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"Foo (disambiguation)" is a redirect to something other than "Foo"

It seems to me that this type of page (for example, the ones here) can be deleted if nothing is linking to them. Could a bot identify the ones that have no incoming links? If so, then we'd know which could be deleted, which need addressing, or both. Any opinions on this? --Auntof6 (talk) 23:59, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

This should be reasonably do-able. And after 14 months, it's probably a good idea to update the list anyway. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:09, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
Is there something I should/can do to pursue that, or can I leave it with your and your bot? --Auntof6 (talk) 21:03, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
I've got this daily report, if it's any help. I've been wondering what should be done. Looks like there's about 5600 of them. I'd be willing to start deleting them manually - do you think it would be acceptable to delete without discussion (beyond here) per WP:G6? --JaGatalk 22:06, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm doing have finished a bot run that should add the number of incoming links to the list. See User:RussBot/Non-disambiguation redirects/001 etc. I guess I'd first try listing a sample on WP:RFD and see if there's a consensus in favor of speedy deletion. (I tend to be cautious in such matters.) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:26, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
I found a little bug in the link counting, so I'm re-running it; it should update in a few hours. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:54, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I've recently had some individual ones deleted under WP:G6. FWIW, None of them had any incoming links. --Auntof6 (talk) 00:24, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

PBS

Thanks for your message, there is now a discussion on the talk page regarding whether it should redirect to Public Broadcasting Service or the disambig. I was being bold as in the previous discussion there were 3 good points put towards the disambig and an extremely weak one in favor of the Public Broadcasting Service. Of course I will leave the redirect as is until a consensus can be drawn. Thanks. Zarcadia (talk) 17:35, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Federated state (disambiguation) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Federated state (disambiguation) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Federated state (disambiguation) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Rennell435 (talk • contribs) 13:29, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

State of Georgia

Maybe you should carefully read the talk page to Georgia, it is quite clear there that 'Georgia' has no primary topic. Given that the word 'state' itself is ambiguous why should 'State of Georgia' redirect to the U.S. state? Zarcadia (talk) 14:31, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you identify any sources that use the specific phrase "State of Georgia" to refer to the independent state in the Caucasus? "Mercury" is ambiguous and "element" is ambiguous, but "the element Mercury" is not. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:33, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Police and Protesters Clash in Caucaus State of Georgia

Georgian contract wins for Cowi & Eptisa

Shuster: SEALs commander mum on mission

'State of Georgia' can refer to either the U.S. state or the sovereign state. Zarcadia (talk) 14:45, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

  • Hmm. Although I suspect the use of this phrase to refer to the U.S. state is much more common, you do have some basis for your view. I won't revert if you change the redirect again, although if anyone else objects then it would be appropriate to have a wider discussion. And, if you do, I hope you will also help fix the many other Wikipedia articles that use "State of Georgia" as a link. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:09, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I hope you accept my edits are made in good faith. I would also like to point out that I have opened a discussion in Talk:State of Georgia which I hope you will contribute to. Thanks. Zarcadia (talk) 16:09, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Whites redirect

Hi, it was me who made the edit redirecting 'Whites' to the white disambiguation page. Apologies if I may have caused offence (your revert comment seemed a bit annoyed but I may be reading into it too much), I was just following the 'be bold' advice. I'd like the opportunity to discuss the matter of the redirect with you and I'd like to hear your opinions and reasoning more fully than edit comments allow. ;) eyeball226 (talk) 01:19, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. As you say, it is hard to communicate adequately through edit summaries. I disagreed with your edit because I think White people is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of Whites; that is, the topic that it is much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined, a reader would be seeking when entering "Whites" in the search box. I have a few reasons for this opinion. First, nearly 350 other Wikipedia articles contain internal links to "Whites", and it appears that the vast majority of them are referring to the racial group, not to a chef's uniform or any other meaning. Second, both Google Books and Google Web searches appear to indicate that this is the most common usage, although admittedly these tools are imperfect because they also return many hits on "White's" which are more or less irrelevant for our purposes here. Third, common usage of "Whites" as a plural in newspapers, magazines, etc. seems to be consistent with it referring primarily to the racial category, especially when not otherwise qualified. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:32, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Ah, I see. I've actually only come across people using 'whites' to mean white people a couple of times, although this could be due to me living in the UK and only rarely even hearing 'blacks' to mean black people mainly on American TV programmes. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they have slightly racist connotations here (political parties like the BNP using them). However, if there are a lot of articles linking to 'whites' with that meaning then I can especially understand your reasoning. I think it's better practice to link directly to the article you're referring to (as in whites) but it would be a lot of work for very little point and for that reason I'm happy to leave the redirect as it is. eyeball226 (talk) 01:17, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Bot edit of Ramsay Hunt syndrome type I

