User talk:Ohconfucius/archive20

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Mosnum script

Erm, basically, can you teach me how to use the Mosnum script? There aren't quite enough examples in the documentation. I'm trying to unify the date formats on Manila hostage crisis, and thought you'd be the right person to ask for help, and would rather make the edit myself because any automated edit to this article may be contentious... Deryck C. 09:11, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Yep, sure. I'm not sure of your exact concerns about examples in the documentation. I presume you are currently using popups, as I see you already have it in your monobook.js. That being the case, you just need to copy the following, and paste it below the last line:

importScript('User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates.js');  //[[User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates.js]]

Click save, and refresh the cache. Whenever you are in edit mode, the various functions will appear under the small triangle in the Toolbox in the sidebar on the left of the edit window. you click on the desired function. In the case of the Manila hostage article, you will need to click on the 'all dates to mdy' button. There is no risk of accidental save; the 'show changes' function is automatically activated, so you will see the changes made by the script. In the above case, you will see instances of 'yyyy-mm-dd' and 'dd mmm yyyy' changed to 'mmm dd, yyyy'. You can then save or edit according.

he 'all dates to dmy' button converts instances of 'yyyy-mm-dd' and 'mmm dd, yyyy' changed to dmy format. If you are editing an article where the dates in the reference section are uniformly 'yyyy-mm-dd', you may choose to use 'body dates to dmy' or 'body dates to mdy' instead (as appropriate) to leave the 'yyyy-mm-dd' dates unchanged. I hope the above answers your query. Failing that, please could you elaborate on the sort of examples you wish to see, and I will explain further. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:35, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

That's the example I want to see - "all dates to mdy" doesn't actually tell the user anything (mdy can mean mm-dd-yyyy, mm-dd-yy, Mmm dd, yyyy etc etc.). I'll try running the script and see what comes out of it. Deryck C. 08:29, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

• Ah, I see what is causing the doubt! 'mdy' in the language of MOSNUM regulars means "July 6, 2011" or similar – one of two date formats deemed suitable for the body of an article – the other one being 'dmy', which means "6 July 2011". --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:32, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

• I think you really need to give an example of each format, so that the documentation is understandable by the rest of en.wp. Also I tried running the script - the "Scripts" option header appears on the left-hand menu, but no conversion options show up... Deryck C. 08:36, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

• The script buttons will appear only if you click on the small triangle next to "Toolbox" and not "Script". Will update the doc accordingly. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:39, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

• Done. Thanks. As for the documentation, it may also help to give an example of an "ISO date". Deryck C. 08:54, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for your advice, Deryck. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:01, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

List of languages

Hello Ohconfucius. Regarding your interesting RfC proposal about diacritics, I would like to mention that the list of languages there omits several European languages with Latin script, that use diacritics, e.g. Bosnian and Croatian language. Serbian language uses both Cyrillic and more recently also Latin script, and we also use Serbian names with diacritics, see e.g. Kruševac or Nemanja Vidić. - Darwinek (talk) 09:23, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing that out to me. I am aware the list is incomplete. In preparing the RfC, I and like-minded wanted to be able to gain consensus with a list that closely follows a major source that uses diacritics. Thus, the list, derived from the style guide of National Geographic, represents verifiable reliable usage, and is our starting point. Of course, as was written in the rationale, the intention is to include Roman-script languages which use diacritics natively, so if we are successful with this RfC, the list can be expanded relatively easily. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:46, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Thank you for substantive and helpful answer. - Darwinek (talk) 10:25, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Delinking script question

So over the past couple of days you've run your style audit script over the articles for the major US broadcast networks. While I would object to the removal of links to television network, as that's a pretty definitional link for those (and therefore certainly fall under the "relevance" exception to WP:OVERLINK), I understand that it's a pretty common term that doesn't usually need to be linked and they were just caught up in the script.

But that's not my real question. My question is one of consistency. I understand the reasoning behind delinking New York City, Los Angeles and some other major US cities (though I do disagree as I feel it only reinforces Wikipedia's systemic bias). My specific question is why links to Chicago are left behind, when, say, San Francisco is delinked. As the third largest city in the US, Chicago is certainly the sort of city that is a "common geographic term". I know I generally disagree with any city falling under that category, for my own reasons, but I just have to question the inconsistency of delinking LA or San Francisco but not Chicago. oknazevad (talk) 00:22, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

• You are absolutely correct of the central relevance of the link to 'television network'. I was actually approaching the article from the viewpoint as a large company, so the connection was not made at the point. I apologise. However, having said that, I generally prefer links to specific targets rather than generic terms – there may be other links which are equally well suited to the article, such as Television in the United States. Having just now looked at the former article, I see that there is some interesting content at that article – the history section, for instance – which arguably should also be at 'Television in the United States'. As to Chicago, I also agree there is an inconsistency, and I don't really know how to draw the line. I am unsure of using population as the primary criterion, as cities like Jacksonville and San Antonio definitely fall below San Francisco and Las Vegas (in terms of recognition certainly as regards from outside the US) although the two latter cities have smaller populations. I think that cities on the East and West coast are generally more well-known, but Chicago and perhaps Detroit in the Mid-West ought to be unlinked too. I'll take another look at the list when I next update my script. Thanks for your imput. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:06, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Redirects

What do we do about redirects from drafts in userspace to the main article? This doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere, at least not on the main userspace guideline page. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 07:57, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

• Good question. For those created when I move work into mainspace, I usually have them deleted myself; I guess not everyone removes them. They seem to be generally harmless, though. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 11:23, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Dougweller (talk) 19:54, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Please stop wholesale edits without checking your work on a few pages at a time

My friend, I appreciate that you appear to be an interested Wikipedia editor, but I really do not understand what you are doing in this wholesale manner with your script assisted editing. I noticed in the Intel article you made over 1,000 changes in a single edit that:

• removed about 100 wikilinks that were all correct and accurate. That is not helping Wikipedia.
• changed hundreds of reference dates (all dates that I can see) that were properly formatted per MOS:DATEUNIFY with the YYYY-MM-DD to the "Month DD, YYYY" format which violates WP:DATERET.
• changed all "{{cite web..." entries to "{{Cite web..." is not as is displayed on Template:Cite_web and was identified as completely unnecessarily when discussed over 1 year ago in this Rich Farmbrough AWB incident thread where you were actively participating in the conversation.
• removed all "parameter=" entries that did not have a corresponding entry. If an editor was looking up data to fill in that information, you have now removed possibly hundreds of thousands of entries of text that editors have to manually re-enter. That is very disrespectful to the editors who are working on those articles.
• changed all "location=London" entries to "location=UK" in the citation templates. This field identifies the location of the publisher. London is more specific than UK (which is actually multiple countries).
• changed various "publisher=xxxxx" to "work=xxxxx" or "agency=xxxxx" with no apparent or cited evidence for the change.
• wasted about 3 hours of my time trying to understand the hundreds of changes to the article I have been watching to ensure they all make sense and are not incorrect or violating WP policy.

