User talk:ThaddeusB/ToDo Archive

oldprodfull bot

I would really like this bot to be created (or the task assigned to an existing bot). Wouldn't it be easiest to just have a bot note on the talk page of every prodded article that a prod was applied? (A simple matter of looking every so often to see where the prod and prod-nn are transcluded to, I think.) It might annoy the admins who have to delete the articles if no talk page existed prior to the bot creating the talk page, so perhaps the bot could just do this for articles that already have a talk page? This would capture most of the interesting cases, since articles that don't have talk pages tend to be young and, in my experience, more likely to deserve deletion. Abductive (talk) 07:25, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The way it would work is capture the list of current articles with PROD tags on them periodically. Articles that disappear from the list and stay off for 24 hours (to prevent tagging articles where the tag was removed in vandalism) would be given an {{Oldprodfull}} tag unless they were deleted. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:02, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

The sockpuppeteer is back, and I would really like to see this bot tagging implemented. Abductive (talk) 22:58, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up & the reminder. I definitely want to see this bot made as well, so I'll bump it up on my list of priorities. Hopefully I can get to it in about a week. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:51, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Since you are busy, and I really would like to see progress with Dr B's TRANSWIKI idea, I am going to ask if any currently existing bots can be adapted to do this (unless you really don't want me to). If they don't/can't/won't I'll ask you again. Abductive (talk) 03:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The code is fairly simple & given my heavy involvement in PROD, I would really like to do it. I promise I'll get to it real soon - hopefully this weekend. :) Should be a 1 or 2 day project. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:27, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay. Abductive (talk) 03:39, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Transwiki

Hi! In light of the recent events I think it might be a good time to make a new project proposal at councils and organise a project which concentrates on trasferring content from other wikipedias but in a may which is much more efficient and can done with no community concerns. If I make a proposal in a day or two can you comment as I feel we both share the same view that it is important to transfer content from other wikipedias but done adequately as part of a project coordination. The ideal is a bot which can run through categories on a different wikipedia and extract any main information from an article and create it on english wikipedia with a reference. I know the community expresses an extreme indifference to automation in regards to content but if programmed correctly bots can do things much more consistently and efficiently than us. The idea is not that the bot writes the articles, the idea is that it draws up missing lists of articles from other wikipedia in the project space, members of a group check them for notability and then the bot is assigned to blue link them in the best possible way without community concerns and which adheres to our policies. The ultimate ideal of cause would be bot which can translate whole articles into English but as we know present, google translate is far from perfect. If it is somehow perfected in the future see google toolbar the new translation thing they have going then I think it would be possible to instantly translate articles but would need to be proof read. But at present I think something which can extracts some basic facts and reference them is most needed. The concern by the community is likely to be about the mass creation of missing articles started without full content and may cause concerns about the amount of work it will take to develop and maintain them. Personally I think arguments against the creation of new content "because they might be vandalised" is an invalid one. There are enough people who use wikipedia honestly to make it work. It might be difficult to programme a bot I don't know but the first phase would be to use a bot to draw up lists of missing articles by wikipedia in the project space. I am thinking maybe a taskforce of the missing encyclopedic articles project. Something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Transwiki/de/Politicians etc etc. We'd need a bot to be able to run off categories on other wikipedias and list them on here in the workspace. So it could generate lists from a diversity of topics and wikipedias such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Transwiki/nl/Writers etc. DO you follow? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 08:40, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Certainly, that sounds great. Funny thing is that I've been looking for absolutely ages for a decent bot operator who is interested in content and willing to run. Your skills would be greatly needed to cleanup existing articles too. We have a whole set of municipalities of Colombia and Brazil which have just been dumped. As much as it seems I like creating new short stubs a lot of my time is spent cleaning up and refencing articles on districts and municipalities across the world. It took me a weke and half to add 500 references to the Vietnam districts and add infoboxes because nobody would help run a bot!! I believe for new articles there is a minimum requirement. As long as they have a bit of info and are immediately expandable it would be greatly appreciated I'm sure. Righteo then I'll make a proposal Monday and I've spent time trying to salvage several gundred of these stubs. The thing is a vast proportion of them contian the same references to the Bavarian Landtag and German National Library meaning of course the generation of such articles could be done effecitvely with a bot. Very glad to meet you and I hope we keep in good contact. Sorry if I come across badly at ANI and AFD discussions but I'm sure you understand the frustrations.

I certainly do understand the frustration. It is no fun at all to spend hours/days working on something just to have it deleted again. That whole thread was a mess with a lot of people (on both sides) acting poorly. I certainly won't hold anything said there against you (or anyone else). --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:42, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

In regards to a project on this I would propose somethign along the lines of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Transwiki. The first task would be to create sections of the new project related to content on the different wikipedia. Then the bot would raid the categories on other wikipedia for various topics and list the articles missing from these categories. The ones that we already have maybe can be moved manually or the bot could by pass them. So eventually we'd have a directory of missing articles organised by each wikipedia and neatly by topic/sub topic so we know exactly what is missing. Inevitably the task is a tremendous one to do so which only a bot could achieve but I am certain that a bot is able to be programmed to copy categories from the other wikipedias and insert them into lists in the project space. Once we have that done or are happy with the missinglists for one topic maybe then the bot can be programmed to start the missing articles, a lot of related categories use similar sources etc so that should make it easier at least. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:34, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a perfectly reasonable and is probably the best way to proceed. i will support such efforts fully. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:46, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Thankyou. Yes the thing was that we've had a great deal of experiemce of evne the stubbiest of articles being expanded like this so it kind of propels me to generate more because I believe they will be expanded. I could almost guarantee that if that editor had come across a red link he would not have started that article. It would satill be sitting as a red link. So while I don't endorse the creation of poorly referenced sub stubs (which is why I want a bot and project) I do think that it is worth creating stubs. Thats what motivates me is the many articles I've created I've seen expanded into real good articles. Even stubs like Xinjiang Medical University has ended up being good! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:46, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Dr. Blofeld, the idea of a place to store machine-translated articles en masse from other Wikipedias away from namespace is a great one, if it can carry across wiki formatting and references. Good plan! It would need willing editors to copy-edit and improve sourcing if necessary, so give me a reminder if and when you've got the project going. We need to pilfer as much as we can from the other Wikipedias. Fences&Windows 00:04, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Well I do see the different wikipedias as one project and I can't believe there is not even anything in place which attempts to put articles in various languages into english and vice versa! It is the core goal on here "to provide an encyclopedia of the highest quality to anybody on the planet for free in their own language". We need a transwiki project and to create a bank of missing articles to bridge the gaps!! 12 million articles have been created by the rest of the world so their inut and content should not be ignored!! I think I'll make a proposal at councils tomorrow. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 12:12, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject TRANSWIKI

