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Caching layers

Hi Z-man,
I've never figured out what gets served by what for logged-in users, but you know these things I believe: Scripts are normally loaded through URLs like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&title=MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js and are, I presume, cached server-side. Would it be a bad idea to do attempt script versioning using &oldid= parameters?
Thanks, Amalthea 11:23, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much scripts are actually cached on the server. For logged-in users, typically the only thing cached server-side is the rendered versions of articles, which doesn't apply for scripts. User:TheDJ might know more about it. Mr.Z-man 14:23, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't really know this either, but I can ask around of course. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:31, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Ah, don't go to too much trouble, it's not really that important. I just thought that you guys would know. :)
Thanks, Amalthea 21:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

You're being too timid

Hey there Mr. Z Bot. I saw task number six, and I believe you are under-killing the job a bit. 10 times in 5 minutes seems like a bit to much before the bot reports. Is there anything to stop you from changing it to 5 times in 10 minutes? Tim1357 talk 05:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I think that's what it was originally, but there were too many false positives. Mr.Z-man 14:15, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Assessment in Popular page list

In Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Popular pages, your bot listed Gas constant and Hubble Ultra Deep Field as stubs, but they are assessed as start-class in the templates on the talk pages. ― ___A._di_M. (formerly Army1987) 14:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

It gets the assessment info a few days before the start of the period. So if it if the assessment changed after then, it won't have the new assessment when it makes the list. Mr.Z-man 16:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Paintball/Popular pages

I'm not sure about this one, but I am trying to get the popular pages report for Wikipedia:WikiProject Paintball/Popular pages going correctly, but I don't know if it's set up right. Can it be confirmed how this one is processing? Jwoodger (talk) 23:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't make the page on the wiki until after the end of each month. But the page that's there now will need to be deleted first (it doesn't overwrite existing pages) for it to work. Mr.Z-man 00:26, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks - I have deleted the page; hopefully it gets setup right next month. Cheers! :) Jwoodger (talk) 01:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

User:Mr.Z-man/patrollinks.js

Hi Mr. Z.

I have been trying to activate your script for patrolling on commons. I am generally helpless with scripts and I can't get it to work. Could you give me a hand or a hint? Thanks! Amada44 (talk) 08:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't know, what you have now looks like it should work. Make sure to bypass your cache. Note that on vector, it adds the new tab in the dropdown box next to the search box. Mr.Z-man 21:57, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Upcoming changes to the English Wikipedia

I'm writing on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation to let you know of some upcoming changes to Wikipedia. On May 13, we will be changing the the default skin on the English Wikipedia to Vector instead of Monobook. This change may affect some gadgets and extensions, so I wanted to let you know as you appear to be the author of/involved with one of the most widely used gadgets on the English Wikipedia. For further details, please check out the post on Village Pump.

Thanks!

Howief (talk) 21:45, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I've been working on a new version for a while now. Mr.Z-man 21:50, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
So with an if( wgWikiEditorPreferences && wgWikiEditorPreferences.toolbar.enable && wgWikiEditorPreferences.toolbar.dialogs ), you could force loading of toolbar 2.0 for those that support it I guess. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:56, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
And perhaps the polish changes can be installed to keep supporting IE users who have switched (have the new toolbar, but not the dialogs?) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:57, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Good edit marked as abuse and reported to AIV

Why did this edit [1] trigger an edit filter and a report to AIV? Looks OK to me. DuncanHill (talk) 15:27, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I only wrote the bot, not the filters. False positives can be reported to Wikipedia:Edit filter/False positives. Mr.Z-man 16:37, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Tried that, no response. And no way properly to make third party reports. DuncanHill (talk) 00:16, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
If there's a significant number of problems, try WP:ANI. Mr.Z-man 02:37, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Another

This [2] also generated a report to AIV, and looks wrong too. DuncanHill (talk) 15:54, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi there, the Australian and New Zealand taskforces have been merged recently to the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific military history task force and as such the popular pages for the other two are now redundant. Would it be possible to cancel the old two popular page requests and update a new popular pages page for the new taskforce? Thanks, Woody (talk) 00:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to be a pain but after looking into it a bit more I realised we haven't updated any of the recent mergers in terms of the popular pages lists:

Thanks, Woody (talk) 00:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm already aware of these (most of them at least), I just haven't gotten around to making the necessary changes. I think some of them might be fixed already. Mr.Z-man 02:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar 2.0

Hello, Mr.Z-man. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar 2.0.
Message added 19:19, 14 May 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

--Funandtrvl (talk)

Courtesy note

You are receiving this note because of your participation in WT:Revision deletion#Community consultation, which is referred to in Wikipedia:VPR#Proposal to turn on revision deletion immediately (despite some lingering concerns). –xenotalk 14:15, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Azerbaijan

Hello, I would like to ask your help over how to add Mr.Z-Bot tool to Azerbaijani WikiProject?--NovaSkola (talk) 11:13, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Please see the User:Mr.Z-man/Popular pages FAQ and make your request here. Mr.Z-man 21:45, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

mw:Extension:HarvardReferences - MediaWiki extension that supports "Harvard" references

Thank you for your interest in Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#MediaWiki extension that supports "Harvard" references. X-romix (talk) 09:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject medicine

We are currently working on a paper for publication. We are wondering if it is possible to figure out the sum of the pages views for all article pages that are part of Wikiproject medicine for a given month? One static number for a given month would be good. If we could look back in time and get a graph of the changing influence of WPMED on health care that would be incredible. Many thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Month Hits
July 2009 142598369
August 2009 147795383
September 2009 155748923
October 2009 2333119
November 2009 156086120
December 2009 132352902
January 2010 127366430
February 2010 140750494
March 2010 162087808
April 2010 157343696

I'm not sure why October is so low, there was probably some problem with the data. January is probably lower than it should be as well, as there was an issue with how the script handled redirects that wasn't fixed until February (I don't think it affected December though). Mr.Z-man 22:10, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

That is not just for the 22,000 wiki project medicine pages is it? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:35, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Maybe it is! Is it possible to go back a bit longer to see if there is a trend in the popularity? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:38, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
That's for all the pages in the medicine project. Some of the older ones exclude non-articles, but that shouldn't make a huge difference. July 2009 is the oldest that I still have data for. Before that, the information was compiled using a different program that didn't retain old data. Mr.Z-man 23:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Wonderful once again many thanks.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:49, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Mackinac Island

Obviously I remember your hard work on the Mackinac Island article's FA-status in 2007. After queueing for 2 3/4 years the article was honored yesterday as the day's featured article, as you saw. Bigturtle (talk) 21:38, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Hard spaces?

