User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2006 September

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ISBN-'s

Hi noticed an insertion of - into an art I had been working on, could you point me to the rules on this, as all I have seen to date is the block of numbers on others entries. Thanks. SatuSuro 01:19, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

They are based on a table found on the ISBN Agency's web site here. I assume you know that the first part is language group, the second publisher (within lang group) the third a serial number and the last a check digit.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough 19:04 19 August 2006 (GMT).

Gawd I do hope you dont feel a need to go through my contributions list there are hundreds of arts with the - 's missing :) SatuSuro 13:44, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Fear not, my trusty SmackBot will be roped in to help. Rich Farmbrough 15:11 20 August 2006 (GMT).

• Question: The unhyphenated ISBNs work fine for looking up a book, that's what we use in MARC records here in the library, and each one is unique. I agree that the standard says "The ten-digit number is divided into four parts of variable length, which must be separated clearly by hyphens or spaces" although it allows the hypens (spaces) to be omitted for data processing. So far as I can see, the hyphens do help you read the number if you know the code, but are not necessary. Or am I missing something? Bejnar 23:28, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

No you are quite right. To identify the book you need the number, for the extra information you need either the hyphens or the appropriate part of the hyphenation rules. Rich Farmbrough 18:46 29 August 2006 (GMT).

ISBNs in Indian Institutes of Technology

Hi,

I have fixed all I can find. Can you please check again to see if any other invalid ISBN in the article. Thanks, — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 15:03, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

This one I think is wrong becasue the check digit doesn't match ISBN 81-7033-526-9. Rich Farmbrough 15:08 23 August 2006 (GMT).

The source I used quoted it wrongly. I searched the net and found another source which quoted another ISBN (with a different last digit) having consistant digits. I have made the corrections. Thanks for pointing it out. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 15:29, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

The Tale of Genji

I see you changed the hyphenation of an ISBN in The Tale of Genji, but also added a tag for an Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs. I followed the ISBN link, and the A9 (Amazon) search came up with the proper book. Other searches also returned correctly. What is invalid about the ISBN? Neier 23:20, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the -0 comes up on Amazon.com, but not the -2. The Japanese site that is linked from the ISBN page doesn't seem to care about the final digit at all. 0, 2, 8, 9, all worked. So, you're calculations seem to be correct. Neier 23:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Chew Valley & the front page

Hi, as you spotted Chew Valley is to be on the front page next week. I'm going to be away on holiday & will have no web access so will not be able to counter any vandalism etc - would you be able to keep an eye on the page for me before & during 31st August? — Rod ^talk 14:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Rod, I'll do what I can beforehand, but the main page FA is always closely watched anyway, so have a relaxing holiday. Rich Farmbrough 14:44 24 August 2006 (GMT).

Otago Peninsula

Hi Rich - I notice you added an "invalid ISBN" tag to the Otago Peninsula article. Which ISBNs are the invalid ones? I have a couple of those books sitting in front of me, and the primary author of the article is User:Peter Entwisle, who is also the author of two of the listed books. Grutness...wha? 03:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

According to my calculations User:Rich_Farmbrough\Invalid_ISBNs, The Australian National University. ISBN 0-7315-0342-1. Rgds Rich Farmbrough 07:16 25 August 2006 (GMT).

Then your calculations are wrong. The ISBN on that book is identical to as it is written in the article - look here or here for confirmation of this fact. The same is true of the two books listed at Dunedin Public Art Gallery. In that instance, not only are the two ISBNs identical in book and article, but the books were both written by a primary writer of the article. Please double-check your information, because judging by the other comments below it looks like you are marking a lot of articles at the moment with incorrect allegations about ISBN numbers. Grutness...wha? 00:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems the Australian National University has made a mistake and used both ISBN 0-7315-0342-1 (incorrect) and ISBN 0-7315-0342-2 (correct) for two different books. See here and here. Mushroom (Talk) 00:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It also seems Dunedin used two ISBNs for the same book: ISBN 0-473-00263-0 (incorrect) and ISBN 0-473-00263-9 (correct), see here and here. Mushroom (Talk) 00:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

OK... that makes sense. Sorry about the grumbling :) Grutness...wha? 01:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

SCOTLAND'S FORgotten VALOUR

Commonwealth --> Commonwealth of Nations for VC's. Thanks for picking this up.

Really the title of the book (and the WP article) is Scotland's Forgotten Valour. To quote the article:

the typography of the title on the book uses capitalisation to contrast emphasis ("SCOTLAND'S FORgotten VALOUR"), to communicate additional meaning, namely a reference to the For Valour inscription on the medal -- and presumably the idea that valour is so much a part of the national character as to justify suggesting that "Scotland exists for the sake of valour".)

If you look it up on Amazon or isbndb, there is no special capitalisation - just Scotland's Forgotten Valour. Colonies Chris 13:35, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Invalid ISBN tag in Evan Mecham

I noticed that you recently added this article to Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs, and based upon User:Rich Farmbrough\Invalid ISBNs the ISBN that is apparently at issue is the one for the Watkins book. While I do not know what methodology you used to determine that the ISBN was incorrect, I am able to state that the number in the article matches the numbers listed for the book in the Library of Congress catalog and the Amazon listing for the book. The formatting of the number also matches the formatting used on the back cover of my local library's copy of the book. As a result of this information verifying the book's ISBN, I have reverted your addition of the article to this category. --Allen3 ^talk 15:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

The article said ISBN 0-668-09051-6 it is actually 0-688-09051-6, a subtle difference (I have corrected the article). The check (for most ISBNs I have labelled - some have digits missing) is by comparing the check digit (the last) whith what it would be assuming the rest of the number is correct. I don't label an incorrect hyphenation, I fix that. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 15:41 25 August 2006 (GMT).

That's what I get for reducing my caffeine consumption. Thanks --Allen3 ^talk 15:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Battleships

Hi there; I obviously have no problem of any kind with editors editing articles that I have written: but you have categorised a number of articles originally by me as "invalid ISBNs". And they are not; the ISBN numbers are those printed within the reference books used. Whether they have been changed I know not, but that would in any case not invalidate my point.--Anthony.bradbury 21:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Anthony, can you point me to one or two of the articles where I may be wrong? Rich Farmbrough 21:28 25 August 2006 (GMT).

Uneless you have now found and fixed ISBN's in which case, that's fine. Rich Farmbrough 21:31 25 August 2006 (GMT).

HMS Temeraire (1876), HMS Inflexible (1876), HMS Rodney (1884) and Ajax class battleships. I have reverted your incorrect edits - I have Parkes and Conway open beside me as I write, with the ISBN numbers in full view. I hope that you, or your bot if you are using one ,will not feel the need to make similar incorrect edits on the other sixty or so ship articles I have written?--Anthony.bradbury 21:43, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Newton's identities

Hi, Rich, what precisely is the problem with the ISBN's? I obtained them directly from the books themselves. Did someone vandalize them since I added them, or what? ---CH 21:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I've met Peter Cameron at QMC. Back on topic 981-02-4561-6 seems to be wrong as I calculate the check digit to be 0 (assuming the rest were correct), and indeed our own Schur polynomial, written by you (grin) confirms that it should be 981-02-4541-6. Rich Farmbrough 21:43 25 August 2006 (GMT).

See you were right about Landau & Lifschitz Classical Theory of Fields. I just changed last digit. The UW Library catalog gives another ISBN, probably because they have hardcover and I used the paperback Pergamon fourth edition.

Peter Cameron: good oh! I really enjoy his papers and books, in fact I am getting back into permutation groups at the moment (see Erlangen Program). Thanks for checking. Obviously I have been somewhat hasty in adding some of the ISBNs.---CH 21:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

ISBNs

Looking at other recent entries on your talk page, it is clear that I am not alone in my dismay at your approach to ISBNs. May i suggest that you review your procedures?--Anthony.bradbury 21:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Read the entries, and see who was right. Rich Farmbrough 21:49 25 August 2006 (GMT).

Rich, I am not trying to start a fight; I am just saying that the ISBN numbers on the articles which I authored are the numbers printed on the flyleaves of the reference books in question. If they are printed wrong, so be it. Conway comes in five volumes;the volume from which I am drawing data relates to ships built between 1860 and 1905.--Anthony.bradbury 21:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I just want to get to the bottom of this, of course I can have made a mistake. Rich Farmbrough 22:03 25 August 2006 (GMT).

Does the number vary with the year of publication? My copy of this volume is dated 1979 (Conway Maritime Press Ltd).--Anthony.bradbury 22:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

It can do if it's a different edition, I need to go back a step, though:

OK, let's see these are the HMS articles I found problems with

1. HMS Electra (H27) ISBN 0-8600-7300-0 : 9 (HMS Electra (Frederick Miller Ltd, London, 1959)) get to that later.
2. HMS Inflexible (1876) ISBN 0-85952-6043 : 6 - this is Parkes some other articles e.g. Nathaniel Barnaby it is ISBN 0-85052-6043
3. HMS Polychrest ISBN 0000649916 : 0 (spurious zero - fixed.)
4. HMS Rodney (1884) ISBN 09-85052-604 : 0 - this is Parkes with an extra "9"
5. HMS Temeraire (1876) ISBN 09-85052-604 : 0 - this is Parkes with an extra "9"

So summary is Parkes is ISBN 0-85052-6043

RgdsRich Farmbrough 22:24 25 August 2006 (GMT).

Whatever you say. I make no comment about HMS Electra or HMS Polychrest, which I played no part in creating. As for Rodney, Temeraire and Inflexible, I just copied the printed ISBN on the inside cover of the book. It is 0-85052-6043 (Parkes} as all the articles state. If your calculations give a different number, then either your calculations or my printed copy of the book is wrong. Best wishes.--Anthony.bradbury 22:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Anthony, it doesn't really matter, since all the articles are now fixed, but the last number you gave me is correct (bar a hyphen) and the articles were wrong, as my calculations suggested. "Inflexible" you fixed (but you labelled the fix a revert - having thought I changed the number, which I didn't), the other two I've removed the spurious "9" they now start 0-8 not 09-8. Regards. Rich Farmbrough 22:54 25 August 2006 (GMT).