Since your wholesale changes have violated a number of WP policies and styles and I forced to revert all changes at this time. I recognize that your bot may have made some good changes, but the rest of the editors cannot be expected to sort through the 90% problem edits manually.

Please reconsider using this bot on the hundreds of articles I see you have edited just today to prevent hundreds of other volunteer Wikipedia editors from wasting 3 hours each looking through this mess. I appreciate your attention. § Music Sorter § (talk) 07:47, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I see you are continuing to edit pages in this same manner with with no response as to why you are continuing to violate WP Policies. You state on your bot page that you are a big supporter of the policy, yet you appear to be ignoring them. I found a number of articles in the computing project area that have your edits in violation of these policies and I feel compelled to undo them. I urge you to reconsider your actions with such disregard to the other editors who are also working to support the WP policies. Please stop your actions to review them further. § Music Sorter § (talk) 06:08, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Firstly I would apologise for not replying sooner. The page you posted to isn't watched. Just because somebody else posted there doesn't mean it's active, so I apologise for not formally redirecting it here since the last post. In addition, have been having connectivity problems for the best part of today. You raised quite a few points in your message. Naturally, I disagree with your accusation: AFAIK, my changes were within policy. You claim to have read my script page and the relevant policies, yet your comments seem to betray a basic ignorance or misunderstanding of them as far as my editing were concerned.

The points in the order in which you raised them:

• Just to humour you a bit, I have rarely found a wikilink that was not "correct and accurate". Removing links, particularly when link density is high, is beneficial to readers, as it focusses on high-value links – those of first-degree relevance to the subject of the article, as opposed to secondary, tertiary etc. Links I removed at Intel were: President, CEO, World, US$, personal computer, BBC News, trademark, board of directors. I believe although they may be 'relevant', they are dirt common and would certainly fall within the realm of 'overlinking'. I removed certain links from within the string "Santa Clara, [[California]]; Hillsboro, [[Oregon]]; and the Phoenix, [[Arizona]] suburb of Chandler" as these successive "chain" links are discouraged in the Manual of Style – the state links were merely subsidiary to the city links, and were removed for the reason of lack of direct relevance.
• I do not believe I have violated policy. WP:DATERET is meant to apply where all or majority of dates are consistent – being the overriding objective of WP:MOSNUM – it is then that whimsical changes are not acceptable. That was not the case of Intel, or the other articles you may be referring to. The guideline certainly does not mean leave inconsistent dates as they are. I would point out that the version of the article I edited was predominantly in the mdy date format, the reference section was a mixture of all three of the allowed formats. I aligned them all to mdy, which is encouraged by the guideline.
• Indeed I ensured that all cases of citation templates were capitalised. In case you were not aware, that out of the 159 existing references (without counting the number of without citation templates), there were 98 instances of "{{Cit" in the version I edited. Thus capitalisation was done in respect of what was before, not in spite of it. Unlike the discussion in the Farmbrough case, where this change made on its own was considered inconsequential, it is perfectly permissible to perform this in the volley of other changed.
• That I removed all "parameter=" entries that did not have a corresponding entry … removing "possibly hundreds of thousands of entries of text that editors have to manually re-enter. That is very disrespectful to the editors who are working on those articles." That is a matter of opinion and not objective fact. Many of those fields are redundant and will never be filled. Editors who know about the existence of these templates and will know to fill in parameters that are needed.
• "changed all 'location=London' entries to 'location=UK'" These are only changed for certain journals, where there is no no ambiguity. There is only one The Times and one The Guardian in the UK; The Guardian is published in Manchester and London.
• "changed various 'publisher=xxxxx' to 'work=xxxxx' or 'agency=xxxxx' with no apparent or cited evidence for the change." I am unsure what "evidence for the change" you wish to see. A news agency is a news agency, a newspaper or journal is a "work". The use of the work parameter is predominantly used to italicise journal titles, in accordance with WP:ITALICS, and only printed journal names are italicised. An example from within the article: the Seattle Times is a traditional journal, and should be italicised. It should be noted that whilst "|publisher=Seattle Times" renders as "Seattle Times", "|work=Seattle Times" renders as "Seattle Times"; one could equally use the "journal" or "newspaper" parameter to italicise.
• "wasted about 3 hours of my time trying to understand" I feel that the changes were uncontroversial and of benefit to the encyclopaedia, and I am sorry you had to spend so long on understanding the changes. I am even more regretful that you feel it was three hours wasted. I urge you to review your understanding of the style guidelines in light of my explanations
• "Please reconsider using this bot on the hundreds of articles" I am not running a bot. I would assure you that all of the edits are supervised and reviewed.
• "I recognize that your bot may have made some good changes" I appreciate that comment, but I would contend you have made a gross understatement: you neglected to mention that, amongst the many changes you expressed disapproval of, some 49 citations I added seem to have been removed in your blanket revert. Of course, you would be well within your rights – I do not own the encyclopaedia or any article within it. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 12:27, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Ohconfucius, I sincerely appreciate your reply. I just finished replying to Jenks24 on my talk page here. He did an excellent job reviewing each point very similarly to your points here. I now have a different opinion of what is happening. I think the key issue I had was "thinking" these changes were from a bot. Now I understand that is not the case and I also understand your changes much better. I now apologize to you and Jenks24 for wasting your time to reply to my concerns. I also mentioned I will re-review my "undo" to your changes and set them back, although I think I have also made other changes since then. I'm not sure they will all go through. Maybe if it is not too much trouble you can rerun your script through any of the other pages you changed that I undid if subsequent edits have prevented our reverts.

Further, as I mentioned in my conversation with Jenks24, I will now look into seeing if I can take advantage of your scripts in my own page edits. Thanks again. § Music Sorter § (talk) 17:32, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your understanding. I have now redone some of the changes to the Intel article, whilst making a few more to refs that I did not pick up first time around. As to the other two articles you reverted, I see someone has put back some of the overlinking changes. If you would like me to rework the dates there, please let me know. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 17:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I am fine to have you pass through those articles again for the dates. Now that I have a better understanding of the intent of the two date policies we have been discussing I agree with your changes and will make them myself in other articles where I can. § Music Sorter § (talk) 03:24, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

British vs American English

Ohconfucius, while reviewing your script pages I saw your script on British English variation and initially I was concerned. At first I thought I read you were converting instances of American spelling to British spelling without regard for the content of the article. I now believe you are not doing that since that statement comes from the same sentence that says It ensures consistency where BrEng is used in an article, by converting instances of American spelling to British spelling...

