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Question

I have created a page (https://hy.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D5%8E%D5%AB%D6%84%D5%AB%D5%BA%D5%A5%D5%A4%D5%AB%D5%A1:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage), but in program AWB disappeared option bot (skip...start), and bots can not work (BekoBot is not enable to use this). Why?--6AND5 (talk) 19:26, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@6AND5: At Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage the user/bot account names don't have the "User:" prefix, so I suggest you remove "Մասնակից:" from your page. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:59, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
(More) You'll get a quicker and probably better response to questions like this one if you ask at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser. More AWB users watch that page. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:01, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Thank you--6AND5 (talk) 20:17, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
For all the edits I've seen in my watchlist from you - RoyalMate1 06:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Thank you! -- John of Reading (talk) 07:05, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Cheers!

Thank you for fixing those Harvard refs on Boston Corbett. I *knew* they should link up to something and not be those dead ends but I was trying to make something work that another editor initiated - am SO glad I now know how to fix Harvard refs for the next time. So cheers! Shearonink (talk) 16:30, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! I've just made another edit there, too. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:33, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Carolina Neurath

 — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:21, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@Crisco 1492: Thanks, but I surely don't deserve this! I merely fixed a typo. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:03, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Jahidhasanovey ‎

Thanks. I deleted the picture, the article talk page, their sandbox, their user space and blocked them (that looks really bad when you type it out like that). All they had ever done was create an article about themselves and made promotional edits in their user space. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 21:56, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

@CambridgeBayWeather: Looks bad, but it needed to be done. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Direct calls to Infobox

Hi,

Could you recreate this list for me, please, at a new page, using the latest data? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:38, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I'll put this on my list for tomorrow. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:39, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
To John of Reading, I mentioned you, and this request of Pigsonthewing's to you, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment#Statement_by_Doncram. --doncram 18:46, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing and Doncram: Wikipolitics? Oh dear. Definitely not my scene. I'll leave this, then, until/unless I receive an explicit go-ahead from a member of the Arbitration Committee. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:00, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm recused as an arbitrator for the topic of infoboxes, so I cannot give you an explicit go-ahead (or otherwise). However, speaking only as an ordinary editor I see this as part of Doncram's ongoing harassment of Andy rather than a violation of any restriction. If you would like a statement from the a committee member, then you will need to ask directly. Thryduulf (talk) 11:18, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Portal edits

Hi John, maybe it's just me but when I switch to "mobile view" instead of "desktop view" on my iPhone, I can't see much... e.g. P:OXFORD, just the header section (stopping at "Show new selections below", no actual content); P:ENGLAW and P:POKE, similarly just the header section. Is there a problem? BencherliteTalk 18:23, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

@Bencherlite: I hope my edits have fixed one problem, but there might well be others. My mobile phone isn't much use for testing, so I've been relying on viewing the mobile URLs on Firefox in a narrow window. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:51, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Portal:Business and Economics

The portal is now completely functional, I think we need more people to collaborate now, I'm doing some research for some articles I think are important. Lbertolotti (talk) 19:51, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Review needed

Hi John, It has been a long time since you reviewed War of the Pacific for last time. We know it is a Sisyphus work. I tried it hard, but it could be a good idea that you take a look in the article again to expulse typos and grammar errors as you make masterly. Probably you will find some Spanglish "constructions" that must be "Angloized". Of course you are encouraged to get involved in the production of the article!. Thanks in advance, --Keysanger (talk) 12:43, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Keysanger: I've read through the article and made some small edits here and there. I've added {{clarify}} in three places; hopefully the "reason" parameters will help you improve the text in those places. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:24, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
I corrected (capital->capitalist; helmet->hamlet; captured Pisco) + minor changes. Best regards, --Keysanger (talk) 20:46, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
@Keysanger: It would have taken me a few days to think of "hamlet"! -- John of Reading (talk) 22:27, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Temple Theatre (Saginaw, Michigan), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page White Christmas. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:27, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Fixed -- John of Reading (talk) 09:31, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Interesting namesake

Thanks for picking up the minor problem at Wombridge Priory. I'm working on Roger Northburgh at the moment and have included reference to a 14th century namesake of yours - the forger not the theologian. Sjwells53 (talk) 00:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

