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The Pages Without Listas Parameter Values Increased

Hi, Mike!

In the five hours I was away the number of pages without listas parameter values increased by more than 2000. Has listas bot been stopped for some reason or has it run out of pages it can process?

JimCubb (talk) 22:26, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
It's been stopped only because it's made about 4 complete runs through the list, and it's down to the point where it's editing about 1 in every 200 pages. I can start it back up anytime, no problem. Matt (talk) 22:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I wondered as I could not see any new complaints. The implications are not good. If Yobot is able to tag that many as new WPBiog pages in that short a time there is no way that a person can keep it clean. (I know that new Yobot tags do not account for all the new pages but they were the reason for the two at the top of Q.)

Is there any way that your bot could work on the pages that Yobot adds? I believe you mentioned somewhere that your bot is faster than Yobot so maybe your bot could work on what his bot did the day before or in a certain time frame.

Can you think of any way that a list can be compiled of who is working on the category so that it can be determined if more volunteers might be helpful and the manual work can be coordinated?

JimCubb (talk) 23:18, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
As far as "can ListasBot work on what Yobot is working on", yes, it can, but I don't think there's a good way to do it that would be more effective than to just have it go through the same group of pages it normally goes through. I think after two passes (and maybe about 4 days) it should get most of the stuff Yobot touched.
Who all is working on the category? I don't know a very good way to figure that out right off the bot. That sounds like another bot to me. :-\ Matt (talk) 00:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I am going to add a statement to the wording in the heading that asks every one who is working on the pages in that category to register on the Talk Page. I will provide an example of how to register. Would you be so kind as to add yourself and your bot to the list in roughly the same format?

JimCubb (talk) 01:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Which page? Matt (talk) 01:12, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Here.

JimCubb (talk) 02:06, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: Maharmah

I tagged it with {{db-a7}} for lack of web pages discussing about it (below 10). I don't know how it suggests importance for its broken grammar. Maybe AfD if prod fails? Alexius08 (talk) 05:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT Théophile Hamel

Why did you add the Defaultsort command to Théophile Hamel, using the words "Comfort, Charles". The article Charles Comfort has nothing to do with the Théophiloe Hamel page. Ron B. Thomson (talk) 21:23, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Interesting

Did you write a script to identify cut-and-paste moves? You're good at finding them. Cool Hand Luke 07:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Kinda sorta. It's going off the assumption that if a page is a redirect, but the talk page still has {{WPBiography}} on it, then it might be a cut-and-paste move. It seems to be true about 10-15% of the time. See Category:Possible cut-and-paste moves. Matt (talk) 07:17, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
Teeheehee, I didn't know you were working on them too. Matt (talk) 07:26, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Tatárjárás page move

Could you possibly let me know what you have in mind? Thanks. --Kleinzach 07:51, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

A lot of what I'm going through at the moment are circular redirects -- e.g., where Talk:A is a redirect to Talk:B, and B is a redirect to A. The idea is to get the talk pages and the article pages to have the same name, so that everything stays together. This is one of those requests. Matt (talk) 07:54, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
OK, then I hope this means we can have Tatárjárás as a redirect to the operetta of the same name. --Kleinzach 08:06, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
This is a request for a page move. I'm basically requesting that Talk:Tatárjárás be deleted so that Talk:Tatárjárás (disambiguation) can be moved on top of it. If you want to start an article about the operetta, I'd suggest starting it at Tatárjárás (operetta). Matt (talk) 08:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
No, the operetta is at The Gay Hussars. Tatárjárás (the Hungarian title) should be the redirect to the operetta. The disambiguation page should be at Tatárjárás (disambiguation). Can you help with this or should I do it?--Kleinzach 08:19, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
You can go ahead and do it. If you get confused, let me know. Matt (talk) 08:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. I've done it - hopefully it's OK. --Kleinzach 08:27, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Best of luck to you. Matt (talk) 08:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Portmanteau

Hello there have been many lengthy discussions about the location of the article "Portmanteau". It is not a candidate for speedy move and would require further discussion to reach a new consensus on moving. Please follow proper procedure for contested page moves. -- The Red Pen of Doom 11:41, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not trying to argue where the article should be. I am trying to make sure that the article and its talk page are in the same place. Matt (talk) 17:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Very late reply

I got your note on my talk page. Did it all get sorted out? BTW, I clicked on the bot's contribs at random and found this. Wonder why that was the listas paramater? Strange. As for "not every page needs a DEFAULTSORT, especially when the DEFAULTSORT is the same as the page title" - my reply to that would be that there needs to be a way to distinguish pages that have been checked and left alone, and page that have not yet been checked. The simplest way to distinguish them is to put DEFAULTSORT on all pages that have been checked. Carcharoth (talk) 17:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it got sorted out. As for the revision you noted, who knows. There's a link between Ian Simpson and Ian Simpson Architects...maybe whoever put the listas tag in was looking at the wrong page at the time. Matt (talk) 17:21, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

This is what he said to me...