Hi. I'm interested in why there is so much resistance to my proposals regarding hard spaces (nbsp), and wonder – do you have the time and inclination for some direct, one-on-one discussion? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I've already explained my opposition several times. If we use a non-directly-typeable character, almost no one is going to use it, so any benefit in terms of editor time saved or wikitext clutter reduction is minimal. It would just as much coding work to use an easily typeable sequence, but it will be easier for users to learn and use, so more people will use it. Mr.Z-man 21:21, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me your opposition has multiple elements, and I am interested in seeing if they can be teased apart and addressed more directly. For instance, my first proposal is simply that non-breaking spaces be given a non-blank representation in the edit box, just so we can see them. As that has nothing to do with input methods, would your objection apply? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
No, I think there is use for an alternate method of entering non-breaking spaces. Mr.Z-man 01:34, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

So my understanding that you have no objection to representing hard-spaces with (say) sdot characters, but only to methods of input. So that I can better understand your particular editing context perhaps you could tell me about it. E.g., do you type text directly into the edit box, do you prepare text off-line then cut-and-paste it into the edit box, or what? Also, what kind of editor and OS do you use? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

No, I would oppose the sdot because its difficult to type. I use the editbox directly on Windows (using Firefox). To type a non-breaking space on Windows is Alt 0160 and a middot is Alt 0183. Neither are especially intuitive or easy to remember (I had to look both of them up). An sdot (⋅) can't be typed directly without modifying the registry to allow using hex numbers as alt codes. And on most laptops they're even harder to type as the numbers have to be typed on the number pad. Mr.Z-man 19:08, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree that entering characters by their codes is not especially convenient. But as you enter text directly, you don't need to enter sdots. Just enter hard spaces, which (by my first proposal) would be displayed as sdots. And I believe that in Windows you can enter non-breaking spaces with just ctrl-shift-space. (Correct?) Is that not reasonably easy and intuitive? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:03, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Ctrl-shift-space only works in MS Office, in Firefox it doesn't do anything. Mr.Z-man 23:19, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I see. A good datum to know, and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. I will re-examine the possibilities. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:45, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Need your opinion

Hi. Can you offer your opinion on this discussion? Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 04:08, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Erm, why? Mr.Z-man 21:43, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

refToolbar configuration

Hi,
I think this attempted refToolbar configuration, based on User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar 2.0#Sample code, leads to problems. The citeTemplate object from base.js will (possibly depending on the javascript engine) usually not be defined. I can reproduce it on my Firefox 3.6.3/Windows. I would recommend that you trigger a custom jQuery event once all refTools scripts are loaded, which can then be used in people's skin scripts to execute their configuration?.
Cheers, Amalthea 08:20, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

This configuration broke Twinkle. ~NerdyScienceDude (✉ • ✐) 13:12, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Only indirectly: the undefined citeTemplate caused a javascript error, which aborted execution of your skin script, so Twinkle never got imported. Amalthea 13:30, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 Fixed - It now triggers the 'reftoolbarbase' event on the head element. Note that since some browsers will execute base.js first, it also triggers it right before it builds the toolbar (which is after the DOM is ready), so you should bind it with one() rather than bind() to avoid it running twice (or unbind() it in the handler). I'll update the docs shortly. Mr.Z-man 23:24, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Everything is working now. Thank you! ~NerdyScienceDude (✉ • ✐) 23:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Mr.Z-man. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change/Bug reports.
Message added 13:48, 28 May 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

GW… 13:48, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Tool server for Telugu wikiprojects

Can you extend the Tool server for Telugu language wikipedia? Arjunaraoc (talk) 09:37, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

You mean the popular pages tool? Not at this time. There are a lot of wiki-specific things involved (assessment types, language prefix, category structure), so it would involve more than using a different database. It may come in the future, but not soon. Sorry. stats.grok.se can do any language though. Mr.Z-man 14:37, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I wanted to see how my Telugu wikiproject pages are performing with regard to page hits. Assessment can be a lower priority for me. Or Can you suggest how I can get started to get popular page views listing for my Telugu WikiProject? Arjunaraoc (talk) 04:03, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Ongoing totals for WP:MED

Wondering if we could get ongoing total at WP:MED such as are found in the table at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages? --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:21, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

The number for May is 151,434,999. Its a fairly fast database query, I'll look into adding it as an option in the Toolserver tool. Mr.Z-man 03:18, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to request popular pages listings for Wikipedia:WikiProject Sociology and Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics - but I cannot find the right place to do so :) I hope bugging you about it here is ok :) Thanks, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see the FAQ now. Perhaps it may be helpful to add a link to such FAQ from the popular listings... currently they say "For more information, leave a message on this talk page." directing people to your talk page. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:04, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Gsearch script

A user commented on the Vector bugs page that your gsearch.js script doesn't work with the new vector skin. I think changing document.getElementById('searchBody').innerHTML

to

document.getElementById('searchform').parentNode.innerHTML

will fix the issue. Shubinator (talk) 05:13, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I made a request to add this project on May 11. I see the project in the projects list but the bot did not seem to generate the popular pages for the month of May. RedWolf (talk) 22:27, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

This is answered on the FAQ. Mr.Z-man 21:51, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

IE8 + reftoolbar

Apparently there is a problem with reftoolbar and IE8 still. It say "$j('head').trigger('reftoolbarbase'); @line 198, Object expected" according to a report. Not sure why. 23:12, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Worksforme in IE8, with and without compatibility mode on. Mr.Z-man 03:12, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Gani tool missing articles?