@Sjwells53: "John of Reading was convicted of felony, and ... hanged for his crime". I'd better watch out! -- John of Reading (talk) 08:46, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Portal:Energy

I noticed the Tesla bio at this portal was 8 years old and a little bit erroneous so I re-wrote it. The portal still shows the old bio and I assume its a script posting/rotating them. Since you seem to watch the page I thought you might know how to purge or force update the portal bio (scripts are above my pay grade ;)). Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 16:02, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

@Fountains of Bryn Mawr: Yes, the portal page needed to be purged. Just below the "Introduction" box is a link "Refresh page contents" which does just that. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:07, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

The Big Ben Atomic Clock created January 2015

Hi John

I was merely stating a fact. Other contributors on the pages such as radio stations, are identified.

How do I not break the rules. Do you want me to remove the hyperlinks

Steve — Preceding unsigned comment added by BigBenAtomic (talk • contribs) 17:10, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

@BigBenAtomic: Your edits and user name strongly suggest that you are here to advertise a piece of software. Please don't. If and when it becomes a well-known piece of software, worth mentioning in a global encyclopedia, then other editors will add it. You've been left two long messages on your talk page; please have a look through those. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:19, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Apologies

Hi John. I take onboard what you said. If you want to totally remove me from Wilkipedia I understand. I am gaining recognition around the world for my software. When other users suggest this, and not me, I guess then it will be seen as not advertising.

Best Regards

Steve — Preceding unsigned comment added by BigBenAtomic (talk • contribs) 17:27, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

That's about right, yes. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:31, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I can hardly believe it

Looking at pages on wikidata I am quite surprised to see the option of 'Scots'. It's quite news to me to hear it described as a language rather than a dialect. Of course the older language, Scottish Gaelic is, but we're talking here of modern usages, not translation into a dead (or at best moribund) language. Conversely languages which aren't dead and spoken by tens of millions don't seem to be included. I am thinking here of my particular interest, pages Filipino. Filipino language, often (usually incorrectly called Tagalog) isn't there, nor are Ilonggos and Waray-waray. Cebuano however is included. So I have had to mark many demonyms as Cebuano even though they're not, but that's marginally better than (not English and not Spanish).--Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Tue 12:22, wikitime= 04:22, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

@Unbuttered Parsnip: Are you referring to the "Language select" item in the left sidebar at pages like this one? Since Wikidata is about forming links between articles in different Wikipedias, I guess the list of "languages" is actually a list of Wikipedias. But Tagalog is included in that list, so I may be looking at the wrong list. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:25, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
No, I was referring to the actual wikidata item, target of 'Wikidata item' click on. This brings up a page with early section "In other languages". Previously this included Scots but just recently there seems to have been a mass edit as it now shows fil. There is no entry in history for these edits. fil of course is not actually any language name. There is no discernible way of editing this section.
I was also referring to e.g. demonym which requires a language. The languages available do not include any Filipino languages except Cebuano, which I think is only third or fourth most widely spoken.--Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Wed 16:00, wikitime= 08:00, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
@Unbuttered Parsnip: OK. I jumped from Castle of Park to wikidata:Q2339964 and I saw the default set of languages: Scots, Welsh and Bengali. Why those? No idea. But after I read wikidata:Help:Multilingual and set up my Wikidata user page with a "babel" template, I'm now seeing my chosen languages, French and Latin. So that looks to be the next step for you to try. But I'm not seeing the word "denonym" anywhere. As you can guess by now, I'm not a good source of help on editing Wikidata! -- John of Reading (talk) 08:44, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 4 February

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:21, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed -- John of Reading (talk) 07:11, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

About your (non)participation in the January 2012 SOPA vote

Hi. I am Piotr Konieczny (User:Piotrus), you may know me as an active content creator (see my userpage), but I am also a professional researcher of Wikipedia. Recently I published a paper (downloadable here) on reasons editors participated in Wikipedia's biggest vote to date (January 2012 WP:SOPA). I am now developing a supplementary paper, which analyzes why many editors did not take part in that vote. Which is where you come in :) You are a highly active Wikipedian, and you were active back during the January 2012 discussion/voting for the SOPA, yet you did not chose to participate in said vote. I'd appreciate it if you could tell me why was that so? For your convenience, I prepared a short survey at meta, which should not take more than a minute of your time. I would dearly appreciate you taking this minute; not only as a Wikipedia researcher but as a fellow content creator and concerned member of the community (I believe your answers may help us eventually improve our policies and thus, the project's governance). PS. If you chose to reply here (on your userpage), please WP:ECHO me. Thank you! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 15:03, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey John, any chance you could help me out with this? Few more responses would really be very valuable to me. As the 29th most active Wikipedian, your input really does matter. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 16:20, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
@Piotrus: I emailed a response. If it went missing, post again here and I'll try to remember what I wrote. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:23, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Thank you, I see it now. Much obliged! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 16:28, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

