This is an archive of past discussions about User:Rich Farmbrough. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page.
Thanks heaps for the list of stations, and especially for making a start upon them.
But I think it duplicates information on the stations list proper.
It also only shares track after Ringwood, after you change trains to Ringwood, then you go on the Lilydale line.
Did you see Alamein line (the link)? That's pretty much the standard around here.
EuropracBHIT 07:39, 2 July 2004 (UTC).
Yep, the Alamein line page is good.
I have to say I'm not knowledgeable about Melbourne, merely trying to create stubs with some value, working off the most needed stub list.
Perhaps best to cut and paste the list of stations from the station list?
Alternatively combining the articles once they get to the level of the Alamein line into a Melbourne Train Lines article, with the appropriate re-directs.
I'm sure there will be errors even in such a simple stub (by the way I mistyped references on Lilydale page as well :).
I see you are invlved in the "To the northwest" project as well :-) Rich Farmbrough 10:32, 2 July 2004 (UTC)
Generalist
Hi Rich, welcome to Wikipedia. I saw on your user page that you are a generalist, and that you want to write about GCHQ and maths stuff... are you a real life spy? (If I remember rightly "generalist" is the MI5/6 term for a spy... maybe it is at GCHQ too?) Pcb21|Pete 00:46, 3 July 2004 (UTC)
No, I'm not, but that's exactly what a spy would say, isn't it? All the best: RichFarmbrough 16:00, 17 February 2024 (UTC).
I'm totally baffled by the pages To West, To East, etc. which are currently listed on Votes for Deletion. Before I cast my own vote, I'd like to know why you created the pages and what they're for. It doesn't appear that any pages actually link to them. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith(talk)]] 23:10, 16 August 2004 (UTC)
Hello
Hi, and another belated welcome to you. If no one has pointed it out to you already, check out the useful info at the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 15:41, 17 August 2004 (UTC)
Brent
Saw the edit on Brent..maybe it needs to be clearer. The Brent oilfield is of course named after the crude, but the crude is named after the goose (many of the Nth Sea fields are named after birds, eg Fulmar, Auk, Cormorant etc
--GPoss 10:05, 19 August 2004 (UTC)
Now much better, thanks
--GPoss 09:33, 24 August 2004 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Edits from 213.48.182.7 have now been reattributed to you. Regards — Kate Turner | Talk 02:14, 4 September 2004 (UTC)
Welchman
Hi! I was thinking about an entry for Gordon Welchman, and stumbled across your conversation with User talk:Pcb21; I've just finished going through The Hut Six Story — perhaps we could knock up a page on him? If you're interested in cryptography topics (even from a generalist perspective!), you might find the Cryptography WikiProject of interest, and I'd welcome any review of Enigma machine, which I've been working on a little recently. — Matt 17:57, 6 September 2004 (UTC)
Arda vs Middle-earth.
Rich, I'm putting this here, so that you don't change more articles about Arda/Middle-earth as the name for Tolkien's universe... When we're talking about J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth universe, we're referring to the *fictional* universe he created, where "Middle-earth" is one of the most popular signifiers for it because most of the stories take place in there. If we were to use "Arda" by your argument, that would still be inaccurate since the entirety of the universe created by Iluvatar is "Ea" -- and infact even *that* would be inaccurate since Ea doesn't include the Timeless Halls where Iluvatar dwells.
In short -- yeah the universe described in J.R.R. Tolkien's books is called Ea, and the planet Arda, and only a continent is called "Middle-earth". But the phrase "Universe of Middle-earth" is just a signifier like "Universe of Battlestar Galactica" or "Universe of Babylon 5" We don't mean that the whole fictional universe is physically contained in those locations bearing that name. Aris Katsaris 23:56, 18 September 2004 (UTC)
Hi! Did you take this photo yourself? Image:StoneFigureonTrinityBridgeCrowland1.JPG. If so, could you please indicate the license and copyright details on the image description page. If it is GFDL, make a note of that by placing {{GFDL}} in the description. — David Remahl 11:58, 20 September 2004 (UTC)
Thnaks for your comment. The picture was by me (as I noted within seconds of uploading). Funnily enough, alhtough I inteded to put a version of that pic up anyway, I was doing it now to confirm the process, in order to help with "tagging" of pix. (Which I had not fully understood, so it was a worthwhile exercise!) Can you point me to the list of tags for licenseing pix? Rgds Rich Farmbrough 12:20, 20 September 2004 (UTC)
Eek! Could you slow down, or mark as minor, the image tagging? Recent Changes is getting swamped. —No-OneJones(m) 20:31, 20 September 2004 (UTC)
Changed my preferences to minor Rich Farmbrough some time 20 September 2004 (UTC).
Thanks...
...for all the great maps! BCorr|Брайен 15:20, 20 September 2004 (UTC)
Not my maps: "I wish!". Simply tagged all 3094+ as GFDL. Rich Farmbrough 15:44, 23 September 2004 (UTC)
Graph
... also, you really do need to check your links. You wrote [[graph]], and that turns out to be a disambiguation page. What you needed was [[graph (mathematics)|graph]]. Similarly, some mathematicians writing on Wikipedia about the mathematician Niels Henrik Abel have linked to Abel, but that page is (of course!) about the son of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis who was killed by his brother Cain. So always check your links. Michael Hardy 00:54, 31 August 2004 (UTC)
Mmmm so there was an earlier Abel, I might have made the same mistake. So now which one did invent the commutative law for groups? Billlion 14:42, 24 September 2004 (UTC)
I have looked briefly at some of these items. Most of those cases the "prophet" would be considered (at the time) a heretic, rather than a member of a mainstream church. I think a little more disclaimer is needed at the top, or a lot of deleteing. :) Also refs to the actual words of the "prophets", where possible. Rich Farmbrough 20:01, 27 September 2004 (UTC)
My personal feeling is that these people were heretics at the time and did not necessarily represent the enitre church. If we delete the "heretical" ones we might end up with only four (Armstrong, Miller, Russell and Jo Smith). I'm happy if you want to write a short disclaimer. One Salient Oversight 22:26, 27 September 2004 (UTC)
"that by 1977 all denominations would be consumed by the World Council of Churches under the control
of the Roman Catholics, that the rapture would take place, and that the world would be destroyed."
(Burgess and McGee, Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, 96)
However this is quite a jump from what the article pages says! It's also the only _source_ I could find. The transcripts of (at least some of) his sermons are on-line, the one I found (http://www.nathan.co.za/message.asp?sermonum=1074) mentions WCC in a negative biblical context but that's about it (although I didn't read the whole thing).
I think we need a more authoritative reference to say that he made the statement, and that he claimed it was divinely inspired prophecy.
I have removed this text until we have an authority.
Hi Rick. Just a query about your changing the William M. Branham article with regards to the prophecy that was not fulfilled. If you go to Google and type in "Branham" + "1977" +"False" you will find a large amount of pages. Considering this large amount of evidence I think it is important to include the phrase in the article. Moreover I am a little concerned that you chose to remove that part of the article when the rest of the article is so very biased and POV towards Branham.
So pretend you're me. You stumble upon the William M. Branham article and discover that the person who wrote it was obviously a big fan of Branham. However there is a cleanup notice on the page and you decide to put it on your long-term "to do" list in your mind. Then in the process of researching other articles, you discover some websites that state that Branham made a prediction that did not come true. Since you have already read a fiercely pro-Branham website that made it clear that Branham believed he was the prophet Elijah, you put two and two together and decide that he must have made a "false prophecy". You include this in one short sentence in the Branham article
Then someone comes along and removes that small sentence with the claim that it can't be verified objectively, while leaving the incredibly POV article untouched. Then you begin to wonder whether that person is a supporter of Branham who does not wish to have anything negative about him written in the article.
Of course I am not making any judgement either way. That's why I'm talking to you. But can you understand my unease at this point? One Salient Oversight 23:07, 27 September 2004 (UTC)
Branham proclaimed himself the angel of Revelation 3:14 and 10:7 and prophesied that by 1977 all denominations would be consumed by the World Council of Churches under the control of the Roman Catholics, that the Rapture would take place, and that the world would be destroyed. He died in 1965, but many of his followers expected him to be resurrected, some believing him to be God, others believing him to be virgin-born.
Branham's influence has continued in many churches where his prophecies are considered to be divinely inspired. His teaching on the power of the spoken word has been a characteristic of later revivalists. Kenneth Hagin identifies Branham as a prophet.
Burgess and McGee, editors, Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. p.96
Until either the above quote is proven to not exist, or until Burgess and McGee can be proven wrong, the quote should stand in the Branham article methinks. One Salient Oversight 23:29, 27 September 2004 (UTC)
There is a reference in each of these sermon transcripts to the year 1977 where he predicts something. In the last transcript he states And at 1906 the Laodicean church age set in, and I don't know when it'll end, but I predict it'll be done by 1977. I predict, not the Lord told me, but I predict it according to a vision that was showed me some years ago, that five of those things has (out of the seven)--has already taken place about.... That bit where he says "not the Lord told me" can't really be made to say anything. In the other three transcripts he makes it pretty clear that he was predicting something. One Salient Oversight 23:46, 27 September 2004 (UTC)
Branham etc.
Yes, I understand how it seemed. It looks like I have stumbled into a controversy (outside Wikipedia) here. I certainly don't think Branham was anything special, I arrived there from the Timeline of unfulfilled Christian Prophecy page. The quote from Burgess and McGee (which both you and I found) seemed rather to overshadow the WCC thing. The sermon I looked at (and referenced), if anything contradicted it. "Gather the tares into bundles - Lutheran, Baptist are in the WCC" to paraphrase. Which would imply that that was one bundle of several. Cursory (I admit) research seemed to indicate that the "1977" element of his predictions was personal, not prophetic. To err is human (even if Branham did it (in terms of facts) rather more than most). The references you gave seem to support this.
I have made some more edits to the Branham page, perhaps you could glance at them (some may underestimate his import).
Then I suggest re-inserting the "1977" under the "anomalies" section, as a prediction rather than a prophecy.
I see you are knowledgeable about the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements, can you confirm whether he was a major influence on the three movements mentioned in the article?
Is it possible to identify his seven prophecies and put them in the article? I find the "egg shaped car" rather amusing, but I couldn't (easily) find a definitive list of the prophecies. Rgds Rich Farmbrough 08:58, 28 September 2004 (UTC)
Branham was instrumental in getting the Latter Rain Movement going in the 50s and 60s. It was so strange that the Assemblies of God declared it a heresy. Branham's teachings have been modified somewhat but are still being felt in the Charismatic and Pentecostal churches through things like Manifest Sons of God and Kingdom Now theology - the latter I believe has some major impact on how Christians in the US will vote at the next presidential election.
Thanks for dispelling any concerns I have. I'm fairly happy with the changes you are suggesting.
As far as his seven prophecies - I admit that I don't know a huge amount about the guy except some of the major stuff (including his denial of the Trinity). I suggest you search that South African website with a Google advanced search, looking for "seven prophecies" on that site.
Egg shaped car? I have no idea what this has to do with Branham but if it was received during one of his visions then I am not surprised. It might even make a good entry on the Timeline page if it is a prophecy. One Salient Oversight 10:06, 28 September 2004 (UTC)
GNU/GFDL
Hi,
You asked if my pics released under GNU are {{GFDL]], and the answer is yes they are, so if you would like to retag them, I'd be much endebted. Thanks
I see that you keep changing "UK" to "United Kingdom". Is this a standard laid down in the MoS, or just your arbitrary personal decision? -- Jmabel 18:43, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)
You've done this on a few pages I wrote or did the edit that put in UK. In each and every case, UK scans a lot better than United Kingdom. I'm chaning them to [[United Kingdom|UK]], as it makes more sense. I'd appreciate if you did this where it scans better. Thanks. Kiand 19:24, 7 October 2004 (UTC)
[[UK]] is a disambiguation page. As Kiand points out [[United Kingdom|UK]] can look better than [[United Kingdom]] in some circumstances, indeed some changes were to that. Please feel free to change any that you wish to what you think looks best. I have disambiguated all references to UK (and they were all to United Kingdom:). Now back to [[British]]... Rich Farmbrough 22:46, 7 October 2004 (UTC)
I'm with Kiand on this. And why on earth is UK a disambiguation page? It almost always has one meaning. I'd think that should be a redirect to United Kingdom and the disambiguation page should be UK (disambiguation). Oh, well. -- Jmabel 22:53, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)
I agree, perhaps I should have been bolder and made the redirect. Rich Farmbrough 23:04, 7 October 2004 (UTC)
I went ahead and made the redirect; this also concurs with the opinions on Talk:Uk. --Michael Snow 06:03, 8 October 2004 (UTC)
On Vickers Vimy you changed a link [[British]] to [[UK|British]]. [[UK]] is in fact a disambiguation page, so your change did not improve the article. You should instead have made your link something like [[United Kingdom|British]]. Please check a link goes to where you think it does. Thanks, —Morven 20:16, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)
My mistake. All being fixed now. Rich Farmbrough 15:32, 5 October 2004 (UTC)
UK and British are not the same thing. At all. The United Kingdom is the entire Union, Britain is the island. For example, Northern Ireland *is* in the UK but is *not* in Britain. Might be advisable to leave links like that as-is Kiand 19:25, 7 October 2004 (UTC)
British itself is a diasmbiguation page.Rich Farmbrough 12:27, 8 October 2004 (UTC)
Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:
Option 1
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}
OR
Option 2
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}
Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. – Ram-Man(comment) (talk)[[]] 13:54, 9 December 2004 (UTC)
No wholesale [commercial use|hijacking] of the Wikipedia.
Credit directly or indirectly through wikihistory.
No real restriction on information which has been digested by sentients.
The GFDL (and CC-by-sa) allow commercial use, otherwise one could not sell printed material, but of course one must always allow free copying. Both supply credit. I'm not sure what you mean about "real restrictions on information", but part of the reason I am seeking multi-licensing from users is because your GFDL edits are restricted so that WikiTravel cannot use them because they use a different open/free license. Both licenses claim to be open and free, but the text of the license makes it clear that they can't be interchanged (without of course multi-licensing, which removes this restriction). – Ram-Man(comment) (talk)[[]] 15:05, 9 December 2004 (UTC)
Energy Development and Hubbert's Peak Theory
There is a little storm brewing at Hubbert peak concerning, well, many things. But currently concerning how to organize information concerning future development of energy schemes (phrased as "Oil Alternatives" or "Future energy development" depending on whom you ask). As you might guess, Hubbert Peak is an article that might be expected to draw a lot of public interest and heat; Energy development is not. We could use your input regarding how to proceed. Visit Talk:Hubbert Peak to contribute. Thanks for your consideration. Tom - Talk 21:07, 15 December 2004 (UTC)
32,000 megatons of TNT = 133 Exajoules by my calculation
Hi Rich, has anybody asked whether you're interested in being an administrator? You've been around long enough to know your way around, and seem to have a pretty calm approach to things. I would be happy to nominate you if you are willing. Please let me know. --Michael Snow 21:05, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me nominate you. I've posted your nomination at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. If you could go there and indicate your acceptance of the nomination, that would be great. Also posted there are some standard questions, if you wouldn't mind taking the time to answer them; some of the people considering admin candidates like to have a little more information, since they may not know much about you otherwise. --Michael Snow 17:15, 1 February 2005 (UTC)
Congratulations, Rich!
Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 19:23, 8 February 2005 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone for considering and/or voting on Adminship.
Much appreciated, hope it's good for us all. Rich Farmbrough 20:16, 8 February 2005 (UTC)
Votes for Deletion: February 15, 2005
Three VfD's are taking place on key Project of Alternative Medicine articles.
I am contacting you because you have in the past made a edit to Terms and concepts in alternative medicine. You added a write up on Iridology to this article. And, I would hate to see all your efforts to improve this article be wasted because other editors voted to delete it.
Thank you for copy editing the Amateur press association article. I used the word "British" and the associated wiki link British to describe BAPA because it was founded with members from the island of Great Britain. Subsequently it attracted members from Northern Ireland, Ireland (Eire) and elsewhere but originally it was British. I plan to revert the wiki link change of United Kingdom back to British. Is this OK with you? --Theo (Talk) 19:39, 20 February 2005 (UTC)
Note: I've repaired links to the disambiguation page for "British" in the above paragraph, to reduce crowding on the "What links here" page for that article. Cheers! -- BD2412talk 03:13, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
Friendly question
I like the idea that editors such as yourself like to tidy things up (I enjoy creating new articles or contributing to articles that I am interested in); but what exactly is it that you are correcting? I am just curious. A number of my previous contributions have been referenced by your work, only you don't say what it is that you have done. If I knew (because it seems to be universal in nature), I would avoid doing whatever it is, or do whatever it is that isn't done, to avoid creating work. I am not in the least bit offended or critical, as I wrote, I like the idea that editors such as yourself exist (and if you didn't, you would have to be invented.) I just wish that I knew what it is that I am doing or not doing that is creating work. MPLX/MH 19:48, 20 February 2005 (UTC)
Pedro Lopez
I wonder if you've noticed that your "scratch" version of Pedro Lopez at User:Rich Farmbrough/Pedro Lopez actually shows up at Category:Hoaxes and the other categories that the scratch article has category tags for. If you're still using the scratch article but don't want it to show up on the category pages, you could try putting a colon inside the category tag, like this: [[:Category:Hoaxes]] This will turn it into a link to the category page rather than placing the page itself in the category. (this works, but for some reason I can't find it documented anywhere.) -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:52, 26 February 2005 (UTC)
Ezekiel Polk
I expanded your note on Polk County, Missouri, and had an interesting and frustrating time trying to researh Ezekiel Polk. Hope I got it close to correct, and thanks for the idea. Lou I 21:44, 26 February 2005 (UTC)
In the Gamma ray burst article, you introduced a factual inaccuracy. You marked in the article that BeppoSAX was healthy as of 1004 (which was rapidly changed by others to 2004), when in fact it was deorbited in 2003. Please use caution that you don't introduce similar factual inaccuracies on future edits; they can be difficult to spot and call into question all facts in the pedia. Thanks. --Milyle 08:41, 10 March 2005 (UTC)
Eagle Scout
Hello. I wish to point out to you that over 1 million Eagle Scouts have achieved the rank since 1911. If you do the math, thats a little bit over 100,000 new Eagle Scouts a year. So it is still a rare occurance that a young man achieves Eagle Scout. Zscout370 00:26, 26 February 2005 (UTC)
Not that this undermines your point, but wouldn't that be 10,000 Eagle Scouts per year? --Milyle 08:43, 10 March 2005 (UTC)
Speedy deletion
Hi !
Would you please delete these Redirects who have a typo in their title but not in their redirect:
Pzkw VI - There's no such designation - either PzKw VI or PzKpfw VI but not this one.
Junkers JU87B-1 - aircraft naming conventions say manufacturer + model number, but nod with subversion number included
There are still some other strange Redirect under Junkers Ju 87 - don't know where they origin from
I was working on eliminating chains of redirects and found these mistyped entries --Denniss 01:33, 13 March 2005 (UTC)
Re: Doug Malloy
The article was deleted as per a VFD voting[2] on the grounds that he wasn't notable. But please don't get me wrong, I might be missing something :) About the links pointing to the page, are they about the same person that was deleted? If not, maybe you could make a request for it to be written (or, of course, just write it yourself). Thanks for your message! -Frazzydee|✍ 04:50, 13 March 2005 (UTC)
Rachael McArthur
I've speedied Rachael McArthur, as requested. Why did you later want this not speeedied? Rich Farmbrough 17:02, 14 March 2005 (UTC)
Honestly, I can't remember the article, or removing a speedy. Sorry. Little curious now, though, but let it drop if you don't think it's a big deal, which I doubt it was. --InShaneee 02:29, 15 March 2005 (UTC)
I propose you take a look at Germanic peoples ones again. The context is clearly historical. Piping to the United Kingdom seems strange to me, and there already exists one such pipe, that maybe is a tad more appropriate. /Tuomas 14:28, 2 April 2005 (UTC)
Charter88
Rich, why didn't you incorporate the text on the Talk page into the article, or was it in the article and you removed it? I thought that a substantial part of the text was very helpful. Did you write it, or what is the history of it? MPLX/MH 20:09, 2 April 2005 (UTC)
Justin Canha and the Google Test
Hello, Rich. I just saw your justification to not speedy delete the Justin canha article, in the article's history page. Responding to my speedy deletion reason: "This is an article about someone with less than 500 hits on Google" , you said (sic): "Google hits do not a speedy deletion make".
Among other reasons to do a Google Test there is: ...to decide whether a person is famous enough to have an article or is just making the page because of vanity
Firstly The Google test has always been and very likely always will remain an imperfect tool used to produce a general gauge of notability. It is not and should never be considered definitive.
I agree that Justin Canha almost certainly “should” be speedied, but under the current policy it needs to go to VfD. Rich Farmbrough 19:24, 12 April 2005 (UTC)
VFD
Just one more thing, Google Test was really voted for deletion. But the result was keep. --Abu Badali 17:23, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
Hello--Crestville 18:17, 13 April 2005 (UTC)
Hello yourself :) Rich Farmbrough 15:26, 14 April 2005 (UTC)
Hey, cheers! :)--Crestville 22:17, 14 April 2005 (UTC)
Persia
I notice you've been disambiguating links to Persia into Iran. Thanks, but please be aware that that article deals only with the country that's occupied that area since 1935, when the international community first began referring to it as Iran. Instances of Persia in more historical contexts--for instance, in ancient Roman, ancient Greek or Muslim history articles--should really be disambiguated to Persian Empire. Binabik80 03:23, 16 April 2005 (UTC)
I was also going to comment that this is probably a bad idea. Most of the the changes I checked should really be disambigged to Persian Empire. It is similar to linking to [[Ancient Egypt|Egypt]] rather than [[Egypt]]. -- Solipsist 06:34, 16 April 2005 (UTC)
The problem with Persia is that the discussion, and the page itself, indicate that Iran is the correct disambig. There is a seperate page for Persian Empire, and I have changed a number of links from [[Persia]]n empire to [[Persian Empire]]. Iran includes a link to History of Iran which is also redirected from History of Persia. I'll leave it alone for now, and see what the discssion on talk:Persia brings forth. Rich Farmbrough 16:41, 16 April 2005 (UTC)
A number of the links you've made to Iran are clearly more appropriately made to Persian Empire, especially considering they are talking about events of 1,500-2,500 years ago. I've fixed some of them. As for History of Iran, the majority of it is on the 20th century, and the section on the older history notes that the main article is Persian Empire. I've fixed that re-direct to point to the article that actually has the information in it. Jayjg (talk) 04:14, 17 April 2005 (UTC)
Shoot, I got involved today with the project and have had the same problems, including someone who was miffed with my edits following behinf me and reverting everything I did. I think maybe we need to have a more general topis Persia, which could cover (and link to) the ancient empire, the modern Iran, and the cultural articles.General Leppy
Hello. Please don't forget to provide an edit summary. Thanks, and happy editing.
And if you use <nowiki></nowiki> you can express wiki construct unwikily.Rich Farmbroughcirca 16:37, 11 April 2005 (UTC)
Trouble at Wiktionary
There is a user on Wiktionary that is outta control and he must be stopped. Will you ban Bobtail since you are an adminstrator and on Wiktionary, protect "Template:Hellenicindex" and "Template:Englishindex" to avoid vandalisms. Pumpie, 21:12, 23 April 2005 (UTC)
Islamofascism VfD
Could you please explain the reasoning behind this decision? BrandonYusufToropov 20:01, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification, and for the suggestions on future edits. I'm partisan, I know, but it seemed to me that the "merge/redirect" + "delete" constituency was a working majority, and that it constituted something of a mandate for change. Could it have gone the other way, do you think? BrandonYusufToropov
Not sure how harmless it is, given the depth of anti-Muslim sentiment in the US and elsewhere, and the tendency of people to point to things like encyclopedia entries as evidence for the legitimacy of ideas that might otherwise be considered extremist and unacceptable. BrandonYusufToropov 22:00, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
I see your point. Thanks again for the ideas on editing. It seems to me it should be a much shorter article if it remains. BrandonYusufToropov 22:50, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
Germans vs Germany links
On several articles related to Czech Republic you changed link from Germans (as people) to Germany (as country). For example in Jihlava article the people link would be better - it is about events hundreds years ago when no state existed (and the people were identified more as Saxons, Bavarians etc than Germans). Pavel Vozenilek 10:29, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, you are right. An article of its own would be needed for complete coverage. Pavel Vozenilek 10:56, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
Are you using a bot? [3] seems rather odd ([[September 11, 2001 attacks|[[11 September]]]] really won't work, honest). Please note that running a bot without prior permission is a Bad Thing, most especially so when you don't even leave an edit summary
Nor does one of the changes in this edit of Hansie Cronje. Well intentioned, but wrong. The template sorts out the linking, so it displays as "As of [[1 January]], 2005" -- ALoan(Talk) 18:17, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Glad to sort out the Kissinger link; looks like there are problems on similar pages. Are you using a bot? Mackensen(talk) 18:20, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
No, no bot. Search and replace, then checking the diff. I was editing the Kissinger one when you fixed it. Rich Farmbrough 19:32, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Disambiguation pages (sticky)
I noticed that you've done some disambiguation on [[British]] and others. I've been trying to do this as well. Any possibility of starting a project to do it? You can reply to this section. Thanks, Alphaxτεχ 09:47, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
How would you envisage this working? Rich Farmbrough 11:24, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ok, people check Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links (and the more updated one) and Category:Disambiguation for things to disambiguate. Where there is a clear alternative for a link target (eg. United States vs. America), it is inserted; where there is not, it is discussed. I realise the difficulty in maintaining such a thing, but ultimately, links to disambiguation pages lead to 2 pages being loaded per link followed - increasing server load and slowing down Wikipedia. Alphaxτεχ 09:18, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps we need a Wikipedia:Disambiguation queries page. OTOh the people who are best placed to decide will be the regular editors of the page, if any. Rich Farmbrough 13:37, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The hardest part is determining which disambiguation pages have the most incoming links - best determined by database dumps. In some disambiguation cases it's difficult to decide which alternative is best suited, so we need language & grammer experts working this (I'm neither). I wonder if we should post an expression of interest to the Village Pump or mailing list... Alphaxτεχ 15:56, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm statting the diambiguation links from a database dump. Rich Farmbrough 19:35, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Cool! Where will you put them? Alphaxτεχ 04:14, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It takes a few minutes of user time to do it, so whenever I notice the databse has been updated I will run it. Rich Farmbrough 16:47, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Time to reset the indent level... Now to rope in more people to help... Alphaxτεχ 07:31, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
New database dump being d/l'd as we speak. Rich Farmbrough 15:57, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Cool... do you know of any other people that would regularly check these? I was wondering how long it would take to de-populate the incoming links. Alphaxτεχ 00:22, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've noticed you're linking dates in references (e.g. here). I'm not sure if this is helpful - it just creates blue text that nobody will ever click on. Is your purpose to force the wiki to use local date settings? JFW | T@lk 21:17, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
And why are you switching month and day order, when the MOS does not suggest it, and the actual articles linked to have the opposite format to the one you are switching to? Jayjg (talk) 22:59, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Because it looks the same. [[17 october]] [[2003]] renders as 17 october2003 wheras [[October 17]] [[2003]] renders as October 172003. rgds, Rich Farmbrough 23:06, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Let me be a lttle clearer. I make no effort to keep the original order becasue it doesn't matter. I am using search and replace to make the change. However, now you mention it there is one advantage, from time to time I have to revert a change, which is simple, more infrequently I part revert, manually. This would be easier with the same order, so thanks, I'll probably do that. Rich Farmbrough 23:22, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, it's not much clearer; why is it easier?
Because in the case in point I would edit "[[May 31]]" to "May 31" if I decided a change was wrong - less keystrokes and less chance of error. (E.G. date in a link, a direct quote, a template which imposes wikifying of dates, a URL.) (Except of course that in the case in point the date order wsn't changed anyway)
Also, don't you think the original authors had something in mind when they used that order?
Not in the vast majority of cases. Any more than they have something in mind when they say Anemia or Anaemia. When the layout is more important than the content, then the change should not be made, as in the examples above, or a proper name. When the idea is to refer to a period of time, then it is good that the users can see it in their desired format.
And finally, since the articles inevitably linked to say October 17, why not just link there? Jayjg (talk) 23:30, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Neither format will be a redirect, so what does it matter? Rich Farmbrough 23:47, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
It's disconcerting, for one thing, and Wikipedia policy generally encourages leaving alternatives like this in the form created by the original author. It's much the same for English/American spellings. Jayjg (talk) 23:56, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
I don't see why it's disconcerting, since it's invisible, still never mind, with the changes I talked about I'll be doing what you want anyway. The example of Anemia/Aneamia was chosen to illustrate just such a point, generally it would be left alone, but in the article Anemia it's been regularised - it's not a big deal. Cheers, Rich Farmbrough 08:45, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
The MOS does not actually suggest linking dates in references. Also, the dates in references often follow a specific format (year, month, day) that is not actually dependant on locale (see Pubmed entries, such as PMID 15908442). May I ask you to not link dates in references. JFW | T@lk 10:22, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
What????
"... volume 31, September 1989" means that the September 1989 issue of a journal is a part of volume 31 of that journal. It is absurd to link that to 31 September, even if (or perhaps especially if) the month of September had 31 days. Michael Hardy 22:20, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, my first impulse was to revert, then I thought, well some of these seem kosher so I'll try editing... but then I saw you'd edited a date inside a link, at which point I figured I'd just revert. :) --Golbez 16:48, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
How do get rights to delete and undelete pages and stuff?
Is there a class you must take, or no? Antares33712 22:26, 7 June 2005 (UTC)
Richard Vanderpool
Rich, please delete the article. It's a proven hoax (on the VfD talk page, you see all the information necessary to prove it was a hoax. I was in the speedy list, and seen it, and pulled it, thinking it was a valid article about an unfamous minor league baseball player. So I figured keep, even if for historical posterity. But seeing as it was a hoax, I feel VERY bad about pulling from the speedy. IF I adn't have done that, we would be wasting time on it.
Like 2 out of 3 times (or more) clicking 'confirm' gives "Error. Sorry- we have a problem... The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request."? Oh, yeah. Rather tiresome. I haven't been deleting much recently so I don't have a good feel for if it only started after the outage earlier today, or not. Niteowlneils 22:41, 7 June 2005 (UTC)
Re: What to List on speedy deletion
Ok, fine, I'll cede. But my article on Nichole Arsenault was speedy-ed away from me, with no chance of a repost, yet this hoax is dragging on.
By that I mean, if that could be speedy-ed away, and the second editor nominated it for a speedy, and everything afterwards was vandalism, or adding more to the hoax, it should just be speedy-ed :-) Antares33712 22:55, 7 June 2005 (UTC)
True, it was on VfU
But the VfU got due process. I may not agree, but it got due process. I feel the speedy was out of process, because a) I didn't repost the content, b) I agrued its merits when it had the explain-significance flag, and promsed to research and add and c) I wasn't a part of the original VfD vote (if I would have been there, I would have voted keep. I read on a wikipedia page were that can be useful in establishing due process. So for that reason, I feel the delete without due-process. But on that, I'm starting to get tired of sounding like a sour grape. :-) Antares33712 23:20, 7 June 2005 (UTC)
True, I probably did put it first. I forgot
I forgot. Can you add those edits under my name to my count. But on the due process you see my point. If I get the information and try to repost (under Wikipedia guidelines since the article was a stub), I don't want to be labeled a vandal. Antares33712 23:31, 7 June 2005 (UTC)
PS: Can you email me the page. I was proud of the IPA pronounciation thing I did (lord, now I'm so vane :-) ) Antares33712 23:31, 7 June 2005 (UTC)
Wow, thanks! I wasn't excepting that. I can work on making the article more notable. Antares33712 13:28, 8 June 2005 (UTC)
Ah, ok....thanks! Antares33712 15:46, 8 June 2005 (UTC)
Disambiguation scripts
I'm not sure what perl does with pipe characters (|), but I've made a little change to one of your scripts. Oh, and to fulfil one of my many pet peeves: When editing an article on Wikipedia there is a small field labelled "Edit summary" under the main edit-box. It looks like this:
When you leave the edit summary blank, some of your edits could be mistaken for vandalism and may be reverted, so please always briefly summarize your edits, especially when you are making subtle but important changes, like changing dates or numbers. Thank you. Alphaxτεχ 11:04, 11 June 2005 (UTC)
Histogenesis
Hi, I have no idea why histogenesis was deleted. Danny 03:35, 15 June 2005 (UTC)
Hi, it was probably like you said. If it was blank, I would have deleted it during an effort to get rid of speedy deletes. Sorry for any confusion. Danny 17:47, 15 June 2005 (UTC)
Would you like to join the animated discussion on the Pakistan's talk page? The current issue is whether "Pakistan is famous for its support of Taliban and 9/11 terrorist" is a suitable sentence to start the article's first paragraph. Your contribution would be much appreciated, as the current discussion seems to be more of a dialog between Ragib and SamTr014 Talk:Pakistan. Thanks !--PrinceA 06:39, 18 June 2005 (UTC)
Benazir Bhutto
R you interested in to join the discussion of cleaning up the article of Benazir Bhutto? Talk:Benazir Bhutto--Raju1 03:16, 22 June 2005 (UTC)
Fathers' rights
Hi Rich, I noticed your changes to the dates on the Fathers' rights page. Perhaps you could explain how formatted dates improve the page? They add links to particular dates, eg. today is 24 June2005 but are these links relevant or useful if no entry appears on the date pages to the 'event' from which they were linked? It seems like you are keen on date cleanup, I am just curious as to the purpose and rationale for this project. Any details cheerfully received. -Akiva Quinn 00:03, 24 June 2005 (UTC)
I'm done, but I'll be keeping an eye on it. --Merovingian(t)(c) July 7, 2005 11:12 (UTC)
what's this with the 'gone in 60 seconds' note in the london bombings talk page? Adidas 00:54, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Revert your own edits...
You're the first strange person who'll write "revert my own edits" on the edit summary column XDDD. Deryck C. 12:19, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
Aircraft specification survey
Since you are a contributor to aircraft articles, you may be interested in a survey currently underway to help develop a revised version of our standard specifications section. Bobblewik 19:36, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
VfD closure
Hi there. Per my comment in the VfD on the page you moved to, I'm wondering how you reached a "redirect" decision on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/1000000000000000000. I count 15d, 5r which is a consensus to delete (imo). Note that Jarlaxle Artemis has sort-of voted twice. -Splash 23:00, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
Date wikification bot? No bot
Are you running a bot to wikify dates? If so, you should fix your code to avoid false positives like [4] where you changed
on [[5 September]], [[665]],000 Soviet prisoners were taken
If you are running a bot, you need to follow the rules on Wikipedia:Bots, you need to run your bot under a separate account from your ordinary account, and you should announce your bot at Wikipedia talk:Bots to give other editors a chance to comment. Gdr 2005-06-30 19:46:41 (UTC)
No I'm not running a bot. Rich Farmbrough 6 July 2005 09:03 (UTC)
I also came across two different articles, where you changed the date format inappropriately (Vladimír Špidla and Calculating_the_day_of_the_week). I would advise you to fix the wikify bot to precede such errors and confusion.
No I'm not running a bot. See my user page. Thanks for fixing the articles, prticularly day of week one which was an egregious oversight on my part. Rich Farmbrough 09:03, 6 July 2005 (UTC)
Wikify Dates
Please see my user page. Rich Farmbrough 09:03, 6 July 2005 (UTC)
Disambiguation scripts
Hello Rich, I noticed you generate the disambiguation link list and wanted to see if you would like to offload this duty. I have recently written wpfsck in Perl. It currently processes three cleanup projects while only requiring one scan over the cur and links dumps. Adding this to the existing cleanup projects would be simple and I am further developing a framework to automatically update and publish cleanup projects. As such this would become just another task it performs, but it would free you from the obligation. Regardless I have also created a Perl module you may find useful. It uses a callback system to facilitate processing of the dump files; the subroutine invoked gets a hash that is nearly identical to a $sth->fetchrow_hashref (if you know what that means, if not, it is very simple) and an optional second subroutine can be specified. This subroutine receives an identically structured hash but there are a few restrictions: the article text is read only and it is not safe to use regular expressions. The tradeoff is that memory copy operations can be avoided for articles you are not interested in and a significant performance boost. I also wrote a report generator that takes a list of articles and produces nicely formated cleanup projects. See this as an example. If you would like to use this code you are more than welcome. Lastly (whew, this is long winded), I have recently created the WikiProject help desk; in short its geeks taking requests for one off jobs that computers can do or helping people who use tools that have broken and they themselves don't know how to fix it. Right now there is little demand but I suspect that will change when word gets out. Are you interested? Thanks for the ear, Triddle 07:12, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
I do not think it was a good idea to move 1000000000000000000 to 1000000000000000000 (number). If you noticed, the article is being voted for deletion, so it is best to keep it in place while the vote takes place.
Second, by moving it, you made the link to the votes for deletion page invalid (well I did a redirect, but that does not change my point).
Can you move the article back please? Oleg Alexandrov 20:18, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
I see. I was confused by the fact that the article was moved but the vfd notice was not removed (I mean, almost half of the day passed between the two).
About the new article 1000000000000000000 (number). I think this has no chance of developing into an encyclopedic article, so I do plan to vote it for deletion. Let us see how it goes. Oleg Alexandrov 21:01, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
You may well be right. Sorry I left the VfD notice in by mistake. Rich Farmbrough 21:08, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
Why did you close the VFD on 1000000000000000000 with redirect? The tally for the VFD was 5 or 6 for redirect (to different articles), 13 for delete. Are you ignoring the results of VFD? --A D Monroe III 00:56, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Would deletion and recreation as a redirect pacify you? — David Remahl 01:00, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
I've put my thoughts on the 1000000000000000000 (number) VfD page. Rich Farmbrough 01:32, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
I read your comments. To summarize, you looked over the VFD results, disagreed with them (for reasons you stated), redirected the page, and then closed the VFD with the text "The result of the debate was move and replace with redirect" when you knew the result of the debate was to delete. Is this right? --A D Monroe III 02:03, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
It's
Hi Rich! No, I’m not using a bot for the corrections I am currently doing, just a custom wiki editor. I have a registered bot for automated tasks, though (User:Diderobot). Cheers, Sam Hocevar 08:01, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Wondrous numbers?
What are wondrous numbers? What are the wondrous numbers before and after 384? I searched the OEIS for the term "wondrous number" then a search for core sequences containing 384, but found nothing for this. PrimeFan 20:59, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Just one remark. You deleted a huge chunk of the article Multi-index notation without an edit summary and only with a minor edit flag. It took me a while to realize that it was you who put that fragment to start with, but it is good if you put an explanation next time. By the way, just before seeing your deletion I saw a (real this time) vandalism at real number where again stuff was deleted without explanation, so as you might guess I am not very pleased with text just vanishing unexpetedly. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 17:15, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Double-indent -- please don't
Hi, I notice you double-indented several formulas in several articles. Please don't, it violates the current style guidelines Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics) (against which more than several thousand math articles are written). To change the guidelines, please discuss at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Don't be surprised if the double-colon usage is reverted to single-colon over time. linas 00:44, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
No problem. Please rewrite or otherwise improve any of those articles (some sorely need it). However for future reference the style guide currently says:
When displaying formulas on their own line, one should indent the line with one or more colons (:);
Pardon my ignorance, but why did you put "obliged" instead of "obligated" in Anti-semitism? What is the difference between the two words? I thought "obliged" meant something similar to "pleasured" or something like that....
Apart from a special use in biology obligate means pretty much the same as oblige. I am of the opinion that it is a back-formation from obligation that came about in the 15th or 16th century, and I find it ugly. For the wikitionary defn. of oblige see. Rich Farmbrough 20:05, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Oh, that I didn't know! :) Thanks! --Sebastian Kessel 20:07, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
I was going to ask the same question about the similar edits made in the Liberty Law article. I think there is a difference between the two words; obligated implies there is a requirement defined by law or contract, obliged implies it is a moral or social requirement. (The wikitionary definition doesn't follow this, but unfortunately I don't regard it as being as authoritative as other dictionaries, which do make this distinction.) That said, I think obligated is the correct word in the context of this article. MK2 23:41, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
OED agrees that legal requirement is included, in its lengthy articles. More accessibly the American Heritage Dictionary says " To constrain by physical, legal, social, or moral means." Mirrim Webster has "to constrain by physical, moral, or legal force or by the exigencies of circumstance". Rgds, Rich Farmbrough 23:55, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm not saying it's impossible to interpret obliged the way you're using it. But obligated conveys the meaning more accurately. MK2 04:28, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
"Until recently, the sense of this word has been restricted to positive and personal acts; and when moral duty or law binds a person to do something, the word oblige has been used. But this distinction is not now observed." Websters 1828.
"Obliged" is more common in British speech. That said, please stop converting one to the other because you find one "ugly". Thanks. Jayjg (talk) 03:56, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
Much obliged for your advice. Rich Farmbrough 16:16, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
Obligated has been in use for 500 years. I think you need to concede it's won a place in the language. MK2 04:26, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Who would have thought the old word had so much blood in him? Rich Farmbrough 11:16, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Hello, I see you have been reverting the American "obligated" to the British "obliged" even on American topics and pages that were written in AmEn. Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English states that if the page is regarding a specific country (i.e., the US) then that country's style of English should be used. I am refering specifically to the MLB, NBA and US political pages you altered. It seems like you are compromizing the spirit of the guidelines in favor of your personal preference. The word "obligated" conveys a much stronger meaning on these pages and is languisticly more appropriate in American English. Would you mind please stop altering the word on the pages that are already written in American English? Have a good day!--CrazyTalk 19:00, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Hallo. Rather than ugliness, redundancy is a valid criterion for removing parts of words, and the 'at' of obligated appears to be redundant even in this context. I say this as an English graduate and as a lawyer. I'm not sure I would bother editing an article just for the sake of it though. DavidFarmbrough 17:14 (BST) 12 September 2005
alex is right and teal is wrong. obligate and oblige is the same thing
Orientated/oriented
Hi, a friendly heads-up: orientated is the usual British English spelling, so I use it in my articles. I appreciate the thought, though. ;) Mark1 04:24, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
With both these words the shorter (orient, oblige) is more widely used, and acceptable on both sides of the Atlantic. The extra syllable makes one (orientate) grate on American ears, the other (obligate) on British. It seems sensible to use the shorter version, but <meh>, if anyone wants to change my edits back, I'm not likely to be bothered. Rich Farmbrough 12:11, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
47, 11^6
Thanks for the 47 from the Doctor's aria. It's a little reaching, but I've added it to my list. Thanks also for the note about 11^6. I see PrimeFan added it to 1000000 (number) (together with 1331^2) but didn't tell me about it. I thought this number was on that sequence about the dying rabbits. ShutterBugTrekker 22:19, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Sitaxsentan
Now you've written sitaxsentan, would you mind also writing endothelin and bosentan? I now next to nothing about it but it sounds fascinating. JFW | T@lk 21:29, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
Hi Rich, welcome to the PlanetMath Exchange project! I've modified slightly the entries you made at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/PlanetMath Exchange/05-XX Combinatorics, to be consistent with the other entries and the style that has developed in the project. Hope you don't mind ;-) Thanks for contributing, It is a big project and we can use all the help we can get. You might want to consider adding your name to the "Participants" list at the bottom of the projects page here. Again thanks for helping out. Paul August☎ 22:06, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
About the grammar edit on "Self-defence ..."
Obliged and obligated are synonymous. No further edits are required.
You might be interested to have a look. Regards. --Pgreenfinch 13:10, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
Open Proxies
I want to investigate some recent vandalism coming from many IPs, I saw your note on User:Func's talk page, I would appreciate any scripts that help test for open proxies. Rich Farmbrough 22:44, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
If you want to test a specific IP for an open proxy but you don't know on which port, your best best bet is to search for the IP on the web with google. If it finds something in a "list of open proxies" it'll usually include a port and you can try editing wikipedia through that proxy; if it works you can block it indefinitely. If that fails, you can also try port scanning the host to find open proxy ports. Try nmap. --fvw* 22:18, September 4, 2005 (UTC)
Links
Hi Rich. You recently turned "23 October" into a link on 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Not that it bothers me much, but it was already a link in the previous sentence, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) discourages multiple links to the same page on the same screen, especially with dates, so I thought I'd call your attention to this. KissL 10:17, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm also curious why you seem to be going around to numerous pages and turning every date into a link? The first time it is used on a page, fine, but otherwise it is overkill and muddies the page. Peyna 00:30, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
Having completed the first pass stats for the PlanetMath Exchange project, when I should have been doing Real Life, I am now taking a short Wikibreak. Rich Farmbrough 19:31, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
When you are back, you might be interested in checking out my suggestions for improving the Perl script. (Look at that, he wrote a 10 line script and is already talking wikibreak :) Oleg Alexandrov 21:58, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm as back as I'll ever be :-) . Rich Farmbrough 14:48, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Since you contributed in the past to the publications’ lists, I thought that you might be interested in this new project.
I’ll be glad if you will continue contributing.
Thanks,APH 09:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
You marked the Camp Iguana article as {POV}, but you didn't say why?
You marked the Camp Iguana article as {POV}, but you didn't say why. Aren't you supposed to say why? May I ask you how you think we can reach a consensus as to when it is no longer POV if you don't say what you consider POV about it? -- Geo Swan 22:29, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I saw your addition to the page, yesterday, and replied on Talk:Camp Iguana last night. Yes, the Bush administration made the claim that their suspects did not fall under the Geneva Conventions. But they were over-ruled by the Judicial Branch. The Judicial Branch had the final say here. Which, to my way of thinking, means that the official position of the US government, after some internal wrangling, is that the US government eventually acknowledged that they did have an obligation to have conducted "competent tribunals", in Afghanistan. This leaves me curious as to the value of including the claim. -- Geo Swan 15:40, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Wikify dates script
I'm sorry to say that this is breaking easy timelines... it messed up Prime Minister of New Zealand real good. Better check before you use it. Alphaxτεχ 10:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the alert. There was another one, which I recognised as being special on the edit page, I would have spotted this one, but for Wikipedia's reluctance to show pages after an edit. I can prevent it recurring. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 13:41, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Rich, this also falls over when it comes across European date formats - e.g. this diff. In cases like this, where there's a mix of formats used, or where there's not enough context to tell the format of dates for sure, a script just seems like an easy way to be careless. (BTW, I do think wikifying loads of dates is a Good Thing, it's just that introducing errors in the process isn't!) sjorford#£@%&$?! 22:18, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, I catch most of these, and do it differently for mm/dd/yyyy. Sometimes you can't tell which format it is and have to research (which is a bummer). If I get it wrong the zz's are a warning. I've only found about two articles which mix the // styles, but
really takes the biscuit! There's only about 400 more articles to fix, then it's back to the "simple" dates where the month is in words. Thanks again, let me know if you see any more howlers. Rich Farmbrough 22:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Enola Gay
Hey Rich, I saw the edits you did on the Enola Gay page. Just curious if you have an interest in terms of the plane. Davidpdx 9/17/05 7:00 (UTC)
Only a general way. I was fixing all refernces to the "United States Army Air Force" to read "United States Army Air Forces" Rich Farmbrough 16:37, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Rich - I noticed you wikified 1945 in the Paul Tibbets article when it was already wikified in the same paragraph. Most editors will only wikify the first occurance of linkable text in an article. I personally feel that in long articles, it is good to wikify text when it occurs in far separated sections, since the reader may not have read the section where the first link occurs. Just my 2 cents. --Rogerd 17:54, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
In particular if your preference is set for ISO dates (1995-10-22) , it requires the year as well as the month to be wikified. Rich Farmbrough 18:03, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
I see. Thanks for explaining--Rogerd 18:32, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Luther Page Rewrite Discussion on
See the Luther page talk. --CTSWyneken 01:26, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Japanese emperors
Hi. I notice you are on a bit of a mission to Wikify dates, which is a laudable goal. However, I wouldn't bother with any of the dates in the Japanese emperor articles. Japan used a completely different calendar system until 1873, and it isn't clear yet whether the dates in those articles are Gregorian/Julian dates or Japanese dates. If the latter, they shouldn't be Wikified. Anyway, there is a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) regarding how dates should be treated in Japanese articles. Probably should wait for that to conclude before making any more changes. I plan on going through and sorting through and cleaning up those dates at some point anyway. -Jefu 16:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Dates / my sig
It's good to see another person is working on dates. I too have spent a quantity of time fixing incorrectly formatted dates and date links. I've been doing it manually, which has the advantage of being unlikely to cause problems, but is also painfully slow.
Thanks for commenting on my experiment. You're the first person to notice, as far as I know. How did you find it, by the way? I haven't been very active lately. —Ben Brockert(42)UE News 00:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I want to sign my comments like this Rich Farmbrough 08:27 20 September2005, and couldn't figure out how to do it so I searched user talk space, and found lots of /sig pages, including yours. I finally realised I could set up my nickname as xxx [[{{subst:CURRENTDAY}} {{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}]] etc.. but I still need to sign, save then edit/save again to get the subst to work. On the subject of dates in articles, most of my uncorrected mistakes (so far I've only been told about a handful in many thousands of edits) "escape" either because I've got over~tired or goggle eyed, or because the 'pedia responds too slowly, rather than any fundamental problem. Pretty much everything has to be checked because so many articles have links to September 11th, 2001 attacks!
Also there's loads of stuff in quotes, split onto mutliple lines, and in URLs. Any ideas for the sig, by the way?
Hmm. That's a clever idea, but no, I don't think it's currently possible. You might just put to the developers that sig dates should be wikified. —Ben Brockert(42)UE News 05:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
It's not a date, it's an edition name
Rich, I wonder if you noticed that at the top of my own user talk page I say I'll answer points there in preference to the questioner's talk page. Anyway, you asked there about a funny date, and I've answered you there. (If you'd like to discuss it further, please do so there rather than here.)
Irrelevantly, since you last commented on AfD/Charles Gauci I think the vehemence and provenance of that article's spirited defenses have made it look more obviously vanity. I've voted "userfy" (the user in question seems to have no interest in WP that's not directly relevant to himself). -- Hoary 09:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Charles Gauci
I would like to get your attention to the so-called discussion that is going on here since it has gone way out of hand. I have been attacked personally and so has another fellow Wikipedian. Can you moderate the discussion since unfortunately it has turned out to be a constant barrage of personal attacks and name-calling by those who want to keep the article? I personally won't post again there since the discussion page is no ground for personal wars. Regards --Roderick Mallia 12:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC) Admin mt.wiki
Its ok giving attacks but its not acceptable for those to argue a point with either roderick Mallia or Maltesedog. They should be placed on remand, as when asked for a detailed reply, one gets attacks right back. You will see many times when I ve asked for the arguements to be only based on the matter of discussion. Nothing else. --Tancarville 10:52, 22 September 2005 (EST)
I have examined the votes on the AfD, and reckoned that 6/3 in favour of deletion is sufficient consensus to delete, bearing in mind that little additional notability was established. Hence I have deleted the article and closed the debate. I would suggest that anyone who wishes to see an article of this name, provide clear evidence and justification of ntability to the votes for undeletion, which data could then be incorporated into the article. Perhaps wait until he has recieved his Maltese Republic award. For example, are the books he authored published by a notable publishing house? How many copies have sold. Are they cited as standard reference works. Has he published on pain management, and is he cited? What is the nature of the award from the Republic of Malta, and how many people recieve it each year? How many people have a title of similar rank to his? Did he write the "bird book" or is that someone else? etc.
On the subject of personal abuse in the AfD, what a shame! It did not advance any argument an iota, and resulted in more ill feeling than was probably intended. It is clear to a dispassionate observer where the abuse stemmed from, but one has to be aware that people feel personally attacked when their contributions to the 'pedia are attacked. I speak from experience.
Thanks for the date fixes, but you can't wikify a date in a file name. [5] (SEWilco)
Thanks for spotting. I thought I had avoided the pix, I have now gone back and done the other captions. Rgds, 'Rich Farmbrough' 13:32, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Date links
Hello there. I see your date bot took on a vast chunk of the calendar yesterday, linking all the dates in the top paragraphs of the mmmm-dd articles. Great work! Uh... I know it's a drag to be pressganged through the medium of your user talk page, but if you have a moment, and the inclination, please take a look at the linking dates discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year and, if you're feeling inspired, share a comment or two about why it's a good idea. Thanks. –Hajor 14:05, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Replied there. It's not a bot, though, it's search and replace with manual checking! (Although the date pages were easy.) Rich Farmbrough 14:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Not a bot? Wow! Thanks for chipping in. –Hajor 14:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
NIce to be appreciated Rich Farmbrough 15:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Your date project work is partially or largely automated? May I suggest it is too automated?
I am going to suggest that your date project work on Camp Iguana[6] really wasn't helpful. I am going to suggest that you should only wikify a date if there is some reason why a reader would look up that date. In the external links section, when would it be useful to let a reader look up noteworthy events that occurred on, June 13, or July 27? Maybe if the external link was to an article that reflected on the anniversary of an event like 1941-12-7, or 2001-9-11. But those are special cases. Excess wikification just clutters up an article, and should be avoided. Sorry, but I don't see the value in the wikification of any of the dates you wikified in this article.
I looked at your contributions today. You wikified the dates in dozens of articles today, spending about one minute per article. Forgive me if I am concerned that this wasn't really long enough for you to read the articles in sufficient depth to make a meaningful decision as to whether wikifying those dates makes sense. -- Geo Swan 22:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Please see my comments below exlaining the reasons most dates should be wikified, and giving refernces to the Manual of Style. Rich Farmbrough 23:23, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
I have noticed you "wikified" some dates on Leicester City. One of these datas was already in YYYY-MM-DD format, and thus correct for wiki according to style and formatting guidelines[7]. Guinness 18:17, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
Perfectly correct sir, Rich Farmbrough 10:02, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
You have wikified an Old Style date in Joseph Sunlight. Of course, that will link to the New Style date which I think is inappropriate. Any comments? Cutler 15:09, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Yes, this creates a non-ideal situation. However this is to allow date preferences to work. If you have them set you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Since linkage of the dates is very unimportant compared with the formatting, I think it's worth doing anyway. Realistically people are not going to click on the date link, and to link to the new-style date would break formatting, and posibly be obtuse. Ideally there would be seperate markup for dates, that wouldn't link by default. Rich Farmbrough 15:29, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Reticular Formation
Hey Rich, I was just wondering what the reticulsar formation is and if it was similar to the reticular formation. Also, I wanted to know why my signature was taken off, i wrote the entire article with the exception of a few reticulsar edits.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Iamnotanorange (talk • contribs) 14:47, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Question on dates
Greetings! I note that you wikified a date on Windham, Ohio. All well and good, but the date wikified was merely the date I retrieved info from the village school's website. Somehow, I just don't have that high an opinion of myself as to think that's a notable date in the village's history. But that does bring to mind a question: Is every date mentioned in an article to be wikified per the Manual of Style? -- SwissCelt 11:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
The reason for wikifying dates is often not because the link is important, but rather that it is essential to make user preferences work (that little "preferences" link you see on your page when you are logged in). Gene Nygaard 21:10, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Japanese Dates
I noticed that you wikified another Japanese date. The Japanese lunisolar calendar was completely different from the Western calendar. Therefore, wikifying them doesn't make any sense, because they do not correspond. -Jefu 23:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Wikification of dates
Why, oh why, do you wikify dates? Babajobu 12:12, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Same reason you spell out small numbers. It's the right thing to do. Note that this is to allow date preferences to work. If you have them set you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Rich Farmbrough 15:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Gasp! Okay, fine, I'll support date wikification if you support the spelling out of numbers under one hundred. My only concern is that 1) wikifying dates causes some articles to become overlinked, and that in those cases an additional link is a steep price to pay for the ability to choose "11 September" over "September 11". However, I will pocket those reservations in exchange for your support in my jihad against inappropriate numerals. Babajobu 15:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
And, from the way you have done the Wikifying of the dates, it looked like it was run by some type of script. Please tell us that you are doing this, so we can point you to the right direction so we can get your script a bot flag. Zach(Sound Off) 07:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Count Stephen Sant Fournier
This getting a bit too much, User:Maltesedog now is after another biography of mine and you feel he isnt taking this personal?? He is not making any sense nor is he communicating with the author directly like Administors have in the past. He automaticly places things into deletion. He must be stopped or banned. Please view what he has done before he continues deleting all of Maltese histories. Tancarville 06:46, 26 September 2005 (EST)
- Your not doing a thing about Maltesedog or Hoary?? Typical!! *KeepTancarville 06:55, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Dear Rich,
Placing articles for afd doesn't imply there's something wrong about the particular person who wrote them. Tancerville has valid articles, which form part of the collection in Wikipedia and are also of importance. However I cannot understand his insistance that I am abusing and placing unnecessary his articles for afd, bearing in mind that since the creation of wikipedia I have only placed 3 of his articles, without taking any consideration that they are his. I do not believe that I am not maintaing a neutral pov in this respect. I am not deleting all Maltese histories. There was concencus in wikipedia that Maltese Nobility, modern nobility should not be deleted only for the sake of being noble. It is not a question of placing articles into deletion. I have placed comments in the talk pages of the articles, but these were removed by Tanacerville. To me, this is intimidation not to place any more articles into afd. Debates occur in afd, it is not simply a question of rapidly removing articles, intense debates are generally done through afd and generally concencus is reached. I place the articles in the afd for others to see the opinions of others. Whether they want the deletion or not. It is not simply a matter of deleting a page without any consideration/discussion as Tancerville wishes to imply above. In view of the above, I would be grateful to comment on all the above so that to end this story once and for all.
However, I cannot understand why placing an opinion on the afd page for deletion can cause so much personal anger. Should I be intimidated by such users? I've had articles deleted such as the on the Mediterranean Region, now recreated ignoring all my work and intense research but if other users thought it was appropriate deletion, I said - I give up and did not keep insisting and taking it against the person who placed it for deletion. I am not against Maltese History far from it. I take active interest. But articles like Stephen Sant Fournier and the one of Charles Gauci, have nothing to do with history. These people are alive. Maltesedog 20:19, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
fountain
not at all, thanks. I always suprise how fast wikipedia communit correctis gramma or letter mistakes :). Regards Rafikk 20:30, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
Could you please wikify the dates again in Khalistan? Your changes were lost when I reverted the changes of a persistent vandal. You have made the changes to a POV/vandalized version. Thanks! --Vivin Paliath (വിവിന് പാലിയത്)
Please note that I had to revert your edit here because what you wikified was not a date.
Also note that a date written in the month-day-year order properly needs a comma after the day and before the year, which you are removing on a mass scale, such as in this article. --Jiang 05:49, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I will try to avoid pinyin in future! By the way it's not a bot, it's search and replace. Rich Farmbrough 09:14, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the prompt response. Usually the pinyin has tones instead of numbers, and with time, numbered pinyin will be converted to tones pinyin.
I would prefer that dates written in North American Month-day style by default not be purposely changed to European day-Month unless the subject is European as it would unnecessarily favor one style over the other. I don't think the edit here is appropriate because the subject is Chinese, and in China, dates are written Month-day and not day-month (but then again, the format is something like 2005.10.02 for today and not October 2, 2005, so I think no change in the default is the best solution for this case). --Jiang 09:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
2005.10.02 can be quickly wikified as [[2005-10-02]] which renders depending on your date preferences as 2005-10-02. Rich Farmbrough 22:07, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Spot the difference
OK. I give up. Unless you are a bot (in which case, here is my copy of the News Chronicle and I claim my £5) I've looked and I've looked, but I still can't see the difference you made with your "Wikify dates" edit to Jabbeke. -- Picapica 16:55, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I was puzzled to start with as well, you had already done the date so my search and replace would have no effect, normally if an edit makes no difference, then it is not saved. But I must have been super observant, and removed the space before the closing square brackets around the website reference. Rich Farmbrough 22:14, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
dates in Russian personalia
Hi there Rich! just thought I'd share with you some odd peculiarity of the calendar in Russia (which you might not be aware of; sorry if I'm beating yet another dead horse... :) OK, so in Russian personalia, the dates of birth and death are often cited in both New Style and Old Style because in Russia, the calendar shift from the Julian to Gregorian has occured less than a century ago (!) and much of the published biographical data still show dates under both calendars or even under the Old Style only (causes confusion often, must I admit :)
For example, Ivan Goncharov article has the dates listed by the New Style, and these will be the ones that get recorded into the births/deaths Calendar and born/died Categories. And, the article also shows the dates under the Old Style for reference -- those were left unwikified intentionally. I'd be okay with leaving them wikified as long as they won't automatically go into the said Categories or events Calendars. Would they? not quite sure how exactly that works in the English wikipedia... I also feel that leaving them unwikified helps clarity as the "proper" dates stand out -- but this is certainly a one person opinion. What'd be your take on this? Regards - Introverttalk 23:16, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
All right! Ivan Ivanovich will be properly tagged and logged :) Yes, I wasn't sure how the inclusion into the calendar categories works (I know that it is automated in the Russian wikipedia). If it is to remain manual, then... I shouldn't have taken your time. Regarding #4, like I said I do prefer the "otherwise" because this way, it helps the contemporary calendar dates properly stand out, but it is of course a matter of personal taste. Thank you again for taking time to explain - Introverttalk 03:19, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Aircraft specs policy
Several weeks ago, you voted in the WikiProject Aircraft Specifications Survey. One of the results of the survey was that the specifications for the various aircraft articles will now be displayed using a template. Ericg and I have just finished developing that template; a lengthier bulletin can be found on the WT:Air talkpage. Naturally, we will need to begin a drive to update the aircraft articles. However, several topics in the survey did reach establish consensus, and they need to be resolved before we implement the template. It is crticial that we make some conclusion, so that updating of the specs can resume as soon as possible. You can take part in the discussions here. Thanks, Ingoolemotalk 06:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikimedia UK meeting
Hi Rich, there will probably be a meeting for the purpose of discussing Wikimedia UK this Sunday, which you might like to attend. You could add your name there if so. Cormaggio@ 23:55, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi Rich,
Princess Margaret of Prussia was also hit by some of the endless mess left by user:Arrigo if I remember well. I never had any dealings with that article apart from a piped link repair and a minor lay-out tweak.
As a suggestion, maybe ask user:deb, I believe she has more experience here than I have (about that type of Princesses) - Not so long ago I left her this note: diff --Francis Schonken 12:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Put up the merge templates for the two identical margaret(e)s (suggesting a direction for merging) nonetheless - PS, If you happen to see Cormaggio this WE, send him my regards! --Francis Schonken 12:32, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Barnstar
I, FireFox hereby award you this Minor Barnstar for all your brilliant minor edits!
I don't know if I have a shared IP address. How would that happen? C2 aaron 12:57, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
It's sort of a high school. It's a school in a residential treatment facility. It has kids from different grades in it. Me, Justin, and Buddy (Aaron) are all in high school though. C2 aaron 13:44, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
9814072356
Just called by to say nice job on expanding 9814072356. FWIW, I have voted strong keep on its Afd page. Gandalf61 11:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Page Deletion
Are you an admin? Can you get LP aaron C2, P.I.D, Samantha Day, Sarah Love, and Brittany h2 o
deleted? 2 or 3 of them were created by Buddy Love, and 2 were created by me (sorry, it won't happen again). Thanks. C2 aaron 13:23, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Vandalism
I typed to Jessica Liao, to give advice on kids. 10 or 15 minutes later, I went back to her talk page. I found out, Buddy Love had edited my advice, so his signature would be on it. I reverted it back already. C2 aaron 13:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Obliged
Sorry, but I have reverted several of your edits. Please don't change English from one form to another to suit personal preferences. - SimonP 14:58, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
autoblocks
The user#N blocks represent autoblocks of the underlying IP address when a particular username is blocked. This is implemented by the Mediawiki software. -- Curps 00:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Physical Effects of Abortion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Effects_of_Abortion can be changed to be more neutral. I have wikified and marked as not NPOV. It was marked as from the Catholic Encyclopedia...if we have a template for it, I assume that it's ok. raylu 16:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Page Deletion
This is LP aaron C2( C2 aaron ). Could you please delete my User and User talk pages or have them deleted? Thanks. LP aaron C2 17:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Overlinking
[8]: did you really mean to wikify the date on which I accessed a web reference? What is the point of that? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:32, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
In particular if your preference is set for ISO dates (1995-10-22) , it requires the year as well as the month to be wikified. Rich Farmbrough 09:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Page Deletion
This is User:P I D ( C2 aaron ). Can you please delete my user and user talk pages? Preacher In Development 15:23, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Properly-wikified dates are good, and I'm glad you're working on it. However, your bot has been making erroneous edits which I've had to revert. Consider this edit and my reversion. One is a direct quotation which shouldn't be modified. Also the dates in the infobox are already wikified by the template so that people don't have to remember to do it themselves. I'm not sure whether that's the right or wrong thing to do, but it's the way it's done, and if you wikify them again they end up as [[[[21 June]]]] which renders as [[21 June]]. I found another example where you'd done that too. I'm worried we're going to end up wasting a lot of time reverting your edits if you don't make a special case for that. Thanks. Stephen Turner 13:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, most of the cricket articles are so good I usually cancel the edit. I also made a change to search and replace some time ago, to ignore dates immediately preceded by an "=" sign, I can then override by inserting a space between the = and the date. However I've had a better idea...
In the round, I'm making a few uncorrected mistakes, but out of many thousand edits, and improving all the time. Quotes are hard, and can only be checked by inspection, (and sometimes the "quote" is a translated, in which case the wikifying is the right thing to do), but I can certainly exclude lines starting with ":".
Incidentally, because of wikilag, I do a bunch of pages, check them, then the next bunch, arguably the checking is the weakest point of the process, and the better the rest, the weaker the checking gets. Also worth noting, the main part of wikifying dates is almost done.
Hi! I reverted part of your edit here because dates in URLs do definitively not need wikification. You might want to exclude this kind of behaviour from any automated processes. --zerofoks 20:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
You made an edit to List of Native American tribes with the edit summary, "Wikify dates" [9] While the edit itself was a useful one, the difference between the edit summary and the change that you actually made makes it harder for someone like me who is verifying that any given edit wasn't vandalism. Please use descriptive edit summaries that match the changes you are making. Thanks. -Harmil 14:32, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I had not realized what a compulsion this seems to be for you until I reviewed your recent edits. The following changes:
are just a sampling of your "Wikify dates" edits over the last couple of days. None of them have anything to do with dates, though they are not actually vandalism either. You seem to have a desire to contribute, so why are you so insistent on making the edit histories of these articles inaccurate? -Harmil 13:01, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Simply a default edit summary, that didn't get turned off. Rich Farmbrough 17:54, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
You might want to be a bit more careful when you convert dates - see Silver Dollar City, specifically the various statments that "childern under 8 may ..." - that is NOT a date. N0YKG 21:57, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
See note at top of page.
It's in big letters. Night night. Rich Farmbrough 00:40, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
and the styles should agree throughout the article.
(I will someday try to clean up that page, but it's such a mess, I've put it low on my list.) Hal Jespersen 00:34, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Just for you I've made them consistant. Rich Farmbrough 00:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
History of the administrative division of Russia
Hi, Rich! I should have probably mentioned this before, because you apparently are wikifying dates in bulk (in a semi-bot mode, perhaps?). Just wanted to let you know that the dates in the History of the administrative division of Russia series of articles (such as this one do not need to be wikified. The reason for that is that there are two sets of dates given—Gregorian and Julian. The Gregorian date is the main one, so it's linked. Linking the Julian date would be redundant (and not quite correct). The other dates/years are duplicates—the first instance is already linked, so there is no need to wikify the rest (otherwise it looks over-linked). Please let me know if you have questions. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 00:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for contating me. This is more about formatting than linkage. For example this is how Administrative divisions of Russia in 1713-1714 looks to someone with their date preferences set to number-month-year.
19 May (May 8 in the Julian calendar), 1713 - the capital of Russia was moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
28 July(17), 19 May 1713 - Riga Governorate was formed on the recently acquired lands in the north-west of Russia.
July 28(17), 1713 - Smolensk Governorate was abolished; its territory was divided between Moscow and Riga Governorates.
Riga Governorate formed on the recently acquired lands in the north-west of Russia.
Smolensk Governorate abolished; its territory divided between Moscow and Riga Governorates.
I brought the years next to the dates for people who have their prefernces set to ISO date format, and also to avoid interrupting the flow of the date. I've moved the Russia link to the first occurance, and removed some bolding. I've also removed the word "was" but that's stylistic choice.
Meanwhile in the real article I've linked the second "July 28", for the moment, the rest I leave to you. I will try to avoid these articles for now, but I suspect I've done most of them.
In the longer term I may look at getting a slightly different markup for dates.
Wow, you must get really tired explaining the same thing over and over again, to each and every person having a question, considering the magnitude of the changes. Anyway, thank you for explaining the bigger picture. Even though I have little to no compassion to people who want to see the dates in the "28 July" format, I understand poor suckers cannot live the other way around, so having a choice is a must :)
I am still, however, a little confused about duplicate dates. The admin division articles only have a few, but I can imagine some articles would get tons of identical date references. Linking them all to achieve the desired formatting effect overloads the page with redundant links, while not linking them leads to inconsistency of date display. Do you have a solution for this problem? No need to go into fine details; if this question had already been asked, I'd appreciate if you could just point me to the right discussion thread.
Same would probably apply to Julian/Gregorian dates—linking both of them is not really the right thing to do (because they both map to only one real-life day), but, as you mentioned, not linking them may break the formatting.
Again, thank you for taking time to write a detailed explanation. I am a date-linking freak myself :), but the issues above leave me somewhat concerned. Take care!—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 12:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that in an ideal world dates should only really be blue and underlined if they are strictly important. That's what I meant about a diffenet markup. I've been thinkng something like <<September 23 1999>> or <<13 September>> etc. The possibilty also exists to put functionality to deal with OS dates, japanese dates, Jewish/Muslim dates etc. Ideally it would be extended to things like <<Cretaceous>> and <<11:15 pm UTC>>. The date linking project is about 80%+ complete I reckon (altough new ones will occur), and I've had probably only 20 enquiries, in every shade of politeness! One of the intersting things is it takes me to bakwaters of the 'pedia where I've found almost every solecism possible, which is useful for planning other cleanup projects. They will not be manual though! (If they happen at all.) Rich Farmbrough 12:46, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Are the developers considering the new markup for that purpose yet, or is it more of a wish-list item?—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 15:06, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Kent State shootings
You made a real mess of many dates in Kent State shootings. I've managed to remove all of the errors I found. Your little search and replace operation wikified several dates that shouldn't have been. One was inside a url (.../may4/...), and several were inside external links. One was already a link!
Thanks for fixing errors, you could have reverted the changes, or just notified me.
Since you actually call it "search and replace", I'm thinking you did this with just a text editor or word processor. As someone who was once employed to do some serious processing of legal documents in Perl, I can tell you you're going to have to do a lot better than that. Learn about Regular expressions for a start. And it's best you use a programming language, so you can construct logic when RE's are insufficient. Like making sure you're not making a link inside an existing link.
I'm using RegExps, there is a limit to what they can do.
But at least check your changes more carefully! And why are they all marked as minor? Imroy 13:00, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I make about 0.1% mistakes, which I think is quite good. I generally find about 1% of speedy delete pages, about 1% of incorrectly titled pages, vandalism, user signed pages and all sorts of other rubbish. They are marked minor so as not to clog up the "recent changes" page. Rich Farmbrough 17:26, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Please do something to prevent the script wikifying dates in signatures and so forth. Thanks. Rob ChurchTalk | FAHD 18:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for your vote on my RFA
Now that the voting has officially closed, I would like to thank you very much for supporting my candidacy for adminstrator and as of 18:36, 28 October 2005 (UTC) I am an administrator. I will make sure to use the additional power judiciously and I welcome any comments you may have. --Reflex Reaction 19:07, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
I came across it while on "random article patrol". You might want to review the edits it made to make sure it didn't break anything else. Keep up the good work. Megapixie 14:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for spotting this. It was a one-off reg-ex search and replace that went wrong, so it's not likely to affect other articles - but if you find any more errors, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 18:45, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Just thought I'd let you know that I've noticed your bot wikifying dates in people's sigs when they sign after placing a {copyvio} tag on an article. I've never been sure why we (used to?) ask people to sign the article in these cases, but quite a few people do. This isn't important, particularly, I just thought I'd let you know. The one annoyance it does cause is that it's nice to be able to get the last diff from the CP listing and, when your bot is the last diff, it means accessin the history instead. Only a minor thing. -Splashtalk 22:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, taken care of. Rich Farmbrough 10:47, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Metrication in the UK
Metrication in the UK. Hi, I noticed your mention of aircraft parking as an exception to metrication law. I searched UK and EU sites for references to aircraft parking but found none. This exception does not exist in any legal reference I have seen. Can you provide any more background on the assertion?
Incidentally, the mention of aircraft height in the dti reference puzzled me at first. At first glance, I thought it was suggesting an exemption for the vertical dimension of the aircraft itself. That would be a weird exception and unlikely to be particularly of concern for aviation. However, it is merely an amiguous reference to use of the foot for altitude which is mentioned in legal documents e.g. Air Navigation Order. Many thanks. Bobblewik 11:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Reduce overlinking.
Some people add brackets to full dates for preferences to work. Solitary months and solitary years don't have preferences.
Our discussion made me notice that you do a lot with dates. I have started unlinking solitary year links and solitary month links with the summary: Reduce overlinking. Some people add brackets to full dates for preferences to work. Solitary months and solitary years don't have preferences.
People do all sorts of bizarre things with dates and it is fairly random and unsatisfactory. There was a discussion about modification of the Wikipedia software so that dates are automatically recognised. This would do away with the need for editors to apply '[['. It was taken seriously at fairly high levels but it seems to have fizzled out. Can we both raise the issue again together? Bobblewik 15:08, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Edward St George
Many thanks for your comments regarding Steve Sant Fournier and also on Edward St George. Edward St George was born to the Count von Zimmermann Barbaro and had everything one can imagine with a silver-lining. Though Edward after a life in the legal profession and other associations, went into an unknown and turned around a community into one of the best in the world. His website biography done by his grandson doesn't really explain all of his generosity and legacies which a GREAT man had left behind. Edward married into the English gentry and nobility but never used his background as a basis of life but through hard work and determination. If Edward had lived another several years would have received a Knight Bachelor from HM, Queen of UK and Bahamas for his efforts.
Tancarville 10:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Aaron Ryland aka C2 is not Aaron Elwen, the problematic user who was blocked along with his sockpuppets. DavidGerard did an IP chekc and Aaron was using the same IP as the other user and that it was at a highschool. C2 has admitted to being friends with Aaron Elwen. C2 was blocked by the autoblock probably. Jobe6 23:15, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Baseball
Hello, I stumbled across Wikiproject:major league baseball. I see that it talks about the 2005-2006 season. This seems odd to me since it seems like a season is contained within one calendar year. There is currently no discussion page to the article. The page seems like it was created by a Bot, and you have the most recent edit, so I'm guessing you are the one to ask aobut this. Should it be changed, or is it correct? Johntex\talk 22:27, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I know nothing about baseball, except what I learned form Peanuts and other American comedy. However I think the article refers to the "standings" i.e. rank which would hold between two seasons. USer:C2 aaron is a real person, a relativly new contributor, I'm not sure why this is a wikiproject: I've sort of asked him. Rich Farmbrough 23:16, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the informaiton. I hope User:C2 aaron is not offended I thought s/he was a bot. I'll go ask him/her about it. Johntex\talk 23:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
363
Hmm... that's really weird. How did I make that mistake? Sure, I can undelete it for you. Linuxbeak | Talk 23:00, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
My RFA
Thank you very much for supporting my rather contentious request for adminship, but now that I've been promoted, I'd like to do a little dance here *DANCES*. If you have any specific issues/problems with me, please feel free to state them on my talk page so that I can work to prevent them in the future, and thanks once again! ALKIVAR™ 07:43, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Okay
Hey what's up? Nuthin' much here. I'm ok. New placement. Ryland 16:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Clarification
The Joey page was a G1 (No meaningful content), but was also a duplicate article. ( See Joey (film) ) I should have been more clear, and for this, I apologise. Krzypntbllr 01:36, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Quizme
Hello, I came across this 'random article' and wondered whether this was something that should be referred to AfD. But I'm new to this and wanted to get your opinion, since you had already wikified it and knew something about it.Crusading composer 03:01, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi Rich. I saw you made a language change to the BBC 6 Music article. Fine. My question, as an author and contributor, is that someone made a change to all the BBC rock station websites BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC 6 Music websites, using an ip address id, to put the entire current broadcast schedule, hour by hour, in the article. I have grave doubts about this. It seems too specific and burdensome to maintain. We had simply a listing of the presenters and show names before. Also, there is an external link to the BBC stations' websites for the schedules. I don't want to edit it out unless there's some concensus feeling. I put a comment on the BBC 6 Music discussion page, ( Talk:BBC_6_Music ) but so far nothing. The poster who changed it might be well-intentioned or fiddly based on his previous contribution history ( User_talk:217.33.74.20 ). Any suggestions ? -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:28, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, very much, Rich. I'm fine with leaving it until or if things go awry. I appreciate your response. I was unsure of my Wiki-feet on this one ! We'll collectively try to keep it up to date. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 23:00, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikimedia UK
You have expressed an interest in Wikimedia UK. Just to let you know I've posted a draft Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association of the proposed "Wikimedia UK" charitable company on Wikimedia UK/Memorandum of Association and Wikimedia UK/Articles of Association. It is proposed that these will receive initial approval by interested parties at a meeting on 27 November. I will put together a brief agenda for the more formal aspects of that meeting soon. Memo and Arts of Association are a company's constitution, and need to be agreed before the company is formed (though they can be changed at a later date). Please feel free to comment on the relevant talk pages (I'd rather the proposed drafts are left unedited so that it is easy to see what is going on) - particularly if there is something there that you would disagree with at the meeting, details of which can be found on the Wikimedia UK page on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Kind regards, jguk 19:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Jake Thackray
You asked about possible copyright infringement. I am a member of a Jake Thackray mailing list, and the original author of the sleeve notes is on the same list. I asked permission before I posted the entry, and sent a link to the entry to the list when I had completed it, so I don't think there will be an issue. Regards Chris Sunderland 12:43, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
BBC sites and internal dead links
Hi Rich. An anonymous contributor made changes to many of the BBC sites (see above) but also just made internal article links where there were no supporting articles. He internally linked all names in the BBC 6 Music Past Presenter list. And other BBC radio articles where there are more names.
This is very hard, if there is a list of, say, ten or even thirty items, which ones are articles and which internal links are dead-ends. I had left them as plain text until I or someone had written a supporting article, then would change the plaintext name into an internal link to the new article. The anonymous contributor has done it to all names in all BBC radio articles. Lots of dead article links.
One can't distinguish which of a list of thirty presenters, have an article. One now has to try all thirty.
Is there some policy, or so you have a take on it ? Should internal pointers to non-existent articles be made when there's no obvious intention of the contributor's writing the supporting article ?
I think it disturbs the reader's flow to point to a number of contiguous dead articles.
Many thanks in advance. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:05, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Got your message. Many thanks for your kind response. I agree also, that a slew of dead article links obfuscate the readability of the article and drilling down for more information. I guess a couple of dead article links, as you say, may encourage people to write articles. But in some of the BBC radio pages, the anonymous user made _all_ presenter names as Wikipedia articles, which is a bit more than a couple and may cause the end-reader to give up on trying to click on other live article links in the list. It's a lot of work to go and fix them. I will look into it.
The anonymous contributor who made the dead article links is User_talk:217.33.74.20 and has been asked about vandalism, although I would hesitate in this case to say it really obviously was.
But one other thing. Is it not the intention when making an article reference Wikipedia link, as opposed to plain text, that one will write the article shortly ? Otherwise, shouldn't one just leave it as plain text until he is ready to write the article ? Thanks for your guidance and help. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 19:49, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Many thanks for your further thoughts on the matter. I will follow your operative wisdom. I agree with all you and Sannse (sannse(talk)) said. I will work it out accordingly. I now know about the colours of article links that you and Sannse are talking about to distinguish a non-existent article pointer from a link to an existing and real article ! I hadn't paid attention to them before. Best wishes. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 20:06, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Loblolly
Hi Rich - I found this interesting discussion on the etymology [11] (from google's cache, as the original page appears to be defunct). It seems 'loblolly' has several meanings, including a mud hole, in which the pines sometimes grow - MPF 11:41, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, the AFD for this was never decided as a clear redirect. Would you agree? I'm asking as you were the closing admin. - Ta bu shi da yu 09:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Non-Western dates
Dude, we've had this discussion before. Non-Western dates (Empress Gemmei) do not correspond to Western dates, and therefore should not be wickified.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jefu (talk • contribs) 23:54, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I noticed that you moved Mojave people to Mojave. This is incorrect, because as stated on the Mojave Desert page, Mojave is used to describe the desert, while Mohave is for the tribe. I am unable to move the page to Mohave however, because the Wiki won't let me. That's why I listed it on Requested Moves and added a note about it on the dicussion page. Perhaps you would be able to vote on Talk:Mojave? Thanks. --Hottentot 03:46, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, you got it. Thanks! --Hottentot 00:23, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I just found out that there is one more: would you be able to move Talk:Mojave to Talk:Mohave? --Hottentot 06:45, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. :-D --Hottentot 19:36, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Mediawiki redirects for deletion
You listed these, now at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion/Old. I've moved all the reamining Template:VfD-<article name> into the wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ space, and deleted the redirects, can you advise what redirects are in the Mediawiki space? Rich Farmbrough 16:17, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Add the following code to your CSS style-sheet and then view the list of pages in Mediawiki. The redirects will be displayed in indented italics. Redirects don't belong in Mediawiki space -- it should be reserved only for system messages.
/* Copy text starting after this line */
.allpagesredirect {
font-style: italic;
margin-left: 1em;
}
/* Stop copying above this line */
Thanks very much for helping perform this maintenance. -- Netoholic@ 04:00, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Great job, Rich. -- Netoholic@ 03:25, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know what you mean by "stayed too long" but it's there. --Dystopos 23:03, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah. Perhaps if I had actually looked at the history I would have known what you were talking about. Ignore me. --Dystopos 23:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Cat:British institutions ->Cat British organisations
Becasue this was done by a mechanism other than "move", history is lost. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 19:06, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Good point, though this is standard procedure at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion, whether or not a bot is involved. You might want to comment on the talk page there if you think this should be changed. -- Beland 02:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Zimbabwe
Thanks for your pass through the Zimbabwean history pages - much appreciated. Wizzy…☎ 06:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Crannog
Hi Rich, I am not quite sure where the contradiction is in the article that you refer to. All I can see is a slight ambiguity about the usual means of access to the crannog (canoe or causeway), but a one word change would fix this. Am I missing something? --Cactus.man✍ 20:20, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, glad to know I am not losing my marbles. I will do some checking and fix things up. Regards. --Cactus.man✍ 08:56, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I have seen several of your edits where you wikify new aricles tirelessly. Keep up the good work. However, some of the new articles are copy-paste jobs from websites and hence, mostly copyvios. Please check the content for copyvio on google & msn search engines (the latter is better as it tracks obscure sites also, imo) and tag them accordingly if they are copyvios - so that we can clear copyvios asap. --Gurubrahma 06:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi, Dilawar Singh Babbar seems to be a copyvio but I am not able to detect it. Sikh Light Infantry is a copyvio and I have tagged it so. Thanks for the heads up, I've failed to look at other contribs from an anon IP with copy-vio stuff. Now I know better. btw, good to see that you are getting into the numerals stuff (above). Sometime back, I had to block three users for 3RR violation (details in my latest archive, in case you are interested further and have time to kill). --Gurubrahma 16:01, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi Rich, please help
I would like to request your help with serious NPOV and verifiability problems on the Arabic numerals page. I have mentioned it, yet again, here Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#December_17. Please help me recruit as many neutral and well-intending editors to the page to counter the strong and manifest bias. Regards, and thanks. csssclll (14:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC))
Hi Rich! Thanks for your intervention in this matter, and I hope things become normal on this article very soon. Our aim is to minimize any conflict. The change in article name was done with consensus, and was based on the following reasons:
"Arabic numeral" is a very common colloquial term for Hindu-Arabic (so fits one of the many criteria for naming on wikipedia), but it's not appropriate in the more formal context of the title of an encyclopedia article, which should be more rigorous in reflecting academic norms.
All other encyclopedias like Britannica [12], refer to the symbols exclusively as "Hindu-Arabic" everywhere they are mentioned. Articles in research papers and other encyclopedias (that are written by professional people who are rigorous scholars, who are paid a lot of money for their work, who are held accountable for what they write, and are peer-reviewed at many levels) exclusively use the term "Hindu-Arabic numerals".
According to another article on Britannica, titled "The Hindu-Arabic system" [13], the numerals are "commonly spoken of as Arabic but preferably as Hindu-Arabic."
Definitely preferred by scholars, e.g., as per Peter Wardley [14]
"`Hindu-arabic' is preferred over `arabic' as a more accurate and useful description for two reasons: first, it places primacy on the region where this system of numerical representation had its origins, the Indian sub-continent; and, second, it draws attention to the difference between the numerals currently used in Arabic countries and those adopted by Europeans after the introduction of various adaptations. The latter, of course, has become the internationally accepted system of numerical representation."
The editors who supported: User:kwamikagami, User:DaGizza, User:Frogular (changed later to weak support), User:Subramanian, User:Raj2004, User:Peyna, and User:deeptrivia (myself). User:csssclll, and User:Sam Spade were neutral. User:Vertaloni opposed at the time, but has since then accepted. User:csssclll does not dispute (at least did not dispute at that time) the name change. He wants certain things to be included in the article, and he has some other issues, like he wants Al Khwarizmi to be called Arab and not Persian. We have included many portions of his text in the article, and mentioned at many places the problems we have with some other portions. We haven't seen any reasonable responses to those objections. Thanks a lot for looking into the matter, and hoping to see some positive results soon! deeptrivia (talk) 15:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Sure, Rich. I think when I last saw the naming conventions, I thought popularity was one of the many criteria to decide on a name. I'll be most willing to accept whatever the consensus is, in light of this new information. Thanks again! deeptrivia (talk) 16:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Obliged
Please stop changing obliged to obligated. The two words do not mean the same thing in some varities of English. - SimonP 17:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
UK Disambig
Hi there. I noticed your dab changing [[British]] to [[United Kingdom|British]]. I went ahead and changed it to British as it was an event that occured in 1702. I was wondering, since from your user page I assume you're from England, if you knew if there was a custom as to what to link the UK to? Should, for example, all events between 1707 and 1801 link to [[Kingdom of Great Britain]]? Linking to [[United Kingdom]] seems a little off to me, as it didn't exist at the time, but I'm not aware of any preexisting conventions or customs. Thanks! -Rebelguys2 23:57, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
I see that you recently edited the Fred Phelps article. This article is currently a nom for Featured Article. I kindly ask that you go vote on it. Thank you.
Hi, Rich. I don't know whether this will affect the wikifying of dates that you do, but I thought you would want to comment if it does. Talk to you later, Kjkolb 03:02, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Surrey10
Just a heads-up that Surrey10 has struck again,at some length: [15]. I've reverted this spree, but I don't know what the longer-term solution is. Mark1 19:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I have reverted the link away from UK for British and made it British Empire, from which they wanted to seceed. No doubt their support from Irish catholics included people sympathetic to Irish Nationalists who may have been UK citizens. Harrypotter 22:43, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
High Court of Justice
The High Court is not a solely Eng institution. The correct link is [High Court of Justice|High Court]. Regards FedLawyer 10:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. I have a strong suspicion that in this edit at the above-named article you made a mistake by inserting the planetmath template and putting it in the combinatorics category. I removed those for now, but please let me know if I was wrong. You can reply here. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Exorcism video
Hi, I see that you deleted an entry that someone had appended to my Talk page. I hadn't bothered to check that video, but now I am curious. Was it porn or something? Did I miss anything worth seeing? 8-) All the best, Jorge Stolfi 16:41, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks... Jorge Stolfi 12:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Rich,
I nominated this page a while back; you deleted it on December 27. I just noticed it has been recreated. I tried to re-nominate it for deletion, but when I put the tag in the top of the page, it linked to the old discussion, not a new one. So I'm not sure how to do that. I'd appreciate your help. Thanks. --Thunk 17:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
An old edit
I got a chuckle out of your "wikify dates" edit of the Long March 1 rocket. But treating that as if there were a date in that name and in the link to the [[Long March 1 rocket family]] screwed things up, royally! Gene Nygaard 21:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
personal attacks
Why again can we not personally attack people?
No, this isn't an encyclopedia, nor any attempt to build one. An encyclopedia is based on verified facts. This isn't, but rather on whoever can log on most often to their page of choice. Wikipedia has great potential, but if you allow the status quo to continue, it will never be taken seriously by anyone with any serious standing in the academic community. But back to the point, my only personal attacks were the result of what was, at root, personal attacks against myself and two other posters, essentially calling us idiots, ignoring our serious concerns about a page, and taking control en masse. Immaturity by others is the sole root of my personal attacks, not any wish by myself to attack other users without cause. Since that situation, I've been trying to show the various fallacies of the system that need to be corrected to have something worthwhile at hand.
Hi, I have just put up a new, shorter and more NPOV version (basically just excised some uncritical description of Evans alleged achievements). I'd love to be able to cite the source for his open letter (?) demanding election fo the Royal Society. IIRC, I found it somewhere, cited in the article, and then you moved it to the talk page? Whatever, I can't seem to find it on the web now at the pro-Evans website where I think we originally found it. Can you help me find the citation again? TIA ---CH 03:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
Thanks for Wikifying the dates in the photographer articles I've been creating. Would you mind reading this article on Adolfo Farsari and suggesting on the featured article candidate page whether you think it's worthy of featured article status or not? No worries if not, but I'd like your sage commentary. Thanks. Pinkville 23:59, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, --Tony Sidaway 16:25, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Page name for temperature articles
To avoid flip-flopping between 'degree Fahrenheit' and 'Fahrenheit' or 'degree Celsius' and 'Celsius', I propose that we have a discussion on which we want. I see you have contributed on units of measurement, please express your opinion at Talk:Units of measurement. Thanks. bobblewik 22:09, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Redirect of Leonard Stern (billionare)
Rich--looked at the redirect. Is there a way to rename the article as "Leonard N. Stern" and redirect it the other way. It seems to me that the current title is hardly encyclopedic. Even "(founder, Hartz Mountain Industries)" would be preferable, if the name by itself wouldn't be sufficient for people to find it. Thanks for your thoughts on this--Beth Wellington 23:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I think I follow! Was there no prior discussion on the original billionaire page. If so, it seems to be missing.--Beth Wellington 23:25, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
My reversions
I reverted your two LoPbN edits that i've noticed so far, with a specific reason for each species of change w/in the page. If it's important enuf to you to ask why, i'll explain. --Jerzy•t 23:34, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Obliged
This is the third time I have contacted you about this issue, and you have yet to respond to me. Please stop changing obligated to obliged, the two words do not always mean the same thing. - SimonP 22:30, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for responding. I had left comments on your talk page twice in the past on this issue, but I guess you must have missed them. I note other users have also complained about these changes. I'm not sure if you are aware but obliged and obligated can have two different meanings. Consider these sentences:
He was obliged to her because of her actions
He was obligated to her because of her actions
They each mean a very different thing. One means he was grateful, the other that he was bound. - SimonP 22:53, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
The two words have become quite confused, so each is often now used in place of the other and many consider them as interchangeable. However, there is no reason to make articles less precise merely because you dislike a word. This reminds me of a recent conversation on the Village Pump. There is a natural tendency for the encyclopedia to move to "lowest common denominator English," there is no reason to help it along. - SimonP 23:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Responses
Hi, I hope you are not planning on indescrimnate reversion of my edits. It seems this is just the sort of behaviour that you are accused of in arbitration. Please also see Wikipedia:Administrators#Reverting. If you want ot discuss the meanings of the word, you had only to ask, rather than just say "I am reverting a few of your edits" then block reverting. Rich Farmbrough. 22:48, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your note. The distinction is not as clear cut as perhaps might first seem the case.
OED agrees that legal requirement is included in "oblige" (as opposed to obligate), in its lengthy articles. More accessibly the American Heritage Dictionary says " To constrain by physical, legal, social, or moral means." Mirrim Webster has "to constrain by physical, moral, or legal force or by the exigencies of circumstance".