First off - thanks for the Geotagged articles needing images tool, it's a terrific little gizmo. One request though, could you save settings to a cookie? My standard way of using it seems to involve changing almost every one of the default settings! More seriously it seems to be missing articles such as Artillery Ground (geotagged since April 2007) and St John Clerkenwell (geotagged since September, no edits this year). There doesn't seem to be anything obviously wrong with the tags, do you have any ideas what's happening? Although I'm not sure I want you to fix it, I've taken on the job of cleaning out the map of central London and there's plenty to work on already without adding more articles without images!!! TIA Le Deluge (talk) 13:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Just as a few extra datapoints, I did some manually off the Google maps Wiki layer, around the Tower of London - Holy Trinity Priory,_Aldgate, The Wayout Club, Crosswall, Minories, America Square and Grange City Hotel are all imageless and missing from the Gani tool but have all been geotagged long enough (months?) to make it onto Google Maps. I got bored after that, but there do seem to be patches of London that are severely underrepresented - there's maybe 2-3 articles on Gani in the area where those 6 are missing from, the bit further west isn't so bad (but doesn't have that high a density of articles generally). Having done these "manually" makes me appreciate Gani even more :-) - what are the odds of an update? Cheers Le Deluge (talk) 20:42, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
The script can't tell the difference between an image from a maintenance or stub template and an actual illustration. In the database they both look the same. That seems to be the case with the ones you listed. For them to be in the list, someone would have to add the {{reqphoto}} tag to the talk page. But the update script was having problems and I disabled automatic updates until I can fix it; right now its updated approximately "when I remember to do it." I'll run another update soon, and look into including pages that only contain SVG images, as those are used mainly for templates and maps rather than actual illustrations. Mr.Z-man 22:30, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks - that starts to make sense, I didn't expect it to be that sensitive as I don't think of templates as having "real" images! Not having stubs would seem to be a serious weakness given that by definition, they almost all need images. :-) Looking at the articles I highlighted, London seems to have a particular problem in that both {{London-struct-stub}} and {{London-road-stub}} contain not just images, but JPEGs, so your anti-SVG fix wouldn't work. They're sized down to 40px, and the {{orphan}} maintenance tag has an image sized at 50px, so if you can't discriminate images in those kinds of templates then perhaps it would be better to demand that the article has an image sized to >=100px? It would be certainly be more appropriate for people like me who want to go take some photos, it's easier to ignore a handful of false positives than to identify masses of missing articles. Le Deluge (talk) 00:34, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that wouldn't really be possible. The database table it uses only records the page with the image and the image title. Getting the size would require using a text dump to look at every page that has images to check the size. Mr.Z-man 03:22, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
(Arrrrghhh. Don't you just hate it when you do a long reply and then manage to close the wrong window. This reply is shorter than the original....)
Ah. OK, in that case it looks like excluding certain filetypes will be the way to go. Looking around the cleanup boxes use a mix of SVG and PNG, the geographical stub templates are a mix of SVG (eg BlankMap-LondonBoroughs.svg in {{London-stub}}), PNG (over 800 articles have {{Highland-geo-stub}} and hence use ScotlandHighlands.png), a scattering of GIFs (ach, can't find them now, there's a few) and the very occasional JPG (Newport). So ignoring SVGs looks a no-brainer, and for my purposes I'd ignore PNG and GIF too. Perhaps this is something that could be selected with check boxes?
The problem comes with members of Category:United Kingdom building and structure stubs, in particular {{London-struct-stub}} and {{London-road-stub}} but I suppose I should care about {{London-railstation-stub}} as well :-), which include LondonTowerBridge2004-08-03.jpg, Whitehall,_London.jpg and StPancrasMidlandHotel.jpg respectively. Obviously these are prime targets for taking photos. Would you be prepared to specifically ignore these three? If I was to give you a list of all JPGs used in stub templates, could you use that as a lookup blacklist? I'm aware that starts turning into a resource issue. It's not just the country-based stub templates that use JPGs, a lot of the general church/hotel etc ones use them too, but obviously you don't see as many of them within a specific area. The hotel and priory articles I mentioned above are examples.
Alternatively, is there anything on the toolserver that can generate a list of articles within xkm of a point, like Gani but not looking for images? I could then use that list to do text searches on the database myself. Le Deluge (talk) 16:26, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Actually, you don't even need to go as far as the Toolserver, if you click the little globe by the coordinates in articles, it will open a map that has links to geotagged articles at their locations. For searching, there's this, though it just works by a coordinate box rather than distance from a point. Mr.Z-man 21:59, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Ach, I just can't get on with the MiniAtlas, I prefer Google/Bing maps with the wiki layer on, even if they're somewhat out of date. Thanks for Locatecoord, it's what I was thinking of, I had a feeling I'd seen something like that somewhere. It's more useful for these purposes because it gives me a list of articles that I can save to a text file. I can throw code at a text file.... :-) But it's not as user-friendly as Gani, I guess I need to start learning KML or something. And of course I'd rather get you to make Gani good enough than do the work myself to produce a gold-plated version! :-) Any thoughts on excluding certain JPGs? In the meantime, perhaps there could be a note on the Gani page, explaining that it doesn't catch many of the articles that a user might expect it to? Cheers Le Deluge (talk) 12:46, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I've now changed the three London stub templates to use SVG rather than JPG, so if you can change Gani to ignore SVGs (or even better ignore PNGs/GIFs as well), then that would get me out of your hair in the short-term. :-) It still doesn't help the bigger problem of all the other stub templates that use JPGs, I'm still prepared to do a list of them if that would help, but that obviously gets more complicated for you. Le Deluge (talk) 13:13, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Error on toolbar

Hi, I'm using the monobook skin, and get the following errors:

  • Under IE8:

Webpage error details

Timestamp: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 07:04:20 UTC

Message: Object expected
Line: 198
Char: 1
Code: 0
URI: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar_2.0/base.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript

  • Under Firefox 3.6.3:

Error: $j is not defined
Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar_2.0/base.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript
Line: 198

  • Under Safari 5.0:

ReferenceError: Can't find variable: $j /w/index.php?title=User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar_2.0/base.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:198

  • Under Google Chrome 5.0:

Uncaught ReferenceError: $j is not defined /w/index.php?title=User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar_2.0/base.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:198

Any ideas? -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 07:19, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