As you have likely seen, the issue of American English vs British English can get as heated as the debates from 400 years ago. :)

May I recommend that you consider adjusting your statement:

It ensures consistency where BrEng is used in an article..

to something like [bold added for comparison only]:

It ensures consistency where BrEng is already predominantly used in an article or should be based on WP:TIES...

I think this will prevent cases where an article which is predominantly or originally written in American English is not changed based on one British English spelled word. It would also support the conversation of text to British English for any article on a British/Australian/etc. topic.

I have not run across an article I am currently watching that has had your British English script make any changes, so I don't know what is the result in questionable articles.

Thanks for your consideration and all your hard work in Wikipedia. § Music Sorter § (talk) 18:01, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

• Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. The wording in the documentation has been modified accordingly. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:47, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Script vs. MOS:DATEUNIFY.

Please get consensus to change the accessdate formatting at MOS:DATEUNIFY before continuing making more script edits. -- Jeandré, 2011-07-10t18:32z

Dl2000 (talk) 02:55, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Jeandré, you might be at the same point I was just a day ago when Ohconfucius ran his script on some articles I had been monitoring. At first I was concerned that he was not following the policies of the MOS, but since then I realize I was not completely following them myself. In the case of footnotes I was concerned that the accessdate I had been entering was classically YYYY-MM-DD, but the rest of the footnote was using MM-DD-YYYY for article or publication dates. I thought that was acceptable, but now I realize I was violating the MOS:DATEUNIFY policy myself and Ohconfucius was simply making them consistent. You did not leave a link to the article in question, so we are unclear what you might be in disagreement about. § Music Sorter § (talk) 03:33, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

"In the same article, do" [...] "Jones, J. (September 20, 2008) ... Retrieved 2009-02-05." - MOS:DATEUNIFY. While it is currently acceptable to use the little endian dates, and worse the middle endians, we don't have get rid of the few big endian ("consistent with the big endianness of the Indian decimal numbering system") dates. Logical punctuation: done. Logical date formatting: not completely, yet. -- Jeandré, 2011-07-11t13:16z

?? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 13:52, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Jeandré, we have no idea what you are trying to say here, § Music Sorter § (talk) 15:18, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

China collaboration is BACK! Yeah!

Long story short, I poked at a few hornets' nests, and User:Casliber was generous enough to create Wikipedia:China-related topics notice board/ZHCOTM; it's been reactivated for a trial run from July 2011. I hope you can figure out how prominently to display it on the noticeboard and WikiProject China, and get deep into the collaboration yourself too.

Hail Confucius! :P NickDupree (talk) 05:11, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Culture Club

Hi Ohconfucius, you are right but I did not add links to words such as singing, it was added by other user. I just restored my sourced information and it may include that links. Excuse me, I didn't know. Thanks for your message. In the future, I will just restore my sourced information or revert vandalism. --Newalf (talk) 01:15, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Evangelos Florakis Naval Base explosion

We've spoken about this before, my friend. Please stop removing publishers (and especially stop adding locations in lieu of publishers when they're not used elsewhere in the article) and stop unlinking publications from references. And replacing "United Nations" with UN (though I agree it shouldn't be linked) is just bizarre, since any half-decent reviewer would quite properly insist that "United Nations" be spelt out in full for the first mention. It's perfectly acceptable to link publications in references (even multiple times) and the only reason you seem to have for removing those links is your own opinion. It's not backed by any guideline or consensus and this is getting disruptive.

I'm sorry, but your script is too binary and it's actually introducing problems where previously there were none. I just don't think it's practical to make those kinds of edits with a script, because it's nearly impossible to deem that a link is inappropriate everywhere it's used. You and I agree on many things, but every time somebody points out that your script is going further than the MoS mandates and/or creating problems that weren't there before, you just carry on. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:20, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

• Harry, Your above article was really quite well laid out there wasn't much for the script to do. I have adjusted the script not to substitute 'UN' for 'United Nations'. The removal of publisher of the Cyprus Mail was entirely manual; I missed removing 'Financial Times Publishers Ltd.! I respect your efforts enormously, but I really do question the point of inserting publishers in this fashion: '|work=[[Cyprus Mail]]|publisher=Cyprus Mail Co Ltd', '1|work=[[Financial Times]]|publisher=The Financial Times Limited', and '|work=[[The Daily Telegraph]]|publisher=Telegraph Media Group' - isn't this the ultimate redundancy? And I just noticed you (re)inserted several instances of '|work=[[BBC News]]|publisher=[[BBC]]', all linked, which I had nothing to do with but would normally have removed as a matter of course. Perhaps it was an expression of frustration at me!

  The refs section is already dense and replete with links; the font size is smaller than the body of the article. I'll think about how to deal with it while on my break. Regards, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:54, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Date format in STS-127 article

I appreciate your editing of STS-127 on 18 May 2011 to unify all date formats. However, at present the table in the "Launch Attempts" section is a mess. I don't know enough about editing a table. Perhaps you can look at it? Bob305 (talk) 03:26, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

 Fixed. Looks like the table is a template, but Ohconfucius did not realize that when fixing the other times in the article. § Music Sorter § (talk) 04:37, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Bob305 (talk) 04:45, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Operation Yellowbird

Hi, I reviewed your DYK nom for Operation Yellowbird and had to tick it of as a "no" because the article is still short of the x5 mark. I also made some small changes to the article itself. I'm not sure exactly, but this book [1] also seems to have some information about it, although since the book itself focuses on cross border crime, it tends to talk a lot about the role of Triads in the operation. Since I'm not sure how significant this really was I don't know if it should be included or not. But if you think so, you can use it to expand the article to get it up to required length and then I can flip the no vote to a yes. Thanks, interesting article.Volunteer Marek (talk) 08:25, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. It's just the source needed. --88.160.245.226 (talk) (aka Ohconfucius) 11:13, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