No. I am sorry, and if my copy of the book is wrong then fair enough. But the hyphen is NOT wrong. The ISBN number for Parkes is 0-85052-6043. It is NOT 0-85052-604-3. Or the book is wrong. I am sitting here with it in front of me.--Anthony.bradbury 23:01, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

OK that's interesting, thanks. Rich Farmbrough 23:07 25 August 2006 (GMT).

And yes, the book should have the hyphen. Rich Farmbrough 23:12 25 August 2006 (GMT).

Ok, fine. But on my word of honour, it doesn't. Obviously you know what you are talking about. But I don't. Could you please tell me why you are so sure that you are right and the book is wrong?--Anthony.bradbury 23:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes of course, I would have anyway but I didn't want to bore you. An ISBN is made up of four parts, the first identifies the "language area" a sort of nebulous concept, but 0 is English for example, However this part can be longer so that 99451 (or something like it) represents Congo . This means you can have lots of books in the English (or French - 2) sections, and not so many in the Congo - which makes sense. The next chunk is the publisher, and the same system applies. "Big" publishers get short numbers like Penguin - 14, and Yale I think 300. Then you get a serial number chosen by the publisher, this takes it to 9 digits, for example 0-593-01518 is an English book by Bantam Press, and probably their 1518th book. The last part is a check digit (or X) in this case 5 so the full ISBN is 0-593-01518-5. So that is what the four parts are. As to layout, the international ISBN agency "ISBN User Manual" states "The ten-digit number is divided into four parts of variable length, which must be separated clearly by hyphens or spaces" although it allows these to be omitted for internal data processing. (On Wikipedia we can't use spaces, because the ISBN magic doesn't work with them.) (Incidentally looking at a book on my desk, the ISBN is correctly hyphenated on the back above the bar code, and in the book's publishing data page, but not on the inside flap.) To confuse matters this will be changing on 1st Jan 2007, with the addition of a 978- before all ISBNs to make them compatible with EANs and allow more numbers to be introduced later with a 979- prefix.

Hope that makes sense, Rich Farmbrough 23:39 25 August 2006 (GMT).

Fair enough. Totally fair enough. I will insert the hyphen in all future articles, and go back and retro-insert it in the previous ones. But not now, because its time for bed!--Anthony.bradbury 23:50, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Me too!

ISBNs again

Hi--Exactly what is wrong with the ISBN 0-89886-238-8, which is the corrected entry I put on the Masherbrum page, which matches the LOC and Amazon, and which checks out (I cut and pasted into an auto-ISBN checker)? Thanks, Spireguy 22:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, your correction was correct, thanks for fixing it. Timing error on my part. Rich Farmbrough 22:28 25 August 2006 (GMT).

Articles with invalid ISBNs

You have now added this category to a number of articles for which I provided references. What is that about? I entered the ISBN numbers exactly as they appeared in the books. I find it hard to believe that so many of the ISBNs for books that I've used as references are invalid. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 23:20, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Donald, can you give me an example or two, preferably on my talk page (click my surname).Rich Farmbrough 23:42 25 August 2006 (GMT).

I see now that they all involve the same library book. Let me check it out tomorrow and get back to you. - Donald Albury^(Talk) 23:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to have bothered you. I've got them sorted now, including one or two articles you hadn't visited yet. -- Donald Albury 20:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Good work. Rich Farmbrough 20:31 26 August 2006 (GMT).

Another timing error

Hogan Cup - I noticed the error when you listed it and fixed it, and you then added the article to ones with incorrect ISBN's, even though it had already been fixed. While checking ISBN's is very useful, I would suggest that you either adding the category when checking, or double check if adding it at a later date. Otherwise, if it is fixed in the time between checking and categorising, no one knows why you're adding the category. Might I suggest a HTML comment in the form of "add cat + <-- please check isbn's xxxxx-xxx-xxxxx and yyyy-yyyy-yyyyy --> which would cover most cases, and also let people know what isbn's are invalid where there are a lot of them). Regards, MartinRe 23:50, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Martin. Rich Farmbrough 23:53 25 August 2006 (GMT).

FYI, Smackbot detecting unfilled out infobox book

I noticed on this page: Alanna: The First Adventure that the invalid ISBN template got added due to the editor copying Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels/ArticleTemplate without modifying this line:

 | isbn           = ~ISBN ~999999999~ (~hardcover~ edition) (prefer 1st edition)~

That line doesn't get displayed on the infobox when they forget to edit, so you are probably safe to leave it alone.

Thanks, RainbowCrane | Talk 02:10, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks that's a useful tip. Rich Farmbrough 15:53 26 August 2006 (GMT).

Actually it was this bit:

< !-- ==Release details== -->
< !-- ~*year, country, publisher ISBN 1234567890, Pub date DD Month Year, binding~ -->
< !--major publication history to be included here, not everything if too extensive-->
< !--example-->
< !--*1999, USA, C.S. Black & sons ISBN 8768768760, Pub date 1 April 1999, Hardback -->

I think. All similar examples have been dealt with. Rich Farmbrough 09:33 31 August 2006 (GMT).

ISBN.

What's wrong with the ISBN numbers at Robert Sheaffer? I got them directly from the book. Bubba73 (talk), 02:50, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Ditto on Kendrick Frazier. Bubba73 (talk), 02:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Whoops. I found a typo in the second one. I'll check the other one. Bubba73 (talk), 02:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Ditto. Both were my typos. Sorry about that.  !Bubba73 (talk), 03:03, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It would be useful if you would mark which ISBNs are flawed, instead of just that there is a bad ISBN in an article. Some of these have a lot of ISBNs. - Jmabel | Talk 05:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

For example here you added Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs to Vilna Troupe. There are only two ISBNs in the article. Both look valid to me, and the University of Chicago appears to have both books ([1] [2]). - Jmabel | Talk 06:33, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, unfortunately this is not simple. And I'm sorry I re-added this to the category after you had fixed it, that was a mistake on my part. However if you look at Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs you will see a pointer to Rich_Farmbrough%5CInvalid_ISBNs where you can look up most of the articles currently in the category and find that in Vilna Troupe the problem ISBN identified was ISBN 973982722 1 whose check digit computes to 5 (as corrected by you). Thanks for fixing the ISBN and sorry again for readding the article. Rich Farmbrough 16:54 26 August 2006 (GMT).

Hmm. Would it be possible instead of just adding a category to add a template with a link to that page (or an equivalent in Wikipedia space)? It would make it easier for people to follow up. - Jmabel | Talk 18:03, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Homelessness article flags, etc.

Hi Rich. Anonymous contributor User:70.191.174.29 (User_talk:70.191.174.29) has put several flags up on the article on Homelessness. I think they're inappropriate. Many of us have worked hard on that article, and cited sources all over the place. And professionals in the field have read it, and have been quite impressed with it. The kinds of edits by that anonymous contributor User:70.191.174.29 have been odd. For example, changing, "Free-care clinics, especially for the homeless, exist and are usually over-burdened with patients. ..." to "Free-care clinics, especially for the homeless, exist but may be over-burdened with patients". That's a plain fact that was referenced. It's a highly questionable edit. I am going to remove the two new flags. Actually, I have taken the chance to roll back the article to a what I believe is a stable and sensible point. It was out of control. We can all start from that point and work our way by rational discussions up to where we want to be. I don't want to be involved in any Wikipedia wars, as I am a Wikipedia pacifist in practice. Please let me know your opinion. Thanks and Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 14:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Consider also the plea made to me by User:Patcat88 "homeless article going to hell" on my talk page (User talk:Wikiklrsc) ... I am not an admin, just a contributor and editor. I put talking points on the Talk:Homelessness and the other anonymous editor's talk page User_talk:70.191.174.29 for Wikipedia peace and sanity. I think I did, but also hope that I did the right thing. I have precious little time to edit and contribute, let alone internet access enough these days. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 16:32, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Rich, for your contribution and help. I hope it is back under control now. Point well taken, Rich. I have always agreed that the article is largely from an American point of view. I tried to change that _a bit_ in the history section. Unfortunately, I didn't have good data or the time to find it all, for most other countries. I moved much into the article at Homelessness in the United States, Homelessness in Canada and the like. I hope other contributors will help to make it more universal, as I will endeavour to do, in future. Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Rich, you said in my talk page (User talk:Wikiklrsc): 'and needs some of the "archeolofy" removing from it.' ... whither "archeolofy" ? Archaeology ? A nonce word for 'archaic loftiness' ? Help. Regards. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

"vi: (1) substitutions made." ... thought it might be. ;) Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:11, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. So far, it all seems to have worked out well in the end. See User_talk:70.191.174.29. We'll all work together as it should be ! Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 16:37, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

The plague you made on the article of keyboard protectors

Please consider carefully your choice of words before you press the button "save page" after editing wildly. Hereby, I advise you to use the show preview function wisely so that you will find out how ridiculous is your mischief before saving the page. Yfjonas 15:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I hate to break it to you, but the original article, while showing a sharp and expressive mind, and a strong vocabulary, was in somewhat strange English to say the least, as was your comment on my talk page. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough 17:14 26 August 2006 (GMT).

ISBN request

Could you pls run your ISBN tool on User:Hlj/CWbibliography? Thanks, Hal Jespersen 16:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I've hyphenated them. the following appear to be incorrect:

ISBN 0-89029-080-7 : 6 (calculated checksum)
ISBN 0-89919-760-6 : 4
ISBN 0-89029-015-4 : 6

Rich Farmbrough 16:59 27 August 2006 (GMT).

Thank you. I rechecked those 3 #s with the books themselves and they are as printed on the jackets. So somebody screwed up somewhere. Hal Jespersen 17:17, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

According to Amazon they are

1. 0-89029-780-0
2. 0-89919-790-6
3. 0-89029-715-4

Rgds, Rich Farmbrough 17:28 27 August 2006 (GMT).