Furthermore Webssters 1828 made the reverse distinction, saying of "Obligate" "Until recently, the sense of this word has been restricted to positive and personal acts; and when moral duty or law binds a person to do something, the word oblige has been used. But this distinction is not now observed."
There are of course cicumstances where "obligate" is to be preferred, in direct quotes and in the technical senses of the word from finance and more importantly biology.
You can not change links and template boxes for Danish 1st and 2nd Divisions to first and second. There are created a lot of articles for those two divisions and EVERY SINGLE PLACE are there standing 1st and 2nd, so it isn't that easy changing it. If it should be with letters, the F and S in first and second must be capitalised. Kalaha 15:56, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Skyblue70707
His name is Skyblue70707, almost all his contributions seem to have been related to whatever Skybluz is. He seem to spend more time on his User: page than actually contributing real content to real articles. Maybe he is confused about what Wikipedia is. His name and that almost all he edited is related to Skybluz indicate that he have an agenda, and maybe he is only interested in promoting something with a direct relation to him. He seems rather silly and suspicous. Frap 17:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikify dates
I noticed your date wikifcation at University of Texas at Austin, and I reverted the change because it is not consistent with the examples given at WP:CITE. Generally, dates aren't wikified unless their wikification will add something to the article. I noticed that you have made this change to many articles. I was hoping that you might hold off for a second and come discuss the policy here. — Scm83xtalk 23:52, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Be careful if you're using a bot or some other tool to wikify dates - one of the edits to United States Army changed "On 17 June 2,200 troops under Maj. Gen." to "On 17 June 2200 troops under Maj. Gen." — Rebelguys2talk 23:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
The wiki style sheet [[16]] says that 20th century is preferred over Twentieth-Century. Why the recent changes? Rick Norwood 21:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
That's a lot more work than I would be willing to do on the question of whether 20th or Twentieth is preferable. Rick Norwood 23:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
While I appreciate that wikification of day and name allows preferences to work, I find it annoying to find extra links. I would have thought the preference would work something like Commonwealth versus US spelling. In Australia it is 11 September. In the US it is is September 11. The wikification to set up preferences runs counter to the beginning injunction at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Avoid_overlinking_dates although I appreciate that they go on later about preferences. Is it necessary though - or is it distracting? I think the latter.--A Y Arktos 00:48, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
At some point wikisyntax may allow date preferences and other regionalisation to work without links. Rich Farmbrough. 10:31, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Please revert all the wikifications of dates done on references. It's not only confusing but useless. Jclerman 00:08, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I noticed a problem with your edits to the Are You Are Missing Winner page here. One of the dates you wikified was emedded inside an external link (to a review of the LP), so 25 Nov. 2001 became 25 November 2001. The original format complied with that suggested at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums, so I reverted it. I appreciate the effort you're putting into this project, though - I guess that's another pitfall for you to worry about ;) Flowerparty■ 16:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi this edit also wikified a date in the title of some meeting minutes, ie within a web reference link, - not at all appropriate to my mind and I hve reverted. Regards--A Y Arktos 20:02, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. You wikified the "accessed on" dates in the References section of Thomas Brownrigg, BBC Regional Programme and BBC General Forces Programme. I've reverted these wikifications, (a) because WP:CITE doesn't support linking of dates in the References section; and (b) because the wikified dates there are very confusing for anyone wanting to follow up the references supplied... which is the point of supplying references. Just wanted to let you know. Cheers! ➨ ❝REDVERS❞ 11:13, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi again Rich. I've reverted one of the two changes you made to History of ITV, because WP:CITE doesn't support linking of dates in a references section and because wikified dates there are very confusing for anyone wanting to follow up the references supplied. Cheers! ➨ ❝REDVERS❞ 18:47, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the wikify date updates on some of my recent contributions - will get it right going forward. --Damate
While the wikifying of [[## Month]] is important, in many/most cases the year should be linked, according to WP:Dates. I'd expect, for example, that a biographical article would wikify the birth and death year but few, if any, others. Perhaps the Margaret Thatcher article might have her start and end years as PM wikified, but not the year in, say, the date of a particular meeting. —Whouk (talk) 12:31, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for wikifying my articles & for the tips! Akina66 22:34, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Lots of edits to be had
You have been hitting a bunch of my pages recently with date fixes. If you are looking for a lot of pages that need date fixing go to my user page under pages I have created and you will see many that need help. I figured I'd throw it our there while you were on a roll--Looper5920 12:16, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Leonard Stern (publisher)
Both Sterns have been publishers. The latter is Leonard B. Stern. There was no article, only a deadlink, so I researched and wrote one. Maybe you could do your magic and rename it and do the redirect? Thanks! --Beth Wellington 01:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
As per your request, moved the article to "Leonard B. Stern." First time I goofed and left (writer and publisher) in move, but fixed that and edited the disambiguation page to show the new article name. Hope I did everything right. This is the first time I've ever moved an article. If you find an error, let me know.--Beth Wellington 22:37, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I just tried to edit the redirect as per yur instructions. Would you mind checking and see if it's right. Never encountered droodles Leonard B sounds nicer than Leonard N!Beth Wellington 21:35, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi! I had to repair some of your changes to this article; dates are automatically linked in refs, and your edits made the brackets visible (for example, [[18 February]]). Write me with any questions :) RadioKirktalk to me 00:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Well (and quickly) spotted, web reference templates are more of a problem for me now that references appear in the middle of articles as well as at the end. Rich Farmbrough. 00:20, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Thank you! It just so happens, I wrote the article, so it's on my watchlist; the ref templates were changing in the middle of my efforts to win FA status, so I'm familiar with the confusion ;)
Did, and replied already ;) RadioKirktalk to me 00:26, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Droodles
Thanks for checking the redirect. Sorry the last note lacked punctuation--the sticky keys option invoked itself at the library and I would have had to reboot and lose what I was working on to get rid of them. Droodles are fun. There are a slew more at the droodles homepage. Did know Stern had published them, since I wrote his entry. Didn't realize Price was born in Charleston, WV. By the way, your note to the Hartz pr woman was very nicely done.--Beth Wellington 00:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Barnstar
The Minor Barnstar
Pretty much every article on my watchlist has been touched by the improvatory hand of Rich Farmborough, and I feel it is time I paid my dues to he :) Thanks Rich! Jdcooper 16:47, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
External link(s)
The last time I looked, the MoS was neutral between singular and plural, explaining that though using the plural when there was only one link was inaccurate, many editors preferred it. Has this changed? I can't remember where in all the mountains of material it was. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:34, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Some editors use the header "External link" if there is only one link, but others use "External links" in all cases. There is currently no consensus on which is better. Editors who always use the plural form may prefer it for any of the following reasons:
experience shows that future editors often add links without changing the section heading
people may be dissuaded from adding links to a section titled "External link" since it seems that there should only be one link
using "External links" gives greater stylistic consistency to Wikipedia
The converse arguments are:
Wikipedia's community-editing leads to prompt correction of such oversights.
There is no evidence that a significant number of people would be dissuaded from adding links. Besides, additional links would often be redundant.
Use of "External links" to head a section containing a single link is fundamentally incorrect, a poor precedent to set in an encyclopedia
"Wikipedia's community-editing leads to prompt correction of such oversights." Yes, I thought that that was a touch optimistic (although I've corrected a fair few singulars to plurals as I've wandered around the place). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 23:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
My responses to Mel
Thanks for the comment. I'm just going out, so I'll check when I get back in. Rich Farmbrough. 18:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Well "Wikipedia's community-editing leads to prompt correction of such oversights." is certainly dubious at best, there are at least 8,600 "External link" sections with more than one link! I'll concentrate on those, and a bunch of other things for now. Rich Farmbrough. 23:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Some stuff from Trey
I'm very confused. Judging from your contribs, you seem to be running a bot to change "External link" to "External links", but you didn't post your intention on Wikipedia talk:Bots to do so, and you're using your regular user account and not a bot account. Am I right on these points, or am I missing something? --TreyHarris 09:51, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
It looks like, based on consensus at Wikipedia talk:Bots, that you need to get approval prior to your edits whether or not you're using bot software once your edit frequency gets fast enough. You made over 500 edits in an hour, so that definitely qualifies. --TreyHarris 11:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
ditto to Trey
Hi, no I'm not using a bot, although I probably should be. I got as far as registering a seperate account and looking at pywikipediabot, but it seemed very complicated. What I generally do is open bunch (99) of tabs in Firefox and batch edit the pages - sometimes it crashes Firefox. When I'm working on dates (which I don't think can be simply robotised, to many quotes, URLs, internal links etc.) I let myself get sidetracked on other formatting issues, but these external links I want to get out of the way. If you know of a simpler bot than pywikipeidabot I'd be very interseted (oh, I've looked at AWB as well which is a great tool.) Rich Farmbrough. 10:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Of coure the big advantage with a bot is that it can be throttled to a slow rate (say 1 per min) and left to its own devices (subject to proper testing of course). Rich Farmbrough. 10:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikifying Dates is often unnecessary
Hi. I noticed you wikified some dates on one of the essays of Franci Fukuyama (as well as quite a few other articles). I was wondering what was the purpose? I can understand wikifying dates when they are fairly relevant to the item being discussed. In this case, the date of publication is fairly arbitrary (the magazine is only published on Sundays - thus the exact date is clearly arbitrary, and the year 2006 is so common to so many things that it is almost irrelevant) and thus it is unlikely that the user is going to click on that date for more related information. In my experience, going around wikifying dates just beacuse they can be wikified only adds irrelevant noise. It isn't that different that me wikifying random words in a sentence -- while it is possible for me to do this, do youthink it adds much value or is it more of a distraction and busywork? (unsigned comment by User:Bhouston)
Your article Athletics Weekly has appeared in the Dead End Pages list because it is not wikified. Please consult the Wikipedia Guide to Layout for more information on how to write a good, wikified article. I would encourage you to revisit your submissions and {{wikify}} them. Thanks and happy editing! James084 03:09, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
External link vs External links
"Some editors use the header "External link" if there is only one link, but others use "External links" in all cases. There is currently no consensus on which is better. Editors who always use the plural form may prefer it for any of the following reasons:
1. experience shows that future editors often add links without changing the section heading
2. people may be dissuaded from adding links to a section titled "External link" since it seems that there should only be one link
3. using "External links" gives greater stylistic consistency to Wikipedia
The converse arguments are:
1. Wikipedia's community-editing leads to prompt correction of such oversights.
2. There is no evidence that a significant number of people would be dissuaded from adding links. Besides, additional links would often be redundant.
3. Use of "External links" to head a section containing a single link is fundamentally incorrect, a poor precedent to set in an encyclopedia"
My own view is that 'link' looks better where there is only one link; looks wrong otherwise to me. I don't feel that strongly about it; nevertheless I may revert if you change singular ones to the plural description, as I have done in a couple of the Iain Banks book pages. Why not dig out other good links, and change it from singular to plural? Or else try and edit out my POV in (for example) Dead Air which I (and everybody I know who's read it) considers his weakest book. I wrote basically the entire article and I couldn't help let it show in what I wrote.
I've done a lot of work on developing all of the Banks book entries, so maybe you could discuss in talk if you want to change formatting like this? If nothing else I think all the Banks books should be fairly consistently treated. Thanks Guinnog 21:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi, Mel Etitis had already drawn my atention to these paragraphs, two comments up, and I am leaving singletons alone - there are enough misdescribed plurals(*). I would certainly not take offence at your changing back those in the Ian Banks canon where appropriate. I am afraid I have only read a few Iain Banks books (though almost all Iain M Banks) so I can't help much with that, but will do what I can. Rich Farmbrough. 21:23, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your edits. I have retained most of them, and standardised them across all the Banks books. See what you think. Guinnog 22:54, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
The anal wink
Thanks for putting in that link. As a physician I was bothered to see the information about misuse of a rectac exam put into a small article about a normal physiologic reflex, but with the social problem of spurious expert testimony the sad truth had to remain. The linked to article is better than the bit in anal wink. Kd4ttc 16:38, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I was suprised the articles weren't linked! Good to be appreciated. Rich Farmbrough. 23:11, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
These things require such care here. There is a definite way to be politically correct on Wikipedia. I started to monitor anal wink on the random chance of seeing it on articles for deletion. folks thought it was a hoax, thinking such a bizarre name couldn't be real. I stopped the deletion with an explanation and it was sitting on my watch list mostly to prevent well meaning mistakes to delete. Well, you might be aware of how political injustice stories get a passionate following around here. So to my chagrin the misuse of a rectal exam gets added to the Anal Wink article. It looks sort of goofy there, but I dared not change it lest the wrath of historically-knowledgeable-wiki-enthusiasts start an edit war. So now I can clean the article up a bit and get the relevent bits separated and stay Wiki-PC! Thus my appreciation of haveing the better link included. It was amazing to read about what mischief can be done by an "authority." Steve Kd4ttc 23:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
LINKS!!!
Hello,
I'm sorry you're having to go back and correct my edits involving External links. I know it should be links - my eyes just aren't picking it up. They will from now on. Thanks. Michael David 18:18, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
ILO redirect
Hi Rich. I noticed that you recently changed ILO to redirect to ILO (disambiguation). Previously it was set to International Labour Organization, and a {{redirect}} was on that page. It's no big deal, but are you opposed to my changing it back. After looking at the disambig page, I think it would be reasonable to assume that most ILO enquiries would be looking for the UN body. Cheers. --Bookandcoffee 21:33, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, you've got a good point about this. It could go both ways, and I'm not bothered enough to change it! (And if I did, then 6 months from now, someone else, who thinks different will talk to me about it, and I'd have to copy your note over to them... :) --Bookandcoffee 05:39, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Missing picture question
Hi there! I have contributed with the picture (that I named) File:Spotted hyena Kenya.jpg, but as you can see, it's gone. I added it to the Hyena article last year. Since I am most active on the Norwegian Wikipedia, I did not see this until today... Can you help me find out why it has been deleted? Thanks!! Could you please answer on my own discussion page? :-) Regards, Helga76 22:28, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Shome mishtake... My edit was to make the bolded headings into real headings, wikify a few dates and remove a redundant phrase. Well done for improving the layout a good bit more, as to content, although I read one of the references, I don't feel qualified to make substantive changes. Rich Farmbrough. 00:38, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Oops, my apologies... the material I'm concerned about was added by 24.252.127.38, not you. Sorry. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:56, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Date links
Since you have taken an interest in date links. Please be kind enough to vote for my new bot application. bobblewik 20:04, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't even want to start thinking about moving this without help. It seems we should have the main entry under his full name: Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. That was one choice among about 4 or 5 (I may be exagerating) that refer to Wilbur Ross. Or maybe we should leave it at Wilbur Ross, since it's simplest? What do you think?--Beth Wellington 17:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation!--Beth Wellington 04:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Changing dates
Hi,
Your "date correction" bot has done some damage to Yuriy Yekhanurov. Namely, it replaced parts of correct image name (i.e., within "*" in "*.jpg") with wikified dates. Can you modify the bot so that it does not replace text within [[Image:]] tag? Thanks. Sashazlv 04:35, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi, Thanks for spotting that. Incidentally it's not a bot, it's search and replace, I always do show changes before saving, and I normally spot problems with image names. I'm not sure if I can improve the search and replace to automatically avoid images. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 13:48 26 February2006 (UTC).
Deletion of Shia views
I happened by chance to notice that a user called User:Blingpling is going around deleting Shia views in articles like Abu_Bakr. It's a bit out of my area but I thought you might be interested as you edited this page JQ 05:33, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Rollback
Please do not patronise me. Thank you. Ambi 06:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Date Discrepancies
Hello,
When I come across a discrepancy in an important date (e.g. Date of Birth or Death), where the date cited in a Wiki Article differs from other reliable sources, I always enter this fact in the Discussion section of that Article, and then ask what others' thoughts are on this. What I am reluctant to do is to unilaterally change the Date myself at that time. What do you think about this? Michael David 15:41, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Rich, help! I created this article and then realized that because of the accent there should be a way to look it up under Alberto Rios but I didn't know how to back that page point back to the original. I recall something about temporary pages etc. but didn't want to muck it up. I just went back there and Alberto Rios is a candidate for speedy deletion. Thanks!--Beth Wellington 01:33, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Nmpenguin had taken care of it and now he's explained how to "do" for myself. Thanks, though.--Beth Wellington 17:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
"If the date does not contain a day and a month, date preferences will not work, and square brackets will not respond to your readers' auto-formatting preferences. So unless there is a special relevance of the date link, there is no need to link it. This is an important point: simple months, years, decades and centuries should only be linked if there is a strong reason for doing so."
"If the date does not contain a day and a month, date preferences will not work, and square brackets will not respond to your readers' auto-formatting preferences. So unless there is a special relevance of the date link, there is no need to link it. This is an important point: simple months, years, decades and centuries should only be linked if there is a strong reason for doing so." This is exactly the point I was making. "simple months, years, decades and centuries" is the subject of that paragraph, not full dates. Rich Farmbrough. 23:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Hey Rich, I feel as if you are taking the rules too literally. If you are going to fix up dates please do it in the articles you are making other contributions to. I feel as if you are doing some type of strange "drive by overlinking" which you can just barely justify. I notice on this page that you have gotten more than a few complaints about this issue as well as a few warnings. --Ben Houston 22:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Well over several ten of thousands of edits, I've probably had a dozen "complaints" and the same number of queries. Some of the complaints were justified (editing errors), which I have fixed, and some were not (almost all of those were happy after a simple explanation). Rich Farmbrough. 23:17, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Krash. I came here to post a comment about your linking-dates in the external links for Sousveillance, and saw there were already some comments on the topic of over-linking. (imho) The spirit of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers#Avoid overlinking dates) rule, is to only link a date, if the date is an important aspect of the context. sep'11, jul'4, dec'24, jan'1, etc could/should be linked. But it's not useful if the date is arbitrary (a date of album release, article publication, etc). --Quiddity 22:41, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi, this is to allow date preferences to work. If you set them you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. The MoS is very clear. Section 1.2 [17] explains date formatting. Section 1.2.1 is a caveat warning against linking just years or just months or just year-month combinations - which I generally remove when I come across them. Rich Farmbrough. 23:19, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Understood. I think in the case of the sousveillance date-link, i'll just remove the date altogether, as it doesnt add anything or have relevance. thanks :) --Quiddity 23:21, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
While I welcome constructive contributions to the Joan of Arc article, I believe your contribution violated the clause at WP:NOT about random collections of unrelated information. When a page gets cluttered with trivial links it becomes harder for readers to glean meaningful information from chaff. It goes much too far to Wikilink every date where I confirmed a site access throughout a list of nearly seventy footnotes. You're an active editor and I'm sure usually a very productive one, but I see you've already disregarded feedback on this issue from several other editors.
I cannot share the opinion that every Wikipedia editor who does not complain is delighted with your work. I wasted half an hour this evening removing link clutter, time that I had planned to spend adding new footnotes and correcting some syntax problems in the article text. Then I visited your talk page, read how you dismissed several other comments, and almost decided it would be a further waste more of my time to give you any input. Rein this activity down to a reasonable level. You've gone overboard. 68.101.254.59 04:55, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
The matter of Dr. James R. Russell's article
Hi Rich. Perhaps you can help out. I wrote Professor/Dr. James R. Russell's article as he is indeed a world known scholar in his field and very notable. I checked that his colleague, Dr. Wheeler Thackston had an article, which he has since 2004. They are both in the same department at Harvard, and on comparable par. Dr. Russell's opus "Zoroastrianism in Armenia" is a major work published by Harvard University amongst other works of his. The article is not a vanity article and Dr. Russell who occupies the Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies, at Harvard University, which is a very prestigious chair, is more than noteworthy. As much as Dr. Wheeler Thackston is. Dr. Russell's article is James R. Russell. I have no idea who User_talk:Dsc is and why the person flagged it. The stated objections are not valid. The warning should be removed. I don't know where else to turn to. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 20:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich for getting back on this situation. I will go do some other things. I hope someone keeps and eye on this. It's nutty. Cheers. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:27, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Thanks for your kind message. It isn't really resolved. User:Sannse formerly of the Wikipedia arbitration committee had removed the warning in the light of reason, and the person User:Dsc has slapped on the warning again on Dr. James R. Russell's article without any discussion. I do hope this gets resolved but (a) I don't feel the warning is justified and it should not be there (b) the person has taken no time to discuss it as per your suggestion, and (c) I have no easy internet access on this end due to serious outages, and (d) the objection by the person does not stand up to reason and a test. I am writing this from a stand-up kiosk in a library. If you could do something appropriate, I would be appreciative. The person is acting in my opinion, irrationally. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 21:06, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Thanks for getting back to me. The debate on the Armenian Genocide has nothing to do with Dr. Russell's erudition and scholarly accomplishments. Plus, the website cited, is unsigned, and can't be rationally used for the article's merit, which is based on Russell's scholarly work. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. See my comments there also, when you have a chance. I put more into the discussion with a level head. I am not part of nor versed in the Armenian debate. I take your points on the further citations on the articles and ISBN on the books. One has to chase these things down a bit when one has time. Thanks again. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 23:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Thanks for your help on the matter. I hope it works out for all concerned in the middle to long run. Much appreciated. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:24, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. I fixed up the references, citations, ISBN numbers and other loose ends as per your suggestion. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 02:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Hello Rich. Thanks for your kind help and suggestions. I think it might be all right now. It was a lot of work. As for a GFDL photo ... that might be a little tricky, but will look into it when I can. ;) Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:14, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Help
This message has just appeared on my Watchlist Page.
"Wikipedia e-mail confirmation has been enabled. To receive Wikipedia e-mail, you must go to Special:Confirmemail, request a code, and follow the link in the e-mail."
I followed the directions & received instructions to Log in; I did this; nothing further has happened. What am I missing? What does this mean? I'm still new here. Michael David 18:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Michael, this means that Wikipedia now "knows" you really have access to that email account. Imagine if someone put an enemy's email address and went around insulting people, to generate badmail. Or even f someone simply mistypes their email address. I don't know why this message was put on the watchlist, though, seems like a funny place for it. Rich Farmbrough 23:08 2 March2006 (UTC).
Question about banner on my Watchlist
Hi Rich. This is a silly question, I'm afraid. When I bring up my Watchlist, this banner apppears :
"Wikipedia e-mail confirmation has been enabled. To receive Wikipedia e-mail, you must go to Special:Confirmemail, request a code, and follow the link in the e-mail."
Is this just a general announcement which requires no action on my part, or is it saying something which requires my action ? Does it mean someone has requested to email me ? I don't have it setup for email intentionally. Thanks in advance as ever. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:51, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich for your kind response. I will look into it further. Bests --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 19:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Rich, Cmh has POV problem with a story I started. When you have time, could you take a look and see what needs to be done to remove the tag. Thanks!--Beth Wellington 03:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Cmh removed the tag. Thanks! I've already thanked him on his talk page.--Beth Wellington 21:05, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
In a related issue, there's a vote to delete an admittedly rough article (but only a day old) that's odd, in that the arguments are poorly researched and all in favor of deletion. Could you take a look-see? Thanks!--Beth Wellington 05:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for weighing in. By the way, I didn't know you were in England until I saw the category at the bottom of your user page. Love the pig Latin and old English babel boxes. What a hoot! --Beth Wellington 01:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Thank you!
Rich,
Thank you for the explanation of that e-mail message on my Watch List. It does make sense after all. My work (in many ways, life) has been sitting across from flesh and blood people trying to help them untangle the emotional knots they have found themselves in. There I'm comfortable because it's familiar to me. It's taking me longer to be comfortable sitting across from a machine that is essentially 1s & 0s. I am comfortable with the information within Wikipedia, where my task is to extract that information and, in my own way, hopefully improve on it. I saw that message & wondered what it was wanting me to do & why. Thanks for straightening it out for me. The wetter my feet get at this, the more comfortable I feel with the structure, the more I will be able to contribute to the content. Right now I'm still learning. Michael David 04:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich,
As you describe yourself as a fixer, UK based & seem to have experience with bots to fix things, I wonder if you can help...
During recent discussions about featured article status for Chew Valley Lake I was challenged that the units (particularly for volume, but it applies to other areas) used in the article discriminated against some users eg;
"Even worse. "Customary" units are not provided throughout. "
&
"The other is the use of imperial gallons and cubic meters, neither of which are used in the U.S. (but who really wants to see acre-foot). Rmhermen 00:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Acre-foot certainly makes no sense, this unit isn't used in the UK as far as I know. Water volumes here are conventionally quoted as so many million gallons (Imperial ones of course, not US gallons). Cubic metres (not meters :-) might be a good choice. What a fine muddle we get into over units! Chris Jefferies 17:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
But you see that you are giving British English readers two ways to understand the volume but giving American English readers zero. That doesn't seem right. Rmhermen 01:43, 3 March 2006 (UTC)"
Do you know of any policy on this & could your bot (or any other) semi-automatically standardise them & if necessary put in the volume measure in the other units expected? Rod 12:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Smackbot: "Agjacent" counties
Hi there, I noticed that SmackBot had made some automated changes to Rockland County, New York, and in looking at them I realized that "Adjacent counties" was changed to "Agjacent counties." A cursory glance at other county articles that the bot edited shows that the mistake was made in several places. Just thought I'd let you know...is there a quick way of going back and fixing? Or do each of them need to be corrected individually? :: Salvo(talk) 03:06, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks :) :: Salvo(talk) 12:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Genocidal Massacre
Not to be aggressive Rich, but you're removing the Warrigal Creek massacre from the Genocidal Massacre page because "it's not in the time frame of the UN" is just plain arrogant and ignorant. Firstly, this doesn't change the fact it qualifies as an incident of Genocidal Massacre. Secondly, by your logic, the Armenian Genocide should be removed because it took place 30 years before the founding of the UN. I don't think you'd go as far as to do that. If you wish to talk about this further, please message me on my talk page. Evolver of Borg 22:10, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
By all means remove the Armenian incident, which should not be on the Genocidal massacre page. I moved the text to Warrigal Creek and did some research on the subject. For reaons I forget I didn't have time to re-write the apalling paragraph that was there, but I did put some references at the foot of the article, to help anyone who feels like creating a proper well sourced article. Rich Farmbrough 16:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah, then the same principle doesn't apply. This is about what belongs on which page, not what belongs on the 'pedia. Warrigal did not have a page before I created it. Rich Farmbrough 00:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Wait wait wait. I think I'm confused. What exactly are we talking about, 'Warrigal Creek' or 'The Warrigal Creek Massacre'? If we're talking about the creek, good on you for writing the article. If we're talking about the massacre, then I'm confused about what exactly we're discussing. Are we saying that the massacre should remain on a seperate page and not the creek page, or something else? Slightly confused Evolver of Borg 01:24, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
My opinion is that if enough data for Warrigal Creek massacre to be a decent page can be found it should have it's own page. Ohterwise a section in Warrigal Creek. I think the information should be sourced, and if possible from (checked) primary sources. I've found the name of the stockman (?) who was killed, but I don't think my source is reliable enouigh to go in the article. Perhaps contemporary newspaer accounts exist? Rich Farmbrough 01:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I've just "googled" "Warrigal Creek massacre -wikipedia" almost the only non-wikipedia refernces are to Gadener's article and the ref I cited above. Rich Farmbrough 01:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I found out about the massacre about a year ago when I undertook a genocide studies course, but I think my notes were what I wrote down on the page. Could be more though. I'll check the resource we used. Evolver of Borg 05:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Was Warrigal Creek never moved in the end, or has it just been reverted to? If the term "genocidal massacre" refers specifically to breaches of the UN Convention, then it should not be listed on that page... Nicolasdz 09:29, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Rich, I have no particular information, but the date of the event seems to make it impossible to be a "genocidal massacre." Nicolasdz 19:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Rich, for now, then, let's leave it be, and as soon as I have time I'll dig up some other examples, move the "Warrigal Creek" stuff to a separate article, and create a link in the main genocide article to "Genocidal Massacre."
SmackBot re: Henry the Navigator
Your bot is making edits like this one: [[18]] which have no impact on the article as it appears to the user, nor on the workings of Wikipedia. These are merely stylistic preferences being enforced by a bot. This wastes storage space (for the edit entries in the database), bandwidth (for the edits themselves), and degrades Wikipedia's performance for no return on that investment. Please, tune your bot so that it does not make stylistic edits without a concrete benefit. -Harmil 16:20, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi Harmil,
Well, spotted, that edit should have changed "Early Life" to "Early life" (process already fixed), I think no more invisible edits should occur. I'll check a sample of a hundred, if you see any, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 18:00 5 March2006 (UTC).
This edit moved the stub template to a place three (!) lines below the interlanguage links instead of leaving it above the categories where it belongs. AFAIK interlanguage links should always be the at the bottom, below categories and person data.—Wikipeditor 13:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
This appears to be standard AWB ordering. It makes sense because the stub template will, presumably, be removed, so having it easy to find is a good idea. I'm not sure if there are any guidelines about it, I'll investigate, and ask on the AWB page. The two blank lines seem odd. Rich Farmbrough 15:13 7 March2006 (UTC).
The extra lines allow for an icon on the stub which otherwise can overwirte text. Rich Farmbrough 12:18 8 March2006 (UTC).
Alcoholism article conflict
Hello Rich,
I suppose it was inevitable. I find myself in the first conflict since coming to Wikipedia. It involves the Article on Alcoholism, most specifically the Section headed ‘Alcoholism as a disease’. This Section is extremely biased and presents facts that are simply not correct. For example, the paragraph “Currently there are no validated medical or scientific procedures or tests to determine if one has the so-called disease of alcoholism or if one is a carrier.” The use of the phrase ‘so-called’ speaks for itself, and, this is simply not true today. I attempted to correct it, but a person who identifies himself as “David Justin” immediately reversed my edit. His name is in red, and he does not have either a User or Talk Page. I made my case on the ‘Alcoholism” Discussion page under the heading ‘Alcoholism labeling>be careful’ in which I included this:
'Today, and for some time now, there are highly accurate tools and other instruments that can accurately diagnose the disease of alcoholism. This is but one of many: SUDDS-IV.'
David Justin's response was incomprehensible gibberish.
AND: the final paragraph of the main Article includes this:
The idea of "alcohol as a disease of the community" or an "environmentally mediated or caused disease" is not as widely discussed or I am not aware of it as much. I see alcohol as an "environmentally caused disease" in many cases.’
The use of the word “I” in an encyclopedia article is unheard of, and I believe represents one person’s very biased POV.
A great deal of progress has been made in the area if alcoholism diagnosis. I believe the Article in Wikipedia should reflect this fact.
I will not become involved in a debate with someone I know nothing about, or cannot communicate with directly. I do want this important Article to be accurate, and up to Wikipedia’s high standards. How do you think I should proceed from here?
Personally I would appreciate it if both of you would realize alcohol dependence is not a disease. Alcohol dependence can be treated in a couple of weeks tops and then the person is no longer alcohol dependent. If alcoholism is a disease we should be able to detect it whether we are drinking or not. In fact if it is a disease even though we have never had a sip of alcohol, we should be able to test and detect it. Does such a test exists? No. Can one take a blood test to determine if they have this so-called disease? And your link is not diagnosing a disease it is about diagnosing alcohol dependence. Alcohol dependence is not a disease.
And an "environmentally caused disease"? Is that like second hand smoke? A wiki article is not the place for you to promote your personal belief and definitions regarding alcoholism.
I just reworked the test part I added to the article in a fashion I think makes it more clear. Instead of removing my comments over and over how about discussing it on the talk page? And if this is an issue you want to pursue please find me a test for the disease of alcoholism. I'd like to take it to make sure I do not have it. In fact I'd like my 2 year old daughter to take the test to make sure she is nto walking around with this disease. If she has a disease called alcoholism I'd want her to know about it sooner than later so she can plan to abstain permanently.
Finally, the SUDDS-IV diagnostic criteria does not even mention the word disease. It talks about alcohol and drug addiction/dependence. Mr Christopher 16:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Rich
Thank you for your input regarding the ‘Alcoholism as a Disease’ issue. I have been a practicing psychotherapist for 40+ years, with a subspecialty in the Dependencies. I have seen tremendous progress in that time with professionals researching and finally solving some very touchy issues regarding the use and misuse of psychoactive chemicals & their effects on a person. The critical part of the ‘disease concept’ is that it removes this disorder from the hands of those who would paint it as simply a problem with the person’s behavior. Categorizing it that way has proven not only problematic with the self-concepts of the patient; frankly it has given ammunition to those who have tried to stand in the way of adequate funding for the research. I am not going to quibble with anyone over whether it’s a disease or not. The only person who needs to understand is the patient. All else is bullshit. Michael David 18:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Your bot tried to do something unsucessfully and had to rv its action. If you can tell me what 'RM caps in section headers' means I'll do it manually. thanks.
Thanks for fixing that, and for letting me know. Bluebot had already made the change, the bad change is a bug I think, and I will pass back to be fixed. Rich Farmbrough
Thanks for your reply. But you didn't tell what 'RM caps in section headers' means... I only have an assumption to go by :(.
You’re right, there are two Sections entitled ‘Social Impact’. They both contain similar material. I believe one could be worked into a Section focusing on ‘Public Health Issues’.
Actually that would be merely like trying to rearrange the passengers on the Titanic hoping this would keep it from sinking. The fact of the matter is the entire Article needs a major reworking. It is trying to do & be too many things. The result: it merely creates confusion about a very important subject.
When I read the Article’s present form, I try to imagine an adolescent trying to make sense of their family life; knowing Dad or Mom is drunk all of the time; has heard the word ‘alcoholism’ used in school, and reaching for an encyclopedia to find out what it’s all about. I am in no way suggesting the encyclopedia should be geared to adolescents, but the average reader should be able to readily understand and to follow it. Anything beyond that and you have a textbook.
To me, an encyclopedia Article about a subject should state the current definition of that subject; a history of the birth, evolution and impact of that subject; and references to more in-depth materials the reader can go to if they want to learn more. It should never offer opinions, or even hint of bias. All this, of course, without being so dry it crumbles before you eyes. This is what writing style is all about.
Again, the present Article on ‘Alcoholism’ needs a great deal of work if it is to be helpful to anyone really trying to learn about it.
On 7 March Smackbot apparently added a bunch of people that are Parsis to Category:Persian people. Thats a far stretch. Calling Parsis "Persian people" is like calling descendants of the pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower "Britons". -- Fullstop 09:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, my mistake. Mea culpa. -- Fullstop 16:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Disambiguation needed
Rich, J.C. Penney (the store) and J. C. Penney (the man) are so close it seems like there should be some pointer between them. Thanks.--Beth Wellington 17:57, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for looking at it. My two cents (pennies?)--while it may be the usual practice, it is an arcane one which makes it hard for the non-editng user to find the correct content. (and hard even for the novice-editor user). Especially since there's little visual difference to the reader between the two. Don't know if those who do such things would want to consider this usage. Alternatively, I might have filed J. C. under his full name with a redirect from the initials. 'Nough said. So, are you this Richard Farmbrough] or is it just a common name?--Beth Wellington 17:26, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
ImDB
Interesting. I believe that ImDB allows juried submissions (I tried to straighten out the double entries on Leonard B. Stern). Of course, your common name might rule you out! If the information is readiliy accessible, I'd be glad to advise the Grand Poobahs over there.--Beth Wellington 17:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Rich, this article has an odd edit on February 8 that eliminated all mention of impropriety. Also, this is the same man, as in the entry Leonard N. Stern. They need to be merged, rather than disambiguated by the tag billionaire. Help! --Beth Wellington 05:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Thank Rich. Won't have time to look at corporate bio today, but will try to work on it next week. --Beth Wellington 20:03, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Rich, Hartz has vandalized the page again, completely replacing it with its own content. Apparently, a stronger warning is in order?--Beth Wellington 21:25, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing this so quickly!--Beth Wellington 22:29, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
User:Deborah Stone went in again on 2/21/06 and vandalized this article, despite your polite request on 2/17 not to do so. Called it a "minor edit." This makes three times. Any way to stop this from happening?--Beth Wellington 17:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I check on it periodically. Blocking might work or perhaps she'll register for another account, like some here do.--Beth Wellington 17:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
When I went to add citations in the press today in response to the NSA issue, I noticed that there had been a POV warning on this article [19]forever. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Beth
--Beth Wellington 09:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for removing the POV tag, Rich. We'll see if it remains gone.--71.254.64.97 02:02, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Mirrorvax [20] added another warning to the site as soon as you took it down. This is really frustrating. What original research? This tagging seems to rise to vandalism. Any suggestions. If you check in the discussion, folks have already had extended discussions with him that have been unproductive. --Beth Wellington 02:17, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Dear Rich,
In the support for impeachment section, why is a subsection on media editorial by a reputable business magazine less encyclopedic than a subsection on entertainers? I don't want to get into an editing war that approaches a 3r infractin. Would you mind weighing in on Stbalbach's deleting this content to the discussion page? Thanks!--Beth Wellington 04:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi, A page I created has had it's last two edits made by AWB assisted robots Bluebot & Smackbot ([22], [23]). It's good that you guys are cleaning up but couldn't you colloborate? What Smackbot did in visit 2, could have been done by Bluebot in visit 1. --kingboyk 02:55, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, there is some overlap between the tasks they've worked on - and the timings. SB is working on Caps in Headings BB is working on many different problems with "See also" and "External links". That's why we hit the same article. In theory it shouldn't matter because if the change is already done the second bot will do nothing - but we had slightly different settings/versions so a small change occurred. I've upgraded to the latest version since that run, so I hope that will not happen again. I've also requested a feature to reduce solely minor edits. Rich Farmbrough 11:27 8 March2006 (UTC).
I believe Bluebot and Smackbot are owned by two different users. On the other hand, I also had a watched page visited by both bots, both commiting a minor error. I've detailed it below:
The following code:
<sup>[[Aleut Restitution Act of 1988#External Links|[1]]]</sup>
As you can see above, Bluebot (or Smackbot) judged [1]]] as a mistake, and fixed it by changing it to [[1]]. However, the singular [ and ] around 1 are decorative, and the other two ]]'s right of the "1" are to end the internal link.
Just to let you know about this, but on the other hand, I appreciate the work Smackbot has done! Kareeser|Talk! 06:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for that, and for your reply on my talk page. --kingboyk 19:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Oregon falls (sic)
Dear Rich,
Yes i would just like to know Why you deleted my page. Oregon Falls is a very good band in fact it was my cousin dayton niemans band i know alot about that band and wasted alot of my time trying to make that page. I dont know who you are to delet a perfectly good page.—The preceding unsigned comment was added byPoonch12 (talk • contribs) .
Hope you don't mind Rich, but I userfied it. It was still a valid speedy deletion and had no incoming links. He can work on it in his user space until he's satisfied WP:MUSIC and everyone's a winner :-) --kingboyk 19:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Please keep SmackBot away from aircraft articles using the airtemp template for specs. This template requires the use of </li> and <li> tags to properly format specs not included in the template. When SmackBot replaces these tags with the asterix, it messes up formatting. Thanks! - Emt147Burninate! 06:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
P.S. AWB has been updated to avoid this problem in future. If it happens again please let me know. If you think there's a significantnumber of damaged articles, let me know and I will try to find them all and revert. Rich Farmbrough 17:24 8 March2006 (UTC).
Only a couple of articles were affected but I wanted to give you a heads up. Thanks for taking care of that! - Emt147Burninate! 20:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
An 'in depth' response
Rich,
(I never know where to post a direct response, on your page or mine – please bear with me, I’m still a kid here!)
No way did I mean to suggest controlling the depth of an Article. In some of my writings a person needs scuba gear. What I really mean involves the structure. As you know in technical writing there is first an abstract, where the reader can grasp the essentials of the subject; this is followed (if they care to go on) by the full text that includes all of the material. Perhaps in Wikipedia it could go something like this: The first that appears after a search would be the Main Article page containing the basic information relating to that subject; then, attached to each paragraph or section could be a ‘read more’ link by which they could go to another page that covers the deeper and more esoteric information. If I read you right, that’s what you were suggesting. I agree with you completely.
Thanks for uploading Image:Brimingham_Central_Library_fire_jan1879.jpg. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days.
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Sounds good to me. If you can, please ask for some who have been active over there to support your nomination. If that doesn't happen I'll use discretion to do it in a few weeks until there is some community view on whether you should be one there. Jamesday 23:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Smackbot, Caps and Dates
In its task of removing caps in headers, Smackbot is changing "Middle Ages" to "Middle ages" (as on the page List of French language authors) It seems to me the expression "Middle Ages" demands caps (see the article Middle Ages). On the same page Smackbot also changed the heading "20th Century" into "Twentieth century", which would be fine... if it changed all the other sections too (19th Century... 16th Century...), instead of leaving the page a hybrid of date formats. Should I go back in and change them all? -- NYArtsnWords 00:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know. You might be right about the Middle Ages capitals - bother! I've done the rest of the centuries on that page. A mixed style page was a "known risk" - there are many thousand section headers on WP with unnecessary caps, I did the 15 most common recently, and am now doing the next 200+. Twentieth Century was in this batch, the others weren't, I guess I should have included them anyway, had I thought of it. Rich Farmbrough 01:11 9 March2006 (UTC).
While your making corrections, your bot ate a capital "C" in an Supreme Court "Opinion of the Court" subhead. Those should stay capitalized as well, since we're talking about "the Court" (but there was only the one digested). Cheers! BD2412T 04:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I hereby award you (well, actually your SmackBot) this barnstar for all the constant edits that it's been doing to articles I've worked on. While I'm glad it's cleaning up my editing detrius, I can't help but feel that it's stalking me for some reason. ^_^;;; み使いMitsukai 15:48, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot and George Jones
SmackBot broke a link in the George Jones article. [24] Everything is back to normal now, but you might want to somehow try to prevent the bot from doing that to other articles. Thanks. --TantalumTelluride 22:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Oh dear, that's a potential problem with AWB. I've reported it, and no doubt it will be fixed RSN. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough 23:02 8 March2006 (UTC).
Also broke a link in the YMCA article[25]Cometward 21:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, AWB is now fixed, so I'd better find a way of identifying any past errors. Not to hard I think. Rich Farmbrough 22:02 10 March2006 (UTC).
Suicide sub-categories
Rich,
Something to think about.
I am currently writing a journal article on ‘creativity and suicide’ - exploring why creative persons take their own lives. As a part of my research I have constructed a rather extensive database of persons in history who have committed suicide and, importantly, the methods they have used. I know Wikipedia has an extensive list of persons who have committed suicide and, in some cases, the method. As I have been cruising Wiki I have been adding the method of suicide information to its Articles. Is there any way, or, for that matter would Wikipedia be interested in, somehow also creating a separate listing category based on the method of suicide. In the cases of drug OD I have also subcategorized the type of drug. Perhaps it could be done in the form of additional categories, e.g.: ‘Persons who have committed suicide by gunshot’. I still have a lot to learn about the mechanics of Wikipedia. I searched it to see if I could find any such categories, but couldn’t find any. If such categories exist, please let me know. If not, I would be willing to help with a project to create them.
Be healthy. Michael David 23:54, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
A note about AWB
See this edit by SmackBot - It did nothing but decapitalise "Trading Card Game", which is a proper noun. Are jobs like this suitable for a bot? --Celestianpowerháblame 16:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for letting me know about this. You make two points, firstly that "Trading Card Game" is a proper noun. Certainly you could argue for "Pokemon Trading Card Game", "Neopets Trading Card Game" or "YU-GI-OH! Trading Card Game" needing capitals, I think it's harder to argue for the =term on it's own. Similarly I have a copy of "The Hobbit, the Book of the Film", I would not talk about it as the Book (that's reserved for THHGTTG or holy books :). To a lesser extent the same applies, for example, to Pepy's, one could say "in his Diaries" or equally reasonably "in his diaries"
Your second point, whether is this a job for a bot, is simpler. The bot isn't mindlessly replacing all section headings with slightly lower case variants, it's currently only changing about 200 specific headings - like "Selected Filmography" to "Selected filmography". Of course there's always the risk that someone's written book called Selected Filmography, but that is within the bounds of acceptable risk, IMHO. Rich Farmbrough 16:58 8 March2006 (UTC).
Sorry, I got my wires crossed. The Pokemon ones are the only article with "in the trading card game" headers I assume - would it be possible to change this to "In the Pokémon Trading Card Game"? --Celestianpowerháblame 17:03, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I would be happy to do that, probably tonight, maybe tomorrow. Rich Farmbrough 17:05 8 March2006 (UTC).
Rich - also in this edit, you removed the spaces in the section headings and after each "*" (bullet point). I feel like those spaces help the readability of the articles source... and they don't affect how the page renders. Please don't change them arbitrarily. -- Netoholic@ 17:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I would agree with the decrease in readability when editing (per [26] and related edits). Some of us don't have large screens and/or perfect eyes (any more!) — Bellhalla 18:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
OK since several people feel this way, I've turned of reduction in surplus white space. Rich Farmbrough 20:18 9 March2006 (UTC).
Have you? I've just had Ethotoin and Felbamate touched by Smackbot (11th March). As far as I can see, the only reader-visible change was from "Side Effects" to "Side effects". I have no problem with that change if it brings the article into line with the MOS. However, there are over a dozen other invisible changes to each article, which make the Diff extremely hard to compare. These all involve whitespace that (AFAIK) only concern editors. Is there even any official consensus regarding which whitespace style is correct? I like to check "bot" changes as sometimes they do screw up the article (particularly foreign words) but having to compare whitespace changes is tedious in the extreme. In addition, it can make it near impossible to compare two human versions if a bot has done this much work in-between. Please, please change your bot so that the only diffs I see are ones that make a difference to the visible article, and only changes that are sanctioned by the MOS. I do appreciate that bots are useful (especially the ones upgrading my citation templates) but these hidden changes are quite harmful to the ability of editors to use the history mechanism and waste our time. Colin°Talk 10:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the note, for the rest of the capitalisation run, I've turned it off, and this time I've saved the settings.... Rich Farmbrough 10:57 11 March2006 (UTC).
Rambot demographics to past tense
Hi there. I noticed that you've done a bit of work with some of the articles that were originally created by Rambot, putting the Demographics section into the past tense. I thoroughly agree that these look ridiculous in the present tense, and it's something that I've been doing as well, when I've hit the Random Article button and come across them. However, it's a pretty thankless task, and even with both of us plugging away, it'll take a while to get through all 30,000! Is this something that SmackBot would be able to help out with at all? --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 17:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. I shall let them go for now, then, and let the bot handle them in its own time. Regarding complaints, you might just want to be aware of this, though I've also had no complaints about actual changes I've made. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 12:04, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Would you please revise the edit you made 10:59, 11 March 2006 (UTC). You have made "U.s." and "U.k.". If you are using a bot to do this, it should not be done under your account (I believe). If you are doing it manually then you are being rather careless. You are responsible for your edits regardless of how they are performed. Colin°Talk 11:41, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Further to my response on your talk page ("Of course"), please note that there is a currently a problem with Wikipedia displaying the wrong version of articles. I've just been around the block making the same changes several tiems because there's this problem, probably synchronising between the squid caches. That's probably why I didn't see my mistake. Rich Farmbrough 12:11 11 March2006 (UTC).
See also your change to Epilepsy 11:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC). I strongly encourage your to use "Show changes" before submitting your edits. Colin°Talk 13:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Show changes wasn't helping, because the version being compared with was wrong. Believe me, I looked at almost every diff of every edit I made to those pages to try to work out what was happening - and I am not a novice at using Show changes or history. Rich Farmbrough 17:47 11 March2006 (UTC).
Hi there, I didn't add the inuse template to this article. Rupakbiswas did in this edit. Cheers, Cmdrjameson 17:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
No problem. Thanks for drawing my attention to the existance of inuse templates though, I hadn't known about them before now. Cheers, Cmdrjameson 18:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Stub template should go after categories
In this edit you moved the stub template before the categories. This should not be done, as the stub category is less important than the others. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 18:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
How very odd. Further up may talk page you will see flamage because stubs went to the end, which is what has always happened if the "sort" option is on. I shall investigate further. Rich Farmbrough 18:42 11 March2006 (UTC).
In your next edit you wikilinked a date that's part of an external link. That one is somewhat my fault though, as I forgot to add a references section. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 19:12, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I've found the reason, the template was "California State Highway Stub" instead of "California-State-Highway-stub" I'm fixing about 100 pages, and moving the sutbs to the end. In at leat one case [27] it has been in the wrong position since day 1. Rich Farmbrough 12:37 19 March2006 (UTC).
Smackbot alphabetizing categories
On pages for sports players, for examples Barrin Simpson, I think it would be a good idea if you did not alphabetize the categories. The categories were listed in a specific order for clarity, first the ones dealing with birth year and living people category, followed by the teams they have played for, sometimes in chronilogical order, sometimes not. By alphabetizing them it makes the categories look like a random mismash. Qutezuce 06:13, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I can't scope it by article type, so for the rest of the capitalisation run, I've turned it off. Rich Farmbrough 10:55 11 March2006 (UTC).
I'm not sure I'm seeing your point about not breaking anything. The edit your bot made ordered the categories: year of birth, team he played for, living people, team he played for. Before Smackbot it was ordered: team he played for, team he played for, year of birth, living people. After I editted after Smackbot it was ordered: year of birth, living people, team he played for, team he played for. My preference is that the teams he played for be grouped together, and that birth year/death year/living people be grouped, and other logical groupings of that nature. The article conformed to this preference before SmackBot, and after I editted after SmackBot, but not after SmackBot's edit.
For other examples of where I think categories should be grouped logically and not alphabetically, check out pretty much any person in Category:Canadian Football League players (or subcats), or Category:National Football League players (or subcats). For one specific example, look at Doug Flutie. With the number of categories on that page I think that grouping categories logically is even more important, otherwise it just becomes a random looking list.
I don't think that sports people are the only examples, but its the only one that comes to mind right now. For example, any person should have birth year/death year/living people grouped together for easy maintenance. Qutezuce 20:35, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Doug has this list
[[Category:1962 births|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:Roman Catholics|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:American football quarterbacks|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:Arab Americans|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:Boston College Eagles football players|Flute, Doug]]
[[Category:British Columbia Lions players|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:Buffalo Bills players|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:Calgary Stampeders players|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:Chicago Bears players|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:Heisman Trophy winners|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:Living people|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:New England Patriots players|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:People from Maryland|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:People from Massachusetts|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:San Diego Chargers players|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:Toronto Argonauts players|Flutie, Doug]]
[[Category:United States Football League players|Flutie, Doug]]
Thanks for uploading Image:Exempt.gif. I notice the 'image' page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this media yourself then you need to argue that we have the right to use the media on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the media yourself then you should also specify where you found it, i.e., in most cases link to the website where you got it, and the terms of use for content from that page.
If the media also doesn't have a copyright tag then you must also add one. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then you can use {{GFDL-self}} to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media qualifies as fair use, please read fair use, and then use a tag such as {{Non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair_use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.
If you have uploaded other media, please check that you have specified their source and copyright tagged them, too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any unsourced and untagged images will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Shyam(T/C) 21:24, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I too have had a stub template moved in an article I've been watching. Although the stub template generates a category (as do many other templates), it is not a category itself. It generates text and the editor will have placed it where he/she thinks best. Wrt sorting categories - please please stop this madness. Where is your authority that you can whizz through Wikipedia imposing your view of "tidy" on everyone else? If you can point to some where that there was a large consensus that it was a "good thing" to have sorted categories and that it was "essential" that all articles be brought into line, then I'll accept it.
In a number of complaints above you blame your tools. I'm sorry but you are responsible for your edits. If you can't control your tools and can't be bothered to check their effect with Show Changes then please find something more productive to do instead. Colin°Talk 21:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
St Louis rename
Have you had a chance to get the St Louis redirects, I have a flagged bot sitting idle which can take care of those tonight, looking at your contribs it hasn't been done. I'll have my bot start away on them as I really need something to do :) -- Tawker 06:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Some of the sub-categories still need doing, (Category:Saint Louis University shouldn't change.) Rich Farmbrough 07:29 12 March2006 (UTC).
Hi! My name is Mike, and I wanted to let you know that this article is up for Featured Article Status! It is SOOO CLOSE! And as someone who has worked on this article a lot in the past (having checked the history) I thought you could help me fix the inline citations. As I have none of the books in question, I am out of luck, but thought real enthusiasts might be able to help. So, please help, or get those who you know can to help make Tolkien a featured article! Thanks much! Judgesurreal777 18:07, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm wondering if you botted this one. I don't quite see the point in wikifying the dates of first sightings of birds in a state, it seems extraneous and/or unuseful to do this. Birthdates and historical events make sense, but I'm not sure why the last edit was even made. :/ -- Miwa 13:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
It has nothing to do with useful links. Just click on the "my preferences" link, or check out m:Help:Preferences under Date format. Gene Nygaard 17:16, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Rich, your bot added a link to The Weavers in the article that I've written. I've removed the link as the Weavers in Spellsinger are a group of sentient spiders, the one you linked to are a folk group. Hope you don't mind me sorting that out. Douglasnicol 18:31, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi, not me but you! No problem. P.S. Generally add new sections to the bottom of talk pages. Rich Farmbrough 13:44 13 March2006 (UTC).
Ah, my mistake, sorry about that. Douglasnicol 17:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Removing caps in section headers
Thanks for removing the caps from the section headers in epilepsy.
However, I noticed that you also removed caps from the text of an entire subsection, the one called 'Normal provocants'. (Check the article history.) I can't imagine that you did this on purpose. I wonder if you didn't use an automated method to do this; if so, perhaps you might be able to figure out where it went wrong.
Thanks, I appreciate the note. I can fix this problem with my editing aid, so it's really useful that you've told me. Rich Farmbrough 19:28 12 March2006 (UTC).
I am glad to have been helpful. I often wish that I had the ability to code up such useful aids. -ikkyu2 (talk) 21:41, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Transwiki:Casualties of the September 11, 2001 attacks
Thanks for your welcome over on the memorial wiki! I just found it myself recently. Doc 14:52, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Wikified Dates
Please undo the "wikified" dates you made in the date articles. You have created circular references. That is, you've got date articles pointing back at themselves. Rklawton 22:57, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your note. You are perfectly correct that these are circular references, which are by and large a Bad Thing. However the badness has been ameliorated by the Wikimedia software (since about V1.3 or 1.4 I think) which displays them as bold instead of as links. Since the frist occurance should be bold anyway, this is ok. On the other hand, it also allows date prefernces to work. For a fuller discussion see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Days_of_the_year#Linking_dates_in_lead_paragraphs. Best regards, Rich Farmbrough 23:11 14 March2006 (UTC).
That's good to know about circular references. I suppose the extra CPU cycles aren't all that significant. However, we now have bolded dates in places where they weren't bolded before (other than as the first word in the article). I'm rather hoping you will avoid this problem with the remaining date articles and review the date articles you've already edited for errors. On a separate note, I'd recommend against running BOTs against date articles anyway. Date articles have a high vandalism rate, and BOTS run the risk of masking such edits. Rklawton 23:20, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Coolio. I'll be able to review date articles on Monday, but with 366 articles to plow through, the fewer edits, the better. Rklawton 00:37, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
election table
All latest election results on a national level around the world are now in a template. This was a project for a couple of months and nobody really argued against it. The big advantage is that results can be used in more entries, and that the results are not diferent throughout Wikipedia. Electionworld = Wilfried (talk 18:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Rich, I'm about to write an entry for the 1977 act. Is the title for this one correct, or should it be somehow otherwise named? I want to make the two consistent. Also, this article was started without a reference by by Alex Horovitz, who despite his bio note saying he contributes regularly to media plagarized it from the external source I've added as the reference in his original version,[28]. (The reference by the blocked sockpuppet was actually to the 1077 act.) You might want to take a peek and if you concur, let him know whatever wiki rule applies to this situation.--Beth Wellington 05:06, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
After looking at the indexing in the category for U.S. laws, I decided to use neither the year, which indexes everything from the twentieth century uner "1" nor the word "federal", which would index all federal laws under "f."
I think that Alex's original 1969 article was a copyright violation. Hopefully I've changed it enough that it is no longer the case. Should an administrator, if he or she agrees with my assessment on the original article point that out to him? It doesn't need to be listed now, as there is a reference and I've paraphrased.--Beth Wellington 23:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Been off-line and am leaving to drive tomorrow to Ohio to give a poetry reading, so didn't reply before now. I guess it's not a copyright violation, but it still seems right to give credit where credit is due. Love the word "crosspatch!" Superpowers? H-m-m-m. The ability to leap tall piles of data in a single bound. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Wikiman! Seriously, i appreciate all your efforts. Your humble scribe, --Beth Wellington 04:11, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
New regex
I have been testing a new regex in a file called 'datestest.js' (see my monobook). It has dramatically reduced two entire classes of false positives: ISO dates and dates that have the year at the left. It does have some 'misses' and some of these can be cured by running it twice (i.e. clicking on that 'datestest' tab a second or third time). Please let me know what you think. bobblewik 18:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Enlighten me
What benefit do the (hundreds of) apparent self-linking edits achieve (see e.g. [29]). Is it some date preferences issue you are sorting? Pcb21Pete 23:45, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, most of them are already self-linked, I only had to do 62 days in the from 1st of July to the 31st of December, about a third of the total. It doesn't present any problems, because the software knows it is a a self link (just as it does with our sigs on our talk pages) an bolds it instead of creating a circular link. Rich Farmbrough 23:55 16 March2006 (UTC).
Yes I agree it seems to be problem-free. I guess I just didn't get the point of the change - The ''' syntax just highlights in bold and the [[ ]] syntax does the same thing, after making the software figure out it is a self-link.. Maybe it is just making things standardized across all date pages? Pcb21Pete 00:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
That plus if you had a page like "December 25 is the day after December 24" for some people it would look fine, for others it would look like "December 25 is the day after 24 December". Rich Farmbrough 00:04 17 March2006 (UTC).
Minor SmackBot edit summary typo
Just a typo of general [30]. Just thought you'd like to know.--Drat (Talk) 01:22, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Your Smackbot just screwed up a bunch of links in Top Gear. While it's good to remove underscores from wikilinks, don't do it in the anchor part i.e after the hash (#). The anchors are given specific names, which includes the underscore. All of those links to sections now simply go to the top of the article. Fix it. Imroy 19:37, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Er, no it didn't. The link anchor was wrong - to Emmy Award#The International Emmys instead of Emmy Award#International Emmys. The link to the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution#Evolution VIII was fine. Rich Farmbrough 20:43 17 March2006 (UTC).
Wikitext readability
Hi. Thanks for cleaning up headings with smackbot. I noticed the bot eliminates spaces in all of a page's headings. I've always been adding those spaces, because it makes the heading text much more easily readable in the edit field if it doesn't run into the equals signs. —MichaelZ. 2006-03-05 17:18 Z
Example:
==External links==
== External links ==
Thank you for your cleanup edit on Austintown, Ohio.[31] I would ask, however, that you not remove spaces from the headings (as you did for "External links" but for no other heading), for the very reason cited above: it improves readability for editors without changing the displayed text. Far too many Wikipedia editors squeeze edited text so much down to the essentials, the result looks like it was meant for a 16KB TRS-80 computer. (Take a look at most of the TV-show articles' "Trivia" sections sometime — they're as bad as obfuscated C programs.) Because Wikipedia is not paper, we have the luxury to use spaces and blank lines judiciously to make it easier for editors to quickly scan articles for material they wish to edit. This is defeated when every optional space is squeezed out of the text. I would appreciate your assistance in not adding to this problem. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 13:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
And now I see that your bot also removed a bunch of blank lines around headings for Herndon, Virginia.[32] I truly fear for the ease of editing of Wikipedia if you are making so many mass edits that you've managed to hit two random cities that I happened to be watching within 2 hours of each other. Please stop this counterproductive, pointless byte saving! ~ Jeff Q(talk) 13:20, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Smackbot escaping apostrophies
In this edit Smackbot inadvertently escaped the apostrophies in the title "Appearances in Playboy special editions". I've reverted this one, but I guess it's likely the same snafu has occurred elsewhere. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for telling me, it's only in some of the playmates articles. I promised to fix this, and am now doing so. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 00:09 19 March2006 (UTC).
I have just reverted a couple of SmackBot edits (Irvine, California and Cerritos, California), as I believe the Bot is wrong. When writing as of (insert year here) the population of (insert city here) .... the rest of the sentence should be in present tense, and not past tense. --Asbl 16:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I think you are right if the text is being written at the time spoken of, "as of today we are getting lots of talk messages", but notif it is being written later "as of 12 BC there are no computers" is wrong whereas "as of 12 BC there were no computers" is right. What do you think? Rich Farmbrough 23:32 18 March2006 (UTC).
Yes, I guess its a function of content, so it's probably best to not create a bot for this application. --Asbl 00:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Caps
It's also made a mistake in capitalization: in this diff, the first "as" should have stayed lowercase. -- stillnotelfhas a talk page 17:13, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot has made the same capitalization error in an edit to Centreville, Virginia,[33] as well as again removing blank lines that serve a purpose, this time between article content and categories, which are supposed to have separation to make the categories more visible. Please stop SmackBot immediately until you have reviewed Wikipedia style guidelines and have addressed the many problems that are being posted on this page. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 17:58, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, capital fixed I will search out and fix any others, however there is still, and always has been, a blank line before the categories. Rich Farmbrough 23:20 18 March2006 (UTC).
My apologies about the blank line. The diff shows a blank line being removed between the Geolinks template and the category, but after your statement, I confirmed that the resultant page does indeed still have a blank line. I guess it's a diff oddity. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 02:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I really don't think it's useful to change all Census 2000 data from present tense to past tense. Ideally we want to print current statistics. The Census 2000 statistics are the most current ones we have, so we use those. Putting it all in the past tense makes it sound like the cities don't exist anymore (or that their statistics are now significantly different, which is usually not the case). This might make sense for New Orleans, but not for other cities. Plus, we'll have to change them all back to present tense when the new Census is published. Instead, let's just leave them all present tense and use whatever are the most current statistics available.
Also, I object to Smackbot making two different types of edits at the same time. This makes it very tedious to revert just one of the changes (either tense or unicoding) should either one need to be reverted. Bots should only perform one type of edit at a time (at least in my opinion). For example, I love the unicode changes you are making, but hate the tense changes. Unfortunately there is no easy way I can keep one but not the other.Kaldari 05:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Bot edit summary
Would it be possible to change the bot edit summary so that it is clearer that is is not primarily relinking nazi links? I come across it at different places, and it just looks so wierd to find it at places where there is no link at all..... KimvdLinde 17:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi, sorry I missed your comment on my talk page earlier. The correction of the links to Nazism is complete, but I would still be interested to know where you saw the edit summary, that idn't have a Nazi/Nazism link. Thanks Rich Farmbrough 11:32 27 March2006 (UTC).
Smackbot: arrangement of interwikis
Hi Rich - your bot's rearrangement of the interwikis at Christmas tree is wrong in putting them in alphabetical order of the two-letter codes; they should be in alphabetical order of the language itself, which isn't always the same. Some important ones to watch for:
es: (Español) comes before eo: (Esperanto)
he: (Ivrit) comes after it: (Italian)
ja: (Nihongo) comes after nl: (Nederlands)
fi: (Suomi) comes just before sv: (Sverige)
Note that this is not a complete list of all the ones that need care in positioning! - thanks, MPF 18:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been reverted or removed by an automated bot. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. If you feel you have received this notice in error, please contact the bot owner // Tawkerbot2 23:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Tawkerbot2
See the bots talk page, during that last squidward attack the diffs comming from the IRC feed were screwed up and it caused some problems with Tawkerbot2, sorry about that, by the time I noticed it (within a few seconds) there wasn't much I could do due to the massive squidward attack. -- Tawker 23:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Sortkey problems
In this edit you removed the space before the "Scenic" sortkey. This moved the article from the beginning of the category to after all the routes. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 11:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi, Rich. Could you, please, exclude the "xxxx in Fooian television" series (such as 1930 in television) from the Smackbot's delink list? These series is one of the few places where linking months makes sense (due to the way tables are laid out). I reverted the changes made so far. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 13:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Certainly. Consider it done. Any other requests, or if this crops up again, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 13:50 23 March2006 (UTC).
Delinking months and days of week
I really appreciate your bot delinking months and days of the week from articles. I was wondering if it could also delink isolated years? For instance, the phrase "In June of 2001" is changed to "In June of 2001", but the MoS also recommends that isolated years not be linked, just like isolated months. I've manually removed the links from isolated dates in lots of articles (e.g.), but it's tiring to do manually. What do you think? Is this something you'd be willing to do? – Quadell(talk) (bounties) 17:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, count me in that coterie. I think a lot of the opposition is just against Bobblewik himself, and the perception that he's rude and negligent. (I haven't found this to be true, but some people seem to be of that opinion.) Anyway, it might be different if someone else, with a good reputation, were to try. If there's anything I can do toward this, let me know. – Quadell(talk) (bounties) 18:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Smackbot, I'm not sure if this is an improvement
Hi Rich, It's good to see the changes being made to the Vermont town pages with SmackBot. However, I feel that it's making some changes that are sort of hard to read in English and I'd like your opinion. The recent changes to the Groton, Vermont page changed this sentence "The per capita income for the town was $14,659. 10.5% of the population and 6.8% of families were below the poverty line. 11.9% of those under the age of 18 and 9.1% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line." to this "The per capita income for the town was $14,659. Below the poverty line were 10.5% of people, 6.8% of families, 11.9% of those under 18 and 9.1% of those over 64."
The sentence that starts "Below the poverty line..." seems wonky. I realize this is trying to keep sentences from starting with numbers, but it seems like the old sentences were a little clearer, even if they had this grammatical undesireability, and I'd lean towards keeping it the old way or finding another solution. I don't feel super-strongly about this, but I wanted to know what you thought? Jessamyn (talk) 17:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not altogether happy with it as it stands. Can you make a better suggestion? Rich Farmbrough 17:38 23 March2006 (UTC).
I'm still having a hard time thinking of a way to do it without starting the sentence with a number. Possibly something slightly more non-traditional but a little easier to follow. "The town has 10.5% of its population living below the poverty line, which includes 6.8% of its families, 11.9% of its people under 19 and 9.1% of its people over 64." The "its" could maybe be dropped. An improvement? I'd prefer to err on the side of starting a sentence with a number, but that's just my personal preference. Jessamyn (talk) 04:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I liked your version, however there' a technical difficulty inserting the word "town" (city, gore, CDP etc.), also "including" isn't quite right fo families. "There are 6.8% of families living below the poverty line and 10.5% of the population, including 11.9% of those under 19 and 9.1% of over 64s." Regards, Rich Farmbrough 13:08 24 March2006 (UTC).
I think your latest suggestion is better than either how it looks now, or what SmackBot's original changes were "There are 6.8% of families living below the poverty line and 10.5% of the population, including 11.9% of those under 19 and 9.1% of over 64." certainly not perfect, but a big improvement. Jessamyn (talk) 13:19, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll go with that for now, but running slowly to allow other people a chance to chip in with improvements. Rich Farmbrough 13:23 24 March2006 (UTC).
Smackbot suggestion
There was some text on a page that looked like "June15", which smackbot changed to "June 15". But obviously this should be changed to "June 15". If there's an easy way to recognize such constructs, fixing them would be helpful. — jdorje (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
You are quite right that this would be desirable, and I do a lot of date linking, but because of the current disagreements around the whole date delinking/linking scenario I am being rather circumspect with what I do with SmackBot. In theory, the example you quoted 15 refers to the year AD 15, so even on a technical level there are problems. However there are a number of poeple working on imporving the date links, and there is a request with the developers for a better system of implementing date preferences, so all is not lost. Rich Farmbrough 00:35 26 March2006 (UTC).
Smackbot and Chemistry
Minor problem of Smackbot's, it will fix links formatted like ''I love [[encyclopedia]]s'' to ''I love [[encyclopedias]]'', but sometimes that's not the right behavior, see line 350 of this diff. Here it fixed [[Sulfur|S]]H to [[Sulfur|SH]], but the H is not supposed to be part of the underlining. (I instead piped it to thiol, which is better anyway.) Perhaps if you instructed it to not make this change when the display text is in all capital letters or otherwise oddly formatted? If there's no obvious way to tweak the program I wouldn't worry about it, it's not likely to come up very often, but I thought you should be warned. Thanks, -- stillnotelfhas a talk page 23:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
OK I've made a change, it its a little complicated by the fact that AWB does some of these off it's own bat, and some are done through regular expressions I specify. I'll just give it a test. Rich Farmbrough 23:42 24 March2006 (UTC).
Your initial reply was fast, but the fact that you've already thought out a possible fix is mind-boggling! wow! -- stillnotelfhas a talk page 23:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
It seems to work, it should now be very limited in taking capitals into the [][]. Any other issues, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 23:47 24 March2006 (UTC).
Thanks, nice to be appreciated! R.
Capitalizing the first letter of all chemical names is incorrect
Smackbot went through the Synthesis and Production section of the article entitled Ammonia. It simplified most of the piped links to various chemicals, with which I have no quarrel at all. But at the same time it also capitalized the first letter of all the chemical names it encountered, which is incorrect usage unless the chemical name starts a sentence. Is there any way to make it recognize the difference between chemical names starting a sentence and chemical names which do not start sentences? (I have just finished changing those capitals back to lower case.
If there is some Wiki style guide that says the first letter of all chemical names should always be capitalized, then that guide is incorrect and something should be done to revise it. - mbeychok 00:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
OK should be fixed now. Please let me know if you see any more issues like this. Rich Farmbrough 00:47 25 March2006 (UTC).
Rich, thanks. - mbeychok 00:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Date Articles
Smackbot is removing the self-referencing date link from date articles. The date link is important because it allows the reader to see dates formatted according to their preference. As such, it's an exception to the self-referencing rule. Besides, with the new software, a self-referencing link is bolded but doesn't appear as a link, so it's no big deal anymore. If possible please roll back your edits to date articles, change the programming a bit, and try again. If not, it's going to take a lot of work to go back and update all those articles by hand. Thanks. Rklawton 02:44, 25 March 2006 (UTC) (see our conversation above [34]).
OK implemented for April, it's not the most elegant solution, but I think it's unlikely to be changed by users or bots. (Incidentally there are a lot of people using AWB, and I have seen at least Bluebot delinking them as well.) If you have no great objection I'll do the rest of the year. Rich Farmbrough 11:33 25 March2006 (UTC).
Bot changes to U.S. cities
Please be careful regarding your new bot changes to U.S. cities. Many of the changes are ungrammatical, with bad punctuation (example: the use of the comma for the last clause in the first paragraph of each article). You're changing article after article in this way, with these consistent errors. Badagnani 05:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for pointing that out. I assume you mean the last comma in "Snooland is a town in Polk County, West Virginia, U.S., at the 2000 census the population was 33." I would see that as a parenthetical comma: what would be the correct way to punctuate it? What other grammatical errors am I making? Regards, Rich Farmbrough 11:12 25 March2006 (UTC).
Hi Rich, I've blocked Smackbot for three hours because it was delinking years and months. I have no problem with this myself, but it's a bit of a hot issue at the moment, and both sides have agreed not to make any more changes for a day or so until it's discussed more thoroughly. See here for the latest discussion if you want to leave a comment. Sorry for interfering. Cheers, SlimVirgin(talk) 07:50, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually Rich, now that I check the edits more carefully, it seems only to be delinking days and months, which so far as I know, no one objects to, so I'm going to unblock it. My apologies. SlimVirgin(talk) 07:52, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I've got no particular objection to the formatting edits SmackBot is making, but I'm getting pretty frustrated with getting up every day to find half my watchlist full of masses of SmackBot edits. Would it be possible to slow things down a bit so it doesn't have that effect? Ambi 04:39, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I will slow it down for the time being - but you must have a huge watchlist, I have over 1000 and only three SB edits on it. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 11:24 25 March2006 (UTC).
I've only got a thousand, so it's quite possible it's just been running through those topics. Odd. Thanks, anyway. :) Ambi 11:25, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
I just thunk of something really cool, and I thought you might know if it has been discussed yet. How about an automatic "converter" for measurements so that all measures appear in the user's preferred format? Currency converters would also be interesting, too, though we might limit them to Pounds, Dollars, Yen, and Euros. The currency converter should be able to show the contemporary amount or today's equivalent (user's preference). Rklawton 20:40, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
First of all, isn't it about time to archive this page? It's upwards of 145kb. Next, I have a question about your bot, SmackBot. What settings was it using when the bot made this edit? You can check out Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Quick Q for the context of my question. Thanks! --M@thwiz2020 23:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
These 367 pages should have self links, at least on the first occurence it supports date preferences. Therefore I always (try to) do these pages with manual intervention, or General changes turned off. I've been through the year twice checking and fixing manually, once last Sept, and once in the last few days, so I don't want to undo all that work! Rich Farmbrough 23:10 20 March2006 (UTC).
PS you're right about the archiveing!
That's funny - while the AWB was still relatively young (about the end of last December), I went though the list of all the date articles and just did general fixes. But why 367 and not 366 (365 days plus leap day = 366)? As for the manual self-linker, you can write a simple regex to do this for you. Do a find-and-replace with regex turned on for:
This should (hopefully) make your task easier. I've already tested it and it works well, but only if the title of the article comes after the template close (for example, September 21). The regex allows for blank lines between the two, but no other text. I did this to avoid false positives, i.e., I don't want it to self-link all instances of the title on the page. If you have any problems with the regex, feel free to drop by! --M@thwiz2020 00:21, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I see that you have a new regex. [35] The ironic thing is that, according to your comments, you want to prevent robots from delinking the date, yet you're using a robot to leave the comments! --M@thwiz2020 23:01, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, fixed. You say "for example", are there others you want to tell me about? Rich Farmbrough 23:53 25 March2006 (UTC).
No >_>
I'm not telling you :)
Uhh.. well they were on the Apple Macintosh page. I just meant it was doing that sort of thing. I reverted it so I don't see that it really matters. ^_- Dan 03:05, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I have blocked SmackBot for three hours per a complaint on WP:AN/I and a few recent edits I saw delinking dates that should have just been reformatted and formatting trailing s's in piped links contrary to the Manual of Style. I don't know if these concerns have been raised before. If you have any questions, please ask me on my talk page or respond to the thread on AN/I. Hermione1980 01:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
A complaint has been made here as well. I'm not concerned with years being unlinked, I do that myself, but I am concerned about what Smackbot is supposedly doing with the trailing s in links. From the descriptions of others, I am not sure exactly what changes it is supposedly making. Is it changing [[computer]]s to [[computer|computers]] or to [[computers]]? The first is against the manual of style, see here, because it makes it harder to read when editing. The second will either lead to people having to go through a redirect or it will break links that don't have a redirect for the plural form. When editing, I usually make it so that users will be sent directly to a page instead of going through a redirect. Thanks, -- Kjkolb 02:55, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
HI Kjolb, unfortunately I'm autoblocked at the moment so I'm answering on my talk page. The answer is neither of the above. SmackBot is (was) changing things like [[computer|comptometer]]s to [[computer|comptometers]] very much in line with MoS. Also it's not unlinking years, only months and days of the week. Rich Farmbrough 12:02 26 March2006 (UTC).
Unblocked. Hermione1980 23:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Sweet, that should reduce my work. It's doing the opposite of what was claimed. I could not find any examples either way, when I did a quick check of the bot's edits. Sorry about the confusion, Kjkolb 02:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot month delinking
An unfortunate side-effect of your current delinking of months meant that in a whole heap of Formula One articles, the team March Engineering, which was wrongly linked to the month as March has all become delinked. I know it shouldn't have been pointing to March but now it is difficult to find and correct those incorrect links that I've only just become aware of. Is there any way to find all of the occurences of this other than going through SmackBot's contribs? Thanks AlbinoMonkey(Talk) 07:36, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi, how about I give you a list of articles that include "Formula One" ,"Formula 1" or Formula one" and a link to March as of earlier this month. Rich Farmbrough 11:23 26 March2006 (UTC).
OK here it is, all 224 articles - two have special characters but I'm sure you'll know the location of the real article. Some you may wish to ignore, like "2004" Rich Farmbrough 12:55 26 March2006 (UTC).
G'day,
It has been pointed out to me that Smackbot is trawling through the US Census articles and fixing layout. Would it be possible to have Smackbot add USA after each location so that it reads, "Horseshoe Falls, New York, USA." Most of the census articles fail to state that the location is in the US. As it is wiki style to actually indicate what country a place is located, this would be a wonderful task for Smackbot.
That is a good idea, but may not be trivial, I'm looking to make another run through improving various solecisms. The MoS abbreviation is U.S. rather than USA though. Rich Farmbrough 10:00 16 March2006 (UTC).
Thanks very much. Will you let me know if it can be done (or if you have the time to do it) and that way I can stop adding them manually. It gets a little tiresome! Thank you, Henry Maustrauser 11:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Some are already happening! Also quite a lot have been done manually by various individuals. My current run will take about another 2 days, then I will re-build the replacement strings to take care of some of the 00.00 % and the redundant word "total" in "has a total population", together with the U.S. part. Anything else you spot about the census articles, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 11:16 16 March2006 (UTC).
You are wonderful! Thank you very much. I'll go off and edit something more edifying now. Cheers, Henry Maustrauser 11:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi—A bunch of your (SmackBot) Census revisions showed up on my watchlist, and since it became apparent to me that it was actually possible to do census data mass revisions (before it seemed to be like it'd be impossible, especially with over 600+ NJ municipality/CDP/area articles alone)... I wanted to comment that, currently, many articles' Census data sections begin at least one (if not more) sentence with numbers/percentages. This is bad English grammar—numbers beginning sentences should either be written as words (which obviously is not the solution to this, since the numbers aren't like "twenty-eight" or "seven"), or the sentence should be recast to start with something other than the number. Obviously this isn't your fault, but if it's something you could somehow correct while you're making these other corrections, it would be good. (Btw, I have never looked this up in the manual of style, but it's in many style/grammar manuals) Thanks. //MrD9 02:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
MoS... MoS... Which one? In Asutralian English, starting a sentence/paragraph with a number of percentage is OK if it makes things more readable. Starting with "Seventeen point nine percent" instead of "17.9%" seems silly. While we are at it, U.S.A. isn't used in Australia anymore, looks weird, not sure of the UK recommendation/usgae. Alex Law 16:15, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I think it is a debatable point, but if we can aovid it wihtout making the sentence tortuous, why not? WP has a preferred style (U.S.), which is fine by me. It may of course change in the future, but that's not a problem. Rich Farmbrough 16:26 21 March2006 (UTC).
The issue of U.S. versus US has been debated at least half a dozen times in various locations around Wikipedia. The outcome has always been to prefer U.S. because that's the majority usage in the United States. Like American politics, American punctuation is very conservative. --153.18.99.87 23:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot
Wow, it's done so many edits it took forever for me to get back to the time on March 24 which gave me my first concern. I think it had something to do with editing everything on Wikipedia in alphabetical order without some kind of explanation as to what it was doing. Nothing against you, but I think the bot flag was set much too easily without a real explanation of what edits you were planning on making. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:35, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
That's brilliant! Using the "nowiki" code was genius — and, yes, it's way better to have the brackets themselves not be linked. Makes them stand out properly and eases potential confusion. Kudos to you, man! Spread the word! — Tenebrae 00:07, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Tell me what's wrong with this sentence. Kaldari 02:14, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
PLease tell me. Someone claimed that the last comma is wrong, but didn't reply to tell me in what way. If I know what is wrong I can easily fix it. BY the way, I did write a reply to your previous message, but must have lost it, sorry about that. Rich Farmbrough 02:23 28 March2006 (UTC).
If you honestly need me to spell it out: In English, sentences are separated by periods, not commas. Also, I don't think the preposition "at" makes much sense in this context. What's wrong with "As of the 2000 census, blah had a population of 77"? That is a clear and concise sentence. I don't see any need to change it. Kaldari 02:31, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, I see what you mean about the prepositon "in" would probably have been better. I'll leave the two sentence struture alone, although I think it's a bit verbose. Rich Farmbrough 02:36 28 March2006 (UTC).
Will you be cleaning up the comma error? Kaldari 03:02, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Just a quick summary of what my previous reply would have said
Yes - we want up to date info and when we get the 2010 census data no doubt Rambot will import it. However it still does not seem right to talk in the present tense about something that is six years old. The population of the US has grown by about 10 million in this period, and Las Vegas by about 41%. Some of the really small places could have seen even more massive percentage changes.
On your second point, I agree with you in principle, however users do not like to see lots of small edits, becasue it "pollutes their watchlists". Perhpas this is something to discuss at talk-bots.
Well, I'm going to tear myself away from WP for a while and get a little real life. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 15:16 28 March2006 (UTC).
Don't need expand if already labelled a stub.
Please read talk pages before removing expand tags. For example, on Annual report[37] I added the expand tag because I'd like that page expanded to include "Semi-annual report" and "Quarterly report". Thanks! Ewlyahoocom 19:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Line 480 of parsers.cs (in the code) contains a function linksimplifier with comments "changes Dog to Dog and Dogs to Dogs". WP:AWB also lists under "general fixes" (in the manual towards the bottom) that it:
I looked at, while it simplifies Dogs to Dogs it will not simplify Changed to Changed, etc. I can't fully understand your request, but I believe that that is what you are looking for, and I can easily modify the code to allow for that. Just drop me a message to let me know. Thanks! --M@thwiz2020 00:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Regarding your first regex, the only way to skip dates is to get into the code. As for the second, why not replace it with </nowiki>$1$3 instead of $2$3</nowiki>? --M@thwiz2020 00:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I doubt you'll get this message (since it's archived) but I'll leave it anyways. $1$3 is guaranteed to be a good link while $2$3 might not be. All in all, you need to edit the code. I'll see what I can do to modify Bluemoose's current regexs when I have time (Friday, probably). --M@thwiz2020 01:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Tennis - RM caps in section headers and/or minor fixes using
Hi, would you mind explaining me why you transformed the tennis files into something hardly readable, like in 1994_French_Open_-_Men's_Singles and so on? What was wrong with the originals? Regards, Darius Dhlomo
Sorry, a mistake. All fixed now. Let me know if you come across any others. Rich Farmbrough 18:37 11 March2006 (UTC).
Thanks, mate!! Good work! Regards, Darius Dhlomo 18:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
In article Carl, Smackbot changed [[Carl (name)]] to [['''Carl''' (name)]]. Perhaps you're auto-bolding the first instance of the article name. If that's the case please avoid that change inside wikilinks. —Quarl(talk)2006-03-11 21:57Z
THanks Quarl, we thought this was fixed. I'll check for all instances where this could have happened. Rich Farmbrough 22:00 11 March2006 (UTC).
I noticed an edit of yours [38] had the summary (Manually checked and maybye modified clean of pages listed via Wikipedia:Bad links#Encoded_characters using AWB).
Did you mean "maybe", or is it meant to be a pun? Andjam 01:12, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for being receptive to criticism. I hope to be able to support future bot requests for Smackbot (of limited scope) since I do believe that the non-contentious edits performed by Smackbot were helpful. Kaldari 02:08, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Sep11 wiki
Thanks for your comments. I've read through the various proposals to delete, move, etc. the wiki somewhere other than sep11.wikipedia.org. However, I'm not sure if anyone is moving toward a decision, and don't want to put too much work into cleaning up articles if they will just end up being deleted. I know memorywiki has taken the testimonials, but don't think they have taken the sep11:Tributes_to_individuals. Many of these presumably were articles originally written on Wikipedia, but moved to sep11 wiki (per WP:BIO). If the sep11 wiki is just completely deleted without moving or archiving these articles, then I think it leaves a void. Perhaps, the bio articles about the victims could be moved back to Wikipedia (with my watchlist growing accordingly), and the tributes to memorywiki. In my opinion, each victim is as notable and worthy of an article as the 19 hijackers are (and a few of the victims do have Wikipedia articles). Or, as a very last resort, I might be willing to take the database, buy a domain, hosting for it. --Aude (talk | contribs) 02:37, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I've actually tried moving some of the more encyclopedic articles back into Wikipedia, but was met with harsh resistance. They were summarily deleted under the chant "Wikipedia is not a memorial". If the sept 11 wiki is ever closed (which is a big "if") I very seriously doubt the content would be deleted outright. At the worst, it will get archived into a big zip file. Kaldari 04:27, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking about the regex script you wrote and, as soon as SourceForge CVS is back up and I can download the latest code, I'll work on adding your regex, plus the requested modifications, to AWB's general fixes. I just have one question. For the regex:
Why can't there be a hyphen or apostrophe after the pipe? Why not change [[Tom|Tom's]] to [[Tom]]'s and [[Tom|Tom-Jerry]] to [[Tom]]-Jerry? I understand, though, why you don't want to change [[Tom|Tom and Jerry]] to [[Tom]] and Jerry. Thanks. --M@thwiz2020 19:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Survey
I am conducting a survey on Wikipedia and would like to invite you to participate in the study. I've posted a message on wikien-l, but here is the link again in case you are not subscribed to that list-serv. Thanks a lot for your time! --Mermes 01:23, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Expand / stub
So many articles are marked stub that the system is a waste of time. "Expand" at least offers some hope that something will get done as it is less used. 62.31.55.223 05:05, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Please block
Notice you're an active admin. Can oyu please block: 64.160.211.191. Posted "I love the cock" in American Civil Rights. thanks. Avraham 15:43, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
That was fast, thanks. the vandalism was actually sitting there for about 20 minutes.
Transwiki "Periodic Report of the United States of America to the United Nations Committee Against Torture" to wikisource?
To my knowledger the flag size has consistently been 20px. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 14:38, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
No problem - this is just one of a number of IP based, unannounced, undescussed edits being done also in an inconsistant fashion. Yours was just the first "Named" user envolved. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 14:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Smackbot
I don't think putting the catgories into alphabetical order instead of a sensible order is "minor", I think it is considerable damage. If you are going to do this, please disclose that you are not making "minor edits", but it would be much better to stop doing it IMO. Osomec 20:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I noticed you temporarily blocked this IP address. Since his/her block has expired he/she has started vandalising again. I have issued a warning. Perhaps we can consider a more long-term ban? TydeNet 15:11, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Also, I'd be interested to know what your intentions are re. submitting a new bot request? If the tasks are well described and non-controversial, I don't see why I wouldn't support such request! --Francis Schonken 16:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Further I'd like to invite you not to use any other account at bot speed, for instance your most recent edits with the Rich Farmbrough account show:
13:51, 8 April 2006 (hist) (diff) m John D. Barrow (spelling) (top)
13:51, 8 April 2006 (hist) (diff) m Balata (spelling) (top)
13:51, 8 April 2006 (hist) (diff) m Tokusatsu (spelling) (top)
13:51, 8 April 2006 (hist) (diff) m Walther P99 (spelling) (top)
13:51, 8 April 2006 (hist) (diff) m Spennymoor (spelling) (top)
Five edits in less than a minute is at bot speed; and doing spelling corrections at bot speed is in itself a bit controversial... (it was one of the given reasons - not by me - why modbot's bot approval request was denied not so long ago...).
Sorry to make a fuss again, but please, behave ;) --Francis Schonken 16:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Your point taken too... I was surprised and checked quick edits in my last 500 contributions, what I found:
Resulting from "tabbed browsing" after merging separate Bourgeois dab issues to Bourgeois (disambiguation):
10:49, 29 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m Bourgeoisie (Bourgeois dab page)
10:49, 29 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Louis Bourgeois (merging with "bourgeois" dab page) (top)
10:49, 29 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Bourgeois (disambiguation) (expand) (top)
Page moves with a page that has a non-empty talk page auto-create 4 edits in less than a minute (well, unless wikipedia is extremely slow),
00:53, 27 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Talk:Al-Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala (moved Talk:Al-Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala to Talk:The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing: per wikipedia:naming conventions (books)#Title translations) (top)
00:53, 27 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Al-Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala (moved Al-Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala to The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing: per wikipedia:naming conventions (books)#Title translations) (top)
00:53, 27 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m Talk:The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing (moved Talk:Al-Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala to Talk:The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing: per wikipedia:naming conventions (books)#Title translations) (top)
00:53, 27 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing (moved Al-Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala to The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing: per wikipedia:naming conventions (books)#Title translations)
Double redirect cleanup after a page move can also be somewhat speedier than than 1/30sec:
01:06, 27 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī hīsāb al-ğabr wa’l-muqābala (avoiding double redirect) (top)
01:06, 27 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m Al-Gabr (avoiding double redirect) (top)
01:06, 27 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m Al-Jabr (avoiding double redirect) (top)
Notwithstanding that, I'm a bit suspicious of spelling corrections at 4 per minute on completely unrelated pages... my point is that one has to read sentences/paragraphs and check other issues (e.g. whether one isn't changing a hyperlink instead of making a typo correction etc...), I give you some examples:
(this one was done by a non-humanly-checked bot, so I hope you don't take offense I use this example; my point is that this change was done completely in accordance with current typo lists available in Wikipedia; and that it would've taken MORE THAN 15 SECs to realise [a] that this was nonsense; and [b] that the text between ".png|" and "|thumb" should've been removed instead of improved): diff changed:
"[...] anual opening of the Congress [...]"
to
"[...], anal opening of the Congress [...]"
(this one is by you, you already acted on my remark regarding it, just mentioning again here in the context of 15 sec changes:) diff changed the Claude Debussy page in 5 places; it is my contention that one needs more than 3 secs per change for finding out that the 3rd of these changes was no-good (Chopin's → Chopin's)
Hello Mr. Farmbrough, I don't want to cause any trouble because I'm new here (at least as an editor), so I'd like to talk off the record to a few good contributors about a problem I see on an article that you've edited. Your contributions seem solid, so maybe you can help me. I've been using the Wikipedia definition of "Shock and Awe" for several months because I like how it described the type of warfare that "Shock and Awe" is and also how it gave a link to a definition of "rapid dominance" (of which it claims to be a subset).
In the last couple of days, however, a user called JW1805 edited the article and I think he made the definition much worse.[40] It now says that "Shock and Awe is a military doctrine," whereas is used to say exactly what type of military doctrine it falls into: "Shock and Awe is a method of unconventional warfare." Isn't the old definition more informative? According to the definition of Conventional warfare, I don't think anyone could call it that. So, I think it's safe and informative to say that "Shock and Awe" fits into the definition of unconventional warfare, don't you?
Also JW1805 removed the link to "Rapid dominance," deleted the "Rapid dominance" article and redirected it to "Shock and Awe." Yet the "Shock and Awe" article still says, "Its authors label [shock and awe] a subset of Rapid Dominance." Does that make any sense to you? According to RUSI Journal 141:8-12 Oct '96, "Rapid dominance" is an "intellectual construct" whereas "Shock and awe" is one "method" of implementing that construct. Obviously they are not the same thing. So, why would JW1805 redirect "Rapid dominance" to "Shock and Awe?" Why would he delete the "Rapid dominance" article and the link it?
I went to JW1805's talk page to speak directly to him, but I read what others have said to him, and it seems to be the same story: if you are only one person complaining, JW1805 considers you a troublemaker and has his friends ban you, but if more than one person gets together and says the same thing, he listens. If you feel the same way as I about his edits to "Shock and Awe" and "Rapid dominance," I'm sure we can work together to get the best definition back in place. Are you up for something like that? --Larnue the dormouse 20:23, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
If you wanted to change content you might have succeeded had you not attempted to rope in loads of other editors. Rich Farmbrough 12:34 9 April2006 (UTC).
Hi Rich, I would ask as a courtesy that you remove "Larnue's" (aka Zephram's) post from this page, which is a personal attack against me from a banned troll. See (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Zephram Stark, Category:Wikipedia:Suspected sockpuppets of Zephram Stark, Wikipedia:Long_term_abuse#Zephram_Stark) for details about his modus operandi. He creates at least several sockpuppets a week, which are usually easy to spot, and they are banned. I'm just one the editors that reverts his edits (I could care less about what is in the Shock and Awe article.) Actually, your comment explains a lot about his behavior. If he really wanted to simply change the content, he could have made some attempt to behave more like an actual new editor. But his massive personal attack against me gave him away. He isn't interested in article content, just causing trouble. That's one of the reasons he was banned in the first place. --JW1805(Talk) 14:53, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi JW, I would rather keep it on my talk page, until archived, it seems a fairly crude and feeble ploy, it would rather blacken the perpetrator's name than your own. Rich Farmbrough 17:19 9 April2006 (UTC).
Smackbot on FastCGI
Smackbot just edited the mod_{perl|php|python} links in FastCGI, changing the underscores to spaces. The links still go to the proper pages, but I'd argue that the link text is incorrect. For once the links really should have an underscore in them! What do you think? Am I being too picky? Imroy 10:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, interesting problem. I've fixed up that page, but the general solution is harder, perhaps we need a stop list for some of these functions (still not perfect I know). Thanks for letting me know. Rich Farmbrough 11:33 14 April2006 (UTC).