thanks for having my back

The bot made one of its little boo-boos last night[1], and I got distracted before fixing it, and when I went back this morning to take care of it, to my surprise I couldn't find it -- because you'd already gotten to it! [2] Eagle eye. Thanks. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:19, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

@Scs: I happened to have that archive page watchlisted, since I did some archiving there when you were away in January. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:10, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
And for what it's worth, one in the chain of obscure bugs that periodically caused that particular glitch is finally fixed, so it shouldn't be bothering us any more. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:49, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Valentine Greets!!!

Valentine Greets!!!

Hello John of Reading, love is the language of hearts and is the feeling that joins two souls and brings two hearts together in a bond. Taking love to the level of Wikipedia, spread the WikiLove by wishing each other Happy Valentine's Day, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person.
 Sending you a heartfelt and warm love on the eve,
Happy editing,
 - T H (here I am) 12:08, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Valentine Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Nomination for deletion of Template:Editnotices/Page/Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Template:Editnotices/Page/Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Kailash29792 (talk) 04:03, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for reverting my mistake on the Jane Austen portal

It was unintentional, I will be more careful
Anupama Chenkamalam (talk) 18:05, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

No problem! -- John of Reading (talk) 18:04, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

My wiki-versary

10000 today!

Hard going sometimes - Acts 26:14

Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Wed 13:14, wikitime= 05:14, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Well done! I assume you have the King James version in mind? -- John of Reading (talk) 07:35, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Chaheru/Chiheru

Hi John of Reading, many thanks for changing the Wikipedia page on Chaheru. In addition to this change, I had also requested a change to the Title of the page from Chaheru to Chiheru. The search based on Chiheru, is much more meaningful to the population of the village. This is how they have always known it. I would really appreciate if this can be done. Cheers. Kinder Deo kinder deo (talk) 18:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

@Kinderdeo: Wikipedia has to follow what the reliable sources say, and the government source calls it "Chaheru". So I'm not convinced. But for help with changing the title of a page, see Help:How to move a page. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:01, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks!!

Thanks for the help on the Micronations Portal page!!! I couldn't figure out what the problem was!!--Claudre (talk) 16:10, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

@Claudre: I see you've got subpage 6 working now. Looks good! -- John of Reading (talk) 16:26, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Portal styles

Hi John of Reading -- I note you recently used a bot to change a large number of portal stylesheets to show better on low-res devices. As you note in your application, this changes the appearance of portals set to 55/44, such that they will probably need manual intervention to rebalance their columns. Do you have any records of which portals were affected? Have you made any attempt to notify the maintainers that they'll need to rebalance their portals? Most portal maintainers will assume, as I did, that bot edits have no significant effect. Regards, Espresso Addict (talk) 01:18, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict: I began by posting at Wikipedia talk:Portal#Portals on the mobile site. As I said there, I thought the change in widths would only be a "slight" change. I did not think that separate notification would be needed, nor was this raised at the bot request for approval. I could use a database dump to compile a list of portals that previously had a 55/44 split. There would be several hundred of them, since that was the default. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited La Polar, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Accessories. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:16, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed -- John of Reading (talk) 09:53, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

The Typo Team Barnstar
Awarded for the massive number of spelling corrections you have performed on Wikipedia. Please keep up the good work! Spirit of Eagle (talk) 05:05, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
Thank you! 326,000 edits and counting... -- John of Reading (talk) 06:58, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
Well done, John. I wanted to send you a similar barnstar just now.
Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 14:26, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! -- John of Reading (talk) 15:02, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Artistry of Janet Jackson

An article that you have been involved in editing, Artistry of Janet Jackson, has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. wia (talk) 23:06, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Portal:Business and economics/On this day