Thanks again. I guess I'll go with Amazon's. Hal Jespersen 17:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

WP:CITE gives examples, Smith, J. How to cite your sources, Random House, 2005. ISBN 1607000X and others, dropping any hyphens and any spaces but retaining a space between ISBN and the first number. The Library of Congress will accept an ISBN as a specific search in its Library Catalogs but only if all of the spaces and hyphens are removed, similarly. Like, ISBN 160700X as one example or ISBN 0890297800 as another example. Whatever works, have fun. Terryeo 23:26, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Questionable links ? added by an anonymous editor

Hi Rich. User:74.130.68.242 (User talk:74.130.68.242) (Special:Contributions/74.130.68.242) added a specific link [3] to many articles, including the article on a Homeless shelter, in order to collect a list of shelters in various US states. I wonder if it belongs in Wikipedia as it appears, although seemingly altruistic, a non-informational solicitation. Thoughts? Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc

Looks like whomp has it under control. Rich Farmbrough 22:28 27 August 2006 (GMT).

Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Projects/hiddenStructure

Rich Farmbrough said: What was/is this? Rich Farmbrough 23:28 27 August 2006 (GMT).

IIRC, someone requested that I do a search of the entire en.wikipedia datadump for templates that included something specific that needed to be fixed. I'm sure that project is long finished.

Usually I make notes when I create lists like that, I'm blanking it now.

-- That Guy, From That Show! 03:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

WP:RFBOT

Please note your recent requests for expansion have been approved: {{Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals/SmackBot 7and8}} Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 03:39, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Moving an article

Hi Rich. I didn't know about the "move" tab when I did the move from Long Island (Boston) to Long Island, Boston, Massachusetts. Sorry. Thanks for the enlightenment ! Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 12:51, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot request

Could I ask you to add Wikipedia:WikiProject Warhammer 40,000/References to the list of pages SmackBot will do ISBN reformatting for? I hope the reason for this request is fairly obvious. Cheers --Pak21 17:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Done Rich Farmbrough 18:03 28 August 2006 (GMT).

Thanks --Pak21 09:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

ISBN reformatting

Hi Rich. Your bot has popped up on my watchlist a few times recently, and I must say I'm impressed with the ISBN reformatting. Nice work! (In saying this I'm assuming you're formatting them correctly, since I know next to nothing about how they should be formatted :)) --kingboyk 20:33, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. Yes, I have been as careful as I can, and after the first 12,000 edits no-one has complained about the formatting being wrong per se, although one guy thinks it's a waste of time, and one was convinced that they should be a block of characters. Incidentally there are about 2,600 regular expressions making up the hyphenation rule base, although it could be done in less. ISBN's that don't fit the hyphenation rules are labelled as invalid, and I have done a separate run to categorise those which don't match their checksum - many of which editors have already fixed. Rich Farmbrough 22:13 28 August 2006 (GMT).

2600 regular expressions?! My oh my. --kingboyk 08:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Ebaums world vandalism

Have a look at this edit. Copy the new location into your address bar, hit enter, and it redirects you to [4], a 404 address. HawkerTyphoon 22:13, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Damn good question. Hit the admin noticeboard, maybe someone can shed light on it?

Domain names can only contain ASCII characters, but most of the world use non-latin scripts or want accents. So the IETF came up with a way to allow any Unicode character in a domain name component: you take out the non-ASCII characters, put "xn--" in front, and append "-" followed by some ASCII characters which specify which non-ASCII chars were removed, and where they were removed from. In this case, the "-nqh" encodes "a Greek lowercase omicron, after the w". Web browsers etc are supposed to automagically "deUnicodeise" URLs (and, um, reUnicodeise them too).

The take-home message is that any ASCIIised domain name containing "xn--" is an IDNA.

Since Wikipedia stores URLs in their Unicode form (as we should), to find URLs containing IDNAs you'd have to search for non-ASCII characters in the "host" part of the URL - maybe ^[a-z]+:/+[!-.0-~][^!-.0-~] would work, assuming we don't have URLs containing usernames or passwords with non-ASCII characters.

I hope this helps; sorry for over-explaining.

What I actually came here to do was thank you for having SmackBot go around and prettify all the ISBNs I've inserted into articles. So: thanks!

Cheers, CWC(talk) 03:04, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, and it's a pleasure. Rich Farmbrough 13:34 29 August 2006 (GMT).

ISBNs on Nakhichevan

Great work on the ISBN reformatting!

Could you have your bot re-format the ISBN tags on the Nakhichevan article? Thanks! -- Clevelander 23:15, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Will do. Rich Farmbrough 15:57 29 August 2006 (GMT).

Done. Rich Farmbrough 18:23 29 August 2006 (GMT).

The bot and ISBN-13

It is a waste of edits to merely checksum and add hyphens to ISBN-10 data, when we know that ISBN-13 will be the standard in four months. Automatic conversion is fairly trivial: discard the trailing check digit, prefix a "978", and calculate a new check digit according to these instructions (which differ from those for ISBN-10). The hyphenation is almost identical, only the leading "978" is separated from the rest with a hyphen. You can test your program against this online converter.

For example, to convert "ISBN 1598165747", which would be hyphenated as "1-59816-574-7", we:

• Drop the trailing digit, here "7"; result: "159816574".
• Prefix "978"; result: "978159816574".
• Multiply odd digit positions by 3, where the rightmost digit is considered odd; result: 9,21,8,3,5,27,8,3,6,15,7,12.
• Sum; result: 124.
• Subtract the last digit from 10, and take the last digit of the answer; result: 6.
• Append this check digit to number; result: "9781598165746".
• Hyphenate; result: "978-1-59816-574-6".

It's really easy to do. However, I would recommend not converting invalid ISBN-10 data, to ease fixing. A beneficial side-effect would be to make the bad ISBN-10 numbers stand out from the converted ISBN-13 numbers. An unhelpful side-effect is that once bad numbers are fixed, they are likely to remain in the old format until the bot returns.

We must begin to change over. Naturally, there will be a few difficulties. The numbers printed in the books will no longer exactly match the numbers in the articles. Booksellers in the USA and Canada, especially those specializing in old books, may be slow to recognize the ISBN-13 form. And there will always be some resistance to change.

I suppose conversion could be limited to books in print, except I know of no free online source for that information. Or, we could provide both ISBNs. --KSmrq^T 00:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I was looking at something like this User:Rich Farmbrough/ISBN template as the next stage. Thus (almost) all ISBN's would change at the right second, and the template could be substed out later. The test template works but doesn't support hyphens. So a new template is required which is actually easy to code, I'll do it later today or tomorrow. Rich Farmbrough 10:02 29 August 2006 (GMT).

With regard to changing over to ISBN-13 all at once, there could be problems with that.

• Major libraries, such as Library of Congress, may not convert their catalogs all at once. Similarly Worldcat.
• Our readers who search the web to buy the book will get Google hits on the ISBN-10 version, not the new one.
• Existing physical books may most reliably be referred to with the ISBN used to purchase them, since editions can change.

If I cite a book from my own bookshelf, and an ISBN is already printed in it, should I post a different ISBN on Wikipedia?

But if I bring a new book home that has an ISBN-13, obviously I would use that for citations. EdJohnston 02:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Flagging an ISBN-13 wrongly *

I reverted your bot's edit flagging an ISBN as invalid. As far as I can see, it's correct, and it's identical to the ISBN listed on the Cambridge University Press website. I suspect that the bot labels all 13-digit ISBNs as invalid. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 01:57, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll check back over the list for any othe false positives. Rich Farmbrough 15:59 29 August 2006 (GMT).

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SmackBot/References query

It did a lovely job on the tone cluster and Henry Cowell ISBNs. I'm not sure it's directly relevant, but earlier today (before SmackBot's involvement...I think) I started having a problem with the References in "Tone cluster." The article comes up with "ghost' or "echo" (or whatever's the proper term of art) refs--so what should be note 1 reads inline and in the References (called "Notes") section as note 13 (or sometimes 7...or 10...or...). Everything connects properly in an informational way, but lord does it look awful, not to mention confusing. Any idea what the source of the problem is, and how to solve it? Best, Dan — DCGeist 04:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

No--I'm still seeing what should be footnote callout "1" as callout "13"--and then the text of the footnote appearing in the References (dba "Notes") both as note 1 and as note 13. All in all, instead of the proper total of 26 notes, I read 38 notes. I've checked a few other footnoted Wikipedia articles to make sure it's not an issue with my browser--no problem anywhere else. But you're reading it AOK--26 notes, not 38? Hardly know what to think. Thanks for checking. —DCGeist 09:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Tried shift-reload. No luck. Some gremlin must just be telling me to stop working on the article. Thanks again. Best, Dan —DCGeist 09:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Note this was Bugzilla:7162 Rich Farmbrough 10:08 1 September 2006 (GMT).

SmackBot and ISBN

I've noticed your bot making changes to a lot of book articles. Can you point me to a standard for quoting ISBN, as I've (wrongly?) always just quoted them as one long number in articles I write. If this is wrong, I'd like to be able to improve how I do it. Thanks --Guinnog 10:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

They are based on a table found on the ISBN Agency's web site here. I assume you know that the first part is language group, the second publisher (within lang group) the third a serial number and the last a check digit.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough 13:20 29 August 2006 (GMT).

Gosh! Fascinating. Thank you. No, apart from the checksum I didn't know any of that. --Guinnog 13:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Hyphenated ISBNs

Great work on hyphenating ISBNs. I don't use hyphens, manually (I think the reward isn't worth the effort!), but if it's this easy to get them right with AWB, then hats off to you. :) —Serein 19:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Ghost notes

While I'm reading "ISBN" and--this hour, at least--"tone cluster" as just fine. This seems like a Wikipedia server glitch, perhaps. I doubt it has anything to do with SmackBot (it doesn't even look from the history like the ISBN article's had SmackBot on it--recently anyway), but why don't you put SmackBot on string piano (another under my care) and let's see what, if anything, happens. —DCGeist 21:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes I was working on references, so I thought it was a WP problem not SB related. I would just like to have more data before logging a bug (but perhaps it's already been logged). Off to the back burner with it. Rich Farmbrough 21:50 29 August 2006 (GMT).