The bot edit made no sense; the policy cited by the bot had nothing to do with related lists of eponymic medical syndromes. I reverted it to the correct link. Trilobitealive (talk) 22:34, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

The bot edit was correct. The page that is linked in the hatnote, Ramsay Hunt syndrome, is not a "related list of eponymic medical syndromes"; it is a disambiguation page. WP:INTDABLINK provides very specific guidance as to the form of links to disambiguation pages. I don't understand how you came to the conclusion that this policy "had nothing to do with" the link in question. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:23, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps it should be de-disambiguated and treated like an article on related syndromes. Even if "related" by discoverer only, they do occupy a very narrow slice of physiology. bd2412 T 23:41, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
I reverted in accordance with WP:IAR because Ramsey Hunt syndrome is truly a related list of eponymic syndromes which is mislabeled as a dab page. (Until you pointed it out I did not know that one core precipitant of our disagreement was the mislabeling as a dab page, indeed I didn't know that such a label changed its content.) And if I read your last comment correctly you'd not disagree with de-dabbing it. So what is the process of de-disambiguation so that RHs-I can be directly linked to RHs? Is it just a simple matter of removing the dab template from RHs? Trilobitealive (talk) 23:58, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
(The last comment wasn't mine, but...) Yes, removing the {{Disambiguation}} template would do the trick. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:23, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
OK, thanks. So if I remove the dab template on Ramsey Hunt Syndrome and then revert the template on Ramsey Hunt Syndrome I to direct it there and then all will be copacetic? Trilobitealive (talk) 03:13, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
Oh yes, and I need to beef up Ramsay Hunt syndrome so that it contains sufficient useful article information and references to be notable - done.Trilobitealive (talk) 03:50, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Please join the conversation at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Mathbot has been blocked from editing "List of mathematics articles"

Apparently, I'm being framed as some sort of "lone nut" for thinking that the math lists should not contain unpiped intentional disambig links. Please let these folks know that this is not the case. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:24, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Since your name came up in the discussion regarding the treatment of disambiguation pages on the "Lists of mathematics articles" pages, please indicate your preference in the straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:58, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Support seems to be coalescing around option 3a - moving the maintenance lists to project space. This would eliminate the article-space disambig links without requiring either an exception to either WP:INTDABLINK or to WP:MALDAB. Some of the math project participants are supporting this one, so it seems to have the best coalition for success. Please take another look and determine whether this option would be agreeable to you. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:32, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. Hopefully this discussion will continue to sail smoothly until Thursday. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:55, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

GCV

Ground combat vehicle primarily refers to the class of military vehicle whereas Ground Combat Vehicle refers to the program. By the way, I can't get anyone to remove the unnecessary disambiguator from Ground Combat Vehicle (program) even though Ground Combat Vehicle already redirects to it. Facepalm Facepalm Marcus Qwertyus 16:58, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't quite sure what you were trying to do, since you had ended up redirecting the page ground combat vehicle to itself, so I took my best guess. Please feel free to correct me. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)


The Disambiguator's Barnstar
The Disambiguator's Barnstar is awarded to Wikipedians who are prolific disambiguators.
For taking the initiative in keeping the disambiguation process safe and sane. Marcus Qwertyus 17:15, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Broken redirect

Thanks for fixing this. I was obviously sloppy with with cut & paste... bobrayner (talk) 22:23, 2 June 2011 (UTC).

Your robot appears to be stomping round breaking the links that appear in the source notes to Autocar Magazine. Is this what you intend? Doesn't appear to make too much sense to me..... Regards Charles01 (talk) 18:48, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about that. The links were correct, but there is something peculiar about how they are used in the template that seems to break the formatting. The bot is going back and fixing all those edits now. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:14, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
It's not the template. The WP:PIPETRICK doesn't work inside <ref>...</ref> tags. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:05, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. I'm not competent to opine on the deeper secrets to be found in the world of the wiki-template, but whatever you just did seems to have corrected the problem. Regards Charles01 (talk) 13:21, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Battle of Orléans (disambiguation) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Battle of Orléans (disambiguation) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of Orléans (disambiguation) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Night of the Big Wind (talk) 14:55, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Winklevoss twins (disambiguation) listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Winklevoss twins (disambiguation). Since you had some involvement with the Winklevoss twins (disambiguation) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Auntof6 (talk) 23:01, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Botanical name

The links added in this edit point to the page where the links were added, via a redirect. So, the page was linked to itself. Please note that, despite the ways the redirects are currently set up, a specific name is not the same thing as a specific epithet. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:58, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Just to be clear: User:Hamamelis and I are in the process of sorting out the links to "specific name", "specific epithet", etc. The current pattern of redirects & the dab at Specific name are not intended to be permanent; they are stages towards a goal which will include being sharply clear that in the Botanical Code, "species name" and "species epithet" cannot be used interchangeably (although they can be, and indeed are, in the Zoological Code). Peter coxhead (talk) 06:22, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