Is there a way to autocomplete this page? Lbertolotti (talk) 22:05, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Lbertolotti: I'll think about it overnight and tackle it tomorrow morning, unless you come up with an easy way to finish the job before then. I'm off to bed now! -- John of Reading (talk) 22:25, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@Lbertolotti: Well, I've made a "clever" edit, but it hasn't worked. Displaying all 365 pages makes the page too complicated, and the software has refused to expand the last couple of months. This is likely to be the case however the page is coded, especially when the subpages get longer as more events are added. I suggest that the Portal:Business and economics/On this day should just contain links to 12 new subpages, one per month. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
(More) I've redone the page that way. I noticed two red links, at June 25 and July 15. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:39, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

@John of Reading Good work! As for the red links I will come up with something. Lbertolotti (talk) 16:10, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

i believe that you should see this ani discussion

an editor has decided on his own to change the format of the Events portal by adding spaces after asterics, adding a space after all events, and also removing subsection heading "as he sees fit" to do so. I have begun an ani to discuss his changes against established consensus that he apparantly thinks his NEW version is the consensus. the ani is here

User:WaldirBot is removing all subsection headings from Portal:Current events

--70.190.111.213 (talk) 18:37, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Noted, thanks. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:25, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
It's general better to start a discussion at the relevant editor's talk page. ANI should be the last resort, not the first. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:28, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you - link deletion and readdition

Hello John of Reading.

Thank you for correcting my awkward phrase in Barn Door Tracker. 2011, I think it was? I am not in the habit of perusing the edit history.

However, some time ago, I noted that the link to my website had been removed from the Barn Door Tracker page. I think the person that removed the link was offended by the religious content on my site. At least, that was the drift of the explanation given on the edit page. All content at my site is opt-in - the reader can choose to go there, if they wish.

I have just now readded the link to the Barn Door Tracker page, and trust that it shall remain. I thought at the time, it is not in the best interests of Wikipedia to censure content based on the personal preferences/perceptions of editors. I cannot find that particular edit. It seems to have been removed. Someone with greater (better) sense, I imagine?

Geoland

110.33.165.153 (talk) 01:02, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Barn door tracker (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Yes, my edit there was a long time ago; I have no memory of it at all. But I've just had a look at the article and decided to remove all the external links. Wikipedia's guideline on external links is much stricter than many editors realise - you can read it at Wikipedia:External links. Also, since you are aiming to add links to your own website, please have a look at the Wikipedia guidelines on advertising and conflict of interest. (I haven't visited your website and have no comment to make on its content.) -- John of Reading (talk) 07:02, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The English language

Hi John,

I committed a new version of Secret treaty of alliance between Peru and Bolivia of 1873 and within it surely some errors. The article doesn't belong to the most visited in Wikipedia, but for the sake of the English language, could you review the version?. Thanks, --Keysanger (talk) 13:42, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

@Keysanger: Yes, I will be glad to give it a read-through. But I've posted at Wikipedia:Cut-and-paste-move repair holding pen to see if an admin can repair the editing history of the page; I'll wait for a response there before editing the page, as any edits I make may make the problem worse. Next time you want to move an article to a new name, please do it by following the instructions at Help:How to move a page. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:43, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
(More) OK, I've made some changes to the grammar, and some fixes to the links in the references section. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:42, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Not a nice story that about the renames. But there were 4 or more embedded links and I had to choose between "do it somehow but now" or "do it someday but well done", that is to save Wikipedia or to save my soul. I saved Wikipedia. ;) Thanks again, John. --Keysanger (talk) 18:59, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Archive feature broken on talkpage

I'm trying to find someone knowledgeable enough to fix the archiving feature on Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68). Specifically, there is no way to access archived pages from the talk page. There are currently eight archived pages. Archive 1 is here. Do you know where I can turn for help? Thank you. Mitchumch (talk) 06:50, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

@Mitchumch: Asking for help here will do! I've moved the archive pages to match the new name of the article, and fixed the archiving instructions at the top of the talk page. I'll keep an eye on it until the bot's next edit. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:51, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
@John of Reading: Thank you. That article has a contentious title. Is there any way to automate this feature of the talk page to stay current with title changes or does it always need to be done manually? Thanks again. Mitchumch (talk) 08:55, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
@Mitchumch: If the article is moved again, post at WP:RM to get it done by an admin. Admins get an extra checkbox or two on the "Move page" user interface and can ask the software to move all the archives at once. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:01, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
@John of Reading: Thank you again. Mitchumch (talk) 09:08, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Relevent regex question