Already logged at Bugzilla:7162 Rich Farmbrough 08:51 30 August 2006 (GMT).

Articles with invalid ISBNs category

Rich, there is a problem with Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs -- it contains entries of articles not in the category. I posted something about this on the Village pump, believing it could be affecting other categories. In addition, User:SEWilco has written on my talk page "I just wanted to point out an unrelated oddity: The category text has some Template:tl usage which is not being transcluded". Alan Pascoe 08:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

RfA thanks

Thank you very much for participating in my RFA, which closed successfully today with a result of (62/18/3). I will go very carefully at first, trying to make sure I don't mess up too badly using the tools, and will begin by re-reading all the high-quality feedback I received during the process, not least from those who opposed me. Any further advice/guidance will be gratefully accepted. I hope I will live up to your trust! Guinnog 14:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)}

SmackBot's Edit Summary

Hi Rich. I've witnessed your bot's amazing work, and would like to nitpick by offering a suggestion. The edit summary left by SmackBot currents reads, "ISBN formatting &/or general fixes using AWB" -- the use of "and/" is redundant. Other than that, keep it running! Xiner 16:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Quite right! However it is clear, and not everone is a mathematician. It should really be "and sometimes" for this particular run. Rich Farmbrough 09:26 31 August 2006 (GMT).

ISBN

Thank you for the information, we will scan for any other occurances of this problem. Rich Farmbrough 15:34 30 August 2006 (GMT).

Re. "we will scan for any other occurances of this problem": is that built-in to the bot's algorithm? Is that re-iterate previous operations of the bot on this issue, before proceeding? Sorry, "we will scan for any other occurances of this problem" is not much of clear answer. --Francis Schonken 18:38, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Both and also identify any candidates which would have been a problem. Rich Farmbrough 18:40 30 August 2006 (GMT).

There were a total of 10 articles where this could have been a problem, all have been dealt with. Rich Farmbrough 09:32 31 August 2006 (GMT).

I did not say that the algorithm would be the same as mediawikis. ISBN XXX is valid under the mediawiki software, but completely invalid in real life as is ISBN 12312-1231-23131-3-4-34-1-3-1432

. Rich Farmbrough 11:14 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Incidentally calling someone a liar, or incompetant, even prefaced with the word "apparently" is both a breach of WP:NPA and not a good way to make co-operative progress. Rich Farmbrough 11:20 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Sorry, I don't know how to put this more precise, but whatever the bot does to "evaluate" an ISBN, it should first start to READ the numbers of the ISBN *exactly the same way" the automatic function does. If the bot reads "ISBN 0803913303 - " as if the hyphen is part of the ISBN {{invalid isbn|0803913303 - }} ([5]), while the usual algorithm has no trouble discerning that the hyphen is in this case not part of the ISBN (and certainly not part of an "invalid" ISBN) the bot programming should be changed.

I happened to have typed that ISBN [6], unless your bot stops insulting people that they don't know how to type valid ISBN's, while they apparently do know how to type them, it should be stopped entirely. --Francis Schonken 11:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I understand what you want, and it is the same as what I want, really. That the bot make no mistakes. That is not the same as what you are asking for. However the bot run is finished to all intents and purposes, so I now need to address any problem edits after the fact. And I welcome anyone who tells me of a problem edit, because I can then fix it, and possibly a class of problems. And I accept that some people will be angry/annoyed, and that some of the edits will turn out to be correct, and some turn out to be wrong, and in one case the publisher had put an invalid number on the book. But really I have a few problems with a lot of your comments. If you can't be cheerful and freindly, can't you simply restrict yourself to stating the apparent problem, and requesting feedback, without resorting to commands, threats or insults? E.G. "Rich - this edit is wrong, I think your bot is counting the dash as part of the ISBN. Can you let me know what you do to fix it?" It's quicker for both parties, and less stress probably. Rich Farmbrough 12:00 31 August 2006 (GMT).

SmackBot problems with certain infoboxes *

Hopefully I'm not covering old ground here, I had a quick look and couldn't see anything! Some articles contain infoboxes with attributes such as "ISBN2=isbn no.", such as The Colour of Magic, for example; however, the bot's inserting a space between the attribute name's "ISBN" and "2" leaving the infobox with an undefined attribute. I don't know if it's a particularly prevalent problem or if it's just related to the Discworld series, but thought it was worth mentioning. Cheers,

-- Chris (blather • contribs) 22:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Chris, thanks for letting me know, Rich Farmbrough 09:20 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Buggy SmackBot edit

Here it had added formatting to image filename, causing the image to not display.

-- LoneFox 06:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, this should not happen, will pass to developers. Rich Farmbrough 10:03 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Please help removing insults

I thought

Apparently, SmackBot evaluates the viability of an ISBN differently from how the automatic ISBN function does (the ISBN function has no trouble to only include the ISBN number, excluding other numbers that follow on the same line). ([7])

more than friendly enough. That was my first comment. I had no clue this was linked with hyphens. I'm still not sure it is *exclusively* linked with hyphens.

Fair enough. At the time neither was I, I thought it was hyphens followed digits. What I did was

• Fix the article in question.
• Scanned for similar articles (finding ten, nine more and the original).
• Changed the robot rules to deal with the situation correctly.
• Fixed the articles and or ran the process against those articles. (Belt and braces approach.)

Rich Farmbrough 13:35 31 August 2006 (GMT).

It would be impolite if I would try to nail down the technical cause of a problem, for a bot for which I have no insight in its internal workings. I can only indicate the problem.

That's fine. Rich Farmbrough 13:35 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Apparently you had nailed the technical problem (which I derived from your consequent manual edit of Socrate)), but had not provided a solution. Sorry, if I raised my voice as a consequence of your lack of appropriate reaction (I was correct in assuming you were only trying to sooth temporarily, in order not to have to improve the bot).

See above.Rich Farmbrough 13:35 31 August 2006 (GMT).

But insults don't help, you're right there. For that reason I moved {{Invalid isbn}} to {{Please check ISBN}}. I'm sure you can get a bot or semibot change every occurence of {{Invalid isbn| to {{Please check ISBN| in a swiff (there are less than 50 pages transcluding that template currently – oops, wrong count, there are over 1000). Then you prevent that an error of the bot turns into an insult of the person who added a "false positive" ISBN. Thanks. --Francis Schonken 12:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, OK, I can live with that if it makes you happy. Rich Farmbrough 13:35 31 August 2006 (GMT).

I suppose I'd better put a bot approval request in. Rich Farmbrough, 13:18 4 September 2006 (GMT).

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits

Is it posible to use the bot that used to work for this for other wikis? --Cat out 16:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, I expect so. I only ran a script against a datbase dump, that tool was sadly lost, however the historic relic from it Wikipedia:List of ips by number of edits shows that some IP's would have been among the top editors. I was thinking of (writing and) testing a new script against ang.wikipedia.org, since it's fairly trivial. Rich Farmbrough 16:49 29 August 2006 (GMT).

Interesting. Is there a privacy issue with that page? bobblewik 18:12, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see that there would be. Rich Farmbrough 18:44 29 August 2006 (GMT).

OK, thanks. Just a thought. bobblewik 18:37, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

ISBN hyphenation: Wikipedia policy?

I have noticed your SmackBot hyphenating the ISBNs in several articles I work on. While I originally had them hyphenated myself, I was instructed to change that in a peer review a while back. Has there been a change in policy that they are now supposed to be hyphenated, or have you taken this upon yourself to do? Elric of Grans 23:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Elric, please let me know which Peer review. Hyphenation (or spaces) is the standard according to the International ISBN Agency, and we can't use spaces. Rich Farmbrough 08:28 30 August 2006 (GMT).

It was in this one. I seem to recall there being more discussion on it, but part of the discussion in that PR also disappeared somewhere along the way – my guess is that it was among that. Could your bot also stop being 'helpful' with categories? I am getting sick of reverting that three or four times a day. To get categories sorted alphabetically you often need to place them above templates, but your bot keeps moving them back to the bottom (which ends up giving me a mish-mashed order). Elric of Grans 23:04, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well it's done for now. I understand what your saying about categories, it raises two interesting points a. how should categories be ordered, and b. what to do about transcluded categories. The first has been thrashed out, and the conclusion reaced that alpahbetical order is not necessarily best (AWB used to order categories). The second is more probelmatical, I believe, for example that in general maintainance categories (and hence templates) should go after normal categories - and I thnk this is widely suported in principle. On the other hand it is common practice to put cleanup and wikify right at the top of articles. One off the things that AWB does in it's general options is to put interwiki at the end, and non-trancluded categories immediately before, so I will copy part of your comment and this reply onto the AWB talk page for discussion. Rich Farmbrough 09:43 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Here Rich Farmbrough 09:48 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Hi Rich, I spotted you and the bot hyphenating ISBNs in my watchlists and (correctly as it turned out) picking up some errors in a few of my ISBNs, which I've now corrected and de-cat-ed as ISBN errors; and I've read the ISBN FAQs. No disagreements; the question is what is wiki magic - I can't find it thru search? Pyrotec 19:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

That thing which makes ISBNs show as links without special mark-up. In general anything on the wiki that does something "automagically". Rich Farmbrough 20:35 31 August 2006 (GMT).

A minor bot issue

I noticed that your SmackBot recently edited David Duke, and wikified the name "David Duke" in a reference, thus creating a redundant wiki link. Is this supposed to happen? --Ryodox 23:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. It actually un-wikified the link. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough 09:59 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Oh, right. Stupid me; I somehow managed to confuse the new edit with the previous version.

--Ryodox 16:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Chew Valley

Not a problem - and well done on the edits to it today --Mnemeson 15:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Images not showing up after Smackbot runs

Rich, you wrote this on my talk page:

Yep, I found, I think, about 24 articles with two or more nested []s, only a few had ISBNs, so I was able to ensure the problem did not re-occur for this project. And of course programmers count "0, 1, many" so I hope that AWB will be made perfect soon! Any comments to my talk page please. Rich Farmbrough 11:08 31 August 2006 (GMT).