It's working fine on both monobook and vector skins using Firefox and Safari with Mac OS X 10.6.3. Looks like it could be a Windows issue. Maybe getting a Mac will fix the problem. :) ~NerdyScienceDude (✉ • ✐) 14:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
You have a gazillion scripts installed Steve. Any of them could be broken and causing the problem. (an error in 1 script often causes other scripts to fail). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
That is true. I'll have to go through them, remove any I don't need - and see if I can find which one is causing the problem! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:07, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
OK, my monobook.js is blank (apart from a comment), and I am still getting the error, so it's not any of the other scripts which is causing the problem (and I Ctl+F5'd to clear the cache, so it's not that either) -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:14, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
But are you still getting the error on Safari or Firefox ? Also, what gadgets are you using ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:36, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Right, just figured out that the gadget always tries to access base.js, but when you fully back out of the usability initiative, you don't have jquery loaded, so the gadget breaks in that case. I'm not really sure anymore WHAT the gadget is trying to do atm, so i'm leaving this upto Mr.Z-man :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:47, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
I hope this diff fixes it, but i'm not entirely sure. I understand User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbarIE.js. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:52, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Actually, refToolbarIE isn't actually used in IE anymore, at least not IE8 (and probably not IE7). What you did should fix it, refToolbar_2.0/base.js used to need to load on every pageview (wgWikiEditorPreferences is only there on edit) so that config changes and additional templates added in user JS wouldn't break. But with the change so that it loads the custom stuff after firing a custom JQuery event, that shouldn't be necessary anymore (the event just won't fire, so the custom stuff in user JS will just be ignored). In summary, trying to get multiple scripts that are loaded in various places in the <head> as well as dynamically, to execute in the correct sequence in every browser is a massive PITA. Mr.Z-man 22:06, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

That is working now! Thanks - just need to try with all my other scripts back in place! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 07:39, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much, this is very helpful information for us to have and we really appreciate it! Invertzoo (talk)

Mr. Z-man - I don't know why you felt it necessary to change Curtis Lofton's wikipedia, his middle name is Tremayne. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.97.53.58 (talk) 03:07, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists (television)

{{rfctag}}

What should our policy be on articles that contain lists related to television? You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists (television). Taric25 (talk) 06:25, 22 June 2010 (UTC) (Using {{Please see}})

afreporter

Hi, I'm interested on running your afreporter.py on eswiki, ¿how can I do it? When I try to run it, it ask me for a "setting" module 

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "afreporter.py", line 5, in <module>
    import settings
ImportError: No module named settings

Sorry if this is a silly question, I'm a newbie with this... Regards --by Màñü飆¹5 talk 01:45, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

settings is just a small file with usernames and passwords. Note that it will need quite a bit of modification to run on a different site. Off the top of my head: You'll need to specify a different site with a different vandal reporting page, a different page to load the filter numbers from, a different IRC channel to report in, and different database settings (or if you don't have a Toolserver account, you'll need to remove the parts that connect to the DB directly). Mr.Z-man 03:11, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

need your expertise

Hi Z-man,

Would you please assist with my request for help on Xeno's talk page? I'm doing something wrong with the url variable in a short JS script. Many thanks for looking,
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 23:37, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject medicine

Wondering if we could get the total page views for the entire medicine project in the last two months added here [3]? It look like it may be going up. Many thanks.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:29, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Recently, I started the page Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject, which I then made a subcategory of Category:Wikipedia. Also, I added a link to the new category to the bottom of each of more than 170 of the lists of popular pages, placing those pages into the new category. Now the new monthly data have replaced the old monthly data, and the category link has been removed from most of those pages. I have read the following question and answer on the FAQ page.

Can I edit the list page after the bot creates it?
Yes, with some limitations. Any edits to the list itself will be overwritten each month, so edits should only be made to the header area. Do not change the name of the section header for the list section or it may break updates.

Are you able to revise the software so that it will leave the category link on each page that has it? Would it be better if I added the category link to the header area?—Wavelength (talk) 06:52, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I can make it just add the category to each list. Mr.Z-man 21:38, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your reply. That sounds like a good idea. Will you please do that?—Wavelength (talk) 21:49, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Gani breaks on image names with spaces?

Great stuff on the Gani update, that's a big help. Even if it does mean I've now got a whole load of new work to do, I had just about finished taking the photos needed to clean out central London on the old view.... However I've got over 3GB of photos to process and add to articles, so it'll take a while for it to show up on the map. Anyway, one minor issue. The code seems to be ignoring JPEGs with a space in their name, so articles such as Exmouth Market appear on the list when they shouldn't. Is this easy to fix? TIA Le Deluge (talk) 10:58, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm - maybe I'm mistaken on the spaces thing, although I'm sure I've seen a couple like that. However I've just discovered that Vine Street, London is included on the list, and that has no spaces in the image name. Its image is called Image:VineStreetSign.JPG - so it looks like the tool is not recognising the .JPG file extension when it's capitalised - Exmouth Market also has .JPG. No doubt somewhere, someone has used xxx.Jpg or xxx.jPg.... Le Deluge (talk) 13:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

RefToolbar 2.0 at el.wikipedia

Hi, I try to port the script as a gadget at greek wikipedia. I followed your guide but it doesn't work. The corresponding pages are el:MediaWiki:Gadget-refToolbar.js and el:MediaWiki:RefToolbarLocal.js (I didn't finish translating it but I guess it doesn't matter). I also couldn't manage to get it working as a personal script in meta. The older script (for the old toolbar) was working great. Can you check it? --geraki TL 08:41, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

You have an error in the RefToolbarLocal page. On the line:

{"field": "work", , "label":"Έργο", "tooltip": "Αν είναι μέρος ενός ευρύτερου έργου"},

you have a double comma after "field": "work". Mr.Z-man 22:32, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

You are right. You are great! Thanks for an excellent tool. --geraki TL 17:36, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

CloseAFD doesn't follow redirects

Are you still planning to add redirect following to the closeAFD script? At times, someone will move a page during an AfD discussion even though it is discouraged. An example of what can happen as a result: tagging the original name of a moved page with {{afd-mergeto}} and likewise tagging the talk page of the redirect rather than the article's talk page. PleaseStand (talk) 02:00, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)Yes that's annoying and I have to fix those manually. However, I'm not sure that it would be a good idea for the script to follow redirects. If an AFDd article were redirected to an unrelated article, someone closing with the script could end up deleting the wrong article. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:19, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Well, the obvious fix for that would be to check if the target page has an AfD tag on it. That would allow the script to work in most cases. PleaseStand (talk) 02:56, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

wikitools issue

Running r359 of wikitools, here's a test script: 

#! /usr/bin/env python

import wikitools

wiki = wikitools.Wiki('http://test.wikipedia.org/w/api.php')

Traceback: 

mzmcbride@bert:misc$ python test.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 5, in <module>
    wiki = wikitools.Wiki('http://test.wikipedia.org/w/api.php')
  File "/home/mzmcbride/scripts/wikitools/wiki.py", line 71, in __init__
    self.setSiteinfo()
  File "/home/mzmcbride/scripts/wikitools/wiki.py", line 101, in setSiteinfo
    setattr(self, attr, Namespace(ns))			
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 3-9: ordinal not in range(128)