Thanks for your help, but I'm still unsure why [.\s]{936,} doesn't capture past \n characters. I've only been using regex for a month or so, so idk if this is a reflection of my ignorance or an interpreter problem.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  16:08, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: I don't know the answer to this. In the rare cases where I need to match/not match a newline, I'm reduced to playing with the "Multiline" and "Singleline" columns in the "Find & Replace" dialog until I find something that works. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
And I've learnt something new. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:36, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Nonono, that is logically inconsistent. See my reasonings below that comment and let me know if I'm being unclear. Because it feels like I'm either talking to the wrong people, or I'm going crazy.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  23:09, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
@Tom.Reding: I usually turn to www.regular-expressions.info for help with my regular expressions. Over at the Character Classes page, it says "The usual metacharacters are normal characters inside a character class, and do not need to be escaped by a backslash". So [.\s]{936,} only matches 936 or more consecutive periods and/or spaces [and perhaps newlines], and is unlikely to match any Wikipedia article. It doesn't have to be logically consistent, it just has to behave in a way that matches the documentation! -- John of Reading (talk) 08:58, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
If that were true, then why does [.\s]{900,} match non-period and non-space characters? Notice that I've changed the number to 900, which skips the page after successfully consuming word characters, brackets, punctuation, etc. This is the key question no one has answered that is stalling the discussion.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  13:00, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
@Tom.Reding: I've just tried it in the "Find and Replace" dialog. Find = [.\s], Replace = matched, and it changes all spaces and periods but does not change anything else; [.\s]{900,} matched nothing in the page I tried, since there weren't 900 consecutive periods and/or spaces. And Skip if contains = [.\s]{900,} didn't skip Solar Electric Light Fund because it only contains about 13 consecutive periods and/or spaces. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:14, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
Wow. Well, at least we're getting somewhere! And I know I'm not crazy. Maybe I'll file a separate bug report that my AWB isn't working the same as others' in this way. Thank you very much for taking the time when no one else would. I can only repay you in citations cleaned, so if you have a few pages you'd like scrutinized, let me know :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  13:48, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: A good next step would be for you to post your AWB settings file somewhere, perhaps User:John of Reading/Sandbox. Then I, or the AWB developers, can try out exactly what you're trying. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:12, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Uhhhhh, after restarting my laptop (for unrelated reasons) I'm failing to reproduce my bug... I mean, I tend to see mild abnormal behavior after a few days of wake-sleep-wake-hibernate-etc. cycles (AWB's Replace Special window unexpectedly disappearing being one example), so maybe they're related. It went without a proper shutdown for 2-4 weeks, so recreation of this uber-fringe case will take a while, even if I'm still interested in it (but I probably won't be).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  05:46, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
@Tom.Reding: That's weird, but good news in a sense. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:00, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Searching for articles containing either ☉ or ⊕

I've been unsuccessful in using WP's search feature to find pages containing either ☉ or ⊕ (I want to standardize these pages to use {{Solar mass}}, {{Solar radius}}, {{Solar luminosity}}, etc.). Searches for "☉", insource:☉, insource:"☉", insource:/☉/ yield trivial results. After reading your userpage, I'm hoping you would be able to either let me know how (if it's possible) to use search to find these pages, or to scan your latest database dump to produce a list? That would be quite helpful.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  18:56, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think those can only be found with a database scan. I'm on the case... -- John of Reading (talk) 19:03, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
@Tom.Reding: OK, I've created User:Tom.Reding/Pages containing ☉ and User:Tom.Reding/Pages containing ⊕. The latter contains a bunch of mathematics articles, so may not be much use. I've created them in your userspace so that you can clobber them with {{db-u1}} when you're finished with them. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:43, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Fantastic! Thanks!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  19:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Labour economics

It seems to me that this guy deleted some important stuff from the labour economics article in the process of adding new material. I think we need to restore some old material without deleting the new content. Lbertolotti (talk) 07:05, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

@Lbertolotti: This post belongs on the article talk page. Hendrick 99's deletions had clear edit summaries; if you think the deleted paragraphs are important then you will need to find better references for them. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:39, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

@John of Reading: most of the material was moved from the older page on labour theory of value, can we get an economist user to review this article?