It would be useful if you could clarify precisely the rules that the bot is using to fix these now dab links, to avoid any overlap with manual changes which User:Hamamelis and I have been making. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:22, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Very simply, if a page contains a link to Animal then it replaced specific name or specific epithet with specific name (zoology); if the page contains a link to either Plant or Fungus then it replaced either of those with specific name (botany). I am glad to hear you are proceeding with manual fixes to make these links more accurate. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:18, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply – and the bot! Has it finished running? If not, how can we tell when it has? No point in editing pages which it will later change for us; it's much quicker to check than to edit. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:00, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
It is finished. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:13, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
Thanks a lot Russ! Hamamelis (talk) 11:49, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

R'n'B: Fix links to disambiguation page Broadcaster

Hi, I really appreciate what you did to the "biographical article" I started. I am aware that this is a dot part of what you have done but, it means star to me. I wish someday, when I have reputation, I am glad to give you an award. Rammaum (talk) 08:04, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

It's been more than a year since these listings were refreshed and as I'm especially keen on the "Broadcasting" list which is (happily) in dire need of updating, could you run an update when you have a few spare moments? Thanks! - Dravecky (talk) 20:21, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Done! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:10, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! - Dravecky (talk) 10:41, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Re: List of nationalist conflicts and organizations

Hi R'n'b, I agree with the proposed deletion for this disambiguation page. I had previously separated the article into two different articles, as was appropriate considering they cover two distinct subjects. Munci (talk) 12:16, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Re: calibre

just curious why you reverted my edit to calibre to point to the firearm term caliber, as opposed to the disambiguation page, while calibre is the British English spelling for caliber, Calibre_(disambiguation) lists 6 other alternative meanings (each with their own article), IMO, the meaning is diverse enough to need the disambiguation, and not simply redirect straight to the size of a firearm's barrel. kthxbai Keastes know thyself 03:49, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Hello. This is a long-standing redirect, and there are well over 100 other other Wikipedia articles that contain links to Calibre, nearly all of which appear to use the term in the firearms sense. The past consensus has been that the firearms usage is the primary topic of the term. That does not mean it is the only relevant topic; quite the contrary, it means that the term is ambiguous but that one of the several uses is clearly predominant, as explained in more detail in the guideline I have linked above. Your edit summary just said that there are several other uses, which is true but does not address whether one of them is primary. Anyway, since this redirect has been around for a long time and is used in links from many other articles, I think any change should be discussed on the talk page before being carried out. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 09:30, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
ah, i see thanks for clearing it up, i was not sure if there was a consensus i missed, which is why idecided to bring it up with you as opposed to simply reverting. Once again thanks for the clarification. kthxbai Keastes know thyself 11:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Another common issue.

I have noticed a fair number of disambig links where the error seems to be one of reversed piping - that is, where the editor probably intended to write "[[Foo (disambiguator)|Foo]]" (where "Foo" is a disambig page) but instead wrote it the other way around, as "[[Foo|Foo (disambiguator)]]". Can you generate a list of instances where a disambig link is on the front end of a pipe and the term on the back end is a link on that disambig page? One of these days I'm really going to have to get you to teach me how to generate lists like this myself. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:12, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

This may require some thought. I'll let you know. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:42, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
No great rush on this one. These are easy links to fix when they come up. bd2412 T 18:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
Still thinking (so that this thread won't get archived). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:24, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

DAB-bing South China

Be careful. Some of these ("Southern China") refer only to the far south of China (Hunan, Guangdong, Hainan, Guangxi), often called in English in "Southern China", instead of the geographical southern half of China. Here, the correct link is South Central China. Hopefully you will not make this mistake again. —HXL's Roundtable and Record 21:00, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I believe the term Southern China includes South Central China; so I would not characterize these links as incorrect, merely as not as specific as they could be. Having said that, how do you propose that I determine which topic the original author of the article intended when they linked to Southern China? If the article itself does not specify which particular part of Southern China it is discussing, how am I supposed to ascertain this? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:43, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
It is vague, sometimes confusing. As I have seen...
  • When the term refers to the southern extremity: Anything south of the Nanling Mountains, but not Fujian (too far east) or Yunnan (too far west). Ex. 'Shenzhen is the financial centre of Southern China' (assuming China here means the mainland only)
  • When the term refers to the southern half: When local customs (esp. language, cuisine) are being described as 'southern' (i.e. Northern and Southern China). When describing something culturally 'southern' but definitely not fitting the 'extremity" definition above.
I see Night of the Big Wind re-directed Southern China to Northern and Southern China, seeing that you were going on a DAB-bing campaign... I don't normally watch what you do, but since in the past few days my watchlist has seen an unusually high amount of activity, owing to some other DAB-bing campaigns. —HXL's Roundtable and Record 03:33, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

regarding your edits @ my apparent cut and paste move

Hey Russ, I am sorry to split the conversation you posted on my user-talk page back to your user-talk page but I had to do it 'cause eventhough you said you'll have my talk page on watch, I haven't gotten a response to my post since last 4 days. You may choose to delete this message but would appreciate if do respond to my post on my page. Many Thanks and hope you do understand I've done it in good faith. Sharda Mandir (talk) 00:13, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