I haven't had a chance to investigate. Thought I'd throw it here in case you knew off-hand. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:34, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

<3 --MZMcBride (talk) 02:21, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Mr.Z-man. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar 2.0.
Message added 12:19, 20 July 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

SineBot caught in the edit filter

It was a few days ago, but SineBot got reported by Mr.Z-bot to AIV/TB2. I know there's no way to prevent users from getting filtered, but is there any way to make an opt-out list? mechamind90 15:20, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Bots should be excepted in the filter itself. What filter did it trip? Mr.Z-man 22:27, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia Online Ambassadors program

Hi, Mr.Z-man. Because of your interest in Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination and because you're a highly experienced Wikipedian, I wanted to invite you to apply for the Wikipedia Online Ambassadors program. It's part of a project the Wikimedia Foundation is doing to get professors and students more involved with editing, and Online Ambassadors will be helping coordinate assignments and help students who are assigned to edit. Cheers! --Sage Ross - Online Faciliator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:42, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect unref to BLPunref conversions.

Is it possible when you do your unref BLP runs that you could not only convert unref to BLPunref, but also check for < ref > tags? this edit for example, is incorrect, as there are two references in the article. At best it should be a BLPrefimprove now, not BLPunref. Thanks, The-Pope (talk) 02:51, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

This has been discussed in detail here and here. Mr.Z-man 22:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, makes sense I guess. The-Pope (talk) 23:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Azerbaijan

Hello, when u going to update results for July?--NovaSkola (talk) 04:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

When July is over, there are still ~10 more hours left in the month. Mr.Z-man 14:30, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi, just dropping you a note to thank you for adding Human rights and African diaspora projects, thanks again - Wikignome0530 (talk) 02:11, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

VPC

— raekyT 23:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Hello Z-man. In mid-July I put in a request for the popular pages service for Psychology, but it's no longer in the queue. Happy to make another, improved request if I got something wrong the first time: could you give me feedback on why the first one was not accepted? Thanks in advance, MartinPoulter (talk) 12:43, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It was accepted. There's more information in the FAQ. Mr.Z-man 22:54, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

In User talk:Mr.Z-man/Archive 12#Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject, I did not receive a definite reply as to whether you were going to add the category to each list. I waited until the end of July had passed, to see whether you had done so, but it was again missing from most of the lists. (Maybe you forgot, or maybe there was a syntax error in the program.) I am willing to add them again, this time to the header area, but, as before, only to about half of them of my choosing. (Other editors may wish to add it to the others.) If you do not wish that I do so, please let me know.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:20, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Conversation on admin noticeboard re: block of ISP for low-income users

I have started a conversation regarding a block of an ISP for low income users that was initiated two and a half years ago and was recently lifted. You were one of the people that helped review the initial block or helped review it when it was lifted. I am cordially inviting you to join in the conversation.
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Two and a half year block of ISP for low-income users
Thank you very much for you thoughtful consideration. - Hydroxonium (talk | contribs) 03:33, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

meetup?

Hi there,

I got your name from the Wikimedia:Meetup/Ohio 1 page. I will be in Columbus Aug 8-11 and was wondering if any Wikimedians would be interested in meeting up then. If so, I started Wikipedia:Meetup/Ohio 2 for quick planning :) best, -- phoebe / (talk to me) 17:30, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

New tool

Hey Z. Many thanks great tool. It will help keep our editors motivated to know that the work is watching what we do. :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:29, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

BTW are there problems with July's data? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:32, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
I believe the raw data I use was missing for about a day, the number there is probably a little low, maybe off by ~3-6%. I've noted that this occasionally happens in the FAQ. Mr.Z-man 11:38, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Courtesy note

You are receiving this message because of your participation in this discussion, now continued at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Microformats. –xenotalk 13:44, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Advice regarding reftool

Dear Mr. Z-man,

I'm working on a tool much like User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar_2.0.js. What I need to achieve is for each of the tool buttons, to run a function (for example, if one of them is clicked, a set of regular expression find and replaces should be performed.) I don't know how to achieve this. Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards, huji—TALK 12:43, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

There's really no documentation about anything in the new toolbar, at least not the last time I checked. I wrote it mostly by looking at the existing code for the toolbar and trial and error. Mr.Z-man 01:35, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Bot update removing useful category

Hi Mr.Z-man! Just letting you know that by when updating WikiProject Indonesia/Popular pages, Mr.Z-bot is removing Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject. Would it be technically possible to fix this? --Elekhh (talk) 05:14, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Elekhh, please see #Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject (second discussion). -- Wavelength (talk) 14:56, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
Mr.Z-man is "taking a short wikibreak". -- Wavelength (talk) 17:41, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
Before I started adding the category again in August 2010, I made a record of the five lists that each still had a link to the category.
The list for classical music has not been updated since December 2009.
The list for Cornwall has a section "See also", and the list for video games has one also.
The list for industrial design has a different wikicode, as follows.
<noinclude>[[Category:WikiProject Industrial design]]</noinclude>
{{Wikipedia:WikiProject_Industrial_design/Popular_pages_bot}}
[[Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject]]
Likewise, the list for Java (programming language) has a different wikicode, as follows.
<noinclude>[[Category:WikiProject Java]]</noinclude>
{{Wikipedia:WikiProject_Java/Popular_page_bot}}
[[Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject]]
—Wavelength (talk) 19:30, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
Oh I see, so it just shouldn't be in the "List" section. --Elekhh (talk) 23:20, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I forgot to update the bot to add this category automatically. It should do this starting next month. Mr.Z-man 01:38, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you think it would be possible to get a list of popular WikiProjects, based on talk page activity (either number of page views or number of edits)? That is, you'd compare projects listed in Category:WikiProjects based on either page views or number of edits this year (or something similar) and produce a list of the "most popular" projects? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Listing articles with no pages for 'X' language

Hi,
The project I have in mind aims to facilitate the translation process of Wikipedia articles written in English to other languages. The basic idea is develop a small web application that finds all titles (of English Wikipedia articles) that don't have equivalent article in x language. Then, this list will be arranged into categories (as they do in Wikipedia). The end user will have a table of all articles that need to be translated in her preferred language. The end user can search by a title or a category. Another cool idea is to rank those titles based on number of view per article which will give the translator an idea of what is currently a hot topic and need to be translated.