Can you figure out why the "</ref>" is showing up in the reference section? I can't! I'm sure it's some small typo in my code I didn't catch, but I copied it exactly (I thought) from Alberto Rios, y no esta problemo ayi. Adios,--Beth Wellington 17:33, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Still having problems. Rash asked me to cite a news release instead and it's got a glitch and the library is closing.--Beth Wellington 22:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I got the template to work, but the article name, which should be in quotations is showing up in ital. Have a nice Easter or Passover or whatever, Cheers.--Beth Wellington 00:04, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Actions taken
I have blocked the anon IP, and left warnings on the other users pages that have done this in the past. Your ref problem was a /ref at the end of the article. Best wishes, Rich Farmbrough 21:03 14 April2006 (UTC).
Stubs
Hi! I noticed that when Smackbot applies general fixes, it moves the stub note to the very bottom of the page (example). It was always my belief that stub messages should be following the article body, and then followed by categories and interwikis. Could you look into this, please? Not a big deal, but when I, for example, edit pages, I do not expect to see a stub message after the interwikis. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) • (yo?); 12:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
There's an archived discussion here. The salient points seem to be
There's not a mandated place.
Stubs are an editor feature (and a form of sef-reference) so belong at the end after user features. Regards. Rich Farmbrough 12:38 14 April2006 (UTC).
Thanks for pointing me out to the archived discussion; while I was sure the issue had been discussed before, I was unable to find an archived thread on my own.
One question I still have is about your second point above. Stub notices are an editor's feature, true, but to the reader the categories will always show in the very bottom of the page, no matter where in the edit screen they are located. For the reader, it really makes no difference. For the sake of editors (those, who frequent the "edit this page" tab), however, wouldn't it be more convenient to leave the stubs immediately after the main text (i.e., before cats and interwikis), especially since the location isn't mandated anyway? I realize that "stubs-to-bottom" is an AWB feature, but somehow in the archived discussion nobody mentioned the point I am trying to make. What do you think?—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) • (yo?); 14:24, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Stubs include a category, so they should definately come after any "real" categories. Before or after interwiki is debateable, perhaps it doesn't matter much. Rich Farmbrough 17:24 14 April2006 (UTC).
I guess I simply do not understand the purpose. OK, suppose we put the stub notices after categories, but what's the point? It makes no difference to readers (cats will show up in the browser after stub notices anyway), and it makes no difference to most of the editors. It is a minor annoyance to editors like me, however, who are accustomed to seeing stub notices right after the main text. Now, on the other hand, if we put notices to where editors like me are accustomed to seeing them (right after text), it would have no effect whatsoever on readers (the article will look exactly the same), and those editors who did not care in the first place will continue to not care about it. Editors like me will get rid of the inconvenience. So, is it really worth to inconvenience some people just for the sake logical purity of the article's structure?
Speaking of "logical purity", I don't even see it. If the article structure is "text+stubs+cats+iw", then, if some stubs contain cats, it translates to "text+(stub+cat)+cats+iw" = "text+stub+cats+iw"—nice and logical. If we put stubs after main categories, then the final structure will look like "text+cats+(stub+cat)+iw"—category list flow is interrupted. What's the logic in that? No matter which way you put it, it does not make sense!
I am not trying to make a big deal out of it, lest you got that impression; it is admittedly a very insignificant point. It's just that I enjoy being logical as much as the next guy, and just couldn't miss a chance to debate such a woefully incongruous inconsistency. If I missed anything in my logic or if you are sick and tired of this discussion, please let me know—I have no intention of forcing you to continue discussion you do not enjoy (I'm only keeping it out of my eternal ever-burning desire to get to the bottom of things :). Best, —Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) • (yo?); 18:07, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
If you look here you will see that having stub before cats gives a cat listing like this: Categories: Northwestern Russia geography stubs | Cities and towns in Vologda Oblast. Rich Farmbrough 21:10 14 April2006 (UTC).
What is says conspicuously on the page that is linked to is JDandelin. I don't know where you got "En". Michael Hardy 23:24, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
UConn
I just saw your bot-assisted edits on Geno Auriemma. The article defines the colloqialism "UConn," which is used correctly in many articles about the basketball team. Your change left a couple of occasions like "his arrival at University of Connecticut," which is grammatically incorrect. It should never be used as first reference, but globally replacing UConn with University of Connecticut is a mistake, in my opinion.--Mike Selinker 14:06, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Sounds like you've got it under control. It seems to me like the basketball (and, to a lesser extent, football) articles will be the most prone to problems. Especially watch the article UConn-Tennessee rivalry.--Mike Selinker 14:10, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
S. P. Timoshenko
Publications
I am new to Wikipedia. So I thought I would ask a question before editing this item. Is it permissible to list books authored by Timoshenko with others? Here are three books very important for the subject Engineering Mechanics . I would like to list those books.
Theory of Plates and Shells S. P. Timoshenko with S. Woinosky-Krieger, McGraw Hill, second edition, 1959
Theory of Elasticity S. P. Timoshenko with J. N. Goodier, McGraw Hill, Third edition, 1970
Mechanics of Materials S. P. Timoshenko with J. M. Gere, D. Van Nostrand, First edition, 1972
Hello there. You have proposed the article CLDR (Covenant Language and Development Resources) for deletion without providing a reason why in the {{prod}} template. You may be interested to know that you can add your reasoning like that: {{prod|Add reason for deletion here}}. This will make your reasoning show up in the article's deletion notice. It will also aid other users in considering your suggestion on the Proposed Deletions log. See also: How PROD works. Sandstein 20:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
EXIT festival
Thanks for cleaning it up a bit. Us non-native English speakers appreciate it. Have you considered visiting this year? :) Titanium 22:28, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
No references on this article at all, except one I just added. Do you know of anyone who likes do work on such? (Did write the person who started the article. Cheers,--Beth Wellington 01:04, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
You have changed the text form "passed away" to "died". Please tell me what is the difference? Is there any such need to do so. Shyam(T/C) 22:23, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
"Passed away" is usually a euphemism. It doesn't say what it means. It is idiomatic. It is not encyclopaedic in tone. It is verbose. (See also parrot sketch.) "Died" is accurate, clear, concise universal English. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 22:42 18 April2006 (UTC).
Thanks for clarification. Shyam(T/C) 03:43, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
² replacements
I noticed your AWT replaced this special character entity in the Cell processor page with a superscript 2 character code (Unicode I presume). What is the advantage of this? Firefox does not find the super 2 character code in mm² when searching for the ASCII string "2". Is there a page that discusses the policy behind botification from markup entities to extended charcodes? MaxEnt 18:20, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
As you may know there are a number of ways of doing superscripts, particularly squares x² x² x2, x² and , that I know of. There are pros and cons for them all, but Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page#Character_formatting suggests using the Unicode for 1,2,3 (also there is a redirect sitting at km², for example). When you are editing a page you can select these from the box of funny characters just under the Save/Show/Show buttons. You can also cut and paste them into the Firefox search box, they will search and highlight in the same way as other characters. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 19:25 18 April2006 (UTC).
Thanks for the link. Confusing. The sup notations render into single characters (as seen in FF "view source") but not the same way as the Unicode chars directly entered. The sup chars (1,2,3) have lower baselines and they are slightly wider too. When pasting the rendered page source into xemacs (non-Unicode build I guess), it came out like this:
This still doesn't explain the pref. for Unicode chars over the entity notation, which translates (for me at least) into characters from a different code block. I have a watch set here, no further need to edit my talk page. MaxEnt 19:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
There was discussion of this somewhere, the advantage with <sup> is that you can use the same format for any superscript. I'm not sure which are amenable to CSS, most mainstream browsers will have the ability to display them all (but complex math can get embedded into graphics, which breaks accessibility), though this may exclude things like phones and personal organisers. XEmacs has this to say "However, as of 2005, the released version depends on the unmaintained package called Mule-UCS to support Unicode, while GNU Emacs has had robust integrated Unicode support since before 2003. The development branch of XEmacs has had robust native support for external Unicode encodings since May 2002, but the internal Mule character sets are incomplete, and development seems stalled as of September 2005."
Yesterday I installed MediaWiki on a FC4 machine of my own for a research topic I'm pursuing, so I'm paying more attention to small details than a normal person might. I didn't know that about Xemacs, either. It worked better on the Win 2000 machine I was using at the time, and I've never bothered to switch since. I found you again checking out Wikipedia statistics pages. As a programmer I wouldn't be too keen on substituting out character entities in PHP source code for Unicode characters, but after I thought about it, it's probably more accessible for Wikipedia newbies to cut and paste character text (including char codes once regarded as non-primary) without encountering the entity syntax. At first it seemed strange that a bot/bot-assistant would target such a trivial difference, rather than say muddling up en-dashes with em-dashes, which is more significant in presentation. MaxEnt 00:49, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Did you have any problems with images? I have set up two WM (1.4 I think) on RH 9, and never resolved some issues with certain image handling libraries. It still works, but you can't use all the formats, or re-size. Rich Farmbrough 07:31 19 April2006 (UTC).
I was going to get back to you the other morning that WP was down. At that point I had equations rendering, but I hadn't enabled image upload yet. Made a pass at that today. Upload successful, but the MIME types are still foobared. Also added a cool little custom search enhancement to the Firefox search bar for my local MediaWiki. Sweet. Let's continue this discussion on my talk page which is less trafficked. MaxEnt 07:50, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
You were gracious enough to comment on 1WW; as you may know there are now seven competing proposals. On April 6 I suggested that I be permitted to refactor the proposal page into a single, unified proposal. It's my belief that most of us are tending toward the same or a similar restriction on wheel warring. I think it's unwieldy, though, as it stands. A fair number of editors have commented on these distinct versions but (precisely because they are so similar) no single one has gained undisputed consensus. I suggest that a single, improved version may fare better on its way to policy.
Just as I proposed the refactor, an editor brought to our attention yet another competing proposal, which I merged into the others, using the same format. Still another proposal has since been added, bringing the total to 7. The two new proposals are encountering an indifferent reception but they, too, have some merit.
At the time I suggested refactor, I also put myself forward as the editor to write the initial draft, based on the plurality of support for "my" version. Since the two new proposals have been added, this plurality has held.
I don't for a moment feel that this gives me any special right to dictate terms; rather I hope to draft a proposal uniting the best features of existing proposals. Unlike any of the seven currently competing versions, this refactor will be open to editing immediately by any editor. I will ask editors to refrain from supporting or opposing the new draft for the time being; instead, to edit the proposal to reflect their specific concerns. I believe the true consensus policy will then emerge, in true wiki fashion. After all, we're not so far apart.
I come to your talk page today to ask for your comment on this refactor. Clearly this will be a major change to the proposal page and I don't feel comfortable being quite that bold without some expression of interest in the idea. Once the new draft is in place, I hope also for your participation to polish it into a true expression of our values. Let's move forward with this complement to WP:3RR. John Reid 04:10, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Passed away --> died on Kali Yuga article
Hi Rich,
I reverted the correction that you made to the Kali Yuga article for two reasons. One, 'passed away' is part of a direct quote in the article. The other, more important, is that 'passed away' in that passage refers to a number of years (4,994) passing away, rather than a person. There are a couple of years in my wild youth that seemingly 'died', rather than 'passed', but in this context it's probably not appropriate. Is this a bot that made the correction? Just curious. ॐ Priyanath 17:02, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Good call. Thanks. No it's not, there are about 1% quotes and about 1% correct usage. This was, unusually, both and I didn't spot it, must have been tired. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 15:57 22 April2006 (UTC).
It's an easy mistake to make, even if you weren't tired. A few hours after I reverted it, someone else tried to change 'passed away' to 'elapsed', and then saw that it was a direct quote and reverted themselves. It is getting rather Monty Pythonish..... ॐ Priyanath 16:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
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Re: 7=7?
I fixed the bug, thanks for pointing it out. BTW, please read the notice on top of the page and "Please post new messages to the bottom of my talk page" ;-) --Dijxtra 14:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Rich, HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) released a statement on Kato's death. The statement says "passed away" not "died". Please stop reverting it. Here is a link to the statement on SuperbikePlanet.com [42]. ♫ Bitch and Complain Sooner ♫ 02:11, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
A plea - Excessive deletion of blank lines
Hello Rich,
I'm sure you mean well by removing those blank lines between headers and text. But in fact, it makes no difference to the appearance of the article, and it also makes the articles harder to edit, by making a messy and hard-to-interpret edit screen. (Sensible people use white space on the page when writing, to help keep everything well organized.)
Might it be more useful to spend your time combating vandalism instead?
Thanks for listening. Yours sincerely, Opus33 00:43, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I must admit I can also think of better ways to edit articles. Since the blank lines are not displayed, and since they make life so much clearer for editors who simply edit articles "in the raw", please restrict yourself to fixing problems rather that formatting text that very few people bother to look at, but many people use. I am currently resisting the temptation to waste my own time by reverting those edits where you have removed a blank line in this manner on pages where I've contributed. Fiddle Faddle 11:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
To back this plea up, Wikipedia itself, when it creates an article on (eg) a talk page such as this one, puts a blank line beneath the heading when you create a new topic using the "+" symbol. Now, that seems to me to be conclusive evidence that the blank line is meant to be there - the system is designed to do that itself. If it's good enough for the software it's good enough for me. Fiddle Faddle 21:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm assuming you are responding to my note on your talk page? It is one of several articles you have been using AWB on recently. And I naturally have no objection to your fixing issues with the page(s) - indeed where there is an issue, either factual or of standards then "fixed" is what should happen.
I am simply pleading for blank lines that cause no issue in the published article to be left for ease of editor navigation. I know one can edit each section, but it is often easier to edit the totality of an article. I also know that many articles are inconsistent because some editors leave a blank line between a heading and the text and others do not. And some editors are not "self consistent" either.
Especially where headings are nested, blank lines after them make an editor's life easier when editing the entire article. Hence my plea on your talk page. I was interested that another editor had commented so joined with them in my request.
I was surprised, because the article in question I had actually added blank lines. Where I have removed blank lines it has been pretty much all manual, so your coming across one or more of these as well as Tide Mills, East Sussex seems coincidence. Regards. Rich Farmbrough 22:18 25 April2006 (UTC).
Following this conversation is getting really hard. I guess it would have been easier if you had made your first response here rather than responding initially on my talk page and then copying that all (well most of it) over here. The answer is that there is either a real or a perceived issue that seems not to agree with what you say clearly that you have done when editing. Since what you are saying is that you inserted blank lines (presumably for edit legibility) and did this manually, but two of us are saying that this appears not to be the case, I guess the point is probably both made and responded to and over? Fiddle Faddle 00:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Please discontinue use of AWB for disturbing edits, like you did on the Erik Satie article [43] - What was your *reason* - if any - to change subtitle levels on that page? --Francis Schonken 08:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Standard appendices are generally level 2, and in the order "See also", "References", "Bibliography" and "External links" if present. I'm not sure what you mean by "disturbing". Rich Farmbrough 00:19 25 April2006 (UTC).
Sorry, I'm not satisfied with that answer.
Seems like you either don't know the difference between "generally" and "always", or didn't check the net effect of your change neither before nor after saving.
Further, could you give me a guideline/policy reference indicating the validity of the "rule" you come up with here?
And with "disturbing", I mean: "disturbing". Again, from the fact that you're at loss what I mean with disturbing, it's quite clear you didn't check your edit nor before nor after saving.
Please answer on my talk page, I generally don't go around checking other people's talk pages. --Francis Schonken 07:29, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
ISBN
Thanks fo rhe info. Had no idea. Copied the usage from some other page where it was wrong. so sorry. Cheers--Beth Wellington 23:14, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
"Passed away"
Can you provide a rationale for your crusade against these two harmless words? Thanks, Ghirla-трёп- 06:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you're still interested in the Dates section of the Manual of Style, but I noticed you'd commented in previous discussions. I have made a proposal to completely rewrite this section, with the hope that people from both sides of the debate can agree on a text. Please do come along and discuss it at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) if you're interested. I would like as many people as possible to comment, so that we can truly say we've reached a consensus.
About a month ago, you asked me to debug this regex. Well, I've implemeneted it into Martin's formatting script! Just added it to your monobook.js and you can click the "format" tab at the top to implement your regex, along with many others. I haven't addressed the BC/BCE problem yet but I probably will in about five minutes. --M@thwiz2020 21:41, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Fixing that problem would require me to change the code a lot and I don't want to do that right now although I might get around to it someday. Until then, the user must just be wary for any false positives. (If you're going to be running this code with Smackbot on date articles, though, then I will fix it soon.) Feel free to test out the code on User:Mathwiz2020/sandbox! --M@thwiz2020 21:48, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Really [insert interrobang] What's the regex? And a few questions about your questions... I don't know perl, so what's tr? And what do you mean by a second row of tabs? Do you mean you want userpage, disucssion, edit... new row, format, something else, etc.? --M@thwiz2020 21:52, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, the only way to add "two rows" of tabs would be to have just one tab that, when you hover over it, produces a column of tabs beneath it (like a pop-out menu). --M@thwiz2020 22:08, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
What happened to him/her/it/miscellaneous pronoun for "bot"? --M@thwiz2020 21:53, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Whoa, you must have the longest monobook.js file in history! My tip: move the census functions to User:Rich Farmbrough/monobook.js/census.js and then just include that file in your monobook.js file. As for the second line, I'm working on that code. --M@thwiz2020 22:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Back to the second row of tabs thing, I can't seem to figure it out. However, you can always do something like User:Bluemoose/monobook.js/catkey.js, which adds a button to the edit toolbar. (The button only works for adding text, though, it can't parse it.) --M@thwiz2020 00:22, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I just saw that on Avagadro's number you've changed “19th century” to “nineteenth century.” I haven't found anything in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers) that says ordinals are discouraged. In fact, I think they're a lot clearer in most cases. Further, the style page mentioned uses ordinal dates. Am I missing something? — Vijay 21:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you're quite right WP:MOSNUM does use ordinals, both numeric and spelt out. Many users, myself included, prefer to spell out smaller numbers (where the definition of smaller varies), in particular I see labelling centuries as numeric as note-taking style, and not suitable for an encyclopaedia. Rich Farmbrough 22:12 1 May2006 (UTC).
I definitely agree that smaller numbers (I usually use the <100 definition, but I'm flexible) ought to be spelled out. Although I guess I usually have only applied it to cardinal numbers. I've never heard of "note-taking style," and I would be interested in knowing if any publications do use numeral ordinals. Of course, I usually try to make the suffix superscripted in that case, but most HTML renders superscripting quite ugly. Oh well. I guess that I'll denumeralize (new word!) ordinals when and if I see them. — Vijay 23:10, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
ʻokina
I think you have found out now in the hard way that the { {okina} } template is not there for nothing. Maybe one day in future, when most Windows Explorer owners will have updated, we can do away with it. But not yet now, I am afraid. Still suggestions for improvement are welcome. --Tauʻolunga 06:37, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
An anonymous poster reinserted a blog as an external source. I suspect it's the blog's owner, Mr. Purdy (gwpurdy@yahoo.com). The blog has no information of value not already listed in the article as an external source. I thought we didn't use blogs as sources. I think it's just an attempt to drive traffic to his site. I wouldn't drive traffice to my blog that way. And I have the same links available. What think ye?--Beth Wellington 21:28, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Mr. Purdy is very mad. He's even started a new blog to decry the situation. Sigh.--Beth Wellington 03:17, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm having trouble with dates in a template for references. Tried several things. None worked. I'm sure it's something simple. Help, please and let me know the fix. Thanks mr. Purdy's latest accomplishment. Linking to a site that took a poem from poetry without proper attribution, rather than linking to Poetry He proudly says NPR is using his screed against Wikipedia. He also brags that the admins here removed the complaints about him--actually it was just archived. Sigh redux.--Beth Wellington 00:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Rich, if you look at the reference section, when I tried to wikify dates in refernces, the brackets show. Thanks--Beth Wellington08:29, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
On the main page of the 9/11 Wiki, there is a link to sep11:Wikipedia, a page only created since the main page link could not be changed without sysop privledges. Could you update the link to go to Wikipedia's Main Page (or similar) and delete sep11:Wikipedia? Also, you might want to look at the "speedy delete" page if you have time. Thanks! Timrem 02:35, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Greetings, Rich. I've picked Trial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus for theLaw portal's next "selected case". I saw that you did some editing on it, and was wondering if you would give it a run-through to determine if anything should be changed. In particular, the case should have a citation if possible, and should note legal appeals of the conviction, if any. Cheers! bd2412T 16:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Eh?
Hi, you might watch your AWB edits a little more closely. This, for example, contains this gem:
There were 15.8% of families and 19.2% of the population living below the poverty line, including 12.5% of under eighteens and 35.7% of those over 64.
That is pretty poor English by any standards. Of course the Rambot census jargon left lots of room for improvement, but this is not. older ≠ wiser 17:17, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich Farmbrough/Talk Archive Mega 0, thank you for your interest in VandalProof and Congratulations! You are now one of our authorized users, so if you haven't already simply download VandalProof from our main page, install and you're ready to go!
If you have any problems please feel free to contact me or post a message on VandalProof's talk page. Once again congrats and welcome to our team! - GlenTC(Stollery) 22:56, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Response also posted on VandalProof disscussion pages
Give log into IE, and give it a shot, let me know the results and I will post that up on the welcome page, thanks.Eagle (talk) (desk) 23:30, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
If this does not work I will need infomation on your settings for wikipedia. Let me know
Ok, this has been seen before, try this solution, if it does not work, reply on the disscussion page... ditto if it works I want to know both ways thanks. (IE Script Warning help, click hereEagle (talk) (desk) 23:51, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Was it the solution I gave you that worked??? If not tell me what you did.... Thanks, my job as a mod is mainly to smooth out this kind of stuff. Agian really appreciate it, you can post your response to my talk page:-).Eagle (talk) (desk) 00:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Lol... yes you absolutly NEED popups,
Add {{subst:navpop}} to your monobook, and let me know what happens or if you need help with my instructions. Eagle (talk) (desk) 00:28, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok, tell me where that documentation is, and I will fix that right now:-) Tell me if you are working properly--- All features and everything... and thanks for asking for help.Eagle (talk) (desk) 00:32, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Hey Rich,
I wanted to let you know that I have nominated Arlington County, Virginia as a candidate for US Collaboration of the Week. The article is in need of much help and with a little group effort, it could be brought to Featured Article status! I brought this to your attention as I have seen you have contributed to the article in the recent past. Please cast your vote with your signature at the US Collaboration of the Week page under Arlington County, Virginia. --Caponer 02:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
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Before 08:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Removed by scanning subsystem
I haven't seen it at all. Can you point out which one you were talking about. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather(Talk) 16:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I noticed you'd commented on an anon's page, who seems to be running software to prevent the posting of expletives. Quite likey it is a school. If this becomes widespread it will take some combatting. Have you seen it elsewhere? Rich Farmbrough 16:01 8 May2006 (UTC).
I am hopeful that Ambi can be encouraged to fully accept Quadell's remedy. Please look at my talk page. Thanks. bobblewik 19:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
"passed away -> died using AWB".....
You're leaving a trail of morbidly amusing edit summaries behind you: at first glance I thought you were saying that these individuals had died using AWB. Now that's dedication to Wikipedia! Cheers, JDoorjamTalk 21:16, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
In the article Death of Adolf Hitler you modified the form "When she passed away on October 31" to "Immediately before she died". This is not about Kamato Hongo or her death. Use of her persona in connection with Adolf Hitler calls for very carefull choise of words. I have restored the original form. -- Petri Krohn 03:51, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
The original said that she was alive when she was dead. I thought that was a bad idea...Rich Farmbrough 18:13 13 May2006 (UTC).
Date linking
Can you not delink dates such as December 2004? There has been no discussion about removing these. Rebecca 04:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Areas: mi² or square miles?
Hello. I'm not sure if I have anything to add to the argument that hasn't already been said more eloquently. My personal opinion is that there isn't anything to be gained, and much to be lost, by using abbreviations that only appear once or twice in an article. Futhermore, I know that mi is an approved abbreviation for mile in the US, but most UK readers will need it spelling out, as mi is not common here (eg it does not appear in the 2000-page Chambers Dictionary, unlike m). Essentially though, I agree with the first dozen lines of Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Units. Mr Stephen 17:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Merkey
Please don't post the amount of the settlement, as it will subject you to suit personally from Mr. Merkey. Bad idea.--BradPatrick 19:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Has an out-of-order category in the Cite-sources template - hence Pearle spots it. This is really symptomatic of self-ref cleanup tags which, perhaps, like stubs should not be at the top? Rich Farmbrough 13:51 11 May2006 (UTC).
The problem was that someone inappropriately used subst: for {{unreferenced}}, which inserted a Category: link at the top of the page, where it does not belong. It is common practice for these templates to be at the top of the page, where they are most visible. I replaced the result of the subst: with the template itself. -- Beland 18:17, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Proposed event policy for Wikicalendar
I recently posted some ideas about developing criteria for what should and should not be listed on Wikicalendar events at the Wikicalendar's talk page. Since you're actively involved in this project, I thought I'd let you know so that you can comment or add more suggestions. Thanks :). Fabricationary 23:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
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Before 08:06, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
User_talk:193.112.229.150
Okay. Thanks for sorting that out! :) -- Tangotango 08:28, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
"Passed away"
Thanks for your work in ridding Wikipedia of that irritating euphemism. AnnH♫ 09:45, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
De-linking dates
Hi, I was just wondering why your bot de-linked the year-dates on Levi Yitzhak Bender article? Especially on his birth years? Thanks, Yoninah 07:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi, since it is notable in that he had more that one birth year , I have re-linked them. In general dates are only linked when the links are useful WP:MOSNUM (the exception being if month and day of month are included when they respond to user preferences, e.g. 3 May). Historically every date was linked, which means there are many unnecessary links (the "sea of blue"), and, more importantly, new editors are copying this style. On a tangential point, a huge battle blew up several months ago when an editor proposed using a bot to de-link dates - so let me be clear this is not a bot. I have a bot account User:SmackBot which does useful clean up tasks. Rich Farmbrough 08:04 15 May2006 (UTC).
Where did you get the idea he has more than one birth year? I'm the only one who's worked on this article, and there's no talk page saying otherwise. These are the dates provided by my published source, Breslov Research Institute.
In future articles, are you suggesting that if I don't know the month and day as well as year of birth/death, I shouldn't link the years? Thank you, Yoninah 18:41, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Changing image name
This is just to let you know that you should NOT change image spelling to any images, even if the spelling is incorrect. ie Changing an image that has "middle earth" to its proper "Middle-earth" Wikipedia will assume that it is a diffrent image and (assuming there is no image of that name) it won't show an image at all. Although it is appropriate to correct the spelling if it is in the image's captioning (the description below it).--Ted87 19:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
No I don't have it. Sorry. Are you a Tolkien/Middle-earth fan? If you are then you may be intrested in joining Wikiproject Middle-earth.
Amon Hen 171
Hi there. I saw your question about this on Ted's talk page. I have this issue of Amon Hen which has the article Tolkien and Beowulf by Michael Kennedy. What exactly do you want to check about it? Carcharoth 21:15, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Middle-earth spelling changes
Hi again. I also saw the little discussion about changes to the spellings of Middle-earth. I saw the edits where you did this in the Tolkien article, but then reverted yourself. Was this because the "incorrect" spellings you picked up with AWB were actually incorrect spellings in book and essay titles that should be left as they are? Looking a bit more closely, I spot a certain Tolkien and Beowulf essay there! So I think I know why you wanted Amon Hen 171! I can confirm that on both the contents page and in the title, Middle-earth is spelt with a small 'e'. So I've taken the liberty of making that correction. Carcharoth 21:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Though actually, I see that the webpage on which this article was republished has it spelt as "Middle-Earth", so please revert me if you think it should be left with an "E". Carcharoth 21:28, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
And the Legendarium one is "e" and the Myth and Modernity one is "E" - from book covers on Amazon. The New York Times article, from Google searches (as NYT requires log-in) is "E". The Michael Martinez article is "E". And rummaging around various reliable websites leads me to think that the Caedmon audio cassette is "E" with no hyphen! So the only one I am unsure about is the Kennedy article - the original publication (Amon Hen) is "e", but the online version (and more importantly the more accessible version), is "E". Incidentially, should the reference say Amon Hen, when in fact it links to an online republication of the article? Carcharoth 21:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. I just wanted to let you know that Dr. Craig did say "passed away" when informing Bree of Rex's death. I would know that since I have it on DVD. I changed it back to "passed away". If you have any comments, feel free to drop me a message or on the talk page. Cheater1908 18:40, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
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About 08:06, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Minor barnstar
This is for excellence in minor edits - well done...!
The Minor Barnstar
For all those relentless minor edits! Keep up the good work Tyrenius 16:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Hi, Rich, and thanks for your improvements to Hordville, Nebraska. I have just a couple of comments that might help you if you decide to continue making similar improvements to other city articles.
First, I noticed you changed the link [[square kilometer|km²]] to [[km²]]. To avoid the redirect, perhaps this should be changed to [[square kilometre|km²]] (note the -re spelling).
I also see that you improved the following pair of sentences:
11.2% of the population and 10.9% of families were below the poverty line. 9.8% of those under the age of 18 and 0.0% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.
Your revision was as follows, which is much better:
There were 10.9% of families and 11.2% of the population living below the poverty line, including 9.8% of under eighteens and none of those over 64.
I would suggest the wording below:
About 10.9% of families and 11.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.8% of those under the age of 18 and none of those 65 and older.
To me, "under eighteens" sounds very clumsy; the original "those under the age of 18" sounds much better. I think you added "there were" to the beginning of the sentence to avoid starting it with a figure, but I don't like how that sounds. I tried to come up with a better way of wording that, and the best I could come up with is to use the word "about". After all, it appears that the Census Bureau does a little fiddling to come up with those numbers. There were 48 families in Hordville as of the 2000 Census. If five families lived under the poverty line, that would be 10.4% of families; if six lived in poverty, that would be 12.5%. So the 10.9% figure must be an estimate based on some statistical analysis, in which case "about" is appropriate. The same goes for the 11.2% figure.
Let me know what you think. —Bkell (talk) 18:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your constructive comments. On the first point, square kilometre was a redirect until earlier today, when I recreated it for the second time! So it's a considered decision to go for km², but admittedly a little arbitrary. On your second point, this is perhaps the most complicated part of the process, because the original wording of the poverty section was manifestly wrong, therefore a lot of manual changes occurred. I do take your point, and am not completely happy with any solution I've seen for wording this part, but I will review what I do in light of your comments. Because the changes are now fairly complex, (and I've done about 3,500 articles already) I may also finish the exercise as is, or very close, and come back with improved wording as a third pass. (The first pass was putting the census results in the past tense.) Rich Farmbrough 21:16 25 May2006 (UTC).
P.S. I've now incorporated your suggestions for the poverty sentence. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 11:48 26 May2006 (UTC).
edit summary
Can you remove the extra "using AWB" from smackbots edit summary, it currently says it twice. thanks Martin 15:03, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
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Before 08:06, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
0.00% in census data
I noticed your bot's edit to Muenster, Texas and thought I'd let you know that I rather think that the 0.00 % figures in census data for a town is necessary for major races. It 1) establishes that the race makes up less than 0.005% of the population (0.00 is not the same as zero) and 2) reaffirms for the reader that the US Census isn't lumping that race under "other races". — Laura Scudder☎ 14:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
On your first point, I had thought of that, for towns with a population of less tan 20,000 even one person should show up as .005% rounded up to .01%. I will not substitute 0.00% for towns with a substantially greater population, (although I suspect there will be few if any). Your second point is interesting, "other races" is fairly well explained in the article Race (United States Census) which is extensively linked to from every article. Perhaps putting "other races" in quotes would emphasise the meaning. See Muenster, Texas, let me know what you think. RichFarmbrough 15:09 29 May2006 (UTC).
Why is the MyDD article at this article, which I found when I referenced Shields in an edit to the Sago Mine disaster article?
Shields is now the director of internet communications for the re-election campaign (well actually he was appointed--so maybe it's an election campaign) of Senator Bob Martinez (D-NJ). I'd be glad to update the article to actually match the title, if that won't mess things up.--Beth Wellington 18:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I have thought about this problem before, and not come up with a fix. But I now think maybe I can. I'll mull it over over night. RichFarmbrough 22:26 4 June2006 (UTC).
Just thought I'd let you know I have written a script to solve these replacement problems, it's under preliminary testing. RichFarmbrough 07:23 9 June2006 (UTC).
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About 08:06, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Qohelet "The Prophet"?
Considering that Ecclesiastes belongs to the Writings, rather than to the Prophets would you mind stating your justification for adding the "The Prophet" to the title Qohelet?
Thanks for drawing my attention, it should have been "The Preacher". This is an alternative name from King James Version. Reagrds, RichFarmbrough 15:05 5 June2006 (UTC).
That translation is already discussed in the next section in the same article, as I mentioned. No point in adding it to the first line (makes it KJV-centric). I would have let sleeping dogs lie. Cheers, Ziusudra 15:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Matthew links
I noticed you are using AWB to wikilink to verses in Matthew. However, most (if not all) of the verses you are linking to are simply redirects. I think the more appropriate course of action to take would be to use template:bibleverse instead. What do you think?--Andrew c 17:25, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I am aware of Bibleverse, Bibleref, niv, wikisource, and one or two others. The slight problem is that none of these are supported on standalone copies of WP or paper copies, nor can we rely on them to always be there. I am also aware of the heateed discussions about bible verse articles. I also think a user is entitled to expect the text (a text) of a bible verse, plus some information about it if they look it up on WP. I am planning on writing a modest proposal, in the next few weeks, to try to solve some of these problems. This exercise is a warm up for that, as much as anything. Incidentally I have just read the article New Testament apocrypha, and am amazed at how much more there is to know about the early church. RichFarmbrough 17:41 6 June2006 (UTC).
note {{tl:Sourcetext}}
I am aware of Bibleverse, Bibleref, niv, wikisource, and one or two others. -- Bibleref has been deprecated. The wikisource template does not serve the same purpose as the other templates. Having multiple templates with similar function is stupid, I will admit, but seeing as how bibleref is being removed, a single, standard template is probably on the horizon.
The slight problem is that none of these are supported on standalone copies of WP or paper copies. Well, WP:NOT.
nor can we rely on them to always be there that is why we use templates. We can easily change what site the template links two, as opposed to using a direct external link.
This exercise is a warm up for that, as much as anything. Well then, I think you are going about this the wrong way. Make your proposal first, before making bold preemptive changes.
I also think a user is entitled to expect the text (a text) of a bible verse, plus some information about it if they look it up on WP. Once again, WP:NOT. We are not a primary source, or a collection of source material (that's Wikisource). We are not a bible commentary (that's wikibook). Once again, if you knew about the heated discussions about bible verse articles, then why are you circumventing the community?
In summary, I feel that if an article is already using one of the templates, and you add in links to the redirected bible verses, it gets confusing. If users are used to clicking on a link and being taken to biblegateway, then they click on your new links and get taken to the main gospel article, it can get very confusing.
This just in, I just looked at your edit history and noticed you creating over 500 blank redirect pages for the verses of Matthew. What in the world are you thinking???? --Andrew c 20:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Miscellania
I notice you have been editing trivia to miscellania on a number of TV episode pages. Isn't it spelled miscellanea? Why do you prefer this term to trivia? If you wouldn't mind could you please post any reply on my talk page as it looks a lot less busy than yours and will be easier for me to spot. --Opark 77 12:56, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Bother! You're correct, now I have to change them all. I prefer miscellanea to trivia because trivia is stuff that's not worth bothering with, and hence has no place in an encyclopedia. RichFarmbrough 13:04 6 June2006 (UTC).
Could you take a look at Prayer. A user constantly is adding a useless external link. I've done my three reverts for the day. It also seems like he's created additional usernames to back up his statements. Thanks. -- Jeff3000 20:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
No I'm waiting for someone to explain why in the world the link isn't allowed. Dannycarlton 22:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for voting on my RfA
Thanks so much for voting!
Thanks so much for voting on my request for adminship. I have decided to withdraw my nomination as it seems that consensus will not be reached. If you voted in support, thanks for putting your trust in me to be a good admin. If you voted in opposition, thank you as well for your constructive criticism as it will only help me be a better Wikipedian and perhaps help if/when I apply for adminship again sometime in the future.
I am curious as to why you are mass-changing instances of "Trivia" to "Micellanea". Is this some new guideline on Wikipedia, or is this just your own project? Just wondering so I can be "in the know". Thanks. RattleMan 03:24, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I'd like to know as well. Everyone knows what "Trivia" means but "Miscellanea" just sounds... odd. Very odd. The word is not nearly as friendly. If this is a new Wikipedia guideline, I'd like to know how I could contribute to changing it back. Esn 03:15, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Presumably you're referring to The Kid Brother? I replied to RattleMan on his talk page. The point is that "Trivia" is information which is not really of use or interest. Ideally information that is of interest should be in the article body, information that is not should not be in the article at all. Nonetheless miscellaneous useful information may need a section of it's own - calling that section "Trivia" invites the addition of facts such as "Harold Lloyd took more cream in his coffee making this film, than in the two previous films put together." You may well find a better name than I have used, please change it and let me know. See also Wikipedia:Trivia. RichFarmbrough 09:28 9 June2006 (GMT).
I you haven't already weighed in, you may want to take a look at
[46]. I'd be intersted in your opinion on th eproposed AfD. Cheers, Beth --Beth Wellington 05:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Hey, would you mind redoing the SmackBot cleanup on Forsyth County, North Carolina? I reverted the edit because it was on top of some vandalism. Wmahan. 21:14, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
It'd be far more productive to remove bogus external links (per WP:EL) than switch between "External link"/External links". From the edit summary it seems like this bot is run under user supervision - so you could do it?
Getting rid of crap links has value, but stray plurals? Thanks/wangi 23:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, the replacement is automatic. I compile a list of articles with more than one link in the external links section by analysing a databse dump, and run the search and replace on those articles. I think it looks bad to say "External link" and have several.RichFarmbrough 08:48 10 June2006 (GMT).
Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion
Hello! I noticed that you have been a contributor to articles on Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion. You may be interested in checking out a new WikiProject - WikiProject Anglicanism. Please consider signing up and participating in this collaborative effort to improve and expand Anglican-related articles! Cheers! Fishhead64 23:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Spacing
Hi Richard!
Thanks for the helpful info. I only just found it on th discussion page. I'll try to work with that in the future.
Hi, I noticed that you created a number of articles like List of chapters and verses in the Book of Job that consist entirely of redlinks. Do you have a useful purpose in mind for these articles? Since these individual verse articles don't now exist for the most part, the lists aren't really doing anything now ... and even once they do exist, categories or navigation templates would work just as well, IMO. A couple of them have been brought up on AFD ... and, given time, the whole lot will probably be deleted unless there is some reason for their existence. As a reminder, if you should decide that they are no longer useful, you can tag them with {{db-author}} to request that an administrator delete them. BigDT 12:33, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Ok ... there is a discussion going on at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of chapters and verses in the Book of Job ... you may want to mention your purpose there. Userfying them is probably a very good idea, though, as it would save the headache of arguing over what to do with them in the interim. BigDT 12:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks
Thanks for clearing up the Smackbot question I had and for all you and the bot do. Ruhrfisch 13:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't know what your proposed Smackbot code is, but see:
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Category:Council elections in England - wikify dates
You asked me to put a list of the articles concerned here. However, as it would take me quite a while to produce such a list, and as all the articles have similar categorisation and naming, I'm wondering whether you could automate that part as well.
Notes: It's possible some of the articles might happen not to have by-elections listed (because there haven't been any in recent history). Also, a small number of articles have had their "dd/mm/yyyy" dates wikified (usually by me).
Anyway, I hope you can help on this. If you want me to produce a list of the articles concerned, let me know. Cheers, --A bit iffy 11:21, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
That saved days - excellent stuff, Rich! Cheers, --A bit iffy 14:08, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Some odd formats
I came across a lot of school articles with odd date formats. See Bear Creek Elementary School and its ilk. Just thought you might be interested. bobblewik 18:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
You may want to let him know. It seems quite a few of the BC school articles you're in the process of fixing were authored by one person. --Stephane Charette 23:33, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Do you know what happened to the Pedro Lopez page? You did a lot of work on it, but it seems its been recently removed for copyvio or some such.--Cúchullaint/c 18:31, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
It's been marked for copyvio again, but at least this time the editor explained what parts exactly are problematic.--Cúchullaint/c 17:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Looking through the history it seems the material in question was actually added by EliZZZa, who runs the site it originally came from. I doubt this new site has the copyright to it.--Cúchullaint/c 01:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Vandal message from AOL user impersonating Jeff
This is your last warning. The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. -- Jeff3000 03:59, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
The above comment was not by me, someone is impersonating me. The IP is from the US, and I don't live in the US. -- Jeff3000 01:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
wikifying dates
Hi Rich, I noticed you had wikified dates and years on the article Stephen Harper. I believe it is policy only to wikify the first mention of a particular date or year in an article, ie only the first 1995 for instance. Thanks, Kalsermar 15:38, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
It is indeed a guideline to link only the first occurrence of a link, except where style dictates otherwise. However dates that include the month and day number will format differently according to user preferences, and hence should almost always be linked thus 1 May1999 (WP:DATES) - bare months, years, days of the week, seasons or centuries should almost never be linked. RichFarmbrough 15:43 14 June2006 (GMT).
Establishments by year
Many thanks for sorting out all the pages using AWB (must find out more) - that's saved me hours of work. By the way, way did you let me know that there is no year zero? I'm in the know about that - has a year cat been created for year zero? Greenshed 20:40, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
World Cup groups
There is a discussion going on about it. So please don't delete it till there is either consensus or no consensus. Kingjeff 22:37, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Can you respect me and everyone else who is willing to discuss the proposed deletion? That's all I'm asking for. But please wait for consensus. Kingjeff 22:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
RE:Navboxen
Fair enought. I had not seen it. kalaha 12:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Bot account
Have you ever considered getting a bot account for some of your massive automated edits?--Andrew c 01:04, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I have one (see my FAQ). However every extension of purpose needs to be approved, which means for relatively small tasks (especially one offs) of only a few hundred edits it's quicker to do them manually, secondly my bot account does not have a bot-flag, because there is currently no process on en: for getting one, and thirdly any edit where there is a significant possibility of a human (or other) mistake needs to be done by an non-bot-flagged account, so that it does show up on recent changes etc., this includes manual test samples of big bot runs. RichFarmbrough 12:17 16 June2006 (GMT).
Well two things come to mind:
Don't edit too fast; consider opening a bot account if you are regularly making more than a few edits a minute.
Don't do anything controversial with it.
I think the first rule needs no explanation. (Your "estcattemp with estcat" edits over the course of 2 and a half hours, totalled around 700 edits, resulting in ~4.6 edits per minute). As for the controversial edits, massively changing "Trivia -> Miscellanea", and wikilinking Matthew bible verses to redirect pages, as opposed to using one of the EL templates, or simply avoiding the redirect by wikilinking only the word Matthew and leaving the verse numbers. But you already have a FAQ section regarding your edit behavior with AWB, so I doubt I am mentioning anything new to you.--Andrew c 13:45, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
are you talking to me?
Hi, I received your message about FIFA 2006. You said:
These artices could do with a Nav-Box in my opinion. I'm to my bed, any chance you might whip one up? RichFarmbrough 23:26 15 June2006 (GMT).
Are you talking to me? I don't understand. --Neo-Jay 23:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I see. Many thanks. I have added this template to the rest of the group articles.--Neo-Jay 14:01, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
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I agree... I'm trying to figure out how to make the default background color come through so that the template is universal. Netscott 15:16, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
The argument is defintely a solution but I'm just not sure if adding a third criteria is warranted if there's a way to make a whatever default color come through. You idea about actually using headin= and template=, etc. might make more sense as well... please continue to edit the new template as you see fit in that regard. Netscott 15:18, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
ok, I added a bgcolor= criteria... in accord with your idea... I still think there should be a way for the table color to be "transparent" in accord with whatever color is set by a given row. Here's an example below with the bgcolor set to #BFD7FF (like the Fifa template)
Thanks for you suggestion about the background color. I couldn't find a more universal solution that'd just have the formatting table be "transparent" to show a given color for a given row and work across most standard browsers. Myself and a couple of other editors had encountered this centering difficulty before and I'm not sure why it hadn't dawned on me to just make a centering header Tnavbar. After I solved the issue surrounding the Fifa templates it became perfectly logical to make one (as you came to the exact same conclusion). With the existence of the new header Tnavbar all of the previous "tough spots" that I recalled seeing previously came back to mind and I went about editing in the header... which is why it's use is already so extensive. Thanks for contacting me about the centering issue and spurring me on in that regard. Cheers! Netscott 11:37, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Statistics
You gave a statistic for what you call 'bare' years. I am not sure how you define that. Can you let me know where you got it from?
You gave me some pointers to statistics before and I filed them carefully but have forgotten where. I pulled up 40 'Random articles' tested them against my 'dates' tool. It wanted to edit 16 of them. That depressing 40% rate works out at 480,000 articles in Wikipedia. bobblewik 19:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Bot approval
I have taken a break from WP:BOTS, when I "left" I thought Essjay's proposed system would be put to use and I am surprised it has not.
Perhaps the whole process should be modelled after Articles for deletion. Each bot gets a subpage (intially used for first running approval, and later for flag approval). On the subpage, discussion occurs and an approval group member "closes" the discussion with a decision (after 7 days or whatever). Two distinct sections would be set up on Bots/Requests for approvals - initial run approval and flag approval. When flag approval is granted, the bot operator lists a request at Requested bot flags (linking to the discussion etc).
Or you could just document and use the the last bit - the use of Requested bot flags. This would solve your current flag problem I think (and I don't know why it isn't being used at the moment).
I don't have the inclination to introduce this new method, but maybe you or others do.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Only the owner process is documented, not the approvals group process". Is this asking if a different system should be introduced? Or you want to remove its "arbitrary, virtually self appointed" nature (which is perhaps odd, but seems to work well)? I can't think of a safe alternative that works, and haven't seen one proposed.--Commander Keane 12:18, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Days of the week and months
Thanks for your comments. You are doing great work, thanks. Incidentally, one of the reasons why I mentioned User:Bobblewik/monobook.js/datebits.js is because it deals with 'month+year'. I just wanted to be sure that you are aware of that. Feel free to ignore it or use it as you think best. No response required. Regards bobblewik 16:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. 88.108.227.2 has twice removed relevant material from the article on Jane Gazzo --- which I continue to put back. Any ideas what can be done ? Bests --- Bob Wikiklrsc 15:05, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich, for your excellent suggestions and reply. Will do as you recommended. Bests Ever. --- Bob Wikiklrsc 15:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Rich, the anonymous contributor User:88.108.227.2 has done it again for a third time. I have done as you suggested, left a message on the anon's discussion page User_talk:88.108.227.2, and on Jane Gazzo's article discussion Talk:Jane_Gazzo, but I fear it will happen incessantly. Unfortunately, I have limited access to the internet in the next while, so it will be terribly difficult for me to guard against it or discuss or revert it. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:44, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Thanks for your kind reply. Okay, I will follow your advice. But some administrative action might need to be taken sometime soon, as you and the community deem necessary and appropriate. Bests ever. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:51, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, Rich. Many thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:52, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Hmm. Point taken. It is a fan page of Jane's and keeps track of what she is doing in the music and entertainment business, albeit esconced in Tony's blog. "Occasionally acceptable links ... fan sites" in WP:EL might qualify ? Please let me know what you recommend and I will remove the link if it is objectionable by WP guidelines. Or you can remove it yourself if you think it is in violation as I am about to lose my access for the day or next few days possibly. I mean it is a fan page, but informative as to her doings around and it is the only way we currently have to know what Jane Gazzo might be up to. The anon contributor made no such cogent explanation as you did. Many Thanks as ever for you help and kindness. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Anon editor User:88.108.227.2 continues to remove it without explanation. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:12, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your help as ever, Rich. We'll see how it emerges. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 16:34, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Anonymous contributor 88.108.227.2 has seemingly morphed into 88.108.130.43 and is adding seemingly spurious information to Jane Gazzo's article. At least, I can't verify that Jane Gazzo has an in-flight radio show on Emirates Airlines (88.108.130.43 mis-spelled this as "Emiritz"), quoting the contributor: " ... as well as the 'Download' in-flight radio show on Emiritz Airlines." I think this is spurious, but I have heard nothing about it, even though it is conceptually possible. I googled and tried to find any mention of it and failed to do so. Also, the airline is Emirates Airline, not as presented by the anonymous editor. I will edit it out and leave it for discussion again. I hope that's the right approach. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Thanks for your kind help in fixing this matter and verifying that Jane Gazzois doing the in-flight show on Emirates Airline. Bests as always. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Infobox country changes
Hi Rich,
I reverted your edits to Template:Infobox country. It seems to have messed up the census fields. I did not see what the error could have been. I'd try again in a sandbox. Also, please see Template_talk:Infobox_Country#Census for more details. Regards,—MJCdetroit 21:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
You're editing away links inside comments - those are quites taken from other pages via a script, and left here just for reference, not intended to be uncommented ever. Don't know if it's worth it spending even bot cycles on removing them. Your thought? --Alvestrand 21:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Your right that it's not worth editing these pieces of text, and in fact they should be avoided, like quotes, template names, image names URLs etc.. The difficulty in doing this is one of the reasons that there are not more bot edits. However I am working on code to avoid these edits, and I believe others may be too, so this should be a thing of the past in due course. RichFarmbrough 21:16 25 June2006 (GMT).
SmackBot's bot flag
Hi. Per Robchurch's approval [48], I have granted your bot a bot flag. Regards, Redux 13:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
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PLEASE FOLLOW THE FORMAT
Please STOP changing Trivia to Miscallania. There was a format that you had to follow. Please stop changing it. Lil Flip246 17:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Disagreed. I like "Miscellania" better. "Trivia" is something trivial. `'mikka(t) 18:10, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Lil Flip246:
Please don't SHOUT.
Those edits were a fortnight ago, you're acting as if I'm changing them as you change them back.
What "format" do I "have to follow"?
See Mikka's comment on my talk page. Also see WP:Trivia.
Sorry about that. I was just shocked how everything changed. Lil Flip246 22:15, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Lists of Registered Historic Places in XX County, Michigan
Hi, I noticed you editing a lot of the dates in these articles. I'm not sure if you're interested in such a cleanup task, but nearly all of the dates on these lists are exactly one month off from the dates in the national register listing database at NPS. The dates there are in numeric form and I suspect that whomever imported the data applied an incorrect algorithm to convert the dates into text. This is why there were dates such as February 31 -- which should have been January 31. Anyhow, ensuring that the actual dates are correct would involve either reimporting the data or massively tedious manual verification and correction. I think it might be best if the incorrect date information were simply removed from these articles. A very very few have been manually corrected, but in my estimation, the loss of such a detail would be negligible. I think removing the month, day portion and leaving only the year would be more than adequate and certainly bettern than incorrect information. Anyhow, I know that you're proficient either using AWB or with a bot to handle such mass edits, so I just wanted to suggest this as a possible project. Cheers. older ≠ wiser 13:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
PGNx Media
Hello Rich, I noticed that you edited out the date links but didn't comment on whether the article should be removed. If you have time, I would appreciate any suggestions in order to keep the article. Thanks for your time. Thinkjose 00:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Bluemoose is using AWB to change back the [[{{PAGENAME}}]] feature you added to the date articles. When I asked him about it he claimed that this "notice" (his words) was no longer necessary, and he reverted my corrections. Whether Bluemoose is correct or not, I do not know, so I thought I'd bring this to your attention. I'd appreciate it if you would let each of us know how the 367 date articles should be formatted. See April 30 for an example. Cheers, Rklawton 15:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Mussolini
The entire article (or most of it) is a copyvio of the Jewish Virtual Library biography. We need to use the information, but rewrite it. It's almost obvious that it was derived from that web site. Aaрон Кинни (t) 22:22, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay. Sorry, but I was confused over this, because it's very difficult to discern if there is a copyvio in play or if ours is the original, sometimes. So should I just reinstate the intro text? I'm not real sure. Aaрон Кинни (t) 22:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Please be careful here. Sometimes you must disambiguate, not delink, as in the case of march. (seePasodoble). `'mikka(t) 18:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your note. Yes, I saw that a very few uses were of a different sort of march (and indeed there is a film called May, among other things). But they don't have to be linked, and being unlinked is better than being linked to the wrong place. Still I am pleased to have achieved edits like this one. RichFarmbrough 18:16 27 June2006 (GMT).
Just wondering, but why are you delinking dates to begin with? I personaly don't see how Wikipedia gains anything from having less links to other articles, so is there some style guide or convention I'm not aware of? --Aknorals 09:04, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
It's only worth linking date like entities in a very few contexts.
Where the date is itself important - so that there is value in following the link - decreasingly often as WP grows.
When the text is about the entity e.g. a link to 2000 or 2001 in The Millennium.
When a date includes a day and month, and formatting preferences will be invoked by linking it, e.g. 10 April1962.
There is also the process of linking to "[Year] [month] in <subject>" via a piped link, e.g. 1999 in television as 1999 - this eventually can suffer the same problem as the first point, and is seen by some as an undesireable Easter egg - i.e. taking te user to a difernt plce than expected..
See WP:DATE for details, and the talk page for 48 archived pages of wrangling over the exact meaning of "links valuable in context" and "the correct use of the non-breaking space" or "the endash". RichFarmbrough 13:19 1 July2006 (GMT).
Automated archival
Hey, I see that you have an automated archival service. Is there a way that I can have it too? bobblewik 12:47, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
IBM Research lab analysis of Wikipedia
Hi Rich. I ran into this on the IBM Research site. An analysis of some of Wikipedia, what they call a "history flow", to some extent, visually. FYI. [49] Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:26, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Thanks for your kind reply as ever. I thought it was indeed fascinating, too. BTW, I tried to put a link and some text to it in the article on History_Flow but it dis-allowed it because the domain alphaworks\.ibm\.com is on the spam blacklist ??? What to do ? One can't update the article !
Spam protection filter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The page you tried to save was blocked by the spam filter because it contained a link to a blacklisted website. If you didn't add the link (see below), it was probably already in the current version of the page. Alternately, it might have been added by spyware on your computer.
You will need to remove all instances of the blacklisted URL before you can save.
If you believe that the link should not be listed on the spam blacklist, or that the spam filter is mistakenly blocking the edit, please leave a request on the spam blacklist talk page. The following is the section of the page that triggered the filter:
The following text is what triggered our spam filter: http:(slash slash)www.alphaworks.ibm.com
Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich for changing the IBM History Flow tool article so it can be saved and updated. I am not sure, besides the obvious, why the IBM Alphaworks URL is in the Wikipedia Spam Blacklist. (?) [50]. Is there no way of finessing it besides chopping up the URL ... Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 14:53, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Thanks for the information. I guess we'll leave it as it is until further action. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 12:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich, for the information about the software pointed at in the external links. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 12:25, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Barnstar
For thousands of your excellent AWB-assisted edits I award you this Working Man's Barnstar. Jogers (talk) 19:58, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for getting rid of these unnecessary date links. Your work is appreciated. Regards, Jogers (talk) 19:58, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
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10:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Track listing formatting
Do you use a regular expression to place songs in quotation marks like this and this or do you just fix it by hand? Jogers (talk) 12:29, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! I guess it will take me some time before I figure out how it works. Take a look at the regexes I use to clean up album articles (User:Jogers/AWB). You may find something useful there. Jogers (talk) 12:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
It didn't work properly here. I hope that helps. Jogers (talk) 13:04, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Here is another mistake. And my XML file: settings.xml. I'm afraid that most of these settings shouldn't be used in an automated bot, though. They are far from perfect yet and I still fix many things by hand. Jogers (talk) 13:39, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
There is another problem [51]. "(Die Elektrik)" is a part of the title in this case. I have no idea how such thing could automatically be distinguished from information about composers. Jogers (talk) 14:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks a lot! This is very convenient, I used to line them up by hand. By the way, when I make an edit like this I usually remove any remaining characters from the "Reviews" field so the professional reviews section of the infobox doesn't show up. Do you have any idea how to automatize this? Jogers (talk) 15:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I'll try this out. Thank you for everything. If you improved any of these settings I would be very glad to know. My improvements and additions are usually reflected here. Regards, Jogers (talk) 17:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't have any problems with "this album" stuff. Some very unusual string of characters must have appeared in the text you tried to edit. The WikiProject Albums discourage from using piped links to "years in music" (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums#Style (Dating)) so this is why I remove them. Please be more careful with your edits. Here I don't know what happened, it must have something to do with your settings. Here the term "Album EP" doesn't make much sense. Here the list of reviews got screwed. Jogers (talk) 07:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
University of Richmond / Cry_Wolf
Thanks for cleaning up the year links on the University of Richmond page. But you also deleted underscores in links to the movie "Cry_Wolf." The proper title of the film does include the underscores. I've restored them, but wanted to let you know for future reference. WildCowboy 03:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Date links
On what grounds are you killing all of these on sight? Rebecca 23:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
RE: Protect Page
Hi, I noticed you said you'd clean up articles and preotect pages. You can do the one now, and the other is (should be) extremely rare. Rich Farmbrough 14:58 4 May2006 (UTC).
Saw on my talk page you'd like some help protecting a page and cleaning it up just tell me what it is and I'll check it out Thanks, Mahogany
What I meant was, you don't need to be an admin to clean up pages, although it helps if you have lots of vandalism to roll back. I was referring to your comments on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Xchrisblackx 2.Rich Farmbrough 16:57, 4 May 2006 (UTC).
SmackBot seems to automatically replace <i> and </i> with ''. This is correct in many cases, where the italics are used for emphasis, but the two expressions are not always equivalent. For instance, Smackbot edited the article Embassy of the United States in Baghdad to remove italics tags around "The Times". In my opinion, this is not semantically correct, because the italics do not indicate emphasis, but instead designate The Times as a publication. Twinxort 02:47, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
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before 20:11, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Please help
I asked to be unblocked, but David Levy won't budge. I promise not to commit any blockable offenses. CoolKatt number 99999 20:11, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Might be worth considering an early unblock if you think the user is unlikely to repeat offend. Bear in mind, of course, a block is not a punishment but a means of protecting the wiki. Regards, RichFarmbrough 20:32 11 July2006 (GMT).
Immediately upon blocking, I offered to lift the block on the condition that CoolKatt discuss the disputed matter in good faith on the article's talk page and not revert again for at least 24 hours. CoolKatt then proceeded to post a message there, threatening to nominate the article for deletion if other editors refused to comply with his/her demands. Since that point, he/she has continually evaded the block (made possible by a bug that's currently being fixed) and threatened other users.
FYI, I reverted the addition of CoolKatt's message because of the aforementioned block evasion. (He/she shouldn't have been able to edit this page.) —David Levy 20:43, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
I thought years were supposed to be linked from that article, just as if it were a real "century" or "millennium" article. You recently removed the year links (and eliminated a number of dateth, which is good.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 15:27, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I debated putting the years back in, and can do quickly if you think it's a good idea (I was there primarily to deal with the month links). However for the 20th/21st C there will be eventually entries for almost every year, so the value of the links seem limited. Post about 2050 (?) the years redirect to centuries an millenia anyway. Let me know what you think. RichFarmbrough 16:01 15 July2006 (GMT).
Dates
Hi there: I guess I'm wrong, but I thought it was a Wiki convention if a year number was included in an article to make a link of it? Your bot has delinked a number in articles on my watch-list. No problem, just asking.--Anthony.bradbury 21:55, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Most helpful; thank you.--Anthony.bradbury 22:10, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Rich, I've always adnired your stance on this controversial topic and I wondered if you might be interested in [52]
Apologies if you are not. --Guinnog 22:29, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Bobblewik
You said: "Just to let you know that those who are familiar with this saga know that Bobblewik isn't using a bot." Is there anywhere were I can read about that? And were did he offer to talk to his detractors? (I guess that last one is his talk page). If you can get Bobblewik to explain why he removed the links he removed on related talk pages or in his edit summaries, feel free to use your administrator powers to unblock him yourself. - Mgm|(talk) 23:14, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
copyvio and ori redler
Hi Rich. I am going to be out of town some this week, and probably working on some personal side projects. I don't really have the time to track down what User:Ori Redler is doing, but today I had a quick look. I noticed on his talk page that you had asked him to follow procedure in the past, would you mind having a look at his edit history (no comments, natch) and/or helping him out so that we can get the copyvios tagged properly and those tagged improperly removed. I'm starting to think we're losing content to the big black copyvio banner. ... aa:talk 03:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
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Smackbot and "delinking months and days of week"?
Can I ask you a question? I often see SmackBot "[d]elink months and days of week &/or general fixes using AWB". Why would the bot delink months and days of the week? I had always been under the impression that it was good to hyperlink dates so that they would show up in the person's native date format -- e.g., June 26, 2006 is going to appear for me, when I save this and look back at it, like "June 26, 2006" -- but someone might see it as "26 June 2006" if that's how they have it set in Special:Preferences (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)). Can you fill me in on the rationale behind this? — Mike 01:48, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
You are right (I do quite alot of date linking for these format reasons), but not as far as things like linking just "Thursday" or "November" are concerned. RichFarmbrough 08:49 24 July2006 (GMT).
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Hi Rich. User:195.93.21.33 continues to vandalise Clare Nasir. I revert it, but maybe there's a bigger problem ? Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 20:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your kind reply, Rich, and help. I thought it might be the case of an AOL vandal, but was unsure positively. Cheers! --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 12:36, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Spelling
I'm sure this has been mentioned already, but "ISBN formatting problems &/or genreal fixes using AWB" (my emphasis)? Cheers --Pak21 17:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Anonymous contributor, User:66.156.10.152 callously vandalised the Homelessness article, and I had a hard time fixing it since there were some legitimate changes since. It must have gone under the anti-vandalism bot's radar. Seems like a singular event for this contributor. I hope it stays that way. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:45, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
The picture you refer to is Image:Brothers Baptiste NIH.jpg.
You are correct that WP is biased towards
The Western world
Male interests
Techno stuff
English language subjects
On the first point you could look to Baidu Baike, on the fourth to 1 (etc). It is generally reckoned (by the "eventualists") that other subjects (than male and techno) will eventually catch up, and coverage is at least useful.
Perhaps you would like to write an article on Jeunes Agape to put this picture to better use.
Rgds, Rich Farmbrough 23:05 28 July 2006 (GMT).
Your list is:
Western world
Male interests
Techno stuff
English language subjects
Although these biases are bothersome, I have others on which I do obsess more, particularly regarding this photograph.
Please note that in the manner in which it had been presented, where I had originally seen it, on a "policy" page, they had been made to appear as each of:
vandals;
sockpuppets;
thieves;
communists;
others that I can't recall,...
Something seemed displaced, so, I looked closer.
I, suddenly, realized that they had been:
AfroAmerican;
twins;
disabled.
None of the other [previous] categories seemed worthy.
I, therefore, felt that this would be confirmation that wiki, Mr. Wales, whatever, are:
handicappist;
antitwin;
racist.
Handicappism is a sort of racism directed @ oppressing disabled, opposing disability-access, enforcing bigotry, discrimination. Try asking politically-active disabled regarding the reaction to handicappist, handicappism.
Please note that it is not likely that these men even would know that we've written about them.
Please explain why you would encourage me to write on websites located in Walmart's favorite dictatorship??
?????????????????????????????????
That is just slightly Northeast of several of Exxon's preferred dictatorships.
As for scribing a better wikiarticle: well, I wrote one about racism. Naturally, it's deleted;
they've even denied me the historylog, repetitively.
Thank you very much. :-) Kondzio1990 11:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
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User:Hopiakuta/Racism here with history. Incidentally, if you leave a message on my talk page, I will see it, there's no need to leave it elsewhere. As to the location of WP, it is spread around the world, and people have copies of it everywhere, so theres no need to discriminate against it on the grounds of geography. You may be interested in the articles on Ableism and Disablism as well as [53]. I'm not aware of any any work on twinism. On the matter of the use of the photograph, the page wasn't a policy page as such, and as you may know Teresa Knott removed the image as soon as she was aware of it. I don't think the poster intended it to be interpreted as a literal picture of the vandal - just two people where one was easy to confuse with the other. Similarly on the "female cyclist vandal" page a picture of a female cyclist does not imply that the the vandal is either a female or a cyclist, (although both are possible), that the kitten vandal is a kitten and so forth. Incidentally I was looking for a picture of paper dolls for the doppleganger page and found a GFDL one on Wikia.
Regards, RichFarmbrough 21:30 29 July2006 (GMT).
If I'd done more, it was to emphatically thank you, honor you f/ assisting me, in a way that others would know that you had come through.
Please do note that many others had not, even where they had suggested that they would.
As you can see from my page history, I only began, successful, comments a month ago. Ms. T. K. did alter the photograph; I am thankful. She did so subsequent to my posting various messages to pages where she had been posting. I believe that that is how she saw it.
I do suspect that that you've made the alterations that you've made subsequent to my messages.
If it was something else, that's okay; but, I do suspect that I'm correct.
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I know that you have worked on Bose related pages before and I was hoping that I could get you involved with the discussion here! Thanks -- UKPhoenix79 07:17, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
US as abbreviation for United States
I saw you've been botting US to U.S.—is this reflecting some new WP policy? I think the version with periods looks awful, and it would seem to fall under the dictum of "leave it the way the author wrote it" unless superseded by some other style rule. /blahedo (t) 05:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
The (very old) guidance can be found under Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Acronyms_and_abbreviations:- When abbreviating United States, please use "U.S."; that is the more common style in that country. When referring to the United States in a long abbreviation (USA, USN, USAF), periods should not be used. When including the United States in a list of countries, do not abbreviate the "United States" (for example, "France and the United States", not "France and the U.S."). You can find detailed discussions on the talk page archive. RichFarmbrough 09:34 6 August2006 (GMT).
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Hi Rich. User:195.93.21.33 vandalised Clare Nasir again. I reverted out the changes. Just to let you know. Thanks and Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 21:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Anonymous contributors User:195.93.21.33 and User:195.93.21.67 et al., continue to put spurious material into Clare Nasir's article and her husband, Chris Hawkins. Annoyingly, quite frequently. Any ideas ? Or maybe I'm missing something obvious ! Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 19:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Thanks. Umm ... I couldn't at all verify the cake bit or that Clare is leaving GMTV (I would really doubt that). It seemed fiddly, especially given other seemingly lewd article additions by anons to both Clare Nasir's article and her husband's, Chris Hawkins. Wasn't sure what to do. Whatever you feel is appropriate. Please give any guidance to me that you can, besides the common sense I might still possess. ;) I guess I could ask Chris, but that would be awkward given the nature of the additions. Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:04, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich, for all your help and guidance, as ever. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
WHA?
It seems you put in some very strange spam on the Slipknot (album) page. "Welcome to the Gerbil Cove"? Really.Schwarzes Nacht 13:00, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
===>Issues While I appreciate you fixing redirects and taking out the unnecessary nowiki tags, your edit on the tracklisting to this album made the formatting much worse. Take a look. You may want to do more previews before saving or figure out some new formula for these tracklistings. -Justin (koavf), talk, mail 15:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I knew I'd got it wrong and was searching for the article (I was distracted on the way to edit it). There's also a mistake in one with some Morse code, that I meant to fix manually, and am now searching for. I will find it... Thanks again. RichFarmbrough 16:04 30 July2006 (GMT).
Willy on Wheels has been spotted at the September 11 Wiki. I've reverted his moves, and am requesting that he is blocked. Thanks! timrem 21:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Tracklist Fixes
Re: Fuhai no Koibito et al. Is hyphen now the official punctuation for separating track title from track length? I always thought it was mdash (three days ago I had a guy going through some pages I watch changing dash to mdash, so your edits come as kind of a surprise to me). I work on a lot of album pages and I'd like to know which symbol to use.
No, it's ndash. See [Wikipedia:WikiProject_Albums#Track_listing]. rgds. RichFarmbrough 22:00 10 August2006 (GMT).
US vs U.S.
I appreciate that the American usage is "U.S." but Wikipedia convention is to use a common style within a page, and the page on transatlantic aircraft plot is written in the British usage (being a British event), so should use "US". I wouldn't be particularly bothered by this, except there are various paragraphs with "UK" and "U.S." in close proximity, and the mixed usage looks very odd. (And yes, I do realise that the general Wikipedia policy is in the opposite direction.) Bluap 14:20, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Logarithmic convolution
Thank you for copying Logarithmic convolution, your help with WP:PMEX is appreciated. I have a remark though. It is good that when you copy things you put a bit more care in how accurately things are copied (1≠ l), if LaTeX is properly formatted, and that the style correspond to existing Wikipedia conventions. I did some fixes which may illustrate better what I mean. You can reply here if you have comments. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Rich, I think that the changes you are making to some of the Now That's What I Call Music entries are wrong, and not to the format described in Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Albums/Archive_6#Various_Artists. If there is an update to this, please point me at it. -- Jbattersby 18:39, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'll avoid them for now. Feel free to revert if you like. Having said that, the discussion at albums was inconclusive (as are a lot of discussions in that project - don't know why). Perhaps it's time to give some more thought to updating the guideline page?
Starting those articles makes you a kindred spirit, as I entered and corrected a lot of Now! track listings on the Free CDDB, may years ago. RichFarmbrough 18:59 14 August2006 (GMT).
There's quite a debate on the deletion of this article and I've tried to verify what i could, change the tone a bit and weigh in to keep and improve. Could you look at what I've got there and see if the neutrality and verifiability tags are still needed? Also, if it merits keeping? As always, many thanks. Cheers,Your inclusionist pal in the U.S.--Beth Wellington 20:52, 14 August2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment on the tags. It was deleted, but I restored it. The article was likewise deleted. Oh well--Beth Wellington 15:31, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
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Are you nominating your user subpage for deletion? If so, can you use the {{db-author}} or {{db-owner}} tags to be sure, please? (aeropagitica) (talk) 22:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
in the left column and
{{coor dms|$1|$2|$3|$4|$6|$7|$8|$9|city}}
in the right, tick the regex box. I did think of doing the radio masts with it. RichFarmbrough 19:43 16 August2006 (GMT).
Note you also want to change the "city" parameter to something more appropraite,, perhaps "landmark", I can't remember. RichFarmbrough 19:44 16 August2006 (GMT).
Linking years
I started de-linking years after I saw comments made by you to the effect that should be done, but there seems to be some dispute about this. I'm not an expert on MoS, and I wonder if you could add anything to the debate. It started on User talk:Harro5 and has continued on my talk page and on Rebecca's talk page. Tyrenius 05:12, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
ISBNs for Sutton Court
Thanks for pointing out the ISBN problems on Sutton Court. I think I've fixed tem all but would be grateful if yu'd check.— Rodtalk 21:11, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Hello, made some modifications to the Mirabilis Media company stub. How can I complete the information on this company (shareholders, executives, etc?) and also wehn do we know it's not a stub anymore?
Best Regards.
Welcome to WP. I would suggest you ask for help on the Romanian WP, however there is a book called Who Owns Who that may help with corporate ownership. RichFarmbrough 11:05 5 August2006 (GMT).
(It's a judgement call when something ceases to be a stub.)
Thank you for your fast reply. I understand now that being or not a stub it's somewhow relative.
I can continue to edit that article, and I hope it would be accepted, as long as I am the owner of the company. My intention is to write three more chapters: history, internet properties (detailing the websites that company owns, and shareolders structure).
Hi Rich. Question about nomenclature of articles. I basically made an article, for Long Island (Boston) using the form, "Long Island (Boston)"
User:Halibut_Thyme changed this to Long Island, Massachusetts without discussion. None of the linking articles linking to it were changed. Any ideas ? I left a note on the contributor's page and no response so far: User_talk:Halibut_Thyme Bests and Thanks in advance. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:34, 13 August2006 (UTC)
Aye, Rich, Boston is not only in America. There is the original St. BOtolph'S TOwN (Boston) in Lincolnshire . However, there may be a lot of Long Island's in Massachusetts, as well ! I didn't seed the original article: I just added a lot of material to it after research. It seems to have been a talking point 13 February2006 in Talk:Enclave#Long_Island. Also, the article links to Long Island (Boston) were left pointing to a redirect instead of the new article. That should be fixed. Hmm. So you're recommending that the main article stay as Long Island, Massachusetts ? Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 19:21, 13 August2006 (UTC)
Okay, Rich. Thanks for all the ideas. I am not sure of the statistical distribution of convention in WP for such an ambiguity. I will go all the way and make a 'Long Island, Boston, Massachusetts' article and move it all there. Okay ? And change the links. Ah, glad you're close to Lincs. Nice place. As I remember, Wikipedian Chris Horry (User:Zerbey --- notice in the photo Chris is wearing a NY Yankee baseball hat ... something which is anathema to a Boston, Massachusetts person ;)) is from the original Boston in Lincs ! Let me know that you agree with the move to the new article title. Thanks and Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 21:28, 13 August2006 (UTC)
Hi Chris. I just wish I had known you were going to unilaterally do this. Oh well. The article should stay in one place now. It's been moved too often recently. I have given it as a reference to historians, scholars, and people at large. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Miscellanea vs trivia
I noticed a couple recent edits of yours on album pages changing the Trivia sections to Miscellanea. What's the reasoning behind this? I didn't find anything with a few quick searches :\ ~Gertlex 05:25, 19 August2006 (UTC)
The reason is that "Trivia" is information which is not really of use or interest. Ideally information that is of interest should be in the article body, information that is not should not be in the article at all. Nonetheless miscellaneous useful information may need a section of it's own - calling that section "Trivia" invites the addition of facts such as "Harold Lloyd took more cream in his coffee making this film, than in the two previous films put together." You may well find a better name than I have used, if so, please change it and let me know. See also Wikipedia:Trivia. RichFarmbrough 20:04 20 August2006 (GMT).
Rich, this may relate to SmackBot more than you, but Wiki standard practice is to always make the header "External links" (plural) even if there's only one external link today.
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Signing articles
Hi Rich. Contributor User_talk:Frank_J_Larkin did a nice job on the Moon Island and Hangman Island articles. He signed his name and town, "Frank J. Larkin Acton, MA" at the bottom of the article. I removed it and left a message on his discussion page. We don't sign articles as far as I know, right ? Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 15:36, 22 August2006 (UTC)
This article was first started by me and was deleted back in May '06. I was reading the punk house article and saw that the link for the TBP article was no longer red so I clicked on it and there was an article back up, started by another user. I dont know who started it because, it was deleted soon after I saw it. The decision made in the "Article for Deletion" debate should be reconsidered. The article is about a punk house not a fratenal organization. It seems that the debate, run by User:ChrisB and results were reported by User:Mailer Diablo. I will post this on their talk pages. This is the first time I have requested a deletion review so please let me know what else I need to do. If there is anything. I am on wikipedia frequently and I want to learn. Thanks. Xsxex 16:28, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Rich, the moment someone lifted the protection on the Clare Nasir article, User:195.93.21.33 came right in immediately and vandalised it. Oh well. A shame. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 21:10, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich, for your kind attention. It is a bit frustrating. Cheers. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 21:17, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I know it was not quite immediately, but it felt so, subjectively. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 21:22, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Happened again, Rich, on 24th August. Vandalised by User:195.93.21.33, again, as is his habit. Reverted, but am at a loss. There are much more important things to do. *sigh* Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich, as ever, for your kind help. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:35, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
ISBN-'s
Hi noticed an insertion of - into an art I had been working on, could you point me to the rules on this, as all I have seen to date is the block of numbers on others entries. Thanks. SatuSuro 01:19, 18 August2006 (UTC)
They are based on a table found on the ISBN Agency's web site here. I assume you know that the first part is language group, the second publisher (within lang group) the third a serial number and the last a check digit.
Gawd I do hope you dont feel a need to go through my contributions list there are hundreds of arts with the - 's missing :) SatuSuro 13:44, 20 August2006 (UTC)
Question: The unhyphenated ISBNs work fine for looking up a book, that's what we use in MARC records here in the library, and each one is unique. I agree that the standard says "The ten-digit number is divided into four parts of variable length, which must be separated clearly by hyphens or spaces" although it allows the hypens (spaces) to be omitted for data processing. So far as I can see, the hyphens do help you read the number if you know the code, but are not necessary. Or am I missing something? Bejnar 23:28, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
No you are quite right. To identify the book you need the number, for the extra information you need either the hyphens or the appropriate part of the hyphenation rules. RichFarmbrough 18:46 29 August2006 (GMT).
I have fixed all I can find. Can you please check again to see if any other invalid ISBN in the article. Thanks, — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 15:03, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
This one I think is wrong becasue the check digit doesn't match ISBN 81-7033-526-9. RichFarmbrough 15:08 23 August2006 (GMT).
The source I used quoted it wrongly. I searched the net and found another source which quoted another ISBN (with a different last digit) having consistant digits. I have made the corrections. Thanks for pointing it out. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 15:29, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I see you changed the hyphenation of an ISBN in The Tale of Genji, but also added a tag for an Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs. I followed the ISBN link, and the A9 (Amazon) search came up with the proper book. Other searches also returned correctly. What is invalid about the ISBN? Neier 23:20, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, the -0 comes up on Amazon.com, but not the -2. The Japanese site that is linked from the ISBN page doesn't seem to care about the final digit at all. 0, 2, 8, 9, all worked. So, you're calculations seem to be correct. Neier 23:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Chew Valley & the front page
Hi, as you spotted Chew Valley is to be on the front page next week. I'm going to be away on holiday & will have no web access so will not be able to counter any vandalism etc - would you be able to keep an eye on the page for me before & during 31st August? — Rodtalk 14:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Rod, I'll do what I can beforehand, but the main page FA is always closely watched anyway, so have a relaxing holiday. RichFarmbrough 14:44 24 August2006 (GMT).
Otago Peninsula
Hi Rich - I notice you added an "invalid ISBN" tag to the Otago Peninsula article. Which ISBNs are the invalid ones? I have a couple of those books sitting in front of me, and the primary author of the article is User:Peter Entwisle, who is also the author of two of the listed books. Grutness...wha? 03:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Then your calculations are wrong. The ISBN on that book is identical to as it is written in the article - look here or here for confirmation of this fact. The same is true of the two books listed at Dunedin Public Art Gallery. In that instance, not only are the two ISBNs identical in book and article, but the books were both written by a primary writer of the article. Please double-check your information, because judging by the other comments below it looks like you are marking a lot of articles at the moment with incorrect allegations about ISBN numbers. Grutness...wha? 00:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
It seems the Australian National University has made a mistake and used both ISBN 0-7315-0342-1 (incorrect) and ISBN 0-7315-0342-2 (correct) for two different books. See here and here. Mushroom (Talk) 00:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
It also seems Dunedin used two ISBNs for the same book: ISBN 0-473-00263-0 (incorrect) and ISBN 0-473-00263-9 (correct), see here and here. Mushroom (Talk) 00:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
OK... that makes sense. Sorry about the grumbling :) Grutness...wha? 01:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
SCOTLAND'S FORgotten VALOUR
Commonwealth --> Commonwealth of Nations for VC's.
Thanks for picking this up.
the typography of the title on the book uses capitalisation to contrast emphasis ("SCOTLAND'S FORgotten VALOUR"), to communicate additional meaning, namely a reference to the For Valour inscription on the medal -- and presumably the idea that valour is so much a part of the national character as to justify suggesting that "Scotland exists for the sake of valour".)
If you look it up on Amazon or isbndb, there is no special capitalisation - just Scotland's Forgotten Valour. Colonies Chris 13:35, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that you recently added this article to Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs, and based upon User:Rich Farmbrough\Invalid ISBNs the ISBN that is apparently at issue is the one for the Watkins book. While I do not know what methodology you used to determine that the ISBN was incorrect, I am able to state that the number in the article matches the numbers listed for the book in the Library of Congress catalog and the Amazon listing for the book. The formatting of the number also matches the formatting used on the back cover of my local library's copy of the book. As a result of this information verifying the book's ISBN, I have reverted your addition of the article to this category. --Allen3talk 15:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
The article said ISBN 0-668-09051-6 it is actually 0-688-09051-6, a subtle difference (I have corrected the article). The check (for most ISBNs I have labelled - some have digits missing) is by comparing the check digit (the last) whith what it would be assuming the rest of the number is correct. I don't label an incorrect hyphenation, I fix that. Regards, RichFarmbrough 15:41 25 August2006 (GMT).
That's what I get for reducing my caffeine consumption. Thanks --Allen3talk 15:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Battleships
Hi there; I obviously have no problem of any kind with editors editing articles that I have written: but you have categorised a number of articles originally by me as "invalid ISBNs". And they are not; the ISBN numbers are those printed within the reference books used. Whether they have been changed I know not, but that would in any case not invalidate my point.--Anthony.bradbury 21:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi, Anthony, can you point me to one or two of the articles where I may be wrong? RichFarmbrough 21:28 25 August2006 (GMT).
Uneless you have now found and fixed ISBN's in which case, that's fine. RichFarmbrough 21:31 25 August2006 (GMT).
HMS Temeraire (1876), HMS Inflexible (1876), HMS Rodney (1884) and Ajax class battleships. I have reverted your incorrect edits - I have Parkes and Conway open beside me as I write, with the ISBN numbers in full view. I hope that you, or your bot if you are using one ,will not feel the need to make similar incorrect edits on the other sixty or so ship articles I have written?--Anthony.bradbury 21:43, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi, Rich, what precisely is the problem with the ISBN's? I obtained them directly from the books themselves. Did someone vandalize them since I added them, or what? ---CH 21:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I've met Peter Cameron at QMC. Back on topic 981-02-4561-6 seems to be wrong as I calculate the check digit to be 0 (assuming the rest were correct), and indeed our own Schur polynomial, written by you (grin) confirms that it should be 981-02-4541-6. RichFarmbrough 21:43 25 August2006 (GMT).
See you were right about Landau & Lifschitz Classical Theory of Fields. I just changed last digit. The UW Library catalog gives another ISBN, probably because they have hardcover and I used the paperback Pergamon fourth edition.
Peter Cameron: good oh! I really enjoy his papers and books, in fact I am getting back into permutation groups at the moment (see Erlangen Program). Thanks for checking. Obviously I have been somewhat hasty in adding some of the ISBNs.---CH 21:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
ISBNs
Looking at other recent entries on your talk page, it is clear that I am not alone in my dismay at your approach to ISBNs. May i suggest that you review your procedures?--Anthony.bradbury 21:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Rich, I am not trying to start a fight; I am just saying that the ISBN numbers on the articles which I authored are the numbers printed on the flyleaves of the reference books in question. If they are printed wrong, so be it. Conway comes in five volumes;the volume from which I am drawing data relates to ships built between 1860 and 1905.--Anthony.bradbury 21:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I just want to get to the bottom of this, of course I can have made a mistake. RichFarmbrough 22:03 25 August2006 (GMT).
Does the number vary with the year of publication? My copy of this volume is dated 1979 (Conway Maritime Press Ltd).--Anthony.bradbury 22:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
It can do if it's a different edition, I need to go back a step, though:
OK, let's see these are the HMS articles I found problems with
HMS Electra (H27) ISBN 0-8600-7300-0 : 9 (HMS Electra (Frederick Miller Ltd, London, 1959)) get to that later.
Whatever you say. I make no comment about HMS Electra or HMS Polychrest, which I played no part in creating. As for Rodney, Temeraire and Inflexible, I just copied the printed ISBN on the inside cover of the book. It is 0-85052-6043 (Parkes} as all the articles state. If your calculations give a different number, then either your calculations or my printed copy of the book is wrong. Best wishes.--Anthony.bradbury 22:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Anthony, it doesn't really matter, since all the articles are now fixed, but the last number you gave me is correct (bar a hyphen) and the articles were wrong, as my calculations suggested. "Inflexible" you fixed (but you labelled the fix a revert - having thought I changed the number, which I didn't), the other two I've removed the spurious "9" they now start 0-8 not 09-8. Regards. RichFarmbrough 22:54 25 August2006 (GMT).
No. I am sorry, and if my copy of the book is wrong then fair enough. But the hyphen is NOT wrong. The ISBN number for Parkes is 0-85052-6043. It is NOT 0-85052-604-3. Or the book is wrong. I am sitting here with it in front of me.--Anthony.bradbury 23:01, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Ok, fine. But on my word of honour, it doesn't. Obviously you know what you are talking about. But I don't. Could you please tell me why you are so sure that you are right and the book is wrong?--Anthony.bradbury 23:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes of course, I would have anyway but I didn't want to bore you. An ISBN is made up of four parts, the first identifies the "language area" a sort of nebulous concept, but 0 is English for example, However this part can be longer so that 99451 (or something like it) represents Congo . This means you can have lots of books in the English (or French - 2) sections, and not so many in the Congo - which makes sense. The next chunk is the publisher, and the same system applies. "Big" publishers get short numbers like Penguin - 14, and Yale I think 300. Then you get a serial number chosen by the publisher, this takes it to 9 digits, for example 0-593-01518 is an English book by Bantam Press, and probably their 1518th book. The last part is a check digit (or X) in this case 5 so the full ISBN is 0-593-01518-5. So that is what the four parts are. As to layout, the international ISBN agency "ISBN User Manual" states "The ten-digit number is divided into four parts of variable length, which must be separated clearly by hyphens or spaces"
although it allows these to be omitted for internal data processing. (On Wikipedia we can't use spaces, because the ISBN magic doesn't work with them.) (Incidentally looking at a book on my desk, the ISBN is correctly hyphenated on the back above the bar code, and in the book's publishing data page, but not on the inside flap.) To confuse matters this will be changing on 1st Jan 2007, with the addition of a 978- before all ISBNs to make them compatible with EANs and allow more numbers to be introduced later with a 979- prefix.
Fair enough. Totally fair enough. I will insert the hyphen in all future articles, and go back and retro-insert it in the previous ones. But not now, because its time for bed!--Anthony.bradbury 23:50, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Me too!
ISBNs again
Hi--Exactly what is wrong with the ISBN 0-89886-238-8, which is the corrected entry I put on the Masherbrum page, which matches the LOC and Amazon, and which checks out (I cut and pasted into an auto-ISBN checker)? Thanks, Spireguy 22:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, your correction was correct, thanks for fixing it. Timing error on my part. RichFarmbrough 22:28 25 August2006 (GMT).
Articles with invalid ISBNs
You have now added this category to a number of articles for which I provided references. What is that about? I entered the ISBN numbers exactly as they appeared in the books. I find it hard to believe that so many of the ISBNs for books that I've used as references are invalid. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 23:20, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Donald, can you give me an example or two, preferably on my talk page (click my surname).RichFarmbrough 23:42 25 August2006 (GMT).
I see now that they all involve the same library book. Let me check it out tomorrow and get back to you. - Donald Albury(Talk) 23:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to have bothered you. I've got them sorted now, including one or two articles you hadn't visited yet. -- Donald Albury 20:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Hogan Cup - I noticed the error when you listed it and fixed it, and you then added the article to ones with incorrect ISBN's, even though it had already been fixed. While checking ISBN's is very useful, I would suggest that you either adding the category when checking, or double check if adding it at a later date. Otherwise, if it is fixed in the time between checking and categorising, no one knows why you're adding the category. Might I suggest a HTML comment in the form of "add cat + <-- please check isbn's xxxxx-xxx-xxxxx and yyyy-yyyy-yyyyy --> which would cover most cases, and also let people know what isbn's are invalid where there are a lot of them). Regards, MartinRe 23:50, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
< !-- ==Release details== -->
< !-- ~*year, country, publisher ISBN 1234567890, Pub date DD Month Year, binding~ -->
< !--major publication history to be included here, not everything if too extensive-->
< !--example-->
< !--*1999, USA, C.S. Black & sons ISBN 8768768760, Pub date 1 April 1999, Hardback -->
Whoops. I found a typo in the second one. I'll check the other one. Bubba73(talk), 02:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Ditto. Both were my typos. Sorry about that. !Bubba73(talk), 03:03, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
It would be useful if you would mark which ISBNs are flawed, instead of just that there is a bad ISBN in an article. Some of these have a lot of ISBNs. - Jmabel | Talk 05:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi, unfortunately this is not simple. And I'm sorry I re-added this to the category after you had fixed it, that was a mistake on my part. However if you look at Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs you will see a pointer to Rich_Farmbrough%5CInvalid_ISBNs where you can look up most of the articles currently in the category and find that in Vilna Troupe the problem ISBN identified was ISBN 973982722 1 whose check digit computes to 5 (as corrected by you). Thanks for fixing the ISBN and sorry again for readding the article. RichFarmbrough 16:54 26 August2006 (GMT).
Hmm. Would it be possible instead of just adding a category to add a template with a link to that page (or an equivalent in Wikipedia space)? It would make it easier for people to follow up. - Jmabel | Talk 18:03, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Anonymous contributor User:70.191.174.29 (User_talk:70.191.174.29) has put several flags up on the article on Homelessness. I think they're inappropriate. Many of us have worked hard on that article, and cited sources all over the place. And professionals in the field have read it, and have been quite impressed with it. The kinds of edits by that anonymous contributor User:70.191.174.29 have been odd. For example, changing, "Free-care clinics, especially for the homeless, exist and are usually over-burdened with patients. ..." to "Free-care clinics, especially for the homeless, exist but may be over-burdened with patients". That's a plain fact that was referenced. It's a highly questionable edit. I am going to remove the two new flags. Actually, I have taken the chance to roll back the article to a what I believe is a stable and sensible point. It was out of control. We can all start from that point and work our way by rational discussions up to where we want to be. I don't want to be involved in any Wikipedia wars, as I am a Wikipedia pacifist in practice. Please let me know your opinion. Thanks and Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 14:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Consider also the plea made to me by User:Patcat88 "homeless article going to hell" on my talk page (User talk:Wikiklrsc) ... I am not an admin, just a contributor and editor. I put talking points on the Talk:Homelessness and the other anonymous editor's talk page User_talk:70.191.174.29 for Wikipedia peace and sanity. I think I did, but also hope that I did the right thing. I have precious little time to edit and contribute, let alone internet access enough these days. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 16:32, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich, for your contribution and help. I hope it is back under control now. Point well taken, Rich. I have always agreed that the article is largely from an American point of view. I tried to change that _a bit_ in the history section. Unfortunately, I didn't have good data or the time to find it all, for most other countries. I moved much into the article at Homelessness in the United States, Homelessness in Canada and the like. I hope other contributors will help to make it more universal, as I will endeavour to do, in future. Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Rich, you said in my talk page (User talk:Wikiklrsc): 'and needs some of the "archeolofy" removing from it.' ... whither "archeolofy" ? Archaeology ? A nonce word for 'archaic loftiness' ? Help. Regards. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
"vi: (1) substitutions made." ... thought it might be. ;) Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:11, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. So far, it all seems to have worked out well in the end. See User_talk:70.191.174.29. We'll all work together as it should be ! Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 16:37, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Please consider carefully your choice of words before you press the button "save page" after editing wildly. Hereby, I advise you to use the show preview function wisely so that you will find out how ridiculous is your mischief before saving the page. Yfjonas 15:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I hate to break it to you, but the original article, while showing a sharp and expressive mind, and a strong vocabulary, was in somewhat strange English to say the least, as was your comment on my talk page. Rgds, RichFarmbrough 17:14 26 August2006 (GMT).
Thank you. I rechecked those 3 #s with the books themselves and they are as printed on the jackets. So somebody screwed up somewhere. Hal Jespersen 17:17, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks again. I guess I'll go with Amazon's. Hal Jespersen 17:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
WP:CITE gives examples, Smith, J. How to cite your sources, Random House, 2005. ISBN 1607000X and others, dropping any hyphens and any spaces but retaining a space between ISBN and the first number. The Library of Congress will accept an ISBN as a specific search in its Library Catalogs but only if all of the spaces and hyphens are removed, similarly. Like, ISBN 160700X as one example or ISBN 0890297800 as another example. Whatever works, have fun. Terryeo 23:26, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
IIRC, someone requested that I do a search of the entire en.wikipedia datadump for templates that included something specific that needed to be fixed. I'm sure that project is long finished.
Usually I make notes when I create lists like that, I'm blanking it now.