You said also that Smackbot caused the image not to show up due to 2 external links being in an image caption. One of the links was at the end of a caption. ISBNs were not a part of this particular problem. But are you saying that 24 images did not show up after that run of Smackbot? And has the problem been fixed? I need to know whether I can put 2 external links in a caption, especially if one link is at the end of the caption where the brackets stack up and confuse the bot. What about 3 or 4 external links in a caption? Does the problem only occur if one of the links is at the end of the image caption? --Timeshifter 19:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

No I forget the details, but I think one other article had been broken, possibly. The problem with the tool has been fixed Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Nested_square_brackets_bug by the main developer and author of the tool, so apart from people using old versions, which won't last long (the tool itself will insist on being updated), you should be fine to put what you like. In fact you shouldn't worry too much anyway because it's easy to roll back an edit if needed. Rich Farmbrough 20:29 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Thanks. It looks like the problem has been fixed. The other note about it here on the same page says that the problem was occuring with just one external link in the caption too, if the link was at the end of the caption. But it has been fixed in any case.--Timeshifter 11:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Date unlinking

I have seen you unlink dates. However, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)#Dates and numbers still lays out the Wikipedia style of linking dates and I know not of a rule prohibiting it. Are you enforcing a rule I am not aware of? --Liberlogos 05:42, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the reference you give ("Where a date contains day, month, and year — 25 March, 2004 — or day and month — February 10 — a link will permit the date preferences of the reader to operate. Day, month, and year must all be linked for the preference to work correctly.") is one I agree with, and I have linked many thousands of dates in these formats, see for example this diff from last night. However Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context means that entities such as bare years or other date fragments (e.g. "Monday", "1994", "May", "June 2015" should rarely be linked (although there are dissenters). (In the infancy of WP all these entities were linked as there was a plan to extract meta - data from them. Similarly there is a request to the mediawiki developers to provide a different way of allowing date prefernces to work than linking.) Rgs, Rich Farmbrough 09:12 1 September 2006 (GMT).

Published ISBN is invalid

I just removed the invalid ISBN category from the I'saka language article after double checking the book and a couple of library catalogues. Then I read up on ISBNs, calculated the checksum myself, and realized that the ISBN is indeed invalid. What should I do? The purpose of the category is the mark that something needs fixing, but it doesn't seem that there's anything to be fixed. Answer here and I'll take any action necessary. -- Ngio 12:27, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

http:// www.isbn-check.de/checkisbn.pl?isbn=0858835544 ISBN Check can give "minimal change" ISBNs for invalid ones. In this case, should it possibly be 0858834545? Cheers --Pak21 12:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but that's not it. The book I'm talking about is in the Australian National Library catalogue with the invalid ISBN [8]; this is also the ISBN printed in the book itself. -- Ngio 13:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Interestingly this is No. 554 in a series. This would indicate that the publisher incorrectly calculated the checksum. So while, ideally we should contact the ISBN authority, to find the correct solution, I would be inclined to put a temporary note in the article, since from the first of January the check digit will no longer be relevant, and it looks like the rest of the number is correct anyway. The article will then be a special case we have to work around for a while. Rich Farmbrough 13:17 29 August 2006 (GMT).

OK, so let's just leave things as they are. I'll copy this discussion to Talk:I'saka language. -- Ngio 14:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Additional comments there - interesting. Rich Farmbrough 20:02 29 August 2006 (GMT).

This particular book is in catalog.loc.gov, where the ISBN field is marked 'Cancelled ISBN'. It's possible that they do this whenever they receive a book for cataloging that has the wrong check digit. EdJohnston 01:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikifying dates

Whichever bot you use to do this is deleting the comma between the day and the year in dates that are in the format Month day, year. This is an example.—Chidom ^talk  18:41, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It's OK because the wikimagic that renders dates according to preferences puts them in. SO you should see no difference between May 1,123 and May 1123. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 18:49 1 September 2006 (GMT).

P.S. I fixed a big red Cite error on that article. Rich Farmbrough, 18:49 1 September 2006 (GMT).

Thanks. Wikimagic—something else I learned. As for the red link, I got one and missed the other ::::sigh::::; thanks for catching it.—Chidom ^talk  18:57, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Buckingham Palace article invalid ISBN on Olwen Headley's book

Hello Rich. Since I had an ISBN problem the other day I looked into a recent exchange you had with FClef about Buckingham Palace. In this case I suspect the ISBN really is wrong, so I sympathize with SmackBot. My comment to FClef was made here [9]. If FClef found this number in the actual book, we have to assume a mistake at the publisher's end. It's possible you could enumerate what you think should happen each time an ISBN is flagged. E.g. if it has a wrong check digit when printed in the book, should we just remove the ISBN from the article? EdJohnston 19:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I haven't spoken to FClef yet, I have just researched the book, and can confirm a leading 0 should be added. This may be because of the change from the British SBN to ISBN. Rich Farmbrough, 20:37 1 September 2006 (GMT).

Fixing the ISBN allows us to notice that Headley should be Hedley. Under that spelling the correct book shows up in the British Library! Also several books by that author at LOC though not that particular one. So we have to credit SmackBot on this one. EdJohnston 21:23, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Trabancos River

Thanks for the fixes. I saw what SmackBot had done, but left it in because I have no familiarity with ISBN...err...validity issues. Are the ISBN numbers proper? I relied entirely on the Spanish language featured article authors when adding the references.--Fuhghettaboutit 22:23, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they're all valid in that article. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 22:29 1 September 2006 (GMT).

A London Life

Removed bad trailing digit from ISBN, needs proper hyphenation. Published in 1962, I couldn't find a properly-hyphenated version ot this ISBN on the web. EdJohnston 03:05, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

KSmrq has kindly fixed this one. Rich Farmbrough, 09:35 2 September 2006 (GMT).

Olwen Headley Buckingham Palace book

Hi Rich - thanks for correcting this. –– FClef (talk) 12:08, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Grabby Award edits

You/the bot changed all the non-breaking hyphens: ‑ (&#8209;) to regular hyphens in this article; they were put there for a reason. Why the change?—Chidom ^talk  23:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll have to look this evening. Thanks for letting me know. Rich Farmbrough 07:25 1 September 2006 (GMT).

I assume you mean Adult Erotic Gay Video Awards: this edit does not change any non-breaking hyphens. Rich Farmbrough 10:15 1 September 2006 (GMT).

Sorry I wasn't clearer; it's not the article on the awards; it's the listing of the recipients of the awards (Grabby recipients): This edit changed the non-breaking hyphens to regular ones.—Chidom ^talk  17:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

They are still the same character I think. See below.

New

co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator

Old

co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creatorco‑creatorco‑creator co‑creator co‑creator co‑creator

Rich Farmbrough, 18:37 1 September 2006 (GMT).

Incidentally it is not part of the HTML specification I believe, and on my browser (firefox) looks very short, almost dot like until I zoom in. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 18:40 1 September 2006 (GMT).

• Well, shut my mouth and I'll be a bug-eyed mule! I suppose I could have tested the necessity of them; I got the HTML code from here, which seems to be a pretty thorough list. In most cases, a line break can occur at a regular hyphen, which is why I put them in. As for firefox, dunno why it doesn't handle the HTML properly. By the way, your hard work at all this is not unappreciated—thanks!—Chidom ^talk  18:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Nice to be appreciated! Rich Farmbrough, 18:52 1 September 2006 (GMT).

1. Thanks for you note about hyphens, in the example, the "old" has the HTML numeric encoding of the unicode as ASCII characters, which get interpreted by the browser, the "new" has I believe, the unicode character iteslf. Experimenting with the width of my browser window I wasn't able to make either break on the hyphens.
2. I think there was an "invalid ISBN" on Dalek, as a dalekite you may care to take a look.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 14:50 4 September 2006 (GMT).

quick clarification: They are not the same character (they often have the same glyph, but have different line breaking behaviour). . Nor are characters defined by the HTML specification. Instead, characters are defined by the Unicode specification, which is then normatively referenced by the HTML specification. --Nantonos 08:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Users and IPs

Is there any way for you to check if a user and an IP are the same?{Halbared 07:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)}

checkuser Rich Farmbrough, 09:38 2 September 2006 (GMT).

Thanks for that Rich. I have tried to archive my talk page, but I don't think I have done it correctly, can you advise please?(Halbared 14:01, 2 September 2006 (UTC))

Hey Rich, how can I email you?(Halbared 13:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC))

The phrase 'Cancelled ISBN' already appears in Wikipedia

See the Ralph_Ginzburg article.

From the article:

100 Years of Lynchings edited by Ralph Ginzburg (New York: Lancer Books, 1962; Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1988, cancelled ISBN 933121180

The situation is murky, however. There could be some politics involved in the 'cancelling' of this ISBN, due to the various obscenity trials of Ginzburg. For instance, the number given in their records (above) is only 9 digits, where we expect 10 for an ISBN! If you put a zero in front of it, you get a valid ISBN, which however does not return anything when you search for it in LOC. So this is not a good example. It's just a case (confusing at best) where they use the phrase 'Cancelled ISBN'.

The pages containing publisher errors where 'Cancelled ISBN' could be needed are (so far):

• 2-10-4 Both the old and new ISBNs for the Jack Farrell book are invalid. Marked as 'No ISBN available'. See my note on Talk:2-10-4.
• A Certain Woman, Now marked as 'No ISBN available'. History comment says 'Please supply corrected ISBN if found.'
• I'saka language, Now marked as 'No ISBN available'. Left link to online article by same authors.
• Ahmad al-Alawi Now marked as 'No ISBN available'. Comment left in Talk page.
• Ajahn Sobin S. Namto Now marked as 'No ISBN available'. Comment left in Talk page.

From Wikipedia's ISBN page I found this document, [10], which asserts: "Most national bibliographies and especially the Books in Print correct ISBN mistakes. The systems then provide cross references ("incorrect ISBN -> correct ISBN")."