The article talk page says there's an Economics wikiproject, so Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics would be the place to ask for an expert. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:32, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks about "vice versa"

You have filled my watchlist by correcting the spelling of "vice-versa --> vice versa" in eight different articles ... and in every one of those eight, I was the one who added the misspelling. Oops!! Well now I know the right spelling ... thanks for doing that. :-D --Steve (talk) 12:06, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

@Sbyrnes321: That was eight out of about 900 in the last four days. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:55, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Talk back

Hello, John of Reading. You have new messages at User talk:The Herald/Talkback.
Message added 05:38, 1 April 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Ah, it's that date again. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:34, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Use of Books from Google Books w/o page numbers

Hello! It's been a while, but I figured if I could ask someone of assistance, it would be you. I'm in the process of reviewing the Catholic Church article for GA status, and I was in the process of using a link from Google Books that didn't have any page numbers. Here's the source: Key Theological Thinkers: From Modern to Postmodern - Google Books. I was under the impression that so long as the sources were linked directly to the page, citations like this were okay, but this link doesn't go directly to the section (the crux of the info lies under Post Humanae-Vitae Fallout. How would this appear as a citation? Respond on my page (or this one, it doesn't matter that much) when you get the chance. Thanks for reading! LeftAire (talk) 22:15, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

@LeftAire: The guideline is at WP:BOOKLINKS, but I'm not sure that it covers this case. This URL doesn't work for me; it displays a page with lots of "the"s highlighted in yellow. When I try other searches within the book using the Google Books search box at the left, I see only a four line snippet - in the UK, most of the book is hidden for copyright reasons. I suggest you adjust the "dq" parameter of the URL - the contents of the search box - so that the search string is (a) in double quotes, and (b) an exact match for a unique phrase at the start of the relevant text. Then the URL is more likely to jump to the right place, and the four-line snippet might be enough for others to see that the text does verify the article. -- John of Reading (talk) 05:59, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
I took your advice, and strangely it still failed to link directly. I found two other sources to use in order to compensate for that mishap. I forgot that Reading in your user name was about town in England...Anyway, thanks for your help and the link provided! I have a feeling I'll encounter this issue again with articles I aim to improve in the near future... LeftAire (talk) 15:04, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

What do you know of wikisource?

I'd like to put a spreadsheet there, issued by Comelec (Philippine Commission of Elections). Is that the right place for it? Instructions are very hard to follow. What do you know?
Happy Easter / Qingming / passover -- Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Sat 22:14, wikitime= 14:14, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

@Unbuttered Parsnip: I haven't done much at Wikisource. There's an introduction at s:Wikisource:For Wikipedians. It looks as if the first step is to demonstrate that the spreadsheet is public domain or released under a free license. But if all you are trying to do is cite the information in the spreadsheet, then it shouldn't be necessary to copy it anywhere. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:19, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

What edit?

What edit are you talking about — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.210.5.190 (talk) 20:24, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation (disambiguation) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
I undid this edit, where you added the word "Amo" in the middle of a phrase. -- John of Reading (talk) 05:07, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Lestane nickname

Im living in Lestane, where are u heard for the Lestane nickname is Little Istok? Its False — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.222.14.235 (talk) 11:44, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Leštane (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
I didn't add that information; I only fixed a grammar error last June. That sentence was in the very first version of the article, back in 2006. But a general rule here is that information that has no reliable source can be challenged and removed, so I'll remove it for you shortly. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:12, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Reference errors on 12 April

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:19, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

 Done -- John of Reading (talk) 06:37, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Market Data

Do you know why wikinews stopped updating this?Lbertolotti (talk) 04:32, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

@Lbertolotti: No, but the bot's edit summaries have a link to the bot operator's talk page. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:39, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Portal redirects

yes I plan on making them there own portals — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.10.128.178 (talk) 09:09, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

OK, but perhaps do them one at a time? -- John of Reading (talk) 09:09, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Template:Diocese oF Agra, Churh of North India listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Diocese oF Agra, Churh of North India. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Diocese oF Agra, Churh of North India redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. GoingBatty (talk) 22:16, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. -- John of Reading (talk) 05:43, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

