User talk:Cydebot/Archive000

Current task

I'm fixing template inclusions of {{Active in service}}, which is just a redirect to {{Ship fate box active in service}}. --Cyde Weys 20:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Cyde Weys 20:57, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now replacing {{biosci-stub}} with {{biology-stub}} (this action has unanimous consensus). --Cyde Weys 01:38, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Currently suspended - No one is against these moves but someone pointed out only four days have elapsed on the SFD discussion, so I'll give it a little bit more time. --Cyde Weys 02:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Restarting task - no objections have been raised. --Cyde Weys 05:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've been getting freaking socket errors all night. I don't know if it's a network issue or a bot issue. Either way, this test run ain't going so well! --Cyde Weys 06:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it was a network issue, I've restarted the router and everything is going swimmingly now. Should be done in no time at all! --Cyde Weys 06:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Cyde Weys 06:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now converting {{an}} (a very old ref template) to {{ref}} (a slightly less old yet still deprecated ref template). This is as a precursor to replacing everything with Cite.php <references /> using User:Cyde/Ref converter. --Cyde Weys 07:44, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done, now converting {{anb}} to {{note}}. --Cyde Weys 08:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done, anb is now orphaned and deleted. --Cyde Weys 08:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now converting {{fnb}} to {{note}}. There are going to be some intermediate periods where things may stop working; don't worry though, on the next pass I'll come through and replace {{fn}} with {{ref}} and it will work again. --Cyde Weys 09:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suspended - I ran into some unanticipated snags. I'll get back to work on this tomorrow. --Cyde Weys 09:15, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Restarted - Luckily I figured out a good way to get around these issues. Just a warning - a lot of these really old reference styles I'm replacing haven't been touched in years and are pretty much broken. So if the bot appears to be breaking something make sure it wasn't already broken before I got there. --Cyde Weys 09:36, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For those of you who are wondering what's going on, I'm converting the incredibly outdated fn/fnb format to the slightly less outdated ref/note format in preparation to convert everything to the recommended format of Cite.php. Ref converter can be used to convert almost anything in ref/note format to the latest format. It can't be done in an automated way though ... there's too many weird and random things that people incorrectly did with ref/note. So I'll be needing volunteers. --Cyde Weys 09:56, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suspended - Ah, fracking network errors again. I'll resume at a later time. --Cyde Weys 09:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright I'm now re-evaluating how I'm going to handle this due to comments received below. It's still a task that needs to be performed, as the fewer old and deprecated references formats left in Wikipedia, the better. The edit summary probably needs work. And I still haven't decided if I should just modify the Ref converter to handle {{fn}} and {{fnb}} manually. Your comments are welcome. --Cyde Weys 19:08, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Current task: substituting {{UsernameBlocked}} and its various redirects. --Cyde Weys 00:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now throttled to just twice every minute. This batch is going to take awhile to complete. --Cyde Weys 02:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now working on {{vanity}}. Ugh, there are so many talk page templates that should be substituted in, but aren't. --Cyde Weys 06:34, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing work with more talkpage templates. Maybe the next step in this bot is to look at the page history, see who is pasting them un-substituted, and automatically leave a friendly message on their talk page reminding them to subst these templates. --Cyde Weys 17:13, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now working on substituting {{afd top}} and {{afd bottom}} and all of their various and sundry redirects. --Cyde Weys 20:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Turns out old versions of {{vfd top}} and {{vfd bottom}} linked to the template using a period as link text (for whatever reasons). This has drastically increased the number of pages in the "What links here" and makes most of them non-inclusion. Cydebot is going through and removing these links as well. Eventually the old VfD templates will be totally orphaned. --Cyde Weys 16:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ValuJet does not currently operate as AirTran Airways. The companies merged, but what was ValuJet is not AirTran. The planes, leadership, business model are all different. That line should be deleted. If the user wants to see how the current AirTran was formed they should visit the AirTran page. The two carriers have seperate pages for a reason. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.16.100.79 (talk • contribs) 21:56, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Your bot

Hi. Just wondering if there's a Wikipedia directive or anything about changing footnotes to a reference note. There was a summary change to that effect by a bot at Doctor Strange. Thyanks for any information. -- Tenebrae 17:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I've noticed to Daredevil (Marvel Comics) and elsewhere. -- Tenebrae 17:13, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, {{fn}} and {{fnb}} are clearly marked as deprecated. --Cyde Weys 19:05, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Notification

This seems like a pretty big summary change throughout Wikipedia, without any consensus that I can see here, at least. I'd like to get an Administrator opinion before your bot continues. Some editors prefer traditional footnotes, and unless there's a specific Wikipedia directive against them, I'm not sure it's good idea to make widespread changes that's just one person's personal preference. -- Tenebrae 17:19, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would defintely not support changing everything over to Cite.php. The older formats are still perfectly acceptable and I don't think this should be done wholesale. You may wish to allow users to request that your bot convert an article for them, but I would not do it en masse. Thatcher131 17:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- This bot is just converting over from the really old references formats which are clearly marked as deprecated. I'll hold off on any more actions for a bit, though. --Cyde Weys 19:04, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, nobody owns any articles. Cite.php is demonstrably better. I'm telling you this from experience ... {{ref}} and {{note}} pages, especially active ones, tend to have their refs get broken. Either someone deletes a {{ref}} and not the corresponding {{note}} or vice-versa, or references get out of order, or what not. Cite.php doesn't have these issues at all. Ref converter reports when it finds these errors and tries to fix them; they come up an awful lot for a citing system that is supposedly so "perfectly acceptable", though. In summary, though, nobody owns any articles, so nobody has to wait for a request from a user on a particular article to go ahead and convert to a demonstrably better reference style. As a note to onlookers - nothing I just said here is especially relevant to Cydebot, this is all dealing with Ref converter, which is totally separate. --Cyde Weys 20:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. Ian13/talk 21:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Erroneous template substitution

You might want to do something to prevent templates that are on any (non-talk) subpage of Wikipedia:Template messages from being substituted. Those are intentionally not substituted there to ensure they reflect the most current template versions. –Tifego^(t)_{01:10, 19 April 2006 (UTC)}[reply]

Oooh, thanks for pointing that out. I'll add a namespace restriction to future runs. --Cyde Weys 01:21, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I ended up implementing this, along the way though I ended up modifying the pywikipedia code and becoming a dev. --Cyde Weys 17:13, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SUBST on closed *fD pages