It would be good to see an example of that, anywhere! EdJohnston 17:58, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Since writing the above I was able to get access to www.booksinprint.com. I found that it will not even ACCEPT an invalid ISBN in the search field. So much for the elegant (but nonexistent) solution hypothesized by the IETF document above. (I believe that Books In Print [Bowker] IS the American custodian of the ISBN system). How about we just DELETE from the articles all the ISBNs that are published invalid, of course after explaining properly on each Talk page why that's a reasonable thing to do? Otherwise these cancelled items (of which there might be 200 or so in all of Wikipedia) will need to be processed by hand after every robot visit. EdJohnston 00:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Clarification on R.R. Bowker and ISBNs

From http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/index.asp:

"As the U.S. ISBN Agency, R R Bowker is the exclusive US source of publisher prefixes and accompanying ranges of ISBN numbers for eligible publishers. It provides information and advice on the uses of the ISBN System to publishers and the book trade and promotes the use of the Bookland EAN bar code format. In addition to their ISBN prefixes, publishers also register their titles for inclusion in the Bowker Books In Print databases."

So Bowker could police the invalid ISBNs if they chose to. At present there is no evidence that they try to correct mistakes or keep records on the ISBNs that are published invalid. You just can't search Books in Print for the invalid ones (though you can search Amazon and sometimes find the book you want). EdJohnston 03:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Chew Valley edits

Thanks for your edits on Chew Valley while I was away. — Rod ^talk 07:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

you wrote: "Could you look at the "invalid ISBN's"., also for [[Chew Magma], Chew Lake and Chew, at some point?" I presume you mean Chew Magna & Chew Valley Lake but Chew is not anything to do with me or the valley - was there another one?— Rod ^talk 20:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I've now fixed these ISBNs (with one exception I couldn't find which I've removed). I thought ISBNs were unique and fixed but obviously not.— Rod ^talk 08:22, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Internet radio article

Hi Rich. I re-arranged the external links on the Internet radio article. One section, I made, "sample internet radio stations". It seems to be an advert area for odd-bit stations. I am not sure it should be there at all. Should it be deleted ? Thoughts ? Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:52, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

ISBN hyphenation

I'm not convinced that hyphenation adds value; in fact, it may even be a liability in web searches. Also, correct hyphenation depends on the number. For example,

99921-58-10-7

9971-5-0210-0

960-87363-3-1

80-86119-13-0

4-8457-0667-9

0-14-015098-6

0-446-60098-9

0-8044-2957-X

0-85386-070-X

0-901690-54-6

0-9500000-0-0

are all correct. Worse still, the proper hyphenation is not determined by a centralized international authority, and requires consulting ever-changing tables like this one. There is a regular pattern for 10-digit numbers beginning with "0", but even books published in English need not be in that group. Is your bot prepared to cope? --KSmrq^T 19:52, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is up to date with the full hyphenation table. Rich Farmbrough, 19:58 3 September 2006 (GMT).

Where did you find a full international hypenation table? --KSmrq^T 20:20, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

The table was found on the ISBN Agency's web site here. Rich Farmbrough, 20:28 3 September 2006 (GMT).

After the world converts to 13-digit ISBNs, won't it be hard to visually scan them (or copy them with pencil and paper) if they are unhyphenated? A better system would be fixed grouping of digits, as in the social security number. But that's out of our control. Perhaps WP could offer a script to do the hyphenation. Or add isbn.org/convertpub.asp to the Special:Booksources page so editors could use it routinely. EdJohnston 20:38, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Last point is excellent. Rich Farmbrough, 20:42 3 September 2006 (GMT).

My reg-exes are published under the WP:AWB pages. Rich Farmbrough, 14:17 4 September 2006 (GMT).

Could you be more specific? I didn't see regular expressions anywhere, but I also don't know where to look. --KSmrq^T 05:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Settings - they are auto generated from the table, and hence are a little long winded. Rich Farmbrough, 20:47 7 September 2006 (GMT).

Pygmies & Dwarves

FYI, re this edit, <str> doesn't strike text, <s> does. Guettarda 12:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

You're gonna love this one!

Hi

My neck of the woods is the Westcountry in the UK. I was "wandering" around articles there when I spotted something that I was not sure about. Moretonhampstead - at the end of the page it states "This page contains information orginally provided by Moretonhampstead Development Trust" and I wondered about copyvio. Looking back I saw that it originally said "Written by the Moretonhampstead Development Trust" and that your edit [11] was the one that changed it. I guess I'm not really worried (and not experienced enough to knwo better!) but is this ok? Sorry to bug you but having found it I thought I ought to ask. Regards --Nigel ^(Talk) 16:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Makes perfect sense to me and all part of the learning curve. Thanks for the speedy answer - regards --Nigel ^(Talk) 18:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to mark published-invalid ISBNs as 'No ISBN available'

Yet another invalid-as-published ISBN turned up in a book by Johan Cartigny in the Ahmad al-Alawi article. In this case I took the number out and marked the Cartigny book as 'No ISBN available', but left commentary as to what was happening. (See Talk:Ahmad al-Alawi as well). I left the invalid template in hidden text as a souvenir of the problem. Upon saving, the page took itself out of the invalid ISBN category, as expected. I hope this saves some work long term, because if you leave no mark on the page, a future editor could put back the bad ISBN, and if you leave the page in the invalid Category, the next ISBN-fixer will try again to fix it.

If this approach is not one you would adopt, please let me know, since I am working my way down through the Category to fix the invalid ones. As I go, I am only intending to suppress from the visible page the ones that were invalid-as-published).

Bowker's decision to refuse to search for the invalid ones has some logic to it, because the alternative is so much fuss and bother. Essentially Bowker is forcing the publisher of the invalid number to re-issue the book properly if they want to sell any copies through Books in Print. EdJohnston 19:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

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Note to self

1930206151. Rich Farmbrough 11:42 31 August 2006 (GMT).

13 digit ISBN

I looked at the following invalid isbn:

• J.K. Beatty, C.C. Petersen, A. Chaikin, ed. (1999). The New Solar System (4th ed.). Cambridge press. ISBN 9780521645874.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)

It seemed completly invalid at first, until I realised. Its using the 13 digit ISBN number. Unfortunatly, most libraries doesn't appear to track 13 digit isbn numbers yet. Don't know if you're accounting for this yet or not. Kevin_b_er 20:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Kevin, I'm working on it. It's one of the reasons I'm doing the project in the first place (see Template:Auto isbn). Thanks for the info. Rich Farmbrough, 20:52 1 September 2006 (GMT).

ISBN 9780521645874 is not an ISBN is an EAN article code for the ISBN which is possibly 052164587X. (note the difference final character which is check digit on a different scheme than the full EAN code). The EAN code is what is used for the bar coding used. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 12:57, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Just when you thought you knew something the world shifts from under your feet - thanks for the update. Nice use of shifting terminology EAN loses it's "European" meaning and ISBN-13 is shrunk to ISBN; leaving us all to be confused. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 13:36, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

On August 19 you fixed a broken (13 digit, written with spaces) ISBN in Margaret Mahy to one written with hyphens and 10 digits. However, you did not alter the last digit accordingly, so the link was broken. The trailing -0 has now been changed to -7. Please always verify that the resulting ISBN link works and actually points to the right book. ISBNs with 13 digits aren't broken per se, but having white space among the digits is wrong. When changing between 10 digits and 13 digits, the prefix is almost always 978 (except when it's 979), but the last digit, the checksum, also changes. --LA2 20:25, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, that was stupid of me. Rich Farmbrough, 20:58 7 September 2006 (GMT).

A Certain Woman: publisher error on ISBN?

From going down your list of books with invalid ISBNs, I came across one that looks like a publisher's error: [12] 1. Check digit doesn't match so it's invalid, 2. Book not in Library of Congress, 3. Not in Amazon, 4. Copy for sale on Ebay for $39.00, found by Google for the given ISBN, 5. Worldcat shows it at Harvard College Library where they have the entry shown below (with the bad ISBN). 6. Google shows another copy at a library in Holland, also with the bad ISBN.

Author : Arishima, Takeo, 1878-1923.

Title : A certain woman / Arishima Takeo ; translated, and with an introd. by Kenneth Strong.

Published : Tokyo : University of Tokyo Press ; [Forest Grove, Or. : distributed by ISBS], c1978.

Location : Harvard-Yenching W 5933 04 Holdings Availability

Location : Widener WID-LC PL801.R5 A813 x Holdings Availability

Description : 382 p. ; 24 cm.

Series : UNESCO collection of representative works : Japanese series

Notes : Translation of Aru onna.

Notes : Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN : 0680082377 :

I don't believe I can update the article to fix this, without just plain removing the ISBN. Or, I could add a note that ISBN is invalid due to a possible error by the publisher, but it can still be used for some web searches. Do you have a recommendation? The benefit to our readers from checking ISBNs is mostly when there is a GOOD ISBN somewhere in the world and we have a BAD one. If there is NO good ISBN, we should put in a suitable flag. Maybe a template?

I checked with the British Library, so yes, I think just a note at this point. There was another book like this, but i can't find the discussion. Rich Farmbrough, 13:08 2 September 2006 (GMT).

#Published ISBN is invalid here. Rich Farmbrough, 13:32 2 September 2006 (GMT).

I prefer to join the English page

Some users gave me advices how to edit my page and how I can introduce myself but there is still the same problem. I click to main page and then I'm trying to open the "edit page" but there still appears this f....ng index. I open this index and then there is an ampty page, I recognise that there, beside thet Start menu, appears a link which says "download", I click download and then another index(2) opens and so on.

I've solved my problem

I've already solved my problem by my own, but thanks for giving me advices

SmackBot is rejecting *valid* ISBN-13s

From American conservatism:

	+	 *Bruce Frohnen et al eds. ''American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia'' (2006) ISBN 9781932236446 {{invalid isbn|9781932236446}}, the most detailed reference book

But don't feel bad, Amazon rejects it as well! Amazon finds the book after you use isbn.org/converterpub.asp to make an ISBN-10 from the ISBN-13. EdJohnston 03:31, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:RFBOT

Task IX has been approved for immediate use, see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot for details. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Jan 1, 2007 and 13-digit ISBN

Regarding the Jan 1, 2007 deadline, it's incorrect to assume that as of Jan 1 all ISBNs will be issued as 13-digit. From the [ISBN.org website http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/transition.asp], this quote:

The new 979 prefix will not be utilized until all 978 pre-fixes have been assigned. However, 13 digit ISBNs that begin with 979 can never be converted to 10 digit ISBNs. They have no 10 digit counterpart.