I think for such job, the Wikipedia API may not appropriate as this will search more than 3 million titles. I believe I might need to download the whole database and work from there but I thought it is better to hear your opinion about this project and to get some advice of what would be the best way to do it is a good idea in the first place.

Thank you in advance for you help,
Salturki (talk) 23:02, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

This could be done with the API, you'd just need to change the order you do some things. Basically:
  1. User enters a language and a category
  2. Then you can do an API query like this to get pages in the category and interlanguage links on them
  3. Filter the results for pages that don't have a link to the specified language
  4. You can get pageviews from Henrik's site - it has an API that returns JSON data [4]
To do it with a database copy, you'd need the page table (600 MB), the categorylinks table (560 MB), and the langlinks table (95 MB), though this would probably be easiest to do on the Toolserver. Mr.Z-man 23:24, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
I managed to design a small tool based on your description here. However, using the parameters you provided in your reply, I noticed it yields few results per term and also it gets the same results every time. This is a bit boring for the end user who want to see different results every now and then! I wonder if you can help me to tweak it a bit to accept any term (not necessarily a category name) and also get random results every time the end user hits the submit button?
Thank you. Salturki (talk) 23:10, 18 August 2010 (UTC) salturki
You can use generator=search to get results similar to what would be given by using the search engine - [5]. There's documentation here. You can get a list of random titles as well, but I don't think there's a way to specify a search parameter and have it randomized, other than getting more results that you need, then randomizing it in the tool. To get more results, you'll have to do more queries - see mw:API:Query#Continuing_queries. Mr.Z-man 22:31, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Yearly (total) stats?

Pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Sociology/Popular pages give results only for the last month, right? Would it be possible to see yearly or "total" (for however many months/years the data has been collected) aggregates? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:22, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Not at the moment, I'm working on a tool that will show a graph of pageviews vs. month for a given article. That's something that could be included. Mr.Z-man 22:20, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

wikitools / Commons issue

#! /usr/bin/env python

import wikitools

wiki = wikitools.Wiki('http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php')
wiki.login('MZMcBride', '8=========D')

page = wikitools.Page(wiki, 'User:MZMcBride/Sandbox')
page.edit(newtext='test')

Any actions to Commons keep returning a "Server lag, sleeping for 120 seconds" error, even with "wiki.setMaxlag(-1)". I peeked at api.py, but didn't have time to investigate. It's very possible it's an issue with Commons itself and not wikitools, but it's rather annoying! If you have a chance to look at it before I do, I'd appreciate it. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:15, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

It seems db5 was lagged by about 217904 seconds, but it wasn't reporting it via the API with &sishowalldb, only without it, I guess. Or something. God bless WediaMiki. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:06, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Unrelated to the above, bugzilla:24837. I'm trying to poke some people about it. For now, I put a live-hack into wiki.py (a try/except KeyError). Bahhh. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:42, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Tool for finding articles lacking images

I happen to stumble on this particular discussion: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#How_stub_templates_interfere_with_a_certain_script. Is it still an issue for you? If so, do you mind I take a look at your code? --AllyUnion (talk) 23:06, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

The relevant code is here. Note that I don't consider downloading the wikitext of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of articles to be a reasonable solution to such a minor problem (currently it doesn't need to look at the text at all). Mr.Z-man 22:13, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
It's not such a minor problem - it means the tool misses 30-50% of its intended articles. (??? Certainly in London my changing of the London-specific stubs added at least another >30%, and I keep coming across articles beyond that which are invisible to the bot. The stub templates are infested with .JPGs - the church stubs are a particular problem, but I've also come across a number of sports grounds and galleries/public art stubs recently that the GANI tool misses.) As I suggested before, blacklisting images known to be used in stub templates should be a "good enough" solution - just scanning Category:Geography stubs or, less-ideally-but-more-manageably, Category:Building and structure stubs for templates would get you a workable list.
Incidentally, on the capitalised .JPG filenames, it feels like they're giving a false positive rate of about 10%, although in London at least it's not that big a problem as they tend to be pretty crappy photos that need redoing.
I have been busy clearing the London map, although there's not much to show for it yet as I've taken a 100s of photos, but not got round to processing them yet. It's been a fun project, a great way to get to know the city. I just need a few more days of proper sunshine, even the most boring office block looks much better against blue skies....Le Deluge (talk) 09:22, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Another Gani tool glitch - |frame|  ??

The tool thinks that Herne Hill Velodrome needs an image - I'm guessing it's confused by the use of |center| or more likely |frame| in the image that's been on the article since June 2007. Not a biggy, it's the first one I can remember coming across and I know |frame| is deprecated these days but I thought you'd like to know. Le Deluge (talk) 15:26, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Mr.Z-bot source

Hello, i want to use your popularity3.py script on the french wikipedia, but where are mysql table structure ? Thanks. Myst (talk) 19:38, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

This is now available here. Let me know if you need anything else. Mr.Z-man 03:28, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Hello Mr.Z-man,

Thanks a lot for this tool. Myst is creating it for fr.wp. Ludo29 (talk) 09:10, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Popular pages - ratings update

Last month I changed the WikiProject rating of several articles yet the Wikipedia:WikiProject Indonesia/Popular pages update still shows the old ratings. For instance I rated Talk:Orangutan C-class, yet in the September 1 table it still appears as start-class. Also many thanks for including WikiProject Architecture. --Elekhh (talk) 04:24, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

See FAQ #7. Mr.Z-man 04:43, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Just a bump regarding your Popular pages bot :) ResMar 17:33, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Um, you'll have to be a little more specific than that :) Mr.Z-man 21:51, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Well, it hasn't left a message on the talk page (WP:VOLC, specifically), and I didn't see a Popular pages on the PrefixIndex, and the FAQ time stamp has been passed, so... :) ResMar 00:14, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Well I registed WikiProject Volcanoes over a month ago. What happened, did it bounce :( ResMar 16:19, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, I think yeah it did. The list includes VOLC, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Volcanoes/Popular pages isn't created. Also, could you change the number to 200? I'd input it but I stored my key on laptop, which currently has a fractured screen :( ResMar 18:18, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Not according to my records. The earliest data I have is from this month, meaning it was requested some time last month (or after the cutoff date the previous month). I've increased the size to 200, though you don't need the same key to request a change. Mr.Z-man 21:51, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Oh, so first the bot lists you, checks numbers for a month, and then creates the page? Also, I just realized I've used way too many emoticons this conversation... ResMar 02:59, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Updating tags = unref BLPs

May I cordially suggest that Z-Bot retain the date from the unref tag? Since the article has been an unreferenced BLP at least that long, it makes sense. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 12:38, 2 September 2010 (UTC).