GOCE drive newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors July 2011 backlog elimination drive update GOCE July 2011 backlog elimination drive progress graphs Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors July 2011 Backlog elimination drive! Here is your mid-drive newsletter. Participation So far, 45 people have signed up for the drive, of which 30 are actively participating, a very high participation rate. If you have not signed up for the drive yet, you can sign up now. If you have questions about getting started, feel free to talk to us. Progress report Progress has been less than that needed to meet our target for the drive (which would reduce the backlog by about 400 articles). Remember though, if everyone copy edits one or two articles every day, we will easily meet our goal. Many thanks to those editors who have been helping out at the Requests page. Reducing the number of articles on this list has been a major success of this drive. Thanks for participating! Your drive coordinators – Diannaa, Chaosdruid, The Utahraptor, Slon02 and SMasters

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 05:04, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Nigel Egg

In April you PRODded this, and it was deleted. Undeletion has been requested at WP:REFUND, so per WP:DEL#Proposed deletion I have restored it, and now notify you in case you wish to consider taking it to AfD. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 17:37, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Operation Yellowbird

The DYK project (nominate) 16:04, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Mangling infoboxes

Please be careful with delinking things in infoboxes, your edit here mangled the map. Also, if you check other parts of the edit, the inclusion of a leading colon is quite strange, among other strangeness. 198.102.153.2 (talk) 16:39, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

• Can't understand it. It was me for sure, but I wouldn't have ordinarily unlinked 'Cheshire' in the infobox. Anyway, I've redone the script, so I know it must have been manual. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:03, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Template:q

I responded on my talk page. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 01:00, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Messiah

You kindly removed some overlinking from Messiah Part II. You also changed the numbering, from "15 - 13" to "15-13". That looks like one number to me, whereas it's two different numbers (for the same movement) in different editions. Is there a better separator? - Whatever the style, it should be the same for Part I, II, III. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:06, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for drawing my attention to that issue. So it's not a typical string, I need to take advice on that. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:09, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

RE: ITN blurb

Hello. You have a new message at User talk:Fox's talk page.  lisica《FOX》 08:22, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

A bug in your script?

Hi Ohconfucius, the edit that you performed here erroneously replaced {{STR}} with {{Flagu|STR}}, which I reverted here. I think a script fix is required. :) -- de Facto (talk). 09:45, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

• It was assumed that the single, three-lettered capitalised format was reserved for flags. That obviously isn't the case. I'll make a note of it. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:48, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

ITN

Hi I have nominated 2011 Kosovo–Serbia border clashes for ITN. Please join the discussion.--BabbaQ (talk) 11:23, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Redirected instead of Moved

Hey, I was following instructions Help:Logging_in#What_if_I_forget_the_password.3F and you redirected my [pages] instead of doing the Move, losing all my history, and I'm still not able to move it myself. If they didn't want us to do this, why put it in the instructions? Why did you do that? Prapsnot 2.0 (talk) 05:42, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

• The great thing about a redirect is you don't lose any history. It's no big deal and can easily be reverted/undone. You don't need to go through RM for stuff in your userspace. Two options: 1/Why don't you just find a friendly admin and ask them to move both pages, and perform a merge on the page history. 2/ Seeing there's precious little in both User:Prapsnot 2.0 and User talk:Prapsnot 2.0, you can have them deleted by using the {{db-house}} tag on both. You can then move your old pages to the deleted namespaces yourself. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:11, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Let me understand. First you comment and tell me not [to get any admin] to move my Userpages. Then you say ask an administrator. Lastly, you want me to ask for my pages to be deleted? How does any of what you are instructing me to do have any resemblance to Wikipedia instuctions? Are you just joking?Prapsnot 2.0 (talk) 06:32, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Please calm down. I suggested all along that you ought to get an admin to help. I said also that your request does not need to go through RM. The two issues are unrelated. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:34, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Template {{movereq}} for Request Move deleted. Redirect undone. Request to remove bogus instructions added to Help talk page Prapsnot 2.0 (talk) 05:15, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

script broken references

This edit left a page with a broken references section. I don't know if you still use this script or if this bug was fixed but I thought I'd mention it. Cheers, Jason Quinn (talk) 00:57, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

• It's always helpful for me to receive error reports like this, and I appreciate you taking the time to let me know. I have made numerous changes to the script since then, and I believe it no longer makes that mistake. I tried re-running the current version on that previous version of the article, and cannot reproduce the same output. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:55, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Fueled

It missed it. Radiopathy •talk• 02:13, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

• The script ignored the string because it did not recognise the dash preceding it. Now fixed. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:11, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

fueled cancelled travelled

traveled cancelled fuelled

canceled fuelled travelled

I typed the 'single-L' version of each word, then ran the script. Which ever word was first retained the single-L. Radiopathy •talk• 05:24, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

fueled cancelled travelled

traveled cancelled fuelled

canceled fuelled travelled

• Can you provide a diff to where you found this error? As you can see from this, the script fails on the first word. This is because it doesn't recognise the line feed which preceded it. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Template talk:Did you know/2011 Ukraine mine accidents

Could we be a little nicer to the editor with 25 edits? I know it's frustrating to see lots of DYKs that are poorly written but we don't want to scare the person off the project entirely. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 12:08, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

GOCE drive report

Guild of Copy Editors July 2011 backlog elimination drive report GOCE July 2011 backlog elimination drive progress graphs Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors July 2011 Backlog elimination drive. Thank you for participating! Here is your end-of-drive report. Participation 50 people signed up for the drive, of which 39 participated. Thanks to all who copy edited articles and helped us reduce the backlogs in both the total articles and requests. We offered a bonus for copy edits from the Requests page, and have been somewhat successful in reducing that backlog, as a record 89 new requests were received in the month of July. Progress report During the month of July we reduced the backlog by 338 articles, or by about 8.5%. We did not reach our goal of a 10% reduction, but we came close, and did very well considering the small size of the group participating. Since our Backlog elimination drives began in May 2010, we have reduced the backlog by 4,708 articles. End-of-drive results can be found here. We will be handing out barnstars within the next week or two. Requests page Please remember that the GOCE Requests page is receiving a high number of requests, with the number of August requests already above three per day. Any assistance to help keep the backlog down would be greatly appreciated. Our next drive will be in September. We hope to see you there! Your drive coordinators – Diannaa, Chaosdruid, The Utahraptor, Slon02 and SMasters

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 16:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Your script has violated the MOS

Recently I was reading the Al-Qaeda article and noticed a bunch of dates set to "11 September 2001". I started changing some of them back, but kept finding ones that I had missed. Your script apparently changed them all in this edit on June 18th of 2011, nearly a decade after the attacks themselves. According to MOS, the date format should not have changed for the following reasons:

1.) The date format had been established for a long time prior to your edit. When I searched for "11 September 2001" in this search, yours was the first and only result. Granted, I didn't chase the query back too far, but it had been consistent since at least 2007, 4 years ago, according to that query. 2.) The September 11th attacks are a thoroughly American topic, and as per MOS, date formats should reflect that. 3.) I struggle to find other dates in the previous version that were not consistent with the American-style format. Thus, the concept of "unifying" them under a common format (UK) makes even less sense.