Could I ask you to add Wikipedia:WikiProject Warhammer 40,000/References to the list of pages SmackBot will do ISBN reformatting for? I hope the reason for this request is fairly obvious. Cheers --Pak21 17:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Your bot has popped up on my watchlist a few times recently, and I must say I'm impressed with the ISBN reformatting. Nice work! (In saying this I'm assuming you're formatting them correctly, since I know next to nothing about how they should be formatted :)) --kingboyk 20:33, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the compliment. Yes, I have been as careful as I can, and after the first 12,000 edits no-one has complained about the formatting being wrong per se, although one guy thinks it's a waste of time, and one was convinced that they should be a block of characters. Incidentally there are about 2,600 regular expressions making up the hyphenation rule base, although it could be done in less. ISBN's that don't fit the hyphenation rules are labelled as invalid, and I have done a separate run to categorise those which don't match their checksum - many of which editors have already fixed. RichFarmbrough 22:13 28 August2006 (GMT).
2600 regular expressions?! My oh my. --kingboyk 08:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Ebaums world vandalism
Have a look at this edit. Copy the new location into your address bar, hit enter, and it redirects you to [59], a 404 address. HawkerTyphoon 22:13, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Damn good question. Hit the admin noticeboard, maybe someone can shed light on it?
Domain names can only contain ASCII characters, but most of the world use non-latin scripts or want accents. So the IETF came up with a way to allow any Unicode character in a domain name component: you take out the non-ASCII characters, put "xn--" in front, and append "-" followed by some ASCII characters which specify which non-ASCII chars were removed, and where they were removed from. In this case, the "-nqh" encodes "a Greek lowercase omicron, after the w". Web browsers etc are supposed to automagically "deUnicodeise" URLs (and, um, reUnicodeise them too).
The take-home message is that any ASCIIised domain name containing "xn--" is an IDNA.
Since Wikipedia stores URLs in their Unicode form (as we should), to find URLs containing IDNAs you'd have to search for non-ASCII characters in the "host" part of the URL - maybe ^[a-z]+:/+[!-.0-~][^!-.0-~] would work, assuming we don't have URLs containing usernames or passwords with non-ASCII characters.
I hope this helps; sorry for over-explaining.
What I actually came here to do was thank you for having SmackBot go around and prettify all the ISBNs I've inserted into articles. So: thanks!
It is a waste of edits to merely checksum and add hyphens to ISBN-10 data, when we know that ISBN-13 will be the standard in four months. Automatic conversion is fairly trivial: discard the trailing check digit, prefix a "978", and calculate a new check digit according to these instructions (which differ from those for ISBN-10). The hyphenation is almost identical, only the leading "978" is separated from the rest with a hyphen. You can test your program against this online converter.
For example, to convert "ISBN 1598165747", which would be hyphenated as "1-59816-574-7", we:
Drop the trailing digit, here "7"; result: "159816574".
Prefix "978"; result: "978159816574".
Multiply odd digit positions by 3, where the rightmost digit is considered odd; result: 9,21,8,3,5,27,8,3,6,15,7,12.
Sum; result: 124.
Subtract the last digit from 10, and take the last digit of the answer; result: 6.
Append this check digit to number; result: "9781598165746".
Hyphenate; result: "978-1-59816-574-6".
It's really easy to do. However, I would recommend not converting invalid ISBN-10 data, to ease fixing. A beneficial side-effect would be to make the bad ISBN-10 numbers stand out from the converted ISBN-13 numbers. An unhelpful side-effect is that once bad numbers are fixed, they are likely to remain in the old format until the bot returns.
We must begin to change over. Naturally, there will be a few difficulties. The numbers printed in the books will no longer exactly match the numbers in the articles. Booksellers in the USA and Canada, especially those specializing in old books, may be slow to recognize the ISBN-13 form. And there will always be some resistance to change.
I suppose conversion could be limited to books in print, except I know of no free online source for that information. Or, we could provide both ISBNs. --KSmrqT 00:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I was looking at something like this User:Rich Farmbrough/ISBN template as the next stage. Thus (almost) all ISBN's would change at the right second, and the template could be substed out later. The test template works but doesn't support hyphens. So a new template is required which is actually easy to code, I'll do it later today or tomorrow. RichFarmbrough 10:02 29 August2006 (GMT).
With regard to changing over to ISBN-13 all at once, there could be problems with that.
Major libraries, such as Library of Congress, may not convert their catalogs all at once. Similarly Worldcat.
Our readers who search the web to buy the book will get Google hits on the ISBN-10 version, not the new one.
Existing physical books may most reliably be referred to with the ISBN used to purchase them, since editions can change.
If I cite a book from my own bookshelf, and an ISBN is already printed in it, should I post a different ISBN on Wikipedia?
But if I bring a new book home that has an ISBN-13, obviously I would use that for citations. EdJohnston 02:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Flagging an ISBN-13 wrongly *
I reverted your bot's edit flagging an ISBN as invalid. As far as I can see, it's correct, and it's identical to the ISBN listed on the Cambridge University Press website. I suspect that the bot labels all 13-digit ISBNs as invalid. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:57, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll check back over the list for any othe false positives. RichFarmbrough 15:59 29 August2006 (GMT).
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SmackBot/References query
It did a lovely job on the tone cluster and Henry Cowell ISBNs. I'm not sure it's directly relevant, but earlier today (before SmackBot's involvement...I think) I started having a problem with the References in "Tone cluster." The article comes up with "ghost' or "echo" (or whatever's the proper term of art) refs--so what should be note 1 reads inline and in the References (called "Notes") section as note 13 (or sometimes 7...or 10...or...). Everything connects properly in an informational way, but lord does it look awful, not to mention confusing. Any idea what the source of the problem is, and how to solve it? Best, Dan — DCGeist 04:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
No--I'm still seeing what should be footnote callout "1" as callout "13"--and then the text of the footnote appearing in the References (dba "Notes") both as note 1 and as note 13. All in all, instead of the proper total of 26 notes, I read 38 notes. I've checked a few other footnoted Wikipedia articles to make sure it's not an issue with my browser--no problem anywhere else. But you're reading it AOK--26 notes, not 38? Hardly know what to think. Thanks for checking. —DCGeist 09:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Tried shift-reload. No luck. Some gremlin must just be telling me to stop working on the article. Thanks again. Best, Dan —DCGeist 09:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed your bot making changes to a lot of book articles. Can you point me to a standard for quoting ISBN, as I've (wrongly?) always just quoted them as one long number in articles I write. If this is wrong, I'd like to be able to improve how I do it. Thanks --Guinnog 10:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
They are based on a table found on the ISBN Agency's web site here. I assume you know that the first part is language group, the second publisher (within lang group) the third a serial number and the last a check digit.
Gosh! Fascinating. Thank you. No, apart from the checksum I didn't know any of that. --Guinnog 13:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Hyphenated ISBNs
Great work on hyphenating ISBNs. I don't use hyphens, manually (I think the reward isn't worth the effort!), but if it's this easy to get them right with AWB, then hats off to you. :) —Serein 19:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Ghost notes
While I'm reading "ISBN" and--this hour, at least--"tone cluster" as just fine. This seems like a Wikipedia server glitch, perhaps. I doubt it has anything to do with SmackBot (it doesn't even look from the history like the ISBN article's had SmackBot on it--recently anyway), but why don't you put SmackBot on string piano (another under my care) and let's see what, if anything, happens. —DCGeist 21:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes I was working on references, so I thought it was a WP problem not SB related. I would just like to have more data before logging a bug (but perhaps it's already been logged). Off to the back burner with it. RichFarmbrough 21:50 29 August2006 (GMT).
Rich, there is a problem with Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs -- it contains entries of articles not in the category. I posted something about this on the Village pump, believing it could be affecting other categories. In addition, User:SEWilco has written on my talk page "I just wanted to point out an unrelated oddity: The category text has some Template:tl usage which is not being transcluded". Alan Pascoe 08:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
RfA thanks
Thank you very much for participating in my RFA, which closed successfully today with a result of (62/18/3). I will go very carefully at first, trying to make sure I don't mess up too badly using the tools, and will begin by re-reading all the high-quality feedback I received during the process, not least from those who opposed me. Any further advice/guidance will be gratefully accepted. I hope I will live up to your trust! Guinnog 14:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)}
SmackBot's Edit Summary
Hi Rich. I've witnessed your bot's amazing work, and would like to nitpick by offering a suggestion. The edit summary left by SmackBot currents reads, "ISBN formatting &/or general fixes using AWB" -- the use of "and/" is redundant. Other than that, keep it running! Xiner 16:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Quite right! However it is clear, and not everone is a mathematician. It should really be "and sometimes" for this particular run. RichFarmbrough 09:26 31 August2006 (GMT).
ISBN
Thank you for the information, we will scan for any other occurances of this problem. RichFarmbrough 15:34 30 August2006 (GMT).
Re. "we will scan for any other occurances of this problem": is that built-in to the bot's algorithm? Is that re-iterate previous operations of the bot on this issue, before proceeding? Sorry, "we will scan for any other occurances of this problem" is not much of clear answer. --Francis Schonken 18:38, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Both and also identify any candidates which would have been a problem. RichFarmbrough 18:40 30 August2006 (GMT).
There were a total of 10 articles where this could have been a problem, all have been dealt with. RichFarmbrough 09:32 31 August2006 (GMT).
I did not say that the algorithm would be the same as mediawikis. ISBN XXX is valid under the mediawiki software, but completely invalid in real life as is ISBN 12312-1231-23131-3-4-34-1-3-1432
Incidentally calling someone a liar, or incompetant, even prefaced with the word "apparently" is both a breach of WP:NPA and not a good way to make co-operative progress. RichFarmbrough 11:20 31 August2006 (GMT).
Sorry, I don't know how to put this more precise, but whatever the bot does to "evaluate" an ISBN, it should first start to READ the numbers of the ISBN *exactly the same way" the automatic function does. If the bot reads "ISBN 0803913303 - " as if the hyphen is part of the ISBN {{invalid isbn|0803913303 - }} ([60]), while the usual algorithm has no trouble discerning that the hyphen is in this case not part of the ISBN (and certainly not part of an "invalid" ISBN) the bot programming should be changed.
I happened to have typed that ISBN [61], unless your bot stops insulting people that they don't know how to type valid ISBN's, while they apparently do know how to type them, it should be stopped entirely. --Francis Schonken 11:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I understand what you want, and it is the same as what I want, really. That the bot make no mistakes. That is not the same as what you are asking for. However the bot run is finished to all intents and purposes, so I now need to address any problem edits after the fact. And I welcome anyone who tells me of a problem edit, because I can then fix it, and possibly a class of problems. And I accept that some people will be angry/annoyed, and that some of the edits will turn out to be correct, and some turn out to be wrong, and in one case the publisher had put an invalid number on the book. But really I have a few problems with a lot of your comments. If you can't be cheerful and freindly, can't you simply restrict yourself to stating the apparent problem, and requesting feedback, without resorting to commands, threats or insults? E.G. "Rich - this edit is wrong, I think your bot is counting the dash as part of the ISBN. Can you let me know what you do to fix it?" It's quicker for both parties, and less stress probably. RichFarmbrough 12:00 31 August2006 (GMT).
SmackBot problems with certain infoboxes *
Hopefully I'm not covering old ground here, I had a quick look and couldn't see anything! Some articles contain infoboxes with attributes such as "ISBN2=isbn no.", such as The Colour of Magic, for example; however, the bot's inserting a space between the attribute name's "ISBN" and "2" leaving the infobox with an undefined attribute. I don't know if it's a particularly prevalent problem or if it's just related to the Discworld series, but thought it was worth mentioning. Cheers,
Apparently, SmackBot evaluates the viability of an ISBN differently from how the automatic ISBN function does (the ISBN function has no trouble to only include the ISBN number, excluding other numbers that follow on the same line). ([62])
more than friendly enough. That was my first comment. I had no clue this was linked with hyphens. I'm still not sure it is *exclusively* linked with hyphens.
Fair enough. At the time neither was I, I thought it was hyphens followed digits. What I did was
Fix the article in question.
Scanned for similar articles (finding ten, nine more and the original).
Changed the robot rules to deal with the situation correctly.
Fixed the articles and or ran the process against those articles. (Belt and braces approach.)
It would be impolite if I would try to nail down the technical cause of a problem, for a bot for which I have no insight in its internal workings. I can only indicate the problem.
Apparently you had nailed the technical problem (which I derived from your consequent manual edit of Socrate)), but had not provided a solution.
Sorry, if I raised my voice as a consequence of your lack of appropriate reaction (I was correct in assuming you were only trying to sooth temporarily, in order not to have to improve the bot).
But insults don't help, you're right there. For that reason I moved {{Invalid isbn}} to {{Please check ISBN}}. I'm sure you can get a bot or semibot change every occurence of {{Invalid isbn| to {{Please check ISBN| in a swiff (there are less than 50 pages transcluding that template currently – oops, wrong count, there are over 1000). Then you prevent that an error of the bot turns into an insult of the person who added a "false positive" ISBN. Thanks. --Francis Schonken 12:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Is it posible to use the bot that used to work for this for other wikis? --Catout 16:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't know, I expect so. I only ran a script against a datbase dump, that tool was sadly lost, however the historic relic from it Wikipedia:List of ips by number of edits shows that some IP's would have been among the top editors. I was thinking of (writing and) testing a new script against ang.wikipedia.org, since it's fairly trivial. RichFarmbrough 16:49 29 August2006 (GMT).
Interesting. Is there a privacy issue with that page? bobblewik 18:12, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Just a thought. bobblewik 18:37, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
ISBN hyphenation: Wikipedia policy?
I have noticed your SmackBot hyphenating the ISBNs in several articles I work on. While I originally had them hyphenated myself, I was instructed to change that in a peer review a while back. Has there been a change in policy that they are now supposed to be hyphenated, or have you taken this upon yourself to do? Elric of Grans 23:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Elric, please let me know which Peer review. Hyphenation (or spaces) is the standard according to the International ISBN Agency, and we can't use spaces. RichFarmbrough 08:28 30 August2006 (GMT).
It was in this one. I seem to recall there being more discussion on it, but part of the discussion in that PR also disappeared somewhere along the way – my guess is that it was among that. Could your bot also stop being 'helpful' with categories? I am getting sick of reverting that three or four times a day. To get categories sorted alphabetically you often need to place them above templates, but your bot keeps moving them back to the bottom (which ends up giving me a mish-mashed order). Elric of Grans 23:04, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Well it's done for now. I understand what your saying about categories, it raises two interesting points a. how should categories be ordered, and b. what to do about transcluded categories. The first has been thrashed out, and the conclusion reaced that alpahbetical order is not necessarily best (AWB used to order categories). The second is more probelmatical, I believe, for example that in general maintainance categories (and hence templates) should go after normal categories - and I thnk this is widely suported in principle. On the other hand it is common practice to put cleanup and wikify right at the top of articles. One off the things that AWB does in it's general options is to put interwiki at the end, and non-trancluded categories immediately before, so I will copy part of your comment and this reply onto the AWB talk page for discussion. RichFarmbrough 09:43 31 August2006 (GMT).
Hi Rich,
I spotted you and the bot hyphenating ISBNs in my watchlists and (correctly as it turned out) picking up some errors in a few of my ISBNs, which I've now corrected and de-cat-ed as ISBN errors; and I've read the ISBN FAQs. No disagreements; the question is what is wiki magic - I can't find it thru search? Pyrotec 19:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
That thing which makes ISBNs show as links without special mark-up. In general anything on the wiki that does something "automagically". RichFarmbrough 20:35 31 August2006 (GMT).
A minor bot issue
I noticed that your SmackBot recently edited David Duke, and wikified the name "David Duke" in a reference, thus creating a redundant wiki link. Is this supposed to happen?
--Ryodox 23:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Not a problem - and well done on the edits to it today --Mnemeson 15:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Images not showing up after Smackbot runs
Rich, you wrote this on my talk page:
Yep, I found, I think, about 24 articles with two or more nested []s, only a few had ISBNs, so I was able to ensure the problem did not re-occur for this project. And of course programmers count "0, 1, many" so I hope that AWB will be made perfect soon! Any comments to my talk page please. Rich Farmbrough 11:08 31 August 2006 (GMT).
You said also that Smackbot caused the image not to show up due to 2 external links being in an image caption. One of the links was at the end of a caption. ISBNs were not a part of this particular problem. But are you saying that 24 images did not show up after that run of Smackbot? And has the problem been fixed? I need to know whether I can put 2 external links in a caption, especially if one link is at the end of the caption where the brackets stack up and confuse the bot. What about 3 or 4 external links in a caption? Does the problem only occur if one of the links is at the end of the image caption? --Timeshifter 19:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
No I forget the details, but I think one other article had been broken, possibly. The problem with the tool has been fixed Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Nested_square_brackets_bug by the main developer and author of the tool, so apart from people using old versions, which won't last long (the tool itself will insist on being updated), you should be fine to put what you like. In fact you shouldn't worry too much anyway because it's easy to roll back an edit if needed. RichFarmbrough 20:29 31 August2006 (GMT).
Thanks. It looks like the problem has been fixed. The other note about it here on the same page says that the problem was occuring with just one external link in the caption too, if the link was at the end of the caption. But it has been fixed in any case.--Timeshifter 11:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Date unlinking
I have seen you unlink dates. However, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)#Dates and numbers still lays out the Wikipedia style of linking dates and I know not of a rule prohibiting it. Are you enforcing a rule I am not aware of? --Liberlogos 05:42, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the reference you give ("Where a date contains day, month, and year — 25 March, 2004 — or day and month — February 10 — a link will permit the date preferences of the reader to operate. Day, month, and year must all be linked for the preference to work correctly.") is one I agree with, and I have linked many thousands of dates in these formats, see for example this diff from last night. However Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context means that entities such as bare years or other date fragments (e.g. "Monday", "1994", "May", "June 2015" should rarely be linked (although there are dissenters). (In the infancy of WP all these entities were linked as there was a plan to extract meta - data from them. Similarly there is a request to the mediawiki developers to provide a different way of allowing date prefernces to work than linking.) Rgs, RichFarmbrough 09:12 1 September2006 (GMT).
Published ISBN is invalid
I just removed the invalid ISBN category from the I'saka language article after double checking the book and a couple of library catalogues. Then I read up on ISBNs, calculated the checksum myself, and realized that the ISBN is indeed invalid. What should I do? The purpose of the category is the mark that something needs fixing, but it doesn't seem that there's anything to be fixed. Answer here and I'll take any action necessary. -- Ngio 12:27, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
http:// www.isbn-check.de/checkisbn.pl?isbn=0858835544 ISBN Check can give "minimal change" ISBNs for invalid ones. In this case, should it possibly be 0858834545? Cheers --Pak21 12:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, but that's not it. The book I'm talking about is in the Australian National Library catalogue with the invalid ISBN [63]; this is also the ISBN printed in the book itself. -- Ngio 13:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Interestingly this is No. 554 in a series. This would indicate that the publisher incorrectly calculated the checksum. So while, ideally we should contact the ISBN authority, to find the correct solution, I would be inclined to put a temporary note in the article, since from the first of January the check digit will no longer be relevant, and it looks like the rest of the number is correct anyway. The article will then be a special case we have to work around for a while. RichFarmbrough 13:17 29 August2006 (GMT).
OK, so let's just leave things as they are. I'll copy this discussion to Talk:I'saka language. -- Ngio 14:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
This particular book is in catalog.loc.gov, where the ISBN field is marked 'Cancelled ISBN'. It's possible that they do this whenever they receive a book for cataloging that has the wrong check digit. EdJohnston 01:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikifying dates
Whichever bot you use to do this is deleting the comma between the day and the year in dates that are in the format Month day, year. This is an example.—Chidomtalk 18:41, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. It's OK because the wikimagic that renders dates according to preferences puts them in. SO you should see no difference between May 1,123 and May 1123. Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 18:49 1 September2006 (GMT).
Thanks. Wikimagic—something else I learned. As for the red link, I got one and missed the other ::::sigh::::; thanks for catching it.—Chidomtalk 18:57, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Buckingham Palace article invalid ISBN on Olwen Headley's book
Hello Rich. Since I had an ISBN problem the other day I looked into a recent exchange you had with FClef about Buckingham Palace. In this case I suspect the ISBN really is wrong, so I sympathize with SmackBot. My comment to FClef was made here [64]. If FClef found this number in the actual book, we have to assume a mistake at the publisher's end. It's possible you could enumerate what you think should happen each time an ISBN is flagged. E.g. if it has a wrong check digit when printed in the book, should we just remove the ISBN from the article? EdJohnston 19:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I haven't spoken to FClef yet, I have just researched the book, and can confirm a leading 0 should be added. This may be because of the change from the British SBN to ISBN. RichFarmbrough, 20:37 1 September2006 (GMT).
Fixing the ISBN allows us to notice that Headley should be Hedley. Under that spelling the correct book shows up in the British Library! Also several books by that author at LOC though not that particular one. So we have to credit SmackBot on this one. EdJohnston 21:23, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the fixes. I saw what SmackBot had done, but left it in because I have no familiarity with ISBN...err...validity issues. Are the ISBN numbers proper? I relied entirely on the Spanish language featured article authors when adding the references.--Fuhghettaboutit 22:23, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Removed bad trailing digit from ISBN, needs proper hyphenation. Published in 1962, I couldn't find a properly-hyphenated version ot this ISBN on the web. EdJohnston 03:05, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich - thanks for correcting this. –– FClef (talk) 12:08, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Grabby Award edits
You/the bot changed all the non-breaking hyphens: ‑ (‑) to regular hyphens in this article; they were put there for a reason. Why the change?—Chidomtalk 23:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry I wasn't clearer; it's not the article on the awards; it's the listing of the recipients of the awards (Grabby recipients): This edit changed the non-breaking hyphens to regular ones.—Chidomtalk 17:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
They are still the same character I think. See below.
Incidentally it is not part of the HTML specification I believe, and on my browser (firefox) looks very short, almost dot like until I zoom in. Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 18:40 1 September2006 (GMT).
Well, shut my mouth and I'll be a bug-eyed mule! I suppose I could have tested the necessity of them; I got the HTML code from here, which seems to be a pretty thorough list. In most cases, a line break can occur at a regular hyphen, which is why I put them in. As for firefox, dunno why it doesn't handle the HTML properly. By the way, your hard work at all this is not unappreciated—thanks!—Chidomtalk 18:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for you note about hyphens, in the example, the "old" has the HTML numeric encoding of the unicode as ASCII characters, which get interpreted by the browser, the "new" has I believe, the unicode character iteslf. Experimenting with the width of my browser window I wasn't able to make either break on the hyphens.
I think there was an "invalid ISBN" on Dalek, as a dalekite you may care to take a look.
quick clarification: They are not the same character (they often have the same glyph, but have different line breaking behaviour). . Nor are characters defined by the HTML specification. Instead, characters are defined by the Unicode specification, which is then normatively referenced by the HTML specification. --Nantonos 08:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Users and IPs
Is there any way for you to check if a user and an IP are the same?{Halbared 07:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)}
Thanks for that Rich. I have tried to archive my talk page, but I don't think I have done it correctly, can you advise please?(Halbared 14:01, 2 September 2006 (UTC))
Hey Rich, how can I email you?(Halbared 13:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC))
The phrase 'Cancelled ISBN' already appears in Wikipedia
100 Years of Lynchings edited by Ralph Ginzburg (New York: Lancer Books, 1962; Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1988, cancelled ISBN 933121180
The situation is murky, however. There could be some politics involved in the 'cancelling' of this ISBN, due to the various obscenity trials of Ginzburg. For instance, the number given in their records (above) is only 9 digits, where we expect 10 for an ISBN! If you put a zero in front of it, you get a valid ISBN, which however does not return anything when you search for it in LOC. So this is not a good example. It's just a case (confusing at best) where they use the phrase 'Cancelled ISBN'.
The pages containing publisher errors where 'Cancelled ISBN' could be needed are (so far):
2-10-4Both the old and new ISBNs for the Jack Farrell book are invalid. Marked as 'No ISBN available'. See my note on Talk:2-10-4.
A Certain Woman, Now marked as 'No ISBN available'. History comment says 'Please supply corrected ISBN if found.'
I'saka language, Now marked as 'No ISBN available'. Left link to online article by same authors.
Ahmad al-AlawiNow marked as 'No ISBN available'. Comment left in Talk page.
Ajahn Sobin S. NamtoNow marked as 'No ISBN available'. Comment left in Talk page.
From Wikipedia's ISBN page I found this document, [65], which asserts: "Most national bibliographies and especially the Books in Print correct ISBN mistakes. The systems then provide cross references ("incorrect ISBN -> correct ISBN")."
It would be good to see an example of that, anywhere! EdJohnston 17:58, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Since writing the above I was able to get access to www.booksinprint.com. I found that it will not even ACCEPT an invalid ISBN in the search field. So much for the elegant (but nonexistent) solution hypothesized by the IETF document above. (I believe that Books In Print [Bowker] IS the American custodian of the ISBN system). How about we just DELETE from the articles all the ISBNs that are published invalid, of course after explaining properly on each Talk page why that's a reasonable thing to do? Otherwise these cancelled items (of which there might be 200 or so in all of Wikipedia) will need to be processed by hand after every robot visit. EdJohnston 00:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
"As the U.S. ISBN Agency, R R Bowker is the exclusive US source of publisher prefixes and accompanying ranges of ISBN numbers for eligible publishers. It provides information and advice on the uses of the ISBN System to publishers and the book trade and promotes the use of the Bookland EAN bar code format. In addition to their ISBN prefixes, publishers also register their titles for inclusion in the Bowker Books In Print databases."
So Bowker could police the invalid ISBNs if they chose to. At present there is no evidence that they try to correct mistakes or keep records on the ISBNs that are published invalid. You just can't search Books in Print for the invalid ones (though you can search Amazon and sometimes find the book you want). EdJohnston 03:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Chew Valley edits
Thanks for your edits on Chew Valley while I was away. — Rodtalk 07:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
you wrote: "Could you look at the "invalid ISBN's"., also for [[Chew Magma], Chew Lake and Chew, at some point?" I presume you mean Chew Magna & Chew Valley Lake but Chew is not anything to do with me or the valley - was there another one?— Rodtalk 20:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
I've now fixed these ISBNs (with one exception I couldn't find which I've removed). I thought ISBNs were unique and fixed but obviously not.— Rodtalk 08:22, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. I re-arranged the external links on the Internet radio article. One section, I made, "sample internet radio stations". It seems to be an advert area for odd-bit stations. I am not sure it should be there at all. Should it be deleted ? Thoughts ? Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:52, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
ISBN hyphenation
I'm not convinced that hyphenation adds value; in fact, it may even be a liability in web searches. Also, correct hyphenation depends on the number. For example,
99921-58-10-7
9971-5-0210-0
960-87363-3-1
80-86119-13-0
4-8457-0667-9
0-14-015098-6
0-446-60098-9
0-8044-2957-X
0-85386-070-X
0-901690-54-6
0-9500000-0-0
are all correct. Worse still, the proper hyphenation is not determined by a centralized international authority, and requires consulting ever-changing tables like this one. There is a regular pattern for 10-digit numbers beginning with "0", but even books published in English need not be in that group. Is your bot prepared to cope? --KSmrqT 19:52, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
After the world converts to 13-digit ISBNs, won't it be hard to visually scan them (or copy them with pencil and paper) if they are unhyphenated? A better system would be fixed grouping of digits, as in the social security number. But that's out of our control. Perhaps WP could offer a script to do the hyphenation. Or add isbn.org/convertpub.asp to the Special:Booksources page so editors could use it routinely. EdJohnston 20:38, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
FYI, re this edit, <str> doesn't strike text, <s> does. Guettarda 12:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
You're gonna love this one!
Hi
My neck of the woods is the Westcountry in the UK. I was "wandering" around articles there when I spotted something that I was not sure about. Moretonhampstead - at the end of the page it states "This page contains information orginally provided by Moretonhampstead Development Trust" and I wondered about copyvio. Looking back I saw that it originally said "Written by the Moretonhampstead Development Trust" and that your edit [66] was the one that changed it. I guess I'm not really worried (and not experienced enough to knwo better!) but is this ok? Sorry to bug you but having found it I thought I ought to ask. Regards --Nigel(Talk) 16:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Makes perfect sense to me and all part of the learning curve. Thanks for the speedy answer - regards --Nigel(Talk) 18:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Proposal to mark published-invalid ISBNs as 'No ISBN available'
Yet another invalid-as-published ISBN turned up in a book by Johan Cartigny in the Ahmad al-Alawi article. In this case I took the number out and marked the Cartigny book as 'No ISBN available', but left commentary as to what was happening. (See Talk:Ahmad al-Alawi as well). I left the invalid template in hidden text as a souvenir of the problem. Upon saving, the page took itself out of the invalid ISBN category, as expected. I hope this saves some work long term, because if you leave no mark on the page, a future editor could put back the bad ISBN, and if you leave the page in the invalid Category, the next ISBN-fixer will try again to fix it.
If this approach is not one you would adopt, please let me know, since I am working my way down through the Category to fix the invalid ones. As I go, I am only intending to suppress from the visible page the ones that were invalid-as-published).
Bowker's decision to refuse to search for the invalid ones has some logic to it, because the alternative is so much fuss and bother. Essentially Bowker is forcing the publisher of the invalid number to re-issue the book properly if they want to sell any copies through Books in Print. EdJohnston 19:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
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J.K. Beatty, C.C. Petersen, A. Chaikin, ed. (1999). The New Solar System (4th ed.). Cambridge press. ISBN 9780521645874.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
It seemed completly invalid at first, until I realised. Its using the 13 digit ISBN number. Unfortunatly, most libraries doesn't appear to track 13 digit isbn numbers yet. Don't know if you're accounting for this yet or not. Kevin_b_er 20:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
ISBN 9780521645874 is not an ISBN is an EAN article code for the ISBN which is possibly 052164587X. (note the difference final character which is check digit on a different scheme than the full EAN code). The EAN code is what is used for the bar coding used. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 12:57, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Just when you thought you knew something the world shifts from under your feet - thanks for the update. Nice use of shifting terminology EAN loses it's "European" meaning and ISBN-13 is shrunk to ISBN; leaving us all to be confused. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 13:36, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
On August 19 you fixed a broken (13 digit, written with spaces) ISBN in Margaret Mahy to one written with hyphens and 10 digits. However, you did not alter the last digit accordingly, so the link was broken. The trailing -0 has now been changed to -7. Please always verify that the resulting ISBN link works and actually points to the right book. ISBNs with 13 digits aren't broken per se, but having white space among the digits is wrong. When changing between 10 digits and 13 digits, the prefix is almost always 978 (except when it's 979), but the last digit, the checksum, also changes. --LA2 20:25, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
From going down your list of books with invalid ISBNs, I came across one that looks like a publisher's error:
[67]
1. Check digit doesn't match so it's invalid, 2. Book not in Library of Congress, 3. Not in Amazon, 4. Copy for sale on Ebay for $39.00, found by Google for the given ISBN, 5. Worldcat shows it at Harvard College Library where they have the entry shown below (with the bad ISBN). 6. Google shows another copy at a library in Holland, also with the bad ISBN.
Author : Arishima, Takeo, 1878-1923.
Title : A certain woman / Arishima Takeo ; translated, and with an introd. by Kenneth Strong.
Published : Tokyo : University of Tokyo Press ; [Forest Grove, Or. : distributed by ISBS], c1978.
Location : Harvard-Yenching W 5933 04 Holdings Availability
Location : Widener WID-LC PL801.R5 A813 x Holdings Availability
Description : 382 p. ; 24 cm.
Series : UNESCO collection of representative works : Japanese series
Notes : Translation of Aru onna.
Notes : Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN : 0680082377 :
I don't believe I can update the article to fix this, without just plain removing the ISBN. Or, I could add a note that ISBN is invalid due to a possible error by the publisher, but it can still be used for some web searches. Do you have a recommendation? The benefit to our readers from checking ISBNs is mostly when there is a GOOD ISBN somewhere in the world and we have a BAD one. If there is NO good ISBN, we should put in a suitable flag. Maybe a template?
I checked with the British Library, so yes, I think just a note at this point. There was another book like this, but i can't find the discussion. RichFarmbrough, 13:08 2 September2006 (GMT).
Some users gave me advices how to edit my page and how I can introduce myself but there is still the same problem. I click to main page and then I'm trying to open the "edit page" but there still appears this f....ng index. I open this index and then there is an ampty page, I recognise that there, beside thet Start menu, appears a link which says "download", I click download and then another index(2) opens and so on.
I've solved my problem
I've already solved my problem by my own, but thanks for giving me advices
+ *Bruce Frohnen et al eds. ''American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia'' (2006) ISBN 9781932236446 {{invalid isbn|9781932236446}}, the most detailed reference book
But don't feel bad, Amazon rejects it as well! Amazon finds the book after you use isbn.org/converterpub.asp to make an ISBN-10 from the ISBN-13.
EdJohnston 03:31, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
The new 979 prefix will not be utilized until all 978 pre-fixes have been assigned. However, 13 digit ISBNs that begin with 979 can never be converted to 10 digit ISBNs. They have no 10 digit counterpart.
So as of Jan. 1 we should be prepared to start getting 13-digit ISBNs, but we'll still get mostly 10-digit ISBNs - especially since the ISBNs are entered for the most part by "real users" and not folks in the book industry.
Also, it's questionable whether we should be converting 10-digit ISBNs to 13-digit ISBNs for linking. That will probably work for vendor maintained databases, such as WorldCat, or for major catalogs, such as LoC or British Library. But I seriously doubt that most libraries are going to scan their DBs to reindex their 10-digit ISBNs as 13-digit. It will probably require a software upgrade on a library's part for their OPAC to understand the incoming 13-digit '978' as a valid 10-digit.
In addition, if the book has a 10-digit on the back and that's what the user put in their reference, that seems like the correct ISBN to display in the reference. 10-digits should still work for linking for the forseeable future, otherwise OPAC vendors would break almost every ISBN link into their OPAC.
I'm going to put this comment on the Auto isbn template page as well.
Hi Rainbow, the "sunrise" for 13 digit ISBNs was 1 January2005. As to the support of 979s, I hope and believe this present exercise (with ISBNs, not Wikipedia) will be long out of the way before we need worry about them. I'm sure that most systems will continue ot support 10 digit ISBNS for a long time, but they are not required to. In terms of supporting 13 digit ISBNs all significant systems will need to support them natively, legacy data can be dealt with in two ways, either by checking the converted number as well as the input number (which is a trivial piece of programming) or by running a conversion routine on the data, which is almost as trivial, the hard part, potentially, being the change to allow longer numbers, which will have been needed anyway. Regardless we need to keep thinking about the best process, as I say "auto isbn" can be used in a number of different ways. RichFarmbrough, 16:23 8 September2006 (GMT).
While all OPAC vendors will probably be ready, my point was that many, many libraries won't upgrade for a while. I work in the library tech industry, and my company (who shall remain nameless) typically has to support legacy software releases for 6 months or a year, at minimum, because libraries have to coordinate upgrades with their school year, fiscal year, etc. So it's probably not going to work to switch to 13-digit for linking a book that has a 10-digit ISBN printed on the back - the links will break. We should trust our editors to enter the ISBN that's actually shown on the book, and use that ISBN for linking. If there's a 13-digit on the book and someone has cataloged it then it should be valid for linking, and we're fine, but we shouldn't convert all 10s to 13s.
Under the Dates section, point 4, you link to Easter egg, but contextually it should probably go to Easter egg (media). Just a thought. --Bdoserror 16:15, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Thanks for your kind response. If I understand what you said, I would agree that quotations, for example, could be included in Wikipedia, as well as Wikiquote, etc. There is no easy linkage between WP and WQ. So, can one put pertinent quotes in articles in WP without having been told to put them in WQ or for fear they will get expurgated from WP ? --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC) (User talk:Wikiklrsc)
Ohio State ISBN
Thanks for the info. I just made the change, and it works fine.--Sam Harmon 21:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
ISBN puzzle
Your smackbot placed invalid ISBN tags on several ISBNs in the Thomas Edison article. Apparently, from what I can make out in the ISBN article, we have to change the ISBN printed in older books to longer ones and remove the dashes. You page has FAQ but I don't see simple basic instructions for updating these arcane digit strings to some modern standard. Perhaps you could be so kind as to add a paragraph to the ISBN article telling explicitly and in simple terms what we should do to update ISBN numbers. I have never understood the point of them, nor have I ever heard of anyone making use of them. Most people go to a library or Amazon,com and find a book by author or title. It seem like it would make as much sense to add the Library of Congress catalog card number. But I really hate to see something I painstakingly typed into an article labelled as INVALID as if I had been careless typing (Typos happen all to often in fact). So when I checked some of the ISBNs which were invalid against what was printed in the book, I thought maybe the Bot had slipped a cog. Thanks Edison 22:14, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
This actually seems a bit more complicated. You've quoted amazon as having 0703304682, which it does for a book called "Edison a Biography", however the book in question is apparently just titled "Edison" which Amazon has as 0070330468 [68], these of course may indeed be the same book but it is certainly confusing. --pgk 22:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info on SBNs, as I said elsewhere I'm certainly not an expert, just responding to a {{helpme}} request, and my little knowledge of stuffing a zero on the front appeared to work... --pgk 22:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Pgk/Edison, the 0-07-033046-8 number that pgk found is probably the correct one. Reasons:
The layout is consistent with the book
(Most importantly) 0-07- is McGraw Hill's publisher ID
The checksum is correct
I suspect that somewhere someone added a number on the end (as I did), and the data got "borged" - after all the purpose of ISBN searches is to enable people to find a book, so it makes sense to allow as many possible variants.
I took the ISBN Nrs from the actual books on my shelf, I don't know how your automated computer routine came up with a different ISBN.--Woogie10w 22:49, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi Woogie, I'm afraid I will need a little more information. Which article would be a start. RichFarmbrough, 08:39 9 September2006 (GMT).
Is your bot equipped to verify ISBNs of books written in other languages? - Rainwarrior 00:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
In this case, the bot was correct and caught an ISBN which was too short. I corrected the hyphenated ISBN that Rainwarrior mentioned from ISBN 3-4230140-6 to ISBN 3-423-30140-6 -- TruthbringerToronto (Talk | contribs) 06:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Ah! I missed one of the numbers. Okay, that makes me feel better about the bot. Thanks! (I should probably go fix the original German page it was taken from too...) - Rainwarrior 06:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Smackbot flagged ISBN 186448408X (Leichhardt: On the margins of the city, by Peter Reynolds) as being invalid on a number of articles, for example Ballast Point, New South Wales. It's an Australian book published by Allen & Unwin in 1997 and the ISBN was taken out of the front cover. The state library finds it OK here. Am I missing something? amitch 08:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Erm where to start...
SB spotted the 9 digit incorrect number and labelled it with invalid
You changed the number by adding an X on using AWB (presumably having got the X from the above library?), but changed it in the invalid tag as well.
SB changed the name of the tag to something considered politer.
So no problem, you could simply remove the tag. I have done so for Ballast Point, and hyphenated the ISBN 1-86448-408-X. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 09:41 9 September2006 (GMT).
Stop!
Stop deleting my work, it takes time you know! from homersimpson742
By the way, every warning I have seen lately about an ISBN-13 is incorrect.
Can you point to the SmackBot code that does the check digit? I looked at the regexes but suspected I wasn't seeing the true source code.
SmackBot is still being confused by trailing hyphens. This sequence at Archimedes got it upset: ISBN 0-691-08421-1 - republished translation... I deleted the trailing hyphen and removed the warning. EdJohnston 04:10, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
PopMatters
Hi. I don't think you should be italicising instances of PopMatters – website titles aren't included in the italics guidelines at MoS:T. Thanks. --CapitalLetterBeginning 14:39, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi, Thanks for your note. Italics are used on the basis that it is a periodical/magazine. Our article describes it as such, do you think that's OK? RichFarmbrough, 14:51 10 September2006 (GMT).
Hmm, I don't really agree with the usage as I see webzines as being distinct from print periodicals/magazines. To give a few examples, Pitchfork Media, PlayLouder and Stylus Magazine are all similar in style and their titles are not italicised. --CapitalLetterBeginning 15:00, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Rich, User:24.119.239.54 has made some spurious edits Special:Contributions/24.119.239.54 to a number of articles, e.g. the one on Homelessness, most of which seem to border on vandalism. I've tried to re-edit the articles, but not all. The usual ideas ? Thanks and Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 15:13, 10 September 2006 (UTC) (talk)
Task X
Go ahead and run the template fix tasks for the bot, as it is approved.Voice-of-All 19:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Obligated = called?
For what reason did you change use of the word obligated to called in Iron Ring? I've never heard this terminology before, is it at one of the sources? BigNate37(T) 22:16, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
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Smackbot
Why add a template to an article just to say the below template is misplaced? (Diana Oughton, etc.) Why not set the bot to wipe or hide the template tag, leave a comment, and put the offending tag on the talk? -Ste|vertigo 01:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
This is SB's edit. The following edit put the template on. The template is designed to warn if it is on an article page, it is not a seperate action. I have moved the template to a talk page. RichFarmbrough, 10:08 13 September2006 (GMT).
whoops! -Ste|vertigo 14:22, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Block Request
Please block sep11:User:Georgia guy, he has been vandalizing the Sept. 11 wiki. Thank you. Timrem 03:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to bother you again, but sep11:User:Georgia gal has been making some of the same edits as Georgia guy had been... Timrem 20:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The ISBN seems to be valid. Its in a lot of places, including amazon. Another site confirms the checkdigit to be correct, though the LOC ISBN converter says it can't hyphenate it properly. Any help on this would be great. Kevin_b_er 04:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
As I understand it, no ISBN should start with a 6, it is a reserved range. I've looked unsuccesfully for information about other books published by the same people, perhaps you could email the publishers? RichFarmbrough, 10:28 13 September2006 (GMT).
There are] a lot of google hits for "ISBN 6" but not as many as if it were valid...
After research at Books in Print and other places, my guess is that some distributor has hijacked the ISBN field (using '6' as a prefix) and is putting their own inventory number in the rest of the field. This would temporarily work for them, because it could never collide with a real ISBN. If this surmise is right, then we should do nothing different than what we already do. That is, we should accept an ISBN as valid only when it is accepted by isbn.org/converterpub.asp. This means that we'd continue to require that the full set of ISBN rules be obeyed. We already know that Amazon doesn't care about validity, so it would not be a surprise that they just accept the word of the distributor. Bill Gothard's four books that are cataloged at LOC all have normal (valid-looking) ISBNs. It turns out the "How to Evaluate Music" is actually a cassette package anyway. So following my own (proposed) rule I'd mark this one as 'No ISBN available', hoping that if it has a real ISBN, someone might provide it in the future. I already checked that it has no OCLC number. EdJohnston 18:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, interesting. I wonder how an apparently new anon would have found that. I'm fairly new to this article, having just seen the film. It's surprising that even now, so many years later, the testimony in the film is so disturbing to people that they want to cast doubt on the participants' credibility. I think people probably don't want the things discussed in the film to have really been true. If one doesn't learn from the past... Badagnani 22:31, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Album format fixes
I do a lot of work with electronic music albums, so I just wanted to say thanks for doing all the format fixing with tracklists and all that. Keep up the awesome! Wickethewok 01:35, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Rich, we got a complaint to unblock-en-l from a user using 64.59.144.21 that they'd been blocked, right after fixing vandalism to Joseph Goldberger (which you apparently mistakenly reverted but which was subsequently otherwise fixed).
Can you confirm that the current bock on 64.59.144.21 is anon-only, not a full IP address block? The block log note isn't clear.
Hi, great job on the album article/infobox fixes. Just one thing I have fixed on a number of articles now, but I figured it might just be better to ask you about it: Is it necessary to exchange <li> tags with asterisks (e.g. as you did on Futures (album) or The Early November/I Am the Avalanche)? I'm sure it's (possibly even in most cases) useful, but I have only seen it mess up the continuity of numberings that don't begin at 1. Maybe you could change your AWB settings? Have a great day, HarryCane 13:31, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the update on the ol/li tags. Concerning Telegraphs in Negative/Mouths Trapped in Static... it's a different issue than the examples I posted earlier (bonus tracks on import/special editions) and I agree, a numbering starting from 16 is a little superfluous. Especially if the first track is in fact track 1 (on the CD), rather than that the first 15 tracks on the disc contain nothing but silence. Yet, I am not familiar with the band/album, and if it appears this way on the back of the case and since Wikipedia/html allows it, I think it doesn't hurt anyone if it's kept this way. I fixed the double numbering though, for aesthetics. Maybe a discussion should be started on the talk page. --HarryCane 15:31, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
- –
Your AWB edits on album articles seem to have a common error, they add an extra dash in album track lists, so it appears as "- –" rather than just "–", an example being a recent edit [71].
So far it's happened to every album I've been watching, and it's getting rather annoying, please check your edits before saving them. ¬rehevkor¬ 22:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Caused by italic track lengths. That particular problem has now been fixed. RichFarmbrough, 09:24 20 September2006 (GMT).
Thanks for the help
Thank you for blockingDralobv. Obviously, your help was invaluable, as it always has been :-)MrFishGo Fish 16:40, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Barnstar
Hope you don't mind, but I thought your endeavours should be recognised! --Guinnog 21:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Infobox album modification
Hi there, since I see you are pretty active cleaning up album infoboxes, I thought I would let you know. Right now, the new infobox has only one problem: when the type is not recognized, and the background color is in hexadecimal, the infobox breaks (like Team Invasion Presents Keyshia Cole). Could you replace the background color with a value, or delete the background color (which is going to be the next modification for the template)? Just wanting to know. Thanks in advance. -- ReyBrujo 21:37, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
The background color is to be dropped. The template will select the background color from the chosen type. The {{Extra chronology}} has been replaced with {{Extra chronology 2}}, and the {{Extra album cover}} should be replaced with {{Extra album cover 2}} (or the contents of this later merged into the former one). -- ReyBrujo 22:06, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
The {{Extra chronology}} is used with the Single infobox, so it needs to keep the Background parameter. That is why a copy was made. After the album infobox is fixed, it should be possible to merge the extra templates just one. -- ReyBrujo 22:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
I apologize for spamming your talk page, but since you had contributed in the past to the WP:NC(GN) proposal, which is currently ready for a wider consultation, I thought you might want to give it another look now and, hopefully, suggest some final improvements. Thanks. --Lysytalk 22:58, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
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ISBN 9780763629885
Your bot labelled this as a faulty ISBN, while a simple Google search shows it is correct.
Did the bot didn't know about 13-digit ISBNs yet or is there another reason this got tagged? Article in question was Sam Stern, which I am cleaning. - Mgm|(talk) 12:33, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I came across a page that said wikipedia ISBNs shouldn't have dashes when I clicked one of them... - Mgm|(talk) 04:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Album infobox colors
Hello, you've done quite a few cleanups on album pages I've been working on as well, so you're probably the right person to ask. What's the deal with the colors now, are they determined by what type is entered or is light blue just the default which is used when no color is specified? Regards - Cyrus XIII 21:05, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads-up. :) - Cyrus XIII 22:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Sam Leach/Vinnyk/Last Memento Of The Beatles
It looks like there has been another attempt to revive some of the fictions associated with this piece of merchandise: [72] shows. Could you help, please? DavidFarmbrough 09:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Vincent Ruello
Hi there! I notice you locked this article again... I deleted it yesterday as part of a general campaign to clear out "protected deleted" pages after three months or so (see the admin noticeboard; the idea is that they're usually created by bored high schoolers who will drop the joke after awhile; there's currently about 3000 prot/del pages which are google-indexed and show up on Special:Random, which is undesirable). Of course this does not apply to all prot/del pages since some are the work of persistent vandals. Anyway I don't particularly care about this Vincent either way but I thought I'd give you a heads-up. Yours, >Radiant< 16:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. It didn't take too long after the article on Clare Nasir was unprotected for User:195.93.21.33 to vandalise it again, as is the anonymous user's habit. *Sigh* Any ideas ? I know it's a broken record. Luckily someone else reverted it. Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC) (User talk:Wikiklrsc)
Hi Rich, you sent me a pointer to this list on Sept. 5. Can you clarify what it means? What are the fields after each ISBN? I could use a list to fix ISBNs more quickly, if the same book is cited on more than one page.
On another subject, do you know why the word 'Wikipedia' has to be spelled out when looking for a list such as
Wikipedia:List of pages with Invalid ISBNs? I was typing 'WP' instead and it didn't work.
Thanks, EdJohnston 17:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
The calculated checksum, the number of occurrences (twice for some reason) and notes.
WP is a shortcut so pages like WP:AGF actually exist in the article space I think, and are redirects to Wikipedia namespace. RichFarmbrough, 17:53 22 September2006 (GMT).
RE:Rating-5
A 10 rating was something I had previously decided against creating. However, I just realised now (literally just now, even though it's so simple) that you could simply double the template. e.g. to get 7.5/10 use {{Rating|5|5}}{{Rating|2.5|5}} to get . But if you want to compose one from the SVGs, by all means, go ahead (I think I public-domained them) - Рэдхот 18:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I actually just noticed that the description which is auto-added to the images makes it a bit messy. But if you want to extend it properly by modifying the SVGs you can. (Or creating a new template) - Рэдхот 18:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
isbn
Well groovey!
Signed
International Anthropos of funk
LoveMonkey 18:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
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If you'd have written "Wikipedia:As_of#Deprecated "As of" pages, also non-rendered whitespace changes" in the edit summary rather than "Ced" (copy edit? copy editing involves changing something that's actually visible, no?) it'd've saved me five minutes wondering what you were on and looking through the MoS. I guess maybe your time is more important than other people's. 'Depreciation' doesn't say *why* it's worth me typing 11 extra characters of course, or worth you going round making edits that don't change the rendered page. --zippedmartin 04:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Fair comment about the edit summary. The idea behind deprecating the pages is to enable simpler review of "as-of" pages for updating: the whole mechanism may soon be replaced with Template:Update after and others. RichFarmbrough, 08:51 27 September2006 (GMT).
Thanks for the reply, especially as it wasn't the most recent of your edits... As of is a bit of an ugly backlink hack, but does have the benefit of getting the date visible in the article (and in not too artificial a manner), which I think's important for readers in some circumstances. Something worth noting in any template debate, maybe. --zippedmartin 13:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing the Indian Paths of Pennsylvania ISBN
Thanks for fixing the Indian Paths of Pennsylvania ISBN in Culbertson's Path. I had seen the tag that the ISBN was invalid, but it came off my personal copy of the book and I could not find a valid ISBN on line. I will replace the old ISBN with the working one on the six or seven other places I cite this book. Thanks again, I appreciate this very much, Ruhrfisch 01:13, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Admin intervention against vandalism
User:John254 had added a blatant vandalism tag, and the IP had vandalised twice more since than. The blatant vandal text says - 'without further warning'. Am I missing something? Catchpole 21:40, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
"Am I missing something" No, maybe I was. I'm reluctant to block when the user has been warned for their last act, so I missed the earlier "blatent". Regards, RichFarmbrough, 21:54 1 October2006 (GMT).
Many thanks for putting this together again. Like most, I edit at a similar pace whether I'm being tallied or not, but IT is more fun this way. A low-tech guy, I haven't a clue how difficult this might be, but I imagine lots. Sfahey 13:39, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
British Royal Residences
Just to let you know, the link to the above on your talk page does not go anywhere. It links to a page that says no such category exists. Your list of dates don't link to anywhere either. Natalieduerinckx 19:50, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I apolozise, I think I misunderstood your list of strange examples of dates on your user page, for real links. I tried to click on my birth date and it did not work,
thats all. Silly of me to think that such an experienced user would make a mistake! Natalieduerinckx 22:22, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
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Internet Search Environment Number recently added to ISBN page
Rich, I'm writing about an apparent publicity campaign for a thing called the ISEN, or Internet Search Environment Number. An anonymous user just added a link to it on the ISBN page: [73]. In fact I see your name in the edit history of ISEN so you must have heard ot fit.
This led me to the ISEN page, that appears to me a candidate for deletion, due to WP:N and WP:SPAM. There is no international committee, no standards proposal here, no actual products tagged with the new proposed number, there is only a patent. There aren't even any white papers or full-length explanations. I'm thinking of starting a PROD or AfD on the ISEN article but probably wouldn't do so if I'm the only one who is bothered! Do you have an opinion?
I just saw this note by Rich Litwin [74] so I might write to him as well. I left a message on the talk page of the publicizer of the ISEN, at User_talk:24.166.27.241 but so far there is no response. EdJohnston 20:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Looking for advice on dealing with abusive & destructive editor
Hi, doesn't repeatedly blanking discussions from talk pages count as vandalism? The editor I have a complaint has done this many times on Talk:Hardcore punk. If it doesn't count as vandalism, what other options are there to stop an editor from repeatedly making destructive and innacurate edits to an article, posting personal attacks, deleting legitimate tags and citation requests, and has using several sock puppets instead of signing up for an account. The Wikipedia procedures and help pages are unjustifiably complicated, and not many people are willing to offer direct advice. Dealing with the offender directly does not seem like a viable option, since he is clearly out of control.Spylab 22:16, 3 October 2006 (UTC)Spylab
I would have no compunction about blocking this individual, in fact I've both welcomed and warned him on his user page, and left a warnings on at least one of his IP pages. However I don't like to block after the final warning unless vandalism recurs. If he vandalises again, let me know, or relist on the intervention page. You could list on 3RR now. RichFarmbrough, 23:04 3 October2006 (GMT).
The vandal referred to above has been adding innacurate vanity references to this article. Recently he has tampered with talk pages, reverted other edits, posted personal attacks, and used sock puppets.
I have never seen a more blatant case of abuse from an out-of-control user. It is difficult to understand why an admin would fail to act, given such clear evidence of abuse. Auto movil 22:51, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
As it says at the top of the page "This page is intended to get administrator attention quickly when dealing with obvious and persistent vandals. For other problems with user behaviour requiring administrator intervention please report to WP:AN/I."
This is an obvious and persistent vandal. Therefore, this page is the correct venue from which to get administrator attention quickly.
The speed and industry at which this vandal, under numerous IP addresses, has reverted and/or changed this page over a period of roughly two years, outstrips the ability of reasonable users to correct the page. Please refer this matter to another admin if there is an issue of insufficient time to address Wikipedia matters.
Auto movil 23:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
The vandalism began again today, on schedule. I have used one revert so far. Please review the article hardcore punk for continued vandalism by the user described above, who continues to violate multiple Wikipedia guidelines without sanction.
Auto movil 16:16, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for helping to resolve this issue fairly and promptly.
I asked Rlitwin, a librarian, to comment on the remaining external links on the ISBN page. He endorsed everything else, but said: "I don't know anything about ISCI. It seems to be an advertising industry standard? Not qualified to comment on that one."
Since it stands for *Industry* Standard Commercial Identifier, and since WP readers are unlikely to be looking up TV commercials by number, I decided we could probably do without it. EdJohnston 22:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
On to greater heights: the ESBN
Just now I was editing the ISBN page and noticed that ESBN is mentioned in the link section, and it points to esbn.org. That link isn't working! The numly.com site now has no mention of an ESBN. There is a surviving thing called ESN (Electronic Serial Number) but it only applies to things electronic. For instance, electronic books but not paper books. The ESN is the same as the Numly Number.
If the ESBN doesn't exist any more, does that make the ESBN article a candidate for speedy deletion? :-) EdJohnston 03:40, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! While you're at it, there is also a redirect ESBN -> Electronic Standard Book Number. EdJohnston 13:41, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Glitch in SmackBot
SmackBot currently changes "External link" to "External links", which is a valid change, but the edit summary is incorrect: "External links is plural as there are more than one". This is not the reason that validates the change. The change is valid because "External links" is the correct name, whether there happens to be one link in the section for externals links, or whether there happens to be more than one link in the section for external links, is not important. Gronky 12:46, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Amazing. How absurd. I've requested a rethink. Thanks for the link. Gronky 13:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Reference to References
Hey, Smackbot just changed "Reference" to "References" when there was only one reference on Odigitrievsky CathedralInvictaHOG 19:04, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
How very odd. Perhaps because it was the last section and was seen as including the "categories". Thanks. RichFarmbrough, 19:51 5 October2006 (GMT).
Hi. Would you mind having a look at my contribution to an Afd and let me know if I've overstated the case? It's Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/David_Eden. Not sure if you're a routine "Afd closer", I just want to know if I've gone over the top! Thanks --Dweller 22:40, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Not over the top, although I know what you mean. Looks like a stub worth saving. RichFarmbrough, 22:47 5 October2006 (GMT).
Hi Richard, I took a look. Perhaps you could request a check user to see whether the IPs and accounts are related. I think you're probably right to proceed with semi-protection rather than blocking for the time being. SlimVirgin(talk) 07:22, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your correction and fixes. This note is to let you know I reverted the numbering scheme for the notes. The wiki system of notes is not good, but my hope is someone will make it better. -- meatclerk 04:48, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
PopMatters not in italics
Could you make SmackBot deitalicize PopMatters? It has been pointed out that it shouldn't be italicized because it is not a magazine as the article said before. Cheers, Jogers (talk) 16:50, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
The title says it all. ReverendG 03:08, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Bot problem
Your SmackBot just edited Louden Up Now, and in doing so it made a little problem. The band is !!!, and if the artist is listed like that, it breaks the table it's in. So, I had artist = [[!!!]] instead of [[!!!]]. However, your bot changed it back to [[!!!]] which broke the table. Is there anything you can do so that it doesn't do that again? Could you have it ignore [[!!!]]? Joltman 16:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. Just wanted to let you know there are two other articles with the same issue, !!! and Take Ecstasy With Me/Get Up, so you'll probably want to exclude them too. Joltman 17:07, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Problem with SmackBot
Please take a look at this. I guess that the bot needs some tweaking. Regards, Jogers (talk) 20:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
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Admin help needed
I have reason to believe that User:Alec - U.K. is a vandal in diguise, he has been doing a lot of edits that are questionable, mixed with other edits that appear on the surface to be ok. However, it's quite possible he is slowly inserting incorrect information. He has made a large number of changes to railway stations, some of then clearly messing things up, others making substantial changes to inforamtion I cannot verify, together with a lot of oddball changes that are not per se wrong. I got your name as listed making a recent change to Streatham Hill railway station. My gut feel is that all his edits for all articles should be reverted as a precaution. --ArmadilloFromHell 02:46, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I've looked, these seem well intentioned edits. I'll keep an eye, two when I can spare them. RichFarmbrough, 11:58 13 October2006 (GMT).
I have less patience with AOL IPs now, there are so many ways for the innocent to avoid being caught. RichFarmbrough, 20:25 14 October2006 (GMT).
Thanks, Rich, for your kind response and attention to the matter. I take your points on AOL now. Oddly enough, whilst editing other materials, I was just re-reading "Up the Organization" by Robert Townsend (1970) and especially (for a serious semi-demi-giggle) "The Peter Principle" by Dr. Laurence J. Peter (1969). Perhaps it was a synchronistic reading. ;) Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 20:45, 14 October 2006 (UTC) (talk)
Ernham RFC
Hi. I'm not here to argue with you, your contribution is very welcome and important (outside view). However I would like to give you my thoughts. Taking action like this is not something I do lightly. I have never had cause until now. Yes I have taken the personal attacks personally, including persistently being called a vandal. However I've ignored many instances of being called a vandal before raising the issue. In fact rather than getting more and more annoyed by it I have disengaged more and more; In the latest discussion:
[76] After again being called a vandal and a stalker my response was "I'll ignore the last sentence. Please stop calling me a vandal. Vandalism is defined as "any addition, deletion, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia." I object in the strongest possible terms to any suggestion that I have vandalised any page. Please consider withdrawing your many remarks (talk page and edit summaries) calling me a vandal. "
[77] I told the user that due to the refusal to withdraw the vandal comment and continued abuse I saw no reason for continuing the discussion.
In a nutshell I'm concerned that after many warnings the user is continuing personal attacks and incivility rather than reconsidering their attitude. I don't want to drive this user away, I've helped where I can: help with ext. links and help with 3RR reporting. Thanks for your time, Mark83 21:17, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
I do understand - I read the user's talk page and a fair few diffs when I was looking at his "unblock" request. I think the other editors restraint was commendable. I wanted to share an approach that has got me out of flame wars before they started in the past. It is easy to see "our" point of view - i.e. that of an established, experienced editor, when looking at this type of dispute, harder to see that of a relative "newbie" we don't know. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 21:29 14 October2006 (GMT).
Re: Substed inforboxen
Yes, I was going to check how many articles were left in the category, and found only 58. Someone must have been working pretty hard there! I noticed it was subst'ed, and was thinking about replacing it with the infobox, but your suggestion does sense. I think it should not be too hard, I will base myself in existing ones like prod and afd. -- ReyBrujo 21:37, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
RfC, alas.
I submitted an RfC on the user PUNKNYC, whom you warned about adding vanity content into the Hardcore Punk article. The warning went unheeded; he's still at it with the same persistence.
Could you certify that you issued a warning?
Thanks!
Auto movil 21:59, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot finding new ISBN errors?
Rich, I notice in SmackBot's log that he is hyphenating some more ISBNs. Does that mean there will be some new invalids added to the list? And is there any news on whether ISBN-13's can be checked successfully? EdJohnston 04:15, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi Ed, this is one of SmackBot's standard tasks, although it is now more intelligent (i.e. fixes incorrect hyphenations) it is aimed at articles with "ISBN:". It may well have picked up invalid ISBNs, but not likely to be more than a few, I probably need to improve the regular scan. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 10:46 15 October2006 (GMT).
Thanks for your reply.. On another matter, near the bottom of your user page, there is a cryptic error message about 'Allowed memory size'. Did you mean to have it there? EdJohnston 12:35, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Congratualtions on being first to spot. I had a lot of WP errors there, most were moved off to a subpage, I left that by accident, but rather liked it. RichFarmbrough, 12:37 15 October2006 (GMT).
Question
Hi there! Long time no see. Could you tell me what "Ced" in an edit summary means? --HappyCamper 15:50, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Oh, "copy edit". I don't remember where I've come across your edits on Wikipedia before. SmackBot? My memory is failing me too. I know you've been here longer than me, and I've been here for more than a year and a half now. "One of the good guys around" I recall. --HappyCamper 16:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
ISBN hyphenation
How do you determine the correct hyphenation for ISBNs? I use User:Diberri's PubMed tool sometimes to create book references, but it just leaves the ISBN as one long number. If Diberri knew how to calculate the correct hyphenation, and could incorporate it into his tool, that might reduce the number of ISBN hyphenations that need to be done by Smackbot. And it would make me feel better to know that I'm doing the citation right the first time, instead of waiting for Smackbot to fix it for me. LyrlTalkContribs 00:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Forgive me for interjecting an idea, after seeing your question to Rich Farmbrough. I tried out Diberri's tool. It's very handy and I might use it myself. However, it does lack that final step of hyphenating the ISBN. At present www.isbn.org/converterpub.asp is what I use for hyphenating. Perhaps Diberri's tool could be modified to invoke this as well? The advantage of the isbn.org script is it also does a full validity check, so it protects you against inserting an invalid ISBN into Wikipedia. I don't know if the source code for converterpub.asp is available, but you can always invoke the program via their website. EdJohnston 03:07, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
I've just partially reverted some changes you made to Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act 1719; you'd changed 23/11/1719 to a conventional written date. However, this is part of the title of the cited work, not normal text, and as such should probably be left in the unusual form - could you keep an eye out for situations like this in future? Shimgray | talk | 18:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I followed the link, although I didn't see the "Cite", I was still happy to change it. But I am biased against xx/xx/xxxx dates... I'm happy to leave it as well. RichFarmbrough, 21:22 16 October2006 (GMT).
I'm not too fond of them either, I confess, but I do worry about changing the title of things - there's always the risk it'll confuse matters for someone following the cite later. Shimgray | talk | 22:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
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Quite odd...
Hi Rich,
Could you step into Hardcore Punk for a moment? The same user as before is refusing to respond to the RfC on his actions, while still editing/reverting, etc. as usual. Even more oddly, his latest comeback is, "User:Auto movil should respond to the RfC concerning his persistent violations" -- when there is no such RfC. One is supposed to assume good faith, but it's honestly becoming hard to assume that this isn't some kind of weird practical joke -- or a psychological test of some sort... Auto movil 03:26, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
WPCD2
Richard,
I am not sure if you are the right person to talk to. I am in the process of starting the second WP CD version which will run to about 4000 articles. At present the clean up of these articles is done by script and then volunteer (we have lots of physical volunteers here). I wondered if stealing some of smackbots ideas might help us increase the proportion of the clean up which could be done automatically or give us more flags. I can obviously write a script to detect say "hello mum" on pages but am really after some kind of list of changes needed. Feel like helping? --BozMotalk 08:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Article list is here, subject to screening by volunteers on suitability for children and possible late additions from 0.5. Dream is to release a 2007 CD selection just in time for Christmas and get a Sunday paper to distribute it for free with the supplement. Timing depends though on whether the clean up and CSS etc from last year still works (which basically depends on if the wikimedia software has changed since I clean up in HTML). There have been 27000 downloads of the first WPCD, some of which we know for certain we on copied over 100 times so we are probably going to put a bit more effort in generally this time.
Um,
He just keeps reverting the edits, won't respond to the RfC or abide by warnings. The new thing is to make up counter-accusations, accusing others of exactly what he's doing (e.g., my talk page).
This is the gentleman at Hardcore Punk, btw. What happens if someone just ignores an RfC, ignores final warnings, etc? Is there another process that can be put into effect?
Auto movil 19:45, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for stepping in. Auto movil 03:20, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
NETZ Page
Thanks for your help and guiding me for article on NETZ.Shub_iitkgp
Roy Harper albums
Thanks for your help with the Roy Harper stuff I have been working on. However, a lot of the album colors, Live, Studio, Compilation etc... are now messed up. Can you put them back ??? Stephenjh
Hi, I have not intentionally changed any colours. Can you give me an example? RichFarmbrough, 11:21 17 September2006 (GMT).
I was quite careful to use the correct colours, but even though the colour is defined as e.g. Orange (Studio album) it shows as light blue. It is fairly straightforward to see the errors where they exist, it has affected a number of Roy Harper albums and I was asking for your assistance as you have had input into most of the 17 Harper album reviews I worked on, and also made changes to the Infobox coding. Stephenjh
Hello, the Infobox Album has changed recently, it takes the album type and generates the colour from that, so that the "background" parameter is now useless (and will be removed in time). The colour scheme has also changed, more details at template:Infobox Album and template talk:Infobox Album. RichFarmbrough, 09:08 19 September2006 (GMT).
The colour scheme hadn't changed last time I looked! Ah well, I guess I'll have to allow others (or bots) to change everything as I simply don't have the time to create articles that need to be constantly updated due to colour and formatting fickleness \ updates. I thought they were fairly "solid" and informative articles too... Stephenjh
Please archive 08:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
question about a band whose page you edited
I noticed that you edited the entry for The Fray's Movement EP (2002). I was wondering if I could ask you a question or two about this CD (I thought since you edited the page, you might know the answer). I apologize if this area is the wrong place to ask. Is there any way I could email you? Thank you very much in advance for your help.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Moore (elizabeth m moore at yale edu)
If you look just under the search box, you will see a number of links called the toolbox. One of them is "email this user". Unfortuantely I know nothing about The Fray or their albums, I have been making a number of stylistic and technical changes to many album pages. However the cover does look like a picture of the inside of a Metro Cammel underground train (or maybe not).
Heya, just a quick point about the F1 race reports such as the above, the dates in the Infobox are automatically wikilinked, there's no need to add the brackets (and doing so simply causes the brackets to be visible in the article). Thanks, Alexj2002 19:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Please archive 08:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Date fragments
Hi, Rich! I've just spotted this edit of yours, and I thought I'd ask for a favor.
Linking single years is a habit I acquired in the past two years, and which is very hard to get rid of. I often catch myself linking single years without even thinking that I really shouldn't be doing it. One example is the dates of the Censuses, such as those you corrected in the diff above.
There are currently mighty many references to the 1989 Soviet Census and to the 2002 Russian Census. All of them are constructed as follows:
I'll make an effort to switch, too; it's just that I really don't want to go back and change all existing formatting by hand.
This, of course, is by no means urgent, but I'd appreciate if you could let me know if it could be done. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:26, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for catching it and for your help with cleaning this up. Population of Kemerovo is around half a million; I corrected the numbers. The number has most likely been added by a Russian—in Russian, a comma is used as a decimal separator, and a space to separate thousands. Just a useless fact you might be interested in knowing :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Thank you again for your time and efforts. While my three-day watchlist now stands at 1,500 items, that inconvenience is well-offset by the fact that I won't have to make all those changes manually :) Please let me know if there is anything I can help with.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
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Thank you for taking the time to do these. After spending a lot of hours changing the refs to {{cite}}, it's really gratifying to see you take up the torch and bring them to the next level. Thanks! Waitak 14:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
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Admin
Do you think I should run again? →AzaToth 20:32, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Could you see if you could update it with this information? semper fi — Moe 02:21, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I have been watching the dumps, so enwiki-20041104-stub-meta-history is download:ing, currently at 21%, with 65 hours remaining. For some reason it's transferring at 10k, perhaps the server has been throttled. RichFarmbrough, 12:44 6 November2006 (GMT).
Albert Fish
If your still interested in more on Albert Fish, I have access to the New York Times archive for a month. They have several large articles in pdf format. Do you know if you can recover the ASCII text from a pdf document? I know the NYT does an OCR scan and that text is stored in the pdf as an index so you can find the article in a text search. I wantr to be able to recover some of the pre 1923 articles without retyping them. Even just for short quotes, its easy to make a transcription error. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 17:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Jumping in here to say that the version of Adobe Acrobat Professional that I'm using (7.0 for Mac) has the ability to save a PDF file as text. You could always try that. A security feature might conceivably block it, but it's worth a try. Naturally this only works when the PDF has associated text, which is true in your case. EdJohnston 20:28, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Your input would be appreciated
I've started a Virtual classroom for Wikipedians to learn by each others' example. Currently we are comparing the user interfaces we each use in making use of and work on Wikipedia (operating systems, programs, browsers, extensions, scripts, settings/features, navigation set ups, etc). You are one of the most advanced users I've ever come across, and I hope you will stop by and share with us how you have your computer set up for working on Wikipedia, so the rest of us can learn by your example. Interiot has been kind enough to help get things started by describing some tools and techniques he uses, and I hope you will too. Sincerely, The Transhumanist02:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
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Thanks for the input
I appreciate it. I learned some interesting points from your tips. I'm sure others will too. Thank you. The Transhumanist11:47, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Secrets of SmackBot?
Hello Rich! Tawkerbot and Werdnabot seem to require an administrator to block them if they malfunction. SmackBot is more user-friendly because it will stop if anyone posts a comment to its Talk page. Was it hard to add this capability? Should the other robots consider the same thing? EdJohnston 18:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
It was easy because SmackBot is really just an account. It's edits are either done using Firefox and Javascript and hence I will see the "New messages" box, or more commonly AWB which stops on a talk page message anyway. Having said that I have had a few anon IP's leaving "moo" or whatever on the talk page, which is annoying. TB and WB are both more likely to be subject of vandalistic attacks, so it may not be a good idea for them. RichFarmbrough, 19:21 8 November2006 (GMT).
Virtual classroom update
I've written a translation of Interiot's "geekspeak" post. It took me hours to figure out what he was talking about. Some pretty cool tricks, now described in easy to follow steps. I've also thrown in some of my own tricks, have updated my notes on the interface I use, and have answered students questions in the questions and comments section at the bottom of the page. Let me know if the page is helping in any way. Hope to see ya there again soon. The Transhumanist23:38, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I read it. Unfortunately I can't get middle-click to work for me at the moment, it's right click <T> for me. RichFarmbrough, 10:23 11 November2006 (GMT).
Unilateral removal of the history section in ABC article
Hi Rich
We have an unpleasant situation about to develop over this action by one "cyberjunkie" ("cj"), who decided all of a sudden that he'd move the entire History section of the ABC article to a new daughter article, without replacing it with a summary. The history section was almost entirely written more than a year ago.
Since this action on 12 September, the section has languished with no text at all under its title, save a link to the daughter article.The action has, in effect, gutted the article, leaving what appear to be insubstantial fragments without a core. It's must be odd to the newcomer to be denied a summary of the history and to move straight onto a chunky section on "funding and relationship with government" without knowing where how the institution arose.
Now, it's not that I disagree with him that the History section was written in greater detail than you'd normally expect in summary style. (A related issue is that the rest of the article may need to be fleshed out in the opposite direction to achieve satisfactory summary coverage of the topic—perhaps the optimal balance needs to be debated on the talk page.) What I do object to is
(1) his failure to raise the matter on the talk page beforehand, and
(2) provide replacement text with the summary style that he's using as his stated rationale for the removal.
The edit comment for the removal was "split (will summarise later)", whereas I'd have been pleased to see a summary written before the removal, for immediate replacement.
I've raised the matter on the talk page, and Cyberjunkie has responded negatively:
I think a total blank is worse than a long history. Please create a summary soon. Your action has resulted in damage to the overall article, IMV. Tony 11:16, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Whereas, I disagree. --cj | talk 12:41, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
I can see that this is getting nowhere. I wonder whether you agree that he should either undertake to write a summary section in the near future (I suggest three or four paragraphs) or reinstate the text and raise the issue on the talk page.
I'd appreciate knowing your opinion. The ABC's talk page is here. Tony 13:52, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, Rich. Not entirely sorted, since the text that has been provided recently needs to be significantly longer, IMV. But at least it's not a gaping hole. Tony 03:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Rating-3 template
Hey Rich, I'll be more than happy to take care of that (might make a rating-6 also, as they've been known to exist). I'll get the code set up in a few hours, and create the images when I get home from work. I'll let you know when Rating-3 is complete, and set links on the existing templates. I think we need to find an appropriate place to advertise these, as I've not seen a mention of them anywhere in the Wikiprojects. Not sure where would be most appropriate though. Also been thinking about modifying the existing templates to accept 0.1 incriments of input, while still using the half-star icons, but I'll worry about that later. Thoughts? -- HuntsterT • @ • C 20:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Aye, I saw that comment, which is what got me thinking about allowing actual imput of 6.9 which would render the approximate amount of stars and alt text. It's just a concept idea, and I don't know how difficult it would be to impliment it. -- HuntsterT • @ • C 20:23, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Just letting you know that {{Template:Rating-3}} and {{Template:Rating-6}} have now been created. I still need to create the graphics, but I should have that done around 12-14:00 ET Monday. Also, that full decimal system works fine, and I don't see any need for additional graphics outside of the half-star system already in place. Cheers! -- HuntsterT • @ • C 04:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay, just updating that images are finished and everything is ready to go. I wanted to ask, though, about your Rating-10 template. The resulting image is very wide, and somewhat unwieldy with the current infoboxes. To that end, would you mind if I created some custom, smaller stars for this template, and rework the code? My thought is to reduce the size to about 60 to 70% of current, so it is longer than the other ratings, but not so wide that it doesn't fit well inside the infobox. -- HuntsterT • @ • C 19:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Alright, changes finally made to {{Template:Rating-10}}. If you don't like it, please revert. -- HuntsterT • @ • C 10:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Delinking Dates
Hi Rich. So what's the policy with linking dates? I thought I had read some Wiki guide that said linking dates is helpful because it lets people display dates in different formats. Is that not the case? Personally, I couldn't care less, but I want to do the right thing. Thanks!
Dfass 14:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely right. But formatting will only be applied where the month and day number are present - e.g. April 13 or 12 May1977. Things like "2002", "January" and "March 1997" by themselves should only be linked under normal "make links only where relevent in context" guidelines. E.G. "May" in the article Maypole or maybe "1066" in Battle of Hastings, "Friday" in Sabbath and so forth. RichFarmbrough, 14:41 13 November2006 (GMT).
OK, thanks a lot. Makes sense. Appreciated. (Saves me time, too!) Dfass 14:57, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Another thing you may find useful to know is house style on headings WP:MSH. Basically things are only capitalised if they would be in normal English usage. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 17:08 13 November2006 (GMT).
NETZ
I've put NETZ up for speedy deletion since it is essentially empty / provides little or no context. Hu 21:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
I suggest that you or the other editor put up the {{inuse}} tag if the intention is seriously to provide content. Hu 21:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
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Edit counter
The better solution for edit-counting might be (barring integration with Wikimedia) to take an rc feed as AntiVandal-Bot does and once a user has been queried keep their counts updated. I could run a baseline of non-deleted edits at a given dump date, but it would be of limited use becasue of synchronisation issues. What do you think? RichFarmbrough, 12:03 14 November2006 (GMT).
1) at that point, you'd more or less have another toolserver. And while we do need either the existing toolserver to work, or a new one to be created, I don't have the skill to do it. And 2) I don't see the point in making a specialized toolserver that only does edit counts, because there are many other pretty important apps that run on the toolserver (probably more important than edit counting). --Interiot 12:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I was thinking on the current toolserver. It would be zero load on the main servers. Perhaps I need to apply for a toolserver account. RichFarmbrough, 21:57 14 November2006 (GMT).
Additional help is always welcomed. As I said, we really do have a large number of tools that are very useful to run, and several are more important than the edit counter (for instance, commons has a tool that checks whether an image is used on any server before deleting a commons image. Since enwiki and other servers don't replicate to the toolserver, commons deleters have to check these servers by hand every time they delete an image... that's just one toolserver tool that's important to get working). So if you'd like to help, it really would be best to get the general database replication working. Working on only the edit counter would be working on a bandaid that will be discarded once the/a toolserver starts working again.
DaBpunkt has been working on importing a recent static dump of the enwiki database, but it's crashing for an unknown reason every time they try to import it. --Interiot 22:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes replication would render it moot, but is the problem on the toolserver? RichFarmbrough, 22:15 14 November2006 (GMT).
Incidentally I've been trying for about 10 days to download a partial dump, there's serious problems there too. RichFarmbrough, 22:19 14 November2006 (GMT).
MySQL crashes when they import the static dump. I haven't heard whether they know why it might be crashing, but one would think that if it's the toolserver mysql that's crashing, that the problem is likely on the toolserver side. (is that what you were asking?) --Interiot 22:34, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
No, not really, I was asking about the main reason that replication stopped in the first place, which seemed to be because of the way the en wiki was set up. Perhaps it's worth talking to DaBpunkt as you suggest. RichFarmbrough, 22:40 14 November2006 (GMT).
Oh, that. Um, first it was an architecture change (multiple masters to replicate from, which MySQL doesn't do natively). But DaBpunkt hacked a way around that. His replication code was a little buggy at first, but we've fixed almost all the bugs we know about. Then the increasing number of edits by all wikis overwhelmed the disk I/O the toolserver has, so they stopped enwiki just so dewiki and all the others wouldn't indefinitely lag. They ordered a new RAID card, got someone to drive out to Amsterdam, found out it was incompatible. Ordered a second one, drove out there, got it installed okay. So replag was 100+ days by then, so they had to import a static dump rather than trying to replicate the whole way through 100 days, and last I heard they were having problems importing the dump. --Interiot 22:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Dunno if this is an AWB problem or what, but you just added Category:Living people and Category:Year of birth unknown to the article, and Harrington is dead and his birthyear is in the article. I've fixed it, but thought you might want to know in case something is off with AWB. Gamaliel 00:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
My fault, I was confused by the subst'ed {{:tl:lifetime}}, out of which AWB pulled the categories. I had meant to go back to the article. Proabaly best not to subst that template though. RichFarmbrough, 10:01 15 November2006 (GMT).
Signature
Hoi: I saw over on Transhumanist's page you had modified your signature to work with only three tildes. I tried playing around with some {{date}} and {{time}} changes to my sig, but I couldn't get them to work without leaving weird templates and stuff in the signature. I also tried adding in ~~~~~ which struck me as fairly clever, but I guess the developers disabled recursive signatures... So how did you do it? --Gwern (contribs) 00:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Preferences raw ''[[User:Rich Farmbrough|Rich]] [[User talk:Rich Farmbrough|Farmbrough]]'', {{subst:CURRENTTIME}} [[{{subst:CURRENTDAY}} {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}}]] [[{{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}]] (GMT). And it took me some time to figure out... RichFarmbrough, 09:33 15 November2006 (GMT).
Well, we've moved on to our second lesson in the Virtual classroom, though each lesson is continuous so we may see more additions to the interface share and compare discussions as well. The current topic of discussion is "stubbing," with a short course to kick things off provided by our resident expert on the subject, Grutness.
To help keep track of what's going on, here's a template you can place at the top of your userpage or talk page:
Discussions planned for the future include scripts, and another on bots. But my head is still spinning from comparing interfaces. I still have some questions left to ask on that subject!
Hope to see you at the Virtual classroom again soon. The Transhumanist 14:09, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I've left you some questions about your monobook.js at the virtual classroom. The Transhumanist12:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Citing articles without ISBN numbers?
I saw your bot leave a note on a Royal Enfield isbn tag, and thought you might be able to help me with a citation query? User:Seasalt/Ducati Sources shows some primary sources (Ian Falloon magazine articles) used in Ducati Motor Holding, Ducati Quattrovalvole motorcycles and Ducati V-twin motorcycles. I cannot find any ISBN number in them. If these are even able to be used, what format would i properly cite them in? Just one example should suffice. --Seasalt 03:32, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
So far, fruitless. no sign of issn. Have sent query to publishers and local issn office. Do you have to have an issn or isbn number in a reference? The Citing sources harvard referencing paragraph seems to suggest that Publisher or ISSN/ISBN is acceptable?Seasalt 12:29, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
No absolutely not a requirement. And indeed ISBNs are edition specific, so can be a hinderance in some ways. RichFarmbrough, 12:35 19 November2006 (GMT).
If no ISSN can be found, I think it might be sufficient to give complete ordering information for the actual magazine that you have. That would include the mailing address of the publisher. However, when I went to the web site of the apparent publisher, Federal Publishing Company of Australia, they did not include any magazine called 'Modern Ducati'. This kind of problem makes you wonder if the magazine actually exists, or if the person who originally checked the article wrote the info down correctly. As an alternative, you might look to use one of Ian Falloon's books on Ducati motorcycles, which definitely exist and can be found on Amazon. EdJohnston 03:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Every piece of information included with a reference can help a reader find the source, so we like to include id numbers like ISBN and ISSN when we have them. We also like to include the publisher and the date and other auxiliary information. It can happen that a book has been published in hardcover and softcover versions, and by more than one publishing house. Older classics may be republished with commentary, or in a new translation. Multiple editions may exist. Sometimes these things are critical; often, not. The most important thing is, if you have a helpful or vital reference, include what information you have. Maybe someone else can fill in missing data, if it exists.
Consider two examples: William Shakespeare's tragedyOthello, and Douglas Adams' comedyThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Besides modern versions, we can find two different "original" versions of the Shakespeare online at the British Library site. And Adams' tale exists in numerous variations, including radio, book, and television. If we are speaking of these works in general terms, it probably doesn't matter which version we consult; but if we are doing critical analysis, the differences may be the heart of our discussion. --KSmrqT 08:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
And on a more prosaic level, any reference to page numbers in a book, needs a clear definition of the edition used. RichFarmbrough, 11:15 20 November2006 (GMT).
Thanks for your support!
A week ago I nominated myself, hoping to be able to help Wikipedia as an administrator as much as a WikiGnome. I am very glad many others shared my thoughts, including you. Thank you for your trust! Be sure I will use these tools to protect and prevent and not to harass or punish. Should you feel I am overreacting, pat me so that I can correct myself. With some luck, this won't modify the time I spend at the different WikiProjects, including Album. Thanks again! ReyBrujo 20:51, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Replacing 13-digit ISBN by 16-digit codes
Hi Rich. I don't understand this edit by your bot. It replaced a 13-digit ISBN by a 16-digit code. I reverted it for the moment; could you please check? Cheers, Jitse Niesen (talk) 05:51, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks, this was an odd bug, well worth catching. Thanks for your help on other ISBNs. PLease let me know if you see any more strangeness, and if it's since now, please halt the bot. RichFarmbrough, 12:54 19 November2006 (GMT).
Moving (US) pages to (U.S.)
Could I ask you to undo those moves until we settle the debate? I mean the disambiguators, not pages like First aerial victory by the U.S. military, those I don't mind at all.
Thanks a lot! hike395 07:29, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, I guess we can leave them inconsistent for a while. Thanks hike395 04:56, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Hope you're well. Could you check for the vandalism by the anon. user and delete it without reversing the entry. Didn't notice it when I made a small change. I couldn't figure a way to go to line 114 without scrolling down. Is there a way?
This same anon. user did a minor vandalism on my user page, but I fixed that. I suspect someone should keep an eye on his larky edits.
P.S. The anti-wiki blog e y e o n l i n e reached huge proportions until he quieted down on in August My novelist friend in FL has no idea who he is, despite the fact that he portrays himself as a famous writer. Eye keeps deriding me by name. Such is the lot for those of us who write without alias, alas. Cheers, --Beth Wellington 22:57, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. Was trying to avoid the deletion from an earlier version, so as to preserve later changes. That's why I asked for an easy way to get to a specific line.
Thanks for the link. The wikiarticle says that U n g a r e t t i, the poet Mr. P translated for G r a n d s t r e e t, etc., is one of the foremost of his country in his century, but looking at said translations <allinfoaboutpoetry.com/features/ungaretti> I can't agree, unless something was, by Mr. P, "lost in translation." And to set the record straight I neither know E m e r e r s o n personally, nor operate any fan clubs. And she lives on the opposite side of Virginia. Sort of like saying everybody in Wales knows everybody in London. I never responded, neither on his blog nor mine, since Mr. P does seem to be perpetually p'd off at us and to have a lot more time than I do to pursue his snit. :} --Beth Wellington 17:00, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not a programmer so I won't be writing any java script. off for Thanksgiving and need to turn in an article, first. Check this out, if you want to do instead of pursuing Mr. P:
Commentary: Mountaintop Removal Sites - "Strip Mining on Steroids"
Beth Wellington's commentary delves into the complex history of this controversial mining operation, with background that highlights corporate and public interest positions, as well as relevant legislative history.
(Still a draft, but she wanted something by Sunday night and she sends out notices to her list of updates.)--Beth Wellington 17:39, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for updating the list. As an editor with severe editcountitis, I always get a thrill out of seeing the new list. As I understand things, it's not very easy to update because it's so unwieldy, so thanks for taking the time and effort. Oh, and congrats on staying on top 'o the list. :)
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Thanks for catching my forgetting to date the wikify tag, etc
I completely forgot to date my wikify, etc, tags on a bunch of articles.. thanks for the catch. Perel 08:44, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
ISBNs
Yeah, in the rest of the world I usually see them with hyphens, but here on Wikipedia I've seen them more often without - as long as the hyphenated ISBNs bring you to the right page, it's fine with me. ThanksTvoz 07:54, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Just an opinion on an image's fair use
Just thought I'd request your inputs as a third party. Image:Iraqi Sniper.jpg is an image from NY times. It is a controversial photo that raised some eyebrows in USA for being unpatriotic (sources provided in image summary). user slimvirgin notes in the talk page that it doesn't fall under fair use since it's of some commercial value, though it's almost 1/2 year old photo. I can scale down the resolution if needed but I have uploaded this just like the Muhammad cartoon for the image itself being a bit controversial. pl give some pointers in this direction or point me to someone who might be well versed in these image issues. Thanks. Idleguy 08:34, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot, uncat, and stubs
I notice that SmackBot is adding {{uncat}} to articles that have stub categories. This proved somewhat contentious when Bluebot was doing this: see the discussion at WT:CAT, and the bot's talk page. I suggested by way of a compromise measure instead tagging these with {{uncatstub}}, which puts them in a separate maintenance category, which met with some agreement, and hopefully keeps all parties at-least-somewhat-happy. (And I've been redoing these that way with Alaibot.) If you're agreeable to doing so, and it's not too inconvenient to tweak the script, could you tag those that way too? Thanks. Alai 21:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, just checking you were aware of the discussion -- though I think my bot may be passing you in that regard. :) A handful being tagged with {{uncat}} probably won't attract much controversy, just so long as it's not greatly enlarging the uncat-cat, as BB was. Alai 22:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Your very high edit count
May I ask how you have acquired an edit count of over 150,000? What do you do on Wikipedia? You must feel utterly exhuasted! Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 21:05, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I read WP, and fix errors I find. When I fix an error I like to fix all instances of it, sometimes this can be done by hand, sometimes it has to be. Where possible I get my bot (SmackBot) to do it, but even then I will run a few hundred edits testing the process. For example almost every album article has been modified by SmackBot, but there are other changes that can't be fully automated. RichFarmbrough, 21:54 25 November2006 (GMT).
I see. Thankyou for your prompt reply. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 21:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah ha! You're a cyborg...half bot, half man...I knew it! :-) —Doug Belltalk 05:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Why did you revert my comment on that talk page? It's not like it was vandalism, as it's not the actual article. It was merely having a sense of humour. The Duke of Rich Farmbrough 03:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot and the unreferenced tag
Looks like a good start. I know some other maintenance tags have the "All articles X" supercat, but do you think that's really necessary since we have Category:Articles lacking sources? I was hoping to be able to 'move' {{unreferenced}} instances to only subcategories so we could walk through the above category, but you know more about AWB than I do. What do you advise (up to and including me getting AWB to help out)? Nevermind, did a few edits and I see where it removes it from the supercat. Pretty slick. -- nae'blis 04:58, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for your support at RFA
I wasn't going to send thank-you cards, but the emotional impact of hitting WP:100 (and doing so unanimously!) changed my mind. So I appreciate your very considered support for me at RFA, and hope you'll let me know if I can do anything for you in the future. Cheers! -- nae'blis 00:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
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I'm sorry...
...but what are you talking about? I loaned my account to my friend yesterday, so if he did something using my account I apologize. The Duke of Rich Farmbrough 06:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
O.K. Copy that, specially the part about the dates linking. Thank you, Rich Farmbrough. Randroide 11:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Wikifying dates
Is it really necessary to wlink every single date in an article, no matter how insignificant it may be to the article? Two of the three you recently did in Bitis arietans are only for when I accessed certain external links and have nothing to do with the article. No offense, but isn't this overdoing it a bit? (PS -- You can answer here, as I've temporarily added your talk page on my watchlist.) --Jwinius 11:53, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
When a date includes a day and month, user formatting preferences ("my prefernces" "Date and time") will be invoked by linking it, e.g. [[10 April]] can show as either April 10 or 10 April, and hence should almost always be linked. Any associated year should also be linked viz: 10 April1962 because the software can display this as 1962-04-10 for those who have their date preferences set to ISO. In due course a feature may be added to MediaWiki allow a different syntax from linking to do this. RichFarmbrough, 12:21 29 November2006 (GMT).
That's swell, but what's the point? I can understand wlinking the date of a famous person's birth or death, for example, since that might be significant to some readers ("Oh, look: he died on the same day as such-and-such was born!"), but why wlink something so arbitrary as the date that an external link was accessed? --Jwinius 12:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not the linking that's important, it's the formatting. (The wikisyntax currently overloads the double square brackets operator. The developers have been asked to provide a different syntax.) If you have your date preferences set you will see all these dates in your preferred format, otherwise you will see a mish-mash of formats. RichFarmbrough, 14:05 29 November2006 (GMT).
Oops! Sorry, I wasn't reading you right at first, but I do now. I'll be sure to follow your example from now on. Cheers! --Jwinius 02:27, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot behavior
You should change SmackBot to use {{linkless}} instead of {{orphan}} because 'orphan' redirects to 'linkless'. — Chris53516(Talk) 21:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Here's a strange Edit summary recently entered:
(diff) (hist) . . m Thermite; 13:43:52 . . SmackBot (Talk | contribs) (Proj album changes/Fmt track listing/Date fragments delinked &/or gen fixes using AWB)
It sure doesn't look like it corresponds to the change made. FYI. — EncMstr 22:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Dating tags
Acknowledge message. Thanks. --meatclerk 22:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Error but not obvioisly bad enough to stop Smackbot for.
See [78]. There are two issues here 1) I'm not sure it should be subbing in talk space 2) it certainly shouldn't be subbing in when it has nowikis around it. JoshuaZ 07:51, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Note that some of them may have the nowikis slightly farther away from the template in question such as this one. JoshuaZ 07:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Actually, looking at some of the recent ones I had to revert (I've only looked at a small fraction of its edits) it may make sense to only do it on talk pages if the tag is in the header. (see for example [79] ). Last comment about your bot. I promise. JoshuaZ 08:03, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Hmm. All live transclusions should get something done to them so that they eventually get human attention, even if that is to "nowiki" them. And I think all the nowiki's are being avoided, that example would be just before I made the change. Your comments are most welcome, as they have improved what's being done. RichFarmbrough, 09:27 1 December2006 (GMT).