RussBot

This has to be one of the funniest edit summaries I've seen, or one of the most foreboding. :) Thanks for the laugh, -- Black Falcon (talk) 04:25, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion

Hello! I noticed you contributed to Middlesex University entry on Wikipedia. If you studied at that University, please consider including this userbox on your userpage. Simply paste {{User:Invest in knowledge/mdx}} to your userpage. Thank you. Invest in knowledge (talk) 18:04, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Use of Show/Hide in InfoBoxes

Russ, searched all through Help and cannot find an answer. I add a Command Structure infobox to United States Army Communications-Electronics Command. (I am using the RDECOM article as a sample.) The infobox works, but defaults to Hide. Looks like page renders with it on Show then changes it to Hide. How does one set the default? Can I make it default to show? The RDECOM page defaults to show, but I cannot see any difference. Not a big deal, but it bugs me not to understand why. Thanks. ArmyRetired (talk) 18:08, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a case of particularly obscure template design combined with incomplete and misleading documentation. Fortunately, I had nothing to do with either of them. :-) Short answer: add "state=uncollapsed" to the parameters of {{Command structure}} and your infobox will display. Long answer: This template and {{Infobox military unit}} both are built on the {{Navbox}} meta-template. Navbox has three "state" options: collapsed, uncollapsed, and "autocollapse", which is the default. The first two are sort of obvious; but the default is that the navbox displays its contents unless it is stacked below another navbox, in which case it is collapsed. You unsuspectingly placed two Navbox-based templates one after the other in your article, triggering this autocollapse behavior. (As a test, you can insert a random line of text in between the two templates, and preview the page: you will see that the second box is no longer collapsed.) However, the documentation for {{Command structure}} doesn't explain this; you have to dig down a couple of levels through nested template invocations to find it. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:30, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Russ, tried that and no change. Is something blocking the inheritance of the state property? I tried uncollapsed and plain. Am I doing it wrong? ArmyRetired (talk) 13:38, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm. You're right. It works in preview mode (shows the infobox uncollapsed) but not when you save the page. I've exhausted my knowledge at this point; you should try asking for help on Template talk:Infobox command structure and/or Template talk:Infobox military unit. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:42, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
The problem here is that {{Command structure}} (which is a redirect to {{Infobox command structure}}) doesn't recognise a |state= parameter, so it's not really surprising that adding |state=uncollapsed in your article has no effect. The template is a wrapper for {{military navigation}}, which does recognise |state= with the normal values for a navbox. If blank or omitted, it defaults to autocollapse; and since {{Infobox command structure}} isn't sending anything, the default action is all that there is. You therefore need to obtain consensus to amend {{Infobox command structure}}; it needs one line to be added:
|state={{{state|}}}
It could go almost anywhere, but I suggest putting it as a new line immediately after the |list2= one. Once that is done, you can put |state=uncollapsed into your article. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:22, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

List or dab?

List of monarchs? Nightw 04:25, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

expressway

Thanks R'n'B for pointing out the thousand or so pages that link to expressway. I have been going through them, looking for links to change to controlled-access highway and limited-access road as appropriate. The trouble is, the "what links here" page seems to be out of date. Please tell me how these pages work, and how or when they update. Nankai (talk) 23:55, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Usually, the "what links here" page is kept up-to-date immediately, unless there is a server lag (in which case other pages, such as user contributions, would also be affected). The one common exception is when a link appears in a template; editing the template will remove the template from "what links here" immediately, but it will take longer, sometimes minutes but sometimes hours, to remove all the articles that contain instances of the template. This is done by the MediaWiki job queue, which runs in the background and therefore can take a variable amount of time depending on conditions on the server. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 01:12, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Russ, thanks so much for the info on my move request for Chaos. I could not find anything on this question, so I thought you might be able to help me. If there is a more appropriate place for this particular question, I would be happy to post it there. If there is already an answer you know about I would love to see it. The question is, when working on DAB fixes, the WP:WPDAB pages recommens fixing all links to the disambiguation page. I did not see anything that states if we should concentrate on the article space only or further if we should worry about user pages, user-talk pages, archives, etc. I would love to better understand that guideline. § Music Sorter § (talk) 15:55, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I won't claim there is a complete consensus on this issue, but most users (including myself) try to avoid editing other people's comments on talk pages and other discussion-type pages, or their user pages, even if they contain incorrect links. I usually only fix DAB links that appear in articles, or in Template:, Portal:, Category:, and File: namespaces (and sometimes Wikipedia: pages, depending on the context). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:23, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Teleportation

