User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2006 March

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Overlinking dates

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers: Please advise regarding your linking to arbitrary dates. This does not appear in line with the rationale expressed in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers#Avoid overlinking dates, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links), & Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context. -- Krash (Talk) 18:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Krash. The overlinking aspect refers to things like October or October 2004 or October 2004 or 17th Century or 421 BC. Full dates like 11 September 2004 or September 11 will show up differently depending on how each user has his preferences set, and should be linked where they appear in article txt.

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Usage of links for date preferences. This is to allow date preferences to work. The section Avoid overlinking dates starts If the date does not contain a day and a month,. Rich Farmbrough. 21:14, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Be that as it may, I think that Wikipedia would benefit from a less liberal application of the Manual of Style, remembering to only make links that are relevant to the context. Also, you misrepresented the quotation from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers#Avoid overlinking dates). The complete quotation should read:

"If the date does not contain a day and a month, date preferences will not work, and square brackets will not respond to your readers' auto-formatting preferences. So unless there is a special relevance of the date link, there is no need to link it. This is an important point: simple months, years, decades and centuries should only be linked if there is a strong reason for doing so."

-- Krash (Talk) 23:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

"If the date does not contain a day and a month, date preferences will not work, and square brackets will not respond to your readers' auto-formatting preferences. So unless there is a special relevance of the date link, there is no need to link it. This is an important point: simple months, years, decades and centuries should only be linked if there is a strong reason for doing so." This is exactly the point I was making. "simple months, years, decades and centuries" is the subject of that paragraph, not full dates. Rich Farmbrough. 23:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Hey Rich, I feel as if you are taking the rules too literally. If you are going to fix up dates please do it in the articles you are making other contributions to. I feel as if you are doing some type of strange "drive by overlinking" which you can just barely justify. I notice on this page that you have gotten more than a few complaints about this issue as well as a few warnings. --Ben Houston 22:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Well over several ten of thousands of edits, I've probably had a dozen "complaints" and the same number of queries. Some of the complaints were justified (editing errors), which I have fixed, and some were not (almost all of those were happy after a simple explanation). Rich Farmbrough. 23:17, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Krash. I came here to post a comment about your linking-dates in the external links for Sousveillance, and saw there were already some comments on the topic of over-linking. (imho) The spirit of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers#Avoid overlinking dates) rule, is to only link a date, if the date is an important aspect of the context. sep'11, jul'4, dec'24, jan'1, etc could/should be linked. But it's not useful if the date is arbitrary (a date of album release, article publication, etc). --Quiddity 22:41, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi, this is to allow date preferences to work. If you set them you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. The MoS is very clear. Section 1.2 [1] explains date formatting. Section 1.2.1 is a caveat warning against linking just years or just months or just year-month combinations - which I generally remove when I come across them. Rich Farmbrough. 23:19, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Understood. I think in the case of the sousveillance date-link, i'll just remove the date altogether, as it doesnt add anything or have relevance. thanks :) --Quiddity 23:21, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

While I welcome constructive contributions to the Joan of Arc article, I believe your contribution violated the clause at WP:NOT about random collections of unrelated information. When a page gets cluttered with trivial links it becomes harder for readers to glean meaningful information from chaff. It goes much too far to Wikilink every date where I confirmed a site access throughout a list of nearly seventy footnotes. You're an active editor and I'm sure usually a very productive one, but I see you've already disregarded feedback on this issue from several other editors.

I cannot share the opinion that every Wikipedia editor who does not complain is delighted with your work. I wasted half an hour this evening removing link clutter, time that I had planned to spend adding new footnotes and correcting some syntax problems in the article text. Then I visited your talk page, read how you dismissed several other comments, and almost decided it would be a further waste more of my time to give you any input. Rein this activity down to a reasonable level. You've gone overboard. 68.101.254.59 04:55, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

The matter of Dr. James R. Russell's article

Hi Rich. Perhaps you can help out. I wrote Professor/Dr. James R. Russell's article as he is indeed a world known scholar in his field and very notable. I checked that his colleague, Dr. Wheeler Thackston had an article, which he has since 2004. They are both in the same department at Harvard, and on comparable par. Dr. Russell's opus "Zoroastrianism in Armenia" is a major work published by Harvard University amongst other works of his. The article is not a vanity article and Dr. Russell who occupies the Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies, at Harvard University, which is a very prestigious chair, is more than noteworthy. As much as Dr. Wheeler Thackston is. Dr. Russell's article is James R. Russell. I have no idea who User_talk:Dsc is and why the person flagged it. The stated objections are not valid. The warning should be removed. I don't know where else to turn to. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 20:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Rich for getting back on this situation. I will go do some other things. I hope someone keeps and eye on this. It's nutty. Cheers. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:27, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. Thanks for your kind message. It isn't really resolved. User:Sannse formerly of the Wikipedia arbitration committee had removed the warning in the light of reason, and the person User:Dsc has slapped on the warning again on Dr. James R. Russell's article without any discussion. I do hope this gets resolved but (a) I don't feel the warning is justified and it should not be there (b) the person has taken no time to discuss it as per your suggestion, and (c) I have no easy internet access on this end due to serious outages, and (d) the objection by the person does not stand up to reason and a test. I am writing this from a stand-up kiosk in a library. If you could do something appropriate, I would be appreciative. The person is acting in my opinion, irrationally. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 21:06, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. Thanks for getting back to me. The debate on the Armenian Genocide has nothing to do with Dr. Russell's erudition and scholarly accomplishments. Plus, the website cited, is unsigned, and can't be rationally used for the article's merit, which is based on Russell's scholarly work. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. See my comments there also, when you have a chance. I put more into the discussion with a level head. I am not part of nor versed in the Armenian debate. I take your points on the further citations on the articles and ISBN on the books. One has to chase these things down a bit when one has time. Thanks again. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 23:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. Thanks for your help on the matter. I hope it works out for all concerned in the middle to long run. Much appreciated. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:24, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. I fixed up the references, citations, ISBN numbers and other loose ends as per your suggestion. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 02:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello Rich. Thanks for your kind help and suggestions. I think it might be all right now. It was a lot of work. As for a GFDL photo ... that might be a little tricky, but will look into it when I can. ;) Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:14, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Help

This message has just appeared on my Watchlist Page.

"Wikipedia e-mail confirmation has been enabled. To receive Wikipedia e-mail, you must go to Special:Confirmemail, request a code, and follow the link in the e-mail."

I followed the directions & received instructions to Log in; I did this; nothing further has happened. What am I missing? What does this mean? I'm still new here. Michael David 18:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Michael, this means that Wikipedia now "knows" you really have access to that email account. Imagine if someone put an enemy's email address and went around insulting people, to generate badmail. Or even f someone simply mistypes their email address. I don't know why this message was put on the watchlist, though, seems like a funny place for it. Rich Farmbrough 23:08 2 March 2006 (UTC).

Question about banner on my Watchlist

Hi Rich. This is a silly question, I'm afraid. When I bring up my Watchlist, this banner apppears :

"Wikipedia e-mail confirmation has been enabled. To receive Wikipedia e-mail, you must go to Special:Confirmemail, request a code, and follow the link in the e-mail."

Is this just a general announcement which requires no action on my part, or is it saying something which requires my action ? Does it mean someone has requested to email me ? I don't have it setup for email intentionally. Thanks in advance as ever. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:51, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Rich for your kind response. I will look into it further. Bests --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 19:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Working Families for Wal-Mart

Rich, Cmh has POV problem with a story I started. When you have time, could you take a look and see what needs to be done to remove the tag. Thanks!--Beth Wellington 03:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Cmh removed the tag. Thanks! I've already thanked him on his talk page.--Beth Wellington 21:05, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

In a related issue, there's a vote to delete an admittedly rough article (but only a day old) that's odd, in that the arguments are poorly researched and all in favor of deletion. Could you take a look-see? Thanks!--Beth Wellington 05:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in. By the way, I didn't know you were in England until I saw the category at the bottom of your user page. Love the pig Latin and old English babel boxes. What a hoot! --Beth Wellington 01:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you!

Rich,

Thank you for the explanation of that e-mail message on my Watch List. It does make sense after all. My work (in many ways, life) has been sitting across from flesh and blood people trying to help them untangle the emotional knots they have found themselves in. There I'm comfortable because it's familiar to me. It's taking me longer to be comfortable sitting across from a machine that is essentially 1s & 0s. I am comfortable with the information within Wikipedia, where my task is to extract that information and, in my own way, hopefully improve on it. I saw that message & wondered what it was wanting me to do & why. Thanks for straightening it out for me. The wetter my feet get at this, the more comfortable I feel with the structure, the more I will be able to contribute to the content. Right now I'm still learning. Michael David 04:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Big Sur

Thanks for taking the time to read and make some fixes on this article. It's much appreciated.Scooterboss 11:58, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Please review

Paphos The Arsenio Hall Show Robert Scott (VC) Max Mosley Rich Farmbrough 21:34, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Standardisation units, imperial, metric etc

Hi Rich, As you describe yourself as a fixer, UK based & seem to have experience with bots to fix things, I wonder if you can help...