Hi. In light of recent events and community concerns about the way in which content is transferred I have proposed a new wikiproject which would attempt to address any of the concerns and done in an environment where a major group of editors work together to transfer articles from other wikipedias in the most effective way possible without BLP or referencing problems. Please offer your thoughts at the proposal and whether or not you support or oppose the idea of a wikiproject dedicated to organizing a more efficient process of getting articles in different languages translated into English. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 12:55, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thaddeus are you still interested? Because the project is kind of dependent on a bot!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 11:40, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I just didn't have a chance to read through everything yesterday. I am planning on doing so today. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:46, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

More congrats

Congrats on adminship. Right then. What we can do once the project is rolling is to contact all the people who have listed themsevles as speaking a certain language and them notification of the project. It could be bot generated although it would need BAG approval I believe. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 09:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. There are several message bot already approved, so it is simply a matter of asking one of those to send out a message for us. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I've made a start on Wikipedia:WikiProject TRANSWIKI, I'll have some assistance with page design and layout shortly I rather like the logo. You'll see there is a language pages red linked. The idea is that each language functions as some sort of taskforce and editors are recruited for each who speak the language or are interested in articles from that particular wikipedia. It will take time to build followers but the first step is to draw up missing article directories for each wikipedia. The list pages will be listed under each language wikipedia neatly in topics/sub topics and sub pages. There will be a massive amount of missing articles to list and organise up but this is the idea. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 17:55, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

My main concern about this project as with many projects is that one moment there will be tens of people posting in rapid succession and seem interested and suddenly it just seems deserted!!! It seems everybody is away at once!! I honestly hope there will be enough people interested in this project to maintain it and not make it die out like several other projects on here. Do you disagree with the idea of the way in which missing lists could be drawn up? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 21:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with the way it is structured. Everything looks good. Recruiting and maintaining active members will be a challenge, but that is nothing unique as all WikiProjects have that problem. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:18, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I've started Wikipedia:WikiProject TRANSWIKI/German. You get the idea? In the missing article directory there will be the sub pages by main topic and then sub ordered and propbably sub ordered again by topic in a chain down way e.g Wikipedia:WikiProject TRANSWIKI/German/Geography/Lakes of Germany and Wikipedia:WikiProject TRANSWIKI/German/Geography/Mountains of Swizterland etc. Or it could be listed as
Wikipedia:WikiProject TRANSWIKI/German/Geography/Switzerland/Mountains etc. So the Wikipedia:WikiProject TRANSWIKI/German/Geography page would list all of the sub topics and then the lists would be generated on a further sub page as shown above. I will now emulate this layout for the other main wikipedias to get us started, I think we should concentrate on the main wikis at present. I doubt welsh wikipedia for instance is first priority of translating decent content. Now we need to discuss how we go about using a bot to copy categories from another wikipedia and use them to generate organized lists by topic in our project space. I would imagine that the bot would be able to detect en: wikipedia links in the foreign article and skip it? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 12:30, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject TRANSWIKI/ Polish/Politics/Polish politicians and Wikipedia:WikiProject TRANSWIKI/Spanish/Culture/Museums as examples. Ideally the bot would generate lists like the museums with the es wikipedia version also linked. The bot will be essential to copy the categories on the other wikipedias and ermpty them linked into the lists. Are you sure you're still up to it? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:56, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

All that you have written above sounds good to me. I took a look at the example pages and everything seems fine. I'll start work on the bot as soon as I can - in the mean time I suggest you listen to the advice that someone else wrote on the talk page: "We need to walk before we run." I know you want this project to happen instantly, but that isn't realistic. I only have limited time, and have other obligations on and off wiki. Other members are the same. We don't need all this content "imported today", we need it "imported right", which will take time. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:01, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, I didn't mean to pester you, just if you are busy I'd appreciate you saying so, so I know to get on with things! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:05, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Babel fish

I've emailed you. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:47, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Wow, you need to calm down a bit. I am busy and can't instantly reply to everything that comes up. I have a real job that I am trying to get done and can only spend a few minutes on Wikipedia at a time.

In regards to Babel Fish, Wikipedia shouldn't be saying "we prefer this one and only this one service." If there are alternative available, we should list them all. Also it would be rather pointless to have a translation tools section with only 1 tool. We need to find more tools and add them to the list, not just rely on Google translate for everything. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:56, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, Babel fish is good but not as good as google translate but if you feel it should be linked I have no problems. I would just have really appreciated it if you had quickly said you were busy and said you'll discuss it when you have time. When there is no response in 6 hours and I can see you are on here then I begin to have doubts. I understand now. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:02, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, next time I will say I am busy. Sorry for the misunderstanding. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:05, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to appear so anxious, its just I've had failures with bot projects in the past when I put a lot of time into trying to create a project so I don't want to do so again! As Blofeld once said "This organization does not tolerate failure". As long as we gradually make process in our own time allowing for RL and other committments I'm happy with that, when you are ready we should discuss how a the bot would go about copying from categories and auto geenrating them into lists on the project talk page. That's the next step but whenever you are not tied down!! Perhaps we can discuss it next week some time. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:18, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

That would be fine. I have another bot project I need to finish up, but I should be able to start on this one early next week and the first step should only take two-three days to program (and then a few more days to await approval). --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:24, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I like it! One thing though, wouldn't it be best to call it TRANSWIKIBOT as it will also be creating missing lists? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:39, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I already was making a bot called ContentCreationBOT for another project, so I figured I'd reuse the name rather than create another. The reason being that it will be actually creating content in step 2. (Step 1 being just creating the lists.) --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:48, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Hokay, sounds cool! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:51, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Generating lists