What is the value in SUBST'ing templates on inactive pages? Seems to me that just adds unnecessary bloat to the page sizes. Since these are historical pages, there isn't much argument to be made that the template substitution by the server is burning CPU/DB cycles, since these pages are not going to be viewed often at all. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 10:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "bloat" that is being added to those page sizes is literally measured in bytes, and seeing how hard drives routinely store hundreds of billions of bytes these days, that isn't really a problem. To be honest, template linkage isn't that much of a problem either because of caching (brion has confirmed both of these two points). Since there's not really any appreciable pros or cons either way, I guess you could say the reason I (and other) people are substituting these templates is merely because they are listed on the list of templates that should be substituted (see WP:SUBST). And also, I have some sort of freakish compulsion with neat "What links here" lists, and these lists were anything but neat. --Cyde Weys 08:42, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category work

Cydebot is now doing some category work based on closed discussions at WP:CFD. I have coded a metabot in Perl to feed the pywikipediabot category.py a whole list of categories to move. --Cyde Weys 16:47, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It seems you added "Princeton Alum" category to William Warren Barbour, and he's not, according to Princeton, an alum. He only attended the university for one semester or so, then left to work in a family-owned business. At the time, Princeton had a policy that only graduates of the university were officially registered as alums. With this in mind, I deleted the Princeton Alum category from the Barbour article. --Jancarhart 15:42, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hurricane Devon

Why did you delete my cat? — Hurricane Dev o n @ 20:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Because userspaces shouldn't have categories associated with them. Categories are used for categorizing articles. See WP:CFD. --Cyde Weys 02:06, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is wrong with {{ fact }}?

Cydebot is currently replacing {{fact}} with {{citation needed}}. It was my impression that bypassing redirects was undesirable. Is this perhaps not true for non-subst'ed templates? Powers 18:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just out of curiousity what is wrong with writing {{ fact }}? Why does it have to be {{ citation needed }}? Isn't the result exactly the same?- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 19:18, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I came here to say the same thing. Cyde, your bot is changing {{fact}} to {{citation needed}} for no reason. When it makes this change, the edit summary says it's to avoid a redirect. But both links go directly to Wikipedia:Citing sources. --Mr. Billion 21:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, no, {{fact}} is a redirect to {{citation needed}}. Sorry if the edit summary was confusing. --Cyde Weys 21:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't find it confusing, but see my question above. =) Powers 02:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The above bit about redirects seems like an arbitrarily technical distinction. {{fact}} is shorter to type than {{citation needed}}, so clearly it will prevail. Heathhunnicutt 03:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The change was also the wrong way around. It changed {{fact}} to {{citation needed}} when {{citation needed}} is redirected to {{fact}}. The changes added to any confusion that already existed. SteveCrook 04:51, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please see here. This was only very recently changed. --Cyde Weys 05:38, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well now I'm really confused. Freakofnurture is reverting all of Cydebot's changes. Which the heck should I be using now? Powers 12:33, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Leave it alone :-) We were just discussing what to do in #admins, and since {{fact}} had a lot more incoming links than {{citation needed}}, it made sense to do it the other way around. --Cyde Weys 14:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to pile on here, but the same topic drew me... you've obviously had a 'bad run'. Looking at all the havoc reported above and below as a former SW engineer, perhaps you might consider the need to do smaller test runs some days apart; far enough to sample results and to gage reaction and effects. Then do a full bot sweep with something that has at least met some field testing!

How about a nice clear discription below on what the resulting relationship is between fact and citation needed. Gauge it for us dummies, who have trouble concieving of templates, much less figuring out which to use! i.e. fact is now no longer replacing the longer, but instead the longer is now redirected to fact, recast in new role as the content in 'citation needed' was doing. I think?!! <G> FrankB 21:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

{{Citation needed}} is now a redirect to {{fact}} whereas the opposite was previously true. This wasn't a "bad run" - the bot did exactly what I told it to. --Cyde Weys 22:01, 18 May 2006 (UTC) — Yeah-that's the problem with computers, and always has been—they always do what you tell them instead of what we meant!<G> Now to straighten out us humans... but that may take a miracle! FrankB[reply]

User boxes

Hello, your bot is "screwing" up user boxes on user pages. I don't know how to explain it, but perhaps you can check out my user page edit history and see the difference it made (I reverted it presently). Basically, it changed the "{user hindu}" user box into a some complicated stuff enveloped by an unclosed "div" tag. Please fix it or refrain your bot. Thanks. Edit: Removed < and > off the div tag. --Shayan g 07:18, 15 May 2006 (UTC) Shayan g[reply]

Yeah, it looks like we had a technical error during a dispute with DotShell (talk · contribs) over whether a category was really necessary in the userbox. --Cyde Weys 15:22, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted the bot in Wikipedia:Userboxes/Religion for the same reason. See what it did [1]. I do assume good faith, but the end result is you managed to #$%& a lot of userpages, again. Friendly Neighbour 20:53, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean "again"? And yeah, this first rollout went sub-optimally .. next time I'll make sure that the template is valid before substituting it. --Cyde Weys 20:55, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, the bot stuffed up my page that used to look like this and converted it to this. I have since reverted. Nobleeagle (Talk) 00:09, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also I recently messed up and substituted a bunch of templates before removing the tfd-inline notices :-P Luckily, I noticed in time and was able to revert all of the changes to fix it. I need to write down a checklist to follow ...

Remove any TfD notices.
Remove irrelevant categories.
Check to make sure template is undamaged.
Run bot
Delete template
Close discussion on WP:TFD (if there is one).

Anything missing? --Cyde Weys 02:41, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you know why -User infidel- now redirects to -User religion interest- and the userbox page? If this was the product of your bot, could you fix it? I am unfamiliar with all the -div- layout to fix it myself, so that I can return it to simply -User infidel- Mr. Cat 02:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New T2 policy. You can't be going around saying stuff like "I am in infidel" in template space. --Cyde Weys 02:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I only vaguely get you. Though that allows me to see that your bot was going around adding the userbox code to make up fo the lack of the temlpate. Could you point me to a page which explains this new policy? Thanks. Mr. Cat 02:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CSD#T2 --Cyde Weys 02:13, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It may be a little premature to quote a proposed policy that has this qualification attached to it "Additionally, the second criterion is disputed by many users and may not reflect consensus." Ans e ll Review my progress! 02:15, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't it apply to say, entire swaths of the beliefs section of userboxes, as well as maybe a dozen of the ones I took? Not that your talk page really is the place for a complaint... maybe I can figure out how to get to a page where I can! Mr. Cat 02:20, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion would be the appropriate page for the discussion. Ans e ll Review my progress! 02:22, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category moves

I just upgraded pywikipedia to automatically remove the Cfd templates before copying over the text from the old category to the new one. I will upload these changes to the dev cvs as soon as the dev cvs server is back up. --Cyde Weys 16:13, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