So as of Jan. 1 we should be prepared to start getting 13-digit ISBNs, but we'll still get mostly 10-digit ISBNs - especially since the ISBNs are entered for the most part by "real users" and not folks in the book industry.

Also, it's questionable whether we should be converting 10-digit ISBNs to 13-digit ISBNs for linking. That will probably work for vendor maintained databases, such as WorldCat, or for major catalogs, such as LoC or British Library. But I seriously doubt that most libraries are going to scan their DBs to reindex their 10-digit ISBNs as 13-digit. It will probably require a software upgrade on a library's part for their OPAC to understand the incoming 13-digit '978' as a valid 10-digit.

In addition, if the book has a 10-digit on the back and that's what the user put in their reference, that seems like the correct ISBN to display in the reference. 10-digits should still work for linking for the forseeable future, otherwise OPAC vendors would break almost every ISBN link into their OPAC.

I'm going to put this comment on the Auto isbn template page as well.

Thanks. RainbowCrane | Talk 15:21, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rainbow, the "sunrise" for 13 digit ISBNs was 1 January 2005. As to the support of 979s, I hope and believe this present exercise (with ISBNs, not Wikipedia) will be long out of the way before we need worry about them. I'm sure that most systems will continue ot support 10 digit ISBNS for a long time, but they are not required to. In terms of supporting 13 digit ISBNs all significant systems will need to support them natively, legacy data can be dealt with in two ways, either by checking the converted number as well as the input number (which is a trivial piece of programming) or by running a conversion routine on the data, which is almost as trivial, the hard part, potentially, being the change to allow longer numbers, which will have been needed anyway. Regardless we need to keep thinking about the best process, as I say "auto isbn" can be used in a number of different ways. Rich Farmbrough, 16:23 8 September 2006 (GMT).

While all OPAC vendors will probably be ready, my point was that many, many libraries won't upgrade for a while. I work in the library tech industry, and my company (who shall remain nameless) typically has to support legacy software releases for 6 months or a year, at minimum, because libraries have to coordinate upgrades with their school year, fiscal year, etc. So it's probably not going to work to switch to 13-digit for linking a book that has a 10-digit ISBN printed on the back - the links will break. We should trust our editors to enter the ISBN that's actually shown on the book, and use that ISBN for linking. If there's a 13-digit on the book and someone has cataloged it then it should be valid for linking, and we're fine, but we shouldn't convert all 10s to 13s.

Thanks RainbowCrane | Talk 16:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Easter egg link in your FAQ

Under the Dates section, point 4, you link to Easter egg, but contextually it should probably go to Easter egg (media). Just a thought. --Bdoserror 16:15, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Cheers. Rich Farmbrough, 16:23 8 September 2006 (GMT).

Deletion of quotes from the Poverty article

Hi Rich. Any comments on this deletion and discussion on the Poverty article ? User_talk:Ultramarine#Quotations_you_deleted_from_the_Poverty_article. Thanks and Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:34, 8 September 2006 (UTC) (talk)

Hi Rich. Thanks for your kind response. If I understand what you said, I would agree that quotations, for example, could be included in Wikipedia, as well as Wikiquote, etc. There is no easy linkage between WP and WQ. So, can one put pertinent quotes in articles in WP without having been told to put them in WQ or for fear they will get expurgated from WP ? --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 13:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC) (User talk:Wikiklrsc)

Ohio State ISBN

Thanks for the info. I just made the change, and it works fine.--Sam Harmon 21:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

ISBN puzzle

Your smackbot placed invalid ISBN tags on several ISBNs in the Thomas Edison article. Apparently, from what I can make out in the ISBN article, we have to change the ISBN printed in older books to longer ones and remove the dashes. You page has FAQ but I don't see simple basic instructions for updating these arcane digit strings to some modern standard. Perhaps you could be so kind as to add a paragraph to the ISBN article telling explicitly and in simple terms what we should do to update ISBN numbers. I have never understood the point of them, nor have I ever heard of anyone making use of them. Most people go to a library or Amazon,com and find a book by author or title. It seem like it would make as much sense to add the Library of Congress catalog card number. But I really hate to see something I painstakingly typed into an article labelled as INVALID as if I had been careless typing (Typos happen all to often in fact). So when I checked some of the ISBNs which were invalid against what was printed in the book, I thought maybe the Bot had slipped a cog. Thanks Edison 22:14, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

This actually seems a bit more complicated. You've quoted amazon as having 0703304682, which it does for a book called "Edison a Biography", however the book in question is apparently just titled "Edison" which Amazon has as 0070330468 [13], these of course may indeed be the same book but it is certainly confusing. --pgk 22:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info on SBNs, as I said elsewhere I'm certainly not an expert, just responding to a {{helpme}} request, and my little knowledge of stuffing a zero on the front appeared to work... --pgk 22:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Pgk/Edison, the 0-07-033046-8 number that pgk found is probably the correct one. Reasons:

1. The layout is consistent with the book
2. (Most importantly) 0-07- is McGraw Hill's publisher ID
3. The checksum is correct

I suspect that somewhere someone added a number on the end (as I did), and the data got "borged" - after all the purpose of ISBN searches is to enable people to find a book, so it makes sense to allow as many possible variants.

Good detective work pgk! Rich Farmbrough, 08:39 9 September 2006 (GMT).

Woojgie's ISBNs

I took the ISBN Nrs from the actual books on my shelf, I don't know how your automated computer routine came up with a different ISBN.--Woogie10w 22:49, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Woogie, I'm afraid I will need a little more information. Which article would be a start. Rich Farmbrough, 08:39 9 September 2006 (GMT).

Woogie10w is refering to the World War II casualties article. Shanes 08:31, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the zero, anyway Amazon also drops it for Dower's book ISBN Nr.--Woogie10w 16:47, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, both needed a leading zero. for example. Maybe SBN -> ISBN or just the 0 got left off for some reason. Rich Farmbrough, 09:25 9 September 2006 (GMT).

invalid ISBN

Your bot inserted an invalid ISBN notice to [Quartal and quintal harmony]. See: [14] and [15]

But the ISBN is quite valid: Amazon link, and DTV.

Is your bot equipped to verify ISBNs of books written in other languages? - Rainwarrior 00:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

• In this case, the bot was correct and caught an ISBN which was too short. I corrected the hyphenated ISBN that Rainwarrior mentioned from ISBN 3-4230140-6 to ISBN 3-423-30140-6 -- TruthbringerToronto (Talk | contribs) 06:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah! I missed one of the numbers. Okay, that makes me feel better about the bot. Thanks! (I should probably go fix the original German page it was taken from too...) - Rainwarrior 06:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes it should work regardless of language area. Rich Farmbrough, 11:07 10 September 2006 (GMT).

Another invalid ISBN

Smackbot flagged ISBN 186448408X (Leichhardt: On the margins of the city, by Peter Reynolds) as being invalid on a number of articles, for example Ballast Point, New South Wales. It's an Australian book published by Allen & Unwin in 1997 and the ISBN was taken out of the front cover. The state library finds it OK here. Am I missing something? amitch 08:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Erm where to start...

1. SB spotted the 9 digit incorrect number and labelled it with invalid
2. You changed the number by adding an X on using AWB (presumably having got the X from the above library?), but changed it in the invalid tag as well.
3. SB changed the name of the tag to something considered politer.

So no problem, you could simply remove the tag. I have done so for Ballast Point, and hyphenated the ISBN 1-86448-408-X. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 09:41 9 September 2006 (GMT).

Stop!

Stop deleting my work, it takes time you know! from homersimpson742

More fun with ISBNs

• How about a shortcut (like WP:INV) to save having to type: Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs. Should I create one?
• By the way, every warning I have seen lately about an ISBN-13 is incorrect.
• Can you point to the SmackBot code that does the check digit? I looked at the regexes but suspected I wasn't seeing the true source code.
• SmackBot is still being confused by trailing hyphens. This sequence at Archimedes got it upset:
  ISBN 0-691-08421-1 - republished translation...
  I deleted the trailing hyphen and removed the warning. EdJohnston 04:10, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

PopMatters

Hi. I don't think you should be italicising instances of PopMatters – website titles aren't included in the italics guidelines at MoS:T. Thanks. --CapitalLetterBeginning 14:39, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Thanks for your note. Italics are used on the basis that it is a periodical/magazine. Our article describes it as such, do you think that's OK? Rich Farmbrough, 14:51 10 September 2006 (GMT).

Hmm, I don't really agree with the usage as I see webzines as being distinct from print periodicals/magazines. To give a few examples, Pitchfork Media, PlayLouder and Stylus Magazine are all similar in style and their titles are not italicised. --CapitalLetterBeginning 15:00, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I've changed "magazine" in the opening line of the PopMatters article to "webzine" now. --CapitalLetterBeginning 15:05, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

SO I see, :). Rich Farmbrough, 15:08 10 September 2006 (GMT).

Spurious edits by User:24.119.239.54

Rich, User:24.119.239.54 has made some spurious edits Special:Contributions/24.119.239.54 to a number of articles, e.g. the one on Homelessness, most of which seem to border on vandalism. I've tried to re-edit the articles, but not all. The usual ideas ? Thanks and Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 15:13, 10 September 2006 (UTC) (talk)

Task X

Go ahead and run the template fix tasks for the bot, as it is approved.Voice-of-All 19:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Obligated = called?

For what reason did you change use of the word obligated to called in Iron Ring? I've never heard this terminology before, is it at one of the sources? BigNate37_(T) 22:16, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Archivist note

It's the name of the ritual "Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer." The later American "Engineers Ring" has a ceremony called "The Obligation of The Engineer."

Signpost updated for September 11th.