Hi there. I've set up the sub pages for the projects now. They are all ready for filling.... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 13:37, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll start working on the bot coding for this today or tomorrow. I'll make a post at the Wikipedia when I'm ready for input. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, I did start adding to a few like Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki/Slovenian/Sports but that was because I moved them from the previous project space. I'd imagine what we'll need is a bot which by passes all articles which have en: links in them and lists all articles without en: links in the workspace. I'd imagien it would be able to read off main categories and core categories so we at least know what main topic the articles fall into. What we will need though is a way to be able to organize it and know exactly what each category refers too. That may require manual work later... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Any developments? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have some material ready to help us proceed. I plan on posting it on the Wikiproject page sometime today. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I always see your name on the recent changes, you are a busy dude and seem to be also be all over the encyclopedia like me! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Trasnwiki bot

Hi. Have you made any progress with the coding or how it will be done? Himalayan 16:26, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Not much, but don't worry its still on my agenda and I should be able to get to it very soon. --ThaddeusB (talk) 17:04, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I thought... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:09, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

PAC bot

I use the online Sepkoski database. The only useful information it offers is the order, the generic name, and the time range of the subject. See here for an example that won't take all day to load. Abyssal (talk) 15:45, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Thing with the Paleodb is that it doesn't, in my experience, tend to have any more info than the Sepkoski database on the species included in the latter. I don't know of any other, unless this one counts. Thanks for taking an interest in this project. Abyssal (talk) 00:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

How are we going to proceed with this project? Abyssal (talk) 18:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Great template! For the see also section, are you sure you can't use the bot for some of that? The paleo db lists sister genera, they would be useful there. The morphology tab has diagnosis and measurement data that may be useful for the article. Also, you might want to rephrase "(Genus) were first identified by (scientist name) in (year)" to "(Genus) was first described by (scientist name) in (year)." IT would also be cool if the year linked to the corresponding article in this series. Maybe the collections tab would have something useful. Other than that, I'm really pleased. Thanks for your hard work! Abyssal (talk) 02:10, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The only thing I think needs added manually to the See also section would be a link to the List of *higher order taxon* article for each major group. Abyssal (talk) 03:36, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Hey, just checking in and see how things are coming. Also, I was curious if a bot could, say, scan and extract information from a PDF the same way it would an online database. Later. Abyssal (talk) 21:23, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I uh, had no clue what was going on. Here are the Sepkoski abbreviations. Most of the start and end times are in the respective articles on the time periods. The Paleodb has info on the start and stop times of subepochs. I can't generate the higher order text until we pick out a taxon to use the bot on. There's no real way for me to anticipate any scientist whose name may be encountered by the bot. There are just too many of them, and I'm not an invertebrate specialist to know any of the big names, who probably only named a small minority anyway. For the see also list, all we need to list is the sister genera listed in the pbdb and the List of taxon article, which can be done as soon as we pick a taxon to work with. If I can assist in anyway please keep me posted. :D

By the way, maybe you should clarify exactly how this bot is going to work, just so I'm up to speed and not making moronic suggestions. Abyssal (talk) 03:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I have a PDF that is a list of every Trilobite genus named before 2003, plus their family, time period, authors, years, and a bibliography. I thought it would be useful when we work on the Trilobites. Abyssal (talk) 00:58, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

How goes things? Abyssal (talk) 15:47, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I haven't had much chance to work on it yet, but I should be able to get to it within the next few days. --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:33, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Have you noticed the number of articles on the front page? Considering that our bot could end up creating more than 20,000 articles (~5,000 trilobites + ~5,000 brachiopods + ~10,000 molluscs not to mention echinoderms, bryozoans and cnidarians), we have a very serious opportunity to be the Wikipedians that create article number three million, if we time this right. I estimate that the day that number of articles would be reached without our intervention to be at the very beginning of august. I think we should go for this. Maybe the second we see the article counter get within twenty thousand or so of the goal we let the bot do its thing and mass generate those articles. What an opportunity! Abyssal (talk) 18:32, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Hate to be that obnoxious guy that constantly harasses you, but, uh, how are things going? Anything I can do to help? Abyssal (talk) 15:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Glad to know I've not been a bother, and glad to hear about your progress. What did you think of my proposal for us to shoot for being the guys who make article 3 million? I think we have a shot, and it would certainly give us bragging rights. :P Abyssal (talk) 20:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Update, stat! :P Abyssal (talk) 14:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

You said before that you could use the prod, so here I am prodding. I'm curious about how you're progressing, you said before that you were on the verge of collecting the data. I've started working on the stub templates we're going to need to create. Do you still want me to collect the start and end dates of the time periods? Anything else I can help with? Abyssal (talk) 14:25, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Are you avoiding me? I've left several messages on your talk page but have yet to hear from you in over a week even though you've been very active. Abyssal (talk) 14:05, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll take that as a yes, I suppose. o_0 Abyssal (talk) 15:18, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Update

Nice to see that you weren't just ignoring me. :D I know it's going to be a difficult fight, but I think we can win them over if we start small. Maybe they would allow us a trial-run to demo it? Say, create articles for Ciliophora, which would create about 30 articles. If something goes horribly horribly wrong, then we could catch the problem early, and correct the bot accordingly with little in the way of clean up.

Now two questions,

1. Do you want that PDF?
2. What do you need me to do to prepare us for the actual article creation?

Abyssal (talk) 22:44, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Lol. Ok. Abyssal (talk) 00:47, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey, Thad, just some random thoughts on our project:

I think we should start trying to distance ourselves from the anybot fiasco in advance of our request for bot approval to make things easier for us. What advantages does PACbot have over the anybot thing? I think we'd have more human involvement in the articles, since there are aspects we have to pick and choose by hand, like in the see also links, and we'd have to pick a stub category for the major groups by hand, and that sort of thing. Also, our bot won't have problems with security the way Anybot did with that webpage it was publicly accessible from. Maybe we could compile a list of the specific issues that happened with Anybot and write a corresponding list of corrections and precautions that will be present in PACbot? I believe that would go a long way in alleviating concerns from the BAG.

Also, could our bot be used to fill in data in a table with data gathered from our sources? Like say, go through the List of placoderms and automatically add in the authority, year, age and such? If you could get it to do that and it works, it may dispel any doubts the BAG might have about your ability to program a successful content generating robot before they're even brought up.