HT userboxes

Hi, this bot recently "userfied" the userboxes pertaining to Hattrick, but in doing so left out the automatic categorization of the users using the template into the Category:Wikipedian Hattrickers. As a result about twenty pages that should be in that category are no longer in the category. If this could be fixed it'd be very appreciated. Thanks. -DMurphy 23:51, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's really no need to group users into categories by which sites they should use. Remember, categories were created primarily to organize the encyclopedic content and secondarily to organize the stuff that helps us build the encyclopedic content (like, say, CAT:CSD). I'm nominating this category for deletion. --Cyde Weys 01:41, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have to object. Hattrick.org is a browser-based game and not simply a website. Since it is a game it has an interface... and it happens to be a unique interface. Though I understand the thinking, Hattrick has a community of over 800,000 users and such a categorization is no different than other Category:Wikipedians by software categories. I personally am torn between whether or not the WBS categories should exist at all, but I certainly can't see a reason to exclude Hattrick from the category. If you would like insight into the notability of Hattrick, see the AFD debate from a few months ago. It's quite simply a notable game, and the fact that it's browser-based shouldn't prevent it from receiving a category. Thanks for taking the time to userfy the userboxes though. -DMurphy 23:38, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's also "userfying" other boxes, replacing templates with their actual code. Is there an actual reason for this documented somewhere? EASports 05:25, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, deleted at WP:TFD. I'm being nice and substituting the templates before deleting them; otherwise they would just simply turn into redlinks on userpages, which would be ugly. --Cyde Weys 05:31, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You missed at least one. My anti-fascism userbox was just a red link, no userfication occurred. Admittedly I probably have too many of them, but the point remains. Is this userfying thing a recent development? EASports 05:40, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, maybe I should have used a better edit summary. I'm not userfying all userboxes, just ones that have been dealt with at WP:TFD. If that turned into a red link it was likely because someone else speedy deleted it. --Cyde Weys 20:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

userfied

I was userfied and some of it does not work now Fallen Angel ^talk 10:57, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you're talking about? Cydebot only made a single template substitution, and it didn't break anything. Can you please be more specific? --Cyde Weys 19:38, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

recycling

I guess if your going to get your bot to keep on it's incredibly politically correct ramblings, eg. User Box Recycling (User is either for or against recyling...) you better change the rest of them.

I may or may not be from Australia, however I may or may not have visited or may or may not have seen it on TV. Or user may or not be a speaker of English, if user is not it/ she/ he does a good job at impersonating an english speaker.

This kind of PC nonsense is a big part of what's wrong with modern society!

Have a nice day!

Cydebot fixed a redirect on those templates and nothing more. I personally had nothing to do with the rewriting of the text on those templates. --Cyde Weys 23:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Double subst

Please see this: [2]. The bot substituted a test2 template for a subst:subst:test2, which clearly doesn't work. -- Consumed Crustacean | Talk | 04:04, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doubled subst:

Cydebot just made a very strange substitution on User talk:63.144.35.98 -- it replaced {{test1-n|Bio Performance Inc.}} with {{subst:subst:test1-n|Bio Performance Inc.}} (note the doubled subst:). I'm glad it brought attention to my mistaken lack of subst: in the first place, but the doubling is strange. -- dcclark (talk) 04:04, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh, that is very strange, I need to investigate what is going on. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. --Cyde Weys 04:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've rolled back all of the bad edits, modified Cydebot, and I'm going back in for a second try. --Cyde Weys 04:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Message from Bestghuran

I accept your apology and hopefully we can do a better job of communicating and working well with each other. Bestghuran 10:20 Pacific, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Cydebot accepts your apology. --Cyde Weys 00:21, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

bot overrun

Your bot just substituted all the templates on Wikipedia:Deletion process. That is an instruction page. It is intended to be show users how to close deletion discussions. The templates are deliberately left unsubstituted in order to be sure that the latest wording always shows through on the instruction page. Please exclude that page from your bot. Rossami (talk) 01:29, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth I think that page is confusing because all of those templates are supposed to be substituted yet the example page shows them being used unsubstituted. --Cyde Weys 01:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

user infidel

I don't understand why the bot is substing {{user infidel}} when the result of the DRV was undelete. It was undeleted and changed so why the subst? Maybe if you explain it to me, I'll understand. Thanks. — Natha n ^{(Got something to say? Say it.)} 01:24, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CfR with redirect oddity

The CfR for Cat:Synth pop said to rename and redirect the category to Cat:Synthpop; however, it was deleted instead and a redirect got placed on Category:Synthpop instead. You might want to have a look at that. –Unint 22:25, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

subst

Thanks for substituting the user warning templates I used. I learned yesterday to use the "subst", but never went back and corrected my mistake. -- Usgnus 18:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes

What changes did you make to my user page? Livin' Large 18:56, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kris18 Userpage

Please don't touch my userpage. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kris18 (talk • contribs) .

Request re Cydebot's updating metadata links

Hi Cyde,
When Cydebot replaces/updates metadata such as category links, could you program it to retain the position of any comments above/below/between them? In lieu of Bugzilla:167, I and I believe other editors find this kind of internal layout is more likely to keep the different types of metadata links sorted and clear to see, especially when editing article pages. (Cf Cydebot's recent internal reorganisation of the above example here.)
Thanks for your and Cydebot's work, David Kernow 20:28, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'm bringing this to the attention of the pyWikipediaBot mailing list because this definitely does need some fixing. Not only does it change the page formatting, it can cause some outright page errors, like if the category was previously inside of a <noinclude> tag or set as a {{nosubst}} parameter. --Cyde↔Weys 15:29, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lord President of the Council

Hi Cyde, I noticed you changed the name of the above category. The thing is I'm not sure it really is correct. I just left a message on Nema Fakei's talk page, the user who proposed the change in Categories for Deletion. Certainly this publication [3] calls them Lords President. Anyway I hope it's sorted out. Best.--Lo2u 15:33, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Something messed?

Can you take a look at this edit? The bot is too liberal in removing newlines. In two cases it removed too much, moving the table-closing |} tag too high, thus severely breaking the page's layout. Please fix it ASAP. Additionally, I don't understand why the categories were moved to the bottom, instead of being removed as the edit summary suggests? Misza 13 ^{T C} 08:07, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Prep schools

Change comment to Robot - Moving category per WP:CFD at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 June 2 instead of June 1. -- Usgnus 20:42, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah well, looks like someone messed up the section headings at WP:CFD/W :-/ Cyde↔Weys 20:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is kind of funny that there are two June 1's. :-) -- Usgnus 21:14, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Layout break

Your bot managed to completely break the layout of my userbox archive subpage when trying to place all the categories at the bottom of the page. A large amount of content ended up getting deleted, and the table layout was destroyed, so I had no choice but to revert it out. Just thought you should know. jgp (T|C) 13:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Attack of the killer Cydebots

Hi, Cyde. While I appreciate your zeal in following through on decisions and keeping Wikipedia up-to-date, sometimes your bot tends to mess up pages that users take pains to keep in a particular style, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AAvraham&diff=59396268&oldid=58399002 becoming http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Avraham&oldid=59396268 . I think it would be less obtrusive and more polite to have your bot put a notice on the user talk page instead of actually changing the page. I realize that this wasn't vandalism, and that you are doing what is good for wikipedia, but it still results in my page being changed for the worse without my knowledge. Thank you. -- Avi 16:58, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bad bot - on categories

This bot (Cydebot) - when unleashed for a specific task (i.e. removing a deleted category) SHOULD NOT do general cleanup. It breaks pages. Stick to the task at hand and do nothing else. Davodd 19:52, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More care is needed.