A cup of tea for you!

thanks Ahm masum (talk) 14:46, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

John, many thanks for picking up this typo and its brethren. That's a mistake I made over 8 years ago, and which had been propagated to other articles, too. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:33, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Eight years? You've been busy for a long time! -- John of Reading (talk) 12:35, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Review

Hi John,

I expanded Boundary Treaty of 1866 between Chile and Bolivia mainly based on Gonzalo Bulnes' Causes of the War. Can you review the text, it would be great. --Keysanger (talk) 18:39, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

 Done I've posted a query at the talk page. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:56, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

"found together" -> "fought together". I was thinking on German verb "zusammenfinden" = to scrape home. Anyway, your version is also correct. More about "lazy" in the talk page. --Keysanger (talk) 14:21, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Ixopo High School

Feel free to remove this. I was a pupil at Ixopo High school from 1987 to 1991. I witnessed the changes that came about when apartheid crumbled. I was there the day the first black pupil was enrolled in the school. I am not alone. I have easily 50 witnesses to corroborate the story and provide photographic evidence of some things. It is unfortunate that the history I offer to the world is unacceptable in the eyes of editors of Wikipedia to the point that I no longer want to bother with contributions anymore. As far as I'm concerned, all the truth in the world would be rejected by Wikipedia because it wants to be second best to every other source.

The Alan Paton Centre was built before I attended the school... somebody else's history is not up to scratch. So here is the crux of original research: eyewitness testimony should be allowed to stand untested until proven false as an allegory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashattock (talk • contribs) 23:56, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Ixopo High School (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
@Ashattock: I'm sorry that this is frustrating for you, but Wikipedia only aims to summarise what has already been published in reliable sources. I see that other editors have already tried to explain this on your talk page. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:07, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Question

Hi!

I noticed that you recently fixed "1960's" in an article to "1960s", which might mean that you are just the person to answer my question. I've long wondered what is the correct form: "19XX's" or "19XXs," or whether both are allowable, but I cannot find sourced on the subject. Do you happen to know of a reference? Thanks! -Xanthis (talk) 19:13, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

@Xanthis: Outside Wikipedia, it probably depends which style guides you look at. Within Wikipedia articles, the Wikipedia:Manual of Style says that "1960s" should be used; the relevant part is at MOS:DECADE. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:37, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
Thank you!! ─ Xanthis (talk) 00:42, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Pancreatitis for by stroke

I ever since. Since all those. I can speak but talk is hard. But on UK. Bye. Unbuttered Parsnip. 62.30.226.91 (talk) 12:40, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. I hope you are getting the care you need. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:17, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Elevator vandal

I see you found a new IP used by the elevator vandal. That IP doesn't belong to canaca.com/acanaca.net. It belongs to York Region District School Board. Perhaps he is editing from school instead of home? The edit filter I wrote is still active and working with the last hit on March 24 and March 20 before that. If you see more edits coming from 209.221.64.0/18, I can add that netblock to the filter. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 05:54, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

@Gogo Dodo: I hope you are now rested and fed. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:31, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Reference errors on 9 May

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:29, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed -- John of Reading (talk) 06:23, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

New York Agreement

Hi, could you check the 'ref' {number 7} that I've added to the negotiations section of the page. The reference publication is a U.S. Department of State publication of a memo sent to the DoS in 1959; but I was just guessing at the Wiki protocol for writing up a ref. Daeron (talk) 16:00, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

@Daeron: I've fixed the "url" parameter and improved the appearance of the "work". Any good? -- John of Reading (talk) 16:08, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks much and good work :) Daeron (talk) 10:11, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Portal:Capitalism

This portal is a bit unusual:

1.The page layout is too big

2.It cites sources on a portal page

What do you think?Lbertolotti (talk) 04:52, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that hard-coded 1200-pixel image is too wide. I suggest removing it rather than shrinking it, since we shouldn't assume anything about the reader's screen width. And yes, the sources do look odd, dangling at the bottom there. The text here is quite different from the lead of the Capitalism article, so I suggest updating the intro box from the article, omitting the sources. -- John of Reading (talk) 05:54, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Besides that, the portal needs an expert to make the boxes cycle randomly like in Portal:Business and economics and Portal:Mathematics, do you know what I mean?Lbertolotti (talk) 01:13, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

