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Contents 1 Glossary of pool and billiards terms 2 Pharaoh 3 == 3.1 My userpage 3.2 Misunderstood 3.3 Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor 3.4 Bot flag 3.5 Misspelling count 3.6 Writers bloc 3.7 The Move Management Center

[edit] Glossary of pool and billiards terms

Just wanted to let you know it's up and running. I turned off the automatic table of contents, and set up self-links so, for instance, when a definition says "see mechanical bridge" users can click on the word and the page will take them straight to it. It seems to work really well.

I set up a few redirects as well, and sometime this weekend I will settle in on the other articles and start making new internal links to the glossary. Hope you like it! Kafziel 00:01, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I like it, I like it! I already made some minor edits. But I still think the name should be Glossary of pool and billards related terms. --Fuhghettaboutit 01:00, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, what do you think about making all the terms enclosed in triple equal signs (===term===) rather than doubles? I did it in preview mode and I think it works and looks better. Usually in lists, a term and its definition are not greatly out of proportion to each other in size, and since the glossary is quite extensive (taking a bow), and I plan on adding quite a few more, and I'm sure others will as well, this could cut down on the size of the entire article as well as the necessary scroll to navigate it. --Fuhghettaboutit 01:07, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Never mind; another editor already made that change. --Fuhghettaboutit 01:17, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pharaoh

Thank you for the edits, they are appreciated. WikiProject_Ancient_Egypt.

—-- That Guy, From That Show! ^(talk) 2006-02-19 00:13Z

You are most welcome --Fuhghettaboutit 00:14, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ==

Careful. You are changing "Rydberg states" inappropriately and making it inaccurate. I have an M.S. in physics, a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics. I have worked in atomic and small molecule spectroscopy. I am an expert in this field. Please refer to the Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy page before making other changes.

Jabberw0cky 01:01, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Moved by me from my userpage to here where it belongs--Fuhghettaboutit 01:19, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to the addition of an introduction and not paragraph breaks, wikification, etc. The article needed an introduction; If the rearrangement of your language to create that introduction created an error, feel free to edit that change, but the form of the edit—starting the article with a short introduction— should remain and be adapted. If you peruse some vetted, established articles you can get a good handle on the form typically used for ease of the reader, almost always including a precis at the start to introduce the reader to the subject matter. Some examples of standard article forms might be Rydberg formula, Spectral line, Feshbach resonance and Hydrogen line. You should also add references. Your text may be correct to many decimal places, but articles require independent verification--especially where the subject matter is not familiar to most people and thus not easily identifiable as correct or not and as established knowledge or original research. --Fuhghettaboutit

[edit] My userpage

===>Thanks for fixing the typo And I'm sure you'll respond "Fuhghettaboutit." -Justin (koavf), talk 03:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Ay...(). Ha! By the way, I've never gotten a good idea from anyone if there is an etiquette to making edits to other people's userpages (which I have violated numerous times)--but I'm compulsive; never met a typo I didn't find personally offensive.

[edit] Misunderstood

When I asked about how to create the table (ish) thing you misunderstood what I said. I know how to create what you told me about already though what I'm referring to is different. When you press edit the template doesn't come up. If you actually check the very end of the articles on The Beatles, Metallica and Phil Collins, you'll know what I'm on about. Thanks for trying to help anywayLuciferMorgan 00:14, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I think I understand now. I have provided new instructions at your question on the help desk. --Fuhghettaboutit 01:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor

Hi, before moving articles to alternative titles, please read Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Western clergy). Thanks. Gentgeen 22:09, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info; all edits reverted. Message left at help desk as well. --Fuhghettaboutit 22:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bot flag

Hi there Fuhghettaboutit! I wanted to let you know that you need to apply for a bot flag to be running such frequent edits. Wikipedia:Bots is the place to check this out; for now you can put your name under 'bots running without a flag'. Until you get this flag, please keep your edits to no more than a few a minute. Check out the full bots page for more information, and any questions can be pointed at Wikipedia_talk:Bots. Thanks! JoeSmack ^Talk 02:00, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

---

I suppose few have worked out a system for making quick edits by hand as I have but I am not a bot, nor am I running a bot and my edits are all done manually (and you can notice that occasionally I make mistakes if you look carefully, such as not hitting minor every so often). I also sometimes stop and make other changes that strike me such as boldfacing the article's subject and usually put that in the edit summary. I find the process very relaxing and I can now do it in my sleep.

This is how it is done:

Go to the Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings and do a search for a particular common spelling error. Say nothern (northern). Now right click on the first article containing the error, hit edit this page and minimize. Move on to the next. Do this for say 25 articles (don't open too many, over 30 and your computer [or at least mine] will run sluggishly). Each article is now minimized on your screen's taskbar. The number of windows that can be seen as minimized in the taskbar are always the same, on my computer eight; on another computer I use its fourteen (it depends on the screen size). Now click on all the articles that are minimized by running along them on the taskbar left clicking and you have eight open windows (each one will now automatically appear in a series as you minimize the one before it).