[edit] Crackpot garbage

Go spout your crackpot creationist garbage elsewhere. Some of us actually care about reflect reality, rather than delusions based on obsolete scribblings of illiterate sheperds. Mokele (talk) 15:37, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Do not vandalize the arboreal locomotion page again. Whatever silly fairytales you've deluded yourself into believing, that page will stick to actual evidence. You want to argue with me, go back to school and get *several* biology degrees, and then we'll talk. Until then, shit down and shut up and let those of us who actually know something do the talking. Mokele (talk) 19:42, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I did not consider my response an attack. Sorry -159.247.3.210 (talk) 19:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

a defaultsort question

hello - Erik9 suggested that i contact you about the scenario presented here, in which a band name (Klaus Mitffoch) got erroneously treated as a name+surname. i hope what i've done is an adequate fix, but if there's a master list or something to which this should be added, please let me know (on Erik9's talk page, i guess, to keep the discussion all in one place). thanks Sssoul (talk) 04:13, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Histmerge list

Defaultsort bot issues

As a DEFAULTSORT wikignome, I've noticed your bot; I've got comments.

First, the talk listas parameter just hasn't been that closely paid attention to; on average, it's a low quality data source, although probably the best available for many pages.

Second, there are some cases where better data is clearly available and the bot doesn't use it; for example, in edit, the bot had available to it: 

[[Category:Iraqi politicians|Hashimi, Abdul Razak]]
[[Category:Boston University alumni|Hashimi, Abdul Razak]]
[[Category:Iraqi diplomats|Hashimi, Abdul Razak]]

but produced: 

{{DEFAULTSORT:al-Hashimi, Abdul Razak}}
[[Category:Iraqi politicians|Hashimi, Abdul Razak]]
[[Category:Boston University alumni|Hashimi, Abdul Razak]]
[[Category:Iraqi diplomats|Hashimi, Abdul Razak]]

I came to this article because people have been adding categories to templates, in this case the "Living people" category is dragged in via the "BLPunsourced" template, btw.

Third, the bot is sometimes using an improper DEFAULTSORT key that violates established conventions and could easily be detected; Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people#Ordering_names_in_a_category has a long list of guidelines, some of which require judgment or context, but some of which are mechanically simple. For example, The first letter of each word should be in upper case, and all subsequent letters should be in lower case, regardless of the correct spelling of the name. While not widely done outside of the biographic articles, this is actually something that should be applied on every DEFAULTSORT key (IMHO). For reference works, sorted index lists are ALWAYS sorted via a case-insensitive sort; sadly, the wiki software is leaving the category sort up to the database (I think) which is doing a case-sensitive sort. Since most article titles (the ultimate source of sort keys) already follow "first-upper, latter-lower (per word)", we adopt that convention for sort keys within biographical articles so that the case-sensitive sort produces a case-insensitive result. (This is something that really ought to be fixed at the software level, rather than by sort-key wrangling, btw... I need to look into why it hasn't been). The example edit from the second comment illustrates this.

Fourth, I haven't seen an example of your bot doing this (yet) but I mentioned that the sort key needs to be derived from the article title; it of course is the title that is being presented in the category list. In wikignoming, I regularly see totally broken values for sort keys. One common misunderstanding leads people to use a single-letter as sort key, either in DEFAULTSORT or category. Some sort of software issue sometimes causes category names to be used for sort keys for categories. Some well intentioned people will use a personal name variant different from the article, often using a complete formal name for an article titled with an informal variant, and vice versa. A hypothetical example would be using the sort key "James Earl Carter" for article Jimmy Carter. I suspect that the listas parameter suffers from this common problem as well, and it would be nice if the bot didn't propagate a bad value any further.

To be clear, I think the bot is useful, it just has major room for improvement in a relatively fussy area. Feel free to ask me any questions.Studerby (talk) 20:16, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, that didn't take long, I've found an example of comment four. The listas from talk for article Orelsan was totally unrelated to that person, probably a legacy from a cut-and-paste from another article. I've fixed both sides of the problem. Studerby (talk) 20:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi Studerby,
To answer your questions:
  • The whole premise of the bot is that it would be working off of Category:Biography articles with listas parameter because it's a convenient list of pages that are guaranteed to have a listas parameter in them. Listas's are supposed to follow the same rules as DEFAULTSORTs (and probably about as reliable, in my experience); the same is not always true for category sort tags. For instance, Richard Nixon has Category:Richard Nixon included in it, but the sort key is a single space. I've also seen instances (although I can't quote any right off the bat) where a numerical value was used for the sort key. Your example (people using a single letter in category sort tags) is a perfect example.
  • Some of the other fixes aren't ones that I don't think a bot is qualified to make. Capitalization is one that the bot probably could make, but "sort key should be based off the article title" isn't. I can't tell you how much flack I would get if the bot were to try that -- I already get enough flack for the way it works currently.
Saying "DEFAULTSORT is a fussy area" is certainly right. Basically, to avoid as much controversy as I can, I try to write my bots to where they make changes that are as uncontroversial as possible. Capitalization is one I need to fix, yes, but I think I'm going to leave everything else alone for right now.
Thanks, Matt (talk) 20:45, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you Matt for the support and nice thoughts at my RfA. I greatly appreciated that! Also, on the naming conventions for listas - do you know if we have a MOS guide that sets that out for us? Cheers. ;)— Ched :  ?  03:12, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Ched -- glad I could help. :-) I think WP:Categorization of people is probably about your best bet. Most of that covers how DEFAULTSORTs and category sort tags should be formatted, but since listas follows the same rules, it's just as valid for that. Matt (talk) 17:00, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

blp on the top

Hi. Can you set ListasBot to move WPBiography on the top of other banners if living=yes? Have you noticed Wikipedia:Talk page layout? -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll keep it in mind. I can't think of a good way to pull it off right off the bat. Matt (talk) 20:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
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