During recent discussions about featured article status for Chew Valley Lake I was challenged that the units (particularly for volume, but it applies to other areas) used in the article discriminated against some users eg;

"Even worse. "Customary" units are not provided throughout. " & "The other is the use of imperial gallons and cubic meters, neither of which are used in the U.S. (but who really wants to see acre-foot). Rmhermen 00:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC) Acre-foot certainly makes no sense, this unit isn't used in the UK as far as I know. Water volumes here are conventionally quoted as so many million gallons (Imperial ones of course, not US gallons). Cubic metres (not meters :-) might be a good choice. What a fine muddle we get into over units! Chris Jefferies 17:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC) But you see that you are giving British English readers two ways to understand the volume but giving American English readers zero. That doesn't seem right. Rmhermen 01:43, 3 March 2006 (UTC)"

Do you know of any policy on this & could your bot (or any other) semi-automatically standardise them & if necessary put in the volume measure in the other units expected? Rod 12:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Smackbot: "Agjacent" counties

Hi there, I noticed that SmackBot had made some automated changes to Rockland County, New York, and in looking at them I realized that "Adjacent counties" was changed to "Agjacent counties." A cursory glance at other county articles that the bot edited shows that the mistake was made in several places. Just thought I'd let you know...is there a quick way of going back and fixing? Or do each of them need to be corrected individually?  :: Salvo (talk) 03:06, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll fix them. Rich Farmbrough 08:18 6 March 2006 (UTC).

Thanks :) :: Salvo (talk) 12:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Genocidal Massacre

Not to be aggressive Rich, but you're removing the Warrigal Creek massacre from the Genocidal Massacre page because "it's not in the time frame of the UN" is just plain arrogant and ignorant. Firstly, this doesn't change the fact it qualifies as an incident of Genocidal Massacre. Secondly, by your logic, the Armenian Genocide should be removed because it took place 30 years before the founding of the UN. I don't think you'd go as far as to do that. If you wish to talk about this further, please message me on my talk page. Evolver of Borg 22:10, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

By all means remove the Armenian incident, which should not be on the Genocidal massacre page. I moved the text to Warrigal Creek and did some research on the subject. For reaons I forget I didn't have time to re-write the apalling paragraph that was there, but I did put some references at the foot of the article, to help anyone who feels like creating a proper well sourced article. Rich Farmbrough 16:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

You understand when I say the Armenian Genocide I'm not referring to the Genocidal Massacre page but Genocide in general. The same principles apply to both. Evolver of Borg 21:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah, then the same principle doesn't apply. This is about what belongs on which page, not what belongs on the 'pedia. Warrigal did not have a page before I created it. Rich Farmbrough 00:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Wait wait wait. I think I'm confused. What exactly are we talking about, 'Warrigal Creek' or 'The Warrigal Creek Massacre'? If we're talking about the creek, good on you for writing the article. If we're talking about the massacre, then I'm confused about what exactly we're discussing. Are we saying that the massacre should remain on a seperate page and not the creek page, or something else? Slightly confused Evolver of Borg 01:24, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

My opinion is that if enough data for Warrigal Creek massacre to be a decent page can be found it should have it's own page. Ohterwise a section in Warrigal Creek. I think the information should be sourced, and if possible from (checked) primary sources. I've found the name of the stockman (?) who was killed, but I don't think my source is reliable enouigh to go in the article. Perhaps contemporary newspaer accounts exist? Rich Farmbrough 01:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I've just "googled" "Warrigal Creek massacre -wikipedia" almost the only non-wikipedia refernces are to Gadener's article and the ref I cited above. Rich Farmbrough 01:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I found out about the massacre about a year ago when I undertook a genocide studies course, but I think my notes were what I wrote down on the page. Could be more though. I'll check the resource we used. Evolver of Borg 05:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Was Warrigal Creek never moved in the end, or has it just been reverted to? If the term "genocidal massacre" refers specifically to breaches of the UN Convention, then it should not be listed on that page... Nicolasdz 09:29, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Rich, I have no particular information, but the date of the event seems to make it impossible to be a "genocidal massacre." Nicolasdz 19:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Rich, for now, then, let's leave it be, and as soon as I have time I'll dig up some other examples, move the "Warrigal Creek" stuff to a separate article, and create a link in the main genocide article to "Genocidal Massacre."

SmackBot re: Henry the Navigator

Your bot is making edits like this one: [[2]] which have no impact on the article as it appears to the user, nor on the workings of Wikipedia. These are merely stylistic preferences being enforced by a bot. This wastes storage space (for the edit entries in the database), bandwidth (for the edits themselves), and degrades Wikipedia's performance for no return on that investment. Please, tune your bot so that it does not make stylistic edits without a concrete benefit. -Harmil 16:20, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Harmil,

Well, spotted, that edit should have changed "Early Life" to "Early life" (process already fixed), I think no more invisible edits should occur. I'll check a sample of a hundred, if you see any, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 18:00 5 March 2006 (UTC).

This edit moved the stub template to a place three (!) lines below the interlanguage links instead of leaving it above the categories where it belongs. AFAIK interlanguage links should always be the at the bottom, below categories and person data.—Wikipeditor 13:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

This appears to be standard AWB ordering. It makes sense because the stub template will, presumably, be removed, so having it easy to find is a good idea. I'm not sure if there are any guidelines about it, I'll investigate, and ask on the AWB page. The two blank lines seem odd. Rich Farmbrough 15:13 7 March 2006 (UTC).

The extra lines allow for an icon on the stub which otherwise can overwirte text. Rich Farmbrough 12:18 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Alcoholism article conflict

Hello Rich, I suppose it was inevitable. I find myself in the first conflict since coming to Wikipedia. It involves the Article on Alcoholism, most specifically the Section headed ‘Alcoholism as a disease’. This Section is extremely biased and presents facts that are simply not correct. For example, the paragraph “Currently there are no validated medical or scientific procedures or tests to determine if one has the so-called disease of alcoholism or if one is a carrier.” The use of the phrase ‘so-called’ speaks for itself, and, this is simply not true today. I attempted to correct it, but a person who identifies himself as “David Justin” immediately reversed my edit. His name is in red, and he does not have either a User or Talk Page. I made my case on the ‘Alcoholism” Discussion page under the heading ‘Alcoholism labeling>be careful’ in which I included this:

'Today, and for some time now, there are highly accurate tools and other instruments that can accurately diagnose the disease of alcoholism. This is but one of many: SUDDS-IV.'

David Justin's response was incomprehensible gibberish.

AND: the final paragraph of the main Article includes this:

The idea of "alcohol as a disease of the community" or an "environmentally mediated or caused disease" is not as widely discussed or I am not aware of it as much. I see alcohol as an "environmentally caused disease" in many cases.’

The use of the word “I” in an encyclopedia article is unheard of, and I believe represents one person’s very biased POV.

A great deal of progress has been made in the area if alcoholism diagnosis. I believe the Article in Wikipedia should reflect this fact.

I will not become involved in a debate with someone I know nothing about, or cannot communicate with directly. I do want this important Article to be accurate, and up to Wikipedia’s high standards. How do you think I should proceed from here?

Michael David 13:38, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Personally I would appreciate it if both of you would realize alcohol dependence is not a disease. Alcohol dependence can be treated in a couple of weeks tops and then the person is no longer alcohol dependent. If alcoholism is a disease we should be able to detect it whether we are drinking or not. In fact if it is a disease even though we have never had a sip of alcohol, we should be able to test and detect it. Does such a test exists? No. Can one take a blood test to determine if they have this so-called disease? And your link is not diagnosing a disease it is about diagnosing alcohol dependence. Alcohol dependence is not a disease.

And an "environmentally caused disease"? Is that like second hand smoke? A wiki article is not the place for you to promote your personal belief and definitions regarding alcoholism.

I just reworked the test part I added to the article in a fashion I think makes it more clear. Instead of removing my comments over and over how about discussing it on the talk page? And if this is an issue you want to pursue please find me a test for the disease of alcoholism. I'd like to take it to make sure I do not have it. In fact I'd like my 2 year old daughter to take the test to make sure she is nto walking around with this disease. If she has a disease called alcoholism I'd want her to know about it sooner than later so she can plan to abstain permanently.

Finally, the SUDDS-IV diagnostic criteria does not even mention the word disease. It talks about alcohol and drug addiction/dependence. Mr Christopher 16:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Rich

Thank you for your input regarding the ‘Alcoholism as a Disease’ issue. I have been a practicing psychotherapist for 40+ years, with a subspecialty in the Dependencies. I have seen tremendous progress in that time with professionals researching and finally solving some very touchy issues regarding the use and misuse of psychoactive chemicals & their effects on a person. The critical part of the ‘disease concept’ is that it removes this disorder from the hands of those who would paint it as simply a problem with the person’s behavior. Categorizing it that way has proven not only problematic with the self-concepts of the patient; frankly it has given ammunition to those who have tried to stand in the way of adequate funding for the research. I am not going to quibble with anyone over whether it’s a disease or not. The only person who needs to understand is the patient. All else is bullshit. Michael David 18:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

smack bots change in Maruti Omni

Your bot tried to do something unsucessfully and had to rv its action. If you can tell me what 'RM caps in section headers' means I'll do it manually. thanks.

--hydkat 06:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that, and for letting me know. Bluebot had already made the change, the bad change is a bug I think, and I will pass back to be fixed. Rich Farmbrough

Thanks for your reply. But you didn't tell what 'RM caps in section headers' means... I only have an assumption to go by :(.

--hydkat 11:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Remove capitals in section headers.  :) I guess you assumed right. Rich Farmbrough 11:39 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Alcoholism Article Thoughts

Rich,

You’re right, there are two Sections entitled ‘Social Impact’. They both contain similar material. I believe one could be worked into a Section focusing on ‘Public Health Issues’.