A little more care is needed in editing user's userboxes pages per this:

Before Cydebot: looks fine, doesn't it?
Cydebot's edit: removed one category, moved others to end, wrecked the page in doing so
After Cydebot (I repaired the damage): Fixed

Yes, I do assume good faith. Could you please try to be a little more careful? Thank you, Cyde. — Nathan ^(talk) 05:42, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I second that. Your bot did the same thing to my page. Look at[ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Raichu/Userboxes&diff=prev&oldid=59395500 this edit]. Raichu 16:20, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Fringe physics

Re your edit line: that is not what the CfD said! Please reread and revert yourself. ---CH 05:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CFD for Red Hot Chili Peppers move?

I can't find the CFD for "Moving category Bands from California to California musical groups per CFD at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 June 13." Ideogram 14:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's the first thing on the page you mentioned :-( Cyde↔Weys 00:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Football templates

Cydebot's latest task is substituting football templates, like {{nft}} and {{wc}}. These templates were being used inline with text as a shortcut for creating links ... templates really aren't supposed to be used this way, especially considering how much they hamper comprehension in edit mode. Additionally, some pages may want the full link text "2006 FIFA World Cup" (for example) and some pages may want the abbreviated link text "2006 World Cup" when the FIFA context is obvious. When everything is using the same standard template there's no way to customize. Now we can handle it on a page-by-page basis. --Cyde↔Weys 07:12, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

stop subst'ing

Leave the templates on the deletion process page alone!

--William Allen Simpson 23:41, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Deceased X-Men

A CfD was recently held on this category with the result of Delete. Yet for some reason you simply renamed the category to "X-Men" thus duplicating an already existing "X-Men members." Please correct this by deleting the category per the CfD vote. CovenantD 01:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cydebot on CFD and templates

Could you stop cydebot from editing templates and totally fucking them up? [4], for example, is doubleplusungood. A spot check of [5] shows that it barely (if ever) has an edit that doesn't screw the pooch on templates and I'm tired of cleaning up after it. Kotepho 09:25, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem appear to be that it isn't just doing a simple string substitution, but also reconfiguring the template in some arbitrary way. That certainly doesn't work when the template designers use noinclude around a blank (space) or asterisk (star) to category sort.

Personally, I always avoid that trick by duplicating the category, with and without the space. Fancy edits aren't guaranteed to work. Clean and simple is better.

Still, there are egregious bugs in Cydebot.

--William Allen Simpson 20:33, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I don't like using * or ' ' for the sortkey just to list the template in the category. a) it muddles the category (the template isn't a stamp!) and b) it only shows on the first page. Better to just edit the category itself and mention the template.

I think it isn't that he is trying to make it do something fancy, but that whatever he is using does this retarded thing where it moves all interwiki links and categories to the bottom and alpha sorts them. I know at least some AWB users do this, and invariably screw up things in the process. Kotepho 23:18, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that is doing something other than simple string substitution. And yes, AWB is a major PITA, too!

--William Allen Simpson 00:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It also isn't changing all instances of the categories, like here. Kotepho 01:14, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep this bot away from templates

Do not use this bot on templates again...it has done so much damage.
Lady Aleena talk/contribs 00:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another mangled page

This edit mangled the formatting of a user page. It looks like it was adding a whole bunch of inlined CSS. Since formatting can be quite complex, especially on user pages, perhaps your bot should refrain from touching any <div> tags. Dgies 09:03, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My page is also mangled

On 16 July this bot messed up the formatting of my heavily substed userpage. I am going to have to go through the whole thing line by line to work out what it's done to it. mge kelly 05:29, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CFD HTML comments

Cydebot moves HTML comments while doing category substitutions on the Oscars/Academy Awards bit. See for instance this edit. —Gabbe 16:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Huddersfield Town F.C. squad template

Please ask Cydebot to go through each of the articles linked from

to convert {{Huddersfield Town A.F.C. squad}} to {{Huddersfield Town F.C. squad}}
BlueValour 20:15, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now that's what I call efficient - many thanks. BlueValour 21:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Huddersfield Town A.F.C.

I need to rename Huddersfield Town A.F.C. to Huddersfield Town F.C.. However, there are a huge amount of pages linking that will need the references changing. Is this a task that Cydebot (or any other bot) could handle, please? BlueValour 12:53, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have now moved to Huddersfield Town F.C.. Can Cydebot help with the links, now, please? BlueValour 21:50, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot breaking userpages

Your bot broke my userpage's layout completely: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Dark_Shikari&oldid=66000953 , so I reverted it.

I can see what the bot is trying to do (and its a good thing), but it probably made a mistake somewhere in the tables and ended up ruining the layout. You should see if you can fix the bot's coding to ensure it doesn't break userpages in the future. And since you're the one deleting all the userboxes... yes, I'm sorry, I use too many userboxes. I'll get around to deleting most of the more useless ones sometime. Dark Shikari 19:24, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It broke mine too [6] and a few others I checked. (I guess it's my fault 'cause I'm an userbox junkie just like the two previous complainers :) Good luck with repairing the bot. regards, – Alensha ^talk 21:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neal Winter

Cydebot has created a redlink in the category People of Sydney. Please fix. - Richardcavell 23:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your bot minorly screwed up my page...