This was changed intentionally during the "unreferenced BLP" discussion some months back. By using the original date, it kept adding newly discovered BLPs to old backlogs, making it difficult to track if any progress was being made. Mr.Z-man 21:46, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah, well it's not a big deal, just saw something catapulted form July 2007 to September 2010, thus getting 3 more years "grace" as an unref BLP/unref BLP. I suppose eventually the subjects will die and we can move them back to unref... Actually I have argued in the past for using creation date of the article for unref tags. I really don't fancy introducing dual dating "Problem since XXXX tagged since YYYY." Rich Farmbrough, 14:27, 4 September 2010 (UTC).

Popular pages tool - archive past reports please

It would be useful for data mining if your tool archived past results instead of simply overwriting them. Please implement this feature, thanks. SharkD  Talk  05:34, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

If archives are not available retroactively, you can proactively archive the present results and future results on sub-subpages of any popular pages list subpage which interests you. Also, you might wish to imitate the summary style used at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages.
-- Wavelength (talk) 19:16, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I would, but I leave Wikipedia for extended periods. SharkD  Talk  21:14, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
What kind of data mining are you referring to? It may be possible to make an API or set up data dumps on the Toolserver. Mr.Z-man 23:08, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Simply having a monthly archive like there are for Talk pages would suffice, thanks. (I.e. just move outdated page content to a new sub-page.) SharkD  Talk  21:10, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
It would not be significantly more work to make an API. An API would be easier to parse with a program and could include more articles than on the on-wiki list. If you just want the wikitext of the list though, why not just use the page history? Unlike a talk page, there's just one edit every month. Archiving once a month would be the equivelent of archiving after every edit, which the page history already does. Mr.Z-man 22:11, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Random Article; filter out ugliest ducklings

Yo Z-man - I've listed 10 ugliest ducklings in my last comment on the (proposals) page and would appreciate your comment regarding my revised views - thanks - MarkDask 17:42, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Secret pages 2

Because you participated in Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 34#Does WP:NOTMYSPACE apply to secret pages?, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Secret pages 2. Cunard (talk) 07:07, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Propagating incorrect errors

I've asked you and Rich/Smackbot before about not propagating incorrect tagging, when your bots convert an "unreferenced" template to a "BLPunreferenced", based on a Category:Living people cat being on the page, unless you are able to check if both the unreferenced template and the living people cat is correct. Rich seemed to think that his bot COULD determine if the unreferenced should instead be converted to a {{BLP sources}} tag, not {{BLP unsourced}}. Are you able to either a) stop doing this task all together; b) leave it others with smarter bots; c) Instead of changing the pages, generate a database list of "incompatible tags" ie a BLP tag without a cat:Living people or vice-versa. Today 6 pages were added to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australia/DashBot_unreferenced_BLPs. 5 of them were incorrect.

  1. Ben Macpherson incorrect
  2. David Hall (rugby league) incorrect
  3. Jim White (drummer) incorrect
  4. Judy Banks correct
  5. Lisa Raymond incorrect
  6. Merv Cross incorrect

That level of accuracy would not be acceptable if it was a person doing the tagging, so a bot should also not be allowed to make that many errors. Your previous claim of "but the BLP tag is more visable" or "higher priority" is misleading, as we are struggling to cope with the REAL unreferenced BLPs, we don't need to be distracted by referenced BLPs being mistagged. It is also quite bemusing to think that dumping extra articles into a bucket of 25000 articles is making them "more visable". So, please stop attempting to do this task - lets try generating a list and see how that goes. The-Pope (talk) 08:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

This has been discussed in detail already here. To summarize: Human editors said that all of those articles were unsourced, not the bot. The articles are no more incorrect than they were before the bot edited them. Not only would I not modify my bot to do it, I would oppose a bot that tries to "correct" human editors on something subjective like quality of references. Mr.Z-man 15:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
This task is currently disabled, if you want to propose a database report, the database query is:
SELECT DISTINCT page_title FROM page
JOIN categorylinks AS clA ON page_id=clA.cl_from
JOIN categorylinks AS clB ON page_id=clB.cl_from AND clA.cl_from=clB.cl_from
WHERE clA.cl_to="Living_people" AND clB.cl_to="All_articles_lacking_sources" AND page_namespace=0
ORDER BY page_title ASC;
Mr.Z-man 16:12, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Great idea!

I'll slap your bot with one hand, and pat you on the back with the other. Got to say, I've been amazed in all of this BLP and referencing that I haven't seen more comments like the one you made last week on the Village Pump page...Why the hell do so many people feel the need to create a new article as their first edit?) is not considered. I agree 100% with you on this - mainspace article creation rights shouldn't be automatic to people. Make them earn it by editing first. Cheers, The-Pope (talk) 13:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I've been saying that this is the root of the problem for a while now. This weird obsession we have with article count is why the average quality of the project hasn't really improved. Mr.Z-man 15:36, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

wikiEditor-ui

Hi. I was looking for an explanatory page for our current wikieditor toolbar. The page Help:Edit toolbar is out of date, and the only decent reference (and screenshot) I can find of it is at Wikipedia:RefToolbar 2.0. Do you happen to know if there's a more current Help page, either here or meta or elsewhere? Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 06:07, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

There isn't much documentation. What little documentation exists is here, here, and here. I wrote Wikipedia:RefToolbar 2.0 pretty much entirely by reading the source and trial and error. Mr.Z-man 16:04, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Much thanks. I'm going to copy this thread to Help talk:Edit toolbar for the benefit of future seekers. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage

Hi. As you recently commented in the straw poll regarding the ongoing usage and trial of Pending changes, this is to notify you that there is an interim straw poll with regard to keeping the tool switched on or switching it off while improvements are worked on and due for release on November 9, 2010. This new poll is only in regard to this issue and sets no precedent for any future usage. Your input on this issue is greatly appreciated. Off2riorob (talk) 23:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Grace Bauer's references