You cite MOS in your script's page but you don't seem to regard it too highly. I intend to research other edits you and your bot have made and if there appears to be a pattern of disruption like this, I hope to stop you from continuing to make these types of illegitimate edits. I expect that you will fix the article in question. LuftWaffle0 (talk) 21:13, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

LW, your tone is unnecessarily confrontational, and your self-righteousness regarding MOS is laughable considering your edits. Look again at the title of the article you are talking about—it is not September 11, 2001 attacks. Al-Quaeda is an article about an international topic and should use the international date format. While hidden links should use the date format actually used in the article title, using US dates in reference to the attacks in articles that are not US-centric is arguable, but certainly not the definite proposition you seem to think. What makes your attitude hypocritical is that your solution was to use the date format you used in your contribution above: "September 11th, 2001". If you had bothered to read more of MOSDATE than the part you quoted, you would have seen that the "-th" is unacceptable. Next time, make sure of your facts before lashing out. This may be part of the internet, but that doesn't give you license to attack without bothering to grasp the facts. -Rrius (talk) 22:22, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

You're saying that I need to follow MOS in my comments on a person's talk page? Come on. In any case, you've failed to address my list of points about why it should not have changed. LuftWaffle0 (talk) 13:46, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

[2] and [3] established the date style in 2002. WP:DATERET is relevant here. Al-Qaeda, as far as I can determine, does not have strong national ties to dmy --JimWae (talk) 23:51, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Al Quaeda is focused in a dmy part of the world. It is becoming less and less clear to me how you define strong national ties to a date format. If a topic has its strongest ties to countries other than the United States or Canada, it's ties are to a dmy country (or, as in this case, countries). -Rrius (talk) 02:29, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Native Spellings

I just wanted to get you in on it at sort of the onset. Do you like how that I am using native names in the infoboxes such as Novak Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic, Monica Seles, Svetlana Kuznetsova? I have learned something by your RfC, but that is in another way. Go look at Winston Churchill in the Russian Wikipedia to see my new motivation to bring a similar practice to the English Wikipedia. So, even though we were on opposite sides of you diacritics argument, we may or may not agree on this matter.SaysWhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow? (talk) 03:54, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thank you for that. Of course, the top of the infobox is perfect and proper place for the native names. I have noticed that it also seems to be fairly common practice for Chinese and many other 'foreign' subjects. The problem I have with your arguments (but not the examples here) is that you seem to be basing them on languages that are non-native in Latin script. My proposal and arguments all along is that languages such as Russian, Serbian, Vietnamese, Chinese are not treated the same diacritical way analogous to your Churchill example. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:25, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I have done some digging on here in looking at the writing system. I see that but your RfC was wider reaching in scope than what I am attempting. I think we still need to use the most common names in English for our titles like Russia does with Russian language names like Churchill. I will agree we need to include it as far up in the article as possible with the exclusion of the title. The reason not in the title is because most English-based language keyboards are not functionally setup to type in varying scripts. In addition, most English based users will not understand the non-native name that is not the most common name. So, this is my half compromise with you we need to find out what nationality the individual article in question is from and use that name in the infoboxes and/or in the lead sections, which would be done for historical accuracy purposes. See on the basis of Serbia and Russia it needs to be done in cyrillic scripting for the native name. I have learned yet again something from you, and by the way I like getting down in the weeds with you on this subject because I believe it will lead to Wikipedia being a better place, peace!SaysWhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow? (talk) 05:32, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
    • By the way, unless it is provided to me, I don't know how to script outside of latin/roman.SaysWhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow? (talk) 05:50, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
      • I just scripted my real name in cyrillic, what a blast it is fun. You should do the same!SaysWhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow? (talk) 06:03, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Amina controversy GAC

The review is up! Please offer some help. The review is viewable on Talk:Amina Bokhary controversy. Deryck C. 21:51, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

RfC

Hello Ohconfucius, I am wondering should we do an RfC to codify a policy on the usage of native names with respect to political, historical leaders, athletes and others. I am wondering if we should do this or not?SaysWhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow? (talk) 02:24, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Script problems

Your script converted "BBC 2, 1 November 2010" to "BBC November 2, 1 2010". Diff at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tea_Party_movement&action=historysubmit&diff=443462255&oldid=443456278 . Have fun. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:13, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. I think that's inevitable. Thanks for fixing it too. Once the conversion done, it's unlikely ever to happen again. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:19, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Script request

Using the script, could you change the date format for Thaddeus McCotter presidential campaign, 2012 to the 'Month day, year' style? It seems the script recognized the other format as dominant because of the source template's presentation of the access date. In the actual text of the article the 'Month day, year' format was used.--William S. Saturn (talk) 23:44, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

• Done. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:41, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you.--William S. Saturn (talk) 03:52, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Please stop your "style audit" edits immediately

You have been asked and warned repeatedly about making edits contrary to MOSDATE. Nevertheless, recently you have made the following edits:

• [4] - changed accessdate style although both existing refs had yyyy-mm-dd (and this was the only date format in the references).
• [5] - changes some accessdate leaving a hodgepodge of inconsistent forms, followed immediately by [6] to "resolve ambiguous style" that you had just created.
• [7] - changed all accessdate although this article appears to have consistently used one style for publication date and yyyy-mm-dd for accessdate.
• [8] - 107 refs, nearly all using yyyy-mm-dd, were changed to a different style

This sample comes after you installed your non-consensus changes on the MOS page prior to discussion and consensus, and you have still not undone them, even pending discussion. If you make any further edits related to "style audits" at this point, I will report you to ANI. I will not reply here. If you want to discuss anything off the MOS page, do so at my talk page. Gimmetoo (talk) 04:31, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

• Don't blame me for faults introduced by others. It's likely because people can't cope with telephone number formats that we end up with nonsensical formats like this. I did not introduce the error. I will address the rest. Now will you stop your drama and stop rattling your sabre. Your cooperation would be most appreciated. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:46, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:ANI#Ohconfucius and date formats. Gimmetoo (talk) 01:35, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Annie Sophie Cory