There was an edit made to Talk:Gaussian integral at 7:59 GMT today that broke both these rules (talk space and nowiki). That is, after your comment at 7:57; dunno if you've fixed it since. Cheers, Lunch 22:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, in future I'll only be looking at pages where the template is invoked so less likely to be a problem, but I will test to see if theres a bug, or just a timing or other mistake by me. RichFarmbrough, 22:52 1 December2006 (GMT).
Sorry, I was told 2 weeks ago by another editor to use the subst tag to reduce strain on the servers and prevent blanking of the tag. Would you be so kind as to point me towards a resource that explains when and when not to use them? Cheers. L0b0t 21:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Always use it for prod and afd, or they won't work properly. Wikipedia:Template substitution explains the pros and cons, reasons to subst and not, and gives lists of "always, sometimes and never". Regards, RichFarmbrough, 21:24 1 December2006 (GMT).
Thanks, I will learn it and follow it in future. Cheers. L0b0t 21:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
ISSN link question
Please see my entry at Talk:International_Standard_Serial_Number; I'm hoping you can figure out a fix! :-) I was getting ready to fix some ISSNs and ISBNs, and now realize I have a headache, and better not do so now. Regards, Keesiewonder 14:25, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
See my response on the above talk page for a temporary ISSN checker you can use. EdJohnston 18:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Excellent! Somehow, I knew you'd come up with something. Thank you! Keesiewonder 22:34, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
You chose an unfortunate moment to start date-tagging these; per this discussion, I'd been back-sorting these by month of original tagging, and had it down to a remainder, almost all from November... which have now been tagged as December, which will now be rather large by the time the month is out. Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier... Alai 17:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about that. I've just done something similar for "unreferenced", although more rough and ready (I missed the nuance of cl_timestamp). We could move all the dec category to nov fairly simply, what do you think? RichFarmbrough, 19:37 2 December2006 (GMT).
I didn't think of using the timestamp myself, until Radiant suggested it. I was thinking of something along those lines: but don't do them all, I have a list of the category contents from early-ish on Dec 1st, I'll use that. Alai 19:41, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your prompt follow-up on the glitch, and your advice on this article. I removed the unreferenced tag and gave my reasons. Someone put it back and gave his or her reasons. Good enough! At least it no longer exists in am informational vacuum. Have a great day! Karen | Talk | contribs 23:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks![80] I thought it should take a date field, but I couldn't remember the syntax and {{importance}} doesn't specify how. I'll have to remember that one. -- JLaTondre 15:26, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
My pleasure, but don't worry, various bots date such monthly maintenance templates. RichFarmbrough, 15:28 3 December2006 (GMT).
ISBNs and the SmackBot
Please take a look at this edit: It breaks the info box for Discworld. I don't know if you should exception it or if you can write the code to see it as not an ISBN to fix. Thanks, Dimitrii 02:14, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Health Wiki Research
A colleague and I are conducting a study on health wikis. We are looking at how wikis co-construct health information and create communities. We noticed that you are a frequent contributor to Wikipedia on health topics.
This research will help wikipedia and other wikis understand how health information is co-created and used.
We are from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The project was approved by our university research committee and members of the Wikipedia Foundation.
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Linking years when the day/month is present
I see you fixed my date formatting at Christopher Spencer (author) from [[May 25]] 1969 to [[May 25]] [[1969]]. I thought wikilinking the year was always optional, but I've discovered I was wrong. Has it always been like that, or has it changed? Regards, Mr Stephen 15:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
In this edit on Washington State Route 240, obviously the word Reference should have been capitalized, and I have no preference for the placement of the stub category -- but in moving it to the bottom, you added an extra line of whitespace. Reverted here.
Like I said... it's a very minor Smackbot problem. ;-) -- NORTHtalk 00:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your note. This is standard WP:AWB behaviour if "general fixes" is selected, presumably for readability of the wikisource. As you say, very minor one way or the other. RichFarmbrough, 09:45 9 December2006 (GMT).
Just double checking, since the applicable MOS article states:
When referring to a specific office, generally use uppercase: "The British Prime Minister is Tony Blair."
It then waffles by adding that other manuals indicate lower case in the absence of the article, "the," and does not seem to contemplate the use of the title of an elected official as the title of an article at all.
I'm new enough at this that I am certainly not making a protest. I am just wondering if there an amplified version of the MOS somewhere that might address this issue more fully, so that I can avoid titling articles in a manner which requires such moves in the future. -- J-MJgilhousen 10:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
You may very well be right. I wasn't asking for a revert, simply clarification. I am attempting to at least appear educable. You know, old dogs, etc. -- J-MJgilhousen 10:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Was this an AWB edit? Either way, it's not wise to perform such edits on protected pages, particularly those protected as Office Actions. Chick Bowen 23:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, just saw that you'd posted about this on the talk page first. Even though you got no response from Danny there, I'd still say in future it would be best to avoid such edits. Chick Bowen 23:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, common sense says that it's OK to make the edit, paranoia says don't. WP runs on a bit of both! But PWU was the only article on the whole of WP with an undated tag of that kind, so as the change was non-substantive I went ahead. However it does leave the situation with these Office actions as very unsatisfactory, even if understandable to some extent. RichFarmbrough, 23:17 6 December2006 (GMT).
I understand what you mean about paranoia, but my thinking is that the best way to avoid debate about what counts as a substantive edit is not to edit them at all. Yes, I agree that the whole situation is unsatisfactory, but there seems to be an agreement (one that Danny has enforced rather strenuously) that WP:Office is the only policy to which IAR doesn't apply. I meant my comment originally solely as advice, though, take it or leave it. Chick Bowen 23:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, be careful with these. Some use "date=" and some use {{{1}}} and some are undated. While it would proabably be good to make them all "date=" it would need to be planned carefully. Your recent changes to Template:Unreferencedsect threw hundreds of articles out of their dated categories. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 14:58 7 December2006 (GMT).
Ok. Thanks for catching that. Are named parameters generally favored over ordinal ones? While it is a bit more work for the user, named parameters will allow for easier modification to the template (an important thing in a wiki), and don't cause problems with meta-templates which take multiple parameters, like {{tlx}} and {{tlrow}}. Hmm. -- PatrickFisher 15:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
The answer is, as usual, "it depends". But with these cleanup templates a number of bots add the date parameter, so the extra work is negligable. And having the bots do it means you don't get things like "Devember" as I typed earlier today, or more subtley "december"- lower case "d". Also if you add a named parameter to a template and it is unused, it doesn't matter, as you hint above. RichFarmbrough, 15:17 7 December2006 (GMT).
Hi, I didn't tag it, merely dated the tag. However Ihave attempted to cleanup links, dates, capitalisation etc. Have a look. RichFarmbrough, 21:40 8 December2006 (GMT).
Thx, best greetings, Bye Paris75000 21:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Doing something about the ridiculous date autoformatting/linking mess
Dear Rich—you may be interested in putting your name to, or at least commenting on this new push to get the developers to create a parallel syntax that separates autoformatting and linking functions. IMV, it would go a long way towards fixing the untidy blueing of trivial chronological items, and would probably calm the nastiness between the anti- and pro-linking factions in the project. The proposal is to retain the existing function, to reduce the risk of objection from pro-linkers. Tony 14:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I see that SmackBot is currently changing {{linkless-date}} to {{orphan}}. Given that Template:Orphan redirects to Template:Linkless, wouldn't it be more consistent to change it to {{linkless}}?
Yours for nitty-gritty details.... --Alvestrand 19:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Would be nice to be consistent. Where should the debate be held? --Alvestrand 21:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Rich, it is probably unfortunate for u sometimes looking like someone who knows wiki procedure, but here's a query. (It may be outside yr ambit, but who to ask?) I made a very dumb edit referring to Russian "looting" of the BMW factory, (what was i thinking? aaaargh!), in a Cossack motorcycle article in the early hours one night. Because of my involvement, I'm a bit close to it to be safe talking to this guy that has made this post on the MotorcyclingProject discussion page. (IP address only). Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Motorcycling#Vandalism by POV and misinformation I do not want to do the wrong thing here. Seasalt 13:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Do you have any advice on dealing with this? Is this sort of post permitted? Seasalt 13:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, you could take it as a personal attack, or lack of [{WP:AGF]]. Or, if you can manage it, leave it alone. As an uninvolved party assuming good faith, it is clear to me from that talk page that your intentions were honorable, and that the IP has overreacted a bit, and not quite managed to calm down. Bottom line, the article is fixed, no-one is likely to think the worse of you (apart from the anon, possibly, whcih you can't do much about), forget it and move on. RichFarmbrough, 14:01 8 December2006 (GMT).
Special:Contributions/203.206.103.188 has now registered as Special:Contributions/M-72 and has continued his argument. He looks like a stayer. There are no admins or third parties who limit this? He seems to have good Russian motorcycle knowledge, looking at his posts so far, but WP:AGF does not seem to register. You will possibly be exasperated with me for asking, but if he is going to persist it is going to be very difficult. Seasalt 13:15, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you Rich. Just seeing a couple of posts made me feel better anyway. If I am lucky, he will read the Five Pillars, and ease up. Much appreciated. Seasalt 11:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Rest
Have a rest
The Xing aknowledges your hard work, and offers you a rest in his garden.
Personal attacks have no place on Wikipedia, and you will get blocked in short order if you persist with them. Rich Farmbrough, 20:13 10 December 2006 (GMT).
I believe, by showing up in my talk page, you are referring to NetSnipe's remarks to me of 'fucking care' and 'you are paranoid', right? And if not, why not? 81.131.101.50 20:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
ISBN vs. AWP
Hi Rich, I'm a relative new player who has a high interest in authors, book cataloging, ISBN tracking and such. I happened to go by the Margaret Truman page a bit ago and noticed that the ISBN groups on her page were messed up. I have researched and installed the ISBN data onto a number of author pages and living with a retired librarian I think I have a pretty good understanding of this system. In looking at the history on the Truman page I saw that you had done some formatting of the ISBN's using AWP. I just looked at the page on AP and just briefly reviewed it. I also have a copy of the work that I did on that page originally. My first (and only, at this point) is that AWP doesn't like ISBN. It has misaligned the ISBN structure on the Truman page. Please review the ISBN page on Wiki. Currently there is a 10 digit layout consisting of the following: X-XXX-XXXXX-X In 2007 it expands to 13 digits of X-XXX-XXXXXXXX-X. Both systems use a 4 block group. The main change is the expansion of the third block. I don't understand what AWP did but in some cases it changed the size of the 2nd data block and even eliminated the dashes. The main problem that I see is that the publishing industry has jumped the gun and started putting the 13 digit assignments in their new books but their structure is all over the spectrum and one publisher even created a five block data structure. For the time being, I would recommend taking a "wait and see" approach. You cannot rely on LoC (Library of Congress) since they use a straight number string with no dashes. The Wiki standard for ISBN states that a post-2007 ISBN might be four OR five data blocks. Additionally, there is no requirement for a publisher to assign an ISBN to a book or display it, HOWEVER, Bookstoreswill only deal with books bearing an ISBN. Isn't that just precious? And then there is the EAN barcode. I will re-correct the Truman page but I thought I'd let you know about this issue. Have a great day. 66.242.209.79 22:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello Rich and Ekotkie. I disagree with User:Ekotkie's recent changes to Margaret Truman, and I'm concerned he believes the publisher code is always 3 digits long. I replied at more length on his talk page [82]. EdJohnston 20:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry
Sorry, I realized too late that I wasn't logged on for my last msg.
Ekotkie 22:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
date-links
Rich—I agree entirely with your comments in their own frame, but I'm very concerned that adding any detail beyond the current minimalist approach will sink the push with the developers. I even hope that they don't get back to us and ask for input on these, because that will invite a huge debate on their patch, and possibly capsize the request.
This is a fear that I've acquired from reading the previous attempt at Bugzilla, and from comments by MattWrigth et al. Keeping it minimalist also, in a way, empowers the developers, which is my strategy. Make it easy for them and make them feel in control.
Since whatever change they make should be relatively easy for them, technically, my strategy would be to go with it and make another request for improving the functionality down the track, when people have seen that "hey, it can be changed; it can be better". Further changes won't mean undoing much, I'm thinking.
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Greeting, fellow bot operator
I see that you are listed as a fellow bot operator. I have been regorganising the wikipedia bot help pages to try and provide more information for those who want to learn how to create a bot or have quesitons relating to how to run a bot on wikipedia (more nuts-and-bolts than the existing policy page, which deals with what you are allowed to do, not how you would go about doing it). I've made a start at Wikipedia:Creating_a_bot but could do with any feedback at all. I could do with any programming-language specific information that you can provide as well as any suggestions for improving the article. I'm leaving this same message with 5 other bot operators, to encourage them to pass on the knowledge we have learned developing our bots to the "next generation" of wikipedia bot-builders! Cheers - PocklingtonDan 15:22, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Glad you liked the look of PockBot. Unfortunately, it seems someone might have blocked it at the moment, its having difficulty writing its results to wikipedia despite its code remaining unchanged. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PocklingtonDan (talk • contribs) 17:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC).
bug in PocKleanBot
It shouldn't have written more than once. Dammit, a bug. Please feel free to block until I can fix this. - PocklingtonDan 19:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
No hurry for this
You might like to consider replacing:
"You should use this section to discuss possible resolution of the problem and achieve consensus for action. Only when there is a consensus that the article is now cleaned up should you then de-list it by deleting the cleanup tag from the article, this causes the article to drop off the monthly cleanup-needed list page."
with:
"You can use this section to discuss possible resolution of the problem and achieve consensus for action. When there is a consensus that the article is cleaned up please remove the cleanup tag from the article."
Main reason, asking and offering instead of instructing, some wpians are very sensitive... Also no need to explain what the tag does, they probably either understand in a broad way, or don't care about the details. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 20:01 12 December2006 (GMT).
Thanks, done now. I have also found and fixed the bug that made it able to write twice tot he same user's tlak page, it was due to an earlier change when I went from pringting the templates to subst:ing them - PocklingtonDan 20:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Mainly to check and get rid of obscenities (or tell me if they are part of an article) plus signature grafiti ;eqokgnw;evn type. --BozMotalk 18:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
OK thanks. I was given a bad steer then! --BozMotalk 21:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
References
Or more strictly references. There is a system that means the references (footnotes, whatever) can be entered in the text body, and show up together where <references /> is entered. So to edit the references just edit the whole article if it's short. Or clcik on the ^ next to the ref in question, whcih will take you to the place it occurs in the article. There is another system where the text is at the end, but it's used less now. RichFarmbrough, 19:40 13 December2006 (GMT).
Hi Rich, I dabbled a bit tonight with that ^ business and it worked like a dream. Wish I had known that earlier as I would have wiped out a few more faulty ISBN's I am puzzled a bit by the fact that in some cases, doing a full page edit doesn't always give you the data for reference items. I will stick with this other way when I need it. Thanks for the tip. BTW, did you use a bot to run that ISBN check in the first place? Did it install those "too long/too short templates? Nice touch. Going cross-eyed doing on-screen hunts for those templates. Lots of work ahead.Ekotkie 07:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi Ed, yes I used my bot account User:SmackBot. I started out removing ":" from "ISBN:" and it snowballed. I've just improved the regular expressions to label checksum errors, so I'm doing another run. (Previously I could only label the article as a whole.) I'm considering migrating ISBNs to 13 digits, but I know there would be a lot of disagreement about such a move. RichFarmbrough, 09:23 14 December2006 (GMT).
Update on previous findings about published-invalid ISBNs
Hello Rich. I felt that your Talk page deserved to have the latest info about published-invalid ISBNs. Rather than make edits to your archive page for 5 Sept 2006, here are some previous items, copied over and updated with new info.
2-10-4. Jack Farrell, 'North American Steam Locomotives: the Berkshire and Texas Types'. The ISBN originally given in WP was 91-571-3151-2, which is invalid. It seems most likely to be a copying error, rather than published invalid. (Can't be sure without seeing a physical copy of the book). I updated the WP article with the correct ISBN, 0-915713-15-2.
A Certain Woman, by Areo Takishima, published 1978. Now marked in WP as 'No ISBN available'. Originally published with ISBN 0680082377, which is invalid. The Library of Congress still has it entered under the bad ISBN and even finds it by that number using an ISBN search.
I'saka language lists 'I'saka grammar' by Mark Donohoe and Lila San Roque, published in 2004. Now marked as 'No ISBN available'. WP originally gave the ISBN 0-85883-554-4, which is invalid. No replacement for the bad ISBN is currently available. LOC lists the book in its catalog, but does not given an ISBN for it, and MARC offset 020 is an empty field.
Ahmad al-Alawi lists a book by Johan Cartigny, 'Cheikh Al Alawi. Documents et temoignages.' Listed in the Univ of Michigan catalog with ISBN 0290529021, which is invalid. Now marked as 'No ISBN available'.
Ajahn Sobin S. Namto lists a book called 'Insight meditation: practical steps to ultimate truth'. The WP editor who created the page says ISBN 947-8357-85-6 is printed in the book, which is invalid. Now marked as 'No ISBN available'. Comment left in Talk page.
Rose: A color of darkness, by Amon Liner. Published with the invalid ISBN 0-932112-09-2 printed in the book. Since then it has been re-issued with a valid ISBN, namely 0-932112-09-9. The WP article has been updated with the new number.
A Google search for the phrase 'Cancelled ISBN' also comes up with this hit: [83], which cites the book Andrew Wilton, 'Journey through the Alps', with 'cancelled ISBN' 3856347756. This book is found in the LOC but with no ISBN listed.
I had previously surmised that the Library of Congress was actually attempting to track good and bad ISBNs for the same book, using the terminology 'cancelled ISBN', but the records I have kept are not good enough to document any actual cases. Certainly the LOC do not seem to filter out bad ISBNs when you search, and in some cases they still deliver book records under their original bad ISBN, which is something that booksinprint.com and abebooks.com admirably refuse to do. Those libraries and services that overtly flag bad ISBNs are truly the most customer-friendly long-term, because not knowing you have a bad ISBN is just storing up trouble for the future. Unfortunately worldcat.org won't flag a bad ISBN and just tells you the book is not found. You still need to use isbn.org/converterpub.asp in case of doubt. EdJohnston 03:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
This is a trivial edit to delay Werdnabot's archiving of the bad ISBNs from your Talk page for a few more days! I suppose I could go ahead and start maintaining my own list of bad ISBNs as a sub-page, or even put it in Wikipedia space. EdJohnston 18:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for finding a good place for the info! EdJohnston 16:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
ISBN page
Do you mind if I go through your list of duff ISBNs and strike out/delete those which have already been done?
I was proposing in the first place to split it into more manageable sections.
If you're intending to update it any time soon, would it be better if I waited for you?
TIA HAND —Phil | Talk 17:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Go for it, but not if it's too much work, the new run will identify bad checksums in the article. RichFarmbrough, 19:59 14 December2006 (GMT).
Extra job for Smackbot
Apropos of the above, I notice that Smackbot has been doing a sterling job formatting ISBNs with proper hyphenation.
However, I don't think the poor dear is noticing a rather annoying (and to me rather disturbing) bodge which seems to have sprouted up.
There is at least one user who seems to think that [[Special:Booksources/0441008534|ISBN 0-441-00853-4]] is better than simply ISBN 0-441-00853-4 , and Smackbot doesn't seem to notice this.
I have checked with Tim Starling who seems to think there is no danger of the magic word ceasing to work any time soon.
I was wondering whether Smackbot could be persuaded to remove the annoying extra layer of crud as part of its work?
In the meantime, would you be amenable to sharing the AWB specs you are using for the ISBN stuff, which look to be pretty awesome.
TIA HAND —Phil | Talk 17:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Rich, do you think User:Shantavira's suggestion might have some merit? (from [84]). The invalid ISBNs might simply be deleted, with an appropriate comment. We could try that out, for a sample of 20 bad ISBNs from the list, and see if the regular editors are moved to do something reasonable in response? There is a hidden benefit, that bad ISBNs are probably more common in less-used references that may not be all that important in Wikipedia. Of course, data is needed to prove this is wise. What do you think? EdJohnston 22:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot has tagged a couple of ISBN's in articles on my watchlist in the last few hours which appear to be valid. See Robert Muldoon and Moeraki. I can find these books in the National Library of New Zealand (via Special:Booksources) and in other New Zealand libraries using this ISBN. Is it possible that not all ISBN's adhere to the checksum rules that SmackBot is using?-gadfium 00:52, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
FBP has (had) 4 sections all referring to other technologies which all have articles in Wikipedia, e.g. Jackson Structured Programming (JSP). I had titled each section with an article reference. SmackBot removed the square brackets, so now I have to change the wording a bit to work the article references back in, e.g. change "This methodology" to "The Jackson Structured Programming methodology". a) This seems unnecessary, although I don't mind doing it if it is really necessary, but b) People don't really like me making changes to this article as I am the inventor, so there is a risk of WP:COI, etc. Do you have recommendations? Thanks. Jpaulm 03:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
The best way is probably to use the {{main}} template instead of putting links in the section header: see Flow-based programming now. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:01, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, everyone! That's very pretty! I wasn't aware of the {{main}} template. Thanks for your help! Jpaulm 15:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
technical request
Rich—Thanks for your support on this matter, which means a lot from someone who's way up there in that list of who's done the most edits. I agree with your concerns about date-ranges and the blessed comma, but let's see if we can KISS (keep it simple, stupid) for the moment. We may be in a better possition to lobby for further changes subsequently. Tony 03:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
A recent edit by SmackBot was just to insert a single space between the interwiki language links and a stub tag (and nothing else). If you can, please change the bot's behavior so that it doesn't make such trivial edits. Thanks, Lunch 02:47, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, this shouldn't have happened, and I will try not to let it happen again. RichFarmbrough, 08:24 15 December2006 (GMT).
Okey dokey. No problem. Lunch 16:48, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I noticed there were some ratios, but the reason I put the info there was that the place I moved it from was redirected there, with the old article left in place. Generally this represents an unfinished merge, and it is important under GFDL to attribute work. If this wasn't merged into the FA article, and is of no use elsewhere (unless it was copied there) then remove it from the talk page by all means. RichFarmbrough, 10:09 16 December2006 (GMT).
Rich. I've checked again. Either Amazon are wrong (could it be?) or it is a misprint in the book. Best wishes. Peter I. Vardy 15:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Rich. You're right again! Fascinating. I'm pretty new to Wikipedia and learn a lot every day. Happy Christmas. Peter I. Vardy 22:58, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
ISBN formatting use
Hi Rich Farmbrough. I often come across articles with an edit by your trusty bot which reformats ISBNs, for example, from 0871141027 to 0-87114-102-7:
It appears to make little difference to the WikiMedia magic ISBN keyword. Is there value in reformatting the number? — EncMstr 20:06, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
ISBNs should be thirteen characters long until the end of 2006 - according to the standard: nine digits, three dashes or spaces and one check digit than can be a digit or X. However wiki magic that makes ISBNs linkable will not work with spaces so we have to use the dash or close the characters up. Therefore I remove ":"s between the "ISBN" and the "number", and hyphenate the ISBN according to the rules published by the International ISBN Agency[85]. This means
Wikimagic will now work
The ISBN is correctly formatted
language area and publisher can be told from the ISBN together with other hints.
At the same time I flag any invalid ISBNs, there are currently over 1600 articles in this category. RichFarmbrough, 20:30 16 December2006 (GMT).
You mean *ten* characters long, right? EdJohnston 03:52, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
i notice i've been wasting your bot's time when i can't find the fully formated isbns, that is dashed into language publisher etc. i add them when i can, but often i have to use a library cat that leaves them out. how does smackbot find the full isbns? (can check here for reply) ⇒bsnowball 11:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I was quite entertained by this. Smackbot tried to leave a template on a page, but typo'd the template name: diff. I have fixed this one, but I hope it isn't making more.. Telsa(talk) 20:51, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Luckily that was the only one. Probably me typing. Thanks for letting me know. RichFarmbrough, 22:46 17 December2006 (GMT).
slamming the lack of botbrain
hey Rich - I hope you know I didn't mean you when I called your bot "brainless" (John Lennon edit summary). I was just being grumpy, because it removed some wikilinks ffrom a heading that I had been trying to preserve. But apparently links in headers are frowned on, and if it isn't your bot it'll be some other bot, so I gave up and incorporated the link into the text which, I have to admit, is probably better anyway. I am sure you have a brain. It's the bot's that I was questioning. (Hey, I'm happier if bots don't have brains - that's entirely too scary to contemplate.) No offense taken, I hope, because none was meant. Tvoz 03:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that SmackBot is changing the way the Isbns are listed. Is there a new form? The Isbns I have included in articles are (I thought) properly formatted (see diffs here: [86]
just curious and thanks. Jeffpw 09:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi - I'm trying to work how you write a bot. Would you give me the code for the above bot so I can fiddle? What language is it written in? Triangle e 11:53, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Please use {{schoolblock}} as your reason for blocking school IPs. Do not use "repeated vandalism" as your reason since it only confounds other users on the same IP address and we get a lot of complaints sent to unblock-en-l from confused staff members. I'd appreciate it if you'd undo all your recent blocks and fix the block reason. Thanks. -- Netsnipe ► 14:30, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
You could also take the effort to spellcheck your messages if you're not going to use standard blocking templates such as {{test5}} {{test7}} and {{anonblock}}. This example comes across as a bit unprofessional. -- Netsnipe ► 14:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I hadn't seen anonblock before - I was going to make one, or have standard way of inserting the message. The only problem with anonblock is that it says "currently" disabled - this will become out of date. RichFarmbrough, 15:44 18 December2006 (GMT).
using new nobots template but not opt-in - acceptable?
Thank you for your comments during PocKleanBot's recent bot RFA. I'm (manually! no spamming! :-P ) contacting the bot operators and admins who commented on the bot's RFA to find out what their position would be to running the bot obeying the new nobots template but not using opt-in. Would this be acceptable to you or not? I think the nobots template is a great idea and I wish it had been introduced years ago and was more widespread. The only problem I can see running the bot this way is that there's going to be a whole lot of people out there who haven't heard of the nobots template and a few of those more violently opposed to bots adding a message to their tlak page will doubtless get irate just like last time. I would be interested in hearing your comments. - PocklingtonDan 15:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
OK, she's withdrawn her legal threat, or says she has; wanna unblock her? (I generally don't reverse another admin's actions without consulting.) --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 18:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich! In terms of who else has been fixing the ISBNs, JesseW comes to mind. He also created the useful Template:OCLC, and has recommended worldcat use. Ekotkie has been helping recently, even after we jumped on him for his first ISBN correction. RainbowCrane started helping in late August after your previous ISBN run and did quite a few, but he's not edited since 19 Oct and I'm afraid he may have left WP. Kevin Breitenstein did a lot of ISBN fixes. I may have overlooked other people who also helped. EdJohnston 02:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Likewise; thanks for noticing Rich.! John Vandenberg 03:30, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist. If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list. Ralbot 06:22, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
SmackBot
In one of its ISBN checking sweeps, I see smackbot is putting isbn followed by the corrected number. In some cases where the isbn is in a template this leads repetition of the word isbn, see for example [87]. (It might be easier to fix the template, let me know ;))Tim! 08:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
It would be preferable to change the templates, as it would create consistencey both with normal text and most other templates. I already differentiate between Isbn= and isbn=, which is not ideal - these are all traps for future editors. Will you change the template? Incidentally ISBN magic won't accept spaces (although they are valid delimiters - you can see the reason). RichFarmbrough, 09:31 19 December2006 (GMT).
OK the developers have made a liar of me, ISBN will accept spaces now, I think this will cause "breakage" due to run on (ISBN 1 123 123141 17/12/2006 for example) but is theoretically good. RichFarmbrough, 09:34 19 December2006 (GMT).
About the end of summer
I did some book articles, and the Template:Cite book(edittalklinkshistory) was finicky about taking the dashes (as in wouldn't at all), not to mention the new ISBN13 instead of the soon to be done away with ISBN10. About then, the system software was supposed to start accepting the ISBN13's. Is this an additional update? Are you aware of this template and do you know whether the sub-template for the ISBN within is now taking what I see your talk is filled with comments and questions about. (I ran across an answer you gave here which raised the question.) Thanks -- I'm playing catch up-- had some RL crunch time. // FrankB 08:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, thanks-- I jes knew it wasn't ca. end of summer. Pardon the Brain fart. Up too late I guess--I could and should have just tested it myself. // FrankB 15:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
OH MY! LOL Me thimnks me D&D library is a bit dated--imagine that, being 25+ years old. The sad part, I didn't even see a title I recognize in the template ~;-( Wonder what I can get on ebay taking bids. Nawh! Be worth even more in another 25! // FrankB 15:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
People are collecting now - not so much the mainstream stuff, but 1st ed Deities, original, and some other stuff. I recently sold my diplomacy and chat magazines. RichFarmbrough, 19:00 19 December2006 (GMT).
Marfan Syndrome Article Graffiti Attacks
I have reviewed the history of changes on the Marfan Syndrome article over the past few weeks and have noticed an occasional graffito is written into the article. The vandals perpetrating these attacks usually do it without logging in, thus leaving no contributor trace. I recommend that whenever any of the responsibly acting contributors log in to do some more editing, first look at the most recent edit. If it is an anonymous edit, just revert the article to the previous edit before doing more edits. Leeirons 13:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Curious
Hi Rich, Everytime I feel like I'm making headway on ISBN's, more errors show up....((Sigh)) I have been running across a statement "Calculated check digit (X) doesn't match" In a couple cases, when I find the title and ISBN, they are in agreement with what is already there. My sources are Abebooks. Many times I will plug the ISBN into the "search for" and it will error out but I have had some that don't. This gets a bit time consuming with a number of windows opened up. For the most part if the number checks out I cancel the template and press on. That has only happened 3-4 times. I normally can spot the error. Thoughts?? I am tempted to set those aside. I have also found a couple titles that listed 13 digit ISBN's. I have loaded them in lieu of the 10. I don't know who else may be doing this but I don't want to get cross-wise with a process or future step. Any problems with this??Ekotkie 00:49, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I moved this from your userpage, I figured it was left there by mistake. Cheers KOS | talk 20:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
And my thanks also. I think I was drinking too much coffee and the word "discussion" didn't looked like "User talk". Rich, I can assure you that I only remove templates on those ISBN's that I have corrected. If I can't fix it/find it, I leave it. I was just remarking to myself the other days about how I couldn't seem to get out of the "A's".....haha Abebooks has even been good about finding some of the foreign ones. Some care must be taken since some titles do not appear there exactly as someone has put on a Wiki page. Thanks to many page creators who do leave a good trail of data. It has aided me to a great degree to ensure I am posting even the right version of a book. Rich, the award you have bestowed was way too kind. You need to give one to your Bot. And kindly ask the Bot to slow down a tad......Ekotkie 01:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I assume that this robot tagging has to do with eo
To me was truncated. However I can perhaps partially reply: my bot is not generally tagging articles it is mainly dating existing tags to help with the cleanup effort. If that doesn't answer your partly asked question, please drop the rest of the question off at may talk page. RichFarmbrough, 11:01 20 December2006 (GMT).
Briefly, it's not clear to me what, if anything, needs to be cleaned up in Nomina Anatomica. Btarski 19:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
The bot has flagged an ISBN in a reference in this article as invalid because it only has 9 digits. I took the ISBN from the publication data page of the book, which was published in the UK in 1969. Now it may not be an ISBN at all, as it didn't say that it was, but it certainly looked like one. I see that ISBNs had only begun to be used in the UK a couple of years before, so is it possible that they had not yet acquired the current format? One possiblity is that simply inserting a zero at the start of the number would make it valid, but doing this would be a guess on my part. It might be better simply to delete it. Any thoughts? Thanks. JH 10:46, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
You are right in every important respect. I have added the 0 and removed the tag. It is safe to do this for UK and some US books between about 1968 and 1972, I think. You can test on http://www.isbn-check .com/, or usually find the book on Amazon, Abebooks, Libray of Congress etc. by clicking on the ISBN. Best wishes, RichFarmbrough, 11:09 20 December2006 (GMT).
Thsnks for your help. JH 18:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Arthur M Young
Hi Rich. Strange one. The above was noted for ISBN correction.(understatement, it had 7 ISBN errors) The bot picked on one title, "The Bell Notes", BUT the page author listed three ISBN's for this entry based on reprints. The bot did not select which one was bad. I have only found one of the references in a correct condition. I can re-write that book reference to reflect the correct entry that I found but kind of hate to do that since only one of three is in error. I can only assume that the page author wanted to give as much reference data as possible. I have noticed that the bot does not always list the faulty ISBN in the template. This info is handy as I can compare the new data against a version of the bad data and see if it was merely an issue of a leading or trailing number that got dropped. In cases where it is not given I typically drop my new data into a blank spot so I can compare.(extra steps) Sometimes there is a radical difference between the bad ISBN and the new data I have found. Correctness, of course, is the order of the day.
Is there some way to indicate when a reviewer has looked at an entry and been unable to resolve a solution. I have no idea how many people are looking at the incorrect ISBN listings. It seems like many could be plowing over the same ground. Have a great dayEkotkie 19:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Another example. Arthur Rostron. There is a book listed by author Walter Lord. The book came out in 1955 yet it has an ISBN. Oh, there are reprints of this book that do have ISBN's but the date shouldn't be 1955. EdJohnson recommended using the latest data and I tend to agree but shouldn't that decision come from the page originator? If we follow that idea, we must be assured that a reviewer does, in fact, change/add the date used. There may be something in the 1955 book that didn't get carried through to one that does have an ISBN. Maybe not. I have spent extra time trying to match up dates (where given) with the actual book. Maybe, we should just give the ISBN and also list the associated date.
Rich, the comment location I was hoping for was to put it on the page of CAT INVALID right next to the page title. I don't see how to access that data and am not sure of an appropriate code to put in that area. Putting it in the template will still waste time for folks.Ekotkie 03:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)Oops...I was logged offEkotkie 03:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
It's hard to give a general answer, but A Night to Remember is a popular book that must have sold 50 zillion copies. Also the two articles involved don't have any page references into the book, so it's unlikely they would care if you replace the old ISBN with the number of a current edition. If it was a rare scholarly book, perhaps it would make a difference. EdJohnston 04:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
CAT:INVALID
Due to overwhelming popular demand, there is now a shortcut:
CAT:INVALID -> Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs. Of course you can type 'cat:invalid' for convenience. Since so many people are fixing ISBNs now, they'll want this :-). EdJohnston 19:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
...and many thanks for the tip! Robertissimo 11:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Reference/s
Re.above plural. Thanks for reassuring me that it was contentious, sometime. I created the page only recently (my first) and did read it on a help page somewhere, not MoS, as you rightly point out. Is there somewhere to advise of inconsistency (yet another) in ref/cite/footnote help pages. Or have I just done so!? Note; to my mind singular is correct and latter 'accepted error' but not worried about it. Do hope citing is improved on wiki, I wasted a lot of time chasing my tail on help pages Best wishes for season Fred.e 16:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
ISBN - What are you talking about???
ISBN
Hi, the first ISBN in the "works" section seems invalid. Are you able to check it? Rich
Farmbrough 19:02 20 December 2006 (UTC).
I have no idea what ARTICLE you are talking about? Can you be more specific? --Ludvikus 20:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Corrected as follows:
* Ovladenie vremenem
[ed.] Michael Hagemeister
(Munchen: O. Sager, 1983)
ISBN 3-87690-231-2 (& not ISBN 3-87690-232-1)
I've had a look at the April suggestion that this was a copyvio, and it seems to be true. Can we pass belated thanks back to the person who spotted this? RichFarmbrough, 19:08 21 December2006 (GMT).
Oh boy, that's crazy. I'll see what I can do. I'm not a OTRS person now, so I'll have to contact someone else to do it. -- Zanimum 21:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I note that your BOT keeps changing the format of ISBN numbers for some unknown reason, leaving them in an inconsistent state. Could you please tell me what you think the "Correct" format of an ISBN is? Here is an example:
^ a b Miller, Jerome G. (1991). Last One Over the Wall. Ohio State University Press. ISBN 0-8142-0758-8.
^ a b c d e Johnson, Richard B. (2006). Abominable Firebug. iUniverse. ISBN 0-595-38667-9.
They used to be
0-8142-0758-8
0-5953-8667-0
n-nnnn-nnnn-n
Thanks ---LymanSchool 13:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
If I may interject, you seem to have the mistaken impression that the number of digits between hyphens should be fixed. That is not how the standard works, and for a good reason. A major publisher will need many more numbers for its books than a small publisher. Also, there are more small publishers than large ones. If the standard assigned equal ranges to each, it wouldn't work. So, the publisher with number 595 is a moderately large publisher, and gets a block of 5-digit numbers to distinguish their books; and the publisher with number 8142 is a moderately small publisher, and gets a block of 4-digit numbers. But wait, there's more. That leading "0" indicates an English-language publication, of which there are an enormous number. More general, we have a country code, with small countries that publish few works having a large code number leaving less room for publisher and item numbers.
Our ISBN article explains a little, and links to an official site that explains in detail. If you want to check the hyphenation, feed the digits to one of the on-line ISBN converters. You will find that "0-5953-8667-0" has an erroneous check digit (the final "0" should be a "9"), and that it should be hypenated as "0-595-38667-9". --KSmrqT 12:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
. The ISBN printed on both the cover and the publishing data page of the book is as stated, 0-06-093507-3. I agree that the check digit appears to be 8, but shouldn't the printed number be given? We do not know if the error is in the base number or the check digit.
The listing in Amazon gives the same number as in the book.
Excuse me while I jump in here. I just looked at the title and ISBN for this book and I made two minor corrections. In checking the ISBN in Abebooks I found that this is one of thse things that gets updated. Your listed ISBN is against "edition #14 and was put out in 2001" so I added those two points. Were you aware that there is a 2003 edition out (and maybe more)? I think your ISBN is ok.Ekotkie 03:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
The copy I have is the 2001 edition, which also gives ISSN of 1066-2712.
The problem was actually the other book "The Film Encyclopedia by Ephraim Katz - Published by Collins - ISBN "0-06-074214-0"": Here the ISBN had the check digit from the 13 digit ISBN. I've put the 13 digit one in. RichFarmbrough, 08:11 23 December2006 (GMT).
ISBN hyphens
I noticed that SmackBot put hpyphens into ISBNs on History of rail transport in Great Britain to 1830m which is all well and good. However, I'm intigued as to how they are placed.... four ISBNs were changed from to no hyphens to 0-7153-7603-9, 1-898937-42-7, 0-434-98083-8 and 1-84033-077-5 respectively - four different ways of grouping the digits. Is there any deeper significance to the different ways of grouping? Tompw (talk) 22:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Yep, the second group of numbers represents the publisher, the system is designed for smaller publishers to get longer ID's (later in the numeric range - say beginning with 7,8 or 9), there are more of these (because they are allowed to be longer) but correspondingly less actual numbers - which is OK because they'll publish fewer books. See ISBN for more detail. Really big publishers (Penguin, Oxford, Cambridge) have the ids 00 to 19. RichFarmbrough, 08:15 23 December2006 (GMT).
Oops
Hi Rich, I just edited a bunch of "B's" and I wasn't logged in. Sorry.... I have started leaving (cannot find xxxx) statements in the B section. I hope to go back and do the same in the "A's" I finally caught up with that speedy little bot....Ekotkie 03:07, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Bot run
OK, the run is done. Why don't you consider making a new area of review and start it by moving all the "A's"left on the current invalid file. I have checked and no new "A's" have shown up. I am now into the "B's". Happy holiday Ekotkie 18:42, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh-oh....all of the A's have changed color back to true blue instead of haze blue (If someone has looked at an item) Any idea why that happened? How can we keep track of our progress?
Would you please put the Invalid ISBN Counter on that page just like the one you are using here on your page?Ekotkie 20:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Library of Congress can't find the 13 digit ISBNs
Rich, the Smackbot robot changed the 10 digit ISBNs to 13 digit ISBNs in UK Dispersion Modelling Bureau and in Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering. As a result, one could no longer click on the ISBNs and then look them up in the Library of Congress or other libraries ... whereas one could do that with the 10 digit ISBNs. I don't know how many other articles have had the same change made by the robot. (I reverted the changes made in the above two articles).
That defeats the purpose of including the ISBNs in the book citation template. Please stop the robot from changing to the 13 digit ISBN's until a solution is found to this problem. - mbeychok 18:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd concur with this - ten digit ISBNs don't become magically obsolete in a week, they just become superceded, but most of the resources will still expect ISBN-10s. Leaving aside the touchy issue of retroactively renumbering sources, this really doesn't seem to give us much practical benefit other than looking modern... Shimgray | talk | 19:00, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I've blocked the bot for now as this conversion seems to be registering multiple complaints. Dragons flight 19:36, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm on a hiatus from Wikipedia at the momement, generally due to my belief that we here at WP just have too many edits per second per reviewer, but I am happy about my ISBN/OCLC work, so thanks for the recognition. Your ISBN bot work has been certainly useful, too. JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
Traffic
Hi, I have an idea to increase traffic to Wikipedia significantly. Many people are now using Wikipedia as a search engine. Wikipedia's searching has a snag which needs some good coding. There are perhaps more than 1 million misspelled searches being made every day... how do i know? I don't, it could be much more than one million, you find out. My idea, which has probably been thought of before is to supply a - Did you mean Such as Such? - by matching misspelled words and terms to their most relevant article. At present this is in place suggestion for terminology sorting based on relevancy, but not for misspellings. Please let me know what you think, and if you could assist with proposing it. Thanks. frummer 00:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
no, i think we need to get rid of redirects. There are a few reasons why. About the server load, whose the man to ask on that? About the algorithm, we can talk more about it once we know, there would be a trail period, i think. Another idea is to integrate a dropdown in the search field so as to enable searches in wikicommons, wiktionary etc in two clicks, similar to ie7's. frummer 09:26, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
Homelessness article and possible promotion again ?
Hi Rich. Happy Holidays ! I had a question about an addition by an anonymous editor who has posted the material before and it was taken out due to promotional reasons. The user, User: 71.231.50.116 added a section in the Homelessness article on "Ending Homelessness". It might be a promo for the organisation. Thoughts ? The user has been warned already and the material taken out. User talk:71.231.50.116. Best Wishes and Happy Christmas ! --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 19:24, 24 December 2006 (UTC) (talk)
I've seen several cases where SmackBot found errors in ISBN numbers. In the article it leaves a message "please check ISBN ... too short". For the edit summary, it leaves "ISBN formatting/gen fixes using AWB)". If it is leaving a "please check", I think it would be better to leave a more descriptive edit summary, such as "please check ISBN", so a person will know to look at it. (I fixed a few today.) Bubba73(talk), 23:35, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, well done fixing ISBNs. Good idea about the edit summary, I will think about it before the next run. Thanks. RichFarmbrough, 16:05 27 December2006 (GMT).
ISBNs & 13 digits
Hi, I see your bot has been making lots of ISBN fixes in pages in my watch list - thanks. Will you be able to automatically change them to the 13 digit versions or do I need to start going through & doing them manually? — Rodtalk 21:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rod, yes in principle it can do it. I'm only 90% sure it's a good idea. If you have some articles suitable for testing the principle it would be a good pace to start. RichFarmbrough, 21:47 21 December2006 (GMT).
Why might it not be a good idea - presumably all the library catalogues , booksellers etc will be migrating to the 13 digit version?— Rodtalk 08:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Well the start date was 1/1/2005 and an awful lot don't seem to have done it yet, with 9 days to go. We could do with a proper survey. I quote myself...
It seems most European libraries are not accepting 13 digits yet. Compare:
OK well if none of the other sources are actually implementing it we could probably sensibly leave it for a while - I only asked because I've just sent a new document to the British Library & it had to have the 13 digit ISBN included.— Rodtalk 10:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, that's a good sign anyway. I did have a scheme that would have swapped over at midnight - see {{auto isbn}}. RichFarmbrough, 10:14 22 December2006 (GMT).
I see you've done one (Robert Dunning) on Charterhouse, Somerset but it doesn't work when you click on the ISBN & go to amazon.co.uk (which I tend to use), for other test on pages I've done many of the refs on you could try Chew Valley or Chew Valley Lake, which are both FA or Chew Stoke, Chew Magna, Kennet and Avon Canal and Mendip Hills which are GA status.— Rodtalk 12:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you're right, all the Amazon's fail, Barnes and Noble, Alibris and Abebooks all work. It's very patchy, and many people seem to be waiting to the last minute. (It's also hard to find a good ISBN for testing - anything popular enough to be world-wide seems to be publishe in many languages/fromats.) I've emailed Amazon. It may be possible (but silly in a way) to re-write book sources to coerce 13 digit ISBNs back to 10, if the right parser functions have been introduced. Anyway, I have done a few hundred articles to seed the collective conciousness, I may just let it trickle away (there are 84,000 ISBNy articles). RichFarmbrough, 13:48 23 December2006 (GMT).
Having had some time to think about this more, I'm considering using multiple ISBNs. By providing a 10-digit number we can allow easy entry and verification against what is printed in older books. By providing a 13-digit number we support the new standard. Better still, we support books that have both a hardcover and a softcover edition; these have distinct ISBNs. It's a little cumbersome, but maybe it's worth it. --KSmrqT 12:58, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
On the Chew Valley artcile I've tested "Ekwall, Eilert (1928). English River-Names. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-869119-8" & it fails on both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. The one I had to send to the BL had a different final digit in the 13 digit version as well as the initial 3 added ie 1-86043-399-5 becomes 978-1-86043-399-3 this may be complicating the additions?— Rodtalk 14:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I had heard that a new 13-digit ISBN numbers were being introduced, and it's nice that Amazon now supports this new format, but is it really necessary for us to convert all of our existing references that have 10-digit ISBN numbers to 13-digit codes? None of the books I own have 13-digit ISBN numbers, so I'm in favor of leaving those references the way they are. You don't really expect us to convert all of the 10-digit codes, do you? If so, checking for mistakes is going to become that much more tedious. In my opinion, it would be better to do something else, like simply changing the labels for the old codes from "ISBN" to "ISBN-10" instead. --Jwinius 21:15, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I hope you have consulted widely about this. Old ISBN contain errors and you risk introducing new ones, severing references to obscure citations, that may remain unnoticed. If your advice from librarians (not singular), reseachers, booksellers, et al condones your approach, I will say no more. Your chastising categorising could do with improvement too. Do you focus on what you like, not what you hate on Wikipaedia? A new user, Fred 14:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello Rich! Great bot you're running, but I noticed SmackBot making a couple minor errors [88], [89]. See here for a few more. Hope you can figure out what went wrong! Cheers, Dar-Ape 16:32, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Dear Mr Farmborough, Can you please give an explanation to:
... appropriate MoS. I come down on the plural, while I am against computers making number mistakes in onter contrexts, I prefer the consistancy. I also run ...
if there is one. Should I check my 'References library'? Toodles, Fred 16:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I was looking through the edit history of an article, and noticed that there's an error in the edit summary: Replace deprecated tmeplate using AWB. As you can proably see by now, template is spelled wrong in the edit summary. Can this be fixed? --GVOLTT 06:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
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Reference and ISBN
No doubt you are working your way through after your wikibreak, thanks for quick reply.
I will sleep on all this, but the end user, the reader, reads the first category of the 'better than start' article as containing wrong information. And it does not.
See the LISWA site previously forwarded.
But you are attempting to communicate with editors, I presume, in effect, 'There is a mistake here.' Otherwise you would simply remove it. Please remove cat
if you haven't already. George Temple-PooleFred 15:47, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I appreciate your intelligent hardwork n sincerity.No one can doubt your intentions , yet I must say you are unnecessarily making edits and unnecessarily making unrequired comments on Thakur Sher Singh Parmar page.Stop it, please.
Amita karpe 14:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
This page has been blocked due to edit war by Indian contributors rewriting Pakistani history from Indian perspective. It has been blocked for too long. I would like to request that this page be unblocked.
Siddiqui 17:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Could you lend an answer to my question on this talk page Wikipedia_talk:List_of_pages_with_Invalid_ISBNs
and/or clarify the reason why we have both a list and an category of invalid ISBNs? I've spent a fair amount of time recently cleaning up some ISBNs, and intend to do more as I'm able. I just don't want to do it 'wrong.' Thanks! Keesiewonder 20:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Excellent; it is not a trouble for me to remove them once I fix them. Perhaps you can also weigh in on my issue here: Talk:Zeynelabidin_Zinar. I'd like to just replace the ISBN with the OCLC, but would appreciate a second opinion. Thanks! Keesiewonder 21:09, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, hope you don't mind but I fixed a few of the identified ISBNs by looking them up at the National Library of Australia catalogue, and one at the equivalent Finnish catalogue. Usually it was one digit mistranscribed, or two transposed, that was causing the problem. Orderinchaos78 21:05, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your recent ISBN fixes. Your repaired versions looked OK to me. EdJohnston 22:15, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Tantiusques
Noting you made some minor edits to my Tantiusques article got me thinking about what a largely unnoticed and thankless task those sorts of edits are. Converting to metric, and vice versa, is a task I admit I've usually shirked. Therefore, this is a note to say "thanks". Happy New Year. ◄HouseOfScandal► 21:22, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
don't take it to heart
Don't take it to heart.I was merely trying to cross check if the mail system works or not by writing to you.I 'm convinced it works ,as I received reply from you.I did not mean it seriously.I had picked up your address randomly, as it didn't look indian.Rest assured I am sticking to my chosen identity.
Amita karpe 13:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
A few months ago, you voted to keep the article because the website had established itself as a notable reviews outlet. If you could please reiterate this vote in the new process, I would be much indebted. Infomanager 21:33, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you! As I asked the other administrator, if you have any suggestions on how to make clearer the notability or focus of the website, I would be extremely thankful! Infomanager 21:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Just a friendly reminder that canvassing is highly controversial and strongly discouraged on Wikipedia. As such, I would encourage you to be careful when participating in debates to which you have been individually invited. Thanks! --Alan Au 09:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
On 16 December SmackBot fixed ISBN formatting on the references in the K'daai article, which was great. But it also added a wikify tag. I would like a little instruction here. What needs to be done to wikify the K'daai article? Or is it just a vagary of SmackBot? --Bejnar 19:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
It is a feature of WP:AWB to tag articles with wikify or uncategorised. The wikify tag is based I believe on the number of wiki-links in the article. If it seems inappropriate, by all means remove it. RichFarmbrough, 20:56 31 December2006 (GMT).
Unresolvable ISBNs
While I am here, occasionally SmackBot notes a check digit failure in an ISBN. Most of the time, it was my typo, or a leading zero was removed; however occasionally when I check WorldCat for the ISBN it comes back with the same invalid one. My guess is that the original cataloger made the error, and everyone since has copied it. Should I leave the bad ISBNs or should I delete them? --Bejnar 19:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Worth chatting with other ISBN hunters (User:EdJohnston comes to mind), I don't have a very strong feeling one way or the other. If you leave it, I would suggest leaving the template, and possibly putting in an HTML comment.
Ah ... it's not too, too lonely! I am glad the Cs that you're through with are still tagged, though. I found one that had given you difficulty. Carl Schuch. I have some Os that I'm working on, and will then pass through these Cs. We'll get it done! Keesiewonder 00:11, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I recognize I am a relative newcomer to WP and to fixing ISBNs. (i.e. please don't bite the newcomers; I'll try to not bite the elders.) However, I have to say I do not particularly like the tendency to insert "cannot locate" after ISBNs that are tagged as being in error. Please see Anatoly Zverev for an example. I trust there is a way to insert this text so it does not appear as part of the article for the basic reader (as opposed to the ISBN hunters/fixers); I think I've already done this myself sometime in the last several weeks. Plus, for those that truly, truly truly cannot be found with a valid ISBN, there are at least three other numbers that can be used and linked to (OCLC, LCCN, ASIN). Please note more times than not, I am finding I am able to find a valid ISBN, though: see
this for an example.
I am content that the "cannot locate" items appear to remain tagged as having an invalid ISBN, and am of the type that will come along and relatively quietly really clean them up rather than leave them 97% finished. I certainly am not as fast as other folks at fixing these, so maybe such a work flow, even with the unprofessional looking (to me, anyway) "cannot locate" is perfectly fine. Just thought I'd share my observation on this ... Thanks for your time. And please move this elsewhere if you find it appropriate. Kind Regards, Keesiewonder 13:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. Please see my talk page as I've asked an additional thing there ... Keesiewonder 13:23, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Happy New Year to you too! :-) ... Just one more thing: what is "these" in "these are all cut and paste from articles?" Keesiewonder 13:46, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok; I think I'm on the same page as you now. I must have asked my original question in a thread from another day poorly. I was wondering whether it would be a good idea to store the invalid and/or canceled ISBNs on article talk pages, especially when changing a SmackBot identified ISBN in error to an OCLC. I like the idea of keeping the "bad" ISBN around, but do not want it to get flagged by SmackBot if I store it on an article's talk page for safe keeping. It sounds like you are saying that article talk pages are not processed, so I could optionally store said "bad" ISBNs there w/o triggering SmackBot. I was not (yet) (intentionally) asking about ISBNs flagged on user talk pages ... but, when I am perplexed by this, I will hopefully remember what you've told me today. Regards, Keesiewonder 14:05, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I have just finished removing all (cannot find) tags from CAT:INVALID pages, A,B,C,D, and that small part of E that I have just started working on. Those were the only ones I worked on. Any use of a tag that I used was to note the absence of a correct ISBN was only intended to flag this error to a user who was looking for a particular reference and might attempt to use one that was in error. It was not to cause heartburn as to the quality of the pages product or the author of the page. I seriously doubt that a typical user will go into edit mode to verify the accuracy of an ISBN, thus, I elevated the comment to the visible area for all to see. This was intended to be a short term solution and would allow others to use additional resources to find and correct the defective ISBN. I am currently using 6 different tools to search out ISBN's. In all honesty I feel the best answer, at this juncture is to just eliminate the errant ISBN and press on. There are over 2000 ISBN that need to be resolved. Let the user seek out his/her own ISBN, if one is even needed. I would rather give the readership an accurate title and author's name then to give them a bogus ISBN.Ekotkie 06:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Sounds fine ... I feel we're all essentially saying the same thing albeit in slightly different ways. Keesiewonder 11:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree, I won't lose sleep over removal of incorrect ISBNs, or their being left in the "do later" pile. RichFarmbrough, 12:06 3 January2007 (GMT).
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ASIN template and the A-list
Thanks for the ASIN template. I don't really like ASINs either, and can stop using them if you wish. I like to have it available as a compromise if others dislike removal of a 'bad' ISBN. I have feelers out regarding Argentine rock on the outstanding A list since I was not able to quickly solve it myself. Regards, Keesiewonder 13:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich! This is the first I've heard of an ASIN template, but since it seems to have been created, would you consider adding a comment about it over on Category talk:Articles with invalid ISBNs? It could help out with difficult books which have no known valid ISBN but can be found in Amazon. EdJohnston 23:47, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Ed, I am not sure that ASINs are necessary for books. I have found that for most cases, an OCLC was readily found. Note: User:Shimgray/ASIN So far I have only found one book that I could only find an ASIN for ([90]), and in that case, only a http://amazon.fr link displayed the book, making the {{ASIN}} template useless. However if an ASIN is all that someone has, I'm all for them using the {{ASIN}} template so it helps others find the OCLC.
Thanks for your input on this topic. If I'm interpreting you incorrectly at [91], please let me know. I'd rather have the dates all wikilinked if that is current policy since, I assume, doing so would help bring an article just one tiny step closer to FA status. Keesiewonder 10:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Admin (again)
Perhaps it's time now for it? or what do you say? →AzaToth 16:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Info on the ISBN-fixing activity now on my user page
Hello Rich. Take a look at the new version of my user page where I tried to summarize the ISBN-fixing activity. Let me know if I missed out on some useful bit of advice for newcomers. So far, there has not been a real project for this work, but it wouldn't hurt if the effort looked a bit respectable, since our changes are sometimes questioned by people who don't know what it's about or why we're doing it. The 'members' of the project are simply the set of people who have been fixing ISBNs lately, using either the list or the category. Please comment if you can think of anything to add. EdJohnston 23:40, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Albert Fish
Come back and check the article. I rewrote a lot based on primary sources, and the secondary contemporary reports in the New York Times. Most of the previous article had sensational material from the tabloids of the time, based on speculation, and his own delusional testimony. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 09:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Delinking years
In your recent edit to Little Britain you delinked a number of years. I'm interested in your reasoning here. The Manual of Style indicates that there is no consensus when it comes to the linking of bare years. Is there a reason beyond personal preference that you delinked these? Chovain 02:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, actually there is consensus to "make only links useful in context" the spectrum of disagreement is about what constitutes "useful in context", and even here there is general agreement that there are too many linked years. In this article the links to 2001, 2003 and 2006 are of little or no use, even links to 2003 in television would be of limited use, as it does not mention the show, nor really provide a context. RichFarmbrough, 11:47 7 January2007 (GMT).
Your change of "truely" -> "truly" in Chess was a bad edit. Quotes must retain the original spelling even if anachronistic. 24.177.112.146 07:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Another editor has added the "{{prod}}" template to the article Queen Elizabeth Elementary School (New Westminster), suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the editor doesn't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and has explained why in the article (see also Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Notability). Please either work to improve the article if the topic is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia or discuss the relevant issues at its talk page. If you remove the {{prod}} template, the article will not be deleted, but note that it may still be sent to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. --Eastmain 20:31, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Vis-à-vis has also been proposed for deletion. NickelShoe (Talk) 01:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
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JS
Nope :-( - My JS still doesn't work correctly either even with Deskana's change undone - perhaps the devs have changed something? thanks/Fenton, MatthewLexic Dark52278 Alpha 771 11:19, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Hello Rich! The List that you generated on 22 Aug 06 is dwindling fast, under the onslaught of the new army of ISBN-fixers. It's down to less than 200 entries, while about 2066 pages are still known to have problems (via the Category). Since the List has become so popular, is there any chance you could generate a new one? I understand it has to be made via an off-line operation that only you know how to do. EdJohnston 23:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Ed, there's not much point re-generating it as it stood, because it's checksum problems only. The early version scanned a databse dump for checksum problems to create a list of articles, and then (if you remember) SmackBot simply added a category to the article, the editor then had to guess which ISBN had a checksum problem - or use the list. The current version is run against every aricle with "ISBN" in it, about 84,000 at the last count, and labels the individual problem ISBNs, so the category should be sufficient. The only advantage to the list is that you can spot when an ISBN error is common to a bunch of articles. Perhaps I'll consider createing a list for this purpose when the next database dump is done, sorted by ISBN no. RichFarmbrough, 23:51 9 January2007 (GMT).
A list of common mistakes (i.e. only invalid ISBNs having more than one occurrence) grouped by invalid ISBN would be great, as tackling those would have the greatest effect.
As an aside, the reason why I started tackling the list was so that it could be removed, to make it simpler to explain where the army should focus their efforts. The problem with the list is that entries become stale (at the moment about a third of the problems have been fixed already). These stale entries still need to be re-checked, as I've found cases where people remove the tag or remove the invalid ISBN. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jayvdb (talk • contribs) 01:13, 10 January 2007 (UTC).
Trammel points
smackbot is a smart bot. How did he get programmed? --Johnalden 01:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. He is usually using AWB, for these changes he replaces a suprisingly large number of variants of about eight basic templates with a canonical version, plus date parameters based on WP:Magic Words. He also makes some of the changes that are programmed into AWB as "general changes". The way the templates are written means that undated copes of the templates put the articels into categories where they can be easily recognised. RichFarmbrough, 09:50 10 January2007 (GMT).
Gmail chat
Oh, you don't have to install the standalone version. If you activate it in your Gmail account, when ever Gmail is open the chat is open without installing the useless standalone version. Sorry, I should have made it clear, let me see if it shows you online. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk • contribs) 16:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC).
OK, I understand! I use Gmail as my POP client, since it has the largest capacity and the messages are stored on a server, I dont use a PC based mail reader anymore.
Template:Copyedit now includes a date parameter. Would you mind running SmackBot on articles tagged with {{copyedit}} as well? Thanks so much! Gzkn 05:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Also, just letting you know that the date parameter works like {{copyedit|date=January 2007}} not {{copyedit|January 2007}}. Gzkn 06:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks so much! A date parameter to {{expand}} and {{verify}} would be good as well. I'm not sure how much it would add to {{fact}} though...and I'm not sure how to display the date either...it would be pretty ugly. However, I'm not an administrator, and all three of those templates are fully protected. So, unfortunately, I can't add the date param. Gzkn 01:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Albert Fish
Hello, yes Albert Fish got much better, I read about 15 articles in the New York Times plus the crime library. All other web sites cited had exaggerated claims and, made up quotes. He admitted two killings and was a suspect in a few others, but not the hundreds originally cited. I also think his letter and the confession provide the best information. Do you have Gmail yet? The New York Times archive is great, I was just reading Orville Wright's obituary today. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 15:27, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Did you activate Gmail chat yet? Its very handy for quick communication and to see if other Wikipedians are online. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 15:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Looks like we both spoke too soon about Albert Fish, someone just added lots of material from the sensational book.
Keep an eye on the Fish story for me, a third opinion is the best way to avoid an edit war. I just want to make sure everything is attributed and that the sensation claims that aren't part of trial, or press coverage are attributes to an author in the test.
Avoid: Fish killed over 100 children.
Better: Fish told his psychiatrist that he had killed over 100 children.
Avoid: Fish was the 'Brooklyn Vampire'.
Better: Detective King believed Fish to be responsible for the killings of several children in New York that were never solved.
I also linked to another serial killer that was sentenced death that had the same MO as Fish, he came up as a suspect in the killings before Fish was caught. Cheers.
If you want to read any of the Fish stories from the NYT let me know, I have them all downloaded already. Just check the bibliography.
Hey, thanks so much for supporting my recent RFA. A number of editors considered that I wasn't ready for the mop yet and unfortunately the RFA did not succeed (69/26/11). There are a number of areas which I will be working on (including changing my username) in the next few months in order to allay the fears of those who opposed my election to administrator.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you sincerely for your support over the past week. I've been blown away by the level of interest taken in my RFA and appreciate the time and energy dedicated by all the editors who have contributed to it, support, oppose and neutral alike. I hope to bump into you again soon and look forward to serving you and Wikipedia in any way I can. Cheers! The Rambling Man 19:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC) (the non-admin, formerly known as Budgiekiller)
To receive a support from a WP legend such as yourself makes me proud to be part of the project. Thanks again. The Rambling Man 19:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Dated Templates
Can you elaborate in longhand. I am not sure I understand what you said. Otherwise send me to a page somewhere with the appropriate detail. TonyTheTiger 20:43, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
HoC
Thanks. I was wondering what you were talking about until I realized that that was one of my subpages. I wanted to know the countries of our top editors. How did you come across it? -- Earl Andrew - talk 03:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
A request for assistance
Would you support the concept of moving the Earhart "myths" to a separate page or article? The reason for my suggesting this is that the main article should be an accurate and scholarly work while the speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart are interesting, they belong in a unique section. Most researchers, as you know, discount the many theories and speculation that has arisen in the years following her last flight. Go onto the Earhart discussion page and register your vote/comments...and a Happy New Year to you as well. Bzuk 02:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC).
Winter of 1976-1977
Hey, since you are an admin who visited this page, Winter of 1976-1977, I thought I would ask your advice. I am a relatively newer Wikipedian. Do you think it is time to tag this page with AfD or should we give it more time? It seems to be a topic that not much is available on, and a fairly local perspective as well. Thanks! Fundamentaldan 21:01, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Judgement
Hey Ed K, there is no team leader! Just use your best judgment. EdJohnston 04:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I treat folks with admin privileges as "folks in charge" or at the least, experienced "go-to" folks. Besides, I seemed to offend some when I decided to leave my comments visible to all. I truly consider Wiki to be a great "Work in Progress" and nothing that folks should be ashamed of. All reference books have errors, thats why they get revised. I have wondered all along just how many people even noticed the flag note at the bottom of the page indicating a invalid isbn? (ya, I saw tonights note in the Cat section) When you stop and think about it, if a person is sensitive to how something "might look" to others, (A lack of professionalism) what is the the difference in the note at the bottom of the page? All very strange to me. Right now I am using a "three strikes rule" I have three search tools open at the same time. I try title and authors name in each tool. If that fails, it gets the "hidden indicator" that will then await someone else to look for it, especially difficult to locate if its from the referenced section (^). At this rate, we might be done by summer............But thats ok, I have other projects to fiddle with.Ekotkie 05:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Ed, I'm not an administrator, but I enjoy the suggestion. See Wikipedia:List_of_administrators to figure out who actually is (e.g. Rich Farmbrough). EdJohnston 05:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich, in a recent discussion, I stood corrected in *assuming* that EdJ was an administrator. For what it is worth, I feel like he would probably make a good admin. He certainly seems to have the right stuff for the job. I'd like to recommend that you give consideration in making him one. FWIW. Have a great day.Ekotkie 21:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Various
Notes for informtion - not necessarily connected in any way.
Email. You can email users using the "email this user" system. However with talk pages, you get the message when you are on WP which I find helpful, for most things. Sensitive stuff can always go by email if needed.
Oh, I understand and have used this method. Wiki mail is a bit strange as compared to e-mail.
Admin. Anyone can propose anyone for administrator, as I have recently done with User:AzaToth - one of our template geniuses. I will ask Ed if he's interested. There's a process which can someitmes be painful for candidates...
Well, it wasn't a joke. I feel like he has the right disposition to do a great job. And yes, I understand all too well what you mean by the pain in the process.
I tend to scan with SmackBot when a data base dump has been completed. This means I can pick likely articles to set SmackBot on, last time 'round it was anything with "ISBN" in it.
A couple observations about SmackBot. I have been through a bunch of editing and the following may just be flukes but they have stood out:
I have found ISBN errors that SmackBot did not catch. This occurred where ISBN was short and colorwise, was black as opposed to blue when it is correct.
I have found the Invalid template placed in the middle of an existing ISBN that may have been correct had it not intersected in the middle like it did.
I have found ISBN's that were flagged as bad but located by the same manner through various reliable sources. You have read my "3 strikes rule". If I found flagged ISBN through my process, I clipped the template and passed it on, as stated.
I strongly support removing the invalid ISBN data once it has been reviewed by two people. Leave the book.doc name and author but get rid of the ISBN. Maybe create an HTML flag note to leave for a page owner, but press on.
People often come across as "grumpy" on WP, sometimes they are, but often it's just terse writing. People like you who are a little more relaxed and polite in style generally help defuse situations when they do arise. Never worry to much about what someone says on WP.
I have no axe to grind or in need of a feather in my hat. Being retired gives me great latitude in this respect. I can go take a nap or seek out another project needing my attention. I am building some small electronic robots to torment my cat and dog (just kidding) I am a bit intrigued by these software bots used here. I tip my hat to the creators.
Erm that's it for now. Best wishes, Rich Farmbrough, 23:04 12 January 2007 (GMT).
Have a great day. We have an inbound ice storm headed for the next two days. Second one this season. I will batten down the hatches.Ekotkie 01:14, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
ISBN troubles
the bot had some trouble in the article List of Naruto media because of the article editor's format:
Naruto Vol. 1 ISBN 1-5693-1900-6 - 192 pages, 2003
the bot read past the 10 digit ISBN and into the page numbers. As a programmer myself the bot performance makes sence to me since it needed to consider the possibility of a 13 digit code. I replaced the hyphen with an ndash hoping this with fix the problem. For example:
Naruto Vol. 1 ISBN 1-5693-1900-6 – 192 pages, 2003
I think everything in the article is fixed now but I didn't verify all the Japaneses ISBNs. Thanks for all your work. --Droll 03:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
AzaToth's RFA
I thought that the convention for new RFAs was to add a "2" or "(2nd)" behind the name, rather than moving the original away from the page. The "2" would certainly help in accessibility. I quote from WP:RFA/N, "To create a second nomination, simply put the number 2 after the nominee's username." – Chacor 00:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, doubtless. I wanted to use the magic button to be sure the formatting was right, by all means move the pages if you think it necessary. RichFarmbrough, 09:42 10 January2007 (GMT).
The first RfA was heavily discussed, so your move did mess up a bunch of archived links (I fixed some at WT:RFA, WP:BN and Signpost). Live and learn, but please don't do that again. Cheers, NoSeptember 21:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
You just recently removed some content from citations that I added in the article on Franklin, Virginia. Specifically, you removed the publisher information and replaced it with "Southampton County Historical Society." Is there something i am unfamiliar with that was the reason for this change? I am just a little confused, I checked the book out of the library, got the information from inside the front cover. If I have made a mistake, please let me know and I will gladly try to fix it and prevent it in the future. Thanks again! -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 05:31, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi, according to Amazon (ASINB000JF398Q, ASINB0007395WY , ASINB000J9Y6L6) it is published by Southampton County Historical Society, Southampton County Historical Society, and Wiliam Byrd Press respectivly. The same goes for Abebooks. I would suspect that Southampton County Historical Society is the publishers and WBP the printers. As for the ISBN, 87-063258 is clearly not one. Possibly, if this was part of a series it may be an ISSN - ISSN 8706-3258. It is also possible that the book was published by two organisations simultaneously. Would you be able to examine the book again? Regards, RichFarmbrough, 14:06 13 January2007 (GMT).
Yea, I will go check it out again! Thanks for the information on the topic, it was much appreciated. I will let you know what I find out. Thanks again! -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 16:41, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Re: AWB versions etc
Hi, Rich. Thanks for yor proposal, I use it immediately: please enable 3.1.0.0 :) MaxSem 16:08, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Did you see
Please let me know if you spot any SmackBot errors (especially of a new type). Rich Farmbrough, 17:54 13 January 2007 (GMT).
the latest note in the Cat:invalid area for the K Row?
Sorry you may have missed my dialog with Chris on the VA. Article. He was going to recheck out that ISBN data at his local library. I suspected that the book was a very limited edition talking to history related matters in that area.Ekotkie 18:34, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Monobook problem
I posted this at VP, but maybe you will see it faster here. Check this diff. This was the the update ABCD did on January 11 (most likely the day ABCD noticed his monobook was broken, and fixed it). -- ReyBrujo 03:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I am... I lost my main PC and had to retpye somr stuff, and got it wrong. Thansk for telling me. RichFarmbrough, 14:41 14 January2007 (GMT).
Greetings
Hi. Your bot made a few edits on a page I watchlisted,[92] and while it did make improvements, I thought you might want to know a couple of things it could do better. The replacement of the Cite-missing template disturbed the infobox on the right side of the page, and graduation dates (e.g., '02) was expanded to 2002. Thanks anyway though. Xiner (talk, email) 01:44, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
You're right about the year issue, and I'll probably revert my own reverts later. As for the cleanup tags, the bot-corrected version[93] renders the new tag across the page at 800x600. I guess my resolution isn't the most common. Xiner (talk, email) 16:03, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm posting a note to Talk:Turn Left about the date issue. Please contribute your thoughts. Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 16:18, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Tony Terran
Sentence that mentions Tony Terran on page 56 chapter 6 (Phil Spector & The Wrecking Crew) in Hal Blaine's book
"Steve Douglas was usually on sax along with Nino Tempo (April Stevens and Nono had the big hit Deep Purple), Jay Migliori and Roy Caton on trumpet along with Ollie Mitchell and Tony Terran." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Daveterran (talk • contribs) 19:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC).
Hi Rich
Thank you so much for helping with the article! I just asked my dad about Charles and Henry, and the names didn't ring a bell. It's very possible he could have worked with them though. What did they do in the entertainment business?--Daveterran 23:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Re: Hi Rich
My dad probably recorded with the Spinners, but he would not have known any of the band members other than saying hi informally. Since that bass player worked with Wynton, my dad probably didn't know him either because I don't think my dad ever worked with Wynton.--Daveterran 00:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
My dad doesn't know a lot of the younger cats like Wynton and his musicians. He did some touring with older guys like Dizzy Gillespie, Freddy Hubbard, Benny Goodman, etc. Sadly, most of the people my dad worked with are dead. Are you a musician?--Daveterran 00:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot is dating {{fact}} and {{expand}}, which do not seem to be dated templates when I just checked. Am I wrong about this? I also didn't see them in the list of tags the bot cleans up. --Keitei(talk) 04:33, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
You're right, expand should become "dated" soon, and will be fairly easy. Fact and verify I am only dating in articles I am already visiting to date other tags, I expect them to become "dated" over the next few weeks. RichFarmbrough, 10:48 15 January2007 (GMT).
Maybe my observation is more for whomever maintains the {{cite ...}} templates. I've noticed that at least for me, they do not seem to know about wikilinking dates. For instance, please see this edit I made: [94]. Putting the retrieved date inside the braces yields red dates, for me. Keesiewonder 22:48, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it looks ok because I did this
{{cite encyclopedia
| title =Lutheranism
| encyclopedia =The Catholic Encyclopedia
| volume =IX
| pages =
| publisher =Robert Appleton Company
| date =1910
| id =
| url =http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09458a.htm
| accessdate =}} Retrieved on [[January 14]], [[2007]]
instead of this
{{cite encyclopedia
| title =Lutheranism
| encyclopedia =The Catholic Encyclopedia
| volume =IX
| pages =
| publisher =Robert Appleton Company
| date =1910
| id =
| url =http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09458a.htm
| accessdate = Retrieved on [[January 14]], [[2007]]}}
Please note position of closing pair of }}. Keesiewonder 01:36, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
This should work, though:
{{cite encyclopedia
| title =Lutheranism
| encyclopedia =The Catholic Encyclopedia
| volume =IX
| pages =
| publisher =Robert Appleton Company
| date =1910
| id =
| url =http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09458a.htm
| accessdate = 2007-01-14}}
the YYYY-MM-DD format is, I believe, what is required for the accessdate field of the "cite" templates. They are linked as part of the template, also, so don't put brackets around them. LyrlTalkC 00:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah - Good to know, Lyrl! I hadn't picked up on the YYYY-MM-DD yet. Thanks for pointing that out!!! Keesiewonder 01:36, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Well actually you can put "accessdate=12 November| accessyear=2007" or accessmonthday=12 January|accessyear=2007 .. confusing, eh?
Hello Rich! I'm commenting under COinS, because it could be a related issue. Here [95] I suggested that SmackBot may not be programmed to handle the 'isbn=' keyword that was recently added to 'cite book'. Diberri has already changed his tool, apparently, to use the new 'cite book' syntax. Please reply at User_talk:Diberri#Wikipedia_template_filling. if I am correct in suspecting this. EdJohnston 22:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
caps section?
what do you mean by this on the Kristi Tauti. I am afraid that I do not understand.Angel,Isaac 22:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot inserted lots of copies of image
In two edits on the condom page (diff), the bot first replaced all <!-- --> tags with {{ASIN}}, and then replaced the characters with copies of an image from the beginning of the article. (It also dated the citation needed and expandsect tags.) Any idea why it would insert random characters and images like that? LyrlTalkC 00:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist. If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list. Ralbot 06:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
The Royal Court and States Building ISBN
My copy of The Royal Court and States Building, Philip Le Brocq, 1998, Jersey states:
It's a pleasure, but it only worked on the first category, whcih is very strange... RichFarmbrough, 16:38 11 January2007 (GMT).
Weird! I'll look into it! — Sebastian 18:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC) (I stopped watching this page. If you would like to continue the talk, please do so here and ping me.)
Uhh...what is your bot smoking? It removed the links from the titles which were placed there to link to the characters. A list just isn't a list if you don't have the characters' wikipedia articles linked to. Without it you have a very, very dead page with no further information on them. Please clean it up; I don't want to change it yet incase this is the intended function of your bot (if so I apologize). SMC 08:32, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you shouldn't have links in headers, both as a matter of stlye, and technically, people who have selected "click on section header to edit" will be unable ot click on the link. I've revised the layout. RichFarmbrough, 09:39 16 January2007 (GMT).
I respectfully submit that this edit is not particularly helpful to the goal of keeping a list-of-things-needing-to-be-done well sorted. Perhaps it would be an idea to exclude talk space from the tag-dating process? When maintenance tags appear on talk pages it is most often because they are being talked about, or as part of text that was moved from articlespace for documentation purposes. Henning Makholm 00:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
There are three points here:
When talking about tags ideally use {{tl}} to give the effect {{expand}}.
Secondly using tags still put pages into the categories, so they need someone to take them out (and in fact I have done this with most of the tags SB looks at).
Thirdly there is a group of editors who believe that cleanup tags should go on talk pages, hence the several thousand talk pages tagged {{expand}}.
Hello. You recently suggested that someone Wikify an article I wrote called Russian traditions and superstitions. I'm confused as to what needs to happen in order to "wikify" it. Could you make a more concrete suggestion, because I'm not quite sure what I need to do to it. Thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Abbadonnergal (talk • contribs) 15:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC).
Hi Rich, this is just a reply to your recent comment [97] over at cat:invalid. My point is just that every ISBN-13 beginning with 978 has a twin that's an ISBN-10. (This is even dramatized by the fact that Amazon uses that trick to look up ISBN-13s by first transforming to an ISBN-10, as you can see by watching the URL in the address bar). So as long as the 978's continue to be issued there is an effective pair (ISBN-10, ISBN-13) of which either part suffices to identify the book, since either one can be transformed into the other according to a rule. Our only uncertainty is about when the first 979 ISBNs will come out because then the trick stops working. Of course I am mentioning this as part of my go-slow campaign on converting WP over to ISBN-13. My theory (and I'm open to rebuttals here) is that ISBN-10s provided as part of a book reference will continue to work indefinitely, although isbn.org has not sworn in blood that that is the case.
If my theory continues to hold, then since every old-style ISBN is now in truth a pair of equivalent codes (one 10-digit, the other 13-digit) we are not truly gaining anything by flipping a reference over from the 10-digit version to the 13-digit version. When the first 979 codes appear, they only exist in a 13-digit version, so there is no conversion required there. So in either case, doing a length conversion via SmackBot seems unnecessary. Until such time that isbn.org brings down the hammer and tells all book dealers and libraries to reject ISBN-10s, which seems unlikely to happen. After all, CODENs are still in use, and so are LCCNs, and libraries are not removing them from their files. Though I guess a person is not going to succeed in ordering a book these days using either one.
It does seem reasonable to enter every book published in 2007 or later into WP with an ISBN-13, however. EdJohnston 02:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I'm sure 10 digits will be acceptable to most (existing) systems for a very long time, I might suggest an earlier start date for using 13 digits than 1/1/7 - 1/1/5 for instance. Bear in mind that the ISBN agency says: ""ISBN data output – general considerations All external transmission of the ISBN should utilise the 13-digit manifestation after 1 January 2007." Regardless no bulk transformation is very likely on WP, so the cross-over date will be ragged. RichFarmbrough, 10:23 18 January2007 (GMT).
Thoughts?
Would you leave the charles whitham references alone? I am trying to sort this out - I have had some delays - I will try to sort it out in the next 24 hours SatuSuro 06:57, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Just received this. This has been an ongoing struggle with this gent to accept the fact that the ISBN shown should just be dropped. It predates the ISBN process as I have indicated in the error (M=Row). He has already admitted to errors in these citations. I have completely researched this effort including going to the national library in Australia. This has been an issue for weeks now and has not been resolved by him. Thoughts? Ekotkie 14:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Well we are in no hurry. Which article is it? SatuSuro is usually a good guy. RichFarmbrough, 15:13 18 January2007 (GMT).
Look for the M=row items calling out Tasmania. The first one I just now looked at had two more refs to the same book/author but the errant isbn has been dropped. That is all I recommended him to do. I sure don't need his excessive chatter on the subject, just do it. He may be a good guy to you but even kessie asked me to back off on him weeks ago because of a futiure Whitman citation and I did. He is slow to perform. He even had Kessie's assistance. Is there any way you can put out a hunt for that book and kill the isbn ref en masse? He has some sort of hangup about the Cat Invalid tag and how it is casting a bad light on the Whitman fellow. That isn't true. Whitman didn't create the page. He needs to get a grip. I tried extra hard to search for that elusive 2003 book short isbn he has inserted. No dice. Ekotkie 00:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Please see this and this and let me know if you have any questions. Thanks! Keesiewonder 01:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC) P.S. I guess it'd help me to know exactly which articles are in question too. I don't think there's any need to back off, but, rather, perhaps, follow the model of what he and I came up with my my subpage. Keesiewonder 01:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Gawd the weird and wonderful world of wikipedia. For a start I have started Charles Whitham article very long after I said I would, my apologies to all over that. The Tasmanian State Library and Australian National Library do not have the 2003 edition (which is being sold in Queenstown currently) - what happened was that the typist in Queenstown when the proofs were being made left out a number - the interesting thing is the Tasmanian State Library refused to offer any solution to the wrong isbn and pointed the finger elsewhere. The solution provided by Keesiwonder - I am very pleased with and have nothing but very positive reaction to such help. I am sorry that I have lacked sufficient Witiquette respect to Ekotkie, but (a) I created all the articles which had Whitham in the reference (b) I dont have a PC so I cannot do a quick AWB solution - I use an imac.... (c) My unreserved apologies to all - I have a 4,000 + page watchlist - am living a complicated real life during my childrens school holidays - and am trying to cope with vandalism and edit wars as well as work on stubs in three separate WP projects - if I cannot do something straight away - I would think I have a grip on more than what is said above! I seem to spend my daylight hours trying to enthuse new users to understand WP:Civility god only hope others can do it without extra encouragement .
(d) Just in case there are further items about this - (1) the Whitham edition of 2003 had a wrong isbn, and there appear to be no current means to ascertaining the correct form. (2) The stub Charles Whitham has the full details of the book (3) unless some smart cookie with AWB use gets in before me - I will go to every article with the citation and attempt to establish a citation that refers back to the Charles Whitham article for full details. May we all be given the grace of patience and understanding in this new year and only bite vandals. SatuSuro 05:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
BTW thanks rich for your comment about me -it is appreciated SatuSuro 05:11, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
So ... I maintain that if we want to help SatSuro out with the numerous Whitman references, if we follow the style at this link we'll get something off our list and his ... :-) ... i.e. dropping the ISBN is fine if other info is retained. Keesiewonder 09:37, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
As long as there is no sign of the isbn number under any circumstances - I would prefer a link back to the article about whitham SatuSuro 09:46, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Understood; I've updated my sub-user page. Keesiewonder 09:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks!
Hey, thanks for getting my signature to work right. It's very much appreciated. .V. -- (TalkEmail) 22:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Hello
Regarding the article New Ash Green - you have edited, have you got any green idea about the origin of the name?
I fixed all the cite book errors I could find. As you said there were not as many as I feared. The only one I could not fix was History of Ukraine as it is protected. Thanks for the advice. --Droll 06:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Rich, when is a stub page no longer considered a stub? I have developed a page for John Lescroart, author, and installed a lot of data, including personal content. Also curious about this funny looking red book that appears next to the flag at the lower left of the page. I've clicked on it and the outline doesn't really tell me much. Also need a bit of clarification about the internal Wiki mail. I have found comments, addressed to me, on various peoples talk pages that never were placed on my talk page. Quite frankly I am a bit dismayed that since I don't go running around looking at other peoples talk pages for mail to myself, I have failed to respond to comments directed to me. In using this clumsy internal mail system I have always directed my comments to another person to their page. I do not find this being reciprocated in kind. Having used e-mail since I first used it on Arpnet I have always tried to respond in a professional and timely manner. Now I find that since I do not read other peoples talk pages, that I am out of the loop. Comments?
Ekotkie 23:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I think the flag is for the country, the book for "novelist". If you think it's no longer a stub, remove the stub designation - in this case I think it's justified. I generally reply on peoples own talk pages (and put the reply on my own for my "records"), and generally look for a reply on mine. Soemtimes I forget and only put the reply on one talk page, meaning to copy it later. I rarely check back on other's talk pages, but I know some people do. Some people put "instructions" on the top of their talk pages. Some people use their watchlists to keep an eye for a reply (see my talk page "Thanks for fixing my mistake!" User:Sebastian seems to have a system for this that changes his signiture). One thing that may help is if you set your signiture to include a link to your talk page. A system that has been tried, and almost works is like the following section, which is shared across both pages, put doesn't trigger the orange mesasge bar, and may not always show updates...
Oh-oh....you just lost me with that term. Ekotkie 23:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
As soon as I dropped the stub comment, the funny red book symbol went away. Ekotkie 17:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
"Justified" to leave or remove? I have a bit more to add to that page but I'm trying to be care about encroachment on the authors site.
(Justified to remove.) RF
I will have to mull about this mail business. It seems quite haphazard and prone to potential info loss. Not healthy for a "team work environment". For sure I couldn't built an airplane this way. Ekotkie 23:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't call it mail... the Wikimedia software works pretty well for the actual articles, less well for policy and talk. Despite the constant improvement the fact that it is still to some extent "string and sealing wax" is shown by the layers of complexity in templates, guidelines, bots etc.
The vision that comes to my mind is "string and tin can" Ekotkie 21:15, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Bot edits to template_talk pages
These two edits are a bit odd: [98][99] What was the bot trying to do? --- RockMFR 18:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
In theory self-ref templates should have a categry parameter which allows their illustrative use, while overriding the categorisation. RichFarmbrough, 18:43 20 January2007 (GMT).
CT:INV proposal (to reduce breakup of conversations)
Hello Rich. EdK has noted that messages relayed through other people's talk pages may not reach the intended recipient. I suggest we might try physically moving new ISBN-related discussion threads from individual talk pages over to Category talk:Articles with invalid ISBNs. Since I can't speak for others, I thought I might begin doing it for conversations that begin on my own User_talk that concern specific ISBNs. Each time I do such a move I'd leave a pointer behind. I assume that anyone fixing ISBNs these days probably has a watch set on the Category talk page, so they wouldn't miss seeing any messages left there.
I tried to do that in reporting repair progress but other then getting responses, it didn't seem to connect with others doing repairs. It certainly would have avoided some of the communication disconnects that have occurred. I really don't think that this system is "communication friendly". I learned very early on that if you want someone to receive your comments, put them on their page.......EdK
I don't know if this is a Firefox point but once typed in my system retains the words. Now when I want to go to that area I merely type the "c" and it call out all "c" related paths that I have used. The same applies to all typing like that, at least on my system it does. Ekotkie 21:27, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Yep, but I use various machines and browesers, and look at a lot of categories! So yes, it could be useful to me. RichFarmbrough, 22:15 20 January2007 (GMT).
Centralized communication can be a good thing; we always have user talk pages if we prefer for whatever reason. I don't have a preference on a new shortcut, other than if it'd help someone, do it. I am not in the habit of using them much. Keesiewondertalk 22:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Uncategorised stubs
Whoops - looks like I misunderstood the reason for these. There was an earlier template and category for "uncategorised stubs" that was simply everything in Category:Stubs that no-one could think of the correct stub type for. It was deleted via WP:SFD as being a bad idea. I had somehow thought these were the same idea. Apologies. Grutness...wha? 22:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
An article that you have been involved in editing, Danny Graham, has been listed by me at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Danny Graham. Please look there to see why this is, if you are interested in whether it should be deleted. Thank you. --Jerry lavoie 05:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Jerry lavoie 05:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Re: Tufte "Ced Date fragments delinked"
Ha, great, thanks; that's what Dr. Tufte would want! --CliffC 23:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Please use the plus tab when starting new conversations on talk pages
You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist. If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list. Ralbot 06:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
The category you wrote, Category:Articles to be trimmed, is uncategorized. Please help improve it by adding it to one or more categories, so it may be associated with related categories.Eli Falk 06:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Long ISBNs
Are we now using long ISBNs?
Is there a particular procedure for changing them over?
I was wondering because not all the links in Special:Booksources seem capable of handling them, although at least one (Amazon UK) does now when it failed previously (which is nice).
TIA HAND —Phil | Talk 16:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Phil, Really we need to monitor the booksources until we reach a critical level. However Wikipedia pressure or requests may actually convince some to change over. Also there is a little resistance (which I sympathaise with upto a point) to having other than the "printed" ISBN as the reference. The third problem is my disk with the scripts on is in a bit of bother at the moment. RichFarmbrough, 17:02 23 January2007 (GMT).
I had a problem with Amazon accepting unhyphenated ISBN-13, but not hyphenated. It might be worth checking elsewhere for the same phenomenon. --KSmrqT 18:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
In doing so I would still highly recommend NOT to use any hyphens. IMHO, this is a potential problem area. Ekotkie 22:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot erroneously removed underscore from a link
Just a heads up: In this edit, while correctly adding a date to a {{fact}} tag, it erroneously "corrected" the link Cry_Wolf to Cry Wolf. While usually underscores in links is wrong, in this case it's correct (per Cry_Wolf). It might be good for SmackBot to note in the edit summary if it's doing underscore removal. — Alan De Smet | Talk 04:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
This is a (generally useful) feature of the underlying AWB software. I have put in a feature request, which will deal with these special cases. RichFarmbrough, 19:17 26 January2007 (GMT).
Off
I have no interest in communicating any further with he who shall not be named here - I have left my parting shot - please remind him hes on wikipedia from time to time... :) SatuSuro 00:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Heheh - we ended talking amicably - and then another arose - but keesie reckons we wait till you run your thingy again! SatuSuro 12:03, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I noticed that a number of users use this template to indicate that they are admins on other projects, but this template includes them into Category:Wikipedia administrators. (see User:CHV as an example.) Is there a way to include only enwiki admins into the category? I suppose we could also create new categories for admins of other projects, or create a parallel template for non-enwiki usage. I'm not sure how best to proceed. You seem to know how to handle these template parameter things. What do you suggest? NoSeptember 17:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Are you sure? CHV and others still appear on the list. NoSeptember 18:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Yep. The category doesn't always update for a while (due to the job queue), and occaisionally not until the page is edited. I just did a dummy edit to User:CHV. The cat was already gone from the user page, though. RichFarmbrough, 18:23 27 January2007 (GMT).
I was looking through my list of articles created, and I noted that SmackBot delinked "Monday" from Dawa (Tibet) - a context where, you must admit, linking is wholly appropriate. If you could adjust the bot to make sure it doesn't go after that article again, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. DS 03:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Hello again, Rich! I noticed that little while ago SmackBot dated a {{mergeinto}} template for December, but the merge tag was actually added in September. I don't know if it is possible for the bot to go through page histories to see when a tag was added, and I also realize that even if this is possible it may be more effort than it's worth. However, I just wanted to make you aware of this in case any improvement can be made. Thanks, Dar-Ape 00:42, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I am aware. I've used a mixture of approaches, in this case, as I recall, deriving the date from the irregular database dumps. Once a backlog is dated, of course, it is then simple to keep up, only mis-dating articles right at the month boundary. RichFarmbrough, 11:58 28 January2007 (GMT).
Okay. Keep up the great work with your bot, Dar-Ape 02:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich. A belated Happy New Year 2007. The article on Homelessness has been getting a lot of vandalism and spurious changes lately from anonymous editors ... we have had a lot of work to constantly and vigilantly keep up with it. Is it possible to put a non-anonymous editor lock on it for a while ? I don't know what else to do except to frantically keep up with the spurious changes, like matter/anti-matter. Please advise. Thanks and Best Wishes. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC) (talk)
Hi Rich. Thanks. I wasn't sure what could be done, if anything other than our continuing to be vigilant and editing out the vandalism and spurious changes. It just recently got way out of hand and we were losing article information. But, maybe the s-protect will calm it down for a little while. I know that anonymous editors have made some really good contributions. In a quandry, I am. I guess you should lift the s-protect as soon as prudently possible. Thanks. Best Wishes --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 15:33, 29 January 2007 (UTC) (talk)
Hurricane Juan was a significant hurricane that struck much of Atlantic Canada in late September 2003. It was the tenth named storm and the sixth hurricane of the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season. Juan formed southeast of Bermuda on September 24 and peaked at 105 mph (165 km/h) as it rapidly approached the coast of Nova Scotia, losing little intensity over the cooler waters. Juan made landfall near Halifax, Nova Scotia early on September 29 while still a Category 2 hurricane, and remained a hurricane across Nova Scotia and onto Prince Edward Island, weakening to a tropical storm over the island. It was absorbed by another extratropical low later on September 29 near Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The storm left extensive damage across central Nova Scotia and into Prince Edward Island, with lesser damage east and west of the storm center. Most of the damage was as a result of the high winds that whipped across the region. Juan resulted in eight fatalities and over $200 million (in 2003 USD) in damage. It was described as the worst storm to hit Halifax since 1893. (more...)