Added references (and external links and removed tag generated by your bot. --Beth Wellington (talk) 19:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Adopt-a-user reminder

Hello, I have completed a general cleanup of the adopter information page for the adopt-a-user project, located here. During my cleanup, I have removed several inactive and retired users. In order to provide interested adoptees with an easy location to find adopters, it is essential that the page be up-to-date with the latest information possible. Thus:

  • If you are no longer interested in being an adopter, please remove yourself from the list.
  • If you are still interested, please check the list to see if any information needs to be updated or added - especially your availability. Thank you.
  • You are receiving this message because you are listed as an adopter here.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Netalarm (talk) at 03:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

Hi Mr.Z-man,

Is it possible to get a popular pages report for WP:WikiProject Essays? The thing is, they don't assess Wikipedia essays for quality (so there's no B-class category name), just importance. I don't know if the bot would be unhappy about that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

As long as all the pages are in Category:NA-Class Wikipedia essays, it could, though the way the importance categories are named ("impact" rather than "importance") means they won't be seen by the bot. Mr.Z-man 22:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand/Popular pages inaccuracy

Hi Mr Z-man - I note a shortcoming of the "popular pages" calculations you run... if a page is created during the month listed, it doesn't get counted. The September 2010 New Zealand list does not include 2010 Canterbury earthquake (created on Sept 3), despite that page receiving 184594 hits, which would have placed it tenth in the list of most-viewed pages for the month! Grutness...wha? 08:11, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there's no real way around this in the near future. Generating the list of articles to get data for takes several hours, so doing it more often would be difficult. Mr.Z-man 22:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Fair enough - I wasn't suggesting more frequent runs, and am grateful that you do what you do. I take it there's no way of running the program for all pages existing at the end of the time period and working back, rather than running it for all the ones existing at the start of it, then? Grutness...wha? 22:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

An update from adopt a user

Hi there Mr.Z-man! You may be wondering, what have I done to sound the alarm this time? Nothing. I'm messaging you in regards to the adopt-a-user program, which currently has a backlog of users wishing to be adopted. This doesn't make much sense, as we have a considerable list of users offer adoption, so there shouldn't be any backlog. I've begun to eliminate this backlog myself through a matching program, but I need your help to make it work. Of course, adoptees and adopters don't have to go through there, but I believe it helps eliminate the backlog because someone is actively matching pairs.

On the list of adopters, I have modified the middle column to say "Interests." It's easier working with other users that have similar interests, so if it's not too much to ask, could you add your interests in the middle column? For example, if I was interested in hurricanes, computers, business, and ... reptiles? I would place those in the middle column. Counter-vandalism and the like can also be included (maintenance should be used as the general term). The more interests, the better, since adoptees can learn more about you and choose the one they feel most comfortable working with. The information about when you're most active and other stuff can go into the "Notes" section to the right.

Finally, I've gone around and asked adoptees (and will in the future) to fill in a short survey so adopters can take the initiative and contact users they feel comfortable working with. We all know that most adoptees just place the adopt me template on their user page and leave it - so it's up to us to approach them and offer adoption. So, please take a look at the survey, adopt those that fit your interests, and maybe watchlist it so you can see the interests of adoptees and adopt one that fits your interests in the future.

Once again, thank you for participating in the adopt-a-user program! If you wish to respond to this post, please message me on my talk page.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Netalarm (talk) at 05:21, 11 October 2010 (UTC).

Your thoughts?

Hi.

Last July you commented on a proposal I made. The mini-tutorial has been trimmed and, I hope, simplified since then; so I would really value any thoughts you may have regarding (a) the proposal as it now stands and/or (b) the clarity, value, appropriateness of the current version of the mini-tutorial - if you feel so inclined. It's being trialled on Pain for a few weeks. Anthony (talk) 08:35, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

ANI

Hi,
On ANI you remarked "This has been an escalating problem." If you mean since the last ANI on 28th September, can you please explain to me exactly what it is that you believe is escalating, and on what basis you form that belief? Rich Farmbrough, 23:52, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

Talkback

Hello, Mr.Z-man. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/WillieBot_2.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

 Ⓢock  21:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Move maintenance tags to talk pages

Please see Wikipedia talk:Perennial proposals#Move maintenance tags to talk pages -- PBS (talk) 23:16, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Just dropping in

Hey Z, thank you for responding the other day on the RFA. I was just curious on your definitions of optional queries, but I see where your coming from on them (and to be honest you do make a very good point), At anyrate, happy editing cheers, Ottawa4ever (talk) 08:56, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

The name of WikiProject Films has been changed to WikiProject Film. If any changes are required with regard to the popular pages setup for this project, do you think you could take care of them? Thanks in advance. PC78 (talk) 12:06, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Ping

I've emailed you. Tony (talk) 07:35, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Another email. I can't send you attachments ... Tony (talk) 13:59, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

citation script

Hi. I've been referred to you as the creator of the 'RefToolbar script', the gizmo that autofills cite templates. 1. Is that right? 2. Shall I comment here, or is there a centralised discussion page? cygnis insignis 11:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

1) Yes. 2) There is a talk page at Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar 1.0 and Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar 2.0 depending on which script you're referring to. Mr.Z-man 05:31, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I want to make use of the function at sister sites, and eventually have this recognised at wikipedia. I'll give you the background: I do a bit of work at Wikisource, Commons, and here. The usual practice at source is to obtain a djvu file from archive.org, upload that Commons, create a page in the Index namespace at wikisource, then make a transcription of the page scans in the Page namespace to serve the presentation of the work in that main namespace. There is an overview of the wikisource namespaces at s:Help:Namespace. This involves a lot of copying and fiddling with the bibliographic details at each of these steps.

Here is a example: archive.org to commons to ws Index to ws main. The title, volume, publisher and so on are given at archive.org, but need to be manually copy pasted at each step.

If I cite this document here, then I need to do that again in a citation template. However, if I was citing a google book or another source, I could make use of the autofill function. Would it be possible to use a script to 'autofill' the commons information template, ws Index form, ws header template and, eventually, a cite journal template here by using a single identifier, such as a url, of a (sub-paged) article like s:Folk-Lore. Volume 4/The Folk? cygnis insignis 08:25, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

The Google books autofill was actually done by User:Apoc2400. It would probably be possible to make such a script, but I personally don't have the time to do that right now. Mr.Z-man 15:42, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll duplicate this there. cygnis insignis 16:25, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
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