I see that your attempt to fix the situation has been reverted; this may take some discussion/explanation to set right. bd2412 T 23:41, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Not about teleportation

I am sure you are well meaning and acting in good faith in trying to resolve disambiguations, but on several occasions your attempts have not been helpful. I have spent several moths now trying to sort out 17th century English MPs and it is the devils own job to do so. In many instances it takes painstaking research over hours to work out the facts. I doubt if you have the same in depth knowledge of this topic area. Nevertheless on occasions you have relinked articles on the basis of a few minutes scan. Sometimes you have made the right match, but when you have made the wrong match it has been seriously wrong. This does not help the process at all. I would suggest that you check articles for recency of update before wading in, and limit your activities to those on which no one is working or to subjects on which you have deep expertise.

I also take issue with your comment that "Linking to a disambigution page that contains no information about the relevant individual is less helpful than a WP:red link that alerts other editors to the possible need for a new article!)". An editor with an interest in the topic will see the need for an article as soon as they hit a dambig page if it does not contain the relevant article. Entries listed on the dambig page may contain useful information and references about the relevant individual, since people with the same name are often closely related (particularly in the area of 17th century politics). Moreover, there is a chance that if an article gets written it may be noted on the dambig page so that an editor can find it and link it. Creating a spurious redlink (which may not necessary be the most appropriate article name) denies an editor access to such information and could lead to unneccessary duplication of articles. I suggest if you are desparate to create red-links you should stick them on the dambig page and leave the existing useful links. Thank you Motmit (talk) 14:07, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I am sure you also are well meaning and acting in good faith, but I completely disagree with you. However, I will try not to interfere with your editing.
To illustrate why I disagree with you, consider the article that you referred to above, Arundel (UK parliament constituency), and put yourself in the standpoint of a reader who, like me, is not an expert in the topic area but knows a little about it. This reader sees that, in 1640, someone named "Edward Alford" was elected as MP for this constituency. Which serves the reader better?
(1) A red link to Edward Alford tells the reader at a glance that there was someone named Edward Alford but that Wikipedia does not have an article about him.
(2) A blue link to Edward Alford suggests to the reader that Wikipedia does have an article about this MP, so the reader clicks on this link and sees the following:
Edward Alford may refer to:
Sources confuse these two and possibly a third who was MP for Arundel
This tells the reader, "yes, indeed, there was an Edward Alford who was MP for Arundel, but Wikipedia doesn't have an article about him, so you just wasted your time clicking on this link."
The situation is even worse for common names where there may be 20 or 30 links on the disambiguation page, not just two; then we are telling the reader, "Maybe we have an article about the particular 'Edward Alford' you are looking for, and maybe we don't; you'll just have to figure it out for yourself."
I think the first priority in building Wikipedia has to be to serve the readers, not to make it easier for ourselves as editors. That why I believe your approach to this particular issue is mistaken. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:41, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
We serve the readers by having articles instead of red links. Articles are created by editors. As editors we need help rather than hindrance. So I detect a slight flaw in your logic. Motmit (talk) 22:07, 30 June 2011 (UTC)


The Super Disambiguator's Barnstar
The Super Disambiguator's Barnstar is awarded to the winners of the Disambiguation Pages With Links monthly challenge, who have gone above and beyond to remove ambiguous links.
This award is presented to R'n'B, for successfully fixing 4015 links in the challenge of April, 2011. This user is also recognized for his past first-place finishes in April and August 2010. Quinxorin (talk) 08:37, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Note - this award is given proactively and retroactively to first-place DAB challenge winners as per the discussion on the talk page.

Completely new abortion proposal and mediation

In light of the seemingly endless disputes over their respective titles, a neutral mediator has crafted a proposal to rename the two major abortion articles (pro-life/anti-abortion movement, and pro-choice/abortion rights movement) to completely new names. The idea, which is located here, is currently open for opinions. As you have been a contributor in the past to at least one of the articles, your thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

The hope is that, if a consensus can be reached on the article titles, the energy that has been spent debating the titles of the articles here and here can be better spent giving both articles some much needed improvement to their content. Please take some time to read the proposal and weigh in on the matter. Even if your opinion is simple indifference, that opinion would be valuable to have posted.