Okay, Rich. Thanks for your comments. So it goes. I heard Don's lectures and found them profound. So did the religious experts ! Thanks again. I'll leave things as they are. Glad for your input. Best Wishes. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC) (talk)
ready to learn
Hi Rich, I see this edit. I used the ISBN printed on the document (visible by going to the last page of the .pdf link in the article). Can you provide a link to what you found in ODIN? I searched a bit and did not quickly see what you saw, but, not having used ODIN before, I probably missed something. Thanks for your help. Keesiewondertalk 23:31, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist. If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list. Ralbot 18:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Dodgeville, Wi School Sports Page
What can I do to make the page acceptable? I'm not exactly sure as to what I'm missing. Thanks
Dodgeville, WI School Sports is probably not a sufficiently notable subject for Wikipedia (note though that I did not add the tag, SmackBot merely dated it). You could perhaps make it part of the artcicle onthe High School, if there is one. Consider also what information belongs in the encyclopedai, and what would be better elsewhere, possibly linked to. RichFarmbrough, 11:00 31 January2007 (GMT).
OXCART clean up
Rich,
Thanks for the clean up work on the A-12 OXCART article. I knew most of that needed to be done, but have been on three business trips and a 3-day professional course all in the last 8 days. In fact, I flew back home less than two hours ago, and was itching to put some of that stuff right. Appreciate that you've already attended to nearly all of it. Especially appreciate the accessdaymonth in the web citation. I simply could not find that correct tag for that line in the template, and it was driving me nuts why I couldn't get that date to wikify. - Thaimoss 03:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I noticed that Smackbot changed a word where we had the | pipe symbol in a wiki link such that the word after the pipe symbol was plural and Smackbot changed the format to remove the pipe symbol and pluralized word after it and simply made it a singular linked word with an "s" after the link closed. Is that current approved style? It doesn't look as good as the way it was prior to Smackbot's change. Please provide guidance. Thanks. Emerman 04:54, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. It looks like this copying of entire threads from page to page is the current vogue way too now. I've now seen three people do that. I thought I was just supposed to reply at the person's page. Anyway, I'll remember the plural method now on links. I think people used to change it the other way in years gone by. Emerman 13:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Your /list subpage:
Hi. I'm an avid editcountitor & was wondering when you were planning on updating the rankings on your given subpage? Is there any way you can keep up with current edit counts? I'd appreciate it greatly if you'd be able to... :) Spawn Man 10:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Just as soon as I can is the answer. I have the data, I just need to recover the hard disk with the program on it... Or quickly re-write it. I should have a toolserver account any day, at that point keeping up with the current figures may be possible. RichFarmbrough, 16:56 2 February2007 (GMT).
Sohmer & Co.
Hello,
I have attempted a "major overhaul" of the article entitled "Sohmer & Co." This has included a MAJOR re-write, addition of a picture, division of article into sections, and addition of References and External links. (I had not worked on this Article until now.)
The article still has a "This article needs clean-up" box. Would you mind checking my work, and if you feel the article is now "up to par", removing the box? Thanks for you time and effort. Prof.rick 09:19, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Why delete this external link?
Hi,
I was just wondering why you removed an external link from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost ?
The link in question was/is http://home.pacbell.net/dbk4297/readyboost_vista_memory.html . This a valid information page about using Vistas new ReadyBoost system. The information is correct, and seems to include much more info that any other page listed here or online by searching with Google. There are no spam links on the page, or badware either.
I admit the page is not yet listed in the search sites as it just went live today.
So I was just wondering why you removed it.
Thanks in advance,
Darrell —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.199.116.5 (talk) 00:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC).
Hi, and thanks for your speedy attention to the "Sohmer & Co." article. Glad the clean-up tag was removed, and that the article is generally acceptable. I'll do the metric conversions as soon as time permits.
(Your minor revisions have been noted as a "lesson"...i.e. "DON'T CAPITALIZE UNNECESSARILY IN SECTIONS".) Thanks for teaching so tactfully!!!Prof.rick 03:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Help please with formatting problems in Health effects arising from September 11, 2001 attacks article
Thank you very much for the tip. Dogru144 23:00, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Django Reinhardt Unsourced References?
Let me get this straight, You probably wouldn't take the time to look up the references yourself,therfore you want people to tell you that the sources ARE IN THE TALK PAGE!!!! I have not added many of these, —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Robbyfoxxxx (talk • contribs) 15:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC).
No, I just dated the tag, I didn't add it. Refs should be in the article thou, not the talk page. RichFarmbrough, 15:28 5 February2007 (GMT).
Template facte
Hey Rick, there is a discussion over at {{fact}} about adding dates to this tag and making it go into categories by date. Only problem is that we have no idea how to add this into the code. I was just wondering if you would be willing/able to fix the template and maybe sending good ol' Smackbot on a date adding rampage. If Smackbot it too busy, let me know if you have any other ideas. I could create an account and request bot approval and go through the whole ordeal I just figured it would be easier for you since Smackbot does similar work already. Thanks! ~ Joe Jklin(TC) 16:31, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the template that puts things in to it {{fact}} was only just updated. I guess Hearts saw the red category and created it as a redirect which was a reasonable guess. RichFarmbrough, 18:15 5 February2007 (GMT).
You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist. If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list. Ralbot 05:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot (yours?) changing tag citation needed to fact
... in the process of adding a date. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amazing_Stories&curid=255474&diff=106015772&oldid=99791258). The date may or may not be useful (in fact, adding it to tags that have been there for months or years may be a bit confusing), but I'd like to vote against changing the tag type. I have found that using 'fact' can be more combative, as editors feel that the factual accuracy is being challenged. I have had fewer disagreements when adding 'citation needed' or its variants. This also makes sense because it matches the displayed text; it helps the novice editor understand the effect and meaning of the tag. Notinasnaid 13:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion about the appropriate name (and content) here. If the general feeling is to go with citation needed/cite needed/cite-needed/citeneeded/cn then I am happy to change. RichFarmbrough, 18:05 6 February2007 (GMT).
SmackBot and the fact tag
The Original Barnstar
For running this useful bot, and making my watchlist light up with many articles that have newly-dated fact tags, I award you this Barnstar (which is the first I've given, if that matters). Thanks for your contributions! JPG-GR 15:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot has taken it into its head today to remove two links in the Wheellock article: I can't think why - the links seem useful and valid to me. Any reason you can see?
Thanks Nick Michael 16:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Many thanks for the editing of Wheellock. It looks much better! Nick Michael 07:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot removing stub tag
Hi Rich. I noticed smackbot on the Barelwi page took off the stub citations. It still has a long way to go in the article. Does it use a character count argument to determine if something is a stub? I wanted to check in with you regarding this.ZaydHammoudeh 19:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi, Rich. There's no need to write back. I just want to let you know that a number of the links on the User:SmackBot page were broken because of archiving activity. (I've noticed this on other pages, and even reported it to Werdnabot, which breaks a lot of links, but I haven't heard back from Werdna.) Anyway, I searched the archives and patched them all up for you, except for a "task approval VI" link, for which I could not locate the desired target.
I did notice one odd thing. The patched links work right. But "navpops" malfunctions when I hover over any of them, probably because the links are nested two deep (nnn/xxx/yyy). I guess I'll go report that to the navpops guy.
Please explain why you have deleted biographical data from the article on Tom Marshall Bible teacher. Ｕｓｅｍｙ他ｌｋぱげ。
Philip Ｍａｒｓｈａｌｌ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Philip.marshall (talk • contribs) 09:05, 9 February 2007 (UTC).
I see you've been around for a while now. Please get into the habit of signing your messages on talk pages with ~~~~. Also it would have helped me if you'd left a link to Tom Marshall (Bible teacher), or even better the diff, like this. You will see clicking on the diff, that I have not removed the text, it was rather User:Slf67 who explained that it was persuant to WP:BLP. Nonetheless I have added the information back as reasonably sourced and non-controversial. RichFarmbrough, 09:57 9 February2007 (GMT).
P.S. Please start new threads at the end of others' talk pages not the top. RichFarmbrough, 10:31 9 February2007 (GMT).
Bots
I was wondering about these bots and how they are created. Can any registered user create one? Longbranch 21:25, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I noticed in this edit that Smackbot took out all the links in the titles for the sections. While links in section titles are to be avoided, there are exceptions and this is one of them. Is there any determination that Smackbot makes in doing this or does it do this to all sections with links? I'd say the latter would be very inappropriate. Ƶ§œš¹[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 13:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
One of the often overlooked problems with links in headers is that those with preferences set to edit on clicking a header, are unable to use the links. RichFarmbrough, 17:05 9 February2007 (GMT).
That's fine and all, but I don't think that a bot should be the one to remove them. Your edit to the page addresses the issue in a much more appropriate manner but how would you change list of common phrases in various languages? Ƶ§œš¹[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 18:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
I think on the language level headings I would replace the word "Phrase" with the linked language name. The famil.y headings I would use {{main}}. RichFarmbrough, 22:38 10 February2007 (GMT).
Feature request
Don't suppose there is some way that your bot could find the date that tags were actually added when it is dating them? Just wondering. AlistairMcMillan 23:40, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Just came here to say the same thing myself. This one, for example, was added in January but is now dated as February by the bot. Anyway you can get that to work? Thanks, Metros232 05:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
The short answer is no, the longer answer is not unless and until my other PC is fixed (has required disk space, scripts and data dumps on it), even then it's a fair amount of work. Ongoing the dates should be virtually correct, as the bot is generally run on daily (or more often). This already applies too all the tags except the "fact" related that are actually categorising by date. Note that several thousand were categorised during Dec and Jan. RichFarmbrough, 10:19 11 February2007 (GMT).
Need to report bullying on Brett Favre page
Hi Rich Farmbrough, a user Lakers89 added some material to the Brett Favre page, correct stats and he added citations and administrator Jaranda and Isotope23 keep reverting his additions and are calling him a sockpuppet, whatever the reason that info belongs there, it's correct and I was hoping you could come in and let Lakers89 additions stand, since your the best administrator on wikipedia, they are bullying by refusing to let the material be added, even though it's correct and there are added cits, they keep removing them, this is not right, wikipedia is not supposed to bully because someone wants things there way, admin Jaranda is a 18 year old from Miami and he refuses to let cited material be added, please look into this and let Lakers89 edits stand, just check the Brett Favre Page history, it tells the story, I can't edit there because Jaranda has semi protected the page, but please step in and fix this, it's turned into a reverting or editing war and for no reason, Lakers89 info is correct and cited and they should be added without this bullying by users Jaranda, PSUMark2006, AdamWeeden, Aviper2k7, King Bee, Isotope23 and MrDarcy who keep reverting his good correct info, these users have ganned up and refused to let this material be added, all others users editing and visiting the Brett Favre Page have no problems, please take the time if you could and step in and correct this situation, Thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.245.120.70 (talk) 07:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC).
I'm touched by your faith, and have left a comment on the page that I hope will help. Having reviewed the history, it is clear that sockpuppetry has occurred on that page. I would suggest that a calm and polite discussion will eventually result in the correction of any inaccuracies, I have seen that you are capable this. RichFarmbrough, 10:44 10 February2007 (GMT).
Reversions were made per WP:DENY of a sockpuppeteer who was rather abusive and disruptive in the past regarding this article.. The account is more than welcome to discuss the changes on the talkpage (If you look at the edits this a content dispute pertaining to different stats from different sources). This isn't ganging up; it is one editor trying to hijack an article without discussion and then complaining when he doesn't get his way. Regardless I would like to see some good faith discussion on the article talkpage.--Isotope23 13:31, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
The original poster is indeed Starwars1955. Please ignore his queries, he is banned. –King Bee(T • C) 16:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes he is banned, which is why I've been blocking his socks on sight.--Isotope23 17:54, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
The identity is, as you say, self evident, and the user is indef. blocked (although his page says banned), and certainly has been "hard to work with" in the past. Nor would I expect anyone to think that I did not understand (in broad term) the sock history, the edit history or the discussions on the article talk page, the discussions on 3RR and Admins noticeboard. Nonetheless, as Isotope says there is still hope that a. People interested in the article can work together towards accuracy and verifiability and b. this user can find a way of transacting with other users that will not become confrontational. RichFarmbrough, 18:15 10 February2007 (GMT).
He has been given more than enough chances to work well with others in a way that will not become confrontational. He has squandered those chances, and lost the patience of the community. I do believe he is honestly interested in the Brett Favre article, but he has refused to read Wikipedia policy and guidelines in the past, shirking all the rules so that the page could "look good." However, it proved impossible to show him that Wikipedia would take what he considers to be ugliness over having reliable, verifiable information. This discussion should be over; he is banned. –King Bee(T • C) 18:38, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
The starwars1955 account was banned in the first place only because the users I mentioned before didn't like it's additions and they refused to let it stand because they want the page there way or no way, and they say starwars was being hateful or rude in the past, they were the ones being hateful and starwars1955 was defending the position, but there has been no rudeness of anykind for months, there has just been attempts to keep the correct material added by Lakers89 at 05:42 stay on the page were it belongs, no material is being deleted, all can stay, but these added stats should be able to stay, they are correct and any Brett Favre fan wold like to review them, I included you Rich to see that all that is being done here is that I'm trying to add these stats that belong there, compare the last post by laker89 at 05:42 compaired by the current version by Jaranda, it's just a few correct stats being added that Al Michaels talked about on Sunday Night Football when Favre played the Bears, and he's at 8,224 attempts, nfl.com own packers.com, and that's why the mistake is on those two sites, a simple mistake, nfl.com has Favre at 4 attempts in 1991 with Atlanta, it should be 5, it's a simple typing error on there part, espn.com, yahoosports.com, profootballreference.com and Foxsports.com Brett Favre pages all comfirm the 8,224. A citation was added to the playoff stats making it a direct link to the stats, check for yourself, and they want to put 5 links if you look now in the playoff section to number 12 citation, click on that citation and find the playoff section were they mention the playoff numbers, it will take you 10 minutes to find it, the direct link is easier and all the numbers are correct nfl stats and need to stay, all I'm asking is you look into the additions by Laker89 at 05:42 and confirm they should stay, if you revert to that version it will stay and this will all stop, it's valuable info that's correct and needs to stay. These guys are bullying the site and they revert and info someone adds because they want it there way, they do it to anyone trying to add a sentance or something, they run them off, and that's not right that 7 people control the page by ganging up and I'm sure you'll agree, they've not only done it with this case if you'll check the past history, I added the playoff section if you'll look way back in the history and now in the past 4 months nobody can do anything without those 7 or 8 doing something about it, and the "put Ty in" comment is correct, they just don't want it here, he says there no proof, well is there proof for every sentance, no but it's widely known that it's true, they just don't want it there, if you check in the past they deleted a sentance for no reason, aviper2k7 did, that was a known fact that Deion Sanders is the only person to intercept Favre in College and NFL, but they didn't like that tidbit so aviper2k7 deleted it a long time, because it was about a interception and they didn't like that, so what it's a known fact about Favre and although interceptions aren't fun, Favre's done so much more great things, but they won't let facts about anything remain if it bothers them, I just hope you'll step in and put a stop to this for good and let Lakers89 additions remain once and for all, they are correct and useful to the page, just check for yourself, I'm sure you'll agree and if you have any questions about the the additions from Lakers89, just ask me and I'll explain everything, they belong there and this fighting needs to be stopped and I had to go the best administartor on wikipedia to get this done, because those 7 or 8 users just won't reason over there, Thanks
OK, I suppose I knew this wouldn't be a quick fix.
Let's separate the factors out.
You got blocked for unacceptable behaviour, and evaded that block.
You still have some concerns with the content of the article.
What to do?
It is not acceptable for me to go and put "your" version back, for several reasons (not least I don't know what a "second down" is).
It is not acceptable for you to do it, for several reasons (you are blocked, it will be reverted anyway, etc.)
Even if you set up a new account, people will know you are trying to evade the block, because of the changes you will make, and your unusual spelling and writing style.
There are two options left, you can hope that your information will be picked up and put in by others (perhaps by persuading them to discuss it in cool detail on your talk page), or you can find a way to get unblocked.
But let's be clear, you have been un-blocked several times in the past, and it hasn't helped (and yes, I have seen all the edits on your user talk pages).
Regardless I would suggest that you need to understand your co-editors, and take the items that are in dispute one at a time. You also need to understand that the Wikipedia policies are to protect the encyclopedia, and that the other editors are trying to put together a good article too.
Do you think that you would be capable of calmly discussing the facts and sources with a knowledgeable editor on your talk page if one can be found willing to take the challenge? You have managed it reasonably well here. If this worked out, I would be prepared to ask for a probationary unblocking.
Oh and as far as the 20 and 30 touchdown seasons, there are 2 categorys most season with 20 or 30 touchdwn seasons in a career and most consecutive 20 and 30 seasons in a career and the Laker89 has those 4 categorys seperate which they should be, but there is a cite on all four so people can look for themselves which makes it easier to understand, the currect Jaranda version has all 4 categorys edited together in 2, but those are the only additions Lakers89 is trying to make and I hope you can look into and see they are all correct and useful info Rich, and I can answer any questions you have and everytime this info is added the user is immediatly indefinitly suspended by Isotope23 and Jaranda of sock puppet and they revert back, but Favre has 12, 20 td seasons and 12 con. 20 td seasons, but he has 5 con. 30 td seasons but 8 overall 30 td seasons, so once again Lakers89 version is much easier to understand and they have cits that people can go to, Thanks
There behavior is unacceptable, and I do have a lot of friends that are Favre fans and they know that the info is correct, they can revert to my version, they are wikipedia users and they know all the info is correct, the way they treated me and others is bad, reverting good and true facts, quit letting these people run this page, so my friends will revert my info, it's all correct and factual, but they are worried they are going to be suspended of being a sock, it will be there computer and I won't have nothing to do with it, but nobody can include that factual info cause they don't want it and they suspend people without even checking there web address to confirm it's not me, and what's the point in discussing it, if you had really looked, you would see they won't let the info be there simply because they don't like me and starwars1955 was suspended because I keep reverting to the correct version, and not for arguing which they mostly did, starwars1955 shouldn't be suspended at all for adding correct info, it's unjust and you should see this, but the reason they won't let it be there is because they are mad and you'll see this in the Brett Favre talk page because they added Brett Favre is on pace stuff to the page and I turned them in because it's a violation of the wp:NOR policy and they are mad, if you look at the past history you'll see the info that I put on there stayed for a long time, but then they decided to delete what I'm trying to add later on, I mean really look into it, people that are Favre fans around the country will revert to my version, but they will just be repremended for no reason, because they just won't have it for no reason, this is wrong and the info belongs, really look at the history.
1. Favre has 2,562 career quarterback points, second to Marino, they won't let this stand, but it's on Marino's page, it's correct 414 pass tds + 13 rush tds = 427 x 6 = 2,562 fact.
2. Favre has 147 reg season wins and 11 playoff wins + 90 reg. season losses and 9 playoff losses for a record of 158-99, second to Elway 162-90-1, profootballreference confirms this fact
3. Favre has a regular season record of 147-90 second to Elway 148-82-1 profootballrefernce and packers.com confirms this fact
4. Favre has 237 starts all consecutive and he is 3.rd for most starts all-time by a quarterback behind Fran Tarkenton and Dan Marino, they had 240 a piece, packers.com confirms this fact
5. Favre has 241 total games at quarterback, third all-time behind Marinos 242 and Tarkenton 246, profootballreference and many other site confirm this fact
and these are the 5 categorys I'm adding that they keep deleting , it's not right, they are fact and the only reason starwars1955 was suspended is because this keeped being added, this is very unjust and I though you would see this Rich, my new ID is Galaxy071, but they will block me again, I never should be blocked in the first place, if everyone is being blcoked for editing, block us all and I admit sometimes I reverted the wrong page and corrected it, but I was new then and made mistakes, but all I wanted to do is add this correct info that visitors and fans would like to see about this player, Thanks
Hi Rich, I've added a unblock request to my discussion page, please go to starwars1955 discussion page and you will see it, it's a unblock request with a explaination and I've asked that only you can take care and review the unblock request since your wikipedia top administrator, Thanks, starwars1955
Now user Yamla has deleted my unblock request which I have a right to do from the starwars1955 discussion page and deleted the previous statement by me, he was the other one I couldn't remember that was harrassing me, see what I'm saying Rich, please step in and put a stop to this, don't let Yamla do this, just more harrassment that I don't deserve, all I wanted to do is improve the Brett Favre page with correct info, I don't deserve this cause of bullies. starwars1955
I am away for the rest of the day, please do not edit using your new account in the meanwhile. RichFarmbrough, 10:39 11 February2007 (GMT).
PS, I am an ordinary admin, with rights and duties no different from any other. RichFarmbrough, 10:40 11 February2007 (GMT).
The editor was indef blocked (I could have sworn there was a ban discussion, but I could be wrong) not because of the addition of information, but because of a string of sockpuppets and personal attacks after repeated 3RR violations. Seeing how the editor has repeatedly engaged in sockpuppeting to continue adding the exact same information into the article (including a number of sock edits today after you specifically asked him not to edit in the meanwhile). This isn't harassment; the editor has repeatedly demonstrated they are not interested in taking the time to simply discuss changes, or wait on the current effort to reconcile the disparate sources. If there has not been a community ban discussion it is getting pretty near the time where there should be.--Isotope23 02:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
There was a very long discussion on the original user's talk page; after things didn't go his way, he saw fit to delete everything. Please ignore him from now on, per WP:DENY. Keep reverting his edits and blocking him, but don't respond to him anymore; it's ridiculous. –King Bee(T • C) 04:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
You would like that wouldn't you KIng Bee and Isotope23, but no material is being deleted and there is no interest in deleting material like King bee would like you to believe, all that is happening is the addition of correct and factual stats, heck, King Bee and Jaranda won't even allow the addition of three direct link to stats of Brett Favre's from espn, cbs and SI, it's getting sad, they are ruing this page of being up to date or anything, it's pure bullying and they should be stopped, only correct and factual stats are trying to be added, no deleting, even a new cit was added, but they delete that too, King Bee and Jaranda and vandalisng the page and getting away with it also, King Bee broke the 3RR rule on the Brett Favre discussion page and Brett Favre main page several times yesterday and no suspention, this is very unjust and something needs to be done here, but no one will, because they have ganned up and they are doing this together and getting away with it, someone needs to step in fast, because this info is correct, compair the edits by user BevrelyHills85 to the current version by Wizardman on the Brett Favre Main Page, all info that is trying to be added by BeverlyHills85 is 100% correct and factual information, but they won't have it, you can't even add the direct link to Brett Favre's stats on ESPN, CBS, and SI in the infobox under stats, they won't allow that, and user PSUMark2006 was the one that approved that, please look into it, Malibu55 08:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)malibu55
Here's the thing. There are two disagreements going on -
About content.
About behaviour.
Now on both of these it seems it's you against all the other editors of the article. But for me the difference is that while it is possible to discuss the first problem, I have no opinion about the content, only that it would be good for the other editors to specifically discuss on a point by point basis why they disagree, and this has happened to some extent. The other editors of the article can, of course, continue to discuss among themselves if there is any merit to your discussions,if they so wish. I can't (and don't want to) make them, nor can I really get involved in the technical detail (really - I have never watched an Amercian Football game in my life).
I also have no doubt that your behaviour warranted being blocked - I have blocked people for less. There is no point unblocking you if you only get blocked again. What is more, next time it would almost certainly be a community ban. So really lets focus on what the Wikipedia community would need from you for an unblock. I would suggest the following:
To choose one account and stick to it.
To respect the Wikipedia policies on personal attacks, notability and verifiability.
Now I don't know if this is something you think you want to do or can do, but if you agree to it I will suggest it to the blocking admin. Alternatively you may wish to look at another site with less onerous standards, like Wikinfo or Wikia or set up your own fan-site on geocities or similar. RichFarmbrough, 15:46 12 February2007 (GMT).
User Starwats1955 requested to be unblocked recently on 06:57, 11 February 2007 on his talk page and user Yamla illegally reverted that unblock request and fully protected the page for a month, he had no right to do that and I hope you go to Starwars1955 talk page and look at this yourself, Thanks Malibu55 03:54, 13 February 2007 (UTC)malibu55
Smackbot (3)
Smackbot poorly auto "corrected" a page I had recently edited. In heave compensator, it turned
[[kinematic ]]constructions
into
[[kinematic]]constructions
The effectual difference is that the bot leaves the two words merged. I suspect your bot is trying to correct additional (unwated?) spaces before the end of the link, but (a) the PHP code already does this, and (b) the code executes whether or not the trailing space exists (although there's a lengthy footnote to that). Anyway, I ask you to fix your bot to either recognize the contractions (space, followed by ]], followed by non-space) or to remove the fix altogether, or show me some editorial policy which points to my construction as ill-conceived. Thanks! --Otheus 07:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
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Smackbot
Hey, your bot Smackbot is misspelling template as tmeplate in the comment section when it makes edits. Here's an example on List of YWAM bases: 17:46, December 26, 2006 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (replace deprecated tmeplate using AWB). Though you might want to fix that. --Davidkazuhiro 22:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Thankyou, a bot that corrects for my laziness when typing tags. I never need type in the date again, fabulous!--Shakujo 08:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Another Smackbot thankyou - being a newbie I missed a couple of details in editing a page. Smackbot fixed them and the transparency of wikipedia makes it nice and easy for me to learn from the bot's edits. —Eldan Goldenberg 21:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot (2)
Hi Rich,
Hope I've diagnosed this correctly, as I wouldn't want SmackBot to change the good work it's otherwise doing:
Going by the example history here, I think SmackBot is moving <!--Interwiki--> new-user-assistance comments from where interwiki links may begin (featured articles on other wikipedias [wikipediae?]) and replacing subsequent <!--Other languages--> assistance comments with it. If so, could you modify SmackBot's code so that this doesn't occur...? As a bonus – if it's not too tricky to implement – maybe SmackBot could be programmed to check/move/insert these comments in the appropriate places, including the initial <!--Categories--> comment, i.e.:
Thanks for your (and SmackBot's) work! Yours, David Kernow(talk) 21:24, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
AWB takes certain things to the end of the artcile, viz: interwikis, cat's and stubs. It has also had a feature added to recognise "understand" some comments such as the ones you mention above, as these were being left stranded by the tide of bits being moved to the end. I think the possibility of adding thos comments was discussed, but I don't know what happened. I'll have a look at the AWB archives. RichFarmbrough, 16:30 12 February2007 (GMT).
Thanks – I see my query is one amongst a number SmackBot happens to've prompted, so if it's less than straightforward to address this issue, I'll happily try to do so; it was something I raised soon after I began using AWB, but let lie as AWB was so useful otherwise. Maybe, though, it might have more impact coming from you as a bot owner... Ideally, I support modifying the MediaWiki software (and/or whatever else would need modification) so that metadata is handled in a separate window/fields, but I realise the developers have so much else to maintain and/or patch... Regards, David(talk) 18:35, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that a smarter edit interface would help avoid lots of problems, in fact (almost) everything that SmackBot does could be at least warned about at edit time. In terms of development time, now we've lost Bluemoose, MaxSem is develping AWB (possibly with others) and although there were some good fixes early on, there hasn't been a release for a while I believe. So there's may be a similar bottle-neck. RichFarmbrough, 10:46 14 February2007 (GMT).
Can you smack your bot please?
Can you please not change {{mergefrom-multiple}} to {{Multiplemergefrom}} as it did in this edit? The Multiplemergefrom template is an older version (should be deprecated) that does not support a long list of pages to be merged. In fact, you should probably be converting usage the other way. —Doug Belltalk 07:23, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for spotting that, fixed. Both are rarely used, and you won't believe the number of templates that redirect or match other templates! Now you suggest migrating to Mergefrom-multiple, and deprecating the other template. I would suggest making the other template a redirect, (once the migrating has been done) otherwise there will still be two distinct syntaxes. I have migrated a couple. Let me know if you see any more incorrect renamings like this. RichFarmbrough, 11:19 13 February2007 (GMT).
The user Tarun2701 who added the cleanup tag to SPEED Channel has made no contributions at all since December 1, 2006? And has no user or talk page. You added the date to the tag (Nov 2006), but it was, I assume via a bot. There is nothing in the discussion page about the cleanup required (and no indication anything was added at the time the cleanup tag was added). It might be nice if someone created an agenda. I don't feel I have the experience myself, to spearhead such an effort. And the page is not under the umbrella of any project, as far as I can tell, although maybe there is a suitable such project for it?--SportWagon 00:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I've done some trivial cleanup, and removed the tag. The lead section is alittle long, could do with a "History" section. RichFarmbrough, 10:05 14 February2007 (GMT).
I missed the Wikipedia:WikiProject_North_Carolina affiliation, actually. But that seems rather tenuous. The intro isn't canonical for wikipedia, but I'm not rushing to create the usual first sentence, which can sound inane. I dropped a few notes on its discussion page (i.e. Talk:SPEED Channel). Thanks.--SportWagon 19:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Category:Articles with unsourced statements since February 2,007
I noticed that some edits by your bot caused a few articles to show up in Category:Articles with unsourced statements since February 2,007. Upon further investigation, it appears that the formatnum function that is being used in {{Infobox City}} is causing {{fact|February 2007}} to change to {{fact|February 2,007}} (or something like that). Throwing nowiki tags around the year within the template call seems to fix this, but is there a better way to fix this via changes to either {{Infobox City}} or {{Fact}}? --- RockMFR 00:41, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. I've moved the "Fact" to "population_footnotes". A sort of kludge, but so is "Fact" anyway. RichFarmbrough, 10:37 14 February2007 (GMT).
what is this "fix" for?
Hi, Rich! Why does {{unreferenced|Date=February 2007}} need to be converted to {{Unreferenced|date=February 2007}}, as in Micrometer (device)? -- Mikeblas 17:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi, strange isn't it? But the parameter is "date", "Date" will not work. (The capital for "Unreferenced" is merely stylistic.) RichFarmbrough, 20:07 15 February2007 (GMT).
City, state changes by your bot
Why does you bot change city links to city and state links? For example, instead of having Los Angeles, California (one link, to the city), it will change it to Los Angles, California (two links, one to the city and one to the state). It's not needed and is really annoying. TJ Spyke 07:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Because someone reading, for example, the article Kennesaw may wish to visit the page for GeorgiaorCobb County. If they click on "Georgia" they should go to that page, just as clicking on "United States" takes them there not to "Cobb County" or "Georgia". In this particular case Georgia has been split out in the article since 11 September2003, up to your edit earlier today. RichFarmbrough, 10:22 16 February2007 (GMT).
A rather important issue has arisen with the way Smackbot gets rid of thing like the "st" in "1st March" for dates. On List of British Rail classes, Smackbot did this with the names of some images (diff). Specifically:
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Automated fact-tag tagging
The use of a bot to go around automatically date-tagging every little "fact" template really is a bit much, IMHO. I can understand automating the larger "Unreferenced", "OR", etc., but this is pretty extreme, and generally an unnecessary feature in order for the various editors to do their needed work on individual articles. Perhaps one might wish to notch this bot's tasks back just a bit and stick to the larger issues? ... Kenosis 16:41, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
There are more articles in this cleanup category than any other. They are dated as a response to a request, see Template talk:Fact for details. Clearly dating the existing tags was a large chore, but the ongoing tagging should be easy to keep up with. RichFarmbrough, 19:27 14 February2007 (GMT).
Neither this, nor the talk page content you mention, justifies this feature of the bot. It's ridiculous to have a bot going around adding dates to every darned "fact" tag on the Wiki. A more sensible argument was rendered by User:Ligulem, which questions the wisdom and utility of having a category for articles with fact tags (apparently in excess of 20,000). The date feature of the tag is properly an option to be exercised by editors who are involved in the content of individual articles, at their discretion, rather than a mandate of any kind. ... Kenosis 20:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
The immortal phrase "going around", funny how someone who "goes around" doing something is always doing something negative... the purpose of the date is twofold, firstly to allow focus on un-sourced statements by month, the same as the other major cleanup categories, secondly to help editors decide which un-sourced statements are so old that they are unlikely to be sourced and can reasonably be removed. If you think this is a problem, may I suggest you discuss it at Template talk:Fact, and see if you get agreement there. RichFarmbrough, 20:38 14 February2007 (GMT).
Why begin the response to my initial objection to this particular function of "SmackBot" with the [obviously sarcastic] statement "The immortal phrase 'going around', funny how someone who 'goes around' doing something is always doing something negative" ...? In any event, I beg to differ. The pupose of WP:BOT and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval is because bots have frequently tended to overreach as they "go around" doing their bit at the behest of their creator. Sometimes well intended things get a bit too ambitious (read that: a bit out of control). The initial grant to use this bot stated as follows:
Question: "What are the maintanence templates this deals with? Please list those on the bot's page. This seems simple enough though.[[User talk:Voice of All]] 19:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Note that the creator of this bot needed to be prompted for some degree of specificity as to the intended role of the bot. And at the present stage, some two-and-a-half months later, it has gone several additional steps without broader feedback from the WP community. As of now, this bot has successfully labeled most or all of the "citation needed" markers applied to many tens of thousands of individual clauses, sentences, and paragraphs on the wiki as "February 2007". This hardly accomplishes the objective just stated above by User:Rich Farmbrough, at least in the short term. Moreover, if it's to be a long term endeavor, plainly it needs to get the approval of interested members of the broader community, not just a quick go-ahead by a couple of participants in one template discussion. ... Kenosis 01:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd be inclined to agree with Kenosis here. Before using a bot to make sweeping changes, community buy-in is a must. I see no value to date tagging in this case. Jim62sch 09:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me the issue here is not limited to Template:Fact, but also involves WP:BOT and questions of what are the range of expectations placed on users to discuss significatn modifications to the bot's function, i.e. requests for approval to significantly expand their role. That's part of the larger community process to which I was referring. ... Kenosis 18:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
As one of the users who helped implement dated fact-tagging, I absolutely support the use of a bot to enforce that tagging, for the reasons Rich mentions above. It's important to have them dated so that we don't end up with a supercat with hundreds of thousands of articles with no indication of when they might have been tagged (last week or three months ago?) without going through the entire page history. That's tedious work that takes away from the actual purpose of the tag, which is to improve articles. Bots cannot do the latter. -- nae'blis 16:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Pls read and think twice, and help in editing
Dear Sir, I am Dr. Mohammad Samir Hossain from Bangladesh. I was and still am too poor like my country. I was desperately searching for support for my research and seeing my desperate wish some educators from the so called non-accreditated university Bircham International University became too kind to buy me books and appove me 100% fund. I had to beg to many but got only one. So I jumped on my dream topic - Philosophy of Death and Adjustment and start working on the Impact of different philosophies on different bangladeshi people. I did it because in the science of death such research was never conducted, but if I can do or at least raise some point for it, may be some richer and more qualified people will find their interest in it and may proceed. My back ground thought was that remedy to many mental health problem might come out from this new branch. But who would raise me with it? Cause I did not have money even to buy papers or my daily food, let alone doing vast correspondences or take help from any accreditated university. Though fortunately I enrolled at Harvard Medical School with full waiver, but that was too small period for me to do any good job. Finally I thought may be Elisabeth kubler-Ross herself might find interest in it and togather we will proceed. But my luck did not support me, cause I found the news of her funeral on the very day I found her organization's web site. So temporarily my research work stopped upto which Bircham International University helped me. So till now I dream of proceeding more on the research with supports of knowledge from all over the world, and I do not even have a web site to introduce my thoughts. So the only light of hope became this free encyclopedia, and for reference I only had Bircham International University web site. So I desperately tried to promote the introduction of the university in this encyclopedia so that the research reference gets its better base. I know my letter is big and annoying, but sometimes we do annoying things for something better, and please believe me I tried to promote Bircham International University or any other that you all object, just to facilitate the birth of a new branch of a science. Please help me in every way, you do not need to ask me anything for editing or changing. If you all fail to help in a rational manner, I do not mind and will take it as a fate. I will see my reply through the condition of the article "Philosophy of Death and Adjustment". I will love to see this baby of mine alive, but if dead, I will follow the branch of science that I am holding on.
Regards Md. Samir Hossain MD, PhD Assistant Professor of Psychiatry E-mail: hmanjur@bttb.net.bd
203.112.199.7 16:49, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
<sarcasm>I'll send him some ping's via his IP address. </sarcasm> I know it's not my business, but Really, geriatrics is not very new, and it's not clear why he couldn't push this subject at Harvard. But it does raise the question, if one is to start original research, and an institute around it, how does one get it jump-started? Alas, wikipedia is not the place for it, I know. --Otheus 00:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Hey Rich,
I've tried to add sourcing on a topic "The Sorrows of Satan" which your smackbot said was missing attribution on a fact. That's an impressive bot by the way - how did you programme it to look for missing attributions?! I'm not sure I've added the footnote correctly. (It's not appeared at the bottom of the page of the article). If you could give me a tip on how to put it right, and if the attribution is acceptable to you, I'd be grateful. Coricus 04:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Sadly I have not invented AI. SmackBot merely dates the tags, such as "fact" "cleanup" etc (and does a few other tasks). Someone has fixed up the footnotes, but merely adding <references /> in the appropriate place is what is required. The smaller typeface I can take or leave, generally I leave it. RichFarmbrough, 14:45 23 February2007 (GMT). 14:45, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Is it okay with you then if I remove the does not cite sources tag now that I've added a reference? (Or is that not possible because I'm a regular user rather than admin?) Coricus 17:52, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Fact tags (again)
Hi Rich. I turned the bot off for the moment, with a note. The issue of the fact tags and the category involving articles which contain one or more fact tags is currently under DRV at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_February_20. It appears there are broader implications involved, some of which I've brought up in the DRV, that will require participation by interested members of the larger community. Look's like it'll take another week to ten days to sort this through. That said, very nice work with the bot, in general. I've appreciated seeing it attend to "unreferenced" and cleanup templates and other such matters. ... Kenosis 17:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Hello, in this edit, User:Smackbot removed the wikilinks of the section headings as part of its other cleanup duties. I will add those back, as they are useful in that article, but just wanted to drop a note. Thx. — MrDolomite • Talk 17:09, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I suggest we adopt one of three possible compromises:
Manually change {{fact}} to {{fact|date=}} for facts where we do not know an accurate date.
Add {{nobots}} to the top of the article.
Research the page history for the first appearance of the {{fact}} tag to give it the correct date.
I recommmend the first alternative.
--Kevinkor2 17:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Altering capitalization in templates
I notice you have edited many templates (states) and changed the capitalization in the category/subject heading, i.e., Largest Towns, you've changed to Largest towns. On what basis are you making these changes? Is there a Wiki guideline addressing this that you know of? If so please point me to it, and if not I would and do argue against you making these wholesale changes. As an example, the main category/subject header of many of these templates is: State of Someplace, and you leave state capitalized (which it should be), but then in the sub-categories where the important element, for instance, Town, is modified by a limiter, Largest, you de-emphasize the element being delineated by removing the capitalization of that important word. These are not sentences, and should not follow sentence capitalization rules. They are instead to be considered headers or even titles, and the rules for that typically allow, even instruct, that important words should be capitalized while unimportant articles and prepositions should not be, UNLESS those articles or prepositions appear at the start of the title/phrase, so State of Someplace, and Largest Towns, would both be correct, but State Of Someplace, and largest Towns, would not be correct. To repeat what I am objecting to in your edits of these templates, the word Largest is capitalized since it begins the phrase, but the word Towns should also remain capitalized as that word IS the name of the category and certainly the important word in the title/phrase. JackME 20:41, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi, As you say, these work the same as headings: the MoS states for headings 'In a heading, capitalize only the first letter of the first word and the first letter of any proper nouns, and leave all of the other letters in lowercase. Example: "Rules and regulations", not "Rules and Regulations".' Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 10:20 24 February2007 (GMT).
Noumenon
RE YOUR COMMENT ON MY TALK:All the tags where you've removed "February" as wrong were added in February. The one by "causal loop" where you've left the date of February was added on the 26th of January. Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 00:15 24 February2007 (GMT).
Hi Rich. Yes I noticed the more recent ones too. As I mentioned, the whole issue of whether this dating thing should be automatic from this period of time forward is a legitimate one that appears to need broader discussion about the various issues that are involved. Among them are standardization vs. editorial discretion by local WP:CONSENSUS, administrative actions vs. broader community actions, and a few other issues. Thanks also for calling to my attention the {{Nobots}} template. Many approaches have been proposed thus far that I hadn't heard before, and that particular discussion, as it relates to Category:Articles with unsourced statements, appears like it'll probably play out over the next week to ten days or so. My point of view you already know to some degree. Thanks. ... Kenosis 00:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
How to get a site on semi-protect status or mediation?
An editor is pulling a category from Health effects of September 11, 2001 attacks. He is doing this on a daily basis, so it doesn't break three revert rule. How do I get semi-protect status or mediation? Thanks. Dogru144 01:03, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I have added a "{{prod}}" template to the article 4AM Miracle, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but I don't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and I've explained why in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Yavoh 04:56, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Next time go for the 3RR
The Surreal Barnstar
For editwarring with your own bot on Vyacheslav Sychev (sorry but I had to delete the article). Gave me a good laugh. Too much of this? CambridgeBayWeather(Talk) 10:54, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I was wondering whether putting timestamps within a protected article is not a bit "risky". Say if the article remains locked for a longer time and then, when it's unprotected someone decided that the citation requests timed out ? Just a suggestion that it might lead to accidental removal of the information. --Lysytalk 19:07, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanks for looking into it. --Lysytalk 19:13, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
re: "Fact" tags
Thanks for the info. --Rrburke(talk) 21:31, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks
Thank you for the positive feedback - slowly working my way backwards through the alphabet to assess all those unrated biographies. Going to take me ages to get all the way back through X, however.
Smackbot fixed a minor error I left when I added a message to Wellesley College. Thanks for writing/running it! --Scouttle 00:56, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
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Thanks for the note regarding WP:SUBST. I've checked, and it's been weeks (at least) since I last made that mistake. Have I missed something? Rklawton 16:24, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Last week your bot helped edit the Chicago COTW. Thank you for designing a useful bot! I hope your bot keeps an eye on our future projects. You may also want to help us out. This week Chicago Theatre has been chosen. Please help improve it towards the quality level of a Wikipedia featured article. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see an open tasks list.
Well, not really! I was inspired by your note here, which I unfortunately read in diff, so missed 'Fact-now' until this moment. (and apparently got the wrong sense entirely as well, as what I THOUGHT I'd read you suggesting, isn't, quite as complicated as what you meant.) Sigh! Alas, I have since developed Template:DATE(edittalklinkshistory), {after some initial testing in {{X4}} and {{X5}} about three hours ago) which has lot in common with Template:Tlx(edittalklinkshistory), but has one virtue... it's extensible to all the other administrative templates which like to see the stray 'date=' definition. Unlike fact now, DATE will yell (shout!) at the user for not substituting it. See: date=May 2009 <BSEG>! OTOH, it also works (finally), albeit, there may be a more elegant way than it's sub-template. {{fact-now}} seems like it might add problems if not substituted... there's a split in the what links here list, at the least. In any event, I bequeath to you {{DATE}} (and it's loyal sidekick Template:DATE2(edittalklinkshistory)) which can be used in merge and copyedit and all that stuff that uses the parameter 'date=', iirc. I'm imagining the consternation that will occur in mainspace when that big text error message blasts off a preview screen where someone has forgot to substitute it... might want to take Template:Error:not substituted(edittalklinkshistory), copy it to {{error:not substituted2}}, and downsize that font selection. Best regards // FrankB 11:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
re:Your Challenge
Don't tell me, let me guess. You spell Polack: "S-U-C-K-E-R", right? <g>
My that's an interesting concoction of densely coded esoterica! Ahem. Well, Give a Speedy-D to this... if I experienced that right, it may be okay, but I suspect it was supposed to be tacked onto a days afd pages, N'est pas? No matter at the moment. Need more to go on with what was 'broken' now that I have a feel for the general code, and I definitely do not want to nominate The Beatles for deletion--wwoods would be after my scalp, and I'd hand it to him! <g>. I suspect, I found one logic nesting problem right up top. I've commented that in {{smartafd}}, and there are at least two probable nesting errors in {{Testafd}}, as I scanned it.
That's a for-certain on only the one... Text search for 'XX', and read the comments about it. Unless I'm way off, the preceding triple '{{{' is just a double, and the 'XX' is thus 'garbage text' needing deleted. I'm not quite sure about the two in test that involves the calls to {{!}}... looks to me even if the subst's work, the code just adds an empty 'else' to the #if: block... so just exits having done nothing. Otoh, your logic was using the old if statements, and that's not something I've experience with. So be advised I also changed those to the new parserfunctions. The use of switch as it is employed seems a bit strange as well. And then there is the overall flow and braces nesting, which needs a bit more analysis coupled with understanding of what is happening when.
I'm also fairly sure the self-referential definition of the parameter category to a parameter of the same name is pretty shakey ground. At the least, CBD counseled me against using such in the older depreciated interwikitmp-grp templates (Say {{interwikitmp-grp3}} feeding such params to the common template {{interwikitmp-grp}}... which is why that scheme is loading everything into the one, and will be deleting the numbered suffixed ones.)
Bottom line, this is something maybe CBDunkerson, Ligelum, Omegetron, Azatoth or others should be looking at-- at least someone with more than my six months of playing template coder brings to the table. I'm primarily a hardware guy, not that I don't still occasionally code for imbedded systems, but this is a very funky language and I'm still very much on a steeper part of the learning curve than I like. If you can give me a better appreciation for the expected behavior, I'm pretty fair at testing code and finding erroneous behavior--and you can plan on doing some speedies of dummy articles so we can test it for certain. I'm up a little late to be going into this more now and today, so if what I've stretched out along with my comments doesn't inspire you with great insights... I'll take another look again tomarrow or the day after. While I'm able to stay awake, I need to get back to WP:TSP matters so I can officially launch it someday.
Oh, btw. You wouldn't want to subst it with the expanded comments as I added, but they code should function the same, save for the 'XX' add in testafd. Now that I've done that, you may well be able to see something I don't yet since (I hope) you know what behavior you were aiming for! Cheers! // FrankB 14:27, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
re: Thanks, interesting analysis. I may have another go at it in a few days. I had asked Azatoth some time back, but I think he was busy. Rich Farmbrough, 19:16 28 February 2007 (GMT).
I asked Ligulem to take a peek at it last night and opined he could probably spot the error at least eight times faster than I... which is particularly true when I've had little sleep in three days(!) I asked him to let me know if he was disinclined to take it on. (Unfortunately he said: "Per the afd: sorry, not interested." Sigh!) Have you asked CBD? He's usually supportive of admin stuff overall, and God knows he's helped me spot more than a few nesting errors. My problem with this is that it seems to want to make self-modifying code with that includeonly subst technique with the {{!}} calls. Not knowing how that {{if}} template behaves is a sticky point when that is taken into accout. My approach would be to disable the 'subst' test logic, put the big message boilerplate aside in a text file off line, then play with it's logic until I could see where things weren't behaving as expected. Best I can do for you now. I've destabalized my windows system and have a bunch of browsers with edits that I need to finish so I can reboot. ttfn // FrankB 19:46, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Cleanup templates
Just to let you know that most cleanup templates, like "unreferenced", "fact", "cleanup" etc., are best not "subst"ed. See WP:SUBST for more details. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 19:19 27 February2007 (GMT).
can not understand what you wanted to say. Khalidkhoso 19:22, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot removed html entity … (ellipses: "…") from Veganism. Not quite sure why, didn't see any mention of it on Smackbot's pages. KellenT 12:49, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I think that was an incorrect replacement, I will investigate further. I was going to suggest […] to show that the omission is editorial, but I have put the elided passaged into the text, it seems relevant. RichFarmbrough, 13:39 2 March2007 (GMT).
I shut off Smack Bot and I figured I should tell you why. It tagged the articles Torrasque and Hunter Killer (StarCraft) as being unsourced. Technically, they were sourced. However, they have sources. They are only primary sources. Because you said on the bot userpage to shut it off if it looks like something may have gone wrong, I shut it off. Sorry if that was what it was supposed to do that. I just figured I'd do it just in case. Captain pandaInvinoveritas 13:20, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
No probs. It actually dates existing tags, does not (generally) add new ones. I would actually argue that in these two articles,"primary sources" are fine and dandy, and are all that is needed. Statements such as "The Zerg are the most horrifying creature in the video game" would require an external source, of course, but factual statements that are easily verified by playing the game or reading the manual seem fine to me. RichFarmbrough, 13:50 2 March2007 (GMT).
Thank you for taking care of that. I just figured I should let you know about that. Captain pandaInvinoveritas 13:52, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Your bot
Hi, your bot has been tagging {{fact}} with "date=February 2007" as early as this morning (March 2).. you may wish to update that, since February only has 28 days, and my belief is that it's got a bug. -- KirinX 15:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
In reference to the William A. Spinks article (at least): you or one of your bots, with an edit summary that mentioned "Ced Date fragments" (a phase unfamiliar to me), de-wikilined a large number of dates, and then also make rather inexplicable location wikilink changes that introduced gross redundancies, e.g. Los Angeles, California ⇒ Los Angeles, California, where "California" as a link an sich has no in-context value whatsoever. I'd like to know what value you perceive such edits as having, on both counts. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ 18:32, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
It was me. All bot edits are under SmackBot. "Ced" means "copyedit", I'll try and spell it out in futrue, and refers to changes that are very minor. Most year dates are not valuable in context. Geographically, I agree that both "Los Angeles" and "Calfornia", may be of limited value links in context, and certainly Los Angeles, California might be considered better in this example. I think, though, that if someone clicks on "California" they should go there not "Los Angeles". "Thou art God" RichFarmbrough, 22:01 2 March2007 (GMT).
Ah! "CEd" might get the point across. I think I would have gotten that. I totally agree that most contextless year wikilinks are kind of useless, but they seem endemic, almost to the point of being de facto "required". I got my head about bitten off when I reverted a few of them once. If you can cite a guideline against them, I would frankly be overjoyed and have a field day with AWB...: "Removing pointless year wikilinks per WP:POLICYHERE". </lust> I didn't revert that change because I thought the links were useful, just because I thought their removal went against long-standing consensus. Please tell me there's a consensus argument in the other direction! Didn't get the "god" point. If you mean that I was coming off as a know-it-all, I apologize; was certainly not the intent. Not sure I get the point about Cali. If I point at Los Angeles, California my browser tells me what link that will go to; I can see that it isn't California, and since the L.A. article already wikilinks to California, I'm not sure I understand a reason to break the state link out (I used to do Manila, Philippines and the like, and have an endless stream of reverts from people combine them into Manila, Philippines and so on, with virtual no counter-reverts, so it seems to be a trend). Similarly, someone recently changed my calciumcarbonate wikilinking to calcium carbonate, and I'm in concurrence with the change - better to link to the specific than the general, and let people manually dig deeper if they want generalities. And I've felt strongly for a while (from a usabilty point of view) that one should studiously avoid, if ever possible, putting two wikilinks completely side-by-side (because calciumcarbonate and Los Angeles, California are, respectively, entirely or virtually indistinguishable from calcium carbonate and Los Angeles, California unless/until one hovers over them. Kind of the counterpoint to the "if I click on 'California'..." point. To me, if a user sees a blue contiguous string of text (e.g. Los Angeles, California) it should be one link, to something that addresses the entire blue string, unless and only unless it would result in truly tortured wording to separate the two (or more) contiguous wikilinks ("carbonate of calcium"). I can't cite WP:MOS on this (that I know of); just advancing it as a wikiusability theory. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ 02:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
PS: Re-reading my original message, it sounded more cranky than intended. Sorry! I was in a hurry, and wasn't thinking at all of how my tone might come across. D'oh. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ 02:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Dates - there is near consensus about delinking years, however one or two of those that were anti, were vociferously so, mainly User:Rebecca, who has blocked users and done "admin rollback" on their edits, to the disgust of many other admins. WP:MOSNUM points out that context is key, it's as far as we could get with unanimity, with mere consensus we could have maybe gone a little further. I have certainly de-linked many hundreds of years with two complaints (both from "antis" in the long long debates) and a handful of queries. You can certainly point to WP:MOSNUM to say that default lining is not policy.
Combination links - I certainly agree with calcium carbonate, I suspect the place names depend partly on display style. I us pop-ups, so I see the link, but the browser hint is too far away for me. If you see underlines then that and the comma probably make the two links clearly seperate, if not the comma can appear (psychologically) blue. Also in the article you cite, since California is already linked to, the argument for leaving it unlinked grows stronger. I did think there was some guidance on this, but haven't been able to find it recently. RichFarmbrough, 12:46 3 March2007 (GMT).
I don't understand. I thought header areas should be simple statements. The whole article was substantially unreferenced and brief - I expanded it and referenced it carefully but largely left the header section seemed legit (it been changed since then but I still see no particular problem) but smackbot tagged it as needing references. There doesn't seem to be an controversy in the header to me and references might be distracting and largely depend on the substance of the article anyway. Please explain. I'm also not sure if this should be here or at smackbot's talk page but since you are who would explain....--Smkolins 23:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
"smackbot tagged it as needing references" .... No it didn't it merely dated the existing tag. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 23:28 2 March2007 (GMT).
I stand corrected. Apologies of course. It seems *you* tagged the header section. Can you explain please? What is it you want fixed?--Smkolins 23:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
No, no, my apologies. It seems I was editing the lead, and thought it was the whole article. tag removed. RichFarmbrough, 23:42 2 March2007 (GMT).
Ah, well then, that is better. Thanks!--Smkolins 01:25, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Your message
Thanks for the clarification; I'll edit in line with that in future. (I don't like to turn "bots" off in my Watchlist because occasionally they do things that I need to tidy up.) --Mel Etitis (Talk) 17:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Survey Invitation
Hi there, I am a research student from the National University of Singapore and I wish to invite you to do an online survey about Wikipedia. To compensate you for your time, I am offering a reward of USD$10, either to you or as a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation. For more information, please go to the research home page. Thank you. --WikiInquirer 22:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)talk to me
Definitely not notable. Links only to a single other article, another wrestler in the 'KWA', a "short lived wrestling promotion" - it is not notable. Not to mention the incorrect name/conflict with an existing article named David Robertson. Jammy Simpson | Talk | 11:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi, maybe not notable, but does assert notability. Therefore use {{nn}} for non-notable, {{unref}}, {{cleanup}}, {{orphan}} for the other problems, {{prod}} or {{Afd}} for deletion, and move to a disambiguated name to solve the naming issue/. RichFarmbrough, 11:40 4 March2007 (GMT).
Can you do something such that the likes of Talk, Template and Wikipedia pages do not get flagged here?
I'd also like to hear your suggestions for how to deal with the ISSN issues for Sega Pro and Mega Power. I am rather convinced that the journals exist but do not have ISSNs. (See a bit of discussion here.)
Ok ... thank you, I think ... Maybe a better solution would have been to move the template for the 5 articles that really do have ISSN issues to their respective talk pages. Keesiewondertalk 19:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Flop - I tried reverting the changes you made that I asked for, after moving the template to the talk pages of articles that do have issues ... and it didn't work as I expected. Maybe you can put the template back the way it was, or point me to instructions on how to begin understanding template programming. Thanks for your help ... Keesiewondertalk 02:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich and Keesie,
Try it now.
I have reversed the condition of the test. --Kevinkor2 06:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Not dating maintenance templates
Hello, I see your bot at work daily fixing tags and such--good job! I was just wondering if it's OK that lately I've taken to not adding the date to tags, knowing that shortly your bot will come along and fix it. Does saving my energy as a wikiresource somehow get canceled out by wasting your bot's energy/server space/whatever? Keep up the good work. Katr67 17:26, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I believe it is a good thing to leave the dating to the bot, less typos for a start! RichFarmbrough, 19:06 4 March2007 (GMT).
Excellent! I'll take any excuse to be lazy. Katr67 20:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
Smackbot recently edited Radiation hormesis and changed "fact" to "Fact." in all but one instance (where it added a date). Is it really necessary to change "fact" to "Fact?" would it have made an edit if this was the only change? Pdbailey 20:58, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
No, but it's neater, no it would be unlikely to edit an article without an undated template, although if the template was dated by a third party between being identified and edited, this could happen in theory. RichFarmbrough, 10:12 5 March2007 (GMT).
I don't know how else to change the link to point to the correct discussion page - it's not in the standard autogenerated location. The Transhumanist (AWB) 16:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
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Can you give me step by step instructions for how to update WP:WBE, please? I am absolutely happy to maintain it, I simply do not know how. I just looked at the download dumping place and was utterly bewildered by which one I needed, and what to do with it. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm nominating "Satsuma (disambig)" for deletion
Please note: I am nominating Satsuma (disambig) for deletion.
You are shown in the history as having edited this page.
If you wish to object, check the details by clicking the link above.
Last week you helped edit the Chicago COTW, but did not vote. Thank you for your help! Your input in future selections would also be appreciated. This week Union Stock Yards has been chosen. Please help improve it towards the quality level of a Wikipedia featured article. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see an open tasks list.
Sometimes the date parameter is added to merge tags without "date=" and SmackBot then adds the date parameter again to the merge tag but with "date=". This causes the Discuss link to redirect to the Month/Year page of the date, as here: [100] Can this be fixed? Squids'and'Chips 01:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich,
When I look at the template code for {{mergefrom}}, I see that the Discuss link would redirect to Month/Year page of the date whether or not your bot made its change. I suggest that if Smackbot finds an unnamed parameter that has Month/Year form, that it add "date=" in front of the parameter.
Yes this can be done and is done for some templates. I will have a look. The risk is if someone wants to merge (say) "Attacks of Septmber 11, 2001" with "September 2001"; fairly unlikely. RichFarmbrough, 08:49 8 March2007 (GMT).
Done for "mergefrom", I may do a major re-write which would include all fixing up all "date=" or not "date=". RichFarmbrough, 10:04 8 March2007 (GMT).
SmackBot and capitalization of the fact tag
Hi! Is there a reason why SmackBot changes {{fact|Date=March 2007}} to {{Fact|date=March 2007}}?[101] I keep an eye on some articles by watching my user contributions page, if they're not high-priority enough to be on my watchlist, and having SmackBot change such minor things as in-tag capitalization means that those articles are no longer listed as "top" on my user contributions. LastChanceToBe 21:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
HI. Yes, "Date=" will not work, it needs to be "date=". Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 21:38 8 March2007 (GMT).
Thanks for your prompt answer! LastChanceToBe 21:40, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Possibly unfree Image:Paperdolls.jpg
An image that you uploaded from stock.xchng or altered, Image:Paperdolls.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images#SXC_images because its copyright status is disputed. If the image's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. Please go to its page for more information if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Sherool(talk) 01:23, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Scientific racism by an editor
I thought that you might be interested in a racially disturbing pattern of edits by an editor that has erased article sections pertaining to the common human heritage in Africa. User:Dbachmann is the editor in question. Please see his edits under African people. Dogru144 13:10, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I looked at 11 edits summed here. I understand you oppose the removal of the image, which you could take up on the talk page, but this doesn't seem like "a racially disturbing pattern of edits". RichFarmbrough, 13:19 11 March2007 (GMT).
The particularly disturbing edits in particular
Hi Rich, Thank you for quickly getting back to me.
The particular edits that disturbed me were the following:
(1) Removal of a section regarding common human heritage. It is scientific consensus that human heritage derives from Africa.
However, Dbachmann removed the following without reinserting (elsewhere in the article) the comment of common human heritage from Africa. (This was the first of several edits on 9 March 2007 on African people.
The removed material follows immediately:
The term African people encompasses several kinds of people; it is most commonly used to describe people who can trace their ancestry to the indigenous inhabitants of the continent of Africa (in fact, scientific evidence points to the fact that all humans originated in Africa), but it is also sometimes used to describe all people who live in Africa, regardless of ancestry.
(2) Removal of large pieces of Turkestan history before the 8th Century CE.
He gave the justification for this in the edit box, "BC history is anachronistic. Substantively, his removal of certain history represents a diminuition of certain groups at the expense of others. The region of Turkestan has a rich history prior to the 8th Century CE. This is amply documented in books, standard encyclopedia articles, and major museum artistic displays. The removed material follows:
Turkestan has a rich history, dating back to the second and third millenia BC. Many artifacts were produced in that period, and much trade was conducted. The region was a focal point for cultural diffusion, as the Silk Road traversed it.
The removed material immediately follows:
Successive external powers have held the region. Greeks, under Alexander the Great, held the area fom 327 BCE to 150 BC. </ref>
Huns conquered the area after they conquered Kashgaria in the early 2nd century BCE. With the dissolution of the Huns' empire, Chinese rulers took over Eastern Turkestan. [1]
[Arab]] forces captured it in the 8th Century. The PersianSamanid dynasty subsequently conquered it and the area experienced economic success. [2]Dogru144 13:41, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
666Satan
hey, idk if your still in2 666Satan much anymore, but i designed a userbox if your interested in using it
{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga/Userbox/User 666Satan}}
above is what it looks like, and the template link for it,
ya i only added it cuz you made an edit on the page and i basically just went through the history and clicked on people who've made edits to the page and send them this message___Ancientanubis 22:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Pilsudski
Thank you for copyeditng this article. Could you look over Soviet invasion of Poland (1939) - I am trying to improve this to GA and reviewer asked for a further copyedit with dates and such (I am not a native English speaker, and I primarily create content, not polish it). Thanks, -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 21:35, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
JAK
I don't quite agree with you and the "tag" about "notability" of the Jayne Ann Krentz article. I'm not the creator of that one. I just translated it into Spanish. Would you please read the discussion in that page in order to see if there was a mistake of the bot or anything?. Thank you.--Joanenglish 02:15, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Than you for your messenge. I'm sorry I though it was you. I apologize.--Joanenglish 15:19, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
bar code & issn connection
Is there one? Someone just uploaded an image of a magazine for which I have not been able to locate an ISSN ... you can see the bar code digits on the image ... ? ... Thanks for your help! --Keesiewondertalk 12:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Excellent! Thanks! I trust it'll always be in that location in the bar code then ... Keesiewondertalk 00:16, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Sprinkling an external link
Hi Rich. Question about someone's having sprinkled several articles, including Homelessness with external links to a specific orgranisation, intelligentgiving.com,
and if it looks okay to you. See the user's (User:Jtuulian) contributions Special:Contributions/Jtuulian and have a look. Something feels uneasy about it. But perhaps it's just me. I'd really like to ask for your thoughts on the matter. Thanks and Best Wishes. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 14:48, 12 March 2007 (UTC) (talk)
Thanks, Rich, that was my feeling. Not egregious, but a bit fiddly. What is your recommended disposition on the matter ? Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:52, 13 March 2007 (UTC) (talk)
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Template:Disambig-cleanup
As I was cruising Wikipedia I had an idea for a task a bot could do that's not very complicated, and I recalled your bot doing similar things already so I thought I'd pitch the idea to you. If a page has both the {{disambig}} and {{cleanup}} it could replace them with {{Disambig-cleanup}}. Vicarious 06:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm having a quick look at this. There's some 76,000 disambig articles, so a one-tme sweep will take a couple of days, more if the changes are done manually. RichFarmbrough, 15:09 2 March2007 (GMT).
If your plate is full I understand, I can always pitch the idea at Wikipedia:Bot requests, or who knows, maybe someday I'll finally finish the bot I started making. Vicarious 20:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Last week your bot helped edit the Chicago COTW. Thank you for designing a useful bot! I hope your bot keeps an eye on our future projects. You may also want to help us out. This week Burnham Park (Chicago) has been chosen. Please help improve it towards the quality level of a Wikipedia featured article. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see an open tasks list.
Thanks for looking at my articles. The article for the Biomolecular Object Network DataBANK was an assignment for a university class; however, my partner accidentally started the article entitled DataBASE so we we're hoping that article could be deleted. The content of the 2 articles is the same, but the DataBASE article is incorrectly titled. The goal of the article was to provide an overview of a current bioinformatics resource.
First, thanks for the copyedit of the Soviet invasion - the article is now a GA. Second, if in som espare time you could look over History of Poland (1945-1989) - some users commented that this FA (now on FARC) needs a copyedit - it would be much appreciated.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 18:03, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Cleanup templates
Thanks for letting me know. I was not aware of that. Corvus cornix 18:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Orphan Tags
I am trying to gather a consensus on whether Orphan tags are necessary on wikipedia.
Please go to the page Template talk:Orphan and fill in you opinion under the heading Please give you opinion on the Orphan tag below area of the page. Thanks Dreamweaverjack 22:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Comment - I'm a bit surprised at the style of this user - a glance at his contributions page will show you what I mean. He's putting this note on a LOT of people's pages. Since I started the discussion with him [102] on this topic, I suppose it's my business to care what he does with it. Do you have any advice? --Alvestrand 22:55, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
He was blocked after an hour for WP:CANVASS, so I now know what Wikipedia policy is relevant. Case closed. --Alvestrand 06:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot: dated templates inside references
Apparently there is a problem with SmackBot's "Date/fix maintenance tags" process, in which an undated {{fact}} tag is replaced with a dated one. Based on an 8 February 2007 bot-edit done to Satellite of Love (MST3K) ([103]), such a tag inside an HTML <ref> element does not get properly processed, leaving template parameters unsubstituted and the template usage itself mangled. (I've manually fixed the problem for that article.) I'm not sure how common this problem is, so I felt uncomfortable stopping the bot by leaving a note on its talk page. Please review this situation to see how it might be avoided. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 03:58, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it's a known mediawiki problem. Therefore I now replace the (date=)"subst:CURRENTMONTH" "subst:CURRENTYEAR" parameters before making the save. Unfortunately this means that "March 2007" is hardcoded into the regular expressions, albeit only in one place. I believe there are not many if any unfixed. RichFarmbrough, 12:14 16 March2007 (GMT).
Hi... I anticipate you're going to leave me a well-deserved message telling me merge templates shouldn't be substed, so I'm here to save you the trouble. Mea culpa. Next time, forty lashes with a wet noodle. I'll look and see if I've made the same mistake elsewhere. Cheers. --Rrburke(talk) 11:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
User:Naconkantari got a request to add these links to the spam blacklist, which he did on 12 March. I left him a message here hoping to get this reversed. The complaint was that the owner of isbn-check.com makes revenue by referring people to Amazon. Personally I think that a small amount of affiliate revenue is deserved in return for the service that his site provides in checking ISBNs. I'm copying the dialog below (from the spam complaint at meta.wikimedia.org) to help publicize the issue slightly. EdJohnston 20:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
these 3 websites are present in many wikis, mainly in the 'Wikipedia:Book sources' special pages (just removed from it.wiki ). If you search a book, the websites are always redirecting to Amazon (pay-per-link system). The same system is adopted by isbndb.com (Amazon and others). Probably the special pages related to Special:Booksources are full of this kind of spam in every wiki. --81.211.181.164 00:05, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Please provide diff links to the spam. Thanks, Naconkantari 05:32, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
the 3 websites on the topic title belong to the same author: he is making money with the "referral profiteering" system (when you get a book description then the links are pointing to amazon). Links are mainly in the "Wikipedia:Book sources" pages on several wikis, for example: en, fr, es, fi, it, de. It is allowed to make money in this way? --81.211.176.241 00:21, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Done, thanks Naconkantari 19:21, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Follow-up: There is now a removal request in place at [104] on the Talk page of the Spam Blacklist at meta.wikimedia.org, but it may be a hard sell. (The request has already been turned down once, though the first attempt may not have given enough reasons). Any ideas for what to do next would be welcome. EdJohnston 02:09, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
CAT:INVALID has disappeared (due to emptiness, perhaps)
Hello Rich. See [105] for this issue and on another matter see [106] for the scary possibility that links from WP articles to Amazon would be disallowed. EdJohnston 03:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I operate a similar bot in HuWiki for timestamping maintenance tags. It currently has a lot of hardwired things and I'm in the process of generalizing it, so that its easier to support new templates and timestamp all tags by just one look at the page history.
Could you share the source for your bot? I believe it would help me a lot when working on my code.
SmackBot seems to be removing wikilinks from subtitles. This may be mandated by WP:MOS, although I do not know if this can be automated.
A more serious issue is, that the bot is also remowing images from subtitles. This led to awful results in this edit, that still have not been corrected. In short, - Germany - was replaced with - 22px Germany -. -- Petri Krohn 21:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
P.S. Using the template {{flagicon}} in subtitles (as used in some of them) does not solve the problem, as {{flagicon|Germany}} produces a very different flag: -- Petri Krohn 21:43, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I have a question. You made a small change (I think) to one of my user boxes, which didn't appear (at least to me) to do anything. In fact, and maybe it's because I havn't had coffee yet, I can't even detect what you changed, lol. If it's not too much trouble, could you teach me, in a sentence or two, what you did and why? Thanx Sue Rangell[citation needed] 18:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Templates can be used in four ways (that I can think of!)
"transcluded" {{my-template}} puts the text of the template in the rendered page without any "noinclude" sections
"substituted" {{subst:my-template}} puts the text of the template in the source page without any "noinclude" sections
"referred" [[template:my-template|my-template]] or {{tl|my-template}} merely creates a link
"pasted" the text of my template puts the text of the template in the source page including any "noinclude" sections.
This last is what I think you did with a userbox. Therefore the category that should have only applied to the userbox was applied to your page as well. You are not the only person to do this, by a long way! Regards, RichFarmbrough, 12:40 20 March2007 (GMT).
references for 9.6_year_cycle_of_lynx_abundance
Inn the page 9.6_year_cycle_of_lynx_abundance you have posted that the references are inadequate. Please put your reasons on the talk page of that article. They look fine to me. Ray Tomes 05:25, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Do you think the "Homeless Hero" YouTube reference in the Homelessness article is appropriate for WP ? Your thoughts appreciated. Best. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 00:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC) (talk)
Thanks, Rich, for your help on this one as ever. Cheers. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 16:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC) (talk)
SmackBot
Don't see why this [107] article's bottom needed smacking.--Shtove 19:18, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
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Cleanup tags
Hi, re the message you left me, I'm not sure what you're referring to?
Jdorney 12:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Hello Rich Farmbrough,
please send your real-name, your prefered login-name and the public part of your ssh-key to . We plan to create your account soon then. --DaB.
If possible, we would appreciate your assistance in cleaning up this article to bring it up to Wikipedia's quality standards. If you are unsure what the nature of the problem is, please discuss this on the article's talk page.
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thanks for your help on the Glen E. Friedman article.
i have found the citations you requested but don't know how to properly format them. (sorry i'm a bit of a newbie)
do you mind doing them for the article?
the first one requested was for the line:
"A consummate artist and political activist, he shuns intoxicants, and follows a strict vegan diet"
Can be seen in many places. The 1st two sources i have are:
"His photos are said to reflect the spirit of progression and angst that defined an era"
this came from SkateBoarder magazine, May 1997, PhotoEnergy by Michele Lockwood
the original is archived at http://www.southern.net/BURNINGFLAGS/press/skateboarder.html
the third one requested :
"Friedman has helped define the moment and movements he was caught up in"
this came from DAZED& CONFUSED magazine, issue#11 1995 p.46
and has been used many places since in other articles.
The original is archived on http://www.southern.com/BURNINGFLAGS/press/dazed.html
the fourth one requested :
"His process was much more incendiary than it was documentary"
this came from "HUH magazine, November 1994
and has been used many places since in other articles.
The original is archived at http://www.southern.net/BURNINGFLAGS/press/huh.html
and further spots where i saw a citation was asked for:
1997 citation - this came from the main page of the burning flags.com website that is dedicated to the work and information on this artist. the URL for all the shows listed is at :
http://www.southern.com/BURNINGFLAGS/main.php
and on that page there are also URL's for each of the city shows mentioned individually.
on Published Quotes of Interest about Friedman:
Los Angeles Times - 21 November 2002
ART section
It's all about attitude, Rebels keep finding their way into Glen E. Friedman's viewfinder.
Hi Rich:
I came across the Satan and Adam entry this afternoon and saw that you were the most recent contributor. I'm delighted to know somebody's taken the trouble to write us up, but it's definitely undersourced. I'm not a Wikipedia person and have no idea how to add sourcing, but I did manage, from memory and with the help of some googling, to find some basic sourcing material, which I'll paste below. I'm sure that some of it doesn't meet the reliability criterion. Maybe you could get back to me with some word of whether this stuff helps. Thanks. Adam Gussow (agussow@olemiss.edu)216.119.179.229 22:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Satan and Adam – some sources I think I can point you towards
For general information on Satan and Adam, esp “Gussow left New York several times….”: My own book, Mister Satan’s Apprentice: A Blues Memoir (New York: Pantheon, 1998)
Entries in All Music Guide to the Blues (not sure of the editor; Rich Skelley’s quote is from this, I believe) and Big Book of Blues, ed. Bob Santelli.
Paul Winley and the Harlem Underground; “Get in My Arms Little Girl”; “Freedom For My People” from Rattle & Hum – can google this
It seems like one of SmackBot's functions is to remove markup for links that refer to the current article. However, mediawiki seems to render the first occurrence of the subject text as bold whether it is marked up with triple quotes or double square braces. Some articles have utilised this mediawiki 'feature', and in those cases SmackBot seems to remove the link markup instead of replacing it with bold markup. For an example of this see Uranium Glass (01:24 20-Mar-2007) Mister Farkas 17:53, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes this is a general AWB fix, as is bolding the first mention of the article. The two should balance out except on the day-of-year articles where there is special anti robot code in place. I'll raise with AWB team. RichFarmbrough, 17:24 24 March2007 (GMT).
SmackBot punctation weirdness
Hello Rich. I noticed that SmackBot added date to a "Wikify" tag. But it also changed the punctation in the whole page. It doesn't seem to make sense. See the diff. Is it supposed to do this? Thanks in advance. --Ysangkok 16:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it moves superscripted refs to after the punctuation. This article used them in a different way, as if they were in line text, which didn't work. Fixed up now I believe. RichFarmbrough, 23:35 24 March2007 (GMT).
mergeto boiler
The bot cleaned-up a page "Eric's Extension" that I had added a mergeto boiler to. It added a date to the tag.
What is weird is that the boiler wouldn't appear on the bot's cleaned-up page. I reedited the page, just
by adding a space and return to top of the page before the boiler and now the boiler appears. No
real changes were made. (This isn't a caching issue I checked that.) In the history though the
bot-edited page shows the mergeto tag. I don't know what's going on here. You might want to manually
check some of the bot-edited pages to see if the boilers aren't displaying after the bot cleans things
up. Jason Quinn 22:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich and Jason,
For sake of investigation, I undid Jason's last change to Eric's Extension.
On this edit - why did the bot move the location of the {{ref}} tags in the table? Also it seems to be having trouble with comments.Gimmetrow 16:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
The first is due to a known WP:AWB feature, I have requested a change. The second is very odd I will investigate further.RichFarmbrough, 17:34 24 March2007 (GMT).
The second part is a fixed AWB bug. I guess we should scan for it. RichFarmbrough, 17:34 24 March2007 (GMT).
I have a similar question about this edit. In the top Infobox, it moved all of the references down a line, which isn't as easy to read for an editor. Why did it do this? --MattWright (talk) 16:58, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Not sure why, I think this is part of AWB general fixes as well. Bug reported. RichFarmbrough, 17:34 24 March2007 (GMT).
Thanks for the followup. --MattWright (talk) 18:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Dave, Shelly, and Chainsaw
Hey there.
You recently made the following statement at the Dave, Shelly, and Chainsaw talk page reasoning why it has the Articles with unsourced statements tag:
Because of this statement
"The J-K Conspiracy is a movie produced by Dave, Shelly, and Chainsaw, directed by Chainsaw, and released in 2005. It stars the entire show, plus a number of celebrities (such as Bob Costas, Doug Flutie, Don Rickles, and Laura Schlessinger) and several notable listeners (including Listener Lex, Commander Butch, and Quiet-Talking James)"
I am wondering which part must be sourced. On the iMDB, it lists everyone listed as actors in the movie. This way we can fix the problem and have the tag removed. --Raderick 03:08, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich,
I put a couple of hours in changing The Office (US TV series) to The Office (U.S. TV series) only be have it moved backed to its original title for what strikes me as a quite nonsensical policy of "US" being the abbreviation of choice in article titles. I've never waded into the arena of Wikipedia style policy before but, as silly as this may sound, this bugged me enough that I'd like to change it. I notced the discussion over at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (abbreviations) is dated from November so I was curious if there had been a change in policy or what the next step is.
Thanks for your help and time,
Jarfingle 09:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot is not logged in
I think SmackBot is editing while not logged in. Please see 172.146.36.39 (talk·contribs). The IP has been blocked for 24 hours. J Milburn 18:30, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Not SmackBot. I don't believe AWB can edit unless it is logged in - as an approved user. Also the edits are too slow, and include definitely manual edits. RichFarmbrough, 20:02 24 March2007 (GMT).
Thanks
Thanks for your cooperation regarding SmackBot. --Ysangkok 11:10, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks smackbot!
I'd just like to leave a note of appreciation for SmackBot. The number of minor corrections it's made for me is really great. i kan reed 18:56, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
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I just wanted to express my appreciation for your work, and consequently the work of Smackbot, in correcting my linking and style errors in the past month or so. Not only has it kept the articles up to standard despite my bumbling efforts, but I'm slowly learning how to do these things (so the bot won't have to follow me around - I'm sure it has better things to do). Thanks again for all your hard work! *Vendetta*(whoistalkedits) 15:16, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
AWB Request:Don't complain of empty categories - Added
Hi,
Just to let you know, i've sorted the complainging about categories, so it will wait till its loaded all categories before it complains
I decided to go with the complain, but not until its loaded all the categories. It will make a list as it goes through of any bad categories, and then display a message box at the end to teh user listing them all. Then the user isnt left wondering what went wrong, and it wont interrupt the page loading from category process.
Please click on the link above, then click on "Revision as of 09:44, March 28, 2007" (or the revision in the right column), then scroll down and look at the categories. One is in red, that should not be. Maybe the infobox cannot handle fact templates with dates? Hope that is clearer. If not, let me know and I'll try again ... Keesiewondertalk 23:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Ah yes, there is some "smart" code in the infobox that puts commas in numbers more thatn 3 digits long. (All very well....) I had forgotten about that. Article fixed up now. RichFarmbrough, 08:15 31 March2007 (GMT).
proposal about maintenance templates
There is a proposal here to make a new maintenance template that would allow multiple issues to be adddressed within a single messagebox. Would you be willing to modify SmackBot to add dates to such a template, and is there any particular way of structuring the syntax of the template that would make it easier? This is all at the early proposal stage, and I wanted to let you know before anything is settled. CMummert · talk 12:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I would, and the proposed syntax would work reasonably well. RichFarmbrough, 12:34 2 April2007 (GMT).
Please date-fix "LocateMe"
There's a new Template:LocateMe; please will you add it to SmackBots patrol for date-fixing? Thank you. Andy Mabbett 00:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Sorry - and Template:LocateMeBot, please (100 instances today; future bot edits should include the date). Andy Mabbett 22:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
AWB weirdness
This was an odd edit. There happens to be an 's version what is a redirect, but... weird. Can you expand on this bug report with your version info, etc? Thanx. — RevRagnarokTalkContrib 14:28, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
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Bot message
Thansk for your response; I'll do as you suggest in future. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 14:36, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Claudia Costa
You flagged my page at Claudia Costa...why? what material do you feel is being misused? Please let me know.
First of all I didn't tag the page, merely dated an exisiting tag. Secondly it's not considered "your" page (see WP:OWN). Thirdly the problem, which is not as major as it may seem, is that there is no source for the data, as Zimbardo Cookie Experiment said "It's definitely unreferenced. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's unreferenced. Please see WP:ATTRIB" Regards, RichFarmbrough, 19:00 5 April2007 (GMT).
I saw that you may have edited the article on the Kabbalah
Hi! I just formed a new project, Wikipedia: WikiProject Kabbalah, would you like to join? It is in great need of your assistance. Thanks. Lighthead 22:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Propose move SmackBot -> MassageBot
SmackBot does what computers should do, making life easier for people. Hate the name. The names FixBot, Doh!Bot, OopsBot, CleanBot, HaHaBot, TouchupBot, MassageBot, ConsistencyBot would all refer more to the function performed, rather than to its unwarranted Smack on the user. I'm already smacked by WP vandalism and WP politics, not to mention real life, I don't work on Wikipedia to be smacked yet again. I'll cop to a Massage, though. So, in future, please log all edits to articles I work on as by MassageBot. --Lexein 01:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
<grin> Think of it as the smack at the end of a Swedish massage, or the smack of a Homer like pate when saying Doh! Whatever makes you comfortable... The name was never intended as a reprimand, although some users have taken it as such, just a passing pun. Regards RichFarmbrough, 07:41 6 April2007 (GMT).
Why this change from a numeric to a named parameter on {{uncategorizedstub}}? It's now inconsistent with the most similar such template, {{uncategorized}}, and the various examples of its use. If there's a move on to have all maintenance templates use the same parameterisation, it would at least be a good idea to maintain "backwards compatibility" until such time as they really all are consistent. Alai 18:07, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes,this was a mistake, working on too many templates. I have restored "backward compataibility". Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 21:46 6 April2007 (GMT).
Thanks. Yeah, I'd noticed one of those edits, checking up on my bot's latest run, but I'd no idea that editor was retagging so many (though, seems to have been doing at least some categorisation in there too). If they're still editing, must from under a different IP, so not much sense in complaining about it. Alai 22:45, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi. I notice you've been involved in blocking User:Ernham before. He's just come back from his ban, and is already at it again, removing sourced references etc. he doesn't like with no attempt to discuss. I'm immensely frustrated at wasting time reverting him, and hope not to get sucked into another edit war. I'd appreciate your help in keeping an eye on him, especially his 'contribution' to Lothar von Trotha and Herero and Namaqua genocide. Thank you :) Greenman 12:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks - he's just reverted the two articles again :) I'm not going to get involved in an edit war again, but perhaps you'd like to case your eye over the two articles when you're feeling inspired, and see what you think :) Greenman 11:54, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
I've reported him at [108] and commented on a report of his against another user at [109]. It would be much appreciated if you could add your comments if you get a chance. Thank you :) Greenman 12:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
its a mistake
If you are looking for a new job, you should find this agency suits you to a T. -- RHaworth 06:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
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SmackBot vs. DoBs
Might you consider using SmackBot to convert 1 April1963 format birth dates, in info boxes, to {{birth date and age |1963|04|01}} format (output: (1963-04-01) April 1, 1963 (age 61) - see {{birth date and age}})?
You can use {{birth date|1963|04|01}} if the subject is dead and if there is consensus to keep that template (last discussed August '06; its talk page) (output: (1963-04-01)April 1, 1963 - see{{birth date}}).
I'm a big fan of templating data, for semantic reasons, and in this case for future use in hCard microformats (see also WP:UF). Thank you. Andy Mabbett 23:06, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
No problems with this in principle. How do you tel if someone is dead? RichFarmbrough, 10:33 11 April2007 (GMT).
Stub tag ordering
Could you please tell Smackbot to not put stub tags below the categories. They belong above them, which is where they are on the page and where they are easily visible to someone editing. Categories, on the other hand, are more like meta-data on the order of inter-wiki links. —Centrx→talk • 20:47, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
There's an archived discussion here. The salient points seem to be
There's not a mandated place.
Stubs are an editor feature (and a form of sef-reference) so belong at the end after user features.
Stubs include a category, so they should definately come after any "real" categories, so that the category listing makes more sense. Before or after interwiki is debateable, perhaps it doesn't matter much. RichFarmbrough, 10:32 11 April2007 (GMT).
Hello Rich. I notice this template has been created, perhaps by people who didn't know that ISBN magic would work with ISBN-13. In the past, counter-productive ISBN templates have been deleted with fair regularity, after the issue was explained. Do you have any strong views on this one? I assume that, since subst may not be used, your off-line ISBN-checker, which reads wiki text, would face an additional hurdle in checking {{ISBN-13|9780123456789}} for validity that it wouldn't face if the ISBN were entered in the normal way. The claimed benefit, from the entry for {{ISBN-13}}, is that this allows a where-used function for usage of ISBN-13 within Wikipedia. So what do you say? Replying here on your Talk page is fine. EdJohnston 19:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
AFAIC it can go. In fairness, though, ISBN has only supported 13 digits relatively recently. RichFarmbrough, 10:15 11 April2007 (GMT).
teh bot parsed {{Check}} and turned it into {{|Verify source|date=April 2007}} in which the super script text don't appear but spills out the broken text. Getonyourfeet 17:47, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, there were several of these, but the cause of the problem is fixed. RichFarmbrough, 18:59 11 April2007 (GMT).
SmackBot
The SmackBot added a link to a global warming site in this article about Internet marketing: [110]. Am I missing something? Panfakes 17:03, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
your bot removed all the _ for one of the articles i've been working on... i've tried to preach to always put the _ in for any article, so i'll be reverting it back to the previous one prior to it editing, but i'll leave the date added to one of the tags... here is the edit summary, if ya have any problems with my revert then message me and change it back... peace, Ancientanubis, talk 19:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
No problem, but most people (and robots) preach against those underscores. RichFarmbrough, 11:34 12 April2007 (GMT).
really??? i've always been under the impression that the _ were consitered more o the norm then no _... hmmmm Ancientanubis, talk 13:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Pectuscast Tone
Hello,
I noticed that you disapproved of the tone of the article on the Nuss procedure, without adding any suggestions on how to improve the article on the talk page. I started this article, and I keep an eye on it to maintain it. Please either explain the designation on the talk page, remove this designation because it is unexplained, or fix the article as you see fit, and remove the designation. If you just want to explain your objection, I would be glad to make the corrections myself.
Hi Seth, I made some style changes at the time, I have made a few more, can you check that I have not introduced any inaccurcies? Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 23:56 11 April2007 (GMT).
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what you changed, as I haven't monitored all of the edits lately, but the article looks good as it is now. Thanks.--Seth Goldin 04:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Tag curiosity
Please remind me what this edit adds. I'm curious since I've been warned in the past to not make what appear as trivial edits to articles with AWB. Thanks for your thoughts. Keesiewondertalk 14:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Probably a bug, as it doesn't seem to add anything of any value? --kingboyk 16:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi I noticed a message in my archives that I had not replied to about this edit. (Kingboyk had said it was probably a bug.) The answer is that the template was transitioning from default parameter to a named parameter, all the dated clean up tags now use "date=". Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 09:15 28 August2007 (GMT).
templates and categories
Why does SmackBot seperate a meta-template like {{DEFAULTSORT}} from the categories? As soon as it's not near the categories, people will wonder about the strange sorting. --32X 19:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Hope I'm not becoming a pain. Here Smackbot corrected the capitalisation of the template (!) but left it wrongly formated (it doesn't take the "article" argument, giving rise to a category error). --Mel Etitis (Talk) 14:01, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot is only attempting (hee) to deal with date arguments and a few ancillary issues. The use of the default template argument leads to many problems, which can only be fully dealt with by AI... <grin> (E.G. cleanup|Fev 2007, cleanup|2007 etc. etc.) That's one of the reasons that I encourage the use of date= format for all cleanup templates, and in due course hope we can phase out the use of the default parameter (possibly adding a standard "reason="). Ideally we could add parameter parsing to the template as well to detect invalid values of date parameter. This also answers some of the points below. RichFarmbrough, 08:26 16 April2007 (GMT).
Strange edit
Hi Rich, you might want to look at edit, where SmackBot's edit summary said "Date/fix the maintenance tags", but all it did was a trivial formatting edit. The maintenance template was removed by me in the edit prior to that. HTH. --kingboyk 16:24, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. It is an inaccurate summary, I suppose I should check for presence of cleanup template. RichFarmbrough, 08:27 16 April2007 (GMT). 08:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Implied date field
Could you update the bot to understand implied dates in templates? See this edit for an example of broken behavior. /Blaxthos 21:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
It is actually not bad at doing that, however that template was already broken as there is no implied date behaviour for default parameter 2. RichFarmbrough, 08:29 16 April2007 (GMT).
SmackBot
Here Smackbot moved a graffito, presumably mistaking it for a stub — I don't suppose there's anything that can be done anout that, but I've often wondered why it moves stubs from the bottom of articles to part way up. At the bottom makes more sense for them, because they're temporary additions. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 09:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
AWB puts stubs after categories but before interwikis. Personally I woul like to see all stubs and other maint. templates right at the end, but for stubs that's good enough. What you saw with the graffito was the cats being moved to the end. RichFarmbrough, 11:36 12 April2007 (GMT).
Ah [smacks head] — not A being moved before B, but B being moved after A. Obvious now you explain it. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 11:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi there. Your SmackBot edited tags over at Orks (Warhammer 40,000) and turned them into partial tags. An Example was changing a tag around sexual to have sex tagged followed by ual. Its a messy error and I do not know how many other pages it commited the error on. Thanks. SanchiTachi 17:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Dominique Peccatte
I have in the past sighted the reference in question, and it was changed by another user perhaps for grammatical reasons. Nevertheless, I have updated my revision to reflect your request.
Could you please delete the > "Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since April 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements"
Thank you in advance. User:Milliot 10:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 08:45 17 April2007 (GMT).
Template:ASIN
Template:ASIN was nominated for deletion. You created it, so I thought you should probably know. --- RockMFR 22:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
My user:talk page is suddenly a mess and I cannot read any of my archived dialog from respondents. How can I revert to the clean page? Dogru144 00:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
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Cleanup templates
Thanks for the tip! Just for my own reference, which of my edits were you refering to? Thanks! Hiberniantears 18:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I know it's a bit silly at this point to think that we will _ever_ have a MediaWiki that doesn't force the first letter to be capitalized, but assuming we ever did, it won't have helped things to have unnecessarily standardized to capitals. 2¢ ¦ Reisio 00:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Sure. When I canonicalise a template name and layout, from potentially hundreds of variations (for example "unreferenced" has 16 synonyms, plus 8 variations, times a least 196 layouts, ignoring case) I have to choose first letter caps or lower case. I choose caps. RichFarmbrough, 07:55 18 April2007 (GMT).
Last week your bot helped edit the Chicago COTW. Thank you for designing a useful bot! I hope your bot keeps an eye on our future projects. You may also want to help us out. This week Chicago 2016 Olympic bid has been chosen. Please help improve it towards the quality level of a Wikipedia featured article. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see an open tasks list. See past CHICOTWs. Note our good articles.
You're just trying to confuse me, aren't you? :) OK, I'll try to be good. ;) Corvus cornix 18:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
Resolved
Why does SmackBot add "date=" to a maintenance tag when it's not needed? For example, {{orphan|June 2006}} has the same function as {{orphan|date=June 2006}}, as far as I can tell. It seems a waste to have SmackBot making these changes. --Sable232 14:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi Sable. Most cleanup templates that take a date use "date=" but a significant few use (used) the default parameter, it is very hard for editors to remember which are which (I find it hard, and I work with these templates a lot). For that reason "date=" support is being added to the templates which didn't support it, such as Orphan, and over the course of time these should migrate to only using "date=". SB has traditionally added or taken away the "date=" as required, this will become simply adding "date=". The default argument then becomes unused, unless the template is re-written. I have to day fixed up several hundred articles where the default argument (which stood for the date) had been used as a "reason" field or contained "article" as other templates default arguments can do, as well as the normal crop of wikilinked dates, quoted dates, misspelled dates etc., some of these problems should go, when the transition is complete, and the syntax will be easier to remember. Hope that explains what's happening. RichFarmbrough, 15:35 19 April2007 (GMT).
Thanks. I got it. --Sable232 17:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
SB: EL section heading
Resolved
SmackBot changed the external links section of Backmasking from "== External links ==" to "==External links==", removing only the spaces. The rest of the article uses spaces in the headings, so I reverted the change. Λυδαcιτγ 23:22, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Could you have SmackBot "date/fix" this maintenance tag? See Template talk:Current#Date parameter. Obviously this will be different than other dated tags as it would be removed after a few months of no significant changes, though I'm not sure whether that part could be automated. I mean, an event can still be very current, and even ongoing, without getting much attention from us (systemic bias — the rate of editing is not always a good indicator). — CharlotteWebb 16:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
No problem, provided it's ok if everything gets bunged into April to start. Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 17:03 20 April2007 (GMT).
Please resolve ongoing move dispute, over name
Resolved
Persons named Juan González use an accent over the "a" in Gonzalez.
Editors have moved the page to Juan Gonzalez (journalist) without the accent several times.
Please help secure that the page can remain with the accent. The system is locked against moving the page to the proper spelling. Dogru144 21:36, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
TSSI entry
Resolved
Please explain why you have reverted the page on the Temporal-System-Interpretation to what is very clearly an egregiously non-neutral edit by theantichrist. I have been following this entry closely and I believe that you should have consulted with me before entering the fray. The best action now, I believe, is to revert to a more neutral edit and then continue the discussion.