PS: Sorry for moving this, but you said you missed previous messages because the topic wasn't near the bottom of your page. Abyssal (talk) 21:15, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's great news. BTW, any comments on my thoughts above here? *points up* Abyssal (talk) 13:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Great, I'll get started on everything tomorrow. Abyssal (talk) 00:36, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I've sent both the pdf and a copy of what I've completed so far of the txt file. Your feedback on the latter is requested. Abyssal (talk) 19:55, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction, I'll get a complete version to you tomorrow afternoon. I'd finish it tonight but my monitor's going bad and it's getting difficult to do anything on the computer because the screen is mysteriously blurring up. Abyssal (talk) 22:13, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I've sent you the finished copy. Let me know what else I can do. Abyssal (talk) 01:40, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Not to nag, but if you need me to do anything very soon, please tell me, as I won't have internet access tomorrow. Abyssal (talk) 23:11, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I'll get started on the "lists of" tonight for the taxa I already have. Hopefully I'll get it sent out to you tonight, but if not, Monday is the soonest I can get it to you. Abyssal (talk) 23:58, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Check your email. :) Abyssal (talk) 02:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Are we still using that page template? 'Cause if we are, we need the start and end times for the time periods, and I can get to work on that. If you get this before 10:30 AM, please reply immediately 'cause I have to leave for work. Thanks. :) Abyssal (talk) 13:09, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Hey, personal life is interfering with my ability to get all that geologic time info to you. Hopefully things will clear up. Sorry I haven't gotten all that to you yet. I'll hopefully create all the Lists that were marked with the *** in the txt file I sent you very soon. Also, can we look into being able to use the bot to fill in tables more seriously? I'm facing significant pressure from other paleo-contributors about my unfinished lists. Sorry for the delay. Abyssal (talk) 02:44, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll get to work on that. Abyssal (talk) 04:13, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Here's a big chunk of those lists that need filled:

• List of prehistoric starfish
• List of prehistoric barnacles
• List of crinoid genera
• List of prehistoric echinoids
• List of edrioasteroids
• List of graptolites
• List of prehistoric sea cucumbers
• List of hyoliths
• List of prehistoric malacostracans
• List of prehistoric brittle stars
• List of prehistoric ostracods
• List of prehistoric chitons
• List of prehistoric stylophorans

There are some more, but I have to hunt them up. Abyssal (talk) 20:17, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Great! Could you remind me what else you need from me for the page creation project? Abyssal (talk) 21:47, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Something like this --> {{sort|5|[[Middle Jurassic]]}}

With the number being the order of the epoch in the phanerozoic eon. EG: Early Cambrian= 1 Middle Cambrian = 2 etc. Abyssal (talk) 22:23, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

It's good except the status column is for taxonomic status (Valid, Jr. synonym, Nomen dubium), not extant/extinct. If our database doesn't have that info, just use "Valid{{verify source}}" or something. Or maybe just "Valid," since the vast majority of them will be anyway, and it can be tweaked as errors are found. Also, the year should be in the "[[XXXX in paleontology|XXXX]]" format. Other than that it looks really good! Thanks for your hard work. Are you an admin yet? Abyssal (talk) 16:10, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I am finalizing the code right now & will likely file the BRFA tonight or early tomorrow. I'll let you know when I put it up... My RfA still has about 1.5 days left, so about midday Wednesday is when it is scheduled to close. Seems nearly certain to pass at this point though. :) --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:22, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

• gorgonocephalid= either gorgonocephalida (if you mean the order) or gorgonocephalidae if you mean the family.
• Mikrocidarió= no clue :/
• Hemieurylae= no clue :/
• Megantocrinus = it's at least mentioned in the PBDB.
• Priscanermarinus = is fine, has a mention at the PBDB
• Diceratograptus = seems fine, a google search turns up many references
• asterometrid = asterometridae
• squillid = squillidae, the mantis shrimps

Abyssal (talk) 21:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really sure we can confidently link to the names, what if there are multiple Wanners? I can't find who they are anyway, although I'm confident Agassiz is Louis Agassiz. I should hopefully have the stage times completed tonight. Abyssal (talk) 23:52, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Geological periods are done. Abyssal (talk) 15:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Second arbitrary break

How are things going? Abyssal (talk) 14:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Alright, thank you for your dedication. Abyssal (talk) 13:20, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Ever find that hour of time? It's looking like we're gonna miss creating article 3,000,000. :( Abyssal (talk) 01:22, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

How's it comin'? Abyssal (talk) 20:44, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

No pressure. Thanks for all your hard work! Abyssal (talk) 19:48, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

How goes the battle? Abyssal (talk) 14:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I've finished filling out your geologic stages page. :) Abyssal (talk) 21:13, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Just making sure you got the previous message. Abyssal (talk) 01:01, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Cool! Abyssal (talk) 16:32, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

:D Abyssal (talk) 15:20, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I notice you didn't mention stub creation in the BRFA, is this something we're planning on doing later, or have you decided against it? Also, is there any way I could be an operator? Abyssal (talk) 15:28, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

No need to worry with the request, I didn't actually do any actually work on the bot itself. As for the operator business, I just had assumed it would be run multiple times (eg. creating stubs in sessions, like 100 today, 500 tomorrow, arbitrary number the next day, etc.). Obviously having two operators would cut down on the total amount of time it would take to run through the database, if that assumption had been correct. Abyssal (talk) 04:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, ThaddeusB. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Bot requests.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

im sorry, i just think its too important to be forgotten Tim1357 (talk) 01:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, you win. I'll put it on my to-do list. :) --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:43, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Im sorry! I did not want to come off as annoying, as I know I CAN be. Congrats on getting WebCite bot up and running! Tim1357 (talk) 01:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Not annoying at all. It is a good idea, I just never prioritized it. Your passion for the idea convinced me it is worth doing. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:16, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

A reply to "Expert opinion needed"

Hi Thaddeus, I read your post on the Project Gastropods talk page and I just wanted to say something about these Sepkoski lists... User JoJan and I struggled for a long time in 2008 to clean up and fix up a simple list of "Prehistoric gastropod genera" generated from one of these lists. One problem that we perceive as living mollusk researchers is that a considerable number of the genera are still extant, some of them very much so. We think that calling them "prehistoric" gives a misleading impression. We finally came up with "List of marine gastropod genera in the fossil record" as a title, which I see has now been changed back to "List of prehistoric marine gastropod genera" by User:Abyssal. Invertzoo (talk) 21:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank for the reply. I wonder is there really a reason to call an article "List of prehistoric starfish," for example, instead of just "List of starfish?" --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:56, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Technically these are lists of organisms found in the fossil records. This is bulky nomenclature for a general encyclopedia. I have glanced through all of the lists, and, as I said before, they all contain numerous extant species, not just extant species, but common and well-known extant species, making the current name, using "prehistoric," confusing. I opt for the bulky title over the inaccurate one. The simple title "list of starfish," for some lists, will confuse the fact that some common or very well-known extant species are not well-represented in the fossil record. This may give confusion to the reader: if this is a list of this members of this taxon, why isn't something well-known included?