Why were all the Year in Literature tags removed from the above article? Thanks, Hohenloh ⁺ 10:44, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

• I consider them of low value as those articles are almost but a list of books published in a given year. Thus, none of those 'year in' links deepens the understanding of the subject of the article. In addition, there is the principle of avoiding Easter eggs, which could mislead the reader. In any event, I believe it is now agreed that such links, where strongly germane to the article, or of incidental interest, may be added to the See also section. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:10, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Good Article promotion

File:HK Police HQs logo.jpg	Congratulations!
	Thanks for all the work you did in making Amina Bokhary controversy a certified "Good Article"! The article has passed, and it was good to work with you. Thanks also for your reviews. Featured article candidates and Good Article nominees always need more reviewers! All the best, – Quadell (talk)

Many thanks for the review. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the good work you did to the article. That was real fast. Deryck C. 15:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to you for putting the article up, and for the encouragement. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:01, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Your proposal

May I recommend that you place a link to your proposal on Template:Centralized discussion, as it will affect the entire project. As you know, more imput will lead to a better idea of where consensus stands. Best regards (and keep up the good work), Nightw 12:37, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the suggestion. Now actioned. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:16, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Error report

In this edit the number sign (#) was replaced with "No." but no space was provided between "No." and the numeral which followed. I have not investigated whether other aspects of the edit were correct. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:46, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. That was deliberately without a space because it was how I understood the guideline. I will look into it and amend it where necessary. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 13:54, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I was mistaken. Script now adjusted. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:15, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Hong Kong meetup

On a separate note, you're invited to the next Hong Kong meetup on 19 August in Think Cafe, Causeway Bay. Hope to see you there! Deryck C. 14:51, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

PS. Do you have any script or know of any bots who do mass messaging? Deryck C. 16:14, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

• After looking up Category:Newsletter delivery bots, I found User:ChzzBot that could be a candidate for your newsletter. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:27, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Oscar Wilde

This is just for your information and is a request that you check your corrective edits carefully. In this edit to Oscar Wilde, you inadvertently broke the link to an image on the page. The image file name File:Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), by Hills & Saunders, Rugby & Oxford 3 april 1876.jpg uses a lower case "a" for the word April and you "fixed" it to a capital "A" which broke the link. I have corrected the article now. Dabbler (talk) 16:55, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Please stop changing dates within timelines

Inside timeline tags, dates need to be in dd/mm/yyyy format -- your scripts have messed up the timelines in a number of articles. See for example Konstantin Päts. Thanks Bunnyhop11 (talk) 19:08, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for letting me know. My apologies. I've now adjusted the script to avoid this problem in future. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:18, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Request and question regarding self-immolation spinout articles

I noticed that you have absented yourself from the Falun Gong work group. God knows I can understand why. But I am going to try to get a few other editors involved, at least some of whom will not be Falun Gong practitioners, and hope that some of the 70 or so subjects which I can verify meet at least the general notability guidelines get developed. I think you, particularly with your wonderful work in developing the self-immolation article, would be an extremely welcome and valuable contributor.

Also, on a somewhat related note, I have gone over a lot of the articles I have found on databanks regarding Falun Gong, and I think that there is sufficient separate notability for most of the survivors of the self-immolation to perhaps have separate articles. This might include the material, primarily from Xinhua, about how they have subsequently converted from Falun Gong, as well as any information available about their prior lives. The surviving child, for instance, evidently played a short solo in an orchestra performance once. I know that Xinhua is not the best source, of course, but I don't know if we can say on that basis that subjects covered by them should not be discussed.

I would welcome any sort of response, both to the second point and, of course, particularly the first one. Like I said, I can and will try to get a few more outsiders involved, and will e-mail to anyone the material I have found at their request. I am going to try to develop some of the bios in particular myself, but outside demands can and fairly often do take me to places with difficult internet access, so I don't expect to necessarily be as active as I would like in content development itself. John Carter (talk) 17:18, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for your request and your kind words, John.

  You are correct in noting that I have decided to withdraw from work on Falun Gong. It is ironic that what drew me into editing Falun Gong was the atrocious state of these articles, and not my love or dislike of religion or of the group. After I got involved in FLG articles that I got literally sucked into the rather insane environment, It took me a while to realise that the PRC and FLG deserve each other for their propagandist and paranoid behaviour bred from the Cultural Revolution. And were it not for my work on other PRC articles, I could have been tarred as a member of the '50 cent party'. Your observation from the sidelines and your occasional interjections were welcome reality checks when I worked in that realm, and I thank you deeply.

  While I do not rule out coming back to the field one day, I feel that the 'battles' that took place with zealots and crackpots from both sides have left me tired and scarred. I also believe it is too soon for me to want to jump back in to the fray. I am just not ready to find myself back in the crossfire of zealots and propagandists from both sides, and would therefore decline your invitation for now. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 17:56, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Script and categorization

Hi, Ohconfucius. I send this message because it is a little problem with your script reguarding the categorization style of catmain. I explain (forgive my bad English :-) ): Categorization of the pages with their own category may be wroten in that way: [[Category:London| ]] in the article London or [[Category:Jennifer Lopez| ]] in the article Jennifer Lopez (as examples), with the empty space after the pipe; as normally done per standard. The script adds article's name after the empty space (ex: [[Category:London|London]] in the article London). Thanks for attention and sorry for disturb. Regards. --Dэя-Бøяg 18:41, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. Funnily enough, I didn't actually add anything. The script removed a space, and this is the display that results. I'll patch the script. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:50, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Random Barnstar Macedoniarulez (talk) 02:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

• Surprised, a bit bewildered, but appreciative nonetheless for the barnstar. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:15, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Congrats!

		100000 Edits
		Congratulations on reaching 100000 edits. You have achieved a milestone that very few editors have been able to accomplish. The Wikipedia Community thanks you for your continuing efforts. Keep up the good work!

Buster Seven Talk 15:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Date script

Where did it go? It was gone from my vector.js, so I reinstalled it, but it's not showing in my toolbox. Radiopathy •talk• 01:00, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Had similar problems several minutes ago, but did a hard refresh on the .js file, then hard refresh on the local monobook, then on the article in question. After doing that a few times, the script was activated on my end. Also, if you upgraded browsers or other software since last using the script, it might call for some hard refreshing all over the place to get things back in order. Dl2000 (talk) 01:52, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorted! I refreshed, logged out and quit my browser. It's all good now. Radiopathy •talk• 02:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Apologies, I fiddled with it last night to fix a bug, and must have introduced a fatal error. I have since restored the last working version. BTW, the bug – due to the 'slashes' function of the script – necessitated this repair. I am still working to resolve it. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:19, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Pmanderson and Arbcom

Hi. As I'm sure you know, you were named by Pmanderson recently on my talk page as one of a party of editors with whom he has some protracted conflict. Subsequent to discussion of that conversation at AN/I, I have decided to file a case with ArbCom to address issues that I'm not sure AN/I is capable of dealing with. Because you were mentioned in the post that started this particular grass fire, I'm thinking of you as a primary candidate to list as a party to the arbitration.