The bot that just went round altering the Wikipedians who are fans of the Simpsons category wrecked the layout of my userpage. It moved all the references to any Categories to the bottom of the page, and removed essential line breaks in tables that kept the page inside margins [7]. I'm sure this is a one off, but can you please check over the bot to make sure this doesn't happen again. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξ φ 11:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the same subject, your bot did this to my Userpage. I'd rather you left a talkpage message for me to change whatever needs changing than set a badly programmed bot to do it - an annoyed MTC 15:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your bot has also ruined my user page as well, so that it looks ridiculous with all the text included at the end of a column containing all the userboxes. If a change is to be made, why not get the bot to leave a message asking us to do it manually? DDS ^talk 20:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another dissatisfied customer :). Your bot kind of messed up my userpage while trying to change [[Category:User British English]] into [[Category:User BrE]]. I appreciate the work your bot does, but that edit would've been less work to me than reverting your bot's edit and making the change myself. Cheers --Bakanov (talk • contribs) 21:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(copied from operator talk): Cyde, several editors have been complaining that your bot is breaking their userpages when removing categories. The complaints don't seem to have anything to do with the removal of the category, but that you are also doing "general cleanup" type operations. Can you reconfigure your bot to not make cleanup edits such as moving white space or links around in the User: namespace? There are also a few queries on Cydebot's talk page that you may want to reply to if you have not already. Thanks, — xaosflux ^Talk 01:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strange

This bot has reinserted the new category into most, but not all the underground stations on the Glasgow Subway. Hmmmm. It also seems the new category does not seem to exist, even though you can go there and see the stations!?. Simply south 21:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Userboxtop

Your bot has messed up my Userpage, it put the entire contents of the page inside the box for my userboxes created with Template:Userboxtop. I have reverted the edits. JP Godfrey (Talk to me) 20:27, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop breaking the layouts of people's userpages

Seriously. This is the second time your bot has done this to my page. You've received numerous complaints from other Wikipedians, and you've done nothing about it. Fix your bot. jgp (T|C) 04:47, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is unbelievable...

Your bloody bot screwed up my userpage AGAIN!! [8] Will an admin please block this idiotic machine, before it fills up Wikipedia's servers with useless (and reverted) edit diffs. BLOCK THIS BOT! It is becoming a menace to Wikipedia, and it still hasn't been fixed despite the huge number of requests. And the annoying thing is that the bot screwed up my page by performing EXACTLY THE SAME EDIT that it did last time it changed my userpage. Which I of course reverted, and I am now going to revert this edit. This is an urgent plea: PLEASE BLOCK THIS BOT. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξ φ 15:59, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not that bad. It only screwed 2 boxes, putting the closing |} tags without a newline before them, which I've fixed. Other that that, it works pretty well. Misza 13 ^{T C} 16:26, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

British or English

How come there are two categories for the models? Lil Flip246 22:20, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Which models? Give me links. Not having anything to go on, I'm going to guess that's one of those weird British idiosyncracies ... you know, England refers to just England, whereas Britain also includes Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. --Cyde Weys 22:22, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are two categories. English models and British models. What's the difference?? Lil Flip246 22:24, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly as Cyde explained. Just like having Texas models and USA models. BlueValour 04:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your bot

Has made a number of undesired edits to New York City Subway articles, which I will now start the very tedious process of reverting. Please ensure that your bot does not touch these articles in the future. Marc Shepherd 15:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Man, reading through this page makes it pretty clear—these bots need to be reigned in. I think we have some people who hit enter to run a Perl script and go "Wheeeee!", leaving a trail of brokenness that must be laboriously unbroken... It's cool being a dev, but it's not so cool if your bots actually increase human work time! There really needs to be some serious talk about this, featuring people prepared to raise developer hackles if that's what it takes. JDG 15:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Maybe this should be reported on WP:ANI? Or maybe filing an RfC against Cyde might get something done, considering how he doesn't seem to listen to any comments about his bot. jgp ^T_C 15:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eh? Apparently, Cydebot is not approved to muck with categories [9]. And mucking with categories has been the cause of all of Cydebot's layout breaks. Interesting. jgp ^T_C 16:16, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm... Looking into it. JDG 23:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heart You

Cydebot:

Don't listen to these mean people and that mean old Cyde. You are loved. We all love you. Smooch. Bastique▼^parler _voir 18:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

broken user page, courtesy of Cydebot

I'm not angry or upset, so let's get that straight first. However, Cydebot didn't just change one category (from Category:Nurse Wikipedians to Category:Wikipedian nurses) in one little userbox, as the edit summary suggests.

Instead, Cydebot took all the categories out of every userbox that was substed and moved each outside the "</div>" tag of the userbox code, but still inside the userboxbox. This had the effect of putting the entire content of my page into the userboxbox.

Here's the diff between what Cydebot did and what it should have done. It only did this for substed userboxes, obviously, because those are the only categories listed in the userboxbox itself - the rest are coded into the template for each particular userbox.

Other users who can't read HTML might think this bot is malicious when it's not. It's a simple fix - revert back to the version just before Cydebot, saving that version, then changing the category manually. Having said that, Cydebot needs a checkup. A simple category change shouldn't mess up every substed box on the page. Baseball,Baby! ^balls^•^strikes 20:04, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's done the same with mine. I spent a while trying to fix it by messing with the tags it inserted, with no success. I eventually gave up and reverted. Please fix your bot. Modest Genius ^talk 21:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It did the same to my userpage. It'll be a nice lesson in HTML to get it back to normal. No anger here, just please fix your bot. Blarneytherinosaur 03:50, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem is that when moving category links to the bottom of the page, you should only remove the carriage return at the source location if the category link was the only thing on that line.

One approach to fixing this would be to implement it as

Cut the category link, but not the carriage return, from the source line
Iff the source line is now blank, remove the carriage return
Paste the category link, with a carriage return, to the target line

Snottygobble 05:46, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm here with a similar problem - my user page is a complete mess now, and I'm not sure how to fix it. I'll try the method someone outlined above. Please, don't make huge changes by 'bot unless you know and control the effect on the overall page. Thanks! Karen | Talk | contribs 18:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There was a small mistake made similar to these on my userboxes page, which I reverted. Should we move this to User talk:Cyde? —$ΡЯΙNGεrαgђ (-¢|ε|Ŀ|T|♪-) 23:08, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Block

I've blocked the bot per a request on ANI until some issues are addressed. (Please review if you are an outside admin.) Grand master ka 05:46, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Blocking a bot which is misbehaving is perfectly routine and not at all - AFAIC - a snub on it's operator. So, of course, as an outside admin I support the block although I think it's perfectly OK for Cyde to unblock it himself once he's fixed it. --kingboyk 07:15, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Right. I just saw a message on Cyde's userpage complaining about the bot for the umpteenth time, and was about to block it myself. Kusma (討論) 12:39, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Request of re-categorization

Could you use your bot to re-categorize the entries in the following categories to entries in the categoeries Maps of XX (XX being te name of the country):

The purpose is to make the categories identical to the categories in Commons. Electionworld Talk? 11:43, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Screwed up userpages

Check this I don't know anything about anything else you do, but you probably don't want this. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 16:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hidden Hand

Can you help to disambiguate the music band from the expression?? Ludvikus 11:28, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cabinet Jagland‎

You(r bot) remove the category:cabinet of norway from Cabinet Jagland‎ stating "Emptying out deleted category Cabinet of norway" but it has not even been proposed for deletion. C mon 19:07, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise, it removed the "English cartographers" category from Laurence Nowell with the misleading edit summary "Robot - Emptying out deleted category English Cartographers". Again, this category has not even been proposed for deletion, let alone deleted. Please fix this: at least fix the edit summary to give a truthful reason for the decategorisation, whatever that reason is. — Haeleth Talk 09:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also removed the botanical "Cannas" category and then removed all references to it with a similar message. The category had not been proposed for deletion. Why?