Actually that would be merely like trying to rearrange the passengers on the Titanic hoping this would keep it from sinking. The fact of the matter is the entire Article needs a major reworking. It is trying to do & be too many things. The result: it merely creates confusion about a very important subject.

When I read the Article’s present form, I try to imagine an adolescent trying to make sense of their family life; knowing Dad or Mom is drunk all of the time; has heard the word ‘alcoholism’ used in school, and reaching for an encyclopedia to find out what it’s all about. I am in no way suggesting the encyclopedia should be geared to adolescents, but the average reader should be able to readily understand and to follow it. Anything beyond that and you have a textbook.

To me, an encyclopedia Article about a subject should state the current definition of that subject; a history of the birth, evolution and impact of that subject; and references to more in-depth materials the reader can go to if they want to learn more. It should never offer opinions, or even hint of bias. All this, of course, without being so dry it crumbles before you eyes. This is what writing style is all about.

Again, the present Article on ‘Alcoholism’ needs a great deal of work if it is to be helpful to anyone really trying to learn about it.

Be healthy. Michael David 14:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot: Parsis != Persian people

On 7 March Smackbot apparently added a bunch of people that are Parsis to Category:Persian people. Thats a far stretch. Calling Parsis "Persian people" is like calling descendants of the pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower "Britons". -- Fullstop 09:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Can you give me an example? Thank you. Rich Farmbrough 16:08 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Sorry, my mistake. Mea culpa. -- Fullstop 16:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation needed

Rich, J.C. Penney (the store) and J. C. Penney (the man) are so close it seems like there should be some pointer between them. Thanks.--Beth Wellington 17:57, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at it. My two cents (pennies?)--while it may be the usual practice, it is an arcane one which makes it hard for the non-editng user to find the correct content. (and hard even for the novice-editor user). Especially since there's little visual difference to the reader between the two. Don't know if those who do such things would want to consider this usage. Alternatively, I might have filed J. C. under his full name with a redirect from the initials. 'Nough said. So, are you this Richard Farmbrough] or is it just a common name?--Beth Wellington 17:26, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

ImDB

Interesting. I believe that ImDB allows juried submissions (I tried to straighten out the double entries on Leonard B. Stern). Of course, your common name might rule you out! If the information is readiliy accessible, I'd be glad to advise the Grand Poobahs over there.--Beth Wellington 17:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Corporate vandalism of Leonard N. Stern

Rich, this article has an odd edit on February 8 that eliminated all mention of impropriety. Also, this is the same man, as in the entry Leonard N. Stern. They need to be merged, rather than disambiguated by the tag billionaire. Help! --Beth Wellington 05:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank Rich. Won't have time to look at corporate bio today, but will try to work on it next week. --Beth Wellington 20:03, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Rich, Hartz has vandalized the page again, completely replacing it with its own content. Apparently, a stronger warning is in order?--Beth Wellington 21:25, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing this so quickly!--Beth Wellington 22:29, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

User:Deborah Stone went in again on 2/21/06 and vandalized this article, despite your polite request on 2/17 not to do so. Called it a "minor edit." This makes three times. Any way to stop this from happening?--Beth Wellington 17:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I check on it periodically. Blocking might work or perhaps she'll register for another account, like some here do.--Beth Wellington 17:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Movement to impeach George W. Bush

Dear Rich,

When I went to add citations in the press today in response to the NSA issue, I noticed that there had been a POV warning on this article [3]forever. Any suggestions?

Thanks, Beth --Beth Wellington 09:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the POV tag, Rich. We'll see if it remains gone.--71.254.64.97 02:02, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Mirrorvax [4] added another warning to the site as soon as you took it down. This is really frustrating. What original research? This tagging seems to rise to vandalism. Any suggestions. If you check in the discussion, folks have already had extended discussions with him that have been unproductive. --Beth Wellington 02:17, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Dear Rich,

In the support for impeachment section, why is a subsection on media editorial by a reputable business magazine less encyclopedic than a subsection on entertainers? I don't want to get into an editing war that approaches a 3r infractin. Would you mind weighing in on Stbalbach's deleting this content to the discussion page? Thanks!--Beth Wellington 04:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Dear Rich,

[[5]] today by anonymous User:70.85.195.225 again tags this article. Could you take a look. Thanks.--Beth Wellington 18:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

2 Bot Visits

Hi, A page I created has had it's last two edits made by AWB assisted robots Bluebot & Smackbot ([6], [7]). It's good that you guys are cleaning up but couldn't you colloborate? What Smackbot did in visit 2, could have been done by Bluebot in visit 1. --kingboyk 02:55, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is some overlap between the tasks they've worked on - and the timings. SB is working on Caps in Headings BB is working on many different problems with "See also" and "External links". That's why we hit the same article. In theory it shouldn't matter because if the change is already done the second bot will do nothing - but we had slightly different settings/versions so a small change occurred. I've upgraded to the latest version since that run, so I hope that will not happen again. I've also requested a feature to reduce solely minor edits. Rich Farmbrough 11:27 8 March 2006 (UTC).

I believe Bluebot and Smackbot are owned by two different users. On the other hand, I also had a watched page visited by both bots, both commiting a minor error. I've detailed it below:

The following code:

^{[[Aleut Restitution Act of 1988#External Links|[1]]]}

As you can see above, Bluebot (or Smackbot) judged [1]]] as a mistake, and fixed it by changing it to [[1]]. However, the singular [ and ] around 1 are decorative, and the other two ]]'s right of the "1" are to end the internal link.

Just to let you know about this, but on the other hand, I appreciate the work Smackbot has done! Kareeser|^Talk! 06:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

This is very useful, and I will pass it back to the developer User:Bluemoose. Rich Farmbrough 11:27 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Thanks for that, and for your reply on my talk page. --kingboyk 19:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Oregon falls (sic)

Dear Rich, Yes i would just like to know Why you deleted my page. Oregon Falls is a very good band in fact it was my cousin dayton niemans band i know alot about that band and wasted alot of my time trying to make that page. I dont know who you are to delet a perfectly good page.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Poonch12 (talk • contribs) .

Answered on your talk page. Rich Farmbrough 19:32 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Hope you don't mind Rich, but I userfied it. It was still a valid speedy deletion and had no incoming links. He can work on it in his user space until he's satisfied WP:MUSIC and everyone's a winner :-) --kingboyk 19:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

NO probs. Rich Farmbrough 20:07 8 March 2006 (UTC).

SmackBot changes to aircraft articles

Please keep SmackBot away from aircraft articles using the airtemp template for specs. This template requires the use of </li> and <li> tags to properly format specs not included in the template. When SmackBot replaces these tags with the asterix, it messes up formatting. Thanks! - Emt147 ^Burninate! 06:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, easily done. Rich Farmbrough 11:28 8 March 2006 (UTC).

P.S. AWB has been updated to avoid this problem in future. If it happens again please let me know. If you think there's a significantnumber of damaged articles, let me know and I will try to find them all and revert. Rich Farmbrough 17:24 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Only a couple of articles were affected but I wanted to give you a heads up. Thanks for taking care of that! - Emt147 ^Burninate! 20:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

An 'in depth' response

Rich,

(I never know where to post a direct response, on your page or mine – please bear with me, I’m still a kid here!)

No way did I mean to suggest controlling the depth of an Article. In some of my writings a person needs scuba gear. What I really mean involves the structure. As you know in technical writing there is first an abstract, where the reader can grasp the essentials of the subject; this is followed (if they care to go on) by the full text that includes all of the material. Perhaps in Wikipedia it could go something like this: The first that appears after a search would be the Main Article page containing the basic information relating to that subject; then, attached to each paragraph or section could be a ‘read more’ link by which they could go to another page that covers the deeper and more esoteric information. If I read you right, that’s what you were suggesting. I agree with you completely.

Be healthy. Michael David 20:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Image Tagging for Image:Brimingham_Central_Library_fire_jan1879.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Brimingham_Central_Library_fire_jan1879.jpg. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

• Wikipedia:Image use policy
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see User talk:Carnildo/images. 10:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Notice of response

Hi, you asked me a question and I responded. Many thanks. bobblewik 16:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

regex

See User:Bobblewik/monobook.js/dates.js. Regards bobblewik 22:36, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

September 11 Wiki

Sounds good to me. If you can, please ask for some who have been active over there to support your nomination. If that doesn't happen I'll use discretion to do it in a few weeks until there is some community view on whether you should be one there. Jamesday 23:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Smackbot, Caps and Dates

In its task of removing caps in headers, Smackbot is changing "Middle Ages" to "Middle ages" (as on the page List of French language authors) It seems to me the expression "Middle Ages" demands caps (see the article Middle Ages). On the same page Smackbot also changed the heading "20th Century" into "Twentieth century", which would be fine... if it changed all the other sections too (19th Century... 16th Century...), instead of leaving the page a hybrid of date formats. Should I go back in and change them all? -- NYArtsnWords 00:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. You might be right about the Middle Ages capitals - bother! I've done the rest of the centuries on that page. A mixed style page was a "known risk" - there are many thousand section headers on WP with unnecessary caps, I did the 15 most common recently, and am now doing the next 200+. Twentieth Century was in this batch, the others weren't, I guess I should have included them anyway, had I thought of it. Rich Farmbrough 01:11 9 March 2006 (UTC).