Are you okay with that? -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:57, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

• I have kept my distance from Manderson for several months now, I only got forced to participate in the ANI because a former arb made insinuations and cast certain aspersions that I felt compelled to dispel. I think that action at this stage is premature. If a suitably competent and uninvolved Admin closes the ANI, I believe that Manderson will receive an indefinite topic ban covering certain areas, and a block that is much longer that a week. You might say I'm an eternal optimist.

  I have no wish to get hauled to Arbcom once again. Without mentioning all the stress and bitterness that will be generated, I still have some outstanding business there that will certainly be torpedoed if there is a case. Already, although I have a great deal or respect for certain ARbs, I have reservations about the competence and disinterestedness of the Arbs, collectively speaking. I have little faith that Arbcom will come out with a ruling that is just. Its track record is that will tend to sanction everyone involved, on the grounds that it takes two sides to tango. So while I do understand that Arbcom may be better placed to deal with this chronic problem, I do not wish to see it go there. That may be an inevitability, in which case I don't see how I will not be named as one of the parties, but I don't plan to stick around when that happens. And since I have your attention, I think Carcharoth needs to go on that list too, not to mention everyone who inhabits the MOS, and anywhere there has been heat generated by Manderson's presence – that wide. Good luck! --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 12:50, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

  • Quoting Ohconfucius: I have little faith that Arbcom will come out with a ruling that is just. Its track record is that will tend to sanction everyone involved, on the grounds that it takes two sides to tango. That is so true. That is so much a problem. This situation with ArbCom serves as a paradigm of how a group of well-meaning people can generate an institution and process that no longer properly serves its constituency. Pretty sad. But true nonetheless. Greg L (talk) 00:19, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
    • Oh, let's try this quoting business: "This situation with MoS serves as a paradigm of how a group of well-meaning people can generate an institution and process." I won't complete that sentence, as I'm not yet sure yet on whether MoS is properly serving its constituency, but I do hope that if being critical of ArbCom is allowed, it is still permissible to be critical of the MoS. For the record, I was firmly recused on the date-delinking case (it is that ArbCom case that is causing numerous people to recoil in horror at the prospect of another ArbCom case). If you like, I can dig up the reason for that recusal. And there are others that share my concern. See here. I maintain my position that there has never been a proper, Wikipedia-wide, discussion of the basic principles underlying a manual of style as used on Wikipedia. Looking at the early versions of the MoS makes interesting reading. As does looking at any Wikipedia process in its early days. The one thing that can be said about almost any area of Wikipedia is that it has accrued bureaucracy and instruction creep over time. Periodically, that needs to be rolled back or pared down, ArbCom included. Carcharoth (talk) 18:08, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
      • I agree that the MOS has its failings and is not immune from criticism: it is often over-complex when it need not be, and there are holes in its coverage that a professional journal could do without. I feel that part of the problem is the evolution of our consensus model, whose tolerance and inclusiveness on many divergent issues has over the years encouraged the construction of ring fences and empires, many of which – such as no single date format, and varieties of English – have had to be institutionalised. Many of the disputes that we see would simply not have occurred had there been centrally defined rulebook from the beginning, but the lack of bureaucracy is one of the trade-offs with the growth rate of the project, which would not have been quite so rapid.

        I am beginning to see the clarity of your analyses. WP is such a wide and diverse place that I often have doubts how there can ever be genuine community-wide consensus on anything short of creating an overarching federal structure for the entire project. So where do we go from here? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:06, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Location of citation style guidance

In this edit I attempted to summarize your position with respect to where guidance about citation style should be located. Please comment there if I didn't get it right. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:47, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of File:IMG Logo4.gif

A tag has been placed on File:IMG Logo4.gif requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section F1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the image is an unused redundant copy (all pixels the same or scaled down) of an image in the same file format, which is on Wikipedia (not on Commons), and all inward links have been updated.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, contest the deletion by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". Doing so will take you to the talk page where you will find a pre-formatted place for you to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. SMasters (talk) 03:48, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Strange script behavior

I recently ran across a strange "word" in the Citibank article which seems to have been originated by an interesting glitch in (one of?) your script(s).

In this diff, three separate instances of "[[credit card]]" were changed to "credit card$2", at ~lines 37–38, 59–60, and 76–77. It just seemed a bit stranger than the usual script-assisted-edit errors I run across so I thought it might be worth calling to your attention. Fat&Happy (talk) 05:06, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

• Many thanks for letting me know. These notifications are always welcome, even long after the event. The bug was corrected on 13 July. I just apologise for not spotting this particular conversion and therefore not correcting the underlying edit. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:20, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

2011 southern Israel attacks

Heya - in the course of your Reflinks edit, you undid two edits I made. Would you mind restoring them? Thanks, Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:21, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

• I did one. It looks like someone else already took care of the other. Hope it's OK now. Apologies for the collateral damage. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 17:04, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

GOCE drive newsletter

Invitation from the Guild of Copy Editors The Guild of Copy Editors invites you to participate in their September 2011 Backlog elimination drive, a month-long effort to reduce the size of the copy editing backlog. The drive will begin on September 1 at 00:00 (UTC) and will end on September 30 at 23:59 (UTC). We will be tracking the number of 2010 articles in the backlog, as we want to copy edit as many of those as possible. Please consider copy editing an article that was tagged in 2010. Barnstars will be given to anyone who edits more than 4,000 words, with special awards for the top 5 in the categories "Number of articles", "Number of words", and "Number of articles of over 5,000 words". See you at the drive! – Your drive coordinators: Diannaa, Chaosdruid, The Utahraptor, Slon02, and SMasters. >>> Sign up now <<<

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 16:51, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Leeds

Not sure whether it was your script or human error, but you've introduced inconsistent spacing for the heights in feet and metres in the infobox, along with turning the hyphens into dashes - telling you rather than just fixing it to (a) save me the effort of checking which is right, but also (b) let you know in case it's a systematic problem! PamD 08:39, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