The lists need to indicate that species found in the fossil record may include extant species. I don't know how to word it well, but it needs to be worded for the general reader. Also, the taxonomy sections are too long. I suggested a streamlined version somewhere.

Wikipedia has some very nice mollusc articles, by the way. --69.225.5.4 (talk) 07:29, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Also, ThaddeusB, can you put up a single centralized discussion page for this, rather than having it all over various editor talk pages. My IPs change a lot, so my talk pages are not useful. --69.225.5.4 (talk) 17:29, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I will copy everything to User_talk:ContentCreationBOT after posting this. I suggest further discussion go there. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:20, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

List of what kind of gastropods? [1]

Too be honest, these Seplowski lists are not very useful. We seriously considered deleting our list article altogether about a year ago, but instead we did a huge amount of work to turn it into something vaguely respectable-looking, but still I don't think it is a very useful list at all. It absolutely cannot be called a "list of gastropod genera", and it certainly cannot be called a "list of gastropods". It is not even remotely complete in either of those ways and is unlikely to ever become so. This is why:

The list contains only those marine gastropod genera that have been found in the fossil record. It includes no land or freshwater gastropod genera whatsoever, of which there are a very large number. It includes no sea slug genera whatsoever, of which there are many hundreds. It includes no species of any kind whatsoever. Many gastropod genera have been found in the fossil record, but countless thousands of minute or fragile shelled genera have never been found as fossils and probably never will be. Most genera that have no shells left no trace whatsoever in the fossil record. Even in terms of larger, more solidly shelled species, only a tiny fraction of all the genera that ever lived have been found in the fossil record, which is of course extremely patchy and incomplete by its very nature.

The list we have does however include a number of bogus genera which were first described as gastropods, but which are no longer considered to be gastropods, and which in many cases are not even considered to be mollusks!!

The list is arranged alphabetically, not by family. All in all it is not very useful at all to anyone who is interested in living gastropods. I am not even sure how useful it is to paleontologists who study gastropods.

I imagine many of these same objections apply to the other group lists from this same source. Sorry, but there you go... best, Invertzoo (talk) 18:14, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Useful commentary. The intention was, at some point, to only list valid species from the paleontology database, but use Sepkowski for age ranges. However, the lists appear to include all species from Sepkowski, even though Sepkowski has since been updated.

Sepkowski does contain only marine taxa. I thought the taxa were being pulled from paleoDB, though, not Sepkowski, so I did not catch that the species on the lists were only marine; also I only checked the chitons and some of the crustaceans to any extent, both are outside my area, and my focus is marine, so, I'd miss that the lists were only marine. This is why these lists require your input, Invertzoo!

The bogus gastropods, and mollusks, would these then be still listed as valid species in the paleontology database? --69.225.5.4 (talk) 18:29, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I personally had no idea of any of this. Remember, I didn't generate the lists and the bot is only filing them in. To answer the specific question, it would be listed as invalid if it 1) has been renamed\found be an error\etc. - I.E. if the taxa itself is considered invalid or 2) it was demoted to a sub-genus. However, if the genus was moved to another class bu not renamed, it would be listed as valid. I do not know if this is what was intended by Abyssal or not - either he didn't consider it or he didn't feel it was a problem, as I was never informed of this possibility.

If stub creation ever takes place, the stubs wouldn't suffer in this way, as all classification data would be coming from paleodb and not be reliant on an existing Wikipedia table. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:17, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, ThaddeusB. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Dead external links.
Message added 00:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Thanks for taking the time to get this project up and running again! Tim1357 (talk) 00:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Hiya! You graciously agreed to re-launch the project a little while ago. How is the progress? If you have to much on your plate, then I can take a stab at it. I would probably use the python script (.py) , and try to modify it a bit. However, it would be some effort because I would have to get a tool-server account (I'm not sure my internet can handle it). Plus, I'm not sure the script produces a well-formatted list of dead external links. Tim1357 (talk) 00:47, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

New dump

Just a quick note, there's a new bot dump for the journal database bot to go through. Would be nice to get an update list. See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals/Journals cited by Wikipedia#Presentation tweak Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:39, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I meant to reply to this earlier... I have a couple higher priority tasks on my agenda, but I should be able to make the modifications and re-run within a week or so. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:45, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Any update? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 15:10, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I've been super busy with the GeoCities closure, but today is the last day for that so I should be able to get back to this within the next couple days. --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:15, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I'll make sure to go get something up this week - hopefully complete with all the desired changes. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:21, 9 November 2009 (UTC)]]

Poke. Any update? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:26, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm on real-world vacation for the next copy weeks so I will definitely get something up shortly. --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. Any plans to implement a couple of the presentation tweaks? (The article links/search is much needed for cleanup). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I will make as many of the changes as I can. --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Any progress? The current journal dump is getting quite old... Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:23, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's the latest dump (30 Jan 2010), for convenience. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:22, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Here's the latest dump (12 Mar 2010), for convenience. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:47, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

DeadLinkBOT

Hello! It seems like DeadLinkBOT (contribs) has stopped running? Do we need a replacement for it? I would be willing to script up a bot to take its' place. Let me know. Nice speaking with you, MatthewYeager 17:38, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Since this popped up on my watchlist, I've got a couple of link replacement tasks for DeadLinkBOT, if it is still in operation? --Tothwolf (talk) 17:46, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

It is still functional. It runs "on demand," that is when there is need to replace specific links. I haven't personally sought out any dead link replacements for a while, so it hasn't been active. I will be happy to run it again if you know of anything that needs done. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:30, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