It's doing the same to a number of footballers by club categories as well Markspearce

Category:H. P. Lovecraft stories

As far as I know this category has not been deleted--it's still there, and there's no CFD notice on it. Nareek 17:38, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind--it removed two categories that were mistyped. Nareek 17:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And another one...

Cydebot broke the layout of Template:GMail, it moved a category link to inside the table definition code. Judging by the type of mistake made, and the amount of remarks on this page, you should definetly do some better bug-checking before you release your bot, Cyde! -- Peter 19:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't edit my user page.

Please put my user page, user:msh210, on this bot's blacklist (or whatever it's called) so that it will not edit it. It has ruined it in the past. Thanks.—msh210℠ 21:50, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Smarter functions?

Cydebot just removed two "rated x by the x orgnization" categories from many video game articles. Is there some smarter way to program it so it removes both categories in one edit instead of doing it one at a time? Just curious. Hbdragon88 05:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Editing categories within noinclude tags on template pages

See this edit [10] --- RockMFR 01:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Animal liberation movement

Is there a reason why Category:Animal liberation movement was deleted and a new page Category:Animal rights movement created? Could not the category have been moved? That way the edit history would have been preserved. In this case I wanted to examine the history? Also could the talk page be moved as well? --Salix alba (talk) 15:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:POSIX web browsers

I think this category is silly. You may not be aware of this, but Windows itself is POSIX compliant, so the windows browsers which are very carefully being excluded from this list should belong to that category. In that case, the category is meaningless. ... aa:talk 21:44, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Current governors of the United States

The vote [11] was to rename not remove as was done here: [12] or are you just going to wait for the dust to settle on the elections? -Ravedave ^{(help name my baby)} 05:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Cydebot, seeing as you know how to edit the Categories sections (I don't). Would you either remove the gov-elect's names from the Category -list of Governors of 'said state'- or perhaps add '(elect' to the gov-elects names [eg. in Alaska, Pallin (elect)]. Please & Thank you. GoodDay 17:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vier gegen Z

I was checking up on articles I created and when I came to this article I saw that Cydebot visited it to "[Empty] out deleted category German children television series." However, I can't find any evidence it was ever deleted. Can you clarify? - Mgm|^(talk) 12:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mistake on noinclude tag

Just noticed [13]. Otherwise keep up the great work! the wub "?!" 13:27, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CFD categories

I noticed that in Category:United Methodist bishops by U.S. State, you moved the CFD categories out of the CFD message into the list of normal categories. Was this intentional? --Alynna 05:33, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working getting very full

Hi, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working is getting very full at the moment - in the coming days are you able to deploy your bot on some of the requests there? Cheers and Merry Christmas. Timrollpickering 14:48, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Mythological Objects

Category:Mythological Objects is incorrectly capitalized per Wikipedia's standard sentence case for titles comprised of non-proper nouns. (To quote the second sentence of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories): "Standard article naming conventions also apply; in particular, do not capitalise regular nouns.") Please stop this bot from moving articles into this malformed category and replace it with Category:Mythological objects instead. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Broken?

Look at the edit history for Category:Alias (TV series) characters. Looks like the bot did not cleanup correctly. Vegaswikian 07:44, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh gosh, that was a uniquely bad situation. First of all, the guy who nominated it for CFD didn't do it exactly correctly, and he left an extraneous parenthesis in there. And then, for some reason the category was included in itself, so Cydebot first came through and moved the category (thus reshuffling the categories to the bottom), and then later came through and tried to remove all of the CFD tag when shifting the text to the new article. The CFD maintenance categories, however, had already been moved to the bottom because the category was included in itself :-( A bizarre situation all around. --Cyde Weys 06:59, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Editing talk pages

When this bot edits talk pages, would it be possible to program it to not move the category link to the bottom, and instead make sure it's above the first heading, so the link doesn't get lost when new sections are added to the bottom of the page through the new section link. Thanks. Tra (Talk) 22:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting Category:Members of the 110th United States Congress who have served in the United States Military

As the result of the discussion Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 December 29 was listify and delete, please direct me to the list.Isaac Crumm 06:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Where

I'm not necessarily saying this shouldn't have happened - but where is the dbate for this run. Robot - Moving category Lloyd Alexander books to Books by Lloyd Alexander per CFD at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 December 31.) as I can't see it in this location. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 08:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked, wrong link

Cydebot is rolling out a CFD decision, but pointing to the wrong date in the edit summary. I have blocked. Can someone fix this and unblock (or I will) please? Hesperian 04:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Should be Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 3. Hesperian 04:29, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed and unblocked. Apparently the CFD subpage format was changed from "Categories for deletion" to "Categories for discussion" as the new year rolled over. --Cyde Weys 13:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cydebot category renaming bug?

It looks like Cydebot is sometimes having trouble renaming categories. For example, see the newly created Category:Members of Kiss. The symptom is that it's sometimes leaving Category:Categories for speedy renaming or Category:Categories for renaming and Category:CfD 2007-01 in the newly created category. At least this is better than the old drinibot bug, which would sometimes propagate the entire cfr tag into the new category.

There were a few other examples I've already fixed, such as Category:Genesis (band) songs and Category:Genesis (band) members. -- Prove It ^(talk) 14:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Aircraft manufactured in {{{nation}}}

Hello Cyde,

Although I appreciate the goal of the renaming, your scheme does not accurately describe the categories it contains. For example, Dornier aircraft are categorised as German, but manufactured in Italy. The CF-18 Hornet is categorised as Canadian, but is manufactured in the United States. I could go on for a good long time.

Anyway, as you seem to have done this renaming unilaterally rather than by going through CFD, I would appreciate it very much if you could move all categories in Category:Aircraft by country back to their original locations. Karl Dickman ^talk 07:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

KIDS INC

Why did you edit?74.195.3.199 21:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good Times actors vs. Good Times cast members

I see a problem with this category renaming. Suddenly anyone who made a single guest appearance on the show is labelled as a "cast member"?! This isn't accurate... and it isn't right. Plus it's confusing. I think this category change should be undone, or more clearly defined. Zephyrad 23:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Illinois related ships

I was wondering if you could use this bot to fix all the articles that it pointed to Category:United States Navy Illionois-related ships and replace it with the correct spelling of Illinois. ie. Category:United States Navy Illinois-related ships. Thanks. --Dual Freq 23:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I spotted this thread (while studying bots), and took a look at the cat. Since it only had a handful of pages listed, I went ahead and cleaned it up with WP:AWB. If you have at least 500 edits under your belt, you should sign up for it. It's pretty easy to use. The Transhumanist 23:15, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And I tagged the mispelled cat for deletion. The Transhumanist 23:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summary