To avoid concerns that this notice might violate WP:CANVASS, this posting is being made to every non-anon editor who has edited either page (or either page's respective talk page) since 1 July 2010, irrespective of possible previous participation at the mediation page. HuskyHuskie (talk) 22:34, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

American Indian vs. "Native Americans in the United States"

You deleted American Indian as a subject for many of my photos and changed it to "Native Americans in the United States."

Is this something you did on your own, or is it something Wikipedia has OFFICIALLY decided?

As an American Indian who has never liked the term "Native American", I just wondered who decided this was appropriate?

Phil Konstantin (talk) 03:54, 6 July 2011 (UTC) Phil

I am not entirely sure what you are talking about. It would be extremely helpful if you could provide me with a link to one of the file descriptions that I edited, or even better with a link to a diff for the edit that you are questioning. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:46, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

20 June 2011 

   (diff | hist) . . mb File:AnzaMorterosByPhilKonstantin.jpg‎; 08:08 . . (+22) . . RussBot (talk | contribs) (Robot: change redirected category American Indian to Native Americans in the United States)

   (diff | hist) . . mb File:BearPawSignByPhilKonstantin.jpg‎; 08:08 . . (+22) . . RussBot (talk | contribs) (Robot: change redirected category American Indian to Native Americans in the United States)

   (diff | hist) . . mb File:CrazyHorseMarkerByPhilKonstantin.jpg‎; 08:08 . . (+22) . . RussBot (talk | contribs) (Robot: change redirected category American Indian to Native Americans in the United States)

   (diff | hist) . . mb File:ChiefDullKnifeCollegeByPhilKonstantin.jpg‎; 08:08 . . (+22) . . RussBot (talk | contribs) (Robot: change redirected category American Indian to Native Americans in the United States)

   (diff | hist) . . mb File:TongueRiverBattlefieldByPhilKonstantin.jpg‎; 08:08 . . (+22) . . RussBot (talk | contribs) (Robot: change redirected category American Indian to Native Americans in the United States)

   (diff | hist) . . mb File:HeartOfTheMonsterByPhilKonstantin.jpg‎; 08:08 . . (+22) . . RussBot (talk | contribs) (Robot: change redirected category American Indian to Native Americans in the United States)

   (diff | hist) . . mb File:SteptoeBattlefieldByPhilKonstantin.jpg‎; 08:08 . . (+22) . . RussBot (talk | contribs) (Robot: change redirected category American Indian to Native Americans in the United States)

   (diff | hist) . . mb File:WarbonnetCreekByPhilKonstantin.jpg‎; 08:08 . . (+22) . . RussBot (talk | contribs) (Robot: change redirected category American Indian to Native Americans in the United States)
  • OK. Those aren't links; I see you have links to your image files on your user page, so I suppose that you know what they are and how to create them. The history you copied doesn't include a date, and you didn't mention that it came from Commons not from Wikipedia, so you left me to do a lot of detective work to figure out what your issue is. But, if you noticed on the page (I suppose it was your watchlist on Commons) that you copied from, the edit summaries say "Robot: change redirected category American Indian to Native Americans in the United States", which should give you a couple of clues: first, the edit was done by commons:User:RussBot, and second, that it was made because of a redirected category. The original edit summaries, although not your copies above, also contain links to the categories involved. In particular, if you clicked on Category:American Indian, you would see that that category page is marked as a redirect to Category:Native Americans in the United States. That category redirect template serves as an instruction to the bot, which changes the category link accordingly. Further, if you looked at the revision history of Category:American Indian, you would see which editor changed it to a redirect, and when. So, the answer to your question, "is it something Wikipedia has OFFICIALLY decided?" is No, because these edits were not even made on Wikipedia at all. And it is not something that Commons has "officially" decided, as it is just the result of a single user's edit, and could presumably be changed by another edit. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:34, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the info Phil Konstantin (talk) 12:08, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

RussBot edit

I'm pretty sure this, which has now been done twice, is wrong. WP:INTDABLINK says intentional redirects to dabpages should be transparent to readers. While I really strongly disagree with this guideline, it's not up to me to change it, but it is everyone's responsibility to make sure it's understaken properly. So instead of putting the direct link back (which is what should be done IMO), I'm going to remove the piping. Hopefully RussBot doesn't do this again. — KV5 • Talk • 12:02, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Cut and Paste

My appologies for this error, and thank you very much for taking the time to describe not only the issue, but also the reasoning behind this. I very much appriciate you taking your time to do this, as I am fairly new to adding and editing Wikipedia. AKnight2B (talk) 12:27, 24 July 2011 (UTC)AKnight2B

Indian mess

Hello, decided to answer here as I don't have time even to read my own page. I did think I was attempting to the best of my ability to sort out some egregrious rubbish by a <quote> new editor <unquote>. As always, takes about a minute to stuff up and an hour to fix; please provide an example if you think I have done anything wrong and I will rectify. Regards (Crusoe8181 (talk) 10:22, 25 July 2011 (UTC)).