The links I'd like DeadLinkBOT to tackle are IETF RFC links that point to faqs.org: "http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc([0-9]+).html" [2] and the old locations on ietf.org: "http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc([0-9]+).html" "http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc([0-9]+).txt" "http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc([0-9]+).txt" [3] These should be updated to point to: "http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc$number"
MediaWiki:Rfcurl was updated back in August 2004 from "http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/" to "http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/" [4] and then in May 2006 and August of 2006 to point to "http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc(number)" [5] [6] but we still have a lot of manually created links in all sorts of namespaces that point to the old locations.
I came across these while doing prep work for {{Cite IETF}} and had considered doing them myself but DeadLinkBOT would make short work of them. Updating these should be very easy since the only thing that needs to be extracted is the RFC number and a really simple regular expression will do the job.
--Tothwolf (talk) 22:47, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Wayback Bot

Hey there thaddeusB,

I did some research on the wayback machine, to help with that bot I've been pestering you about. Like you said, the bot would have to find an archived version that is at least close to the date it was accessed, so here is my solution.

Let us assume that the range for deviation from the access-date is 4 months.

And lets have example.com be our example dead link.

Also, the accessdate for that is July, 2008.

Because we have a range of four monthes, (2 months in either direction) our date range (in yyyymm format) would be.

200805 and 200809

So, in the wayback url, type the following

web.archive.org/web/200805-200809/example.com

this would produce the archived version closest to the center of the provided range. If no archive exists in the provided range, then it returns "no archive".

This, of course, works if there is an "accessdate" parameter given. If it is not given, you can query wikiblame, which gives the accesdate.

Use the following url, replacing pagename with the page's name, and linkname with the link's name.

http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php?
project=wikipedia&article=pagename&needle=linkname&lang=en&limit=2000&ignorefirst=0&
offjahr=2009&offmon=10&offtag=26&searchmethod=int&order=asc

the page will produce a statement "insertion found between (datestamp) and (datestamp), which can then be substituted for the accessdate. Whew, and thats all i got. I might have just spent a lot of time telling you things you already knew, but I thought that was a good way to work through the problems you listed in the bot request i originally made. tell me what you think. Tim1357 (talk) 21:15, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for "pestering" me. I, in fact, was completely unaware of the wikiblame system and only vaguely familiar with the archive.org system so the information was definitely helpful. Hopefully I'll find the tim geocities e to program the bot soon. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:24, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Definitely take your time, this is not nearly as urgent as geocities, what do we have, 16 hours left? Good luck! Tim1357 (talk) 00:30, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

No idea really - the wording is quite vague. I don't really expect it to suddenly disappear at 12:01a, although it is possible. I wouldn't be surprised to see at least one links linger on for a few days. If they are truly deleting every page like they claim, that will take quite some time to complete.

As far as progress goes, all 26k enwiki links finished shortly after midnight yesterday. The combined total of all foreign language Wikipedia has about 3k links to go out of 51k. Then I have to do another run through to try and get some of the "503 - temporarily unavailable pages" (~1% of total). Based on the rate so far, it looks like a bit less than 2 hours of archiving remains. I believe just about everything salvageable (nearly 10% were already dead) will be archived in time. :) It will be awhile before all the Wikipedia pages are updated though. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic! I almost sent an email to yahoo begging them to wait a few more hours, I thought it would be really that close. Kudos for getting the job done so quickly! Tim1357 (talk) 00:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Some of the existing dead links may have been page renames or prior removals (like when Yahoo purged untold numbers of inactive accounts) and may still be salvageable with archive.org. --Tothwolf (talk) 20:40, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, many of these sites probably decayed for the "normal" reasons of people abandoning their project or changing sites and not leaving redirects behind. The higher rate than normal is probably due at least in part to people moving when they learned GeoCities was closing. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Re: BOT you were working on with Abyssal to record speicies info (?)

This may not make a whole lot of sense. Abyssal suggested that I contact you about a bot you were working on to automate "filing in tables" on arthropod invertebrates. Here is the text of his message to me...

"Actually, come to think of it, maybe you should talk to User:ThaddeusB before continuing. We were collaborating on a bot that would fill in the tables automatically from the PBDB, but it fell into development hell. Should it continue it may render your work unnecessary. You should tell him your plans and ask him if any future work on the bot would effect your planned editing. Filling in a lot of data manually would be an unfortunate waste of effort if it ends up getting overwritten by the database-harvesting bot. Abyssal (talk) 00:02, 21 November 2009 (UTC)"

I have only entered a small amount of info in the list of eurypterids, which is what he was referring to. I am presently entering species descriptive information from the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology onto the pages on each individual genus. As the source I am working from is a non-digital paper source, I doubt that a bot will affect that work. As for the name and date info that I have entered onto the species lists, if that could be automated, more power to you. My input was minimal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Digthepast (talk • contribs) 18:55, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Just a reminder...

Hey there!

Just a reminder to generate the list of dead links.

This reminds me - a really need to generate that list... Yes, I will output two lists - a complete alphabetical one & a separate list with the most "popular" dead links. I'll make finally finishing the program the make this list my top priority for the next week.--ThaddeusB (talk) 8:28 pm, 4 October 2009, Sunday (1 month, 21 days ago) (UTC−4)

Thanks again for taking the time to do that! Tim1357 (talk) 19:34, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Statistics

Hi, I wonder if you're still interested in saving regularly the statistics as we had disucssed here. Cenarium (talk) 14:38, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess I never noticed that you wanted some additional stats that aren't already tracked at the link the other editor provided. As such, I had incorrectly assumed the bot was no longer wanted... I am on real-world vacation the next couple weeks, so I should be able to get something programmed before the end of the year. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The Auto-categorizing Robot

Hi! A couple of months back, you created this 'bot to work with National Register of Historic Places historic district categories. (THANKS!) From User:The Auto-categorizing Robot/Logs/NRHP Index, it appears that the categorizing work began, but then stopped. This task is still needed (see Template talk:Infobox_nrhp#Problem with autocategorization to Category:Historic districts in the United States for the latest expressions of concern). Was there a problem with the 'bot or the task design that someone else could help out with? --Orlady (talk) 21:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The only problem was that I never restarted the task after the last run finished... Thanks for the reminder - I will restart it w/in the next day or two. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:38, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! --Orlady (talk) 15:01, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Can this bot be started again soon? --Orlady (talk) 22:10, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Please? --Orlady (talk) 18:09, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry; I haven't done much the past few days. Will try to get to it tomorrow. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:56, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