PS I'll check the MA thing and revert them if necessary. Rich Farmbrough 01:11 9 March 2006 (UTC).

While your making corrections, your bot ate a capital "C" in an Supreme Court "Opinion of the Court" subhead. Those should stay capitalized as well, since we're talking about "the Court" (but there was only the one digested). Cheers! BD2412 T 04:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I see your point. Thanks for letting me know. Rich Farmbrough 20:59 9 March 2006 (UTC).

For Jesseca Turner, SmackBot is adding back-slashes to the section heading. See this edit. --Rob 11:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorted. Rich Farmbrough 11:49 10 March 2006 (UTC).

Barnstar

The Surreal Barnstar I hereby award you (well, actually your SmackBot) this barnstar for all the constant edits that it's been doing to articles I've worked on. While I'm glad it's cleaning up my editing detrius, I can't help but feel that it's stalking me for some reason. ^_^;;; み使い Mitsukai 15:48, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot and George Jones

SmackBot broke a link in the George Jones article. [8] Everything is back to normal now, but you might want to somehow try to prevent the bot from doing that to other articles. Thanks. --TantalumTelluride 22:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear, that's a potential problem with AWB. I've reported it, and no doubt it will be fixed RSN. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough 23:02 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Also broke a link in the YMCA article[9] Cometward 21:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, AWB is now fixed, so I'd better find a way of identifying any past errors. Not to hard I think. Rich Farmbrough 22:02 10 March 2006 (UTC).

Suicide sub-categories

Rich,

Something to think about.

I am currently writing a journal article on ‘creativity and suicide’ - exploring why creative persons take their own lives. As a part of my research I have constructed a rather extensive database of persons in history who have committed suicide and, importantly, the methods they have used. I know Wikipedia has an extensive list of persons who have committed suicide and, in some cases, the method. As I have been cruising Wiki I have been adding the method of suicide information to its Articles. Is there any way, or, for that matter would Wikipedia be interested in, somehow also creating a separate listing category based on the method of suicide. In the cases of drug OD I have also subcategorized the type of drug. Perhaps it could be done in the form of additional categories, e.g.: ‘Persons who have committed suicide by gunshot’. I still have a lot to learn about the mechanics of Wikipedia. I searched it to see if I could find any such categories, but couldn’t find any. If such categories exist, please let me know. If not, I would be willing to help with a project to create them.

Be healthy. Michael David 23:54, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

A note about AWB

See this edit by SmackBot - It did nothing but decapitalise "Trading Card Game", which is a proper noun. Are jobs like this suitable for a bot? --Celestianpower ^háblame 16:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for letting me know about this. You make two points, firstly that "Trading Card Game" is a proper noun. Certainly you could argue for "Pokemon Trading Card Game", "Neopets Trading Card Game" or "YU-GI-OH! Trading Card Game" needing capitals, I think it's harder to argue for the =term on it's own. Similarly I have a copy of "The Hobbit, the Book of the Film", I would not talk about it as the Book (that's reserved for THHGTTG or holy books :). To a lesser extent the same applies, for example, to Pepy's, one could say "in his Diaries" or equally reasonably "in his diaries"

Your second point, whether is this a job for a bot, is simpler. The bot isn't mindlessly replacing all section headings with slightly lower case variants, it's currently only changing about 200 specific headings - like "Selected Filmography" to "Selected filmography". Of course there's always the risk that someone's written book called Selected Filmography, but that is within the bounds of acceptable risk, IMHO. Rich Farmbrough 16:58 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Sorry, I got my wires crossed. The Pokemon ones are the only article with "in the trading card game" headers I assume - would it be possible to change this to "In the Pokémon Trading Card Game"? --Celestianpower ^háblame 17:03, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I would be happy to do that, probably tonight, maybe tomorrow. Rich Farmbrough 17:05 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Rich - also in this edit, you removed the spaces in the section headings and after each "*" (bullet point). I feel like those spaces help the readability of the articles source... and they don't affect how the page renders. Please don't change them arbitrarily. -- Netoholic @ 17:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with the decrease in readability when editing (per [10] and related edits). Some of us don't have large screens and/or perfect eyes (any more!) — Bellhalla 18:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

OK since several people feel this way, I've turned of reduction in surplus white space. Rich Farmbrough 20:18 9 March 2006 (UTC).

Have you? I've just had Ethotoin and Felbamate touched by Smackbot (11th March). As far as I can see, the only reader-visible change was from "Side Effects" to "Side effects". I have no problem with that change if it brings the article into line with the MOS. However, there are over a dozen other invisible changes to each article, which make the Diff extremely hard to compare. These all involve whitespace that (AFAIK) only concern editors. Is there even any official consensus regarding which whitespace style is correct? I like to check "bot" changes as sometimes they do screw up the article (particularly foreign words) but having to compare whitespace changes is tedious in the extreme. In addition, it can make it near impossible to compare two human versions if a bot has done this much work in-between. Please, please change your bot so that the only diffs I see are ones that make a difference to the visible article, and only changes that are sanctioned by the MOS. I do appreciate that bots are useful (especially the ones upgrading my citation templates) but these hidden changes are quite harmful to the ability of editors to use the history mechanism and waste our time. Colin°^Talk 10:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, for the rest of the capitalisation run, I've turned it off, and this time I've saved the settings.... Rich Farmbrough 10:57 11 March 2006 (UTC).

Rambot demographics to past tense

Hi there. I noticed that you've done a bit of work with some of the articles that were originally created by Rambot, putting the Demographics section into the past tense. I thoroughly agree that these look ridiculous in the present tense, and it's something that I've been doing as well, when I've hit the Random Article button and come across them. However, it's a pretty thankless task, and even with both of us plugging away, it'll take a while to get through all 30,000! Is this something that SmackBot would be able to help out with at all? --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 17:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I shall let them go for now, then, and let the bot handle them in its own time. Regarding complaints, you might just want to be aware of this, though I've also had no complaints about actual changes I've made. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 12:04, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Felbamate rm caps in section header

Would you please revise the edit you made 10:59, 11 March 2006 (UTC). You have made "U.s." and "U.k.". If you are using a bot to do this, it should not be done under your account (I believe). If you are doing it manually then you are being rather careless. You are responsible for your edits regardless of how they are performed. Colin°^Talk 11:41, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Further to my response on your talk page ("Of course"), please note that there is a currently a problem with Wikipedia displaying the wrong version of articles. I've just been around the block making the same changes several tiems because there's this problem, probably synchronising between the squid caches. That's probably why I didn't see my mistake. Rich Farmbrough 12:11 11 March 2006 (UTC).

See also your change to Epilepsy 11:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC). I strongly encourage your to use "Show changes" before submitting your edits. Colin°^Talk 13:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Show changes wasn't helping, because the version being compared with was wrong. Believe me, I looked at almost every diff of every edit I made to those pages to try to work out what was happening - and I am not a novice at using Show changes or history. Rich Farmbrough 17:47 11 March 2006 (UTC).

Re: Anna Hazare

Hi there, I didn't add the inuse template to this article. Rupakbiswas did in this edit. Cheers, Cmdrjameson 17:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks for drawing my attention to the existance of inuse templates though, I hadn't known about them before now. Cheers, Cmdrjameson 18:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Stub template should go after categories

In this edit you moved the stub template before the categories. This should not be done, as the stub category is less important than the others. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 18:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

How very odd. Further up may talk page you will see flamage because stubs went to the end, which is what has always happened if the "sort" option is on. I shall investigate further. Rich Farmbrough 18:42 11 March 2006 (UTC).

In your next edit you wikilinked a date that's part of an external link. That one is somewhat my fault though, as I forgot to add a references section. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 19:12, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I've found the reason, the template was "California State Highway Stub" instead of "California-State-Highway-stub" I'm fixing about 100 pages, and moving the sutbs to the end. In at leat one case [11] it has been in the wrong position since day 1. Rich Farmbrough 12:37 19 March 2006 (UTC).

Smackbot alphabetizing categories

On pages for sports players, for examples Barrin Simpson, I think it would be a good idea if you did not alphabetize the categories. The categories were listed in a specific order for clarity, first the ones dealing with birth year and living people category, followed by the teams they have played for, sometimes in chronilogical order, sometimes not. By alphabetizing them it makes the categories look like a random mismash. Qutezuce 06:13, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I can't scope it by article type, so for the rest of the capitalisation run, I've turned it off. Rich Farmbrough 10:55 11 March 2006 (UTC).

On the other hand, compare the list you had before, to what you think is good now. I don't think I broke anything there. Have you any other examples?Rich Farmbrough 11:39 11 March 2006 (UTC).

I'm not sure I'm seeing your point about not breaking anything. The edit your bot made ordered the categories: year of birth, team he played for, living people, team he played for. Before Smackbot it was ordered: team he played for, team he played for, year of birth, living people. After I editted after Smackbot it was ordered: year of birth, living people, team he played for, team he played for. My preference is that the teams he played for be grouped together, and that birth year/death year/living people be grouped, and other logical groupings of that nature. The article conformed to this preference before SmackBot, and after I editted after SmackBot, but not after SmackBot's edit.

For other examples of where I think categories should be grouped logically and not alphabetically, check out pretty much any person in Category:Canadian Football League players (or subcats), or Category:National Football League players (or subcats). For one specific example, look at Doug Flutie. With the number of categories on that page I think that grouping categories logically is even more important, otherwise it just becomes a random looking list.