To clarify: I didn't mean to suggest you shouldn't have been changing the hyphens to dashes, just mentioned it as what was going on while the inconsistent spacing was being introduced! PamD 09:04, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Script edits: location

Hello. Re your script edit to Birmingham City F.C. diff. Where a cite-news template included both a wikilinked work and a location parameter, the script delinked the work and also changed the correctly completed location=London location parameter to location=UK. Doesn't seem particularly constructive to change the correct value to something less precise. I've changed them back. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 08:53, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

• As you wish. IMHO, the sources are all well-known and don't really need linking. Just thought I'd mention that there is no real advantage or point changing '|work=' to "|newspaper=' within the template. They both exist to italicise the rendered output which, as you know, is appropriate for journals and literary works. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:03, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Just to mention: I had the same thought about London being changed to UK as a publication location in the Leeds article - if it's precise and right, it seems unhelpful to change it. The two aren't synonymous, though it would be even more of a loss of useful information to change a non-London publication place to "UK". PamD 09:08, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

The titles are unique in the UK, so the lack of precision isn't a problem. OTOH, using 'London' might just be ambiguous. but adding '|location=London, England' is probably overdoing it. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:14, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

<scratches head> Did I change a non-London publication place to "UK"? </scratches head> --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:16, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Re work and newspaper, there is indeed no difference in output. However, there's still a great deal of confusion among less experienced editors as to correct usage of work and publisher fields. Using newspaper makes it obvious. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:17, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

• Minor detail: whilst that will work with {{citation}} and {{cite news}}, it does not work for {{cite web}} template. '|newspaper=Newspaper' does not produce any output:

  {{cite web|title=testing|newspaper=MyNewspaper|date=24 August 2011}} -> "testing". MyNewspaper. 24 August 2011. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:28, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Script with Images

Hi Ohconfucius. Just thought I would let you know that your script changed the filename for an image in New Zealand [9]. It was in a multiple image template. Not sure if there is an easy way to avoid this. AIRcorn (talk) 04:24, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. Very useful indeed it is to know of the existence of that template. Script now tweaked and tested. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:41, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Re: Dates withon Journals?

See the "False positive" discussion immediately above on my talk. Might not make sense for a journal title to embed a particular date, but seems the journal= param is something which shouldn't generally be altered by script. However, some cases conceivably warrant factoring out to a date= param. 03:32, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

• Sorry I troubled you. I should have gone through the talk page first. My script now adjusted too. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:37, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

yyyy-mm-dd yet again

[10] How many accessdates were in any form but yyyy-mm-dd? None that I can see. You are again, and still, editing contrary to MOSDATE. (You have also made a number of edits where the style in the references was near 100% consistent, but you changed it to a different form.) You've been warned multiple times. Enough is enough. How do you intend to resolve your continued non-compliance with the guideline? Gimmetoo (talk) 06:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

[11] Made after the latest warning. Please stop making any date-related edits until you are able to edit in compliance with MOSDATE. Gimmetoo (talk) 14:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Stop using the script. Simply fixing the links when I find them is insufficient. There are many other pages where you have done the same thing - remove yyyy-mm-dd formats contrary to guideline - including [12] which is after 14:18 today. Gimmetoo (talk) 14:32, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

[13] [14] Yet more. Your most recent editing shows that you can turn off the part of the script that removes yyyy-mm-dd. Gimmetoo (talk) 14:46, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Jivesh Here

Hi. I am Jivesh. Not sure we have ever talked. Can you please do the same thing you did on "Countdown (Beyoncé Knowles song)" on "1+1 (song)"? Please. Jivesh • Talk2Me 07:17, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Jivesh • Talk2Me 10:03, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome! --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:13, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

List of awards and nominations received by Kamal Haasan

Thanks for copy-editing the article. When I nominated this for FLC, the reviewer said not to include the hard-code of the url in the references. I can still see that in "work" parameters. It will be nice if you also correct those. Regards!

Questions

1) Hi, I've read Template:Use dmy dates/doc and Template:Use British English/doc, but I'm still a little bit confused. I deduce that an article labelled thus uses dmy dates and/or british english. Highly laudable! By why is this useful, how is it used, by whom is it used, and used to do what? Pdfpdf (talk) 11:24, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

2) Is it "the plan" to have all articles marked with a relevant template? Is there a strategy in place to achieve this? Is the marking manual, or are there semi-automatic aids? Pdfpdf (talk) 11:24, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for your enquiry. I guess the background lies in WP:MOSNUM and WP:ENGVAR respectively. Historically, Wikipedia does not have one overall style for all its articles. Editors are permitted to employ English variants – principally American and British English spelling differences – and, to a lesser extent, date formats within articles according to nation-based dividing lines, or sometimes according to who gets there first. British- and commonwealth-related articles thus tend to adopt 'British spellings' and the dmy date format. The imperative, however, is that all date formats used within an article are required to be 'monocépage'; the same goes for spelling. In practice, different editors contribute to the growth of an article without necessarily paying a great deal of attention to specific date formats and national spellings. The resulting inconsistencies are becoming quite large, but at the same time this volume allows for a degree of automation. The scripts were written with the objective of harmonisation in mind. Lightmouse (talk · contribs) was already doing good work on the date harmonisation script, and I have since built on it.

  SInce starting to use scripts to automate the process, I always had the intention in the back of my mind to create a bot that crawls its way systematically through all wikipedia articles using categories. I created the templates as markers of the passage of the script (and ultimately the intended bot), making the updating schedule possible. However, the time and my skill-set is not yet ripe, so I do most of the work 'manually' with the aid of my battery of scripts. A number of other editors use my scripts or variants thereof depending on the specific needs. As for me, I work through article categories that take my fancy, but always hoping to eventually to process all WIkipedia articles. Categories chosen may be biographical, geographical, wiki-project based; there is no rule.

  So far, over 125,000 articles have been tagged by the script for dmy dates, and nearly 12,000 articles tagged for mdy dates. You may find more details of my project at User:Ohconfucius/script. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:12, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

date reformat in titles, quotes

Please adjust your bot so that dates enclosed within a quotation, "...such as in Sept. 26, 2011", or italics, are not reformatted. In the William Parry article, the title of a painting was changed. SamuelRiv (talk) 12:53, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

List of deaths at the Berlin Wall

Sorry, I reverted your changes to the article, because they resulted in many error messages. Also the article uses a consistent date format, as far as I know. It's enough to mention that once. But please check for changes you made other than date format, which would improve the article, and restore them, please. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. Strange interaction with that template that produced an error in about half of the output. I'll reinstate the other changes and fix that script error. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:23, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:51, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.