Now in the first first article, type into the edit summary what you are doing, I always use the format: incorrect spelling--->correct spelling (for our example, nothen--->northern). Highlight that and click copy (control + c) so it is in your notepad (another words, every time you paste, that same edit summary text will appear (paste using control + v, which is blindingly faster than right clicking and choosing paste if you are used to it).

Now click edit from your internet explorer menu--->click find (on This Page) and type in the incorrect word (nothern), in the search box that appears (after the first search the word is automatically in the find (on This Page) for all future iterations. All this set up takes about 20 seconds (not inclusive of opening up the 25 windows). As soon as the word is found (immediately) click in it at the right spot, (between the "o" and "t" in nothern hit "r" to correct make the spelling correction, put your cursor in the edit summary, hit control + v (to paste nothen--->northern) hit This is a minor edit box and Save page, immediately minimize, the next window is open automatically on your page (the reason minimizing again is key is because there is lag time while the save is occurring; if you wait for each page to save and then move on to next the process is almost half as slow), repeat and rinse till all eight pages are corrected and minimized.

As soon as you see your desktop, you know that you've gotten to the end of the series. Now just click on the eight pages that are minimized and have finished saving, by running along them on the taskbar left clicking (they will now all be open again on your screen); put your cursor over the close window "x" button and click eight times to close all eight now corrected and saved pages. As soon as you have done this, there are eight more unedited pages in your task bar. Open up the next eight and repeat.

Once you're used to it, it's easy. --Fuhghettaboutit 03:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Might I suggest you press CTRL+F to invoke Find, instead of using the menu, it would speed things up even more!

Noted!

Anyway, I thought I ought to add something to this discussion. As you will see if you visit my user page, I am engaged in the same sort of work as you are. Although I have not done quite as much. As for the 'bot' question, I shall quote myself from another user's talk page:

I am using tools which automate the processes of searching for and retrieving articles, locating errors and recording corrections. However, I make all actual edits myself – there are no automated 'bot' edits being made from this account.

These tools are custom-written things, not AutoWikiBrowser, and among other things they generate the list at User:Gurch/Spelling. Although my edits are therefore more 'assisted' than yours, they are still very definitely manual.

User:JoeSmack has also brought the concept of 'bots' to my attention. I have had a look at Wikipedia:Bots and unfortunately it seems that they do define 'bot' editing as any sort of high-speed mass-editing, not just automated editing without human supervision. Hence, under the policy (which is admittedly very difficult to follow) it would seems that we should both be contributing using 'bot flags', or contributing much more slowly - more like 1 edit per minute (which I certainly couldn't bear). However the policy does not make a number of other things clear, such as whether we should be making these mass-edits from special 'bot' accounts, rather than our 'normal' user accounts.

I took a look at that page (in fact read it very carefully) and I don't read it the same waty you do. Everything points to that the page is specific to actual bots—automated or semi automated processes with their own coded software that interact with Wikipedia. The fact that they detect bots by looking for edits with short lag time just means that we (or at least me since I am 100% manual, nyaa) have run afoul of a false-positive with the detection process.

So, having been persuaded by User:JoeSmack, I have added a request to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals just to see what happens. According to their own policy, after seven days if nobody has opposed your request then it's OK, so I'm hoping they'll remain silent on the matter, then I can just carry on as I have been.

I will not follow suit. Talk about square peg in round hole. You're a human goddamit!:-) Seriously though, I think the whole thing makes no sense. The reason they need to keep an eye on bots and have them register separately is because they're bots. Will you run all night automatically making the same mistake over and over. Will you not recognize a song title as a song title? (I do that all the time; pause and google to make sure stuff like that is not reflected in the actual name). Will you run haywire and use up half of Wikipedia's bandwith? Of course not. You're making spelling corrections; you're not a bot, and shouldn't need to pretend you are because some blind parameter software process flagged you as doing something which made you (falsely) look like one.

I suggest you might as well do the same, as far as I can see the worst that can happen is you'll have to create another account to make these edits. Which shouldn't be a problem, unless you have editcountitis of course. You could call it User:Lookisaidfuhghettaboutit.

lol

Also, I might as well take this opportunity to commend you for the work you've done so far. It is nice to know that someone else cares about typographical errors. A quick peek at Interiot does Kate suggests you're well past 8000 corrections now; that's 8000 fewer errors for me to worry about. So have one of these flower things, I think it's called a 'WikiThanks'.

My first award! Greatly appreciated!