I don't think that sports people are the only examples, but its the only one that comes to mind right now. For example, any person should have birth year/death year/living people grouped together for easy maintenance. Qutezuce 20:35, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Doug has this list

[[Category:1962 births|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Roman Catholics|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:American football quarterbacks|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Arab Americans|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Boston College Eagles football players|Flute, Doug]] [[Category:British Columbia Lions players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Buffalo Bills players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Calgary Stampeders players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Chicago Bears players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Heisman Trophy winners|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Living people|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:New England Patriots players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:People from Maryland|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:People from Massachusetts|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:San Diego Chargers players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Toronto Argonauts players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:United States Football League players|Flutie, Doug]]

Apart from Roman Catholic it's alpha order. Rich Farmbrough 13:45 19 March 2006 (UTC).

Image Tagging Image:Exempt.gif

This media may be deleted.

Thanks for uploading Image:Exempt.gif. I notice the 'image' page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this media yourself then you need to argue that we have the right to use the media on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the media yourself then you should also specify where you found it, i.e., in most cases link to the website where you got it, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the media also doesn't have a copyright tag then you must also add one. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then you can use {{GFDL-self}} to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media qualifies as fair use, please read fair use, and then use a tag such as {{Non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair_use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other media, please check that you have specified their source and copyright tagged them, too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any unsourced and untagged images will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Shyam ^(T/C) 21:24, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I've today replaced that with (self-made) File:Exempt.png. So I've deleted the gif. Rich Farmbrough 22:03 11 March 2006 (UTC).

Cats

I too have had a stub template moved in an article I've been watching. Although the stub template generates a category (as do many other templates), it is not a category itself. It generates text and the editor will have placed it where he/she thinks best. Wrt sorting categories - please please stop this madness. Where is your authority that you can whizz through Wikipedia imposing your view of "tidy" on everyone else? If you can point to some where that there was a large consensus that it was a "good thing" to have sorted categories and that it was "essential" that all articles be brought into line, then I'll accept it.

In a number of complaints above you blame your tools. I'm sorry but you are responsible for your edits. If you can't control your tools and can't be bothered to check their effect with Show Changes then please find something more productive to do instead. Colin°^Talk 21:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

St Louis rename

Have you had a chance to get the St Louis redirects, I have a flagged bot sitting idle which can take care of those tonight, looking at your contribs it hasn't been done. I'll have my bot start away on them as I really need something to do :) -- Tawker 06:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Some of the sub-categories still need doing, (Category:Saint Louis University shouldn't change.) Rich Farmbrough 07:29 12 March 2006 (UTC).

J. R. R. Tolkien

Hi! My name is Mike, and I wanted to let you know that this article is up for Featured Article Status! It is SOOO CLOSE! And as someone who has worked on this article a lot in the past (having checked the history) I thought you could help me fix the inline citations. As I have none of the books in question, I am out of luck, but thought real enthusiasts might be able to help. So, please help, or get those who you know can to help make Tolkien a featured article! Thanks much! Judgesurreal777 18:07, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

List of Arizona birds

I'm wondering if you botted this one. I don't quite see the point in wikifying the dates of first sightings of birds in a state, it seems extraneous and/or unuseful to do this. Birthdates and historical events make sense, but I'm not sure why the last edit was even made.  :/ -- Miwa 13:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with useful links. Just click on the "my preferences" link, or check out m:Help:Preferences under Date format. Gene Nygaard 17:16, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Gene has kindly replied for me. Rich Farmbrough 18:39 13 March 2006 (UTC).

Spellsinger reverts

Rich, your bot added a link to The Weavers in the article that I've written. I've removed the link as the Weavers in Spellsinger are a group of sentient spiders, the one you linked to are a folk group. Hope you don't mind me sorting that out. Douglasnicol 18:31, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, not me but you! No problem. P.S. Generally add new sections to the bottom of talk pages. Rich Farmbrough 13:44 13 March 2006 (UTC).

Ah, my mistake, sorry about that. Douglasnicol 17:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Removing caps in section headers

Thanks for removing the caps from the section headers in epilepsy.

However, I noticed that you also removed caps from the text of an entire subsection, the one called 'Normal provocants'. (Check the article history.) I can't imagine that you did this on purpose. I wonder if you didn't use an automated method to do this; if so, perhaps you might be able to figure out where it went wrong.

Cheers, -ikkyu2 (talk) 08:38, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate the note. I can fix this problem with my editing aid, so it's really useful that you've told me. Rich Farmbrough 19:28 12 March 2006 (UTC).

I am glad to have been helpful. I often wish that I had the ability to code up such useful aids. -ikkyu2 (talk) 21:41, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Transwiki:Casualties of the September 11, 2001 attacks

Thanks for your welcome over on the memorial wiki! I just found it myself recently. Doc 14:52, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikified Dates

Please undo the "wikified" dates you made in the date articles. You have created circular references. That is, you've got date articles pointing back at themselves. Rklawton 22:57, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your note. You are perfectly correct that these are circular references, which are by and large a Bad Thing. However the badness has been ameliorated by the Wikimedia software (since about V1.3 or 1.4 I think) which displays them as bold instead of as links. Since the frist occurance should be bold anyway, this is ok. On the other hand, it also allows date prefernces to work. For a fuller discussion see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Days_of_the_year#Linking_dates_in_lead_paragraphs. Best regards, Rich Farmbrough 23:11 14 March 2006 (UTC).

That's good to know about circular references. I suppose the extra CPU cycles aren't all that significant. However, we now have bolded dates in places where they weren't bolded before (other than as the first word in the article). I'm rather hoping you will avoid this problem with the remaining date articles and review the date articles you've already edited for errors. On a separate note, I'd recommend against running BOTs against date articles anyway. Date articles have a high vandalism rate, and BOTS run the risk of masking such edits. Rklawton 23:20, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Coolio. I'll be able to review date articles on Monday, but with 366 articles to plow through, the fewer edits, the better. Rklawton 00:37, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

election table

All latest election results on a national level around the world are now in a template. This was a project for a couple of months and nobody really argued against it. The big advantage is that results can be used in more entries, and that the results are not diferent throughout Wikipedia. Electionworld = Wilfried (talk 18:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

1969 Coal Mine Safety and Health Act

Rich, I'm about to write an entry for the 1977 act. Is the title for this one correct, or should it be somehow otherwise named? I want to make the two consistent. Also, this article was started without a reference by by Alex Horovitz, who despite his bio note saying he contributes regularly to media plagarized it from the external source I've added as the reference in his original version,[12]. (The reference by the blocked sockpuppet was actually to the 1077 act.) You might want to take a peek and if you concur, let him know whatever wiki rule applies to this situation.--Beth Wellington 05:06, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

After looking at the indexing in the category for U.S. laws, I decided to use neither the year, which indexes everything from the twentieth century uner "1" nor the word "federal", which would index all federal laws under "f."

I think that Alex's original 1969 article was a copyright violation. Hopefully I've changed it enough that it is no longer the case. Should an administrator, if he or she agrees with my assessment on the original article point that out to him? It doesn't need to be listed now, as there is a reference and I've paraphrased.--Beth Wellington 23:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Been off-line and am leaving to drive tomorrow to Ohio to give a poetry reading, so didn't reply before now. I guess it's not a copyright violation, but it still seems right to give credit where credit is due. Love the word "crosspatch!" Superpowers? H-m-m-m. The ability to leap tall piles of data in a single bound. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Wikiman! Seriously, i appreciate all your efforts. Your humble scribe, --Beth Wellington 04:11, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

New regex

I have been testing a new regex in a file called 'datestest.js' (see my monobook). It has dramatically reduced two entire classes of false positives: ISO dates and dates that have the year at the left. It does have some 'misses' and some of these can be cured by running it twice (i.e. clicking on that 'datestest' tab a second or third time). Please let me know what you think. bobblewik 18:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Enlighten me

What benefit do the (hundreds of) apparent self-linking edits achieve (see e.g. [13]). Is it some date preferences issue you are sorting? Pcb21 Pete 23:45, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, most of them are already self-linked, I only had to do 62 days in the from 1st of July to the 31st of December, about a third of the total. It doesn't present any problems, because the software knows it is a a self link (just as it does with our sigs on our talk pages) an bolds it instead of creating a circular link. Rich Farmbrough 23:55 16 March 2006 (UTC).

Yes I agree it seems to be problem-free. I guess I just didn't get the point of the change - The ''' syntax just highlights in bold and the [[ ]] syntax does the same thing, after making the software figure out it is a self-link.. Maybe it is just making things standardized across all date pages? Pcb21 Pete 00:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That plus if you had a page like "December 25 is the day after December 24" for some people it would look fine, for others it would look like "December 25 is the day after 24 December". Rich Farmbrough 00:04 17 March 2006 (UTC).

Minor SmackBot edit summary typo

Just a typo of general [14]. Just thought you'd like to know.--Drat (Talk) 01:22, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, much appreciated. Rich Farmbrough 01:24 17 March 2006 (UTC).

Underscores in wikilinks

Your Smackbot just screwed up a bunch of links in Top Gear. While it's good to remove underscores from wikilinks, don't do it in the anchor part i.e after the hash (#). The anchors are given specific names, which includes the underscore. All of those links to sections now simply go to the top of the article. Fix it. Imroy 19:37, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Er, no it didn't. The link anchor was wrong - to Emmy Award#The International Emmys instead of Emmy Award#International Emmys. The link to the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution#Evolution VIII was fine. Rich Farmbrough 20:43 17 March 2006 (UTC).