PS see Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics and you will see why I use short sentences! (Crusoe8181 (talk) 10:36, 25 July 2011 (UTC)).

The Template of Fox Television Stations

What I Mean is the sales of the stations from Fox is pending on the sale to Local TV if you want to see more here is the link:http://www.bookrags.com//wiki/Local_TV see what i am talking about Dmcgowan4272 (talk) 14:59, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, but that information is three years old and the sale actually closed in 2008. There is no pending sale as of today. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:24, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Leo Cristante

Thanks, Russ. I have never done a redirect/page move before, but I will follow the correct process next time. Thank you again! McGill1974 (talk) 02:14, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

User talk:173.20.236.122

Hello admin

Can you block talk page access to User:173.20.236.122 since he is abusing his talk page? Best, Albacore (talk) 18:45, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

The page you want is WP:ANI. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:48, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

National Monuments Amsterdam, Netherlands - Please help

Dear Russ, I would like to kindly ask you to perform an automated maintenance job on the category:Rijksmonumenten in Amsterdam (which means national monuments in Amsterdam). All media has to be moved to subcats. All media beginning with the letter A should be moved to the subcat Rijksmonumenten in Amsterdam-Centrum (which means National Monuments in downtown Amsterdam).

All other media, all starting with the letter D should be getting added the following two categories instead: 

Category:Rijksmonumenten in Amsterdam-Noord
Category:Durgerdam

I see that you can write scripts & bots for these tasks. Would it be simple and easy for you to perform this by a script or a temporary bot? I stil have 500+ media files to go, I hope you can help me. Thanks in advance, hope to hear from you, Picasdre (talk) 22:08, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Dear Russ, thans a lot for your help and advice to work with Cat-a-Lot. It took a while learning to work with t, but so far it has helped a lot. Picasdre (talk) 16:29, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Washington Senate

I did try to find something. Surely that show's writers didn't make it up on their own.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:59, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

It seems quite possible that the writers could deliberately have had the character use an uncommon and incorrect name for comic effect. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:55, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't think so in this case. It's amazing I watched syndicated reruns so many times, so I sort of remember the line. An Asian kid pretended not to speak English and Sgt. Carter learned enough of whatever language when he was in whatever war. Believing the kid was telling him his home address after lying at least once before, he and Pyle took the kid to the baseball stadium. The kid wanted to see a game! The line went something like "Now we know where this kid lives. Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, home of the Washington Senate." Carter was getting increasingly frustrated by the kids' lies. I don't recall Robert Kennedy Stadium, but that's where the team played in reality. Oh, yeah, it was the last time he lied, because the kid yelled at the blind umpire in English.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:37, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at User talk:Galassi#Hermann Hauser

You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:Galassi#Hermann Hauser. Trevj (talk) 22:54, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Boulevard Records (Canada)

The article Boulevard Records (Canada) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

no evidence that it meets the notability criteria for record labels

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 23:14, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Writer's Barnstar
Excellent article on Madhabdeva Jrkalita (talk) 12:01, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Random survey

Hi, This is a random survey regarding the first sentence on the Wikipedia policy page Verifiability.

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."

In your own words, what does this mean? Thank you. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 19:26, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

  • Random? What's your sampling methodology? :-) Anyway, I believe the emphasis in the phrase following the dash needs to be on "think" -- obviously, we don't want people publishing information that they believe to be false, unless the falseness itself is notable (for example, one could hardly write a useful article about Clifford Irving without including information that is believed to be false, and citing reliable sources that establish its falsity). But in most cases believing that the information is true is necessary but not sufficient to justify its inclusion in Wikipedia; it also has to be verifiable. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:25, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 22:48, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Hey

I know you have a bot. Any chance you can do some work on PBS (disambiguation)? PBS got redirected there and it caused literally 5,000 links to that page. Almost all should go to Public Broadcasting Service. --User:Woohookitty Disamming fool! 04:44, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll see, but it depends on whether there are any recurring patterns that the bot can pick up on to make the changes quickly. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 09:53, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Bot got it down by about 50% but I'm hitting the point of diminishing returns now. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:26, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Suicide of the bishop of Meath

At the critical moment I was popping this new page up I got an emergency call from my elderly neighbour who was having a suspcted heart attack. My wife went with him to hospital in the ambulance where fortunately it turned out to be just very severe angina; thus, I did not do my usual post posting chcks. My apologies. Now corrected. Bashereyre (talk) 21:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Sampling methodology