You can edit in your sleep? I'm impressed -- Gurch 15:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Lol. Now that I think about I may have given someone fodder for thinking I am a bot, what if that were taken literally? --Fuhghettaboutit 21:42, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey guys, I see you've found each other. To be honest, I think the policy is kinda dumb when it comes down to simply doing good for wikipedia. Really I was just trying to save you some sass from a bureaucrat later on. If you guys aren't worried about it don't be. Keep up the good work regardless of if you get a bot flag or not - cause you guys really pump it out! :) JoeSmack ^Talk 15:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misspelling count

Hi again. You may be interested to know that I've just run a mass Google search for all the misspellings listed on Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings, and the rather depressing news is that there are approximately 60,833 misspellings still to be corrected. Some of these are intentional of course, but then not all misspellings are on the lists, so it could be more or it could be less. Either way, it's a lot -- Gurch 19:16, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

There are probably more spelling errors not on the list than on it. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them. I hate them. Kill-destroy-exterminate. --Fuhghettaboutit 21:47, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

"Kill-destroy-exterminate"? Now you sound even more like a bot :). Anyway, my request on BRFA has so far been ignored, assuming things stay that way I think you've made the right decision by not even bothering with it. For now, I will also continue making corrections as before. Incidentally, your method of eliminating the 'lag' caused by waiting for pages to save is a good one, I hadn't thought about that -- Gurch 08:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Well I was hoping you would read that and guess I was going for a Dalek sound --Fuhghettaboutit 17:54, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Gah, Google is being a bit strange. I re-ran the search today to try and gauge how much the figure changed in one day (obviously Google's cache is out of date, but at least it's always out of date by roughly the same amount). Apparently there are now only 38,739 of them. I don't know why this could be, but I think the lesson we can learn from this is: mass Google searches are about as accurate as a lawn sprinkler. And anyway, that's still a very large number -- Gurch 15:14, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Gurch, it's so much worse than that. Think of any word let me see...(looking at another document on my screen) how about "abandon." Now I looked at the list of common misspellings...yep it's listed with the misspelling, "abondon". Now think of some other likely ways it might be misspelled. Ah, abandan gets me 5 results. I tried a few others without result so this is not a sterling example, but I have come upon others in the past that are not listed, with hundreds of results. I'm betting the number is closer to 500,000. --Fuhghettaboutit 17:50, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, you are right. The current lists of misspellings are not extensive enough. Unfortunately, if they were extended to cover every concievable typo, they would become impossible to use. Comparing my personal correction log with Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/A, it's clear that I've corrected several hundred errors in 'A'-words that are not listed there. The best course of action would be to remove some of the less common errors from those pages and replace them with more common ones, although that would be very tedious, and I doubt I could be bothered to do it.

You have just given me another more interesting idea, though. What we need is not a list of all possiblilties, but some way of generating all the plausible misspellings of a particular word. In other words, a sort of mini-application into which you can enter "abandon" and it'll spit out "abondon", "abandan", and so on down to less likely ones such as "abandno" (people tend to notice transposition of the last two letters). Of course it's easy to come up with these yourself, with a little thought, as you have demonstrated, but if I actually tried to put that into practise, I would probably end up trying combinations more or less at random. This approach would let me do it systematically, without wasting time searching for stuff I've already done, or overlooking ones that I haven't. I can't promise anything, but I'll look into it tonight.

Oh, and I corrected almost 1000 pages today. I think it's a personal record :) -- Gurch 18:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Jackpot! -- "possesed", 84 Google results, not in the lists. Probably not worth the four hours it took to find it, although I have also come up with a method of estimating the number of misspellings there would be if we weren't running around fixing them. Apparently, "seperate" would occur 2622 times, and in fact there are only about 345, so that's nice to know -- Gurch 17:43, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Also "posses", 156 results for that one but some of them are false positives (e.g. Jamaican Posses) -- Gurch 17:48, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, I give in. You were right. "Possesive" (16), "posessive" (4), "posessions" (30), "possesions" (36), "posessee" (1), "possesees" (1), "posesed" (1), "posesion" (12), "posesive" (1), "possesssion" (2), "possesss" (4), "posssess" (1), "posssesed" (2), "posssesion" (1), "posesssed" (1), "posession" (1), all without entries in the lists. It takes forever just to look at one word, and that's just the obvious ones. There are probably more. Certainly there's no way I'd have found them all without a systematic search.

Anyway, another more useful thing I've done today is import all of the Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings lists into a spreadsheet. There are just over 2400 errors on the list, but I'm now adding some new ones (up to 2500 already). At some point, I'll convert the spreadsheet back into articles and update the lists. I've added the Google search results to it as well, so they might as well also go into the lists (unreliable though they are, they do at least give a rough guide) -- Gurch 18:11, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Writers bloc

Since you originally put the speedy tag on this article, I thought I would invite you to come participate in its AfD debate: -->HERE. --Hetar 09:30, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up --Fuhghettaboutit 13:03, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Move Management Center

I've added quite a bit of content to The Move Management Center, which you had marked as not following Wiki's policies and guidelines late last week. Could you please review and give me your comments. I feel the entry is fairly unique and notable for wikipedia. Thehusband 21:12, 20 March 2006 (UTC)