Wikitext readability

Hi. Thanks for cleaning up headings with smackbot. I noticed the bot eliminates spaces in all of a page's headings. I've always been adding those spaces, because it makes the heading text much more easily readable in the edit field if it doesn't run into the equals signs. —Michael Z. 2006-03-05 17:18 Z

Example:

==External links==

== External links ==

Thank you for your cleanup edit on Austintown, Ohio.[15] I would ask, however, that you not remove spaces from the headings (as you did for "External links" but for no other heading), for the very reason cited above: it improves readability for editors without changing the displayed text. Far too many Wikipedia editors squeeze edited text so much down to the essentials, the result looks like it was meant for a 16KB TRS-80 computer. (Take a look at most of the TV-show articles' "Trivia" sections sometime — they're as bad as obfuscated C programs.) Because Wikipedia is not paper, we have the luxury to use spaces and blank lines judiciously to make it easier for editors to quickly scan articles for material they wish to edit. This is defeated when every optional space is squeezed out of the text. I would appreciate your assistance in not adding to this problem. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

And now I see that your bot also removed a bunch of blank lines around headings for Herndon, Virginia.[16] I truly fear for the ease of editing of Wikipedia if you are making so many mass edits that you've managed to hit two random cities that I happened to be watching within 2 hours of each other. Please stop this counterproductive, pointless byte saving! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:20, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Smackbot escaping apostrophies

In this edit Smackbot inadvertently escaped the apostrophies in the title "Appearances in Playboy special editions". I've reverted this one, but I guess it's likely the same snafu has occurred elsewhere. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me, it's only in some of the playmates articles. I promised to fix this, and am now doing so. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 00:09 19 March 2006 (UTC).

All fixed. Rich Farmbrough 11:17 19 March 2006 (UTC).

Errors in SmackBot

Tense

I have just reverted a couple of SmackBot edits (Irvine, California and Cerritos, California), as I believe the Bot is wrong. When writing as of (insert year here) the population of (insert city here) .... the rest of the sentence should be in present tense, and not past tense. --Asbl 16:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know your view. Rich Farmbrough 23:20 18 March 2006 (UTC).

I think you are right if the text is being written at the time spoken of, "as of today we are getting lots of talk messages", but notif it is being written later "as of 12 BC there are no computers" is wrong whereas "as of 12 BC there were no computers" is right. What do you think? Rich Farmbrough 23:32 18 March 2006 (UTC).

Yes, I guess its a function of content, so it's probably best to not create a bot for this application. --Asbl 00:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Caps

It's also made a mistake in capitalization: in this diff, the first "as" should have stayed lowercase. -- stillnotelf has a talk page 17:13, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I will have to scan through and fix these. Rich Farmbrough 23:20 18 March 2006 (UTC).

Caps and a blank line

SmackBot has made the same capitalization error in an edit to Centreville, Virginia,[17] as well as again removing blank lines that serve a purpose, this time between article content and categories, which are supposed to have separation to make the categories more visible. Please stop SmackBot immediately until you have reviewed Wikipedia style guidelines and have addressed the many problems that are being posted on this page. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:58, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, capital fixed I will search out and fix any others, however there is still, and always has been, a blank line before the categories. Rich Farmbrough 23:20 18 March 2006 (UTC).

My apologies about the blank line. The diff shows a blank line being removed between the Geolinks template and the category, but after your statement, I confirmed that the resultant page does indeed still have a blank line. I guess it's a diff oddity. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that, if I had more energy I'd file a bug. Rich Farmbrough 11:50 19 March 2006 (UTC).

Smackbot grammar changes

I really don't think it's useful to change all Census 2000 data from present tense to past tense. Ideally we want to print current statistics. The Census 2000 statistics are the most current ones we have, so we use those. Putting it all in the past tense makes it sound like the cities don't exist anymore (or that their statistics are now significantly different, which is usually not the case). This might make sense for New Orleans, but not for other cities. Plus, we'll have to change them all back to present tense when the new Census is published. Instead, let's just leave them all present tense and use whatever are the most current statistics available.

Also, I object to Smackbot making two different types of edits at the same time. This makes it very tedious to revert just one of the changes (either tense or unicoding) should either one need to be reverted. Bots should only perform one type of edit at a time (at least in my opinion). For example, I love the unicode changes you are making, but hate the tense changes. Unfortunately there is no easy way I can keep one but not the other.Kaldari 05:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Bot edit summary

Would it be possible to change the bot edit summary so that it is clearer that is is not primarily relinking nazi links? I come across it at different places, and it just looks so wierd to find it at places where there is no link at all..... KimvdLinde 17:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I missed your comment on my talk page earlier. The correction of the links to Nazism is complete, but I would still be interested to know where you saw the edit summary, that idn't have a Nazi/Nazism link. Thanks Rich Farmbrough 11:32 27 March 2006 (UTC).

Smackbot: arrangement of interwikis

Hi Rich - your bot's rearrangement of the interwikis at Christmas tree is wrong in putting them in alphabetical order of the two-letter codes; they should be in alphabetical order of the language itself, which isn't always the same. Some important ones to watch for:

• es: (Español) comes before eo: (Esperanto)
• he: (Ivrit) comes after it: (Italian)
• ja: (Nihongo) comes after nl: (Nederlands)
• fi: (Suomi) comes just before sv: (Sverige)

Note that this is not a complete list of all the ones that need care in positioning! - thanks, MPF 18:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been reverted or removed by an automated bot. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. If you feel you have received this notice in error, please contact the bot owner // Tawkerbot2 23:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Tawkerbot2

See the bots talk page, during that last squidward attack the diffs comming from the IRC feed were screwed up and it caused some problems with Tawkerbot2, sorry about that, by the time I noticed it (within a few seconds) there wasn't much I could do due to the massive squidward attack. -- Tawker 23:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Sortkey problems

In this edit you removed the space before the "Scenic" sortkey. This moved the article from the beginning of the category to after all the routes. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 11:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot not reviewing edits

Not reviewing every edit as required by AWB. Blindly piped UK and US in the List of all two-letter combinations.

--William Allen Simpson 13:19, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Now configured to avoid that page. Rich Farmbrough 17:01 23 March 2006 (UTC).

Smackbot edit to delink month

I reverted this edit because it was incorrect. You may want to double check your bot. —Mike 03:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Now avoiding that kind of table. Rich Farmbrough 15:48 23 March 2006 (UTC).

Smackbot request

Hi, Rich. Could you, please, exclude the "xxxx in Fooian television" series (such as 1930 in television) from the Smackbot's delink list? These series is one of the few places where linking months makes sense (due to the way tables are laid out). I reverted the changes made so far. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 13:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. Consider it done. Any other requests, or if this crops up again, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 13:50 23 March 2006 (UTC).

Delinking months and days of week

I really appreciate your bot delinking months and days of the week from articles. I was wondering if it could also delink isolated years? For instance, the phrase "In June of 2001" is changed to "In June of 2001", but the MoS also recommends that isolated years not be linked, just like isolated months. I've manually removed the links from isolated dates in lots of articles (e.g.), but it's tiring to do manually. What do you think? Is this something you'd be willing to do? – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 17:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, count me in that coterie. I think a lot of the opposition is just against Bobblewik himself, and the perception that he's rude and negligent. (I haven't found this to be true, but some people seem to be of that opinion.) Anyway, it might be different if someone else, with a good reputation, were to try. If there's anything I can do toward this, let me know. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 18:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Smackbot, I'm not sure if this is an improvement

Hi Rich, It's good to see the changes being made to the Vermont town pages with SmackBot. However, I feel that it's making some changes that are sort of hard to read in English and I'd like your opinion. The recent changes to the Groton, Vermont page changed this sentence "The per capita income for the town was $14,659. 10.5% of the population and 6.8% of families were below the poverty line. 11.9% of those under the age of 18 and 9.1% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line." to this "The per capita income for the town was $14,659. Below the poverty line were 10.5% of people, 6.8% of families, 11.9% of those under 18 and 9.1% of those over 64."

The sentence that starts "Below the poverty line..." seems wonky. I realize this is trying to keep sentences from starting with numbers, but it seems like the old sentences were a little clearer, even if they had this grammatical undesireability, and I'd lean towards keeping it the old way or finding another solution. I don't feel super-strongly about this, but I wanted to know what you thought? Jessamyn (talk) 17:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not altogether happy with it as it stands. Can you make a better suggestion? Rich Farmbrough 17:38 23 March 2006 (UTC).

I'm still having a hard time thinking of a way to do it without starting the sentence with a number. Possibly something slightly more non-traditional but a little easier to follow. "The town has 10.5% of its population living below the poverty line, which includes 6.8% of its families, 11.9% of its people under 19 and 9.1% of its people over 64." The "its" could maybe be dropped. An improvement? I'd prefer to err on the side of starting a sentence with a number, but that's just my personal preference. Jessamyn (talk) 04:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I liked your version, however there' a technical difficulty inserting the word "town" (city, gore, CDP etc.), also "including" isn't quite right fo families. "There are 6.8% of families living below the poverty line and 10.5% of the population, including 11.9% of those under 19 and 9.1% of over 64s." Regards, Rich Farmbrough 13:08 24 March 2006 (UTC).