1) Click on "Random article" in the navigation box in the upper left hand corner 2) take the first editor in the history list that (a) has a contribution in the last 48 hours to Wikipedia as indicated by their contributions list, (b) is not a bot, and (c) is not an IP. These conditions were chosen to facilitate a response. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 22:50, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Supreme Court of Ohio

When you have a chance, could you please check out the discussion I just started on the Talk:Supreme Court of Ohio page? Many thanks, — Alex—talk 02:31, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

BLE (disambiguation) listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect BLE (disambiguation). Since you had some involvement with the BLE (disambiguation) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 11:07, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Thanks for this posting! Ganeshmanohar (talk) 12:26, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Criminal Investigation redirect

I wanted to reopen the talk page for Criminal investigation as I believe there is some consensus it should not be redirected and should be its own article, please see Talk:Police. Since I did not see the original discussion regarding it, I wanted to contact you first. Please let me know your thoughts in regards to this. Legion211 (talk) 17:32, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

If you are proposing to create an article about the topic of criminal investigation, rather than the disambiguation page that used to be at that title, I think that would be a great addition to the encyclopedia and encourage you to proceed. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:09, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Have a great day! Legion211 (talk) 04:39, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Nokia 5800 update

Hello,

I see you have write an uodate for Nokia 5800 XM. I have this phone and I want this update. Do you use OTA or Nokia Ovi suite (I can't have this update)?

Thank you.

--France64160 (talk) 12:53, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Ask and ye shall receive (eventually)

Hey Russ, I wanted to let you know, now ALL the tables of data I generate have been moved to u_jason_p. Every last one. So it's all there for you to play with. I should have done this years ago, and I apologize for that. Enjoy! --JaGatalk 06:19, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Wow! That's great, thanks. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:22, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Daily Disambig problem

Hey, WP:TDD didn't update with September 1 data although the subpage did. --JaGatalk 22:50, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I know, and I can't figure out why. There were no error messages. I'll wait and see whether it fixes itself tomorrow. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 01:56, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Article Web app nominated for deletion

Hi. Letting you know that Web app has been nominated for deletion (or redirection to Web application) because the contents attempt to duplicate the already existing and industry-accepted term Rich Internet application. Please share your thoughts here:Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Web_app -Object404 (talk) 02:20, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

You will be need more help...

wrote previously...

Wikipedia List of superpowers article, need more superpowers

I have a real article that i work any moment and everyday with any pals... you have rights for use it for your convenence (except erase it or modify it) to show how many super powers exist in your article. Super Power List behind Wikipedia from Spanish Leanguage to english leanguage I work so much, and any pals too, dont destroy own article but almost try to add more super powers to your super power list. If my wikipedia in Spanish article is not without faults of orthography, you could read it without so much problems, Greetings. (This for your List of Superpowers. --Georgy (talk) 18:43, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Iamb dab

I do realize that the current state of links to the dab page is not correct, and I also apologize for my role in having broken those links. However, seeing your work disambiguating iamb, I want to mention that the rearrangement discussed on my talk page is still planned. It might make sense to consider either (1) holding off for a while (I wish I could work on this now but am simply too busy), or (2) creating Iambic verse (accentual-syllabic) and Iambic verse (quantitative) as redirects (for now) to iamb (foot); the former would be the right place to point links discussing English poetry, the latter links discussing Greek and Latin poetry (and with literal reference to the simple definition iamb = a foot consisting of short plus long, the links would still go to iamb (foot)). Sorry to complicate things, but I don't want to see work wasted, and I just can't help the delay in doing something about this at the moment. Wareh (talk) 15:57, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh. I just got this message after I had finished working on all those links. Frankly, the whole thing seemed rather straightforward to me. Iamb (foot) discusses how the concept evolved over time from one based on syllable length to one based on accent. If you really think this needs a split, fine, but it doesn't seem like a problem to me as a non-expert. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:03, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Sorry my message was not more timely. In any case, many kinds of inertia may well keep things as they are for a while, or for good. Meanwhile, you've certainly made things correct for the present state of the encyclopedia, and thanks for that! Wareh (talk) 17:49, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Page Quality

Could you let me know why this page still exists? There is not a single ref, after years; and not a single clue in the article as to whether it's just a fantasy. Don't we have a policy about verification? Tony (talk) 16:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I presume that's a rhetorical question, but lack of verifiability is not one of the criteria for speedy deletion. Speedy deletion is deliberately limited to narrowly-defined types of pages to make sure that there is an opportunity for community input before most pages are deleted. What's wrong with PROD? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:10, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. I've never been familiar with this corner of WP, and now I understand the distinction. Will do. Tony (talk) 00:33, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Creating article: Bro (online subculture)

Could you help us by giving some pointers on what we can do to make sure the article meets Wikipedia's standards, then? We're kind of lost here, aside from using the wizard. T-Ravenous (talk) 18:52, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

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