What with the edit summary? Example (from Category:Historically Dutch-American colleges): (Robot: Moved from Category:Historically Dutch-American colleges. Authors: 13:50, 16 October 2006, 12:53, 16 October 2006, 05:19, 17 October 2006, 02:29, 18 October 2006, 00:20, 25 January 2006, 00:22, 25 January 2006, 03:06, 18 October 2006, 12:21, 1) These are not the authors as stated but the dates of the edits. What is it supposed to be showing? Rmhermen 03:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a automated to all bot operators

Please take a few moments and fill in the data for your bot on Wikipedia:Bots/Status Thank you Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding your edit to Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest:

Your recent edit to Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest (diff) was reverted by an automated bot. You have been identified as a new user or a logged out editor using a hosting or shared IP address to add email addresses, phone numbers, YouTube, Geocities, Myspace, Facebook, blog, forum, or other such free-hosting website links to a page. Please note that such links are generally to be avoided. You can restore any other content by editing the page and re-adding that content. The links can be reviewed and restored by established users. Thank you for contributing! // VoABot II 12:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Automated message to bot owners

As a result of discussion on the village pump and mailing list, bots are now allowed to edit up to 15 times per minute. The following is the new text regarding bot edit rates from Wikipedia:Bot Policy:

Until new bots are accepted they should wait 30-60 seconds between edits, so as to not clog the recent changes list and user watchlists. After being accepted and a bureaucrat has marked them as a bot, they can edit at a much faster pace. Bots doing non-urgent tasks should edit approximately once every ten seconds, while bots who would benefit from faster editing may edit approximately once every every four seconds.

Also, to eliminate the need to spam the bot talk pages, please add Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard to your watchlist. Future messages which affect bot owners will be posted there. Thank you. --Mets501 00:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Surnames

Hello, regarding your removals of the Chinese surname categories, those articles need to have the names of the individuals placed in the lists of individuals in each surname article--a condition of the agreement made when the categories were deleted. By doing what you're doing, you're unfortunately making that impossible. This is yet another case where doing it by hand is infinitely better than in an automated manner. Go in and retrace all of the removals you've done, take the person's name, and add it in the lists of notable individuals in each surname article. Thank you for this. Badagnani 04:24, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Date of birth unknown

Why are you now removing "Date of birth unknown" cats without going in and putting in the proper cats ("Year of birth missing")? Any normal, responsible, conscientious Wikipedian would do so, and you are not exempt. Please go back and do this by hand, as you should have done in the first place. Not to do so is disrespectful to the community and to knowledge in general. Badagnani 04:42, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Needed function under Cyde/List of candidates for speedy deletion

Any chance that you could sort the articles by time in the list, maybe as a subpage? With the speedy category getting so large, it seems that many of the items sit there for days. Even better, create as a sortable table so it could be viewed either way? Vegaswikian 07:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also having the number of entries would be nice. Vegaswikian 07:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Computer games are not video games!

Computer games are not damn video games! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.180.66.13 (talk) 10:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Why did you do this?

Why did you move someone from Piacenza to Pisa? They're entirely different regions of Italy. Did you move others erroneously, as well? Badagnani 09:45, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CfD: Category:People who have renounced Judaism

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 April 19#Category:People who have renounced Judaism. Thank you. IZAK 09:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Game screenshots are NOT all non-free

Please be careful of automatically changing all game screenshots to non-free game screenshots. With open source software this is very much not the case. Entro-P 06:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

{{game-screenshot}} is a fair use template though. The whole point of it is to tag non-free images. If the images are actually free, which screenshots of GPLed games might well be, they should have a different tag on them indicating that they are free content. "Game-screenshot" is not a template that identifies something as a screenshot of a game; rather, it is a template that is used to justify fair use exemption on an image (abiding by our guidelines on how game screenshots can be used). The new name will help clear this up. --Cyde Weys 19:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(copied from User talk:Entro-p) You're correct: not all game screenshots are non-free. That's actually a large part of the reason the templates are being renamed! The original template on the page was the game-screenshot template. The text of that template, however, indicated that it was a "fair use" licensing template, and should only ever have been applied to non-free images. It wasn't simply to label all game screenshots regardless of licensing status. The templates are being renamed to indicate that they are licensing templates, not categorization templates, and to make it easier to identify non-free content.

For that reason, your message on Cydebot's edit is misleading. It's not "erroneous"—the person who originally placed the template was the one in error. I would hate to see someone read that and mistakenly block it thinking that it was going around and making incorrect edits, because it's doing exactly the right thing. If you can think of other open-source/free software game images where this would also be a problem, your help would very much be welcome in putting the correct templates on them! Cheers, Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 20:08, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for clearing that up for me. My appologies for my missunderstanding of the true nature of this. I was actually the one that originally put up that shot - so I've only myself to blame :) Entro-P 21:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, no problem... Good reason to rename it, then; it confuses people. :-) Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 23:11, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Beatles Box Set album cover (cardboard box)

Why would you classify the album cover as "non-free" when I happen to own the box and scanned the box myself. I'm also giving the right to redistribute the album cover by my submission of the album cover for the article The Beatles Box Set. Steelbeard1 23:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright is another matter. You really need to read and understand Wikipedia:Non-free content - it's not freely-licenced content, so it has to be tagged as "non-free". It may be fair use, but our policy is somewhat more restrictive than the mere US legal definition - David Gerard 22:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images (once again)

well i noticed that your bot had a little fun adventure in going to tag all the images i had uploaded for the black legions. i took them myself! you can search the web for them, and you will not find better quality ones. that is my proof! i also noticed that this incident has happened in the past, looking at the reports up here.... do something about it. this is ridiculous. either you are assuming, or your just being a jerk...- HDS —The preceding unsigned comment was added by HDS (talk • contribs) 18:19, April 23, 2007 (UTC)

HDS, though you scanned or photographs the covers of albums yourself, the copyright to them is not owned by you. By uploading an album cover, whether photographed by you or not, you are asserting that the use on Wikipedia is a fair use under United States copyright law and that you are complying with Wikipedia:Non-free content policy. Cydebot is a robot that is programmed to change all of the instances of {{albumcover}} to {{non-free album cover}} in hopes to eliminate this ambiguity. If a robot can be a jerk, can someone pinch me? This must be a dream... :-) Hope this clears things up, Iamunknown 18:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

haha ok i get it. i thought it was one of those warnings that went to wiki admins for deletion. i apologize. -HDS

Even more Images

Understanding that this bot was created with the expressed intention to eliminate instances of tagging copyright ambiguity...on the NYSP Wiki page the NYSP logo image was changed from being tagged as a "logo" to a "non-free logo". I reverted the edit. I did this because this is not a non-free logo; this is a free logo.