I think your latest suggestion is better than either how it looks now, or what SmackBot's original changes were "There are 6.8% of families living below the poverty line and 10.5% of the population, including 11.9% of those under 19 and 9.1% of over 64." certainly not perfect, but a big improvement. Jessamyn (talk) 13:19, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll go with that for now, but running slowly to allow other people a chance to chip in with improvements. Rich Farmbrough 13:23 24 March 2006 (UTC).

Smackbot suggestion

There was some text on a page that looked like "June 15", which smackbot changed to "June 15". But obviously this should be changed to "June 15". If there's an easy way to recognize such constructs, fixing them would be helpful. — jdorje (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

You are quite right that this would be desirable, and I do a lot of date linking, but because of the current disagreements around the whole date delinking/linking scenario I am being rather circumspect with what I do with SmackBot. In theory, the example you quoted 15 refers to the year AD 15, so even on a technical level there are problems. However there are a number of poeple working on imporving the date links, and there is a request with the developers for a better system of implementing date preferences, so all is not lost. Rich Farmbrough 00:35 26 March 2006 (UTC).

Smackbot and Chemistry

Minor problem of Smackbot's, it will fix links formatted like ''I love [[encyclopedia]]s'' to ''I love [[encyclopedias]]'', but sometimes that's not the right behavior, see line 350 of this diff. Here it fixed [[Sulfur|S]]H to [[Sulfur|SH]], but the H is not supposed to be part of the underlining. (I instead piped it to thiol, which is better anyway.) Perhaps if you instructed it to not make this change when the display text is in all capital letters or otherwise oddly formatted? If there's no obvious way to tweak the program I wouldn't worry about it, it's not likely to come up very often, but I thought you should be warned. Thanks, -- stillnotelf has a talk page 23:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks I'm not sure how to do this but I'll think about it. Rich Farmbrough 23:36 24 March 2006 (UTC).

OK I've made a change, it its a little complicated by the fact that AWB does some of these off it's own bat, and some are done through regular expressions I specify. I'll just give it a test. Rich Farmbrough 23:42 24 March 2006 (UTC).

Your initial reply was fast, but the fact that you've already thought out a possible fix is mind-boggling! wow! -- stillnotelf has a talk page 23:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems to work, it should now be very limited in taking capitals into the [][]. Any other issues, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 23:47 24 March 2006 (UTC).

Thanks, nice to be appreciated! R.

Capitalizing the first letter of all chemical names is incorrect

Smackbot went through the Synthesis and Production section of the article entitled Ammonia. It simplified most of the piped links to various chemicals, with which I have no quarrel at all. But at the same time it also capitalized the first letter of all the chemical names it encountered, which is incorrect usage unless the chemical name starts a sentence. Is there any way to make it recognize the difference between chemical names starting a sentence and chemical names which do not start sentences? (I have just finished changing those capitals back to lower case.

If there is some Wiki style guide that says the first letter of all chemical names should always be capitalized, then that guide is incorrect and something should be done to revise it. - mbeychok 00:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

No, I think this was just plain wrong. Let me see if I can fix it. Rich Farmbrough 00:29 25 March 2006 (UTC).

OK should be fixed now. Please let me know if you see any more issues like this. Rich Farmbrough 00:47 25 March 2006 (UTC).

Rich, thanks. - mbeychok 00:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Date Articles

Smackbot is removing the self-referencing date link from date articles. The date link is important because it allows the reader to see dates formatted according to their preference. As such, it's an exception to the self-referencing rule. Besides, with the new software, a self-referencing link is bolded but doesn't appear as a link, so it's no big deal anymore. If possible please roll back your edits to date articles, change the programming a bit, and try again. If not, it's going to take a lot of work to go back and update all those articles by hand. Thanks. Rklawton 02:44, 25 March 2006 (UTC) (see our conversation above [18]).

I have a solution, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. Regards. Rich Farmbrough 03:07 25 March 2006 (UTC).

• OK implemented for April, it's not the most elegant solution, but I think it's unlikely to be changed by users or bots. (Incidentally there are a lot of people using AWB, and I have seen at least Bluebot delinking them as well.) If you have no great objection I'll do the rest of the year. Rich Farmbrough 11:33 25 March 2006 (UTC).

Bot changes to U.S. cities

Please be careful regarding your new bot changes to U.S. cities. Many of the changes are ungrammatical, with bad punctuation (example: the use of the comma for the last clause in the first paragraph of each article). You're changing article after article in this way, with these consistent errors. Badagnani 05:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for pointing that out. I assume you mean the last comma in "Snooland is a town in Polk County, West Virginia, U.S., at the 2000 census the population was 33." I would see that as a parenthetical comma: what would be the correct way to punctuate it? What other grammatical errors am I making? Regards, Rich Farmbrough 11:12 25 March 2006 (UTC).

P.S. I've fixed the missing "and". Rich Farmbrough 13:10 25 March 2006 (UTC).

Smackbot block

Hi Rich, I've blocked Smackbot for three hours because it was delinking years and months. I have no problem with this myself, but it's a bit of a hot issue at the moment, and both sides have agreed not to make any more changes for a day or so until it's discussed more thoroughly. See here for the latest discussion if you want to leave a comment. Sorry for interfering. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 07:50, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually Rich, now that I check the edits more carefully, it seems only to be delinking days and months, which so far as I know, no one objects to, so I'm going to unblock it. My apologies. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 07:52, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Rich Farmbrough 11:28 25 March 2006 (UTC).

SmackBot's speed

I've got no particular objection to the formatting edits SmackBot is making, but I'm getting pretty frustrated with getting up every day to find half my watchlist full of masses of SmackBot edits. Would it be possible to slow things down a bit so it doesn't have that effect? Ambi 04:39, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I will slow it down for the time being - but you must have a huge watchlist, I have over 1000 and only three SB edits on it. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 11:24 25 March 2006 (UTC).

I've only got a thousand, so it's quite possible it's just been running through those topics. Odd. Thanks, anyway. :) Ambi 11:25, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

You may wish to vote for this bug. Rich Farmbrough 21:18 25 March 2006 (UTC).

Converters

I just thunk of something really cool, and I thought you might know if it has been discussed yet. How about an automatic "converter" for measurements so that all measures appear in the user's preferred format? Currency converters would also be interesting, too, though we might limit them to Pounds, Dollars, Yen, and Euros. The currency converter should be able to show the contemporary amount or today's equivalent (user's preference). Rklawton 20:40, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Here and here. Rich Farmbrough 20:50 25 March 2006 (UTC).

AWB

First of all, isn't it about time to archive this page? It's upwards of 145kb. Next, I have a question about your bot, SmackBot. What settings was it using when the bot made this edit? You can check out Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Quick Q for the context of my question. Thanks! --M@thwiz2020 23:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

These 367 pages should have self links, at least on the first occurence it supports date preferences. Therefore I always (try to) do these pages with manual intervention, or General changes turned off. I've been through the year twice checking and fixing manually, once last Sept, and once in the last few days, so I don't want to undo all that work! Rich Farmbrough 23:10 20 March 2006 (UTC).

PS you're right about the archiveing!

That's funny - while the AWB was still relatively young (about the end of last December), I went though the list of all the date articles and just did general fixes. But why 367 and not 366 (365 days plus leap day = 366)? As for the manual self-linker, you can write a simple regex to do this for you. Do a find-and-replace with regex turned on for:

Find: \|}(\r\n)*(''')?(\[\[)?(''')?(%%title%%)(''')?(\]\])?(''')?
Replace: |}\r\n[[%%title%%]]

This should (hopefully) make your task easier. I've already tested it and it works well, but only if the title of the article comes after the template close (for example, September 21). The regex allows for blank lines between the two, but no other text. I did this to avoid false positives, i.e., I don't want it to self-link all instances of the title on the page. If you have any problems with the regex, feel free to drop by! --M@thwiz2020 00:21, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I see that you have a new regex. [19] The ironic thing is that, according to your comments, you want to prevent robots from delinking the date, yet you're using a robot to leave the comments! --M@thwiz2020 23:01, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Links

You're making piped links look bad. For example, this bot changed Mac OS 9.2.2 to Mac OS 9.2.2 —This unsigned comment was added by Angelic Wraith (talk • contribs) .

Thanks, fixed. You say "for example", are there others you want to tell me about? Rich Farmbrough 23:53 25 March 2006 (UTC).

No >_> I'm not telling you :)

Uhh.. well they were on the Apple Macintosh page. I just meant it was doing that sort of thing. I reverted it so I don't see that it really matters. ^_- Dan 03:05, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot

See: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals#SmackBot_and_AWB_operated_by_Rich_Farmbrough --Francis Schonken 10:30, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Sep11 Adminship

Congratulations! You're now and admin at the 11 September Wiki. Have fun! :) Jamesday 22:09, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Remember that you can always take a break from edit wars or other strife. This place is supposed to be fun. :) Jamesday 22:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Tawkerbot2

Yea, apparently there were some major major problems with Wikipedia, it appears to be fixed now, sorry about that -- Tawker 23:09, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

html commentary tags

See for instance template talk:footnotestext, comment by Omegatron [20] --Francis Schonken 01:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Smackbot blocked

I have blocked SmackBot for three hours per a complaint on WP:AN/I and a few recent edits I saw delinking dates that should have just been reformatted and formatting trailing s's in piped links contrary to the Manual of Style. I don't know if these concerns have been raised before. If you have any questions, please ask me on my talk page or respond to the thread on AN/I. Hermione1980 01:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

A complaint has been made here as well. I'm not concerned with years being unlinked, I do that myself, but I am concerned about what Smackbot is supposedly doing with the trailing s in links. From the descriptions of others, I am not sure exactly what changes it is supposedly making. Is it changing [[computer]]s to [[computer|computers]] or to [[computers]]? The first is against the manual of style, see here, because it makes it harder to read when editing. The second will either lead to people having to go through a redirect or it will break links that don't have a redirect for the plural form. When editing, I usually make it so that users will be sent directly to a page instead of going through a redirect. Thanks, -- Kjkolb 02:55, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

HI Kjolb, unfortunately I'm autoblocked at the moment so I'm answering on my talk page. The answer is neither of the above. SmackBot is (was) changing things like [[computer|comptometer]]s to [[computer|comptometers]] very much in line with MoS. Also it's not unlinking years, only months and days of the week. Rich Farmbrough 12:02 26 March 2006 (UTC).