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Smackbot

Why add a template to an article just to say the below template is misplaced? (Diana Oughton, etc.) Why not set the bot to wipe or hide the template tag, leave a comment, and put the offending tag on the talk? -Ste|vertigo 01:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

This is SB's edit. The following edit put the template on. The template is designed to warn if it is on an article page, it is not a seperate action. I have moved the template to a talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 10:08 13 September 2006 (GMT).

whoops! -Ste|vertigo 14:22, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Block Request

Please block sep11:User:Georgia guy, he has been vandalizing the Sept. 11 wiki. Thank you. Timrem 03:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Done, thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 10:08 13 September 2006 (GMT).

Sorry to bother you again, but sep11:User:Georgia gal has been making some of the same edits as Georgia guy had been... Timrem 20:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

ISBN bot error, maybe

From Bill Gothard:

• How to Evaluate Music. Life Change Books, 1989, ISBN 6052230010

The ISBN seems to be valid. Its in a lot of places, including amazon. Another site confirms the checkdigit to be correct, though the LOC ISBN converter says it can't hyphenate it properly. Any help on this would be great. Kevin_b_er 04:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it, no ISBN should start with a 6, it is a reserved range. I've looked unsuccesfully for information about other books published by the same people, perhaps you could email the publishers? Rich Farmbrough, 10:28 13 September 2006 (GMT).

There are] a lot of google hits for "ISBN 6" but not as many as if it were valid...

Rich Farmbrough, 11:10 13 September 2006 (GMT).

After research at Books in Print and other places, my guess is that some distributor has hijacked the ISBN field (using '6' as a prefix) and is putting their own inventory number in the rest of the field. This would temporarily work for them, because it could never collide with a real ISBN. If this surmise is right, then we should do nothing different than what we already do. That is, we should accept an ISBN as valid only when it is accepted by isbn.org/converterpub.asp. This means that we'd continue to require that the full set of ISBN rules be obeyed. We already know that Amazon doesn't care about validity, so it would not be a surprise that they just accept the word of the distributor. Bill Gothard's four books that are cataloged at LOC all have normal (valid-looking) ISBNs. It turns out the "How to Evaluate Music" is actually a cassette package anyway. So following my own (proposed) rule I'd mark this one as 'No ISBN available', hoping that if it has a real ISBN, someone might provide it in the future. I already checked that it has no OCLC number. EdJohnston 18:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Clare Nasir's article

Hi Rich. Someone (User:Jaranda) un-protected Clare Nasir's article. Worried but holding. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC) (talk)

sep11.wiki deletion reviews

Hey, I noticed you are active on the September 11 wiki. Maybe you can chime in at the current deletion review of sep11:Amadou Arflika and sep11:Mohammed Abed Al-Kareem which for whatever reason seems to have been lodged here on en.wiki. ~ trialsanderrors 21:25, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Winter Soldier

Hmm, interesting. I wonder how an apparently new anon would have found that. I'm fairly new to this article, having just seen the film. It's surprising that even now, so many years later, the testimony in the film is so disturbing to people that they want to cast doubt on the participants' credibility. I think people probably don't want the things discussed in the film to have really been true. If one doesn't learn from the past... Badagnani 22:31, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Album format fixes

• I do a lot of work with electronic music albums, so I just wanted to say thanks for doing all the format fixing with tracklists and all that. Keep up the awesome! Wickethewok 01:35, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Block on User:64.59.144.21

Rich, we got a complaint to unblock-en-l from a user using 64.59.144.21 that they'd been blocked, right after fixing vandalism to Joseph Goldberger (which you apparently mistakenly reverted but which was subsequently otherwise fixed).

Can you confirm that the current bock on 64.59.144.21 is anon-only, not a full IP address block? The block log note isn't clear.

Thank you. Georgewilliamherbert 23:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Album fixes

Hi, great job on the album article/infobox fixes. Just one thing I have fixed on a number of articles now, but I figured it might just be better to ask you about it: Is it necessary to exchange <li> tags with asterisks (e.g. as you did on Futures (album) or The Early November/I Am the Avalanche)? I'm sure it's (possibly even in most cases) useful, but I have only seen it mess up the continuity of numberings that don't begin at 1. Maybe you could change your AWB settings? Have a great day, HarryCane 13:31, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the update on the ol/li tags. Concerning Telegraphs in Negative/Mouths Trapped in Static... it's a different issue than the examples I posted earlier (bonus tracks on import/special editions) and I agree, a numbering starting from 16 is a little superfluous. Especially if the first track is in fact track 1 (on the CD), rather than that the first 15 tracks on the disc contain nothing but silence. Yet, I am not familiar with the band/album, and if it appears this way on the back of the case and since Wikipedia/html allows it, I think it doesn't hurt anyone if it's kept this way. I fixed the double numbering though, for aesthetics. Maybe a discussion should be started on the talk page. --HarryCane 15:31, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

- –

Your AWB edits on album articles seem to have a common error, they add an extra dash in album track lists, so it appears as "- –" rather than just "–", an example being a recent edit [16].

So far it's happened to every album I've been watching, and it's getting rather annoying, please check your edits before saving them. ¬rehevkor¬ 22:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Caused by italic track lengths. That particular problem has now been fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 09:24 20 September 2006 (GMT).

Thanks for the help

Thank you for blocking Dralobv. Obviously, your help was invaluable, as it always has been :-)MrFish^{Go Fish} 16:40, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar

Hope you don't mind, but I thought your endeavours should be recognised! --Guinnog 21:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Infobox album modification

Hi there, since I see you are pretty active cleaning up album infoboxes, I thought I would let you know. Right now, the new infobox has only one problem: when the type is not recognized, and the background color is in hexadecimal, the infobox breaks (like Team Invasion Presents Keyshia Cole). Could you replace the background color with a value, or delete the background color (which is going to be the next modification for the template)? Just wanting to know. Thanks in advance. -- ReyBrujo 21:37, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The background color is to be dropped. The template will select the background color from the chosen type. The {{Extra chronology}} has been replaced with {{Extra chronology 2}}, and the {{Extra album cover}} should be replaced with {{Extra album cover 2}} (or the contents of this later merged into the former one). -- ReyBrujo 22:06, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The {{Extra chronology}} is used with the Single infobox, so it needs to keep the Background parameter. That is why a copy was made. After the album infobox is fixed, it should be possible to merge the extra templates just one. -- ReyBrujo 22:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:NC(GN)

I apologize for spamming your talk page, but since you had contributed in the past to the WP:NC(GN) proposal, which is currently ready for a wider consultation, I thought you might want to give it another look now and, hopefully, suggest some final improvements. Thanks. --Lysy^talk 22:58, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

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ISBN 9780763629885

Your bot labelled this as a faulty ISBN, while a simple Google search shows it is correct. Did the bot didn't know about 13-digit ISBNs yet or is there another reason this got tagged? Article in question was Sam Stern, which I am cleaning. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:33, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• I came across a page that said wikipedia ISBNs shouldn't have dashes when I clicked one of them... - Mgm|^(talk) 04:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Album infobox colors

Hello, you've done quite a few cleanups on album pages I've been working on as well, so you're probably the right person to ask. What's the deal with the colors now, are they determined by what type is entered or is light blue just the default which is used when no color is specified? Regards - Cyrus XIII 21:05, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the album type now determines the colour. And there is a new colour scheme, which can be changed much more easily. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Albums and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Albums for details. Rich Farmbrough, 21:49 19 September 2006 (GMT).

Thanks for the heads-up. :) - Cyrus XIII 22:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Sam Leach/Vinnyk/Last Memento Of The Beatles

It looks like there has been another attempt to revive some of the fictions associated with this piece of merchandise: [17] shows. Could you help, please? DavidFarmbrough 09:21, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Vincent Ruello

Hi there! I notice you locked this article again... I deleted it yesterday as part of a general campaign to clear out "protected deleted" pages after three months or so (see the admin noticeboard; the idea is that they're usually created by bored high schoolers who will drop the joke after awhile; there's currently about 3000 prot/del pages which are google-indexed and show up on Special:Random, which is undesirable). Of course this does not apply to all prot/del pages since some are the work of persistent vandals. Anyway I don't particularly care about this Vincent either way but I thought I'd give you a heads-up. Yours, >Radiant< 16:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Clare Nasir article vandalism

Hi Rich. It didn't take too long after the article on Clare Nasir was unprotected for User:195.93.21.33 to vandalise it again, as is the anonymous user's habit. *Sigh* Any ideas ? I know it's a broken record. Luckily someone else reverted it. Bests and Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC) (User talk:Wikiklrsc)

About your List of common ISBN errors

Hi Rich, you sent me a pointer to this list on Sept. 5. Can you clarify what it means? What are the fields after each ISBN? I could use a list to fix ISBNs more quickly, if the same book is cited on more than one page.

On another subject, do you know why the word 'Wikipedia' has to be spelled out when looking for a list such as Wikipedia:List of pages with Invalid ISBNs? I was typing 'WP' instead and it didn't work. Thanks, EdJohnston 17:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The calculated checksum, the number of occurrences (twice for some reason) and notes.

WP is a shortcut so pages like WP:AGF actually exist in the article space I think, and are redirects to Wikipedia namespace. Rich Farmbrough, 17:53 22 September 2006 (GMT).

RE:Rating-5

A 10 rating was something I had previously decided against creating. However, I just realised now (literally just now, even though it's so simple) that you could simply double the template. e.g. to get 7.5/10 use {{Rating|5|5}}{{Rating|2.5|5}} to get . But if you want to compose one from the SVGs, by all means, go ahead (I think I public-domained them) - ^Рэд_хот 18:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I actually just noticed that the description which is auto-added to the images makes it a bit messy. But if you want to extend it properly by modifying the SVGs you can. (Or creating a new template) - ^Рэд_хот 18:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

isbn

Well groovey!
Signed
International Anthropos of funk LoveMonkey 18:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

About your edits on article Acute abdomen

Hi,

please note that a large portion of that article was copyvio. Could save you some work adding the {{wikify}} tag in the future.

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)