This logo was free in both its acquisition and it is free in its distribution. The image was scanned from a magnet logo that was given to me by a NYSP recruiter, I paid nothing thus the acquisition was free. At the bottom of the NYSP website it says to quote, "Information on the NYSP website is presented as a community service. Reproductions of information or images taken from the NYSP website must be used for the sole purpose of supplying information as a non-reimbursable, community service." I am not getting paid to edit Wiki, and I am supplying information. Albeit, the part about community service is highly subjective...but the website makes no clear attempt at quantifying what use constitutes community service and what does not. I have made no attempt to portray this organization negatively, incorrectly, or with bias and there have been no attempts by the organization to remove the page or logo. I am not here to argue that editing or adding to Wiki merits equality with actions of community service, but I am arguing that this image is very much FREE. cprockhill 04:27, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That the "logo was free in both its acquisition and it is free in its distribution" does not mean that it is free by our Wikipedia:Non-free content standard. Image licenses must permit both commercial reuse and derivative works and by your post you seem to indicate that not both of those terms are in the license.

Furthermore, the tag {{logo}} has always been used to tag non-free logos. The general confusion surrounding this is why the image copyright tags are being renamed; if you have a digital reproduction of a seal that is in the public domain, for example, it should not be tagged with {{seal}}, it should be tagged with the appropriate public domain image copyright tag; if, however, it is non-free, it should be tagged with {{seal}}. Thus the ambiguity.

The template {{logo}} currently redirects to {{non-free logo}}, so the image is currently tagged with {{non-free logo}} nonetheless, and that is the way it should stay per our policy regarding Wikipedia:Non-free content. Hope this helps clear things up. --Iamunknown 04:33, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I read the page on [Non free content policy]. This has cleared up a lot of points. It does seem for anyone who is not completely versed that all tags fall into either free or un-free categories (that makes sense of course)--if that seems like a duh statement then whatever...that being said this systematically effort to change all tags from {{logo}} to {{non-free logo}} is pointless if they mean the same thing...anyone on wiki who reads that page I linked to above will know that when they see the {{logo}} tag that this means that this is "not free". I understood this from day one when I put this tag on a scanned picture (I had to read and learn how to do it and what the tags meant). I never read that I needed to add the word free or not free (the quality of free or not free are intrinsic to whatever tag is choosen)...and when that bot put the word non-free in my tag I thought there was a mayor change made in the way tagging is being done...which is not the case. I don't think if I write the word blue I should have to write color-blue...people familiar with the English language know that blue is a color and therefore people using Wiki should know that the logo tag means not free. If we see that this is not the case then by all means go and fix it...that is what an editable encyclopedia is for. Hope that makes more sense too. Thanks cprockhill 05:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That analogy may be partly true. My hope for this rename, however, is that editors will be more aware that these image tags are not meant to be put on image descriptions because the image is that something (logo, screenshot, etc.) but that the templates indicate whether or not the template is free or non-free. I see where you are coming from suggesting that it is unnecessary; hopefully it will, however, eliminate the ambiguity. (Oh and thanks for reading through the policy! I'm not too sure many editors do that!) Regards, Iamunknown 05:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One of the other drivers for the change is because previously there was no naming standard for the templates and anyone can and did add new ones.. So there were hundreds of them, including many duplicates.. So anyone writing software to deal with our images had to worry about all these templates because making software smart enough to figure out the meaning of one is a very hard task. The new names will make it trivial for software to identify all the non-free ones. And of course, while you might have understood that logos were non-free .. several of the other folks who have complained did so because they were using a "fair use" template on something which actually was free, or because they thought content that wasn't free was... Not everyone can be an expert, just like not every english speaker knows that "Ochre" is a color. --Gmaxwell 05:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes...I read the policy..I am anal retentive ;) and there is a part of me that understands wanting to be as specific as possible. I completely understand what you are attempting to tackle; the lack of regard when tagging an image so as to very specifically pick the proper copyright, and the seemlingly endless temptation to simply add a tag not in the hopes of making an image legal to be placed onto Wiki but simply because the name of the tag template seems to describe the picture that was uploaded--very frustrating. I will keep the one I changed to just logo if you don't mind, since I understand the tagging to a fair degree and the added redundancy just goes against my better nature. However, for those out there that are just not getting it, the final explanation of purpose is something that I can get behind and something that I think might help drive home the point. All I can say is very Good luck--great talking with you! cprockhill 05:31, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ochre is a color...I thought it was used in reference to money...espeically gold coins...hmmmm color....hmmmm how strange

(kill indents) Cprockhill — Unfortunately, I'm not sure that you understand the meaning of "free" in this context. It's free as in speech, not free as in beer. The image that you speak of has restrictive use guidelines on it: "Reproductions of information or images taken from the NYSP website must be used for the sole purpose of supplying information as a non-reimbursable, community service." This makes it non-free, hence the non-free template is appropriate. If it actually was available freely, you wouldn't need to use a fair use template at all, and {{logo}} was exclusively a fair use template. At some point the bot is going to go through and revert your change from {{Non-free logo}} to {{Logo}} because once we're done with all of these the old template names are going to be deleted. --Cyde Weys 14:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Needless and misunderstood ESPN College Football category removal

The category that you just recently had removed only featured the various college football related programs on ESPN, the list of personalities, and notable Bowl games that they broadcast. You're still going by the critiera of individual announcers being listed in the category. TMC1982 (talk) 11:24 p.m., 30 December 2008 (UTC)

You freaking did it again with the Major League Baseball on television categories!!! Did you even get my first message about how I don't like you doing that!? TMC1982 (talk) 1:55 a.m., 4 January 2008 (UTC)

New Book--Charles Panici page

Good afternoon, my name is Michael Volpe. I'm an investigative journalist and I just published a book that took an inside view of the trial. It's called Prosecutors Gone Wild: The Inside Story of the Trial of Chuck Panici, John Gliottoni, and Louise Marshall.

In it, I prove that the trial was a farce designed to get Panici. I prove this by carefully examining hundreds of documents from the trial and other proceedings related to the trial.

I show that Nick LoBue was the original target of the feds. He faced a five count RICO indictment in 1990. Then, he began cooperating with the feds. He told them that he was merely acting as a bagman for the real criminal mastermind, Chuck Panici, he told them.

For saying this, most of the charges against him were dropped. Instead, Panici faced nearly the exact same five count RICO indictment for all the same crimes in 1992.

I show numerous incidents in which there was contradictory testimony, where witness's testimony would evolve given the venue, and all sorts of other examples of corruption in the trial.

I hope that an editor could take a look at my book. A link to it is below. Though I'd be happy to send a free copy to anyone willing to look at the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Prosecutors-Gone-Wild-Gliottoni-ebook/dp/B009X23G70/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1351540976&sr=8-3&keywords=michael+volpe

Help

I need help to write an article Christiana Onwunali (talk) 22:18, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]