Oh yes and things like [[computer|computers]] to [[computer]]s. Rich Farmbrough 22:23 26 March 2006 (UTC).

Unblocked. Hermione1980 23:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Sweet, that should reduce my work. It's doing the opposite of what was claimed. I could not find any examples either way, when I did a quick check of the bot's edits. Sorry about the confusion, Kjkolb 02:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot month delinking

An unfortunate side-effect of your current delinking of months meant that in a whole heap of Formula One articles, the team March Engineering, which was wrongly linked to the month as March has all become delinked. I know it shouldn't have been pointing to March but now it is difficult to find and correct those incorrect links that I've only just become aware of. Is there any way to find all of the occurences of this other than going through SmackBot's contribs? Thanks AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 07:36, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, how about I give you a list of articles that include "Formula One" ,"Formula 1" or Formula one" and a link to March as of earlier this month. Rich Farmbrough 11:23 26 March 2006 (UTC).

OK here it is, all 224 articles - two have special characters but I'm sure you'll know the location of the real article. Some you may wish to ignore, like "2004" Rich Farmbrough 12:55 26 March 2006 (UTC).

Thanks! AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 08:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Smackbot and US Articles

G'day, It has been pointed out to me that Smackbot is trawling through the US Census articles and fixing layout. Would it be possible to have Smackbot add USA after each location so that it reads, "Horseshoe Falls, New York, USA." Most of the census articles fail to state that the location is in the US. As it is wiki style to actually indicate what country a place is located, this would be a wonderful task for Smackbot.

What do you think?

With best wishes,

Henry Maustrauser 09:28, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

That is a good idea, but may not be trivial, I'm looking to make another run through improving various solecisms. The MoS abbreviation is U.S. rather than USA though. Rich Farmbrough 10:00 16 March 2006 (UTC).

Thanks very much. Will you let me know if it can be done (or if you have the time to do it) and that way I can stop adding them manually. It gets a little tiresome! Thank you, Henry Maustrauser 11:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Some are already happening! Also quite a lot have been done manually by various individuals. My current run will take about another 2 days, then I will re-build the replacement strings to take care of some of the 00.00 % and the redundant word "total" in "has a total population", together with the U.S. part. Anything else you spot about the census articles, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 11:16 16 March 2006 (UTC).

You are wonderful! Thank you very much. I'll go off and edit something more edifying now. Cheers, Henry Maustrauser 11:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi—A bunch of your (SmackBot) Census revisions showed up on my watchlist, and since it became apparent to me that it was actually possible to do census data mass revisions (before it seemed to be like it'd be impossible, especially with over 600+ NJ municipality/CDP/area articles alone)... I wanted to comment that, currently, many articles' Census data sections begin at least one (if not more) sentence with numbers/percentages. This is bad English grammar—numbers beginning sentences should either be written as words (which obviously is not the solution to this, since the numbers aren't like "twenty-eight" or "seven"), or the sentence should be recast to start with something other than the number. Obviously this isn't your fault, but if it's something you could somehow correct while you're making these other corrections, it would be good. (Btw, I have never looked this up in the manual of style, but it's in many style/grammar manuals) Thanks. //MrD9 02:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll have some thinks about this. Rich Farmbrough 08:59 17 March 2006 (UTC).

MoS... MoS... Which one? In Asutralian English, starting a sentence/paragraph with a number of percentage is OK if it makes things more readable. Starting with "Seventeen point nine percent" instead of "17.9%" seems silly. While we are at it, U.S.A. isn't used in Australia anymore, looks weird, not sure of the UK recommendation/usgae. Alex Law 16:15, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think it is a debatable point, but if we can aovid it wihtout making the sentence tortuous, why not? WP has a preferred style (U.S.), which is fine by me. It may of course change in the future, but that's not a problem. Rich Farmbrough 16:26 21 March 2006 (UTC).

The issue of U.S. versus US has been debated at least half a dozen times in various locations around Wikipedia. The outcome has always been to prefer U.S. because that's the majority usage in the United States. Like American politics, American punctuation is very conservative. --153.18.99.87 23:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot

Wow, it's done so many edits it took forever for me to get back to the time on March 24 which gave me my first concern. I think it had something to do with editing everything on Wikipedia in alphabetical order without some kind of explanation as to what it was doing. Nothing against you, but I think the bot flag was set much too easily without a real explanation of what edits you were planning on making. User:Zoe|^(talk) 23:35, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Of Tom Sutton and brackets

That's brilliant! Using the "nowiki" code was genius — and, yes, it's way better to have the brackets themselves not be linked. Makes them stand out properly and eases potential confusion. Kudos to you, man! Spread the word! — Tenebrae 00:07, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Smackbot breaking rules of grammar

Ohiopyle is a borough located in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, U.S., at the 2000 census the population was 77.

Tell me what's wrong with this sentence. Kaldari 02:14, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

PLease tell me. Someone claimed that the last comma is wrong, but didn't reply to tell me in what way. If I know what is wrong I can easily fix it. BY the way, I did write a reply to your previous message, but must have lost it, sorry about that. Rich Farmbrough 02:23 28 March 2006 (UTC).

If you honestly need me to spell it out: In English, sentences are separated by periods, not commas. Also, I don't think the preposition "at" makes much sense in this context. What's wrong with "As of the 2000 census, blah had a population of 77"? That is a clear and concise sentence. I don't see any need to change it. Kaldari 02:31, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, I see what you mean about the prepositon "in" would probably have been better. I'll leave the two sentence struture alone, although I think it's a bit verbose. Rich Farmbrough 02:36 28 March 2006 (UTC).

Will you be cleaning up the comma error? Kaldari 03:02, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Rich Farmbrough 09:40 28 March 2006 (UTC).

Just a quick summary of what my previous reply would have said

Yes - we want up to date info and when we get the 2010 census data no doubt Rambot will import it. However it still does not seem right to talk in the present tense about something that is six years old. The population of the US has grown by about 10 million in this period, and Las Vegas by about 41%. Some of the really small places could have seen even more massive percentage changes.

On your second point, I agree with you in principle, however users do not like to see lots of small edits, becasue it "pollutes their watchlists". Perhpas this is something to discuss at talk-bots.

Well, I'm going to tear myself away from WP for a while and get a little real life. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 15:16 28 March 2006 (UTC).

Don't need expand if already labelled a stub.

Please read talk pages before removing expand tags. For example, on Annual report[21] I added the expand tag because I'd like that page expanded to include "Semi-annual report" and "Quarterly report". Thanks! Ewlyahoocom 19:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I've put the tag on the talk page. Rich Farmbrough 21:49 28 March 2006 (UTC).

Re: RegEx

Line 480 of parsers.cs (in the code) contains a function linksimplifier with comments "changes Dog to Dog and Dogs to Dogs". WP:AWB also lists under "general fixes" (in the manual towards the bottom) that it:

• Simplifies links like Dog to Dog.
• Simplifies links like Dogs to Dogs.

I looked at, while it simplifies Dogs to Dogs it will not simplify Changed to Changed, etc. I can't fully understand your request, but I believe that that is what you are looking for, and I can easily modify the code to allow for that. Just drop me a message to let me know. Thanks! --M@thwiz2020 00:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your first regex, the only way to skip dates is to get into the code. As for the second, why not replace it with </nowiki>$1$3 instead of $2$3</nowiki>? --M@thwiz2020 00:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I doubt you'll get this message (since it's archived) but I'll leave it anyways. $1$3 is guaranteed to be a good link while $2$3 might not be. All in all, you need to edit the code. I'll see what I can do to modify Bluemoose's current regexs when I have time (Friday, probably). --M@thwiz2020 01:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Tennis - RM caps in section headers and/or minor fixes using

Hi, would you mind explaining me why you transformed the tennis files into something hardly readable, like in 1994_French_Open_-_Men's_Singles and so on? What was wrong with the originals? Regards, Darius Dhlomo

Sorry, a mistake. All fixed now. Let me know if you come across any others. Rich Farmbrough 18:37 11 March 2006 (UTC).

Thanks, mate!! Good work! Regards, Darius Dhlomo 18:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Smackbot on article Carl

In article Carl, Smackbot changed [[Carl (name)]] to [['''Carl''' (name)]]. Perhaps you're auto-bolding the first instance of the article name. If that's the case please avoid that change inside wikilinks. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-03-11 21:57Z

THanks Quarl, we thought this was fixed. I'll check for all instances where this could have happened. Rich Farmbrough 22:00 11 March 2006 (UTC).

Cheers —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-03-11 22:30Z Quarl 22:30, 11 March 2006 (UTC)