Hi Rich. The article on Homelessness is being hammered by vandalism. We have had to spend a lot of time fixing the vandalism. We could use some protection for a respite if deemed reasonable. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 00:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC) (talk)
Oh well. We've been fighting it on a daily basis. Thanks anyway. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:23, 20 April 2007 (UTC) (talk)
Thanks, Rich, for the s-protect. It gives us editors a breather. Even for a little while. Cheers. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC) (talk)
Hi, Uncategorized can now accept "date=" syntax, would Alaibot be able to swop over to this style? Thanks, Rich Farmbrough, 15:24 20 April 2007 (GMT).
OK, change made, will be using that from the next run on. Alai 17:01, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
OTOH, I see no real reason to change existing usages retrospectively: that looks like a huge number of edits to no real purpose. Alai 21:27, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Diff. This one isn't serious: There is no reason to remove spacing between nav tags and categories; it just makes the code harder to read. This one is serious: It really should not be removing spacing between stub tags and whatever preceded them (usually categories, sometimes interwikis or even regular content); stub tags have a known problem that they need two blank lines between them and whatever preceded them, or they butt up against the last content in the page that preceded them when the page is rendered in the browser. Looks like crap, but WP:WSS is unlikely to fix this any time soon, since it means changing the behavior of thousands of stub templates. Example - smackbot is changing:
[[Category:Foo]]
{{foo-stub}}
to
[[Category:Foo]]
{{foo-stub}}
and this is a Bad Thing. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]‹(-¿-)› 14:29, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the info- I wasn't aware that it was a bad idea. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 02:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
FAQ date-rot
You might want to tweak "Gets us ready for the change-over to 13 digit ISBNs at the end of the year." (and anything similar) in your FAQ. (I spend the first quarter of each year chasing such things on a massive website, so I sympathise...) Andy Mabbett 20:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Hello Rich. I notice this template has been created, perhaps by people who didn't know that ISBN magic would work with ISBN-13. In the past, counter-productive ISBN templates have been deleted with fair regularity, after the issue was explained. Do you have any strong views on this one? I assume that, since subst may not be used, your off-line ISBN-checker, which reads wiki text, would face an additional hurdle in checking {{ISBN-13|9780123456789}} for validity that it wouldn't face if the ISBN were entered in the normal way. The claimed benefit, from the entry for {{ISBN-13}}, is that this allows a where-used function for usage of ISBN-13 within Wikipedia. So what do you say? Replying here on your Talk page is fine. EdJohnston 19:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
AFAIC it can go. In fairness, though, ISBN has only supported 13 digits relatively recently. RichFarmbrough, 10:15 11 April2007 (GMT).
RevRagnarok has nominated it for deletion here. In the discussion, I cited what I imagined were the needs of SmackBot. Not certain whether people really like this template or if it was just put in because Mediawiki support didn't exist yet. It was created in July 2006. EdJohnston 04:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Changes to date parameter format
I see that SmackBot has resumed mass-conversion of numeric to named date parameter usages, subsequent to my query as to why you're doing this. (You may have missed this, due to my having added it to an existing section.) This just seems completely pointless to me: why make tens of thousands of edits to convert formats, when they'll just "wither on the vine" anyway? Alai 07:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
On a side note: in the light of this, edits like this look rather odd. I don't see the need to convert old usages, but it would make sense to add them in the revised format... Alai 08:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely, ~I have a feature request in with the AWb developers for this. RichFarmbrough, 09:30 23 April2007 (GMT).
I did miss your previou query. Yes, I understand, they would "wither on the vine" somewhat, but people will carry on (a) usng the old syntax (which is not a problem in itself), and (b) using other values (like "article" or misformatted or typo'd dates) for parameter 1, which puts the articles in spurious categories, and is hard to find (see my answer to User:Sable above). I have suspended "general fixes" so that the stub spacing problem is not made any worse, although I believe there is a better solution to that (and it pains me to see the other "general fixes" not being fixed). RichFarmbrough, 09:23 23 April2007 (GMT).
Fairly rapidly withering in some cases, in fact: uncat is shrinking faster than I can fill it up (and I'm filling it rather a lot). I'll grant you that some of them seem to be backlogged an ungodly number of months, so it's obviously not true of all -- "orphan" springs to mind. But OK, and thanks for turning off the "general fixes". (I didn't immediately twig that these were AWB changes, which explains a lot. They really ought to allow unbundling of the "general" cleanup...) I also notice that in a couple of cases, it was not actually doing any template-related tasks, and was only doing general AWB "cleanup" type, some very minor indeed (like removing leading and trailing spaces from headers), and doing it all under the same summary. Alai 10:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes indeed "Orphan" is the problem child, uncat and unref are small by comparison (and I think pretty much sorted). Wikify I haven't looked at yet, but I may be inclined to pick that one up on a month by month basis. I agree about unbundling general cleanup, it would allow those with slightly thicker skins to be more active, although I've not really had major grief about things that could be considered correct for some time, so perhaps the place is more robo-friendly than of yore. RichFarmbrough, 11:23 23 April2007 (GMT).
I have added a "{{prod}}" template to the article Locopops, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but I don't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and I've explained why in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Tarheelcoxn 08:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot's opinioins of wikifying
Hey, I'm curious if it's possible to get opinions on what needs to be done to Raum to get the wikify tag removed. Cheers! Murderbike 18:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I was just wandering around, saw this note, and wikified the page. To answer the general question, an article that needs to be wikified needs internal (blue) links, sections with headers, and a lead sentence formatted according to the standards here (such as the Manual of Style. The Raum article wasn't bad at all; it already had links, just needed a small amount of section and lead formatting. *Vendetta*(whoistalkedits) 21:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
And now I'm curious how many articles need to link to an article to be able to remove the orphan tag. The Kitchen Syncopators has at least four regular articles linking to it, which seems like plenty to me, is there a standard that Smackbot goes by to place these tags? Murderbike 21:30, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
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Playmates templates
Please stop de-capitalizing the word "Playmate". It is a title and as such, it should be capitalized. By changing this in the categories in particular, you are breaking the category link. Dismas|(talk) 10:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like we're agreed then. Dismas|(talk) 10:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I have added a "{{prod}}" template to the article User:Rich Farmbrough/test, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but I don't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and I've explained why in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on [[Talk:User:Rich Farmbrough/test|its talk page]]. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. 172.144.12.192 14:57, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi Mr. Farmbrough! Our issues have now been resolved on Rani Mukherjee's page. It would be great if you could unlock the page now so that we can work on it as we've got our ideas together. Thanks. --shez 24:11, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi! You need a citation in the article Road traffic in Denmark. Unfortunately I cannot find it written anywhere (as if I was looking) but it was and still is what I see every day working as a truck driver in Copenhagen. G®iffen 19:18, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I found these two edits odd. First it put the date and changed the template name. Then it returned a few hours later and added the date= parameter. — RevRagnarokTalkContrib 20:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I slipped back to the less improved version, and had to revis9it about 20 articles. Similarly I am now doing some "odd" articles (about 40) by hand, and they will be re-visited to make them canonical. RichFarmbrough, 21:30 24 April2007 (GMT).
Last week your bot helped edit the Chicago COTW. Thank you for designing a useful bot! I hope your bot keeps an eye on our future projects. You may also want to help us out. This week Douglas Park (Chicago) has been chosen. Please help improve it towards the quality level of a Wikipedia featured article. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see an open tasks list. See past CHICOTWs. Note our good articles.
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OK, I didn't know that. The years were linked even before I started to reshape the list.
I know, I am currently reshaping the list and was coming to that.
It is perfectionist, especially since it is not even seen for the reader.
Thanks for your answers. John Anderson 09:17, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot deleted hyphen in template name
This edit replaced {{current-related|article|Anna Nicole Smith}} with {{Current related|article|Anna Nicole Smith|date=April 2007}}. The deleted hyphen gave a redlink to the template. PrimeHunter 14:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
This is not a major problem but I think it should be pointed out. When Smackbot comes across {{current-related}} it changes it to {{Current related}}, which is a redirect. Example --Philip Stevens 16:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your kind comment on my page. Life is happenstance and fragile. An engineering grad student, who is one of my favorite contra dance partners, emailed me that he had been chained into the building by Cho, but thankfully was safe in the lab on the first floor, unlike many of his colleagues. At a dinner party last night in Roanoke, a friend who drove up from Montgomery County and works at Tech with the wife of one of the professors killed, told me Dr. Granata was in his office on the third floor when he heard shots. He locked students in his office, went down to investigate and never returned. I just looked it up and his story in the Washington Post is here: [112]. Another friend at dinner told me that her friend who works in a local hospital said someone in the building in the aftermath said the eeriest thing was the sound of thirty cell phones on the floor repeatedly ringing.--Beth Wellington 22:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
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I see that you've made edits in articles about Guster. I'm trying to create a WikiProject to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to the band. If you're interested, please express interest for WikiProject Guster on the proposal page. Thanks! - [hmwith]
Earlier this month I added {{mergeto|Witchcraft|Date=April 2007}} to Russian witchcraft. Notice the typo with the capitalized D in Date. This breaks the automatic "Category: Articles to be merged since April 2007" system. It took me awhile to catch my mistake. Consider having SmackBot fix these types of trivial mistakes. Thank you. Davidwr 03:01, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
SB should fix these errors, one way or another. However it has had a few days off. RichFarmbrough, 16:19 3 May2007 (GMT).
Date fixes
SmackBot is still using "April 2007" for date fixes (cf. Conductor: this diff). -- JHunterJ 17:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Substing problem on [113], both {{dead link}} and {{dlw-inline}} use the same format as the fact templates. —Dispenser 23:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, this is due to a bug with WP interpreting Magic Wordss within ref tags. I have a workaround for this in place. RichFarmbrough, 09:25 5 May2007 (GMT).
Birth and death dates
Do you think SmackBot might convert birth dates in infoboxes, such as:
Born | [[April 12]], [[1940]]
or
Born | [[12 April]], [[1940]]
to
Born | {{birth date|1940|04|12}}
and, if there is no death date present, to
Born | {{birth date and age|1940|04|12}} ?
If there is a death date, that could be converted to
Died | {{death date|1999|08|23}}
or
Died | {{death date and age|1999|08|23|1940|04|12}}.
Thank you. Andy Mabbett 11:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
At the same time, you could check (do they match?), and if necessary add, year of -birth and -death categories (though I and others would agree that such categories should be included in the templates; in which case you'd need to remove them from elsewhere in the article). Andy Mabbett 14:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Persondata is metadata for specialist parsers of database dumps. Microformats are metadata for parsers of be pages, including ordinary users with the requisite browser tools (native support will be in Firefox 3). It's also my belief that Persondata is a developmental cul-de-sac, but that's by-the-bye. Andy Mabbett 21:34, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I think the bot should maintain the default date format by applying templates such {{Euro birth date}} where a day first or little endian date format is found e.g.:
Well done. I was tempted to speedy it immediately, but I felt there was some benefit getting a resounding consensus on the record. Thanks! -- Avi 16:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for adjudicating the disscussion. I promise to abide by the ruling. There is no harm however in establishing, for the entire Wikipedia community, where the boundries lie. Prester John 03:31, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Shin guard
Hi! friend, do we really need to put sources for this article? Its very basic and almost every one who knows the game of hockey and soccer know a lot more about shin guards that the information written here.Jpogi 05:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
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The SmackBot complaint
Hi Rich,
I just would like to apoligise about complaining about your bot, i thought it was a hacking system that edited true information to false information. You can also find that I have replied to your message which was...
Hi Tom,
SmackBot has made over 250,000 edits to Wikipedia, so 75 complaints isn't bad going. However if you look more closely, some are not complaints but praise, some are complaints that are wrong, and some are just things like "moo". Of course I welcome people telling me if something is going wrong, because I can then fix it, and in fact if you leave a message on SmackBot's talk page it then stops editing until I can solve the problem. Of course some silly people think it's fun to stop it "for laughs" but generally they are so silly the leave messages when SmackBot isn't even running! Thanks for taking an interest in my robot. RichFarmbrough, 23:18 10 December2006 (GMT).
I have noticed that your bot, SmackBot, placed the clean up tag in the article Fishing net sometime April. I'm not really sure whether I should be removing it personnally after doing a major change. Would you be so kind helping me out regarding this. Thanks! Bu b0y2007 04:58, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Your citation request on Letter-spacing (typography)
Hi. Is your bot automatic, or do you monitor/look at its work? Curious about your citation request on an article I recently edited. Previous to my edits there was not a single reference, and many ludicrous anecdotal claims. My statement regarding terminology is based on John Kane's Type primer (in references), and Robert Bringhurst's Manual of Typographic style (also in references). I've taught typography since 1988, admit wikipedia is newer to me. I observe a prevalent software writers and programmers take on type rather than a typeface designer, graphic designer, or type history take on it. I don't want to make it esoteric or dryly academic. Just bring a balance and awareness of the long history of type (550 years) and the more recent desktop/PC use of type (not yet 20 years). 12:23, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I mind
I appreciate the sentiment, but please don't spellcheck my non-article edits for me. Thanks.Chunky Rice 19:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
Polska (dance) edit
I made substantial changes to this entry. My first effort and I am very open to correction. You marked the artical for clean up and I'd be glad to work more. Can you point me to the best focus
1) Change first line to be a simpler definition. for example, a) Provide a simple definition before getting into history, b) Break the article into several separate entries, c) structure the article with headings, d) other. Perhaps best if you could point me to an article of similar scope that better fit the wikipedia model? Cpgruber 16:41, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot rules!
The Barnstar of Diligence
For the great way Smackbot works! ~KnowledgeHegemony~ 17:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot incorrectly removed a right bracket from a "mergeto" template. Not a major problem, and it's been fixed, but I thought you would want to know. Thanks. Ward3001 22:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Hey, just found this template on your userpage. What is the fixed month from which the month numbers are calculated? I'll document it and how to calculate month numbers on the template page. Thanks, OldakQuill 15:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Chicago Landmark Stubification
I noticed that SmackBot has edited some WP:CHICOTW stubs this week. This week, we are focussing on stubifying the numerous redlinks in Chicago Landmark with a goal of getting over half the redlinks stubified (we began with about 25%). This will improve our chance of getting it approved as a featured list candidate. When reviewing this week's new stub contributing editors your name was absent and SmackBot did not create a stub. You may want to choose a redlink or two from Chicago Landmark and create a stub before this week's project ends so that you can be a part of our drive for featured list status. The necessary links to find the proper info are footnotes on the redlinks and dates. Thus, not much research is necessary. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
AWB v4 Testers Required
Hey,
I was wondering if you would consider helping us with the v4 Release of AWB.
AWB has had some major section re-writes as part of the v4 release, and also a migration to a new diff engine. We need users familiar with AWB to help us out by testing it by using this version rather than the current release version.
You have been selected as you have reported quite a few bugs/feature requests in prior versions.
If you would like to help us out, please download this version of AWB, and then if you encounter any problems or have any feedback, leave us a message at the usual pages - Bugs, Feature requests or if its important, the Dev talk page.
Also, if you do choose to use this pre-release version, can you let us know here that you will be testing it.
If you post any bugs, please put version 3902 and SVN Rev 1151 as the version number - This allows us to know which version you are currently using.
We will let you know of any other testing releases on your talk page
... Can you let me know when (if) you add {{{date}}} syntax to any other templates. I am trying to migrate to all date=, but my robot at the moment will correct to or from {{{date}}}/{{{1}}} depending on the template historically. Obviously this is counter productive once the date= syntax is permitted. Rich Farmbrough, 11:40 20 April 2007 (GMT).
Rick:
Just saw this above note again looking to see what could be archived. I don't believe I answered this. I have no plans to systematically update any admin templates. As far as I know many to most already used the |date= parameter. I think I made an announcement post on the VPP about {{DATE}}'s utility and existance, but I've been fragmented much to much on other sisters when I've had wiki time at all this past month (and more) to be sure. In any event, I'm not sure it's germane to what I understand your BOT problem is, as Template:DATE(edittalklinkshistory) should be subst'd when used at all. It automatically generates "date=correct month+date stamping", so if it's not, Perhaps your BOT should test for it's presence and do the subst -- which would make the deal "complete". (The bright shouting error message was complicating substing, and CBD and I decided to apply the KISS principle. So 'Tis short and sweet. (Suggest: Run your BOT against it's whatlinkshere list once a week or so, and then run it regular mode, and should work out fine, as whatever list is generated the second way will be shortened by the first. Or so I would think! <g> I know little or nothing about script constructs like BOTs!)
Further, when I have been around wikipedia lately, I took some good advice and got back into article editing a good percentage of the time. Dealing with templates issues all the time was very wearing, and is much too much like TL work and while I've gotten some help now with WP:TSP, I spend all too much time with templates or worse, their documentation for the layperson. The recategorization of those by David Kernow and Mike Peel really threw a monkey wrench in some of the planning for consistent categorization of common templates across sister projects as well, and I'm still the only representative to fight for that sensible measure on most other sisters participating such as Wikinews, Wikiversity and Wikispecies. I get a hand on Meta, the commons, and Wikibooks, but only in spots.
Then again, working in articles again (Frank's definition of "'relaxing' wikitime", usually!) has recently lead me right back to more template issues on infoboxes, TOC fixups, and TOC placements... skim my talk from here to end, which are all pretty much related issues. Take note of the two new "General Solutions" when used together: {{TOCnestright}} and {{FixHTML}} and some of their used in pages. (e.g. Battle of Arias && Battle of Jutland has both, and the technique is working out pretty well for both canceling certain brower dependent issues and tightening up excessive whitespace from TOC HTML generation. Also political "stances" on such as: [law] and talk:Ronald Reagan)
In any event, apologies for the tardy response. // FrankB 15:56, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello, Rich Farmbrough. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Apollo-guidance-computer.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Rich Farmbrough/sandbox. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 04:05, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello, Rich Farmbrough. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Ashes urn.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Rich Farmbrough/test2. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 04:34, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello, Rich Farmbrough. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Bloodhoundgang.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Rich Farmbrough/sandbox. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 06:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Last week your bot helped edit the Chicago COTW. Thank you for designing a useful bot! I hope your bot keeps an eye on our future projects. You may also want to help us out. This week Magnificent Mile has been chosen. Please help improve it towards the quality level of a Wikipedia featured article. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see an open tasks list. See past CHICOTWs. Note our good articles.
Last week you helped edit the Chicago COTW, but did not vote. Thank you for your help! Your input in future selections would also be appreciated. This week Magnificent Mile has been chosen. Please help improve it towards the quality level of a Wikipedia featured article. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see an open tasks list. See past CHICOTWs. Note our good articles.
Hello, Rich Farmbrough. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:DrDobbs first.png) was found at the following location: User:Rich Farmbrough/sandbox. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 01:19, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
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Hello, Rich Farmbrough. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:GBUMA3.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Rich Farmbrough/sandbox. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 05:11, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello, Rich Farmbrough. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Gold-rush.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Rich Farmbrough/sandbox. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 05:54, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello, Rich Farmbrough. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:HubbardHall.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Rich Farmbrough/sandbox. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 08:19, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
My name is Rich Knight and I work for SMITH MAGAZINE. I'm interested in interviewing you.
Resolved
Hello, my name is Rich Knight and I work with an on-line publication called SMITH Magazine(http://smithmag.net/).
Our mission is to explore storytelling in all its forms, and we'd love to write a story about the person who's written (or edited) the most wikipedia entries. This story would be the first in a series we're looking to start that would chronicle the lives of many others who've made vast, vast, (VAST) contributions to the web, and what better place to start than with a dedicated wikipedia writer?
The interview (either by instant messanger or emails) would definitely turn some heads and would get wikipedia some great press.
SMITH Magazine has already been recognized by many established publications, and one of the projects that ran on our site is even featured on wikipedia itself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_War_%28comics%29).
I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you and take care.
Hello Rich Farmbrough, an automated process has found an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, such as fair use. The image (Image:Rosetta disk.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Rich Farmbrough/sandbox. This image or media will be removed per statement number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media will be replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. The image that was replaced will not be automatically deleted, but it could be deleted at a later date. Articles using the same image should not be affected by my edits. I ask you to please not readd the image to your userpage and could consider finding a replacement image licensed under either the Creative Commons or GFDL license or released to the public domain. Thanks for your attention and cooperation. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 07:44, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello Rich Farmbrough, an automated process has found an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, such as fair use. The image (Image:Sayyed Hosein Nasr book cover.jpg) was found at the following location: User:Rich Farmbrough/sandbox. This image or media will be removed per statement number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media will be replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. The image that was replaced will not be automatically deleted, but it could be deleted at a later date. Articles using the same image should not be affected by my edits. I ask you to please not readd the image to your userpage and could consider finding a replacement image licensed under either the Creative Commons or GFDL license or released to the public domain. Thanks for your attention and cooperation. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 08:26, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Chicago Landmark Stubification
Resolved
I am writing you because you either (1) edited Chicago Landmark 5 weeks ago when it was the WP:CHICOTW (2) edited it or created a stub last week when we had the stubification drive for it or (3) you nominated an article to be the CHICOTW in the last few days.
Hello. Should this edit [116] have been for "2007" instead of "07"? It looks like there may have been 16 articles which were affected and are sitting in Category:Cleanup from May 07. I'm not sure if there are other similar red cats out there. --After Midnight0001 22:07, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi, yes it should. I believe I have fixed all cases of this problem, and the underlying cause. Thanks. RichFarmbrough, 10:58 19 May2007 (GMT).
Recent SmackBot edit
Hi Rich. FYI, in this recent edit to 2005 United States Grand Prix, SmackBot changed "Date = June 19" to "date = June 19" thereby breaking the infobox. I'm not sure how often this occurs, or how easy this circumstance would be to avoid in the future; maybe it's just easier to fix them on case-by-case basis. Regards. DH85868993 01:58, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich. I'm contacting you wrt to some recent edits by SmackBot to the article Eurovision Song Contest 2008. The bot has removed a break from the caption of Image:Pre-ESCmap 2008nonsemi.PNG, on May 14 (first time and second time) and earlier today. It's not a severe error and it can easily be undone, but it is an edit that disrupts the deliberately chosen layout of the caption. If SmackBot performs such edits on this article, it might do it elsewhere as well. I would like to know if it was written to do this, if it was a glitch, or simply a consequence of the chosen layout. AecisBrievenbus 13:07, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
It's a general AWB fix to remove surplus line-breaks. Strangely the forced line break of the bulleted list doesn't seem to work in captions, this may be a mediawiki bug. I've put a fix in to the page, so that it is unlikely to be changed again (actually the blank space after the break also worked, but that is the sort of thing likely to be fixed anyway). I may do a search for bulleted lists in captions, I imagine they're rare. Thanks for letting me know. RichFarmbrough, 14:04 19 May2007 (GMT).
You might want to have a look at this edit as well, where SmackBot partially removed a flag from a header, but left the pixel size in place. AecisBrievenbus 00:08, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Tricia Yearwood
Resolved
Hi there. Did you actually create Tricia Yearwood? I was kind of puzzled by your edit summary of "copyedit". Anyway, I've redirected it to Trisha Yearwood. Best, Fvasconcellos (t·c) 14:08, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
No problem. Sorry for the bother. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 14:24, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Category links
Resolved
In this diff SmackBot removed the piped part of category links that cause the names to be sorted by last name. Is there a new policy on this? [117] -Ravedave 14:24, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi, you may not have noticed SB also inserted { {DEFAULTSORT:Kline, John} }, this causes the correct sort to take place both for explicit and implicit categories. Best wishes, RichFarmbrough, 14:54 19 May2007 (GMT).
Excellent, thanks -Ravedave 15:14, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot just changed {{fact|date=April 2007}} to {{Fact|date=April 2007}}.[119] Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see the point of that one. Anomie 00:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
SB visited the page because of the undated fact tag that was removed (in the previous edit) by the time it got there. SB canonicalizes the tags it deals with because it is the only realistic way to deal with the thousands of different (valid and invalid) combinations of layout, capitalisation, format, synonymical templates etc.. It will not normally visit a page where it would only make that type of change. Hope that helps, RichFarmbrough, 14:55 20 May2007 (GMT).
Patent model
Resolved
Thanks for your message on my talk page! Cheers, --Edcolins 20:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi, SB made this edit to We (novel). SB removed the link to 4711, which is an article about the Eau de Cologne number 4711. I have restored the link. What do you recommend to prevent a recurrence? --Jtir 18:32, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I've answered my own question. "4711" is a date per WP:DATE.
"A page title that is just a positive whole number is always a year."
Someone had renamed "4711 (brand)" to "4711", so I reverted that. I also fixed the guideline. I believe this problem is resolved. --Jtir 09:11, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
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G6 (housekeeping). Empty maintenance category that categorises by month ... should not be repopulated.
To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Category:Articles with unsourced statements since August 2006, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. --Android Mouse Bot 2 00:42, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Category:Uncategorized stubs from April 2007, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. --Android Mouse Bot 2 02:27, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Last week your bot helped edit the Chicago COTW. Thank you for designing a useful bot! I hope your bot keeps an eye on our future projects. You may also want to help us out. This week Rookery (Chicago landmark) has been chosen. Please help improve it towards the quality level of a Wikipedia featured article. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see an open tasks list. See past CHICOTWs. Note our good articles.
Hi there, a few weeks back you edited this disambiguation page to read Eight (or twelve, depending on how one counts) vessels of the British Royal Navy have been named HMS Royal Oak. Isn't the correct figure Eight (or eleven, depending on how one counts)? 8 physical vessels, one of which was rebuilt three times, making a total of eleven. Or am I going mad? Regards, — BillCtalk 20:06, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
No you are right. I spotted that the first figure was wrong, and assumed the second would be out by the same amount. RichFarmbrough, 21:30 23 May2007 (GMT).
I have taken the liberty of removing from several hundred articles the tag {{current}} that were no longer current,or incorrectly using the tag, and the like. I see you've had some relationship to the template it in the past, and I guess you were involved in getting the dating feature working for the template, and getting smackbot to date all template's uses. Thanks. I would like to put forward for consideration a much narrower policy on the use of {{current}}, and also revise the categories that templates like {{ongoing lawsuit}} and various others use. I also see that the current events portal suggests using current in a rather expansive way compared to the original development of the template. It does seem that no one pays much attention to the tag...not a peep from editors of all of those articles, for example. Who are the leading individuals who would care about this to consult with, as I stumble toward writing up a well-formed proposal? -- Yellowdesk 06:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi yes, I though it did some of these already. SB will be resting for a few days though. RichFarmbrough, 09:55 26 May2007 (GMT).
It's good to see SB back to work! Can it make a special pass against Category:Articles lacking reliable references to get these all cleaned up? If you let me know here when it is done, I can check to see if there are any other template issues that need correcting. --After Midnight0001 03:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm hoping to get a complete run through today. SO keep an eye on the cat. Ideally I like to empty the cats at month end, but it will be a bit of a struggle this time. RichFarmbrough, 18:25 31 May2007 (GMT).
It looks like you made it through the second half of the alphabet from looking in the category now. Even though many were not done, this is still a great improvement, and the ones that weren't tagged for May can get June. Looking in the later part of the alphabet does show that we should also consider adding {{inline citations}} to the list. Also, there is something wrong with {{refimprovesect}}. Either the parameter needs to be changed to remove the "date=" (i.e. from "|date=May 2007" to just "|May 2007", or the template needs to be changed to accept it in the "date=" format. Which do you recommend? I can change the template if you think that is the way to go for consistency, but however we go, we should probably coordinate for timing, etc. --After Midnight0001 04:40, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
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I got here first.... Please look up 2 headings. --After Midnight0001 01:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Reference tag by Smackbot
Resolved
Hi, I think, that demanding references or sources in the articles about regional and international organizations with existing official web-sites, already mentioned in the "External links", is excessive. If any organization has its official reliable web-site, it seems to be enough in many cases. Example:Pacific Regional Environment Programme.Ans-mo 13:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I noticed that Smackbot changes External link to External links without regard to the number of links in the section. If there is only one link, I would prefer the singular to be used. Is there a reason why this is not the case? Catchpole 10:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, there are a number of reasons. (And of course there are a number of reasons that the singular is good too.) Wikipedia:External links is the guideline, and the main reason is style. We use plural for both "External Links" and "References" (and I guess "Notes") in the same way that books have a "Contents" page even if there's only one chapter. Subsidiary reasons include that people often add links without updating the headings, and consistency. If you trawl through the talk page you'll see the various arguments come up on either side. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 19:24 30 May2007 (GMT).
Hi! Would you mind adding {{trivia}} and {{toomuchtrivia}} (which redirects to the former) to the list of maintenance tags that SmackBot dates? The template was modified recently and monthly categorisation is now possible. I initially brought up the request here, if you want to see more details. Cheers, Black Falcon(Talk) 22:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi, yes no problem, will include it over the next couple of days, once SB has caught up with its backlog. RichFarmbrough, 13:54 1 June2007 (GMT).
I noticed that SmackBot apparently de-wikilinked the year 2003 in this edit. Unless I misunderstand this, it should not have done that. -- Boracay Bill 23:09, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Joey (film)
A "{{prod}}" template has been added to the article Joey (film), suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but yours may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice explains why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. JHunterJ 23:19, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Joey (film)
A "{{prod}}" template has been added to the article Joey (film), suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but yours may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice explains why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. JHunterJ 23:19, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Hi, the reason for this is that stubs introduce categories of there own. Since these are meta categories (WP:selfrefs if you will) not content, it is good that those categories go at the end of the category list. RichFarmbrough, 12:53 3 June2007 (GMT).
Malfunctioning bot
Stopping a malfunctioning bot is not vandalism. Your bot keeps tagging sections as trivia which aren't trivia sections at all. You didn't address that problem at all!! You should see to repairing your bot. --Maxl 16:27, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Maxl - your concept of what constitutes a trivia section seems at odds with quite a few other wikipedia editors + bots. From what I can see, Smackbot is doing a fantastic job. Could you quite an example of where the bot is misbehaving? --Oscarthecat 16:41, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for those few kind words. Of course SB doesn't have an opinion, it merely dates existing tags. However I am not completely at odds with Maxl on this, in that I prefer to call such sections "Miscellanea", although I wouldn't remove the tags. I also support incorporating the miscellaneous facts into the thrust of the article, where possible, if they are really "trivial", disposing of them, but if they are relevant and can't be made to flow, then they should be left as a bulleted list. RichFarmbrough, 16:54 3 June2007 (GMT).
Current event template dating by SmackBot
I don't think SmackBot meant to make the following edits on Fourpeaked Volcano.
It seems to have messed up then fixed itsef using AWB. Smackbot then proceeded to add date tags until now. The edits don't seem to mess anything up but they also don't seem necessary. P.Haney 21:00, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
No this is a foo-bar. As you say, no serious breakage, and I believe I've stopped it now. Thanks for letting me know. RichFarmbrough, 15:54 4 June2007 (GMT).
Just to Let You Know
Hey, I'm not sure if you care about this or not ... but just to let you know some of the templates on User:Rich_Farmbrough/test are making it show up in the actual categories - for example User:DumbBot has a list of pages incorrectly listed as AFDs - and it's there. Again, you don't actually have to do anything - I just don't want the page to be deleted (since there are deletion nominations on it) and then you have to create it again - so if you still want it you might want to consider substing some of it to stay on the safe side..danielfolsom 22:29, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Hi Daniel, Thanks for letting me know. Not a big deal if it does get deleted I guess... But "subst" would break the testing regime - still I think that work has been superseded by someone else. RichFarmbrough, 14:12 4 June2007 (GMT).
Dear Smackbot
I see that you are fond of inserting "citation needed" tags to articles. The trouble is that, even when, having encountered such an insertion, one has an appropriate citation up one's sleeve it is exceedingly difficult to see how that citation can be supplied in a manner that would please Your Botship.
Wikipedia:Citation templates -- the article to which, in trying to add a citation, one is eventually lead -- is hardly the most well-meaning-technoramus-friendly article included in the Wikipedia... -- Picapica 13:45, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
SB only dates the tags.... RF.
Smackbot error in removing underscores
This edit[122], with a similar one repeated a few days earlier, resulted in removal of an underscore from a URL, breaking the link. Might want to check up on the rules for that one... GDallimore (Talk) 13:48, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, this is an AWB bug, I can see why it's happening, I wall pass to the developers. RichFarmbrough, 14:10 4 June2007 (GMT).
Cool, thanks! GDallimore (Talk) 17:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
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Providence, Rhode Island
Editor, I've noticed your contributions to the Providence, Rhode Island article. I've just nominated it for Featured Article status.--Loodog 15:10, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
FA page is here. Any feedback and assistance you have to offer would be greatly appreciated.--Loodog 00:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot redundant edits with {{subst:fact}}
Hi, just letting you know that SmackBot is doing redundant edits when fixing substed 'fact' templates: it first turns the big substed mess into a proper {{fact}}, and then subsequently replaces that with {{fact|date=...}}; Here's an example: first edit, second edit. Should be an easy fix, but if it's not, nothing's broken anyway. -- intgr#%@! 15:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Is {{who}} working right now? I think you might have stuck in at least one extra curly bracket. See? {{who|date=99/99/99}} --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 14:43, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it's benefical to substitute Unicode by the actual symbol as it brings no benefits to a reader, but may bring a little of confusion for a Wikipedia editor. If you are not using the latest system (such as Windows Vista, which supports Unicode 5.0) then {{Unicode|₴}} may look like {{Unicode|â¡}} due to missing fonts with the later being even more confusing than the former.
(Smackbot activity)
--Novelbank 18:50, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Hi thanks for your note. There has been substatial discssion in the past, I will attempt to find apointer to it, biut I am away from home until later this week. RichFarmbrough, 15:15 11 June2007 (GMT).
tagging of article BOOKIT
Resolved
I noticed your smackbot changed the tagging on article BOOKIT. I do not find the tagging being relevant for the article if you read it in context. Please have a look at it. --Tradof 08:25, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Hi, the tag in question was until recently a redirect to the tag the bot placed. The bot now uses the new destination tag I believe. RichFarmbrough, 15:12 11 June2007 (GMT).
List of Wikipedians by edits
Resolved
I went ahead and took a stab at writing an FAQ on how to generate the list at the top of Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by number of edits. Mind checking it? I've never generated the list, so I may have made a mistake or skipped a step. âÂÂDisavian (talk/contribs) 19:15, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Hi - that's not the method I use so I can't comment definatively, but it looks a bout right. RichFarmbrough, 15:09 11 June2007 (GMT).
What is the method that you use? I tried that method, and it didn't seem to work for me. âÂÂDisavian (talk/contribs) 03:31, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
My WBE method
Resolved
The file to use is the latest version of "stub-meta-history.xml.gz" at http://download.wikimedia.org/.
This is 3.6 Gb + so will take some time to download. The simplest thing to do, if you have disk space, is to expand the file using winzip or similar (gzip for linux).
You will need a version of perl installed, if using windows Active PErl is quite good, or the mainstream perl from (I think) www.cpan.org.
Then put this code in a text file called em.. "wbe.pl"
while (<>){if (/<(username|ip)>(.*)<.(username|ip)>/){$hash{$2}++;}}
my @list = sort byedits keys our %hash;
foreach $item (@list) {print "# $item $hash{$item}\n";}
sub byedits {our %hash; $hash{$b} <=> $hash{$a};}
You should then be able to run
>perl wbe.pl <stub-meta-history-expanded-filename-whatever-it-is> >> results.txt
This will produce a set of results with the biggest contribs at the top. Take the first however-many-you-want lines and paste them to a wiki page. Bots and admins will not be marked on this version. The version that does mark them (when flagged) is on my dead machine, but may be back "RSN".
RichFarmbrough, 08:50 12 June2007 (GMT).
I've already downloaded the xml file, so I may give this a try later today :) âÂÂDisavian (talk/contribs) 12:52, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Just started it. Any idea how long it takes? âÂÂDisavian (talk/contribs) 12:56, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
I seem to remember around 1-3 hours. I.E. too long to have a cup of tea, but not long enough to worry that it won't be done overnight. RichFarmbrough, 14:54 12 June2007 (GMT).
Done! The "results.txt" file is 154 mb. You're at #13, including bots. I went for a cut-off of 5000 edits. âÂÂDisavian (talk/contribs) 17:24, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Source of the the joint collection was provided in bold letters. and since this is itself a debut of reference work, no other reference at present is available except the link to the original article is provided.
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Thank you. I thought there were a lot more. There is the possibility of new links also using that suffix, because, on visiting such a page, the BCC web server currently appends it :-( Andy Mabbett 10:35, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot wikilinking errors
Resolved
Hi, I noticed the Smackbot is disrupting wikilinks. e.g. Antonov An-12B is being changed to Antonov An-12B where the 'B' is not part of the wikilink. See this. â AA(talk ⢠contribs) â 16:20, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, this appears to be a strangeness in things ending with digits inside the ]]. Will escalate to AWB developers. RichFarmbrough, 21:16 13 June2007 (GMT).
It is debatable whether this is still a stub. However with the redundancies removed it becomes more stubby. RichFarmbrough, 13:47 14 June2007 (GMT).
SmackBot: intentional underscore removed
Resolved
Regarding this change by SmackBot, it removed underscores from the link to (____surrounded):, where the underscores were actually intended to be there. Is there a way to avoid having SmackBot do that? (I don't know why the link was previously piped, perhaps that was an effort to avoid this problem. It obviously didn't work, but perhaps it should. Also, the bot might as well have unpiped the link, since it made both sides identical.) Thanks. --PEJL 20:25, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I found the energy to write the reg-exes and test them, but not to submit the bot approval request. RichFarmbrough, 15:45 15 June2007 (GMT).
I could send you one of these... [123]Andy Mabbett 15:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
My edit to your bot's page
Resolved
Hope this edit is OK. It will aid accessibility. Andy Mabbett 22:53, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
It's not the bot's page, it's a doppleganger page... <grin> RichFarmbrough, 15:44 15 June2007 (GMT).
Server Appliance category
Resolved
Hi Rich, yes I know it should be Server appliance but I have no idea how to rename it so I built a redirect for it. There are already 11 articles in it. I have been fixing things. Any ideas? I see you are an admin can you rename it? It does not work for me.
Done. You have to create a new cat and move the items, then delete the old one. WP:AWB helps. RichFarmbrough, 10:54 15 June2007 (GMT).
Thank you so very much, you have no idea how I tried to fix this and could not figure it out. --Akc9000 13:10, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Article Question
Resolved
Hello Rich. Thanks so much for your help. I was wondering if you could look at this article server appliance and tell me if it is still classified as a stub? I just want to be sure before I move on, this is done properly. Thanks! Please leave response here, I am having issues with my talk page. It says edit conflict and I lose what others have said. --Akc9000 01:32, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Rich. I looked at the def. and it said a sentence or two, so I was not sure. Best Regards, --Akc9000 12:20, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Bot
Resolved
Dear Rich Farmbrough/Talk Archive Mega 0
Can you guide me in creating a bot. I need the steps and what to use and do. I have already looked at how to create a bot and need guidence. How do you create one and what programs? Please respond on my talkpage. Thank You! -- Crunch13 PS: Respond on my talk please --Crunch13 PS (again): Respond if you can and even if you can't help
Just to let you know that most cleanup templates, like "unreferenced", "fact", "cleanup" etc., are best not "subst"ed. See WP:SUBST for more details. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 09:09 17 June2007 (GMT).
Hi,
you left me a message about clean-up templates (most should not be subst'ed) but I don't know what "subst'ed" means or where I "subst'ed" one. Could you let me know? I'd like to learn so I can avoid ;messing up again. Jd2718 10:24, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the explanation. I will be careful in the future. Jd2718 13:35, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Edit on Mii
Resolved
I don't understand why the SmackBot made this edit to the Mii page. It mostly considered changing wikilinks in such a fasion that, for example "[[Eye|eyes]]" before the edit became "[[eye]]s" after the edit. Surely it is best to use the prior version, as it features the correct wikilink (although I noticed the "(Redirected from 'name X')" text doesn't appear under the page title anymore), and, perhaps, looks a little neater (with the whole word contained within the wikilink)? Either way, what is the reasoning behind these edits? --Zooba 14:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
The purpose for making the edit was to date the refimprove tag. Like many bots SmackBot is based on WP:AWB which has a host of general clean-up functions. In particular the changes you mention are designed to make the wiki-text clearer, per WP:MoS. Either "Eye" or "eye" are correct wikilinks ("Eye" for the start of sentences), and you should not see a redirected from message following either link. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 10:27 18 June2007 (GMT).
John Buscema
Resolved
Hi, Rich. Appreciate the John Buscema copy edit, though I'm flummoxed as to how you did it when the article is protected. Just wondering, since the piece really does need the protection till a mediation happens. Thanks for any info! --Tenebrae 10:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! I thought that might be it, but I wasn't sure. 'Preciate the response! --Tenebrae 00:55, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Response
Resolved
You asked me about the subst thing in my merge template placed on the boar page. I tried following the instructions on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Mergeto but I guess I probably did it wrong.Lilac Soul 11:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Ah. Yes, if you had put {{subst:DATE}} it would have done the right thing. Not a problem. RichFarmbrough, 12:14 18 June2007 (GMT).
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I'm from the Math Project. Right now I'm about to write a database for references to facilitate creating, maintaining and using them in WP articles. Right now the child is doing its very first steps, i.e. I'm still working on correct DB design etc. User:KSmrq urged me to contact you about this, so if you are interested, see my post here and also the follow-up discussion here.
To be more specific, I thought you'd be a great resource for dealing with ISBNs. Maybe if this project succeeds all ISBNs will be validated and properly hyphenated! Maybe. :-)
Your general programming expertise and Wikipedia-wide knowledge may also be helpful. Thanks for any assistance you can offer this fledgling effort. --KSmrqT 02:50, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
Need arbitration on Elizabeth McGrath article
Resolved
I'm having a spot of trouble with an poster calling him or herself Fountains of Bryn Mwr. I wonder if you could put your two cents in on this issue. The above mentioned poster has flagged the article for deletion on notability grounds. I pointed out that artists in the same movement with less "notability" have no flags like this. She also flagged the founder of the movment for lack of citations. She then put a flag in my own comment page warning me not to edit my own page! What?!?!? The tag includes an implication of vandalism on my part with a possible ban. I object very strongly to that and to her apparent arbirary self assignment of authority. Thank you. WJBean
Rich. I responded to your points on my own talk page. Thanks. William (Bill) Bean 17:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia Study: would you like to participate?
Hi Rich,
We've not met in Wikipedia, but some other users recommended I contact you. :-)
I'm an Australian research student who is writing her thesis about Wikipedia. The thesis is about virtual places and citizenship online, and the ways that communities are formed in virtual spaces. Wikipedia is my main case study for this.
As part of this I am interviewing Wikipedians (via email) about their thoughts and experiences while editing and using Wikipedia.
I'd love to interview you for my research, if you are amenable. I know that you have been a member for many years, as well as an admin and a prolific contributor.
The interview would take place via email at a time convenient for you, and you would of course be anonymous in the research. All up, the interview should take no more than 1 hour (spread over several emails).
If you are interested please say Hi on my talk page or send me an email and I can explain the project and what it involves in more detail.
I hope to hear from you! Best Wishes, tamsin 06:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
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SmackBot
Resolved
I didn't want to shut SmackBot off, because it wasn't malfunctioning as such, but it has been putting {{unreferenced}} tags on many articles within WikiProject CSI which do not need them; surely a reference is only needed to back up statements which could be disputed, not to corroborate the content of an episode? Example: in a season 6 episode "Way To Go", the final scene reveals a previously undisclosed relationship between two major characters; this is a fact - there IS a scene at the end of the episode revealing a previously undisclosed relationship between two major characters - and does not need sourcing; by comparison, stating that fans use the phrase "GSR" (Grissom-Sara Romance) would need referencing, as there is no proof that all fans use the phrase, in what medium the phrase is used (Web forums mostly), how often it is used etc... Could you look into your Bot's parameters for action please (note that Way To Go is not an example of SmackBot's failure, just an example of how it could go wrong)? Editus Reloaded 16:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
More help needed
If you have been following along at WP:FLC#List_of_Chicago_Landmarks you know we need help creating stubs for the List to make it a more useful list and help it achieve WP:FLC status. Since I reminded people of this 7 stubs have been created. We need about 40 more to be safe although we may have a successful candidacy with the article as it stands.
I know it is not your bot but since you have one do you know..
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Hi Rich I know HagermanBot is not your bot but I was wondering if you know of any plans to fix it. I think the concept behind the bot is an excellent one. (signing unsigned statements) or maybe there is something else in place that does this now? --akc9000(talk • contribs • count) 02:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
[125] - the second change in the diff is good, but I don't know what the point of the addition of the second parameter is in the first line. It's not a style-breaking problem, and more likely than not, it's not a bug (just me being ignorant :)). Any thoughts? Martinp23 16:29, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
It should have added the "date=", ideally, it does for most templates. RichFarmbrough, 19:45 27 June2007 (GMT).
Updated AWB Alpha Release Thingy
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Hey,
Majorly (lol) updated version of AWB. Many changes, just looking for people to test it again - [126]
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Top stuff!
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The da Vinci Barnstar
I'd just like to say thank you for all the amazing work your bot does. Thanks! Abbott75☺ 08:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I've just reverted all your edits to the above article, and intend to manually carry out the necessary edits that were done. I assume it was a bot under your control that actually did the edits. Unfortunately, along with the good edits it did, it also added unnecessary category links all throughout parts of the article, disrupting the infobox and a list of schools, etc. It may be an idea to check any bot to make sure it is working correctly. Thanks for making sure (one way or another) the necessary links are edited in the article, however. DDStretch (talk) 13:18, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Good Lord! I don't know how that happened - it's not a bot edit, and wasn't visible in "show differences" before I saved it. Probably a WikiMedia glitch. Thanks for fixing, RichFarmbrough, 15:01 8 July2007 (GMT).
Image:Elbaneh2.jpg
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Hi, Thank you for uploading Image:Elbaneh2.jpg,however it would be much appreciated if you could expand or clarify the sourcing information you have provided in the image summary., In particular which law enforcement agency took the photo originally?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by ShakespeareFan00 (talk • contribs)
Hi Rich, can you put {{Db-author}} into {{Birth date and age test}} to delete this test I don't think you are using any more. Thanks Patleahy 08:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
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Hello, Rich Farmbrough! You are invited to participate in Gnome Week, a mass article cleanup drive between June 21 and June 28, 2007.
This week, backlogs will be cleared. Articles will be polished. Typos will be fixed. Bad prose will be edited. Unreferenced articles will be sourced. No article will be safe from our reach! The more people who participate, the better Wikipedia will become as a result.
I would love it if you would participate! - â Tom@sBat
Took out the part which incinuates a correlation between Nazism and Nordicism. Please read chapter 11 of Mein Kampf. Nordic Aryan was used to describe the European segment of the Aryan race
Hi, I have reviewed Naming conventions (settlements) and the wikiproject. They have nothing to say about links, only article naming. I would be interested in any discussions you have links to. RichFarmbrough, 10:17 15 July2007 (GMT).
Source?
Would you mind if I borrow the source from your bot so that I may put it onto my wiki? I am no programmer. Jac roeBlank 02:20, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
At some point you expressed an interest in supporting Wikimedia UK. We're now ready to begin receiving applications from prospective members. If you would like to join, application forms and further information can be found at: http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/join. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions, either via my user page at the English Wikipedia or by email (andrew.walker@wikimedia.org.uk).
Hmmm... I'm guessing that you're referring to the subst-ed merge templates I placed on the articles relating to Christian worship. I have read the guidelines for subst-ing templates, but I subst-ed the templates cos the exact template that I needed was not available. Is there another way I could have done this? Other than placing two merge templates on the related articles. For example, now the template looks all messed up cos the links are repeated twice. Anyways, thanks for the warning. :) aJCfreakyAk 07:09, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm. I used {{Mergefrom-multiple}} on the main article. But for the others, there's not the exact template which I require - something which says "It has been suggested that this page or section be merged with A1, A2 and A3 into Christian worship." Anyways, I've been reading up on templates, going meticulously through the various merge templates. Thinking of creating the required template. That would be ok, right? aJCfreakyAk 08:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
It's done. I've created the {{Mergetomultiple-with}} template. I know it's a long name, but had to differentiate it from existing templates. Thanks... Without you setting me off, wouldn't have done it at all. :) Btw, do check it out and give me any pointers if possible. aJCfreakyAk 10:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Ummm. No. I've no idea how and where to list it. Could ya help me out, please? I've asked here too. :) aJCfreakyAk 11:29, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. It's done. There is some formatting-problem with including it in this page, due to the non-acceptance of the "=" symbol by the {{tlrow}} template used in that page - however, I think the explanation suffices for users to know how to use the template. Guess we'll leave it like that... You wouldn't know how to fix it, would ya? I tried using Unicode character coding for the "=" char, I also tried the <nowiki> and </nowiki> tags, but they completely mess up the template. :) aJCfreakyAk 14:49, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Just a note to say that Smackbot recently changed 'Reference' to 'References' in Abella, despite the fact that there's only one. If this is a general policy change on style please let me know where it's been discussed so that I can object; if not, I believe you should disable this inaccurate edit function. Thanks for your help. Espresso Addict 22:14, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Your interview
Hey Rich, "I'd like to create a mathematical model of the trends, to investigate how we best go about keeping the vitality of the enterprise without compromising content." How is this project coming along? Have you recruited anyone to help out? How do you plan on taking the measurements? What do you think could be the remedy for stultification? ... I am rambling again... Anyway, I would be interested to hear more about it. Cheers.--Cronholm144 21:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Question
Hi Rich Farmbrough,
I just had a question about Wikipedia bots and since you created a bot and you control it, I thought you might know the answer to this question.
Could someone get a bot to be a designated bot for a Wikiproject or task force?
That would be up to the project or task force. See, however WP:BOT for the requirements to run a bot on WP, and links to pages where you can, for example, request a bot to fix a given problem. RichFarmbrough, 18:52 18 July2007 (GMT).
Cleanup templates
Just to let you know that most cleanup templates, like "unreferenced", "fact", "cleanup", "merge"etc., are best not "subst"ed. See WP:SUBST for more details. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 10:47 19 July2007 (GMT).
Would you be interested in joining the Wikipedia Crime Project?
I have seen that you like to contribute to serial killer articles I am trying to organize a task force on this subject under Wikipedia:WikiProject Criminal Biography. If you would be interested in joining contact me. Thanks, Jmm6f488 19:36, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
<ROFL> This is the sort of thing that makes it all worthwhile. People who can't even use history properly, or sign their messages. RichFarmbrough, 08:46 21 July2007 (GMT).
Incidentally my bot doesn't generally add "notices" it merely dates them to help the teams addressing the underlying problems and removing them. RichFarmbrough, 08:48 21 July2007 (GMT).
Looks like smackbots got a new admirer ;) Reedy Boy 10:43, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Replacing sigs on talk pages
Hi, I wonder if you could help me out with your bot, or if you have a good alternative suggestion. I recently had my username changed per the right to vanish policy. However, I've made a lot of edits to talk pages and they contain my sig linking to my old account. I'd like that sig deleted and replaced with the default sig for this account. I don't use Windows so I can't use AWB to do this. --C S 06:51, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Wow, thanks! Your effort is sincerely appreciated. --C S 19:13, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
IMO something wrong with this activity. IMO it creates confusion. For exmple, the contributions page for user:C S does not list the edits where the 'bot changed the sig from User:Chan-Ho Suh to User:C S. Am I missing something? `'Míkka 15:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
That's right the sig changes were made by me at the user's request. The changes were not practical for the user to make themselves, however their request for me to do it for them is on my talk page, and the changes are all in history, so it seems reasonable. Clearly the user hasn't completely "vanished" per "right to vanish", but its a step in that direction. RichFarmbrough, 17:55 21 July2007 (GMT).
smack
Why did SmackBot create /210707 3? -- RHaworth 17:10, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi, why is SmackBot converting the sources tag to the unreferenced tag? The unreferenced is used where there are no sources whereas sources is used where there are some sources but a need for more. Bridgeplayer 21:36, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi, the reason is that {{sources}} used to redirect to {{unreferened}}, whereas it now redirectes to {{refimprove}}. These conversions should no longer happen, thanks for letting me know. RichFarmbrough, 07:39 22 July2007 (GMT).
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troll and MoS
Troll or not doesn't make cap of lower case, do they? I have no pov to push on Unnithan or such shitty pieces. Please make that casteist troll Manu rocks stick to Wikipedia Manual of Style. 59.91.253.161 17:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I appreciate you efforts to track me on to the RD and activate a discussion there. In fact, I had started a half joc thread on ANI. Indian English, has a tendency to initial cap words to honour[ify] the subject. For example, government is very often Gov..., and you can see multiple instances in Kerala That SPA Manu rocks apparently shares this notion. We have a logophile professor here with a fetishism for such things. I will also ask his opinion. Regards. 59.91.253.178 04:07, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Bad edit by SmackBot
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SmackBot's last edit to Cambridge seems to have introduced ]a mistake. It removed one of the three square closing brackets at the end of
[[Image:CambridgeMarketSquare.jpg|thumb|left|The market in the centre of Cambridge, with Great St Mary's Church in the background · [http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/markets more]]]
I fixed it in the article, but you may want to have a look at the code. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 03:35, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
No, it's fine, what makes you think it's stalled? It's only gone a day or so without comment, that's not very long. Andre (talk) 06:55, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Not a problem. Andre (talk) 07:00, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
It's not easy being green
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SmackBot is resting until Wednesday/Thursday.
He's cool. Thanks for the pic. (If only I'd noticed & posted here rather than on SmackBot page. My brain is about the same size as Kermit's, here...) Jessica Simpson 18:55, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot and superscripts
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I noticed in this edit that Smackbot changed <sup>2</sup> and <sup>3</sup> to ² and ³ respectively. As a matter of consistancy, I would suggest that smackbot either also convert <sup>1</sup> to ¹ (not my preference) or to leave any <sup>#</sup> instance be; I recommend the latter as most computers don't display superscript 4-9 (or zero) correctly so that articles that utilize superscript numbers past 3 would not have a consistant format. As I recall, Sburke started to go around changing superscript encoding this way for all numbers but it wasn't met with positive reception and most of these edits have been undone. Ƶ§œš¹[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 01:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot bad edit - switching cleanup-list/confusing tags
Your Bot User:SmackBot has put a warning about the need for sources on the page List of shipwrecks in 1956. The reason why there are no sources listed is that all of the information displayed on the page is sourced from other wikipedia article pages, which is where the source information is listed. Could you please repond to my talk page User talk:Dreamweaverjack if you want any further information about this article. Thanks, Dreamweaverjack 02:25, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
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Noticed some edits to one of my pet articles, and just wanted to thank you for programming such a handy little bot. While the edits are minor, they were things I'd failed to notice myself, and they make a big impact on the article's organization! HamatoKameko 05:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Will comments by SmackBot removed by itself?
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I made some rewritings and citations to Wikivoyage. Can we remove the ad template by ourselves or will this be done by SmackBot? --RolandUnger 17:44, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Usual answer. RF
Smack Bot
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Rich -- can you put the Clinton T. Casey Brennan Month document on the page?
I see that SmackBot delete the navy-stub template from Lunar distance (navigation). Because the article is now no longer a stub?
Since this template includes Category:Navy_stubs, and since Category:Navy_stubs is a subcategory of Category:Navies, removing this template also removes Category:Navies.
Can SmackBot be told, when it decides a navy-stub templated article is no longer a stub, that it should become Category:Navies instead? Or maybe Category:Navies_please_check_and_categorize_this_former_stub! navy-stub is a real grab-bag. These articles need some other kind of categorization, but probably should not get completely dropped from the navies hierarchy as soon as they start to look like real articles. Thanks --SV Resolution(Talk) 16:06, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Hmm tricky one. The articles should have categories as well as stub categories. When I last looked the two hierarchies didnot correspond, so no automated solution was possible. Definitely, though, the stub category should not be thought of as a replacement, ersatz or place holder for a real category. These articles should have {{uncatstub}} put on them. Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 16:23 2 August2007 (GMT).
Will SmackBot now go and put "uncatstub" on those "navy_stubs" articles? --SV Resolution(Talk) 01:41, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
It has done in the past. I'll look into it - the difficulty as I remember is that cats can be concealed in templates. RichFarmbrough, 11:46 3 August2007 (GMT).
Smack Bot
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Hey smack bot - trying to fix the Ravenchase page per your suggestion. Can you be a bit more specific for us non editing citation pros? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.8.131.10 (talk • contribs) 13:27, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Hallo Smack Bot, I found your tag citation needed[citation needed] in the article on the osteotome in the English Wikipedia. The article is a stub and I am not sure if the definitions in the first lines are correct.
The osteotome (German: Osteotom) that I know was invented by the German physician Bernhard Heine in 1830 and was used for opening the skull. In my Commons gallery you can see the pictures that I uploaded, I have some more on my computer. The usage of the instrument can be seen in the Bernhard Heine article. I am able to provide sufficient material about Heine’s invention, but I am not sure about the other “types” of osteotomes. My question: Do you know anything about the other meanings and types of this instrument?Hans555 08:37, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Sadly I know little of this. However I've added a link to Wiktionary. Incidentally, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 11:42 3 August2007 (GMT).
Signpost updated for July 30th, 2007.
Apologies for the late delivery this week; my plans to handle this while on vacation went awry. Ral315
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I have started to implement a suggestion you made on Talk:The_Microsoft_Sound. Unfortunately, another editor keeps deleting my efforts without taking it to Talk. I just wondered whether you would like to contribute to the discussion. If there is a consensus that I am wrong then I will back down. Many thanks, HairyWombat 19:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
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Order of St. Benedict
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Smackbot flagged the article Order of St. Benedict section on External Links for not having citations! :) Okay if I remove it? Student7 11:40, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 12:11 7 August2007 (GMT).
My error! Thanks for pointing that out! Student7 12:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Most edits by a single editor
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Do you realize you hold this record? Just wanted to say that. LOZ: OOT 02:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm fairly certain that he knew/knows, given that he generated the list for a long time. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 02:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Speaking of breaking Wikipedian records, I have a few questions which I would like to know: How did you manage to have so many edit counts throughout your life here as a Wikipedian? Are you really suffering from editcountitis? Plus, what would you do and how would you feel when somebody else has overtaken you in succeeding to hold such Wiki-world-record? Presently, you have a hundred sixty-four thousand and thirty edit changes in just a thousand and a hundred ninety-four days so far, when divided it is equivalent to around an average rate of 137.3786 edits per day!!! My goodness! How did you do that? :-O 14:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Hey, I use Template:Articleissues a lot when I'm stub-sorting. Sadly, however, it doesn't seem that SmackBot dates these. Would it be hard to change this? Thanks, Iknowyourider (tc) 03:05, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Oops, so it does. Sorry, didn't see any mention of {{articleissues}} in the bot's documentation. However, it didn't get it exactly right on at least one article: see this diff, where for some reason copyedit was left un-dated. Thanks again! Cheers, Iknowyourider (tc) 14:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Rich, I was surprised to see this edit of Square foot gardening where, among expected actions, SmackBot also unexpectedly added Template:Rescue. I don't notice this as one of Smacky's functions, but if it now is capable of adding this template, I'm curious about the rules that are used to determine when to add. Thanks for the clarification. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi,
I would just like to make sure you are aware that all information on the Eureka Video page is both accurate and relevant- hence shouldn’t be deleted. The page is a stub- hence it shouldn’t be deleted. Thanks. Edito*Magica 23:16, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. Regards,RichFarmbrough, 06:44 11 August2007 (GMT).
List of chapters and verses
Hi there! I came across the "List of chapters and verses in the Bible" pages and would be willing to help! Let me know if that sounds OK. Thanks! jj137 2:47, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, my vision was that there would be a link for each verse which would redirect if appropriate to the chapter, passage or book. The various bible projects, however, have gone with a different scheme for references, which goes to an external site to provide the text from an appropriate version of the bible. In my view this is limiting, although useful, because the tapestry of links between passages and from text to commentary is broken. The lists themselves, are really of more use in user or project space as a tool to check which verses have article/redirects in place. Also worth knowing is that there seems to be a prejudice against the current ordering of the bible in books, chapters and verses, in favour of subject matter and pericopes (stories/passages). Clearly chapters and verses were added later by systemitisers, nonetheless chapter and verse is how people refer to the Bible. In summary thanks for the offer, I am not currently doing anything with these lists, although I may one day. You are of course welcome to use them for your own purposes. RichFarmbrough, 10:19 13 August2007 (GMT).
OK, that sounds fine. jj137 14:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Good Job
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Well I just wanted to congradulate you on contributing so much to Wikipedia! :-)
An article that you have been involved in editing, Psalm 69, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Psalm 69. Thank you. -- Jreferee(Talk) 19:40, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
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Spelling of sulfur and related words
Hi Rich,
I noticed your edit to aluminium. You changed the spelling of sulfate and sulfide to sulphate and sulphide, respectively. I don't know why you did this, I'm sure you had a good reason. As set down in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry)#Element names, the word sulfur and its relatives must always be spelled with an F in chemistry contexts.
As such, I've changed your ph's to f's. I thought I would let you know why I undid some of your work, and also inform you of best practice for future editing.
Hi Ben, purely because the lead comment says that UK spelling is used in the article. Thanks for changing those back, I will fix the comment. RichFarmbrough, 13:50 15 August2007 (GMT).
Smackbot issue
Hi, I wasn't sure to stop the bot, so I'm just leaving a message to give you a headsup. Smackbot just posted a template on the Flowering tea article. Said template has a minor factual issue -- it states that it has been tagged since May 2007, when in fact the templates just when up today (making it August 2007). While this seems minor, it could have effects in AfDs where length of templates are sometimes used for reasons to Delete. Can you check this out to see if Flowering tea was the only article targeted, or is more widespread? Much thanks! Zidel333 13:41, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I award you this barnstar in recognition of your endless amounts of useful work, which include the creation of many articles and a really useful and fantastic Bot. You've been so valuable to Wikipedia, and long may your excellent work continue. :-) Lradrama 11:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to have a friendly conversation on the topic to understand your perspective, since I guess we're on opposite ends of the spectrum of the worthiness of these templates. My view is somewhere along the line that one tenth of all Wikipedia articles could use updating, that the fact there are sources for the articles to cite means that the topic is in the news and in some way current--and that it's pointless to make a template that states the obvious. I believe a template like {{current only}} is yet another invitation for massive mis-use, especially since there's no guide for its proper use. I admit I can't see the point in having the template for an article named "Current events in X." More bluntly, why should the template survive a discussion about its potential deletion?
More generally...
Since no one is maintaining or monitoring the use of the various current templates, who's going to wade through the thousands of articles that will have the "current only" tags? Couldn't the same consequence be accomplished by mere use of a category?
I have not yet examied the various sports-related "current" and "future" template uses. But I bet the uses of the templates are cavalierly haphazard, and not much help. In that area, what's the point of having a template for the current year of a sports team's season. Shouldn't any intelligent be able to tell if the article is current and subject to change?
I would propose that Wikipedia is not a newspaper and never will be, and should not be concerned with the currency or how changeable an article may be, unless it is an article about a genuine crisis that literally thirty or fifty or a hundred contribute to in one day.
I'm looking for a good counter-argument to my views. Best regards, Yellowdesk 05:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
A few points in no specific order:
The purpose of the distinction is that articles which are about current events in general need to belong to a different category than articles which are about an event that happens to be current.
There is already a WP:NOT policy covering news. Having said that I am not a great fan of WP:NOT, which could do with a total re-think and re-write IMHO.
In particular a significant amount of work is done to take articles out of the dated sub categories of Cat:Current_events when they are no longer current, removing the warning template (and, one hopes, to ensure they are brought to a reasonable standard, or at least tagged appropriately).
The template {{current only}} has limited application, and I have just modified {{current events}} to cover much of it. Once I have completed clean-up of the parent category, I will delete it if it is no longer needed.
Further to your notes on {{current}} you may wish to go through some of the dated categories and see which articles can have the tag removed. RichFarmbrough, 09:31 16 August2007 (GMT).
I'd be interested on some of the thoughts you have on WP:NOT. As to recent "news," it seems to be fairly silent; mostly guiding against original research.
The key problem is that WP:NOT does drive away valid content. The statement "we have wikiXXX" for that in particular is annoying, because WP is stand alone, and there is no guarantee that transwiki'd information will be accepted by sister projects, let a lone kept. Further I would like to see a solution for providing glosses for terms that does not take one off to Wiktionary. For this reason I am in favour, as the simplest solution, of allowing "dicdefs" - even when they have no chance of growing.
Category:Current_events_as_of_April_2007 shows some of the challenge of removing the last "current" items in a dated category. Lawsuits have a current template, and these could go on for years. I think something should be changed there, but I don't have a proposal. The other items seem to fit more closely to what I guess is your intent for "current only," but I'm not sure. The April 2007 category had about 500+ articles in it a couple of weeks ago, since it was (thanks to you and your bot) the first month all of the templates were dated. Quite a bit of junk was in there.
I think it's worth changing the dates to now if they are still current. I also wanted to mention the fewer templates (and redirects) the better frm my point of view, because my rule-base has to deal with all of them. RichFarmbrough, 15:35 16 August2007 (GMT).
Do you have an impression if the dozen or so redirects to "current" would actually be approved for deletion, in the Redirects for disscussion area? I don't have enough exerience to know how template redirects are handled, and how the discussion would likely go. I'd like to see most of them go, as I view them all as 'use me too" invitations. -- Yellowdesk 00:20, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
I would think most would go. Personally I am happy with one short redirect (eg cu->cleanup) for speed of tagging - these get renamed by my bot anyway, if not dated. RichFarmbrough, 00:27 17 August2007 (GMT).
Just another note, {{Current}} could take a {{{1}}} parameter which could be a word like "election" rendering nost of the variants obsolete as well. RichFarmbrough, 09:26 17 August2007 (GMT).
I'm rather unenthusiastic about encouraging use of descriptions "lawsuit" and "election" for {{current}}, as these take months and years to conclude, and fail to fall into the "many editors working on the article today" criterion (which I admit to thinking is the only manageable use for the template) . Consequently, they invite more use of the "this is a newspaper" templates. I would like to generate consensus that these uses are not really useful or helpful. I do see some use to {{future election}}, as there's a definitive end date, but I think it is needless too. The article should make clear that things are changing. For lawssuits and also criminal trials, nothing happens for months and years, wih occasional news, and then there's a decision, and then perhaps an appeal, and nothing happens for months, and then there's another decision. Your thoughts? -- Yellowdesk 14:08, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
I added an edited guideline for {{current}}. It's an edited version of the proposed draft floated at talk guideline. Perhaps a bit narrow. Comment invited. -- Yellowdesk 14:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
I have added the parameter already. The guidelines should indicate when the template is to be used, reflecting the wording in the template, or the wording should be changed to reflect the guidelines. For maintenance purposes, there is no need to have anything visible at all. Incidently I have deleted the April 2007 cat. RichFarmbrough, 15:10 18 August2007 (GMT).
Please prevent the bot from automatically changing 'External link' to 'External links' when there is only one, as it did with Janet Darbyshire. I believe I've mentioned this or a similar problem before. Espresso Addict 22:18, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
You have been invited to join WikiProject U2, a WikiProject dedicated to improving the U2-related articles on Wikipedia. You received this invitation due to your interest in U2 and/or your many edits to U2 articles. If you would like to join, please visit the project page, and add your name to the list of project members.
Hi there. I recently saw SmackBot making loads of DEFAULTSORT edits. Well over 5,000. Good stuff! I saw you were only doing this with people stubs, and doing that on a regular basis will be wonderful. I wondered if you were aware of Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Polbot 3, which is a similar, if more ambitious bot request (it is not human-supervised AWB, unlike yours). Would you have any advice there, or at User talk:Carcharoth/Polbot3 trial run? I tried to get this going, but the momentum has died down a bit. What do you think of the aim of getting DEFAULTSORT on all the articles with WPBiography on their talk page, and what do you think of the problems that sometimes come up with names in other languages. See the archived discussion here and the guidance here? Any advice or help would be much appreciated. Carcharoth 19:20, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Oops. Missed a typo. Was wondering if you'd had a chance to look at this yet? Carcharoth 18:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes this looks good, not sure what I can do to help. The problems are, I think, well known. RichFarmbrough, 19:52 19 August2007 (GMT). —The preceding signed but undated comment was added at 19:52:39, August 19, 2007 (UTC).
For making a difference! This Barnstar isn't free, this is a chain barnstar, as payment please give this star to at least 3-5 others with 500+ edits but no barnstar. So that everyone who deserves one will get one. Hpfan9374 01:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The Chain Barnstar of Merit
The Chain Barnstar of Merit
For your hard work! This Barnstar isn't free, this is a chain barnstar, as payment please give this star to at least 4 others with 1500+ edits but no barnstar or has few barnstars. So that everyone who deserves one will get one. Hpfan9374 01:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The Chain Barnstar of Diligence
The Chain Barnstar of Diligence
For shaping Wikipedia! This Barnstar isn't free, this is a chain barnstar, as payment please give this star to at least 3 others with 2500+ edits but no barnstar or has few barnstars. So that everyone who deserves one will get one. Hpfan9374 01:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The Wikipedian's Chain Barnstar of Honour
The Wikipedian's Chain Barnstar of Honour
For building Wikipedia! This Barnstar isn't free, this is a chain barnstar, as payment please give this star to at least 2 others with 5000+ edits but no barnstar or has few barnstars. So that everyone who deserves one will get one. Hpfan9374 01:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi, there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot 08:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
...appears to be adding a bunch of random changes to articles. [129] I suspect vandaism, because he's changing names and dates for no apparent reason. But for all I know they could be legit. Have fun weeding those out. Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc? 12:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
The rest of the edits seem sound. (Even the Mr Blobby one.) I assume this is a Monday/Thursday thing. RichFarmbrough, 12:59 20 August2007 (GMT).
Hurricane warning template
It conceivably has a use for the storm's article, since there's storm info there that may be out of date, but it's useless on the Cayman Islands article, so I removed it from there (and from Jamaica, and from Grand Cayman...) –Chacor 15:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot Default Sort fixes
It seems that while Smackbot is making an edit like this it could alphabetize the categories as well. Have you ever thought of programming smackbot to check for alphabetization and maybe do some sort of bubble sort on the categories.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 22:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that used to be a "general fix" of WP:AWB, but caused a lot of kerfuffle, where the order of the categories had been manually sorted. RichFarmbrough, 10:22 21 August2007 (GMT).
Hi, why did your bot remove the stub templates from Happyslip? (see here) It's referenced and everything but there are many paragraphs to add. cheers -- Outspan [talk · contribs] 20:57, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
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Unnithan and Valiathan
Dear sir , i am new to wikipedia,,,Does wikipedia go by the available refrences, or by what somebody personaly thinks of it.. i've tried to compile a text about Unnithan,, but as manu thinks that nagam aiya is wrong in his travancore manual about unnithans,,& wants to express his opinions or personal research.. i think this is not fair.. as it'll be difficult then to create any page with refrences from whats written in history... .. If the wiki will be all about what we personally think & not what is taken from references then there is no point for us to go through refrences & compile texts..so please if possible check the page & then we should be coming to a consensus.. then i want to compile a text for valiathan & thampi also... user :Indianitihas
Unnithan and Valiathan
Yes they do...these references are accessible at the Public Library of Trivandrum city as also with the Kerala Council for Historical Research..i personally possess one of them (the travancore state manual)..Manu
I will immeditely add the page refernce from the Travancore Manual but since i dont have the Census Report it might take time. Likewise the Kiriyathil Nair article. The topic is based on certain legends and so at every possible place i have mentioned in the article "legend has it" or "collection of legends" etc making it pretty clear that the thing cant be taken to be true history. Does it still qualify to be "deleted in 3 days" because it has no historical sources except legends? i have mentioned the books that repeat the legends as well Manu
The anonymous user is creating further trouble..Eg- Unnithan which is a proper noun is constantly being written as unnithan etc...but thats only the less important part of it. He seems to feel my references are false even now. What do i do? help!!! Manu
Page 368 for what? Ive added the page numbers for Kiriyathil Nair (215 volume I) and Malayala Kshatriyas..Yusuf Khan? First time im hearing of it...neways the guy asks me to quote the pages about Malayala Kshatriyas...now thats 319-326 volume II...how can he expect me to type out the whole thing...ive even told him i can tell him how to procure the book...And just so u dont get confused, there are two Travancore Manuals, the former of three volumes by Nagam Aiya and the later of Velu Pillai with 4 volumes..I personally own the Nagam Aiya books and the History of Travancore is on its way by post...btw i have a serious suspicion abt this guy...he seems to know exactly how to edit wiki and the perfect wiki terms etc...looks like an editor whose not using his id..Manu
Yup there are....as i said Nagam Aiya and Velu Pillai...Nagam Aiyas is from 1906 while Velu Pillai around the 1940s...the census reports are from 1901...Manu
This guy is causing trouble...ive mentioned the page number clearly for Kiriyathil Nair and Malayala Kshatriyas and yet he adds tags that state they are original research, povs and need to be deleted urgently...isnt there a way we can protect these articles from this anonymous user?? Can u please do something abt him...im getting pretty fed up reverting all the time..Manu
In reply to the message above by Indianitihas. He is reverting the article to a very old and wrong version with many discrepancies. He has stated that i think the author of one of the references mentioned was wrong. I am right on that account and have even explained to him as to why the error occured and why the entire manual was rewritten in 1940 with correct info, which is the 2nd ref of the Unnithan article. This is not original research but the prologue of the 2nd set of Manuals in 1940 mention that the main reason for the manuals to be re written was because the previous manuals contained a few errors such as these. Manu
Feel free to place this award on your user page, as a token of appreciation for your contributions. If you're willing to help spread the good cheer to others, please see the project page for the Random Smiley Award at: User:Pedia-I/SmileyAward
I didn't think editors were supposed to be editing protected pages: [130]. Dreadstar† 09:28, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
"Admins should not edit pages that are protected due to a content dispute, unless there is consensus for the change, or the change is unrelated to the dispute." Admittedly I should in theory mention the edit on the talk page, but it would really be a waste of everybody's time in this case. RichFarmbrough, 13:35 23 August2007 (GMT).
Cool! I wasn't sure how that works. Appreciate the info! Dreadstar† 16:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I appreciate your work to fix dates. But, is it possible, when you change dates in tables like this, you use just 3 letters for months. That's important because those kind of tables sometimes are in the width limit, so if goes a bit wither, could make a one line row become two lines. Also, a long date takes the focus from other more important information. Because all that, I'm trying to keep a 3-letter month standard for those kind of articles. Thanks.--ClaudioMB 04:00, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
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Is just great. I'm guessing you have heard that before, but I just wanted to contribute a spurious gush of grateful affection for it, nice work. Jdcooper 14:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Hear, hear! Nice job on the bot. It does what a bot oughta.--BillFlis 22:17, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
It's really quite wonderful.--Duncan 21:12, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot and birth date formatting
While changing the format of the infobox on hockey players' pages, please use {{birth date and age}} instead of {{birth date}}. It just makes it a lot easier to figure out how old they are, and I bet that's what most readers are looking to find out anyway. Thanks. --Muéro(talk/c) 18:25, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes this is good, however I will need to do a separate pass that only includes living people. RichFarmbrough, 21:17 30 August2007 (GMT).
I agree with this, and actually could you provide the regular expression you use on smackbot that can be used in AWB? I do a lot of work on ice hockey articles and it would be useful IrisKawling 21:41, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I would like to interest you in including (and modifying appropriately) SmackBot and {{recentdeath}} to date any and all recent death templates on articles. My hope is that, eventually, all "recent death" tags are removed after a month. -- Yellowdesk 18:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC).
January 0, an article you created, has been nominated for deletion. We appreciate your contributions. However, an editor does not feel that January 0 satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in the nomination space (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and the Wikipedia deletion policy). Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/January 0 and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of January 0 during the discussion but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. -- Jreferee(Talk) 17:11, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
A template you created, Template:Blacklist, has been marked for deletion as a deprecated and orphaned template. If, after 14 days, there has been no objection, the template will be deleted. If you wish to object to its deletion, please list your objection here and feel free to remove the {{deprecated}} tag from the template. If you have no objections regarding the deletion, no further action is necessary. Thanks for your attention. --MZMcBride 04:52, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Three matters
SmackBot problem
G'day Rich,
I'd like to say "I'm sorry for stopping your bot", but that would be insincere.
Your bot keeps popping up in pages I've been working on turning USA into U.S. I think you've managed to hit about 6 of these pages in the last few days. Given how many pages there are on WP, I'm forced to congratulate you for the thoroughness of your search algorithm. But I digress.
I know this is entirely subjective opinion, but I really don't like this change. I know that what I personally like or dislike is irellevant to this discussion. The reason I'm mentioning it so you have an understanding of where I'm coming from (whether you agree with me or not). So I'll get to the point. (All right, I'll get to my point.)
When I saw the first one of these changes. I shrugged my feelings off. With the second one, I went searching and discovered that there is an unresolved WP debate about the name of the country between Mexico and Canada. I fairly quickly discovered that the "only" reason that (in the WP environment) that WP continues to refer to this country as U.S. is because opinion about whether it should be called U.S. or USA is fairly evenly split, so there is no concensus one way or the other. So, whatever happened to be there before the debate started, was left alone. I gather that "whatever happened to be there" was U.S.
So, I understand that you can use this result to justify a position that says "It should be U.S."
But, if you were to do that, my opinion is that you would be missing the point. My opinion is that the concensus is: given that there is no concensus, things should be left alone until such time as there is a concensus. I quickly and freely admit that this is (only) my opinion.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that your opinion is: there is no concensus, so the previous "official" opinion stands - this previous opinion was: "It should be U.S.", so that's what I'm going to use my bot to implement.
So, the way I see it, there are two opinions/positions:
There is no concensus - leave things alone. (a.k.a. "My opinion")
There is no concensus - the previous policy stands. Hence I'm going to use my bot to implement the previous policy. (a.k.a. "My interpretation of your opinion", which is, I guess, also my opinion!)
Now, I'm prepared to concede that I've got it completely wrong.
So please, enlighten me. I'm looking forward to reading your reply. Regards, Pdfpdf 13:22, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
However, in my newness to and ignorance of WP, there are a few things you've done that I don't understand. I really would appreciate it if you would explain them to me:
Wikify dates (where month and day both present). I don't really see the point of this. The only reason I can think of for doing this is so that WP can cross-reference back to all events that are related to that date. Is that the reason? Are there other reasons too? If so, can you point me at them please?
Date fragments delinked. As you might expect, I can't see the point of linking date fragments either. However, in this case you seem to agree. But if it's desirable to link full dates, it seems inconsistent to not link fragments. Obviously I'm missing something. Can you enlighten me please?
Cat sort order. I presume that's the stuff you did down the bottom?
Headers. I gather "it's not the done thing" to have links from Headers? (e.g. you turned "===Vickie Winans===" into "===Vickie Winans==="). Can you point me at the explanation for this please?
Then there are a few things I disagree with. I haven't changed any of the above, but I've changed a few of the following:
Note that the section header is "Recording artists and groups within the family"
There is no such artist/group as "Delores and David Winans". There is, however, an artist/group called "Mom & Pop Winans".
Similarly "Ronald Winans Family & Friends Choir", and "BeBe & CeCe Winans".
(Regarding "Angie & Debbie", I don't know, and to be honest, don't really care - in and of themselves, I don't think they're particularly notable. i.e. they're only notable-by-association.)
As for changing "*dec28th.com, official website of Marvin Winans, Jr. " into "*December.com 28 December.com, official website of Marvin Winans, Jr.", well, I don't think I need to make any further comment.
You hadn't expressed an opinion last time I looked. What is your opinion? Cheers, Pdfpdf 10:54, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the prompt, and more importantly, useful, reply.
As "they" say, "You learn something new every day. Sometimes, some of it is useful."
Best wishes, Pdfpdf 11:41, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Timezone
LOL! Yes, you're right. I'll look into it. But somehow I doubt that it will come down much. As it is, we're only about 5% of Australia's population, and Aus+U.S.+U.K is about 400million, so we're only 0.25% of that. I'd still class 99.75% as "almost 100%"!! Thanks for the laugh, Pdfpdf 11:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Bianca Ryan
The bot was reverted: one, "USA" is the accepted global and local norm; two, "U. S." requires a space to be technically accurate. —ATinySliver | talk 13:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
WP:Mos says U.S., and yes you're "right" about the space although a thin space would be preferable. The space (or at least on space) is observed in the names of many biographical articles, where the subject is known by their initials, see J. R. R. Tolkien for example. RichFarmbrough, 18:09 6 September2007 (GMT).
Apologies, but I've reverted your removal of "prodigy"; please see the talk page re ample evidence within the text. Also, I'm a bit confused by your removal of "date fragments" (WP:MOS says month-year is fine, since they are legitimate links, and then you add a month-day fragment that is eschewed by WP:MOS); explain? —ATinySliver | talk 22:10, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Okay, apparently this has changed recently (and is under dispute). None of the links or lack thereof really bothers me one way or the other... ;) —ATinySliver | talk 00:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
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Hi, I'd like to know if you could help me to find out if a user is hoax used by another user. Thanks. --ClaudioMB 18:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi Claudio, there are some people who can perform a checkuser: but there will need to be a good reason for doing it - see the top of that page. RichFarmbrough, 19:51 7 September2007 (GMT).
Dragons flight has replied via email (sounds like he's probably not returning). His suggestion for this is effectively to add a new namespace for undisplayed categories (Hcategory:), possibly including them in the HTML output but using a CSS style that typically makes them not shown. I suspect the devs are not likely to consider either creating a new namespace or alphabetizing whatlinkshere output for this high priority. Would you be OK going ahead with this without any MediaWiki software changes? -- Rick Block (talk) 16:13, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot
Thanks for making User:SmackBot. I always forget to put date fields on my cleanup tags, and it always makes me smile to see that the bot is there to fix them for me. spazure (contribs) (review) 09:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
"Current" and unknown template causing "year" articles to be linked
I cannot figure out why all of the "year" articles (such as 1981) recently have been linked to {{current}}. It must be some recently modified template, but I don't know how to read template programming to figure this out. Can you? I want to cause the change to be reversed. Some probably 2,000 articles are now linked to {{current}} because of the change. -- Regards, Yellowdesk 20:39, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
I seem to have found it; a redirect created from the {{Current-year}}. I reversed the redirect, but I still don't understand how the links were created. Less than obvious. -- Yellowdesk 20:44, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot and defaultsort
This edit seems a bit odd. How does the bot determine when to use DEFAULTSORT? --- RockMFR 21:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Adding refs didn't work as expected with broken table
[131] Adding a ref section to a page with a table that wasn't properly closed put the ref section above the table for some reason. Probably not a reason to stop doing it, but food for thought. - Peregrine Fisher 16:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, if all the articles were "correctly" formatted the task would be much simpler. Thanks for the note. RichFarmbrough, 16:26 11 September2007 (GMT).
FYI re blacklist
I have asked again that books-by-isbn be removed from the Meta blacklist. Feel free to comment. --KSmrqT 17:37, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
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Footnotes
Thanks, Rich.
I've been going with both the print-publication standard of calling numbered, statement-specific citations "footnotes," and with WP:CITE:
"A footnote is a note placed at the bottom of a page of a document to comment on a part of the main text, or to provide a reference for it, or both. The connection between the relevant text and its footnote is indicated by a number or symbol which appears both after the relevant text and before the footnote."
...which goes on to suggest three headings, one of which is "Footnotes"
The other page I've been going with is Wikipedia:Footnotes, which calls itself "Footnotes" and itself uses the derivative subhead "Notes" for its own footnotes, rather than "References."
So, where do we go from here? I know at WikiProject Comics we often use a separate "References" section to list things like comic-book databases, where we just give the one link for each easily searchable database rather than a plethora of footnotes, one for each issue we're citing that is in the database. --Tenebrae 20:09, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Oh, right. Forgot about the font-size part of this. Go to Stan Lee or Spider-Man, for instance, and you'll see why WikiProject Comics, at least, finds the smaller font most workable! --Tenebrae 20:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
So in that case, should this be automated after all? I'm not sure I'm following. (Then again, I'm bleary-headed from editing!) --Tenebrae 20:23, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
That many?! Holy cow.
So the bot only affects those articles without a "Footnotes/Notes" section currently? Is it turning inline links to footnotes? --Tenebrae 20:48, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, it's a little beyond me, but it sounds like you're saying that if footnotes with superscript numbers already exist, that the bot will leave those be. Cool. Could I just ask or suggest that the section these things go into be called "Footnotes". I know that would make things way easier on WikiProject Comics, since otherwise we'd have several instances of articles with two sections called "Reference".
I appreciate very much your talking to other editors and getting input on all this. And let me just say again how good it is to see SmackBot when it does things like update "cn" templates to "Fact" templates. That's a particularly good one, and I, for one, thank you for all your work coming up with these. --Tenebrae 04:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Yep, I see exactly what you're saying now. Thank you so much for taking all this time and answering my questions, and I hope I've haven't delayed things too badly. I have to say I really admire all the work you're putting into Wikipedia on the technical end. Continued good luck with SmackBot! --Tenebrae 14:02, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot and references
For some reason, when adding {{reflist}} to the Christopher Pittman article, the bot also removed one of the "=" from the chapter heading, but only on side of the word. If I'm being unclear, I apologize, but hopefully it will be apparent when looking at the edit history. Probably not a big deal, but I figured I'd let you know. [132], Cheers, JCO312 16:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, this is becasue References wwas a level 3 heading when it should be (SB assumes) level 2. RichFarmbrough, 18:07 12 September2007 (GMT).
The bot left a vary bizarrely formatted addition at this diff. I see that other pages seem to be fine, but you might want to look at why this was so strange. AKRadeckiSpeaketh 20:49, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
The problem wasn't related to the bot at all, except, that the bot revealed it. The issue, was a malformed {{Cite web}} template, left either by a broken template, or, a user somewhere [133]. The bot did exactly as it should have, it added a {{reflist}} tag. Your diff even showed as such. Anyhow, HTH. SQL(Query Me!) 22:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. the reason was a strange unclosed "ref" tag in one of the tables. SQL has fixed it. RichFarmbrough, 22:34 12 September2007 (GMT).
Yeah, I've been trying to exclude the commented out ones :) For some reason, I'm having a lot of trouble doing so... SQL(Query Me!) 23:45, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
For reference sections, please use {{reflist}}. - UtherSRG(talk) 03:40, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, and, might I add, great work! :) I looked over a bunch of the bots edits, and, they seem pretty spot on :) SQL(Query Me!) 09:58, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
I am switching over to {{reflist}}. I have some reservations about the small type, but they are better addressed at the template talk page. RichFarmbrough, 10:58 12 September2007 (GMT).
As an aside, I'm working up another list as we speak, since there's a new DB dump available... Do you prefer the current way of posting it, or, is some other way preferable? (I.E. txt file via e-mail, etc...) SQL(Query Me!) 11:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Heh, no problem! :) It doesen't take very long to run it (8-10 hours total, and, it's on a dedicated machine right now), I'll hold off till you're ready :) SQL(Query Me!) 11:16, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Rich! And I should add that I agree... great work! - UtherSRG(talk) 13:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Just finished up! There was a bit of a bug in my new sorting app, which, caused everything to be duplicated :) I'm just about to post the (non-dup) results... Turned out to be about 16,000 again.... A sampling showed about 1 in 40 to be incorrect for some reason or another (mostly those dang tags in comments, but, a lot less of those this time round) SQL(Query Me!) 19:45, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
There we go! New lists are up (only 4 pages this time.... I decided to do 5000 per list). SQL(Query Me!) 19:55, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Why use {{reflist}}? Some people object to the reduced font size. Gimmetrow 16:12, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi. Thank you for adding References sections automatically. At least that is what I thought I saw your SmackBot do today. What a great idea. -Susanlesch 03:06, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Must agree with the above. You have made more refs appear then we normally do in weeks of work. Brilliant! I looked at the list .... many of those articles were going from "start" to "B" etc. Very clever. Victuallers 09:40, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
The da Vinci Barnstar
1. Clever idea 2. So much valuable work for wikipedia 3. References added "by magic" (ie fixing oversights). Smackbot is good at housework.... but today it polished the silver. Victuallers 09:40, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Probabilities and Time Zones?
Re User:Pdfpdf#Time footnote: Have I adequately addressed your concerns? ;-) Pdfpdf 10:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot thanks
Nice work with the reference-section-adding task. I'd wondered if this was possible, it's a great thing to be doing... I had no idea so many articles I watch needed such a section. --W.marsh 13:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
Just FYI, the edits I've seen that have the summary "Add references section (testing) and/or general fixes." all seem to be legit, helpful, and properly done. And may I, as a fellow bot owner, say "Wow!" Well done :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:18, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Apparently it did at least once. :) Ok, that article is perhaps a bad/good example since the section is titled "Bibliography and References" and so the bot came up empty when it (presumably) scanned for "==References==" or its bot'ish equivalent. May I suggest that it be "trained" to check for a "Bibliography" keyword and/or combinations of the two?
ps: nifty feature btw. Well done! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fullstop (talk • contribs) 03:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. The focus is on adding the {{Reflist}} not so much the section, where there are references in the article which can't bee seen. I will look at the combinations of Notes, Footnotes, References and Bibliograpy. RichFarmbrough, 06:53 14 September2007 (GMT).
The reason why the bot's addition of the {{Reflist}} tag was rather strange was that the Sraosha article (see link above) doesn't have any <ref>s, leave alone refs that can't be seen. The article has only one source, hence no reason for refs.
ps: on an unrelated note: could the bot be made to patrol categories and {{db-catempty}} them if they remain empty for, say, a month or more?
Would it be possible to not add Refs section to List of the largest arch bridges? Referencing is done there using another way (links in rank section) and i do not want to argue with bot. --Jklamo 12:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
There was a <ref> in the commented out section of the table. Incidentally the process is two-and-a-half-pass, not just obstinate. RichFarmbrough, 13:40 14 September2007 (GMT).
SmackBot: typo
Hello, this edit by SmackBot was a typo. Possibly it wasn't the only one. Conscious 05:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Could you run your bot over the Manchester article? The refs were recently updated, but all the spaces in the ISBNs were removed. Your bot is probably the best way to fix & check them. Thanks and regards, Mr Stephen 19:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
the ISBNs loook OK to me. (Also my ISBN script is on a dead drive, and outdated.) RichFarmbrough, 19:28 14 September2007 (GMT).
Faster than a fast thing! Thanks, and bad luck with the drive. Mr Stephen 19:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Assuming one gets a good database extract, how would you look through it with a script to determine all of the articles started by [or, equivalently, first edit in the article's history, as I know some articles predate the current database] a particular user? Alternatively, a script that (somehow) goes through a user's contributions and checks each of those articles might be faster. Special:Newpages only goes back to Aug 23, 2007, and I'm curious to see a complete list of articles I've started. Any ideas? —Disavian (talk/contribs) 20:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi you can run this off the database dump with full history, but this is hundred+ gig now. So you would be able to use "stub-history" which is not horrendously bug, and just records who + when + bits about the changes. Incidentally I have done this per [[134]] in the past. RichFarmbrough, 20:12 14 September2007 (GMT).
Cleanup templates
Thanks for the tip, but when did I "subst" a cleanup template? I would appreciate to see an instance of when I have. I subst user warning templates, but generally know when and when not to subst. Regards, Gilliam 21:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Ah yes that's a typo. Thanks for the correction.- Gilliam 21:48, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Smackbot malfunction
Resolved
Smackbot is malfunctioning and placing references that are incorrect on multiple pages including Buck Shaw Stadium and McAfee Coliseum. Gateman1997 16:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Just an FYI, SmackBot isn't a vandal bot. Also, I went in, and, replaced the {{reflist}} tag for ya, and, cleaned up the references there (Applied citation templates: {{cite news}}, {{cite web}}). As an aside, if the article cites references, it really should display them :) SQL(Query Me!) 06:07, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to re-run the list. Is SmackBot done yet? If it's not, I don't know if posting a corrected list will mess it up or not... SQL(Query Me!) 06:33, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
K, new list is up :) You're doing great! Only 564 articles this time! :) Also, I'm curious, what do you think, about removing {{reflist}} or similar, from articles that don't need it? Not so much a 'do you want to do this with smackbot', but, a 'do you think it's a good idea?' :) I've noticed quite a few, in the last couple script runs... SQL(Query Me!) 06:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Wikifying dates
Resolved
Thank you for your recent edit on the article that I created and that Reedy Boy also made some contributions. I see that you wikified the dates, forming links to the year and date.