It still hasn't run. Is there a problem that someone else could possibly help with? --Orlady (talk) 16:40, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

[outdent] I see that real life has been interfering with your wiki-life lately. I hope things are getting sorted out for you. Is there anything anyone else can do to help with this 'bot process? --Orlady (talk) 00:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Please advise if there's anything anyone else can do to help get this job running again. It's been more than three months since it last operated. --Orlady (talk) 06:11, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I'll get it back up tonight or tomorrow afternoon. Thank you for your patience. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:26, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Charlie Palmer (chef)

If you want more of the fine foods meme this new article is mighty skimpy. Otherwise, you're welcome to help out on the Tacoma, Washington architecture subjects I've uncovered (see top of my user page article list...) or to do your own thing. :) Anyway, great job on that article you fixed up. ChildofMidnight (talk) 07:35, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Assignment 4?

Is it ready yet? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 02:49, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Schwa GA

On behalf of WP:CHICAGO, kudos on a great article. You might want to consider taking it to WP:FAC. It is a very thorough article. Note the WP:LEAD will need to be consolidated into four paragraphs for FAC if you are interested.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 09:23, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. I am definitely considering taking it to FA, but that's something I've never done before so I'll have to read over the requirements first. I also have ordered a couple off-line sources from the library that I want to (potentially) incorporate first.

In the mean time, any suggestions you have to improve the article (even small ones) are certainly welcome. --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

You can see, I added a few minor things. Remove anything that you don't think should really be there. I look forward to seeing this at WP:FAC. FAC always encourages a visit to WP:PR first. If you are unsure of how this will fare at FAC, you might want to go through a WP:PR.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:47, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

ContentCreationBOT

Hi there. I'm really sorry to bother you, as I know you're busy, but I was wondering if you had any updates concerning Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ContentCreationBOT. The BRFA has been open since September, and the bot has been in trial for seventeen days. Are you planning on running this bot soon, or are there still problems affecting it? Best. — The Earwig @ 22:40, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:RFBOT

Your recent bot approvals request has been expired. Please see the request page for details. Josh Parris 03:03, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

User:WebCiteBOT

Seriously, what's up with User:WebCiteBOT? It says it's active, yet doesn't seem to have run since November. This is a key task - if you can't run it, can you try and hand it over to someone else? Rd232 ^talk 07:36, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Presumably caused by this. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 11:05, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

No, that down-for-maintenance issue must be recent; I've used webcitation.org plenty of times since November, I'm pretty sure in the least week or two. Rd232 ^talk 17:30, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

ThaddeusB, I understand that someone's priorities on Wikipedia can change. You get burnt out on something and stop devoting attention to it. Given that, I was wondering if you had any desire to support WebCiteBOT any more? It hasn't ran since November and you have repeatedly said on the bot's talk page that you hope to have it running soon, but it hasn't ran since late November. If you no longer want to support the bot, would you be willing to hand it off to someone who does? If so, I will raise the proposition at WP:BOTREQ and hope we have other takers as I feel strongly that this bot can do a lot of good for the project. Thanks.—NMajdan•talk 15:06, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Hello, I appreciate your concern. Fortunately, I am finally getting back into Wikipedia after 3-4 months of being pretty inactive. I should have WebCiteBOT back up by the end of the coming weekend. --ThaddeusB-public (talk) 21:40, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Thaddeus, do you have an update on the bot?—NMajdan•talk 02:17, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I have to make a couple changes to the code due to recent changes in the MediaWiki software. I'm optimistic that will happen tomorrow. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:43, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Is there an update?—NMajdan•talk 19:18, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Thaddeus, sorry to ask again, but is there an update on the bot? Should we go back to WP:BOTREQ and request another WebCitation bot? Would you be willing to help the new bot creator if one does volunteer?—NMajdan•talk 14:18, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Thaddeus, do you have an update?»NMajdan·talk 14:42, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

UPDATE 2010 Aug 25 - Related conversation at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 37#WebCiteBOT still down, replacement growing more urgent - Hydroxonium (talk | contribs) 01:06, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Transwikibot

Yep. Fritzpoll has left permanently for certain reasons and sadly will not be returning. If you like Thaddeus I can email him and ask him to give you the bot script to continue to download the lists from the others wikis. So far he has done Faroes and Albania and they look good.. Sometime we also want to programme a bot to create batches of articles... Are you still interested? I don't want this project to have been another dud and die out. Yes it is relianlt on a loose group of individuals often working independently but it would be nice to work towards a coordinated way of transferring articles together. Hope you are well. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 10:02, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Your response is overwhelming me!... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:23, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Hehe. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time for any of my bot projects recently. Maybe this coming week, I'll have some time... Failing that, I have a lot of free time coming up in about a month. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:JCW update?

Hi, would it be possible to update WP:JCW ? There are a few suggestions and issues on WT:JCW. IMO, the most critical improvement would be the verification of whether or not the target is an article about a journal, as I suspect this would result in many more high profile journals ending up on the missing list. I'd be happy to give you a hand with the coding if that is of any use. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:23, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I am finally back on Wikipedia "full time" now after a 4+ month absence. I'll try to update the code, by week next, but if not I will at least run it to get an updated list. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:54, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Not to be annoying but... Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:16, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Any update? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:02, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Please, it's been 10 months since it last run. A new report without any code updates to the code would still be immensely usefull. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:33, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll get it done this weekend, 100% for sure. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:29, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I started the download/uncompress/run program cycle this afternoon. If it goes at the same speed as previous runs, new data should be on wiki on Tuesday. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:45, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Party time! Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:40, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

New dump for WP:JCW

Here's the link to the most recent dump. If you can add improvements to the dump (such as links to the articles which are citing "journal" that are cited less than 5 times, and the search links) that would be great and really help with the cleanup of "bad inputs", but if you don't have time for coding the extra bits, we'd still be pretty happy with a normal run. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Latest dump. We did lots of work since the last one, so instead of the top 500 pop/missing, could it be upped to the top 1000 pop/missing? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:12, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Stats tool

Can we get the tool that does the stats at T:DYK/Q#Current_number_of_hooks_on_the_suggestions_page off of your puter and onto the tool server so someone can fix it when it breaks? It breaks constantly and right now it's been broken for over three days. Shubinator was working on a replacement but he's not finished it. — Rlevse • Talk • 11:32, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

User:ThaddeusB/Celebriducks

You userfied this and never did anything to it. Still planning on doing something? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 05:43, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Euan Blair

I was disappointed to find out that the Euan Blair article had been deleted after it had graduated from the Wikipedia:Article Incubator. This was some time ago, but I found out that it was put up for deletion after it was deleted. You had given my a message congratulating me on bringing the article up to standard. What can be done about this? Snowman (talk) 11:36, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Remember Abyssal?