@Lbertolotti: They use {{Random portal component}}. Have you ever set that up? If not, I could re-arrange Portal:Capitalism so that the existing article, picture and quotes were the first random selections, which you could add to. -- John of Reading (talk) 05:37, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

@John of Reading That would be perfect.Lbertolotti (talk) 17:52, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

@Lbertolotti: OK, I will tackle that tomorrow. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:30, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
(More) Partly done; I've left a comment on the talk page. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:51, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

@John of Reading Looks like what you did is working fine, can u do the same for the "Did you know" box? As for the Hong Kong stuff, I'm going to search for more users to discuss the issue. Lbertolotti (talk) 17:22, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

OK, I'll reformat the DYK box. But it's time I stopped to make the dinner... -- John of Reading (talk) 17:27, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

@John of Reading Well, I invited some wikipedians into the discussion, if you want to invite more people to the portal talk page, feel free to do that. Last but not least, thanks for the help with the portal stuff.Lbertolotti (talk) 21:59, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you!

I have no earthly idea how all of these "the the" references get into documents. It clearly is some sort of glitch. But I am most thankful that you diligently remove them and improve the documents by doing it. SusunW (talk) 15:30, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing! Yes, this is a very common mistake. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:32, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Sports current events

hello, i added the FIFA U-20 World Cup, which is taking place in New Zealand, at ( this page) i hope i did good, (because it wasnt added before), but now, im not sure if was the right spot or place to add it. Can you please verify if i did good there? thank you in advance. --WiZaRd SaiLoR (talk) 00:19, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

@WiZaRd SaiLoR: I don't often update that page, but your edit looks good to me. -- John of Reading (talk) 05:58, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Portal:Capitalism again

The logo for the portal is the same as for the numismatics portal, I'm not sure if you know someone who can fix that.

But more importantly, the {{WikiProject Capitalism|class=C|importance=Top}} box doesn't permit article assessment.Lbertolotti (talk) 17:25, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

@Lbertolotti: To change the image, post a request at Template talk:Portal. You'll need to choose something that is recognisable even at the small size shown here at the right. Turning on assessments, I think, requires editing {{WikiProject Capitalism}} to make it look more like {{WikiProject England}}, and creating a bunch of categories. I could have a go at that, except that I'm going away for a week, starting tomorrow! If you'd like it done sooner, a post at WP:VPT might attract a willing helper. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:23, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
@Lbertolotti: I'm back. Do you still want me to adjust {{WikiProject Capitalism}}? -- John of Reading (talk) 06:29, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, please Lbertolotti (talk) 15:00, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Lbertolotti: Done, I think. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:50, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The portal is a lot better now, only thing that still needs fixing is the portal logo. I've already posted the request.Lbertolotti (talk) 20:08, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for fixing my typos and formatting on the Fenton article. I have been adding glass companies and expanding Fenton, but offline life got in the way, again. AlbinoFerret 18:25, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Fenton Art Glass Company (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
@AlbinoFerret: That was just a few seconds work with AWB. After your message here, I've gone back and read the article and made a couple more fixes. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:49, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I am going to have to look into AWB, and see how it runs under wine since I am a Linux user. I'm all for automation to make small fixes. AlbinoFerret 21:08, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your thanks

I'm of the opinion that there's a big competence problem with this editor, but I haven't decided the way forward yet. Doug Weller (talk) 11:09, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for adding that link so quickly and for your advice. I hope to do more, now I'm retired! Wiki filbert (talk) 11:22, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Business card

I have a business card from semmes motor cars 1100 Connecticut DC Can I send you a pic of it. I'm looking for more info about it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dqauto (talk • contribs) 00:47, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

@Dqauto: Surely the best way to get more information about a business card is to use the phone number, email address or street address that is printed on it? Failing that, you'd do better to ask someone from Connecticut; I'm from Reading, England. Or perhaps upload a picture of it to a photo-sharing site and then ask about it at the reference desk. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:24, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Page archiving

Do you how page archiving works? This talk page has 42 discussions! Lbertolotti (talk) 15:28, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I do. I've set up automatic archiving using the instructions at Help:Archiving a talk page#Automated archival. The bot should move the old threads off the page in a day or two. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:22, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
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