I am not opposed to this. It is very commonly done. However, why is it done? I heard that wikipedia likes to link things so that it will place high on the google and search engine list. If so, this is manipulation. Are we unknowingly helping a scheme? I don't want to create controversy but am merely curious. If someone wants to look up an article of the year, it's easy to look it up without a link.
Archtrain 16:33, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
User:Rich_Farmbrough/FAQ#Dates explains what is going on here. There is no "scheme" that I am aware of, except one to stop search agents following outgoing links, to prevent people from gaining google-rank "spamming" their URLS onto WP. RichFarmbrough, 18:33 15 September2007 (GMT).
Smackbot typo
Resolved
recent edit summaries by smackbot include "Unreferenced to refimprove where appprpriate and/or general fixes." Can you change that to "{{Unreferenced}} to {{refimprove}} where appropriate and/or general fixes." to make it clear that it's templates you're modifying, and also to correct the spelling of appropriate? Thanks — TimotabTimothy (not Tim dagnabbit!) 18:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi, SmackBot has recently touched Guitar pick article and has changed
== Reference ==
to
==References==
That seems to be odd, as all other headers on this page are formatted with spaces (== Header ==), and Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(headings)#Spaces generally says that any style is good, as long as it's consistent on all of the page. I believe that it's wrong for SmackBot to break style on one single header it touches. I'll fix that manually, but just wanted you to know. --GreyCat 20:58, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi! I'm just here to point out this diff, where Smackbot wrote 'appprpriate' instead of 'appropriate' in its edit summary. Thanks for your hard work! --Masamage♫ 23:51, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
I am inclined to agree, also, and more "in your face" is the treatment of x2+y7. I have requested that this particular feature be removed, or at least reined back in AWB. RichFarmbrough, 14:58 16 September2007 (GMT).
plural references
Resolved
SmackBot seems to be changing the "Reference" section to "References" even when there's only one reference, which seems grammatically incorrect. I don't see support for that change in the Manual of Style, either. --Delirium 01:30, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Never mind, I dug up some "consensus" buried in a separate MoS page (not the one on references of course). Still is incorrect, but not worth arguing over I guess. --Delirium 01:33, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Has Wikipedia become an exercise in change for the sake of change using format or style as the reason? To change a heading that is factually correct to conform to a bot is inexcusable. similarly, changing "&" to "and" is an unwarranted change.
Dear Rich Farmbrough, you left a note on the page Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami saying that if an allegation is notable and attributable it can be included. I am wondering if you think the allegations I have commented on are attributable and notable. They are blanket accusations that do not name specific priests. I think that makes them unattributable. I am not sure what notable would be, could you enlighten me, I can not find a Wikipolicy on attributable and notable. NancyHeise 04:42, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Verifiability & Wikipedia:Notability. Of course the second is a guideline on subject matter in general, see also WP:BLP. Simply put, WP does not make "allegations" or indeed unsupported statements of any kind, but may chose to report allegations made by third parties - examples would be those made against Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton and OJ Simpson. They need not necessarily be true or even plausible, since we are not contending that they are either, simply that they were made by the given person. WP is also not in the business of giving or denying the "oxygen of publicity" to campaigners - we report on material mainly from secondary sources, that reflects the real-world. Whether this campaign, or your counter campaign are notable I do not know, but it seems that your arguments are that it has made a disproportionate impact, which would tend to support inclusion.
I would like to ask you if it is notable that these accusations were never repeated in the local news media, either in South Florida Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald or local television stations? If the local news doesnt carry accusations that are clearly exaggerations, why should Wikkipedia? NancyHeise 18:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
In the article Stella Hudgens, the template {{birth date}} was being used in prose at the beginning of the article. I don't know what the MoS says about doing that, but to the reader it looked no different and so I never changed it. SmackBot (talk·contribs) recently switched the {{birth date}} to {{birth date and age}} which doesn't look right in the prose and I don't think was intended by the bot. — pd_THOR|=/\= | 18:41, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Hm... I would be inclined to remove the template - indeed I have. But I suspect this is a rare enough event, and not sufficiently bothersome to programme around. RichFarmbrough, 18:45 16 September2007 (GMT).
Thanks for that. I've never seen it used in such a fashion anywhere else either, but I thought you should know. — pd_THOR|=/\= | 18:48, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Notability and Verifiablility of Sharon Bourassa allegations on Archdiocese of Miami page
Resolved
See Wikipedia:Verifiability & Wikipedia:Notability. Of course the second is a guideline on subject matter in general, see also WP:BLP. Simply put, WP does not make "allegations" or indeed unsupported statements of any kind, but may chose to report allegations made by third parties - examples would be those made against Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton and OJ Simpson. They need not necessarily be true or even plausible, since we are not contending that they are either, simply that they were made by the given person. WP is also not in the business of giving or denying the "oxygen of publicity" to campaigners - we report on material mainly from secondary sources, that reflects the real-world. Whether this campaign, or your counter campaign are notable I do not know, but it seems that your arguments are that it has made a disproportionate impact, which would tend to support inclusion.
RichFarmbrough, 14:50 16 September2007 (GMT).
If the Sharon Bourassa allegations were like allegations made against OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton, I would advise including them in the Wikipedia article. However, her allegations are different from these cases since they are heresay. She claims a group of straight priests are feeding her this information. This is not a direct allegation from a vicitim or a witness, this is heresay. We have no news articles of Archdiocese of Miami priest making these same allegations. In one of the references to these allegations http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/abbott/051129, Nancy Heise states she spoke to two members of Sharon Bourassa's group who beleived the priest making the allegations was Sharon's former pastor, Fr. Mulderry. His statement to Nancy is that the allegations are so ridiculous that he wonders how it could be possible for any person to know the sexual orientation and practices of all 400 Archdiocese of Miami priests. He states he has never told Sharon such a thing. Further evidence as to why these allegations should not be printed is that the local papers would not print them. The only people to print these allegations are blogs who carry Matt Abbott columns, this is a gossip column, not someone with a fact checker or an editor as required by WP:RS. Is it not obvious enough evidence that an allegation is an extraordinary claim when someone claims to know the sexual orientation of 400 priests? It was obvious enough to our local papers and television news. NancyHeise 18:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi Nancy, I have had a quick scout around, but I do not intend to research this case. Possibly "Matt Abbott, gossip columnist, has carried reports of Sharon B...'s allegations ... these have been syndicated on a number of blogs." Anyway my purpose in chipping in was to try and provide clarity on what can, in principle, be included in WP, not to make a judgement about this particular case. YOu should discuss with those who want to include the information why they think the allegations are notable. RichFarmbrough, 18:52 16 September2007 (GMT).
Thank you, your input was very helpful. I read the WP policy pages for notable and verifiable. The nutshell comments reflect my position on the exclusion of these allegations. I hope you will come to our assistance on this page again. We could use your help. NancyHeise 19:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Re: template company importance
Resolved
Apologies, I don't think I've done any others but I'll check. Thanks for fixing it. mattbr 19:53, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
About a bot edit
Resolved
I noticed that your bot tagged Protoss as having a plot summary that is too long. I'm not sure if it's a big deal, but as it is a character page and not a story, I'm not sure why it did that. Any thoughts? Larrythefunkyferret 05:35, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Please forgive my ignorance; I'm don't know what all your bot is capable of. Still, do have any idea what that tag is referring to? Larrythefunkyferret 06:38, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. I'll go look for the tagger now. Larrythefunkyferret 22:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
No problem. There is a resistance among some Wikipeadians to to much "in universe" description as "fancruft". I sympathise with but do not share this view (although support stylistic measures to keep "in universe" and "out of universe" clearly labelled, and to avoid WP:OR - fan hypotheses). There is possibly some legitimacy in that a really extensive plot summary (as we once had for a, I think it was the fifth, Harry Potter book) could conceivably constitute breach of copyright. Anyway, perhaps the person who added the tag can enlighten you further. RichFarmbrough, 10:12 16 September2007 (GMT).
When I click on the link Smackbot added, I get the message "Wikipedia does not have a category with this exact title". In otherwords, you are linking to a non-existant category.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jdemeis (talk • contribs) 13:51, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, the housekeeping task of creating the monthly categories is not automatic, but it is simple. The category in question was created on 30 Augusthere by User:Harryboyles (thank you Harry). So you must have a caching problem I guess. RichFarmbrough, 14:51 16 September2007 (GMT).
If anyone had a caching problem it was Wikipedia because the link was being represented in red. But as of today, it's blue and works. -jdemeis —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.192.27.79 (talk) 12:55, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Ampersand, Wackcaplet and Spong
Resolved
I am sorry, Rick, to place my irritation, on what I consider unnecessary changes, on your page. I had found four changes of "Reference" to the plural on my watch list all with a single reference, and from your bot. I normally do not make critical remarks without suggestions and/& appologise for doing so. Would it not be possible to program the bot to action only after a count of References or links shows more than one?
As a person born in England I believe that one of the joys of the English language is that there are so many ways to convey a thought. Therefore I get "hot under the collar" when changes are made to a sentence that is already understandable, to my mind "nitpicking".
I have been making edits on wikipedia since 2005 and have originated over 100 pages. but my total edits are low compared with many user pages. I do find that a very much larger proportion of changes are a matter of taste, when comparing today with 2005.
Thanks
It is doing the same with 'External link' -> 'External links', even if there is only one. Seems pretty unnecessary to me... Ninja neko 07:31, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Previously I have restricted this change to items with multiple entries in the list, however the standard for headings is to have plurals for notes, footnotes, references, external links etc. RichFarmbrough, 08:52 17 September2007 (GMT).
Bot & Somerset
Hi Rich, Thanks for setting the bot to work (I'm seeing most of my watch list gain them. However on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset page a note has appeared saying:
:I noticed a Somerset WikiProject template on the article about Trevor Pinch, whose only apparent association with Somerset is that he took a degree at the University of Bath. Isn't this spreading the net a little wide? Are you also going to include Tom Jones and The Wife of Bath? --RichardVeryard 13:40, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Any idea why, when it doesn't appear in any of the Somerset categories?— Rodtalk 13:49, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
OK thanks I should have checked more closely before requesting the bot. Can we remove:
as they all contain people who may be only peripherally associated with the county.
I can check Exmoor by hand but excluding those in Devon would be good.— Rodtalk 14:08, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Template:Somerset was my first real attempt at a complex template & I couldn't get the importance component to work - so I went back to the basic one which just handles class - I followed the guidelines on project creation & used what I thought was the standard naming convention - any advice/help appreciated.— Rodtalk 14:35, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Template:WikiProject Somerset doesn't seem to include the class & importance ratings & doesn't say that the page hasn't yet been assessed or am I missing something?— Rodtalk 14:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Date format
Resolved
From your edits, I guess you know well about how to use dates on Wikipedia. So, I'd like to have your opinion about this propose. Thanks. --ClaudioMB 22:16, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Template:Somerset
Resolved
Has been added to Talk:Trowbridge by your bot. Not sure why as it's in Wiltshire... Cmiag 19:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
It's in Category:West Country Carnival which is in Cat:Somerset. Thanks, will review this subcat. RichFarmbrough, 10:12 18 September2007 (GMT).
Internal link formatting
Resolved
Since you seem to have written the guideline on the subject [135], I thought I'd ask exactly what you meant by it; I've run into this debate a few times now, and would gladly have it resolved. Please see my talk page; specifically, is the guideline intended to be applied to links in which the apostrophe is part of the article title, or are apostrophes always supposed to be included in the linked text (even for simple possessive forms)? The question arose because I had formatted text as [[John Philip Sousa]]'s, and the other party maintains that the MoS requires [[John Philip Sousa|John Philip Sousa's]]. If my interpretation is correct, I have ideas on how the guideline text could be revised for clarification. MisfitToys 22:40, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
The reason I chose the example and wording was in order to make clear how it worked, and advise that taking the apostrophe inside makes it more readable, without issuing an instruction. This is because you otherwise get a colour change in the middle of the word. IMHO it is a bug in MediaWiki not to treat hyphens and apostrophes in the same way as letters here. Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 22:49 17 September2007 (GMT).
That strikes me as an odd position; not only does it waste text space by forcing you to repeat the title, but IMO the link actually appears gaudier with the apostrophe inside it. Anyway, if it's merely your opinion that it's a bug (it might be intentional), then I think the MoS should be worded to indicate the style used is a matter of preference. MisfitToys 22:53, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist. If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list. Ralbot 03:37, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Re: Cleanup templates
Resolved
Thanks for the heads up, I wasn't entirely sure. ^demon[omg plz]15:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Your edit to Big Brother 4 (US)
I changed back one of your edits, specifically the one that said "Correct caps in section header". The reason I did this is because it actually is "Power of Veto" with the "P" and "V" capitalized. That is the way it is supposed to be and that is the way it is on every other Big Brother page. Just thought I would let you know so that you don't change it back. - Rjd0060 20:03, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, thanks for letting me know. I did dispute with myself over that, but I lost. On a more substantive point, the article should really be at Big Brother 4 (U.S.) unless the "(US) is part of the official title of the show - do you know whether it is? RichFarmbrough, 20:04 18 September2007 (GMT).
It is not part of the official title, however it is like that because Big Brother exists in so many other countries. For example, there is also a Big Brother (UK). - Rjd0060 20:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I am the artist this page describes...I'm not really sure who posted it, but I wish to assure you that the information (I edited a couple of things) is accurate. The sites listed as sources are national sites that have posted various information about me, and some of the companies I endorsee.
Hi Jerry, I have changed the template to "inline" which means that the refernces given should be recast as footnotes. Incidentally my robot did not add the request for references, simply dates it back in Novemeber and changed it to refimprove recenty. I will probably be able to look at putting inline footnotes in soon. Glad to see you support Peavey, they are a great company. RichFarmbrough, 09:08 20 September2007 (GMT).
Lists
Resolved
Hey, I meant to ask, should I be letting you know, when new Reflist's are up (monthly, usually, somewhere around the 9th-11th), or, does SmackBot check periodically? :) SQL(Query Me!) 09:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
NP, thanks! :) SQL(Query Me!) 09:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Cool, the next batch up, will ignore the Portal: Space :) SQL(Query Me!) 09:44, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
ISBN-Check
Resolved
Hi,
I saw that you participated in the discussion of banning ISBN-check. I'd like to to make you attentive on a new tool: on the wikimedia-toolserver there is now IsbnCheckAndFormat. This tool checks ISBNs for correctness, formats ISBNs with dashes in the right positions and converts ISBNs from ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 and vice versa. The tool doesn't use partner-links, but can be configured to use any OPAC you like. Here are examples of usage:
--Kkrouni/こかるに/Ккроуни/ΚκρΩυνι has wished you well! Joy promotes WikiLove and hopefully this little bit has helped make your day better. Spread the WikiJoy by sharing the joy someone else, Try to brighten the day of as many people as you can! Keep up the great editing! Smile at others by adding {{subst:Joy message}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
Thanks for having 164,852 edits, and cleaning up vandalism, have this too,
--Kkrouni/こかるに/Ккроуни/ΚκρΩυνι has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy editing! Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
I just noticed a rather odd edit by SmackBot which, in addition to changing {{sources}} to {{unreferenced}} and introducing a {{main}}, also deleted a load of text. Very bad behaviour, but I've not stopped the bot because it happened quite a while ago. Hairy Dude 14:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Seems it found the text "main article:" followed by a link and assumed it was at the start of the paragraph. The link was erroneous anyway, so I've removed it. I don't think the bot will make that mistake again on this particular page, but could still do it elsewhere. Hairy Dude 14:21, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
I haven't seen a recent one, but I've recently stumbled on a run of older bad smackbot edits, from a few days before and after September 1, where it was taking category sort keys and creating a new and malformed DEFAULTSORT statement. An example is this edit, which produced this DEFAULTSORT: {{DEFAULTSORT: |Rogers, Daniel}} . The " |" characters need to be removed, the pipe breaks the desired sorting.
However, it's clearly not a simple consistent common bug; if I randomly sample Smackbot user contributions from that era, I always find it working correctly when it adds a DEFAULTSORT.
I tried looking in talk archives to see if this had been brought up with you and didn't find it; I mention it in case it's still a lurking bug of some kind. So far, I've found dozens of bios in the sub-categories of Category:Delaware politicians that got hit with this, but I've no idea of the overall scope or any sense of what might be triggering it. You can find other examples of the problem by looking at my contributions; recent ones with edit history of fix defaultsort - no bar are 99% on articles that Smackbot mangled. If you have any questions, feel free to ping me. Studerby 22:14, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Sutderby. Looks at first sight like they are articles where there was a space before the | - I shoul be able to fix this when I get home later today or tomorrow. RichFarmbrough, 09:10 20 September2007 (GMT).
Yeah, that definitely looks like it; I checked half-a-dozen and they all had that leading space. A particular editor, "Stilltim", did that routinely. He seems to have only edited Delaware bios and XX United States Congress XX articles since May, so that explains the distribution. In my experience, that particular extra space is pretty rare... Studerby 17:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
(almost) All occurrences from August have been fixed, including those that might give rise to the problem. I'm d/ling the sept dump, and will re-run against that. RichFarmbrough, 14:07 21 September2007 (GMT).
Your AWB bug report
Resolved
Thank you for your bug report. Could you give a specific example of an article where the problem occurs? I couldn't reproduce it in my sandbox. Thanks in advance. Jogers (talk) 19:51, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Do you use default settings? [137]Jogers (talk) 13:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Pretty much everything turned on. If you still can't replicate will document settings further. RichFarmbrough, 13:50 21 September2007 (GMT).
So you have the option to ignore templates checked too? :-) Jogers (talk) 14:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, I marked it as "not a bug" for now. Please let me know if it wasn't it. Jogers (talk) 11:04, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Now I can see it. Thanks a lot! Jogers (talk) 11:37, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
You are right. The closing ref tag is seen as a part of the URL together with the {{check}} template. Jogers (talk) 11:54, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
I've fixed the bug in rev 1715. Thank you for your involvement. Jogers (talk) 12:52, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
WP:SNOW
Resolved
You should probably read WP:SNOW more carefully, it states that if there are policy-based objections, i.e. it's not a unanimous decision, then WP:SNOW-based decisions aren't a good idea. --W.marsh 20:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. I can't see where though, nor how a policy-based objection is synonymous with a non-unanimous decision. RichFarmbrough, 20:47 20 September2007 (GMT).
"If an issue is run through some process and the resulting decision is unanimous, then it might have been a candidate for the snowball clause." it was run through the process, but it was not a unanimous decision, so the page says it was probably not a good candidate. --W.marsh 21:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Actually that doesn't follow (if it's got four legs and is called Tiddles it might be a cat, it's got four legs and is not called tiddles it is probably not a cat?), but never mind. RichFarmbrough, 12:25 21 September2007 (GMT).
Linking isolated years: such a fun topic
Hey Rich. I saw your comment in this thread that you don't see as much date fragment linking any more. I would love to stamp out linking of isolated years. Since two pages in my own watchlist just had all their years linked (perhaps by AWB users) if possible I'd like a thread to point to where this policy issue has been discussed. Do you have a favorite one to point to? Thanks, EdJohnston 11:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi Ed, this has been a bugbear for a long time. There is one user, who is highly placed in the community who has fought against de-linking years, blocking and using admin functions to revert, and stopping consensus at MOSNUM. We have lost good editors over this, which is why I am reluctant to press the point. Nonetheless I have de-linked many thousands of bare years, with maybe a couple of queries. The MoS has actually come on now saying
Wikipedia has articles on days of the year, years, decades, centuries and millennia. Link to one of these pages only if it is likely to deepen readers' understanding of a topic. Piped links to pages that are more focused on a topic are possible ([[1997
in South African sport|1997]]), but cannot be used in full dates, where they break the date-linking function.
I would prefer it not to provide any support of Easter egg links (WikiPRoject albums deprecates these preferring the style "1999 (see 1999 in music).
The discussions run to many pages. If you wish to de-link more efficiently, there is some good monobook code around, mine is passable, but not to good with links adjoining other links. RichFarmbrough, 11:40 21 September2007 (GMT).
Proposal for a cooperative effort among several bot designers/code writers
Rich, would you kindly look at Betacommandbot and consider helping to assemble a small group of bot designers that can interact on the project of organizing the tagging of images. Among the things that will be needed is a running tally of image and media file template usage. In kind response to my request, arising out of ongoing discussions at WT:NFC Betacommand has recently put together a static tally here. The partially complete tally includes Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags/All#Non-free_content and Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags/Public_domain. This will ideally need to be converted to a running tally of usages of all templates in Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags/All#Non-free_content and perhaps even the entire list of tags in Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags/All. Can you consider this? Do you know other competent bot designers who might be interested? This is, IMO, too important to leave to one user, because it has to do with complying with the Wikimedia Board Licensing Policy Resolution issued in March 2007. WP needs to get this more-or-less in order by March 2008. Thanks, Rich. I'll also leave a similar note on Misza13's page. ... Kenosis 14:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. IMO, tt should capable of being updated often enough to develop trend representations, for example, derived from a spreadsheet. Maybe once a week?, bi-weekly? Perhaps even monthly would be adequate. ... Kenosis 14:18, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your note,your talk page is interesting, É verdade I have no particular desire to learn Portuguese, over other languages. RichFarmbrough, 09:14 22 September2007 (GMT).
From user page
reply
Actually you didn't need to put a note in the edit summary because you made a new section. If you had had something to say about Cabo Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe, THEN you would have needed to drop that note in the edit summery. Just so you know for next time.
Hey -- There's a request on my talkpage, for a bot, that I think you might be better suited for than I... (I've got a system down, for reading and regexing the wiki to make lists, but, I'm not at a point with my framework, where reliable posting to the wiki is a good idea....) Anyhow, could I talk you into taking a look at it, please? :) SQL(Query Me!) 06:19, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
As of month year
Resolved
I see you are piping as of month links to a page without month. Such a pipe was once recommended at Wikipedia:As of but the recommendation was removed in December 2006 [138] after there was no objection at Wikipedia talk:As of#Deprecated "As of" pages (?). I don't know whether there was a good reason for having the recommendation but I expect to continue making unpiped month links as long as Wikipedia:As of doesn't recommend against it. PrimeHunter 15:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your work on Template:WikiProject Somerset as a replacement for Template:Somerset. Would the new one cope with importance rating? also can we use "na" (for categories etc) & list as class ratings? If we do move or replace the existing one please tell me that we are not going to loose the 800 or so ratings we have done so far? Also if it does take importance ratings - how do we get a bot to update the numbers on the project page? Thanks again — Rodtalk 07:56, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Wow. I really didn't realize there were some templates that weren't supposed to have the subst on them. Interesting. Thanks Again. - Rjd0060 23:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Why was this deleted? Doesn't make sense, they are a rap group just like gunit or any other artist you have on wikipedia! Although not on the charts yet, they are an upcoming group on the rap scene. Why is it that we can't put informationa bout them so that others can see?
Gunit sold 4 million copies of Beg for Mercy - not quite the same as "we made two mixtapes", I'm afraid. RichFarmbrough, 21:50 23 September2007 (GMT).
Because there are millions of bands who have not made the charts yet. We delete many such bands every day, this one has been deleted several times, and will be again unless it becomes notable. Sorry about that. RichFarmbrough, 21:57 23 September2007 (GMT).
Two mixtapes, they don't need to be 20000 million hit group, its a new group on the scene.People are allowed to find out information about them! All that work put into editing the wiki page gone because you felt like your special. Music is music whether underground or commercial!
It's not because I think I'm special, it's because the group is non-notable. Put the content on Myspace, or wikicities or somewhere. People can still google it. It was deleted when User_talk:Tamilan107 created it, by Mailer daibalo and has been deleted once today by Android79. Hundreds of articles get deleted every day, don't take it personally. RichFarmbrough, 22:04 23 September2007 (GMT).
HAve you even read these articles? Papoose has featured on charting albums, Kam has worked with Ice Cube, Snoop, etc... NTP counts Queen Latifah and Busta as members... RichFarmbrough, 22:13 23 September2007 (GMT).
Thanks for the heads up. I will update the template once the old categories have been emptied and the new ones populated. Cheers, Black Falcon(Talk) 21:14, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I've updated the numbers. Thanks again for letting me know and for changing to the new categories. Do you know if the other maintenance categories that start with "Wikipedia articles ..." will be renamed to "Articles ..." as well? Black Falcon(Talk) 16:40, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I was aware of the suggestion to switch from maintenance categories to 'whatlinkshere' and will have a look at the CfD discussion. Cheers, Black Falcon(Talk) 17:00, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
Changed {{nofootnotes}} to {{unreferenced}}--they're slightly different, thought you should know. If there's a reason for this let me know. Katr67 01:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Katr67, a bug. Now have definitive lists for unreferenced, refimprove and fact.... RichFarmbrough, 09:01 24 September2007 (GMT).
Imagawa Yoshimoto
In addition to expected changes, the bot seems to have moved link to out of pre-exiting alphabetical order? Isn't this a curious-seeming POV for mere bot action? --Ooperhoofd 14:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
(diff) (hist) . . b Imagawa Yoshimoto; 10:03 . . (-23) . . SmackBot (Talk | contribs) (Date/fix the maintenance tags or gen fixes)
- - - - -
+
You must forgive my ignorance in this matter, but I believe it is conforming to the local pronunciation of the language name, transliterated to the western alphabet. See Wikipedia:Language order poll foe some discussions. It is an WP:AWB feature, so if it is wrong, it will be widespread. RichFarmbrough, 14:11 24 September2007 (GMT).
This is grand. Sometimes it's so much better to be wrong, because sometimes it's the only way to learn. I never noticed this precise detail before, but I will pay closer attention in future. Thanks for the unexpected smile on my face just now. You're right. I'm wrong. ---Ooperhoofd 15:52, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
SmackBots NewsFire edit
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See the NewsFire diff. SmackBot has changed an "nocite" to an "unreferenced". I decided that the article did have a reference (being rather generous) and I just wanted the one statement to be marked as uncited. Bpringlemeir 23:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot shouldn't be deleting double blank lines after templates anymore
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With the new article message boxes there is now a legitimate reason to have two blank lines after an {{ambox}} template, to keep its border rules from colliding with an infobox's. For example, see the before and after of the first change in this edit -- clearly it looks better when the lines don't collide. Can you keep SmackBot from deleting double blank lines after templates, please? ←BenB4 02:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the note. The page at Wikipedia:Article message boxes only uses double lines to prevent stacking, nonetheless your example is sound. I have raised it at AMB since there will be a significant number of cases where thsi needs to be considered, an the documentation may need to reflect. RichFarmbrough, 08:05 25 September2007 (GMT).
I removed smackbot's Jargon tag. The article looks good to me. Words that might be considered technical jargon are links to information in other articles. Might need to tune smackbot's algoryths or selection/threshold criteria a bit if possible. Lazyquasar 03:47, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Re "Norman L. Bowen" article, it appears to be vandalized with joke/spamm sort of stuff Sept 24 16:41. I've tried to revert it to SmackBot (your?) previous edit of 03:47, 19 August 2007, but it appears I have failed to correct the problem.
Thanks for coding this bot; I find it to be one of the most useful bots on WP. Recently, it made edits to run-time analysis, changing both {{{onesource}}} and {{{not verified}}} to {{{refimprove}}}. I'd suggest adding code to remove duplicate template headers. Groupthink 04:38, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
And if you're doing that, you might consider ordering them; I tend to like the look of most severe to least severe (red->orange->yellow). But that may be overkill... Whatever... Studerby 21:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Both are hard because it's all done with regular expressions. I would also have to have a regex to decide which of the two templates to keep by comparing dates. RichFarmbrough, 21:24 25 September2007 (GMT).
SmackBot
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Hello, just wanted to say that I have edited the Fredrik August Lidstromer-page, and I have added a lot of notes and thus erased all tendences of plausible COI. I would therefor be greatful if the "unsourced"- and "COI"-tags could be taken away. I have said so to user:JzG but he is now "retired" it claims on his talk-page. Could you assist me her? Thanks.Nike George 11:51, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
No reason you can't remove these tags, if you really believe they no longer apply and no-one is contesting that. RichFarmbrough, 12:17 25 September2007 (GMT).
Moresources -> Refimprove
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Why is SmackBot changing transclusions of {{morereferences}} to {{Refimprove}}. This appears to be a pointless edit and completely unnecessary. --Farix (Talk) 13:58, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi Farix, the reason is that the redirects to cleanup templates are in such a mess, and need sorting out. There are for example about 69 redirects to the three templates {{refimprove}}, {{unreferenced}} and {{fact}}, and {{nosources}} was completely different in nature than {{no source}} for example. I have deleted and changed a few unused redirects, but I hope we an reduce the number to a manageable level, by discussion on the talk pages of the main templates over the next few days. RichFarmbrough, 14:07 25 September2007 (GMT).
To me {{morereferences}} is simply more intuitive and much easier to remember then {{refimprove}}. And such redirects should never be removed or orphaned. --Farix (Talk) 14:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't use them enough to have an opinion. But it does worry me that {{Verfiy}} was deleted without going through WP:RfD first. --Farix (Talk) 14:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
References sections
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Hi, regarding the neat SmackBot capability to add references sections, could you possibly exclude pages like Portal:Minnesota? Thanks if you have a minute to look. Again thanks for the feature. -Susanlesch 14:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I am writing in regards to information page I created here on Wikipedia about Robert M. Hensel. It seems everytime I try to put information pertaining to Robert M. Hensel it ends up being deleted by an editor. Mr. Hensel is a highly published poet & 2x world record holder and holds many accomplishments. Could you please support me by helping to prvent Robert M. Hensel from being deleted.
Hi Rich - just an idle query... I keep running across your test and template subpages while clearing stub categories - I realise you probably have a good reason for the pages, but it'd be helpful if they weren't in them all. What are you using them for, and are the pages likely to stay multiply stubbed? Grutness...wha? 23:57, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Exploring the possibilities.... and complexities of stub tags. They can be cleared down, np. RichFarmbrough, 11:54 26 September2007 (GMT).
Asbox
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Hi Rich - to be honest, I don't like it much at all! Similar ideas have been suggested frequentl;y in the past, but cause far more headaches for stub sorting than they are worth. I can understand the reason for suggesting an automated sorted stub variety like this, but it makes it far too easy for parallel, identical stub types to be set up, and reduces the ability to keep track of stub numbers (now done to a large extent via such things as whatlinkshere. It also, believe it or not, makes it too easy to create new stub types - there are reasons for setting hurdles in the way of new stub creation, not least of which the fact that for stubs to be really useful for editors, it's important to split out types of fairly reasonable sizes (WP:WSS tries to keep all stub categories at a size of between 60 and 800 stubs for that reason). Too many tiny categories, which might well be the result of an automated template like this, lead to far more work for editors hunting for articles to expand. The archives of Wikipedia talk:Stub and Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Stub sorting have quite a number of instances where something similar has been suggested. Hand sorting may be more of a chiore, but there are reasons for it. Grutness...wha? 00:40, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
OK, sorry - I completely misinterpreted what was going on. A lot of the technical side of computing leaves me completely baffled, so once it's into this sort of programming I'm completely confused :) If it's for what you say, then it sounds like a good idea to me but (as i said), the technical side isn't something I'm strong on... I suggest you talk to people at Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Stub sorting about it, explaining what it's for. Hopefully it'll get a good reception - changing over large numbers of templates at one time has always been a problem, and if it stops me having to scouur "Newpages/templates" every day, it'll definitely be worthwhile! :) Grutness...wha? 00:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist. If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list. R Delivery Bot 02:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Portal:Earth sciences
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may i know why did you added references to the featured list there on the portal page. i mean it is not required there. what you could have done is that added the references in the list (i.e. main article). Sushant gupta 14:27, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I didn't add references, merely code to display those already there as superscripts. Of course you can remove the references and the what I added if you like. But leaving one of the two would be a mistake. RichFarmbrough, 14:58 27 September2007 (GMT).
New naming convention
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You requested I let you know of any major changes. Please see [139]. --Kbdank71 14:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
You have left a note on "hormonal imprinting" about that the key word needs more references.
I hope that you can consider, that the two references given are the first reference and a basic overview on the phenomenon from the person who described it. As more than 300 references are available about the the key word, I hope you understand the number of cited works.
Thank you for your help and understanding. Kohlasz 20:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 20:21 27 September2007 (GMT).
"Pilot asbox template."
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Given the early state of this proposal, that it's explicitly contrary to an existing guideline, and that there's an outstanding objection, I think a "pilot" is distinctly premature. Doing it on hundreds of stub templates is just ridiculous. Please stop, and ideally, revert. Alai 10:05, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
No problem I'm about done (except perhaps for four more in the East African politicians category). RichFarmbrough, 12:10 28 September2007 (GMT).
Re:Sig
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Oh, thanks! I'm in the school library and caught a moment. Forgot to close the bold tag. BTW, how'd you notice. YamakiriTC 09-28-2007•16:22:25 16:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the date syntax tip, although I'm dumbfounded as to why you left it for me. I've been a little inactive this month and do not recall tagging anything for cleanup lately. Slysplace | talk 21:23, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
It is a little old... [140]. Acutally I would be interested in knowing where you got this syntax from, as I'm seeing a lot of it, and many of them have to be fixed by hand. Rgds, RichFarmbrough, 21:27 26 September2007 (GMT).
Not entirely sure, I must have clicked on 'Insert Tag' 'Cleanup' in AWB Which the latest version enters as {{cleanup|date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}} although I use AWB 'TO CLEANUP' so how or why I would have selected to tag an article for cleanup is beyond even me. Or in a moment of ignorance I just pasted in {{cleanup|{{subst:August}} {{subst:2007}}}} as I have a habit (probably bad) of saving snippets of code to a text file for easy insertion into articles. If your seeing a lot of this by me I do apologize. I have reset AWB to the original default preferences just to be on the safe side. Slysplace | talk 19:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
re:cydebot
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How many bots have reached 1,000,000 edits? The Placebo Effect 19:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
One. Although SmackBot combined with me would also pass that mark - and I don't know about other projects, or cross project totals. RichFarmbrough, 08:22 29 September2007 (GMT).
I generally have always put the stub templates first followed by the categories then followed by the langange links.
Is there a preferred method?
I like the work your bot is doing adding dates to the maintenance tags. How often does this bot run? I had manually edited several uncat tags which were less that 48 hours old which was probably a waste of my time as your bot works much faster.Dbiel(Talk) 17:56, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. The preferred order is:
Other cats
2 blank lines if possible (I think this is still the case)
Stubs
1 blank line
Interwikis
The reason for putting stubs after other cats, is that the stub categories are less important, so should be at the end of the list.
SmackBot's Date maintenance tags task runs most days when I am at home. If I am way for a few days it ususally catches up in one or two days. There are always some to be done manually, because of transclusions, subst:ing, new templates/redirects and strange syntax. RichFarmbrough, 18:02 29 September2007 (GMT).
Thanks for the reply. Keep up the good work Dbiel(Talk) 18:35, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Infant baptism
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In Infant baptism your bot has merely capitalized the word "fact" where the date was already given. "fact" works just as well as "Fact". An alteration merely from "f" to "F" wastes the time of anyone checking what change has been made. (At least, that is my opinion.) Lima 03:37, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes you are quite right. It should have dated a tag on the page. Note that you can suppress both bot edits and minor edits from both recent changes and watchlist. RichFarmbrough, 10:43 30 September2007 (GMT).
References section on portals
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Please see the history for Portal:Basketball/Selected article/September, 2007. In general, I don't think sticking a reference section in a portal is a good idea. Chances are that if there is a ref tag but no references section, then either (a) it should be removed, (b) it should be converted to a straight link, or (c) the page where the feature is transcluded has the references section. --B 21:53, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
I go with (a) (since a ref is not necessarily a link) - in fact I would put it more strongly, it is a major gaffe to have an un-reachable footnote - but, see above sections, we're not including portals any more. RichFarmbrough, 06:41 1 October2007 (GMT).
In Infant baptism your bot has merely capitalized the word "fact" where the date was already given. "fact" works just as well as "Fact". An alteration merely from "f" to "F" wastes the time of anyone checking what change has been made. (At least, that is my opinion.) Lima 03:37, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes you are quite right. It should have dated a tag on the page. Note that you can suppress both bot edits and minor edits from both recent changes and watchlist. RichFarmbrough, 10:43 30 September2007 (GMT).
I see that your bot is still making the same minimal and to my mind absolutely unnecessary change in other articles too. While I appreciate your reply on my Talk page, I do not think your suggestion of turning off Watchlist visualization of bot changes is helpful: as far as I know, that would mean that I would fail to see an indication of any change made to the article before the bot change, if this happens to be the latest change.
There is absolutely no need to reply to this. I write only to draw your attention to what seems to me (perhaps not to others) a drawback in the present functioning of your bot (I never saw it do this before), not to engage in a discussion about it. Lima 10:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
NP. For anyone else reading this: it should be a rare event (<0.1%), in general, but having just taken on a new category, there may have been a few more than normal recently. RichFarmbrough, 10:37 1 October2007 (GMT).
Twould be nice if your summaries used the template NAME (i.e. {fact}) and included some focus to the request.
If this wasn't you in your alter-ego running AWB, then your bot seems to be keying in on the word 'experiment' in the text. Please confirm or deny!
Someone has cleared the second, and the first fact tag should be easy enough to run down, but the third cite request seems to be both contrary to common sense, and could be a difficult time sink (as it involves 4-5 years experience with the series, upto hundreds of thousands of posts on 1632 Tech Manual, and so forth) and is therefore asking for an awful lot of effort to confirm the self-evident concept that making an entire town an protagonist in time travel was an experiment. I know he's written about it somewhere, but recollection of where and when is missing.
In short, what exactly are you asking be confirmed in the third fact tag?
Hope you had a good summer! // FrankB 12:33, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Sorry -- cancel my last... you were just fixing up misapplied template 'dates' of this edit -- I shoulda backed up one more edit! Have a good week! // FrankB 12:37, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
The article about Gigi Ugulava had one definitely wrong information about his work experience - he was not an executive director of Transparency International Georgia in 1999-2000 and could not have been because TI Georgia was only established in May 2000.
I have just delited this line from his biography.
Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mari geo (talk • contribs) 13:57, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes it was me who did a lot of edits to the article "bans on ritual slaughter".
I practically rewrote the article, and it was reverted by Ron Nagle.
I am happy that at least my revisions are somewhere in the system.
The article is controversial in itself, and peppered with errors, some of them due to non-Jews tackling a Jewish subject (Jewish slaughter) and not having basic fundamental concepts.
Jewish custom and Jewish law are specific categories and are not interchangeable. To learn about this, you need a lesson in Jewish legal terms.
This is something like someone attempting calculus without basic arithmetic.
These errors signal the article as being written by non-Jews, as the use of "counter-revolutionary" and "revisionist" would indicate a communist using communist terminology.
Ron Nagle reverted the article, and suggested using it for reference bit by bit.
My patience is exhausted - and I cannot explain every change from the ground up. e.g. Why "Jewish Law" and not "Jewish custom"? To understand this, you need to know the structure of how current Jewish praxis (halakhah) is derived. There are four sources: 1) Law from the written Torah 2)Oral law by tradition from Moses codified in the Talmud 3) Custom (minhag) derived from customs and traditions. Occasionally a custom - like covering the head at all times becomes Law (din). Then there is Law derived from rabbinic decisions (din sheberaitha) like washing the hands.
Jewish kosher slaughter is not based on custom (minhag) but on Law (din) from the Written Law. The details are in the Oral Law passed down by word of mouth and finally, when it was feared it might be lost, codified and written down in the Torah, in Tractate Chulin.
The word *custom in the article should be changed to law.
Of course any rabbi would agree, but what the ... do the editors responsible in Wikipedia know about this, and how do I convince them that what I am saying is true when I am labelled as a well-known vandal?
It is physically impossible to explain, point for point to a non-Jew each and every item, and the structure it rests on. It would be like those bibles for understanding James Joyce's Ullyses. - a farthing is a quarter of a penny and there are twenty shillings consisting of twelve pence in one pound stirling or 240 pennies. etc etc.
In any case, the debate is covered in the literature outside Wikipedia, so let the Animal Activists set up their wooly and evasive arguments on Wikipedia and let the article remain a mess, as that signals the true nature of the input.
Any intelligent person can follow links and references and google and get the information for themselves elsewhere.
Meanwhile the Wiki article remains a hijacked site, where people who have not gone to college give source references that only go to News programs (BBC) and try to prove that bans on religious slaugher have been introduced in countries where they have not —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.73.17.190 (talk) 14:34, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
FYI: books-by-isbn
At last, my request to have http://www.books-by-isbn.com/ removed from the spam blacklist succeeded. Enjoy. --KSmrqT 20:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Resolved
Weird edit by your bot
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It removed a prod tag I had added to this article and the end of a sentence.diff.P4k 22:42, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
They need to press save as well. And they need to be a registered user. Anyway, a atop is not generally a big deal. Several in one run can get irritating (if they're not justified). RichFarmbrough, 15:58 3 October2007 (GMT).
Ggobi article
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I received your message on the Ggobi article. I am currently gathering more sources. These new sources will be posted within the next couple weeks. Please do not delete the article. This is a work in progress and any feedback would be appreciated.Lynn08 16:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Rich, I was going to write Wired about why the anonymous edit tool was not sufficient to root out corporate tampering with Wikipedia and went to look at the article above, which had again been truncated. I reverted it. But, additionally on the discussion page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kingbotk had added a libel warning. It is now categorized as having unsourced statements. could you check that out and let me know what to source or remove the category? Actually, I looked and the part I wrote on legal difficulties was sourced, which is the only part that kingbotk should be worried about. The other part should be documented by the previous editors. Thanks.
The anonymous user that tamper this time was:
22:58, July 19, 2007 203.244.218.22
the subsequent truncation
11:02, August 10, 2007 Dardorosso
was before the Kingbotk warning to the discussion page. Hope you had a nice summer. Cheers. --Beth Wellington 02:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Looking back the only noncorporate-speak entry besides the initial stub and my revision was by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JLaTondre. Maybe you could ask him for sources. I don't know where he got his stuff and Mr. Stern is on the periphery of my universe--I just wanted to make the section on his legal woes authoritative. P.S. what about the libel warning on the discussion page>--Beth Wellington 19:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot: USA to U.S.
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I noticed SmackBot was changing USA to U.S. and claiming "per MoS", but I checked the MoS and it seems both are suggested. Why is the bot switching from one recommended format to another? --MattWright (talk) 22:01, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't think SmackBot did that, and if it did, you didn't cite the diff where it happened, only the diff where you fixed an error and SmackBot had been the last editor. --MattWright (talk) 05:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
You're right, obviously, a too-late-at-night brain glitch on my side; this edit was done by an IP [141]. My bad, sorry. -- John Smythe 16:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
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I made a relevant addition under "comparison to other works" that was subsequently deleted by smackbot (I believe; this is the first time I've encountered it, so if I'm mistaken, I apologize). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.167.237.20 (talk) 09:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Awarded to you for your great skill in fine tuning the looks of articles with lists (viz.: The Protocols of Zion). --Ludvikus 22:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Need your immediate help. Please read the first line(s) of the article. It's got some garbage caused by "REDIRECT". Can you fix the problem and remove the cleanup tag? Thanks. --Ludvikus 14:10, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Now it disappeared! What happened? --Ludvikus 15:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
You deserve an award of recognition for your fine copyediting work. Yours truly, --Ludvikus 22:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Awarded to you for your great skill in fine tuning the looks of articles with lists (viz.: The Protocols of Zion). --Ludvikus 22:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I have reverted your move for Big Brother (US), please before moving provide a reasoning why the page should be moved to Big Brother (U.S.) as this decision affects other Big Brother articles. Thanks ♪♫Alucard 16♫♪ 00:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
There were some terrible, unsourced comments on Jerome Hauer page. I have gutted non-verifiable --except by dubiuosly worthy blogs-- from the Hauer article. Dogru144 21:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
US
I'm unsure of the history of whatever MOS used to say about how to format this item, but since I started hanging around MOS, it hasn't prescribed one set of usages and proscribed others. There are a few issues:
Why is one country privileged over others by having one particular formatting practice enforced (or even mentioned) in MOS? There's no equivalent section saying "No dots in UK". There's no dictum that you must write "People's Republic of China" rather than "China", or to refer to Taiwan or Tibet by the names the Chinese regime would prefer.
In most varieties of English outside North America, the dots are not used except in upper-case text, where the abbreviation would be the same as the personal pronoun "us". The rule about spelling out "the United States" when in the same sentence as the names of other countries is a nuance that Chicago, is it, recommends, but this is not practised consistently by Americans and is an unknown rule outside North America. Many Wikipedians might resent being told, or even urged, to "toe the line" with respect to an American practice that goes against what they are used to in real-life, and that has no logic to it. Many people are sensitive to American behaviour on the world stage, particularly over the past seven years, so this is not a good time to be enforcing the whims of a particular American practice against the practices of other English-speakers.
On a purely linguistic level, you dot es dot goes against what is now an almost universal practice of losing the dots in abbreviations, in all varieties of English. To many people, it looks cumbersome against that practice, whereas a few decades ago, people were so used to dotted abbreviations that it wasn't an issue.
Thus, I suggest that MOS remain silent on the issue, so that WPians may dot or not, and abbreviate or spell out regardless of the presence of the names of other countries in the sentence, provided consistency is maintained within each article. Tony(talk) 11:08, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Richard, I'm sorry to have been appearing to be heavy-handed over this dotting thing. In retrospect, I wish I'd first attempted to persuade you towards my view that loosening up a little about the dotting guidelines is realistic and linguistically desirable. I still want to persuade you. So are you totally pissed with me? If so, I'm sorry, and hope to make amends by engaging with your opinion. Tony(talk) 03:15, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
It's partly a "variety of English" issue, so I don't know how we can escape having both options. Many Americans will object to being told not to dot it (despite whatever diadvantages others might assert about their choice), and many other English-speakers will object to being told to dot it, when their variety of English uses the undotted version. As much as I'd much prefer to enforce the undotted, I accept that this is not acceptable to too many WPians. As long as each supplementary manual is consistent in its use of "US" or "U.S.", I don't see a problem. Same for articles. No one wants a huge back-compatibility problem.
The undotted versions of "am" and "pm" are widespread, especially outside the US. Again, it's partly a variety of English issue. Allowing the undotted option was agreed to by consensus some months ago; but there was no agreement to allow caps, whether dotted or undotted, and no agreement to allow them to be unspaced (12:30pm).
MOS is always going to experience push-and-pull WRT options. Sometimes it comes down on one side; sometimes it allows more than one option (consistently within an article). The lack of cohesion might be slightly apparent when you consult groups of related articles that have chosen a different option. But people can live with that, can't they, just as they might live with "Economics" in AmEng, and "Economic history" in BrEng (I'm just guessing for the sake of the example). MOS is, I think, about to generate consensus to allow either italics or quotation marks for "words as words". I have no wish to patrol what are probably more than half of WP's articles in which the "wrong" option is currently used. Again, internal consistency is what matters more, because it affects the reading experience very directly. Tony(talk) 11:00, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Help me make a good article
Hello, my name is Isucheme and I am writing an article on the Churchill-Bernstein Equation for convection heat transfer. I would appreciate any feedback you could give to me. This article is in the rough draft stage.
Thanks. Have made the desired change, suppressing the rest. Will see if a bug needs to be filed for WP:AWB. RichFarmbrough, 11:04 9 October2007 (GMT).
Hooray for SmackBot
I just saw SmackBot doing an replacement of "[[Linear_classifier|linear classifiers]]" to "[[linear classifier]]s". I'd only seen him dating maintenance tags before, he's obviously a more complex piece of code than I had given him credit for. Good work! --tiny plastic Grey Knight⊖ 12:50, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I was glad to see SmackBot. I don't know much about Wikipedia or how to go about adding citations. Could you please add these citations to the article Neil Papiano. The other information in the article is correct, I just don't have a way to cite them at the moment.
Citation for Ida Cotton Children's Play Park - lazoo.org/pressroomarticle.
Citation for Ruth Giolman Scholarship - socwk.utah.edu/students/financialaidscholarships.asp. Citation for Winifred Dyer Sholarship - http://elp.ed.utah.edu/financial.htm.
Citation for Stanford Football & Baseball - Stanford University Athletics Department/Athletics Scholarships.
Hello
I'm really not familiar with Wikipedia and I wanted to ask you something.
On an article I wrote about the harpist Şirin Pancaroğlu, you said a reliable reference is needed. First of all I don't know how to add referances :), and secondly I took the biography from the harpist herself, isn't it reliable? This is the only English biography of her that exsists as her web site is under construction right now.
I also want to tell you something which is probably none of your concern but I feel I need to tell this to someone, someone working for wikipedia and is more familiar with such things.
My actual intention was to put her biography on the Turkish Wikipedia, as I was suprised to see it wasn't already there; because she is a very valuable person and the primary harpist in Turkey. So I put it there, again it was the only proper biography of her in Turkish that exists, writen by her, she sends it to everyone that needs it to be put up on a website so the same thing is on a few other websites such as her record label's.
I was really confused when i saw it had disappeared a few minutes later, I put it again, yet it kept disappearing. It took me a few more minutes to realise there was an admin who kept deleting it. I spent some time to figure out how to write them, and told them I have permission from the artist to put up her biography on here, there is no reason to delete it. The reply I got was very rude and arrogant and really annoyed me. I wrote them back saying this is not the way to speak to a lady and still they ignored it...
They were telling me the biography is copyrighted and I can't put it there eventhough I have the permission of the person who wrote it.
The thing is not copyrighted or anything, it really isn't. The only reason they were doing this is because they are given the power to do so, and probably find it amusing.
This experiance has totally discouraged me from contuributing to the Turkish Wikipedia and even using it.
I just wanted to ask someone who knows these things better than I; "am I wrong?"
Thank you for spending your time reading this,
Öykü
SmackBot merely dates templates: the one in question was added buy User:Denizzhere.
Copyright. Wikipedia:Copyrights explains this in more detail than I can. You will see that explicit permission is needed to upload copyright works - all works not in the public domain.
References. If there is a reliable third party source (such as newspaper reviews of performances, orchestra webs sites, interviews) then these are preferable to the artist's own text, which can be a little biased. However if that is all there is cite that. See WP:CITE for more detail.
Reference(s) and External link(s): Sorry, Rich, but I don't see the necessity of pluralizing headings that have only one entry (see Cape Grysbok)—GRM 20:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
This is correct per the external links guidelines. I did block temporarily as I initially believed it was incorrect, but have now unblocked. TigerShark 22:55, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Regex assistance needed
Hi Rich,
I recognized your name from a list of users who are regular expression programmers and was hoping that you can help me. What I want to do is to use the find and replace function in AWB to remove commas (or spaces) in numbers within parameters of an infobox template. For example, if the parameter |area= has a value entered of 102,003. I want to have AWB replace it with 102003. That way, calculations can be done on that raw formated number. Can you assist in creating a regular expression to do this? Thanks, —MJCdetroit 14:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
(\d),(\d\d\d) replace with $1$2 for one comma, probably get multiples as well, if not just repeat. RichFarmbrough, 14:13 10 October2007 (GMT).
Based on what you gave me and what little I know about regex, I came up with something like this for the AWB:Find: (some_parameter_name[\s\=\s|\=\s|\s\=|\=])(\d),(\d\d\d\.\d) Replace with$1$2$3. There are multiple variations of the "\d groups" to include 5 digit numbers with or without the decimal place, so on and so forth. In the one page that I did test it with, it did seem to work well. Thanks, —MJCdetroit 20:37, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Unless there are "," after the decimal point you could probably simplify with something like
This has the advantage of not matching, say, "pitcharea=" when you want "area=" and maintains the spacing before the edit, people sometimes (and Smack Bot for all the Album pages...) line up the "=" signs. Using a list of parameter names helps, in that changes you make then apply to them all, rather than having to work through a list in AWB's tiny font. Watch out for accidentally having "||" "(|" or "|)", these will match the empty string.
Thanks. I didn't think to list of parameternames. I've been burning my eyes out trying to change each separate entry with that tiny print. I'll try that method out and let you know. —MJCdetroit 12:24, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Update: I moved the comma in between groups 5 and 6 and that seems to have done the trick. It looks like it is working perfectly. Check out my last few AWB contributions. —MJCdetroit 13:23, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I pressed the "rollback" button on this edit. Recall your comments concerning the expression x2 + y3 versus x² + y3. Obviously the second alternative is very bad. Michael Hardy 21:29, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I have already raised a feature request, and turned off unicodify on SB's maintenance tag runs. Apologies for this cropping up again, although it looks like there ended up only being squares in that article. RichFarmbrough, 13:21 11 October2007 (GMT).
SmackBot and DefaultSort
I just saw an edit where SmackBot moved the {{DEFAULTSORT}} magic word, but didn't remove any of the identical manual sorts. Here is the diff. This is opportunity for improvement. GRBerry 14:00, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help on how to use tags (and I figure it was your bot that did it so this may be your first exposure to the topic). I'm pretty new to editing, although I've been reading Wikipedia for years. Any suggestions on appropriate steps regarding this User:Sagbliss character? Other editors have started to coach him/her but there's no acknowledgement of the misbehaviour. If I were to guess, he or she is using that article for a personal essay on the legal issues. It may even be one of claimants in a related trial. It's becoming more and more OR, and the dude even lashes out at edits like minor punctuation. Bruno23 16:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Good trimming there. We'll see how it goes since it looks like some reverted Sagbliss' activities before you made your mods so the article was relatively clean by comparison. Bruno23 10:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
"Unreferenced" template change
Hi Rich, I'm not sure if you monitor template "unreferenced" or not, but there's discussion of changing it a bit, adding a "section" parameter and removing the description field. User:Jeepday said he thought you'd looked into doing some changes on the template, so I thought you might be interested in the topic. (Not necessarily to perform the changes; we're still discussing whether to make a change.)
As a brief summary, people seem to use the description field almost exclusively to add the word "section," and we want to add a section parameter for that explicitly, which will categorize the article differently. The category change would make {{unreferenced|section}} work the same way as {{unreferencedsection}}; kind of silly but that's how people use it!) I'll watch if you reply here, or you can add an opinion at Template_talk:Unreferenced#Section_parameter or Template_talk:Unreferenced#Section_parameter:_specific_proposal. Best regards, -Agyle 00:18, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Stubs to bottom
Why your bot moves stubs templates to bottom? [143] --Emijrp 10:24, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
This is part of WP:AWB general fixes. The reason is that (a) we want a place we can find the stub templates, and (b) after the categories means the stub cats are listed at the end of the category list.RichFarmbrough, 11:57 13 October2007 (GMT).
SmackBot ~ External link -> External links
Resolved
SmackBot is changing External link to External links on articles that only have 1 link, shouldn't that read just External link still? See Lake Strom Thurmond and Lamar County, Georgia. --Mjrmtg 13:16, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
My mistake, didn't know there was a guideline on "External links" always being plural, seems silly to always be plural. --Mjrmtg 17:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot and external links
This is probably minor but if there is only one link, why does SmackBot correct the title to external links? Simply south 22:05, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, didn't notice discussion above. Simply south 22:07, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Stub tag movement
Re this edit: I thought stub tags are supposed to go before the categories so the stub category will be listed first instead of last. Am I mistaken, or is the bot malfunctioning? --zenohockey 22:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
This is part of WP:AWB general fixes. The reason is that (a) we want a place we can find the stub templates, and (b) after the categories means the stub cats are listed at the end of the category list.RichFarmbrough, 11:57 13 October2007 (GMT).
Template:Orphan
Please remove 2 extra } from the template. -- Magioladitis 19:22, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi there. I am Daniel Clark's dad. I was looking at his page and noticed it was rife with errors, all of which seem to have been created by this smackbot. I'm reasonably tech savvy but totally out of it when it comes to dealing with Wikipedia edits. But the original pages were much closer to the truth. E.g., middle names, relocated to Boca Raton, not California. Also, addition of younger brother Aaron Brown makes it sound like Aaron was in Zack Files and Strange Days, when in fact it was middle brother Rob. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.229.208.251 (talk) 02:47, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi, which Daniel Clark? Almost certainly you are misreading history, SB doesn't do that sort of stuff. RichFarmbrough, 10:18 14 October2007 (GMT).
I saw this change [144]. Two queries: SmackBot changed "External link" to "External links" even though there is only one; and it moved a template for no obvious reason. Neither is serious, but it is not obvious these are improvements.--Rumping 11:31, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm just curious now. How did you become the wikipedian with the most edits? Simply south 22:19, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Well various projects, tagging all the U.S. county maps GFDL was about 3-4000 edits, manually fixing half the album articles was thousands, testing out and refining SmackBot's fixes for the Rambot generated article was also thousands. Mainly lots of copy-editing to bring stuff in line with the WP:MoS. There's quite a bit of anti-vandal work there too. RichFarmbrough, 07:59 15 October2007 (GMT).
WP:AWB moves the interwikis and categories (and stub templates) to the end of the article. It knows about some standard comments, which is why the categories comment ends up in the right place. I will drop a bug notification to get the other comment in this example dealt with. RichFarmbrough, 17:36 15 October2007 (GMT). 17:36, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if you're aware of this, but I did leave refernces to the allegedly "unreferenced" sections of Interstate 495 (New York). Perhaps not all of them, but I still left references. I had others, but somebody deleted them, and promised to make duplicates that never came. ----DanTD 20:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 22:55 15 October 2007 (GMT).
ETH
You rolled back the reference and toned down the statement in the ETH intro, yet no comment on the talk page (where I had discussed the reason for the change), and you did it (as best as I can tell) logged in as a bot. Please comment. --Psm 17:29, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Rabbi ingram, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Rabbi ingram is a redirect to a non-existent page (CSD R1).
To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Rabbi ingram, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself.CSDWarnBot 08:40, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
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I am a little concerned that a user who makes as many edits as you do is not summarising them accurately.[147][148]. The removal of leading and trailing spaces from section titles does not constitute a "copyedit": a copy edit changes the copy; excising spaces from markup makes no difference to the page rendering at all. It does, however, make the titles a little less clear to some other editors. (Although I, for one, consider clarity reduction to be a bad thing.) If you can give me a valid technical reason for these changes, I would be interested to know.
Summarising your changes as copyedits is also misleading, because it ignores the changes that actually were significant: the addition of a notability tag; and the removal of a Category needed category (since the one specified didn't actually exist) that would help draw attention to the article's need for improvement. These are important changes that should have been noted in the edit summary. By omitting them you have effectively started the deletion process and handicapped its chances of survival, and done so in a way that is less readily attributable. While I agree that the article does not properly assert its notability, questioning it should be done more openly. ObfuscatePenguin 14:14, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
External links/references
Hi, I saw you added this
------------------------------------------------------------
As per Wiki policy all external links should be in <ref> form.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes for a
discussion of different citation methods and how to generate
footnotes using the <ref>, </ref> and <reference /> tags
-------------------------------------------------------------
to Edith Shain. This is certainly not the case for external links, and I don't believe there is a policy on footnote style, see the section "Converting citation styles". RichFarmbrough, 08:23 16 October2007 (GMT).
Some external links are welcome (see "What should be linked", below), but it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a comprehensive list of external links related to each topic. No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justified. ... Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article.
Means that if a website has the same info as the wiki page then it shouldn't be included in the External Link. A Wikipedia article should NOT be a collection of links. -- Esemono 14:16, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I understand the guideline, but it says nothing about "<ref> form". RichFarmbrough, 20:22 17 October2007 (GMT).
Currently SmackBot is changing {{verify}} tags to {{Unreferenced}} tags. I believe that it should instead be changing them to dated {{refimprove}} tags, as this tag is more in line with the intent of the verify tag. Thank you. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 16:00, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you are perfectly correct. Thank you. RichFarmbrough, 20:37 17 October2007 (GMT).
Herman
Hello Rich,
I am a new user to Wikipedia and I was wondering if you have any feedback for my article on Herman Parish. I appreciate and suggestions, constructive criticism, attention to formatting, etc.
Greetings. Recently, on Tue 16 Oct, I constructed a disambiguation page for the various fish known as chubs. After having done so, I began to contemplate whether that page and the current Chub page might be better named. I posted a discussion on the Chub page but it's not yet received any comment. I noticed from the article's revision history that you had made one or more contributions to the page. Consequently, I thought I might profit from your advice at Talk:Chub#Page title if you have a moment or two to spare. Thanks. — Dave (Talk | contribs) 03:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
Cheers for the advice. Citations/links have been added to Arklow vs.MacLean.--WingateChristopher 02:22, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello. Regarding the purpose of this user: would it not make more sense to create a section in WP:WBE detailing "the removal of several users who do not wish to be listed", and then link each instance of [[User:Place holder]] to this section? -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 08:37, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Something went awry with the first change in this diff. Shiroi Hane 23:23, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it seems SmackBot doesn't like the letter Y. See this edit also. Pagrashtak 15:23, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks I picked this up (from your notes) when out consulting and stopped SB - it's worth it for things like this. RichFarmbrough, 16:56 19 October2007 (GMT).
I have reviewed the last 2500 edits and picked up a few occurances. I hve fixed the code, and will scan the next DB dump in case there are any more. RichFarmbrough, 11:17 21 October2007 (GMT).
Smackbot and category links
Smackbot made was an error in this diff - it moved all categories to the bottom of the page, but that included category links (prefaced with a colon) which should obviously not happen. Shiroi Hane 01:24, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
I have suppressed these types of changes and file3d a bug report with the WP:AWB developers, some time ago. It might be worth an additioanl note about leading : on categories as well. RichFarmbrough, 11:19 21 October2007 (GMT).
Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Ronald Ray Gun, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Ronald Ray Gun seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.
To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Ronald Ray Gun, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself.CSDWarnBot 12:32, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Merge templates
Hi Rich! Thanks for the message. I think I just made a mistake in forgetting the closing brackets. So I don't know of any reason. I thought Smackbot had repaired that error on the Sundance page, though. I'll make an effort to be more careful. Thanks again. — WiseKwai 17:20, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
date formatting of your SmackBot
Hello,
I have a question about SmackBot. (By simply using the "random article" key) I detected this edit. It seems strange to me that 1993 was delinked, but not 1996. Is this a tiny bug in your Bot? If so, you might want to change this behaviour (or maybe you've done it already because the edit is three months old).
BTW, I linked 1993 now again, before reading your description of SmackBot, and the discussion on WP:DATE – sorry for the wrong order, it seemed that you liked to have both dates without instead of with link. If so, please change Albin Gutman again…
As you probably remember, US place articles' demographics sections place metric units before imperial units — for example, Tombstone reads "The population density was 135.0/km² (349.8/mi²).". User:MJCdetroit and I have agreed that this doesn't go well with the Manual of Style's directions regarding imperial and metric measurements. Since SmackBot was the last bot to update US place articles' demographics sections ("Simplify where possible &/or add state link, United States., map ref template, & or 00.00% .&/or other minor fixes using AWB"), could you please seek approval to have it go through these sections and switch the imperial and the metric measurements? Nyttend 15:23, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
By the way, since you say that you'll reply on my talk page: would you please copy the reply to MJCdetroit's talk page as well? Thanks! Nyttend 15:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I will look at this. There were some other changes requested after the last run too. RichFarmbrough, 15:27 26 October2007 (GMT).
It is more than just simply switching the unit order. Square mile should be spelled out and not abbreviated. If for some reason it is abbreviated we should use "sq mi" and not "mi²". See the diff here—MJCdetroit 16:33, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
And this should also apply to the geography section as well. —MJCdetroit 16:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot sorting
Please don't have your bot add defaultsort on presumed surnames in cases like this: [149] The article had intentionally been sorted by first name in a category and a user had even left a comment explaining this. A bot should not override that. Also, what's with the year delinking? Haukur 23:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Also, could you please have the bot leave more precise edit summaries? It says "Date/fix the maintenance tags or gen fixes" a lot. When all it's doing is dating maintenance tags I know the edit is completely trivial and I don't need to check it. But if there are actually some "gen fixes" that's something I might want to take a look at. Haukur 23:13, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Get smackbot ready :)
Heya! Something went wrong with the enwiki dump last month it seems, so, I haven't posted a new reflist in a bit (that, and, well... being made an admin last month sorta prolly distracted me :P). Anyhow, I lost my main squid here last week (was where my most recent bot code was stored), so, I'm trying to hack out an older version, to what I had. (New DB dump got posted today, I'll have it in it's 3GB Glory here shortly) I was wondering, when I post the new list, can you poke over it, and make sure that I re-addressed all the issues that we'd corrected before? (IIRC, the only version of my bot that I have, is a way earlier version.) Hopefully, I'll have a list for you within 48 hours, one way or another. SQL(Query Me!) 07:18, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Not as of yet :( I lost my bot framework too, and it's proving annoying to rewrite to far... SQLQuery me! 14:12, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot marked my brand new article on Tags as possibly not meeting the notability guidelines. I'm open for discussion on that subject, although I think the article can't be much better. In any case, I doubt whether this is the kind of job you should trust to a bot. Julian Gong 11:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
As you probably remember, US place articles' demographics sections place metric units before imperial units — for example, Tombstone reads "The population density was 135.0/km² (349.8/mi²).". User:MJCdetroit and I have agreed that this doesn't go well with the Manual of Style's directions regarding imperial and metric measurements. Since SmackBot was the last bot to update US place articles' demographics sections ("Simplify where possible &/or add state link, United States., map ref template, & or 00.00% .&/or other minor fixes using AWB"), could you please seek approval to have it go through these sections and switch the imperial and the metric measurements? Nyttend 15:23, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
By the way, since you say that you'll reply on my talk page: would you please copy the reply to MJCdetroit's talk page as well? Thanks! Nyttend 15:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I will look at this. There were some other changes requested after the last run too. RichFarmbrough, 15:27 26 October2007 (GMT).
It is more than just simply switching the unit order. Square mile should be spelled out and not abbreviated. If for some reason it is abbreviated we should use "sq mi" and not "mi²". See the diff here—MJCdetroit 16:33, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
And this should also apply to the geography section as well. —MJCdetroit 16:46, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
[150]
While directly linking to images may not be good practice, moving them to the bottom of the article doesn't do much good either... 82.139.85.94 11:54, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
This appears to be an {[WP:AWB]] bug, I have notified the devs. I currently have the "general fixes" option turned off, so this should not happen - it is an extremely rare circumstance anyway. Many thanks for letting me know. RichFarmbrough, 20:16 28 October2007 (GMT).
Sorry for the tardiness in sending the Signpost this week. --Ral315
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SmackBot
Resolved
to bob burn drummer, come back to lafayette,la see you c.k. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.80.110.195 (talk) 23:45, August 29, 2007 (UTC)
Recently a "new" user placed tags on a difficult technical audio related subject (Audio mastering) asking for references, citations, violation of NPV etc, etc. Another editor came in, deleted them and dismissed it as unnecessary. Then, your bot shows up today mimicking the same tagging user actions and tags all over again the article {see diff at Audio mastering). My problem is that if your bot engages in reverting deleted tags by other users, then, its usefulness is outweighed by the damage is creating at WP. Was this just a mere coincidence? Jrod2 18:26, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
If you look at the edit again, yyou'll see that is not what was happening. RichFarmbrough, 17:03 28 October2007 (GMT).
So, are you saying that it was a coincidence this bot shows up to tag this article, even though it never did it before? OK, explain this clear example where the same user comes to another article to place another cleanup tag, a disagreeing editor deletes it and your bot comes back to restore the tag. [151] and [152]. IMHO, your bot is out of order by restoring deleted tags and it needs to be fixed or shut down immediately.Jrod2 19:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Please look carefully at the three diffs you cite. One is by Quiest, the other two do not introduce (or reintroduce) tags, merely date them. RichFarmbrough, 20:14 28 October2007 (GMT).
OK, It comes to place a date. It seems to me that is coming when somebody adds a tag, correct? Jrod2 20:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich, I appreciate SmackBot a lot, but unfortunately it has been removing whitespace from my beautifully lined-up templates; that is, templates unrelated to what the bot fixes up. For example [153]. Please reply on my talk page if at all. Cheers, Colin MacLaurin 18:37, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for telling me. I can fix this. Incidentally SB aligned all the Infobox Album templates a while back, I was thinking about making a generic solution for this - non-trivial though. RichFarmbrough, 09:53 30 October2007 (GMT).
What's triggering this
Hey there, hi there, ho and yo!
Long time no see! <g> What's triggering this kind of removal by Smackbot? A section maintenance tag which goes missing is no longer either drawing the eye, nor adding to the to-do list of the category. (It's probably nicked me on a couple of other pages "underconstruction", hence avoiding it's mindless repetition is of great interest! <g>) Is there a "Smackbot ignore this page" template I can add? Be well! // FrankB 14:19, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Found your mention of {{nobots}}, but with my spelling, would be nice to allow some of the other bots do their thing. Need a {nosmackme I don't like pain} tag!<BSEG> Let me know if you do one up! // FrankB 14:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
read this and you will know what to do... I will need to ensure SB obeys the tag, AWB supports it but I'm not sure quite how smart it is. The reason for removal is unknown, I would guess it is interpreted as a stub tag, but I have AWB's "General Fixes" turned off at the moment, so it should leave those alone. RichFarmbrough, 14:36 31 October2007 (GMT).
OK - { {bots|deny=<botlist>} } it is! (Now you can go on about being banned in Boston at cocktail parties!) It used to be a distinction of sorts!—though in this case...? <Happy Halloween> and thanks! // FrankB 14:50, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
LOL, thanks! But your airline seems to have misobserved the {{inuse}} tag... (no harm, no foul, though—you've got me chuckling still!) and I need all the help I can get with formal formatting and spellings! So tanks, tahnks, thnaks, errrr, you no! // FrankB 21:13, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
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Casanova's Homecoming
Casanova's Homecoming was tagged as unreferenced, evidently by the bot. In the case of works of fiction, a publisher is usually sufficient; this article already had a discography. best, Sparafucil 08:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
No, Brownhaired Girl tagged the article. And if it seems excessive, have a look a the talk page, one of the two unsourced dates in the article was wrong. RichFarmbrough, 08:54 1 November2007 (GMT).
Oops. Thanks for that. I'm going to remove intensional(ity) from my bot for now. It looks like it's a bit too problematic. Cheers, CmdrObot 21:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot sorting
Please don't have your bot add defaultsort on presumed surnames in cases like this: [154] The article had intentionally been sorted by first name in a category and a user had even left a comment explaining this. A bot should not override that. Also, what's with the year delinking? Haukur 23:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Also, could you please have the bot leave more precise edit summaries? It says "Date/fix the maintenance tags or gen fixes" a lot. When all it's doing is dating maintenance tags I know the edit is completely trivial and I don't need to check it. But if there are actually some "gen fixes" that's something I might want to take a look at. Haukur 23:13, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
The article is currently protected and found that you have been making some changes. I would
like you to look into this diff[155] which has happened by the edit of User:Vivin(That version got protected). If you go in detail you can find that most of good face of the article has lost(eg descriptions About famous warriors or sections like Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker, Warriors Of Northern Ballads, Kuroolli Chekon etc ) and tactically keeping the bad face like Trading, Toddy Tapping, Brewing Arrack sections. The main article editors are not against keeping this bad face but should also keep good face of the community. thatnks in advance. cheersTulu war
Hi! First I would really thank wikipedia and, foremost, the people that make it going - people like you. I come from a village in Herzegovina, and throughout this century it has vittnesed many atrosities. So I desided to make a page about it, on wikipedia. Among the thing that I wrote is the genocide aginst the serbs in 1941, in Prebilovci. And on the title I used genocide - a user named rijeka, from croatia, has just removed that bit.
600 women and children from my village, were in 1941 slaughtered and thrown into pits near surmanci, the place were virgin mary is said to have apeared. I wrote abut this -- and rijeca removed that bit. Maby he just doesn't want people nowing about it -- that virgin maty apears to some vroats near were they cilled serbs during a genocide.
I've also created a page valled Prebilovci Massacre, and because of that, he claims, has removed a great bit of my article on Prebilovci. Among that article, he has removed of what happended in 1991, the bodies of thoose who were massacred in 1941 were blown up by a bomb.
I just think this is unfair. I see it this way: that's he's missusing his power on wikipedia. Chek it put yourself, then contact me and say what do you think.
Please respect the role of British English in Wikipedia
British English articles should have dates in the format day-month-[no comma]-year. Please do not convert dates in British English articles into American format. Thank you. Mowsbury 22:26, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Changing <references/> to {{reflist}}
SmackBot often does good work and I've many times had cause to thank it. However...
The documentation for Template:Reflist states "there is no consensus that small font size should always be used for all references", while Wikipedia:Citation templates states "Because they are optional, editors should not change articles from one [citation] style to another without consensus". This issue of font size particularly affects people with visual impairments who may well be able to see the regular wiki font size but struggle with smaller sizes. We're talking disability discrimination and all that. Unless you can show good cause, please stop performing this unnecessary edit. -Arb. 22:05, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes I've just noticed this myself. I am a proponent of using the standard font size for references. So once again I have to turn off "general fixes". RichFarmbrough, 22:19 4 November2007 (GMT).
Thanks for the prompt reaction. To further my education, can you give a pointer to an explanation of what "general fixes" are. -Arb. 16:55, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Removal of a wiki stub...
Your bot has removed my {{edu stub}} from this article...
[156]
Is this a bug, or is that {{edu stub}} an obsolete one?
Mugunth 12:49, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
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A thank-you to SmackBot
Next time your bot goes back to the workshop for a grease and oil change, could possibly please pass on a thank-you to SmackBot for
thesechanges?
They were much appreciated! --Shirt58 11:34, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Goodness! How did you happen to spot this? It joins Cydebot in a very small group. Thanks for letting me know. RichFarmbrough, 15:52 15 November2007 (GMT).
London Gazette etc
Don't know what I was doing on Ian Cundy, somehow typed cite web instead of LondonGazette when I was sorting it out the other day. With the list, thinking about it it may make more sense to move it to a subpage of the template (talk). I'll leave it where it is for now though. Long-term, might be an idea to check for new ones every month or so. If possible, it would be worth excluding London Gazette, Belfast Gazette and Edinburgh Gazette as they legitametly link to the home pages, rather tan to issues of the relevant gazettes. Thanks again for your assistance. David Underdown 17:18, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
"See also main article" problem
While reviewing James I of England, following a discussion on the talk page, I discovered that a note that had previously addressed the issue being discussed on the talk page had been removed by this bot. See here for the diff. I've now restored the note, but could you try and fix it so the bot doesn't do that again? Not sure how many other articles it may have done this to - can you find out? Carcharoth 12:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, this was a rather horrible AWB bug that is fixed now. It may be possible to download a full history file and do a scan, but last time I looked the db dumps were unavailable. RichFarmbrough, 21:22 16 November2007 (GMT).
SmackBot is moving stub messages below categories.
At [157] the bot moved the stub message below the categories, yet in the default skin the stub note is shown above the categories. Please change the bot to stop doing this. -- Jeandré, 2007-11-16t20:32z
This is the correct behaviour. The reason is to put the stub categories att the end of the list of categories. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 21:24 16 November2007 (GMT).
Hi Rich. I would like your attention or guidance in this matter. I wrote most of the Chris Hawkins article, and seeded it. Chris is a presenter on BBC Radio 6 Music, etc. I got this headshot image from his management company and publicity company in London. I was told it was part of publicity kits. I thought that was "fair use". I don't have access to any other pictures. Someone is now disputing its " fair use " and wants to delete the image ( Image:Chawkins.jpg ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chawkins.jpg . I know you're away but might you help or advise in this matter ? Many thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 02:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC) talk
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Lebanese Independence Day
Rich! Just popping by to wish you a lovely Lebanese Independence Day! Love, Yeanold Viskersenn (talk) 16:49, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't aware that I had subst'd any cleanup templates. While patrolling Newpages, I have a file I use to cut and paste common templates and usually just paste them exactly so. ((unreferenced}}, {{fact}}, {{cleanup}}, etc. I may, on on occasion add a date to the template. I can't recall any case where I've done {{subst:unreferenced}} or other such substitution. If I did, it was entirely unintentional. Can you give me an example? Thanks ++Arx Fortis (talk) 15:23, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
I was wondering whether SmackBot corrects common mistakes in the date parameter for {{Fact}} and other templates, such as using Nov 2007 rather than November 2007. A look down the list at Special:Wantedcategories suggests that this would be a simple addition for the bot if it doesn't do it already. Harryboyles 22:59, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
It does fix some of these errors, however it's not run against non-existent categories... RichFarmbrough, 09:50 24 November2007 (GMT).
It falls under the same heading, so I'm going to put it here. Is there a way to stop Smackbot from tagging articles using {{inuse}}? My edits were not personally affected, but a page on my watchlist was. It's just a thought. Andrew647 12:40, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback! Andrew647 12:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
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Reference(s)
Why does SmackBot change "Reference" to "References" even if there is only one reference in the section? Is this intended behavior? Michael Slone (talk) 19:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Query
Hey Rich. What was it on the Chris Hawkins article promotional photograph query I left here for you which didn't seem to deserve a reply ? Thanks. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 00:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Rich, very much. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 15:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads up! I'm not that involved in mainspace editing; I just revert vandals. I should probably read up on the policies and guidelines soon. Thanks again, Master of PuppetsCare to share? 05:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
On User talk:76.111.250.140
He's deleting his warnings. Again. E Wing (talk) 00:14, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
The Artical of Reindeer Bill you edited...
Hi. Where did you get the information that Reindeer bill killed KC Morgan? I am very curious because KC Morgan was in my family many many years ago and his murder was never solved. Please please please contact me back at candibear955@tmail.com. This is very important so please get back to me asap!
The edits [158] and [159] were not due to SmackBot, but to anonymous editors. The edits have been reverted (not by me), since they were almost certainly baseless vandalism. Michael Slone (talk) 06:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Tony Chappel
The above is the correct spelling. Sorry I got a bit confused about the correct spelling, but all the information in it is correct I can assure you. I used it as a bit of a tester really so I can get more familiar with wikipedia in general, and i'm going to start writing more useful articles. Samasnookerfan 12:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
As you have edited this template significantly, you may be interested in this TfD, one way or another. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 10:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
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Strange edits by Smackbot
I just reverted a couple of edits by Smackbot, where it was messing up subtitles by replacing 'Operations==' with 'operations'. See diffs here and here. Could you please work out what the glitch is here, and try to fix it? Thanks in advance. Terraxos 20:35, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
I too have just noticed this error in a bunch of US Navy ship articles such as [160]. I've been trying to cleanup these articles myself, however it seems I might be doing so for a while. Would it be possible to get SmackBot to correct this problem? -- malo(tlk)(cntrbtns) 21:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Is the use of <references /> now deprecated? I notice your Bot is changing <references /> to {{reflist}}. I thought that in stubs with just a few refs., <references /> was still OK. JGHowestalk - 18:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
No, I actually prefer <references />. The change is part of WP:AWB's general fixes, and for this reason I have turned off "general fixes" in my main "date maintenance tags" run. However, on balance, with the standard headers I decided that the type of article is more likely to benefit from the general fixes. I have also asked the AWB developers to remove this particular feature.
How do you link the date and year in your sig? — $PЯINGεrαgђ 19:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
I sign with ~~~ and embed the linked dates in my raw sig under preferences. RichFarmbrough, 19:03 5 December2007 (GMT).
OK, what does it look like though? (Sorry, despite being computer savvy on an average level, I am horrible with code.) — $PЯINGεrαgђ 19:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
I was indiscrimately reverting his top edits due to him being a banned sock. Will(talk) 19:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Weird edits by smack bot (citation template)
Hey there, smack bot made some weird edits to Lyndon–Hochschild–Serre spectral sequence (see diff [161]), specifically it moved some citation template parameters out of the template and just placed them at the bottom of the page. RobHar (talk) 20:35, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Those links need ":" before "en", else they are interwiki. --Emijrp (talk) 21:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Correct. Or they don't need "en:" at all. So I have fixed them up. And am now looking at the other 408 cases, mostly commented out en: interwikis. RichFarmbrough, 21:15 5 December2007 (GMT).
Ah I see, I hadn't noticed those extra "en:"s. I looked into it and I think User:Jakob.scholbach has been adding these (possibly through some database he uses and some automated process, I'm not sure). I've informed him of this on his talk page. RobHar (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Merge templates
Thank you for the information. --Anthony5429 (talk) 20:50, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
do you read Python?
You might be interested in a bot that runs (continously, background) on the en.wikt: see wikt:User:AutoFormat/code. If you do write some Python, there may be any number of snippets you would find useful. Cheers! Robert Ullmann 15:06, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Here's a stamp from the Faroe Islands for you! Stamps from the Faroe Islands somehow promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving something friendly to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Make your own message to spread WikiLove to others! Happy editing! Vatomanocu (talk) 13:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
In this edit [162], SmackBot changed some {{cn}} tags to {{fact}} tags. I intentionally used cn because I know the facts are correct but want to remember to add a reference; I don't like them changing to fact, which implies there is doubt about the claims. Adding the dates is a useful function, but I believe the tag used should not be changed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
{{Cn}} is a redirect to {{Fact}}. SmackBot canonicalises redirects - it has to deal with several hundred template names plus (well actually muliiplied by) many different valid ways of writing the templates. While I agree that "Cn" is a tad more friendly than "Fact", I really need to go with the redirect target. Since the test displayed is "citation needed" we shouldn't perhaps worry too much about this, but you could request that the canonical template have one of the other names. RichFarmbrough, 22:35 3 December2007 (GMT).
Thanks for the explanation. I'll try to remember to date my templates. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:39, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Happy Holiday season ! Meanwhile I have been re-working a few articles on NCLEX as requested. I removed odd text by a contributor User talk:Maxbasco who had been warned about messing up the articles by someone else. The three articles in question which I had somewhat re-worked are NCLEX, NCLEX-RN, NCLEX-PN. If you could, please have a look. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 19:27, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
SmackBOT & Category:NPOV disputes
Resolved
Category:NPOV disputes seems to be filling with undated articles tagged with Template:npov-section, Template:POV-check, Template:pov-title, and presumably some of the others (and their redirects) listed at the top of the category description page. Just curious if it would be possible for Smackbot to date these as well, to keep the NPOV queue moving. Thanks for your bot work, by the way; you're picking up some of the slack from my Pearle being down for a long time. 8) -- Beland (talk) 18:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, this is (as you probably know) easy in principle - added those three templates, will gather in the others as I go. RichFarmbrough, 22:57 8 December2007 (GMT).
I've added {{POV}} and it's fourteen redirects... should get 50% of the 6000 articles this time through. RichFarmbrough, 23:31 8 December2007 (GMT).
Can you help answer a reference desk question?
Can you help answer this reference desk question? You added the edit about Jian squares which I was wondering about. Graham87 13:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I need help putting pictures
hi, i know how to edit articles but not how to put pictures. whenever i put pics, it is deleted. For example, if i want to put this http://www.afrol.com/images/persons/som_Yusuf_Kibaki.jpg what should i do? Please tell me step by step instructions (for a person that has no clue)...the help sections on wiki, are not clear to me. when uploading, there are a lot questions and options to choose for copyright type etc..and i have no clue. thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.247.122.251 (talk) 17:39, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
The picture you mention above is presumably copyright by afrol News, so can't be included except in special cases. Pictures you take yourself can be released under GFDL. RichFarmbrough, 17:46 9 December2007 (GMT). 17:46, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
thanks for reply. what are those special cases?? please give me full details.....and also are you saying all pics in wiki are uploaded only by people who took the pictures only? like the picture inside Mwai Kibaki and Meles Zenawi don't seem that way - thanks
so, what were those special cases?? please give me a hand with this issue, with more detail. or if you can, help me put a couple of pictures inside one or two articles. thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.247.122.251 (talk) 18:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Pictures that have been released under a suitable license (ideally public domain or GFDL) including your own
US federal Govt images, but not logos, coats of arms, badges etc. Also not all govt agencies pix.
Pictures where copyright has expired or was never in force
"Fair use" where the picture is used to illustrate an article on the subject. See WP:Fair use.
Hi Rich, I've blocked SmackBot as it's been replacing {{NPOV}} with {{POV-statement}} which are two completely different templates. Feel free to unblock when it's corrected. Ryan Postlethwaite 18:30, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
You helped me figure out how to add citations
Resolved
... to Neil Papiano. Someone has made it so I can't continue as I find more and has wiped out what you showed me and what citations I had added. They have also filled the entire article with "citations needed." What do I do now? User:3rdEast 8 December 2007
Thank you, Rick. I appreciate it! User:3rdEast 11 December 2007 —Preceding comment was added at 22:15, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Papiano
My concern with the Papiano is not that 3rd East is an inexperienced editor. Rather, my concerns are multiple, including (i) the article reads like an advertisement for a practicing lawyer in LA, (ii) while his LA zoo donation and such may be verifiable, the claims about "representative clients," playing football for Stanford, foregoing a judgeship, gaining "favorable" outcomes for clients are not verifiable, and are written in a truly promotional way. In my opinion, the article should at least be pared back to that which is truly neutral and verifiable. Cbl62 (talk) 21:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree. However much of it is verifiable, we should only remove such as raises eyebrows or obvious puff. For example having a major company as a client can IMHO sit there with a "cite needed" for donkeys years, given the supported clients, but Reagan should be cited. Notice, by the way that he played football at Stanford, not necessarily for Stanford. This could be removed as trivia... RichFarmbrough, 21:47 9 December2007 (GMT).
I spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the article, adding considerable text with cites regarding his cases of note. I think it passes muster now.Cbl62 (talk) 00:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
references/ v. reflist - again
Er, didn't you agree to stop the bot converting <references/> to {{Reflist}} on account of the reduced font size (chief amongst several arguments)?
Just to be clear, the date should be added to the {{deadend}} tag, which places stuff in Category:Dead-end pages. Obviously, time for my nap!--Fabrictramp (talk) 23:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
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Edits on Wikipedia
Gosh you have a lot of edits on Wikipedia. Pretty cool. Smackbot's okay too. Seeya. 203.220.12.110 (talk) 12:07, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Category:Uncategorized stubs from November 2007, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click hereCSDWarnBot (talk) 19:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Restored page mistake
Resolved
It seems that you restored the page: Category:Articles with trivia sections from April 2007. This seems to be a mistake because the page contains no articles, with the exception of one article that was placed there by mistake in the first place. I have corrected the mistake and returned the article to Category:Articles with trivia sections from August 2007. If you could re-delete the page, that would be helpful. Thanks. Johnred32 (talk) 21:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Same problem, different template... Fixed, and checking the others... Thanks for letting me know. RichFarmbrough, 00:03 14 December2007 (GMT).
Conformism meets gimmickry
Resolved
A dismayed view of this prompted a message here. -- Hoary (talk) 13:13, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot...
Resolved
...apparently deleted a stub template here while editing the page. I have restored the template since it's been assessed as a stub in the related Wikiprojects. Have a nice day, Rosenknospe (talk) 15:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm curious as to why your bot did the following change: [163]
It doesn't affect how the article looks. --Rockfang (talk) 10:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I've noticed that Smackbot corrects headings when they're not in a standard form, which is useful. However, one thing that puzzles me is why it changes Reference to References and External Link to External Links when there is only one reference or external link. Wouldn't leaving the heading in the singular in those cases be more correct? Andrew nixon (talk) 16:08, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Psychos
Resolved
SmackBot
you people think u are getting to heaven by judging other people....our soldiers are fighting for our freedom and your right to wear and say your rediculous things...yet you picket @ their funerals....crazy people....cults aren't of God by the way....You nut cases..Judge not......I watched u guys last night and you all sound stupid.....Hey just because u know the bible doesn't mean u are going to heaven...Lucifer knows the bible front and back dumb asses...And Shirley I just thought u sounded so intelligent when u said "not a chance poopy pants" Man u people really need a freakin life...
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a citation needed was changed to a fact
I am writing a page about a plant that I may or may not have seen before in the language of a science that I have admired but don't know that much about so, I have been very careful to cite all of my words on this page. So, Smackbot found a {{citation needed}} that I left because I totally invented the words that were there.
I did not click on the stop part of this talk page because I am uncertain if the bot did the right thing or not. What do you think and more importantly, what is the right thing in a situation like this? -- carol 21:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot added a citation needed tag to the Blue's Clues article. Now, either it was done in error, or I made the citation incorrectly. Here's the paragraph in question:
Reception and influence
Blue's Clues premiered on September 8, 1996.[1] It was a "smash hit," largely in due to the intensive and extensive research its producers employed.[2] Within eighteen months of its premiere, 100% of preschoolers' parents knew about the show[citation needed], an awareness comprable to "top-tier" shows like the 30-year old Sesame Street. It became the highest-rated show for preschoolers on commercial television; by 2002; 13.7 million viewed tuned in each week. In 2000, the show had generated over $1 billion in licensing products. It has received numerous awards for excellence in children's programming, educational software, and licensing, and has received nine Emmy nominations. More than ten million Blue's Clues books were in print by 2001, and over three million copies of six CD-ROM titles based on the show have sold since 1998.[3][4]
Notice that there's a citation at the end of the paragraph, done in that way because the information was taken from both sources. Is there a better way to do it? Thanks for your help, and happy holidays. --Figureskatingfan (talk) 21:15, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. However in this case it is clear the extraordinary assertion that "100% of preschoolers' parents knew about the show" is what needs citation, and I would suggest a direct quote, since it is patently hyperbole. Regards, RichFarmbrough, 22:54 17 December2007 (GMT).
I agree, so I went and made the change. I appreciate your input in the editing of this article; it used to be quite horrible, actually, and I believe it is much, much improved now. --Figureskatingfan (talk) 18:24, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Re: the block quote from Gladwell you brought up on my talk page: I wanted to blame the anonymous editor that's been vandalizing the article lately, but I discovered that it was my typing error. Good thing I haven't returned Gladwell's book to the library yet! At any rate, I went and corrected it. Thanks for catching it. --Figureskatingfan (talk) 17:35, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Fact templates
Got it. Thanks. --Mongol (talk) 16:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot is great
Thank you, SmackBot, for enforcing the Manual of Style on the Archive Utility page. I somehow missed that little thing that needed fixing until SmackBot saw and fixed it. Wrldwzrd89talk 13:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
SamckBot seems to have put an "advertisement" warning on the Lindane article. Why? Rick lightburn (talk) 16:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I put the {{ad}} tag on there, and then SmackBot came along and just modified the tag by changing it to {{Advert|date=December 2007}} to make it easier for future editors to see when the article was tagged. Yilloslime(t) 17:47, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
reversion of SmackBot edits
I reverted this edit and this edit of SmackBot. In each case the bot changed "Reference" to "References" in a section with exactly one reference. Michael Slone (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Also reference my comment on the Smackbot talk apge noting a similar issue with singular external link sections being renamed to a plural header. - CobaltBlueTony™talk 20:39, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Your advice on a technical matter today was helpful. Thanks for cleaning up after me. I'll make other mistakes now. But not that one at least. I appreciate it. David in DC (talk) 15:36, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
SmackBot
Hi, I don't understand why when I looked up my contributions and watchlist, there was a SmackBot listed under "Garfagnana". Can you explain? I read the SmackBot page and still don't get it. Kit1066 (talk) 17:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you put a tag on there - {{advert}}. SB dates these tags to help administer the clean-up. Incidentally you also signed it - we don't sign on articles (with a very few exceptions - perhaps the copyvio template), only on talk pages. RichFarmbrough, 17:34 21 December2007 (GMT).
SmackBot and references
Could smackbot maybe not change references to reflist?[164]Gimmetrow 16:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Comment According to WP:FN if a list is 9 or less, it should be using "references/". 10 or more items should use "reflist". Is the bot following this guideline? --Rockfang (talk) 13:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I just checked, according to that example it isn't. --Rockfang (talk) 13:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't expect bots to go counting references, I would just like this to be left alone. Gimmetrow 01:52, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
OK! So, why was SmackBot doing the change? Gimmetrow 01:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Part of AWB's usually excellent "general fixes". Has been remvoed in the latest builds, but not in the release version. RichFarmbrough, 02:02 22 December2007 (GMT).
Resolved
Done RF 2014.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Rich Farmbrough (talk • contribs) 17:47, 30 January 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for your contribution at 2005 South Asia earthquake. Please keep it up!!! Pradeepsomani (talk)
.svg){kind=small}
23:15, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
07:43, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
23:52, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Folajimi 17:04, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
.svg){kind=small}
22:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Rich Farmbrough, 11:10 13 September 2006 (GMT).
Moved to User talk:Gadfium
Tony 03:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
.jpg)
.svg)
.svg){kind=small}
Germany - was replaced with - 22px Germany -. -- Petri Krohn 21:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
-- Petri Krohn 21:43, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
. We plan to create your account soon then. --DaB.
Resolved
located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot 08:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