Hey, remember me? We had a fruitful collaboration on a bot to generate articles on prehistoric animals that fell through because of a disruptive editor. I'ev recently had a good idea for a bot that could benefit almost any Wikiproject. I left a proposal at the bot requests page but the idea failed to attract any interest. I thought I would run it by you and see if you might be interested in developing a bot like this. Below is a copy of my original post to the bot requests page.

It would be very helpful to almost any Wikiproject if someone could program a bot that would compile data on the quality assessments of every article within a wikiproject's categories into a table sort of like those of the bot that makes "popular pages" pages (example). It would be nice if, additionally, every category could also get a numerical rating averaging the scores of every article it contains. Every assessment level could be assigned a number in increasing order so a stub would be a 1, a start a 2, and so on topping off at 6 for good articles and 7 for featureds. Giving a numerical rating to categories could help Wikiprojects keep track of which categories would be easy to turn into featured topics and which need a lot of work. Would anyone be interested in creating such a bot? Abyssal (talk) 20:59, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Transwikibot

I mentioned this again at Wikipedia talk:Stub. Would you still be interested in this?♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:16, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Prehistoric articles bot

I'm open to reviving that project. Abyssal (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

It's officially on my agenda then. :) Expect me to get to it around the end of February. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:04, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey, I had an idea. It might be more productive for us to design a bot similar to our prehistoric animal bot to extract conservation data from, say, the IUCN database and add that information to the years in the environment articles. Since we'd be editing only a small number of articles our success would give us credibility making it easier for a future approval of the prehistoric bot's operations. It would also give us a chance to work out any potential kinks if something goes wrong. Whaddaya say? Abyssal (talk) 03:27, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Can you give me an example (IUCN page & info to be extracted) of what you had in mind? I assume you mean something like "so-and-so species declared extinct"? --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:58, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the gist of what I was thinking. Like, a bot that would add something to 1998 in the environment like "Acacia purpurea was assessed for the IUCN Red List as vulnerable by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre as vulnerable. Its previous assessment, in 1997, found it insufficiently known for categorization." And of course add to 1997 in the environment that it was found insufficiently known for categorization at the time. Here's a link to A. purpurea at the IUCN red list. Abyssal (talk) 16:59, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Lets discuss it at Wikipedia_talk:Environment_by_year_project#Use_of_a_bot_to_add_articles. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 18:56, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Envirobot

Hey, if you're still interested in programming that "years in the environment" bot, is there anything you need us to do before you get to work on it? Abyssal (talk) 21:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

It'll be a little while (a week perhaps) before I'm ready to work on it. I don't need anythign form you at this time. --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:10, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Abyssal (talk) 00:05, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Just touching base again. Abyssal (talk) 20:32, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Reviving interest in the Article Incubator

I notice that you commented on Wikipedia talk:Article Incubator and suggested that you are interested in trying to revive the project. I have a similar interest in doing that, but I felt a viable way to get that accomplished was to get a team of about 4-5 core supporters who were committed to really getting it going before commencing. I could push it further in terms of trying to hit up some of the various mailing lists, put something on the Signpost, or otherwise spread interest in the project, but getting that core group has been somewhat of a struggle. Defining the scope of the project has also been somewhat of a problem as even the idea of an Article Incubator has become almost a mirror to whoever is contemplating the concept and means so many different things to so many people.

Anyway, thank you for your interest. I really would like to see you help revive the project, and would like to offer my name as somebody to help you out in that endeavor as well. --Robert Horning (talk) 13:14, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Change always starts somewhere... Even if it is only you and I who are committed at first, maybe we can get something going. I have some ideas to spread interest once the article incubator gets going again, but first things first. Let's nail down the basics first. What do you envision for the project? That is, where should it concentrate its efforts. The least controversial route may be to start by rescuing abandoned userspace drafts. Also, where do you see your interest in the project? - writing content, finding stuff to save, maintenance, etc.

I look forward to working with you on reviving the incubator. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:57, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

One of the first things to tackle is to simply go through the stack of existing articles in the incubator area (renamed under the incubator) and determine the disposition of those articles. Some could be rescued and others simply deleted. More in general, a reboot of the project really shouldn't be dealing with that older stuff that was never completely dealt with in the past and a rebooted project should try to start with a clean sheet... although the backlog could be interesting to review.

My main area of direct interest is primarily with article rescue, although it would be interesting to also perform a survey over what kind of articles were successful in being incubated. There are success stories, where articles saved from the AfD grinder eventually made their way to main namespace articles under no threat of further deletion discussions. Identifying some of the elements of success may also provide some clues for what things could be beneficial to Wikipedia and since they are success stories they can be demonstrations for why other people could and should be involved with the incubator.

Something should change in terms of the bureaucratic overhead, and if that is being really selective in terms of what qualifies for inclusion into the incubator or some time limits on content revisions... there are things that certainly could be procedural changes to how things happen in the project. What was happening is broken, so some changes are necessary.

Summing up, my view is that the incubator can act as something to catch articles falling through cracks that aren't up to par with Wikipedia standards but have real potential to become important and even essential articles to the project. It is to provide a 3rd direction (or fourth in the case of a merge option) for content being debated in the AfD areas as well as articles being developed in a "new editor boot camp". Certainly the incubator could put a much friendlier face onto Wikipedia than is currently the case. --Robert Horning (talk) 14:09, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, ThaddeusB. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Bot requests.
Message added 04:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hi. If you write any code towards such a bot, please reply there. :) Otherwise feel free to reply on my talk page if you like. —Unforgettableid (talk) 04:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC)