User talk:Ram-Man/archive6

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[edit] Multi license tagging

I've tagged my main page... it's lost temporarily though because of various reasons. Should be back soon. - Ta bu shi da yu 10:28, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] GFDL, etc.,

Hi,

I don't mind making available my contributions to others. However,I have to read all the fine print carefully and then decide what category to put them under. Right now I don't have the time. Will do it shortly. KRS 15:38, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Confused

I'm jsut confused by the whole thing. Since few of my contributions are really mine -- some have been changed in ways I thoroughly disagree with, others, like WaltPohl's changes to Feudalism, are great. Anyway, I thought the whole wiki thing was that nothing belongs to any of us. That being the case, isn't this all academic and up to Jimbo? JHK

I am surprised at the way even Jimbo seems to be looking at the content of Wikipedia from a perspective of pieces of work. We should be looking at each user's edits as individual works, and Wikipedia's articles as derivative works incorporating all of them together. Thereby, I can still release my contributions under CC-BY, which (I think) makes them legitimate for inclusion into the whole article, which is then released under GFDL. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 23:38, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Requesting more detail

I had no idea I was in the top 2000. I still don't think I am. Regardless... Can you explain to me what exactly is the incompatibility between GFDL and CC-BY-SA?

To put it simply, each license, while very similar in purpose and meaning, states that only the same identical license (itself or any later version) may be used for derivative works. So if I modify a GFDL document, it must be GFDL. The same for CC-BY-SA. The text of the license specifically restricts the license to itself only, so the licenses are only compatible with themselves. -- RM
Then doesn't that cause problems for Wikipedia? Since Wikipedia as a whole is licensed as GFDL, then me dual licensing my material as GFDL and CC-BY-SA will effectively make Wikipedia in violation of my dual license. - KT
No, a copyright holder can license his original contributions under any license he sees fit, including using different incompatible licenses. If others agree to this, the multi-licensing chain is maintained, but it can be easily broken and by default the GFDL chain will always "stick". -- RM

The idea of having to multi-license works foretells a nightmare of having to release everything we do with a veritable cluttered patchwork of licenses.

The purpose of not making this a Wikipedia policy is to avoid mandatory nightmares. If someone seeks to use any article in a multi-licensed fashion, it is solely their responsibility to remove the copyright violations from the copied document, not the responsibility of the copyright holder(s) of the article. -- RM
What I mean is that, as more forward-forcing licenses are created, and people start using them, then in order to ensure the free use of our material, we'll just have to tack on each of those liceneses to allow those people to use them. We will then be talking about Triple Licensing and Quadruple Licensing and so on. In fact, it starts to sound like anti-free interests could kill the free use movement simply by creating and pushing lots of forward-forcing "free use" licenses, causing a tangled mess of license tunnels. - KT
Yup, it is unfortunate. The fact that the CC licenses are popular helps. Only the public domain solves this problem by not being copyleft and fully compatible with every license. -- RM

Besides, if GFDL and CC-BY-SA are incompatible, isn't there then a conflict between using two licenses? Does it truly imply the freedom of both, or does it imply the restrictions of both?

The latter (I think). Both licenses only allow themselves, so in theory one would have to accept all copyleft licenses in order to have true freedom, but trying something like that is difficult at best. There are no perfect ways around this problem, but various people try different things that work for them, including multi-licensing under any form of the CC licenses, or even using the public domain. I'm not sure if I am answering your question here... -- RM
Not quite, but you illustrate a problem. If dual licensing implies the restrictions of both, then in order to reuse my work, any reuser has to dual license it as well. That sucks. - KT
Correct -- RM
No, this is not correct, I suspect RM misread your last question when he said Correct. A reuser can pick any of licenses you put your work under, and reuse your work under that license alone if they wish. By multi licensing, you're giving people the option to reuse your work under the GFDL or a different license or licenses. It is or and not and, if you don't not get what I mean. ~leif ☺ HELO 20:20, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
Goodness, I must be more careful next time. What I thought you meant was that in order to keep something dual licensed, a reuser also has to dual-license it. You can never require someone to choose both licenses, because the licenses themselves forbid that! -- RM

Furthermore... Why would it not be enough for me to singly license everything with CC-BY or CC-BY-SA? Lastly, would it be possible simply to draw up a new license that was compatible with both, and just use that?

I've made a template (Template:WikimediaTextLicensing) which gives the WikiMedia foundation permission in the future to license my contributions for me under any copyleft license it chooses, thus freeing them from always having to ask me for new licenses. You can also explictly license under those two licenses, which will obviously widen the ability for your contributions to be shared in that manner. -- RM
I am leaning towards simply CC-BY, which will not force a license on any forward user. I do want attribution, and I also want to encourage reuse. If I license something as CC-BY, no matter what anyone else does with it, the original material is still free for use. I don't frankly like the -SA part very much, nor do I like the GFDL as of this discussion. I'll take a look at yours. - KT
I think if you use CC-BY, then if you'd want to use it in a GFDL or CC-BY-SA (or other copyleft) license, then all you need to do is keep the copyright information in derivative works and to give proper attributions. Sounds like a decent step up from public domain. -- RM

Thanks, Keith D. Tyler [flame] 18:12, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC) (reposted)

[edit] Hi

I'm not in favor of using Rambot to recruit people to your campaign for relicensing, and I encourage you to slow down a little bit here. You're making people confused and nervous, I'm afraid, even though this isn't your intention at all of course.

Hey thanks for your clarification. As it stands, I am not planning on doing anything until all discussions have taken place and concerns met, so no one needs be fearful or confused. It is unlikely that the bot will be used again, at least in any fashion similar to the way it was used. I'd still prefer to use it in a limited fashion, such as adding comments to small groups of user pages at a time, just to save me some time to work on other tasks at the same time. This is a different issue from whether or not to send the messages at all, which some people also oppose. -- RM

One of the things that you wrote somewhere was something about getting "90%" agreement. This would not be enough. Only unanimous agreement makes a license change possible. This is why I think it is pointless and silly to try to relicense all of wikipedia, especially since a reform of the GNU FDL is coming soon in the next version.

One does not need 100% of all users to change the licenses of certain individual articles, just the editors of those articles or the portions of those articles to be copied. I have stated countless times that I am not trying to change Wikipedia's license because a new version of the GFDL is coming, and it should make it a much better and preferred license. The reason for getting as many users as possible is to make Wikipedia content as open as possible before it becomes encumbered by a license. -- RM

I do not oppose, however, the attempt to find a way to get your Rambot articles into wikitravel. This is a particular unique case, and it seems that the effort is sensible and worthwhile. But this is not, in my opinion, the best way to move forward with all of wikipedia. --Jimbo Wales 20:17, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

After a long discussion, I do plan on focusing my attention on users who have edited the "rambot articles". That has always been my primary goal, although many users have not seen to agree to just those articles, but to all articles. The main problem was that I did not figure out who those users were, because it was a difficult process to find out. But such is life, and I will have the bot figure that out from this point. Do you mean that you don't desire Wikipedia to be multi-licensed because (1) You oppose the idea of sharing all Wikipedia content under another copyleft license or (2) You just oppose the idea of trying to change the policy here, such as mandatory multi-licensing or even an official policy supporting it. Put another way, is this a problem with sharing or a problem with policy? -- RM
I'm strongly in favor of sharing, of course. And I would not mind multi-licensing. I am quite hopeful, rather, that all of this will prove to be a confusing waste of effort, as it is my belief that the next revision of GNU FDL 2.0 will take care of all this seamlessly anyway. The main thing I would stress is that we should avoid talk about 'forks' and avoid talk about 'mandatory' and even talk about "license change" unless we make it very very clear that license change requires unanimity for the portions of a document to be changed. --Jimbo Wales 21:45, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Then we are in agreement. I just wanted to clarify that point. Oddly, if it becomes a wasted effort, then I will have "won" anyway. Woohoo. I guess a lot of users became a bit more educated about licensing issues. I wonder how long it will take for an improved GFDL though? -- RM

[edit] Please advise

Ram Man: This is Michael Reiter. I would like to know to take advantage of what you are proposing. Write me back and tell me what you want me to do. J. Michael Reiter.

[edit] against multi-licensing

I'd like to voice opposition to multi-licensing. If cc-sa and gfdl are really that similar in spirit, I'd rather wait for gfdl 2.0 to resolve the differences. Multi-licensing is a big headache in the free software world; we don't need a similar headache here.

I also have nothing against attribution in general, but I really enjoy the egoless, collaborative nature of wikipedia editing and in fact I usually don't bother to log in when I edit. So I wouldn't like it if wikipedia incorporated any type of formal attribution requirement. People should follow traditional academic standards for citing significant pieces of work outside wikipedia, but wikipedia itself should be considered the work of a large, amorphous, collaborative group, like the Beatles songs credited to Lennon/McCartney (per their agreement) no matter which of Lennon or McCartney actually wrote the song. The genealogy of any particular article can of course mostly be traced through its editing history. That can leave it unremarked when someone (as is permissible) cuts and pastes pieces of text from one wikipedia article to another, but I don't think that causes any confusion in practice.

Phr 09:08, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)Phr

I tend to agree with your argument, but I don't have any high hopes that GFDL 2.0 will resolve all the problems. There is an argument that Wikipedia is a single collaborative work, but the fact that it is explicitly placed under the GFDL might negate that. Thus we already have a formal attribution requirement, as the GFDL has a formal attribution requirement. I suppose one can hope that GFDL 2.0 will allow one to simply print out a URL where the GFDL and the list of all the authors can be found, but I don't have any high hopes for this. It would be a very significant change to the GFDL, especially if you consider the fact that Wikipedia is not the only GFDLed work. anthony 警告 12:41, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oops, I just realized this was Ram-Man's talk page. Sorry about that Ram-Man :). anthony 警告 12:42, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Having read the above and some other contributions, I now feel uncomfortable about the multi-licencing issues and will therefore remove the notice from my User Page. Chris Jefferies 13:17, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] licensing under pseudonyms

There is a question that is bothering me: as very few of us edit under our real names (and I, for one, do not want to disclose mine), how can anyone know who is licensing what? Filiocht 09:17, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

  • You can't. That's one of the reasons we should UseRealNames (or just be anonymous). anthony 警告 12:35, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] RFA thanks

Salve, Ram-Man!
I wanted to drop you a line to thank you for your support in my successful RFA candidacy. It was very gratifying to see the kind remarks posted in the debate. Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 17:45, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] About Rambot

Salve, Ram-Man!
When I was thanking the voters on my RFA election, I found someone discussing census data and looked at the site they mentioned. To my surprise, I found that there was indeed data on Ohio's townships; I had presumed there was not, which is why Rambot had not added the demographic information. I've created articles on the townships of Warren County, Ohio#Townships and the only population information in them is what was in the Ohio Secretary of State's roster, namely the 2000 and 1990 populations.
While I realize it would not be as easy as the municipality and CDP articles because of the repetition of names--there are dozens of Washington Townships--and the long names we've been using on these articles (e.g. Union Township, Warren County, Ohio), but is it possible for Rambot to take the Census datasets and add the data to the township articles? Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 18:45, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

I can look into it. It is possible that the rambot was unable to add the information because the township articles already existed. I'll check it out and get back to you or just fix it anyway. [[User:Ram-Man|-- RM]] 18:58, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Josh on multi-licensing

  • I am sorry that I did not get back to you sooner, but I had to take a little break from Wikipedia to study for my final exams. I have looked at the arguments on this page and at the available multi-licensing templates, and I have decided to:
    • Release all of my minor text edits to the public domain, as they are hardly eligible for copyright anyway.
    • Dual license all of my other text edits with the Creative Commons By-SA 1.0 and 2.0 licenses, as you suggested.
    • Give Wikimedia permission to relicense my text edits in the future, in case they ever want to change Wikipedia's license. (Although I doubt that will happen.)
  • My only concern is that derivative works made outside Wikipedia might be incompatible for re-integration, but hopefully that is a chance worth taking.
  • Also, can anonymous contributors really claim copyright, since there is no real way to prove who they are? If not, changing Wikipedia's license would not be as difficult, and I would support it. Of course, even getting every registered user to relicense would still be quite difficult.
  • Finally, I am glad that you decided to stop using your automated program to send these requests. The message did not offend me, but personal attention is almost always better for those sorts of things. Josh 05:22, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-license

No problem, I've put the dual license in my user page. I'm all for making my work more useful, but still free. --AstroNomer 00:25, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-license

I finally am responding to your comment on my user page. I did agree to multilicense under the CC license with the suggested template. Thanks for telling me! I really like that license better anyway! Good luck with it!--naryathegreat 03:52, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-License

I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0
I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under the GFDL and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 and version 2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides.

--[[User:Plato|Comrade Nick @)---^--]] 02:22, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Multilicensing spam

I agree to multi-license some of my contributions as follows: If an article is edited by User:Rambot, all my subsequent contributions to that article are licensed under the same terms as the contribution to that article by User:Rambot.

I'm sure all edits that fall under the above category are/will be too minor to be copyrightable anyway, so I'm not spamming my user page with licensing info. -- Paddu 06:47, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Licensing info from Cwoyte

Hello RM, I've changed position slightly. It boils down to this: all edits by me that I've marked 'minor' (regardless of subject) I've released into the PD; all other ('major', or, rather, non-minor) edits by me remain GFDL. See my user page. Good luck, Cwoyte 13:48, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

  • I find merit that any attempts to dual license will simply cause a complete mess on Wikipedia with articles being all over the place in terms of license. e.g. if cwoyte added a few paragraphs in an article and marked it non-minor, they would be under GFDL; then, if some spelling corrections were made, it would be marked as minor - although still under GFDL, it's hard to know whether the *entire* revision article should be counted as PD. It would be require a lot of matching up of different revisions of the article. Enochlau 15:41, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • We need to stop thinking of articles as pieces of work of sole authorship, and look at articles more as derivative works comprised of a set of contributions from various sources. If, for example, all contributions were licensed CC-BY, then the articles could be rereleased as CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, or GFDL. As it stands, we seem to indicate or imply that all contributions are GFDL. - [[User:KeithTyler|Keith D. Tyler [flame]]] 20:55, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] CC-by-SA

I'm pleased, Ram-Man, that you took the initiative on licensing. It's a long-overdue task, and one which I think will benefit Wikipedia in the long haul. I do not object to the message appearing on my user page; I treat it as akin to a newsletter a condo resident might receive - while unsolicited, of potential interest and certainly not spam. One reason I find the process of value is that I spent considerable time weighing the license options available to me, and have been using cc-by-sa with all my images for some time now. It satisfies me the most in assuring that my work meets Wikipedia's licensing requirements while still offering me some protection as the creator of the work. Denni☯ 21:25, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

[edit] Response to licensing thing

As is now mentioned on my user page, all my textual contributions are in the public domain. My images and other things will probably also be in the public domain. I'll try to explicitly give the licensing status of each of these non-textual things when I upload them. —Bkell 23:49, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Rejection of multi-licensing, affirmation of GFDL

For the record, I would prefer that my contributions remain under the GFDL license alone, such as they are. That's the license that was in effect when I made the edits, as the text at the bottom of every edit page makes very clear. I don't see any compelling reason to change that. When I write for wikipedia, I do it because I want to contribute specifically to wikipedia, and don't see any special reason to want to broaden that more than the GFDL already allows. (shrug) Wesley 03:47, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] CC Licence

I am am glad that you appear to be trying to multilicense Wikipedia as I feel that the GFDL, although good, has many flaws and limitations (discussed at GFDL) including that it is not compatible with CC.

Instead of getting everyone to agree to duel release their stuff, you should drive to have Wikipedia offically start releasing new content under a multilicense. This way we will have a limited set of people to try and convince to multilicense their stuff instead of a growing one. --ShaunMacPherson 08:44, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Copyrights by Pouya

Thanks for your efforts for increasing coverage of multiple-licencing. I accept multiple licencing my edits and added the necessary templates to my user page. --Pouya 12:16, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-licensing - Wikimedia Compatible License

Hi Ram-man. I know you have received similar objections already, but as people who don't respond are being counted as tacitly agreeing with your approach I thought I'd better drop a note. Here are my reactions to your recent post on my talk page:

  1. Spam. My first reaction, and something I'm not happy about. There are other places to make general announcements and requests, not bulk-mailing everyone's talk pages (although I must say it was interesting to find I'm in the top 2000 editors. How did you get this info? The list in the spam only goes to 1000)
  2. Confusing. I couldn't understand quite what it was asking. I certainly didn't understand the implications of it. Even now, having spent (wasted?) a long while reading around the subject I don't really understand.
  3. My response to the multi-licensing issue is that I am submitting material to Wikipedia under the GFDL. I don't think the issue should be confused (as it certainly now has been) by trying to operate several different licenses underneath the broader project-wide license. A better approach would be to address the problems at a higher level. If Wikipedia decides to change the license it operates under, I am happy for any of my material to be published under the new license, whatever that license is, providing that it is 'free and open'. More importantly Wikipedia does not need to ask permission to make such a change. If I put any license on my page it would be something like:


Wikimedia Compatible License: All my contributions to Wikipedia and any other Wikimedia projects are governed by the current applicable license(s) of those projects. The content or scope of these licenses may, by community concensus, be modified from time to time. I give permission for any and all of my contributions to be republished under any such future license, providing the new license retains the principle of 'open and free information'.


--HappyDog 16:34, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Article Licensing (that you submitted on 10 December 2004)

I do not fully understand what you mean if I would be willing to multi-license all of my contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. What is multi licensing? As of now, I concentrate in Chinese Wikipedia where I am an administrator with much work to do. I have not logged in to English Wikipedia for very long time, so I have not replied until now. Jusjih 10:27, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] non-ASCII ISO 8859-1 literals / HTML entity references

Greeetings. I noticed that your bot is replacing literal ISO-8859-1, non-ASCII characters like "°" and "²" with the corresponding entity references. Since the English Wikipedia does specify ISO-8859-1, and not the ASCII subset, maybe your bot can just use the literal values in these cases. Any thoughts? Fleminra 04:53, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. The best reference I can find on this is meta:Help:Special characters. Also, I noticed that the "character palette" at the bottom of the "Edit" template here uses the literal ISO 8859-1 values, and uses named HTML entity references only for glyphs outside of that set (ndash and mdash). So maybe the best policy, also considering Wikipedia:Browser notes, would be to use literal characters for the "safe" ISO 8859-1 subset tabulated here: meta:Help:Special characters#ISO-8859-1 Characters. Fleminra 20:12, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Creative Commons License subcategory

Hi, I work on parenting a lot of orphan categories, and the creative common license subcategory is an orphan...I'm not sure where to parent it...but it will continue to show on scans of orphans til it does. Could you parent it as appropriate? Thanks Sortior 17:38, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)


I agree to multi-license with CC-by-SA. Mindspillage 22:36, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] UN/LOCODE

I think you could insert the redirects like USLAX. This is general use for abbreviations in Wikipedia. If one day more of the links have to be disambiguatet we can talk again about doing it like UN/LOCODE:USLAX.

Maybe you start with US Locodes, and than go on with english speaking countries because the name in UN/LOCODE-database for those should be more or less equal to the names used in Wikipedia.

Is it faster (less molesting for wikidatabase) to simultaenously edit the corresponding citypages and add the UN/LOCODE there, or can this be done in different process? We have to think about where and how to put the LOCODE, and whether to insert shortcut hint. Some people may find the shortcut hint ugly. Should we just try it for some places? Would be a way to find out what others think. Tobias Conradi 00:04, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I assume that shortcuts in the articles would be a mistake. I think people would find it ugly, so I have decided not to do that. That isn't to say it doesn't have a place in the article, but I don't know what that place would be right now. While it would make more sense to do everything at once, I don't have those answers right now, so they will just have to wait. It is unlikely that I won't have more things to do on the articles anyway in the future, so it probably won't matter. As for the short shortcuts, I plan to do the direct shortcuts in addition to the UN/LOCODE shortcut. It doesn't hurt to have multiple shortcuts. [[User:Ram-Man|-- RM]] 03:24, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] NonCommercial ShareAlike?

Again, the license problem. what's the difference between the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Dual License and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Dual License? sorry i am too impatient to read all the English stuff... =.= --Yacht (talk) 06:38, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] created Template:Mapit-US-countyscale

... in case you want to use it for the county articles. -- hike395 15:52, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll be sure to do the counties as well. -- RM 15:57, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Archive

[edit] RFC

Should this page still be listed on RFC? Maurreen 06:45, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why? -- RM 14:18, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why did you do St. Vincent? (shocked)

WHY did you do this page on St. Vincent, Minnesota? Are you from the area? I grew up in the town and don't recognize you. It's such a small village in the middle of nowhere that I was flabbergasted to see someone had written it already....!! This link is about me and where I come from, St. Vincent...one of these days I mean to expand upon it. I also have written a bit about my life there in a blog.

[edit] My copyrighted articles

In response to your comment on my user talk page (hiya!) - All the images I upload to Wikipedia are licensed under these terms:

This image is not licensed under the GFDL. It is under a non-commercial-use only licence.
Image:Stop hand.svg If this image was uploaded after May 19, 2005, it will soon be deleted without further warning.[1]

Older images with this template will be considered for deletion.


This image is copyrighted and is not licenced under the GFDL. The licence holder allows anyone to use it for any non-commercial purpose, provided that the photographer (Brian Kendig) is credited.

I'm not a lawyer and I don't have a very good grasp of legalese, but I think this protects my interests (retaining credit for the images, and allowing them to be used anywhere but not allowing other people to profit from my work). After reading your explanation of multi-licensing, specifically the issues where people could re-license a work more restrictively and profit from it, I think that the terms I chose are still most appealing to me. If you disagree, if you feel that multi-licensing would be better than the solution I chose, please let me know? - Brian Kendig 21:26, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-licensing - rlv

Ram-Man, I notice that I failed to respond to your question on mulit-licensing. I will refrain at this time, at least until I can look into it more closely. Thanks. - Rlvaughn 03:32, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] CC/GFLD dual liscensing

Hi, I was going to do this a while ago but wanted to read more on the liscenses and then forgot. I've liscensed all my contributions under GFDL and any version of the CC-by-sa liscence. It's amazing how unnecessarily restrictive the GFDL is! Keep up the good work. Telso 08:24, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More Archiving

[edit] Rambot Articles - When created?

I am doing some statistical analysis on the growth of Wikipedia and I wanted to adjust for the auto generated articles. Do you have data on what months what number of articles were created? Were all 37,000 created in Oct, 2002, or were some in other months? Is 37,000 the right number also? Because they were made as a mix from your account and the rambot account, I thought it best to ask you. Thanks - Taxman 20:20, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

From the FAQ: ...a maximum of 36,973 articles. I have no other estimate, although the actual amount is probably closer to 36,000 - 36,500 because all of the counties and cities that already existed in the database were not created by the rambot. I suppose there may also be a good number of cities missing and a large number of duplicates, but if you are just estimating, that's fine. I don't really know the exact number. 99% of the articles added after October 5, 2002 were added by the rambot and this includes virtually every city article that did not already exist. Entirely 100% of the counties added were done without the use of a bot, although the content of the articles themselves was generated from an SQL query. That is at most 3,141 articles. My main user account was used by the bot from October 5 to December 8, 2002 (See User:rambot), but without checking I would guess that I had probably added most of the cities from this account. Maybe at some point I will have better stats for you. Until then, hope that helps. -- RM 20:50, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ohio Township Data

Salve, Ram-Man!
Sorry I haven't replied sooner--we're still digging out from a foot of snow here in Warren County, Ohio and I've not been to the library in a week.
The data I'm talking about with our townships is on the Census site here. The townships don't come up if you type something like "Salem Township Ohio", but they do have a series of menus at the above address. Is it possible for your bot to harvest data in the form at that address? Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 17:42, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Ahh! The townships are county subdivisions and not "places", as defined by the Census Bureau. The rambot has only retrieved information on the individual places and not subdivisions of counties, because those subdivisions presumably contain places, or at least that seems to be the implied hierarchy. In any case, I could grab the data if need be, but it would be some time before I could. -- RM 20:58, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Talk

rofl, its a dictatorship! Lirath Q. Pynnor

[edit] Rambot problem

Rambot is going through added map references to city articles, but it is not checking to see whether or not checking for singular/pluralness of the header title (External link[s]) and it's adding a header incorrectly if the header is singular. See Garland, Texas history for what I mean. RADICALBENDER★ 22:55, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

  • I noticed this as well in the Florida articles. To date I've been manually editing them. --Monstrocity 00:12, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] CDPs that get annexed / Naming conflict between a city and a CDP

A naming conflict has arisen between a Florida CDP and a city that incorporated in 2003 with the same name. It's Miami Gardens, Florida. They're both in separate counties, and the CDP was recently annexed. I moved the CDP to Miami Gardens (Broward), Florida to try to disambiguate it from the City of Miami Gardens, so that problably means that rambot will need to associate the CDP data with the Broward page so that it doesn't update the wrong one. Thanks...

Also, what usually gets done with CDP articles after they get annexed into an incorporated area? --Monstrocity 00:12, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

This is the first instance that I know of where this has occurred, that is, you are the first to let me know about this. So I don't know the exact answer to your question. Thanks for the update though. -- RM 01:54, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

Well, if you haven't noticed -- i haven't made any serious attempt to edit anything in about a year. And of yesterday, I have my own wiki now -- so I'm sure I won't return to the wikipedia. Lirath Q. Pynnor

[edit] Rambot

Why does rambot move interlanguage links from the bottom of the article to before the external links section? [2] According to Wikipedia:Interlanguage links, interlanguage links should placed "at the bottom of the page, after external links, see also's, and categories". Merry Christmas, Gehirn 02:19, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Updated template for maps

Hi, Ram-Man. Chinasaur has made new, updated templates for the maps, including links to Tiger census maps (for surrounding areas) and current weather satellite images. I must say, it is quite neat. You can check it out the new templates at Template talk:Geolinks-US-streetscale.

One sad thing to note is that Template:Mapit-US-cityscale is broken: Maveric149, Chinasaur, nor I can edit it --- it always returns a wikipedia error. Sadly, that template does not conform to the rest of the Mapit templates. You may wish to convert cities over to the Geolinks templates for that reason (unless you have some special powers to fix the database?).

Thanks for all of the Ram-Bot work: I really appreciate it. -- hike395 08:06, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Attica, New York

Hi, there is a question about some articles that may have been done very early on and have some naming irregularities. See Talk:Attica (village), New York for my take on what is going on. Thanks. older≠wiser 18:29, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

Another question about New York places: any idea what happened to the census data for Geneseo (village), New York? It currently duplicates the data for Geneseo (town), New York. older≠wiser 18:58, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] UN/LOCODE , progress, coordinates, wikitravel

how long might it take to insert redirects for US data? I mean, when can I look for missing entries? Is there any order in the way you insert redirects?

Coordinats, FIPS: Can you create merged FIPS / UN/LOCODE csv-file including both coordinates. are there conflicts? maybe we can help UN/LOCODE to get more coordinates.

I already asked Evan from wikitravel what he thinks about adding the codes on wikitravel as well. Would be great, maybe we can have much shorter links there, like wikitravel.org/USLAX

regards --Tobias Conradi 07:27, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

When I cease to be on WikiVacation I can work on this some more. I am done with most of the U.S. city UN/LOCODE entries, but I imagine that a few are missing. I have not done any of the shorter ones though, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USLAX, but I will probably be able to. Let me know what Evan says about the locodes, because the rambot can just as easily add the codes there too if required. -- RM 20:42, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
missing e.g.: USSFO, USUIZ, USSTL, USSEA, USARB . Would be nice if you could add info on citypages. Why not doing tables for all places like for German cities in de: de:Altusried All base data could be put there and we would have a place for the LOCODES. WikiProject_Cities also has tables, are the going to be implemented?. Otherwise a note in section Geography could be made: UN/LOCODE for Xyztown is US XYZ Tobias Conradi 08:06, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
the redirect info (R from UN/LOCODE) is not shown anymore on the redirect page. may MediaWiki1.4 bug Tobias Conradi 22:11, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I made the redirects for USARB, USDET, USHVN, USSEA, USSFO, USSTL, USTWD, USUIZ, USWHF Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:28, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Evan likes the idea and suggested to set up namespace Locode: for it. But currently I worry about http://www.unece.org/etrades/uncopyright.htm and wrote them an email. If it turns out bad, I will maybe go to create public domain geocodes. Tobias Conradi 08:31, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

Ram-Man, thanks for the articles on different cities. I think the content is great for Wikipedia. I look up information on different cities regularly and this information has been helpful. I wanted to share with you a site that I found that has more information. http://www.city-data.com . Perhaps the rambot could be configured to include external links to each of the City-Data pages. Sorry to request work from you, it is far beyond my capacity. I do appreciate your work to communicate more about the the places we live in. PoolGuy 06:05, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

Data mining is always possible, and I will check it out to see if it is feasible. Of course I have many things that I work on and not an infinite amount of time, so it may be a fair amount of time before I even have a chance to evaluate it, but I will do my best. -- RM 13:12, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
Thats where UN/LOCODEs could step in. if city-data.com is worth linking, it should maybe be done via an easy URL. Tobias Conradi 08:01, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dual-licensing on U.S. dot-maps

Hi Ram-man,

Go ahead and use your Rambot to dual-license my dot-maps using {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}. I've done dot-maps for Washington, Nevada, Delaware, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Northern California. Thanks! Bumm13 10:23, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Geographical coordinates

I did a little demo in Charleston, West Virginia, using the new coor template for geographical coordinates from Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. The point of the exercise is that the coordinate pair becomes a link to a special page that offers many different map resources. I guess it would be a potential job for Rambot. -- Egil 18:30, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] US State widths, lengths, and mean elevations

Hi - Do you have any idea where the values in the US state articles for width, length, and mean elevation came from (originally). There's a suggestion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_U.S._states to include both metric and English measurements (since the states are in the US, at least some folks are objecting to metric-only). Both are included for Kansas and Missouri, and I'm willing to change the infobox template (and the articles) to explicitly include both. I've looked a bit, but can't seem to find USGS sources for width, length, and mean elevation. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:00, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] McLeod Co. Minn != Mahnomen Co. Minn

I don't know how it happened, but somehow McLeod County, Minnesota's text has been replaced w/ the text of Mahnomen County, Minnesota, apparently from the time of the article's creation. McLeod County is indicated correctly in the map, but the text is completely wrong. The text for the Mahnomen Co. article appears to have been tampered w/ as well, at least from my cursory examination, basically doubling its population. Might wanna add these 2 articles to your 2do list. Tomer TALK 06:12, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] CSD on music

Hi there! Regarding this CSD proposal (3-C) some people expressed the concern that a policy page should not refer to a guideline page like that, which is a good point. As an alternative, you offered the idea of making a separate policy page for it (which I take to mean moving the page away from the WikiProject, and labeling it policy). Would you consider it an applicable alternative if the WP:MUSIC criteria were simply copy/pasted into the CSD page? Yours, Radiant_>|< 11:05, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikitree

I was interested in obtaining the rambot code, but I see you're not giving it away. My interested actually related to uploading of GEDCOM files into the wikitree. It would be tedious to maintain and load family trees which you already have electronically by hand, so a bot seemed like a cool idea. Maybe you can help the wikitree project with such an upload program. I'm afraid I'm not a good enough programmer. Thanks. (I go under the handle Superdooperhero)

Since my code for the rambot is quite custom by nature and not really designed for anyone else (I write much of it on the fly for each task that I do), there are really two options for you here. You could a) give me the raw data and I could generate the articles and upload them for you or b) You could find out more information on the other bots being used, because some of them are public. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 12:03, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

Ram-Man would you be interested in helping me add Towns for Italy that don't exist? What format would you need from me? Gioto 02:13, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Licensing

Back in December last year, you posted a request about multi-licensing my contributions. (I've been away from the pedia for a long time.) I have now very belatedly done so. Bth 20:54, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

  • My situation is similar. I have thought about it, though, and decided that I would like to keep my contributions licensed under the GFDL, as all my contributions have been textual, and I think the GFDL is a fair license for text. Yours with wikiness, Two Halves

[edit] Lost image in licensing template

Can you please fix (or get someone to fix) Template:DualLicenseWithCC-SA? The image there, Image:Somerights.png now is a bright red request to use Image:CC SomeRightsReseved.png, although perhaps they meant Image:CC SomeRightsReserved.png instead. The template is protected, though, and I cannot edit it.

Thanks. Jdavidb 17:58, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! Jdavidb 18:30, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Pot of Chili.jpg into commons

hi Ram-Man, I found your image and could you please upload it into the commons, so any language wiki is able to use it? in the german wiki, there is a writing contest and somebody is writing on de:Chili con Carne and I think your image would enrich this article :D. so would you please upload it? greets, --Andreas -horn- Hornig 12:13, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

great, thank you very much! greets, --Andreas -horn- Hornig 10:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your photo

Is licensed under a license that we don't permit. Any change you can change it to GFDL or something? The Uninvited Co., Inc. 20:40, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What happens if an article becomes a disambig?

The rambot article Perth, North Dakota needed to be moved, and a disambig page, put in its place. There's now one old rambot article (under a new name), one disambig page (old name), and one new non-rambot article. I'm wandering if something like this will cause a problem for rambot in the future. I wasn't even aware of rambot until recently (I just thought it was somebody's user name, and they had a rather robotic writing style). Now that I'm aware of it, I thought there could be problems with a case like this. --Rob 09:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Happy Holidays

Hello Ram-Man. Have a Merry Christmas and a happy 2006!- JustPhil 01:08, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Drhaggis Muli-license

After a year, I have agreed to multi-license all my contributions. Thanks! -Dr Haggis - Talk 17:57, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Picture of Ram-Man 300.jpg has been listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:Picture of Ram-Man 300.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

dbenbenn | talk 18:50, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pearlfish

Like to add articles on Pearlfishes, but before I do, would you be able to add the last 2 Genera into the 3 groupings, only 5 out of the 7 have been placed. Thanks. GrahamBould 17:39, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia survey

Hi. I'm doing a survey of Wikipedia editors as part of a class research project. It's quick, anonymous, and the data will be made available to the Wikipedia community later this month. Would you like to take part? More info here. Thanks! Nonplus 00:10, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another WP survey (it seems like everybody had the same idea at the same time)

I am conducting a survey on Wikipedia and would like to invite you to participate in the study. I've posted a message on wikien-l, but here is the link again in case you are not subscribed to that list-serv. Thanks a lot for your time! --Mermes 01:18, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clans of Scotland Wikiproject.

Hello, there. I'm going around to all the listed participants of the Clans of Scotland WikiProject, asking for a short update on whate they're up to as far as the project goes. I want to see if this project is still viable, and I'm wondering if anyone else is still actively participating. Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clans of Scotland#Status.3F. Canaen 19:15, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Susquehana River 700 Image

Was this picture from the main Susquehanna State Park, near Rock Run, on the Harford County, Maryland side, looking ENE toward Roberts Island? If so, I think this shows some of the bridge pier ruins of the 1818-1857 Port Deposit Bridge. Since that article is on my todo list, I'm curious. --J Clear 02:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I've updated the description for Image:Susquehanna River 700.jpg. It might answer some of your questions. I have some other pictures of the scene as well. They are closeups of the mini-islands on the original picture. I also have a picture of the old house I referenced in the description. Let me know if you need those, since I have no reason to upload them to Wikipedia otherwise. -- Ram-Man 21:45, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Stafford road give some wiggle room, but it's certainly Roberts, or the island alongside it. And I'm fairly certain those small islets in a row in your picture are the old bridge abutments. Were you standing about here? And it looks to be more NE than ENE (which I came up with from memory). I'll watch your talk page, so no need to leave a clue on mine.--J Clear 02:18, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
That's the best I can do. I just took a picture of it because it looked nice. I had no idea those little islets might be important. But I just can't give you any additional information. Maybe some day I'll go back there or someone else will, but it's probably a safe assumption. -- Ram-Man 02:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I also added a closeup image: Image:Susquehanna River Islet 3264px.jpg if you can find it useful. Ram-Man 02:39, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually it is useful, if you look closely at the rocks, they appear to be dressed stone (i.e. squared off).--J Clear 14:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, they do appear as you have stated. Ram-Man 14:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commons uploads

Can you please give more descriptive filenames to the pictures. "Image:Nikon Coolpix 8700 LCD swivel 2496px.jpg" isnt exactly descriptive. --Cat out 19:41, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, but I'm not sure how much longer the filename should be. Isn't the description page supposed to take care of that? Ram-Man 19:44, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lol

I'm from Mendham, NJ dude. Sort of embarassing, to see that ur own town had an article written by someone outside it....

When I "wrote" that article, Wikipedia had relatively few articles and few editors. And since I did all the articles for all the missing cities, it's not really embarassing! Ram-Man 13:12, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
You did all those city stubs?!?!!! Nice job. I'm assuming you had some automation, it looks a bit like you used the census DB and ran it through a script. Good idea. Also explains why Conowingo, Maryland doesn't exist (yet, also on my to do list) (see Cecil County, Maryland).--J Clear 14:38, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I used MySQL to process the raw census data for counties and cities, generated text files automatically and then uploaded a few thousand of the articles to Wikipedia by hand and the rest using the rambot (See: rambot FAQ). Seems like a long time ago, but it had quite an effect on Wikipedia for sure. Ram-Man 14:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Found the Rambot. Do they award oak leaf clusters to Barnstars? I'm curious how the updates are going to work if any given article get's mutated by human editors. I suppose you just throw it as an exception onto a pile for human editing.--J Clear 15:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
You're correct. When an exception occurs, it has to manually done. The rambot can fortunately follow redirects, so at least that exception isn't a terrible problem. Ram-Man 15:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Georgia Move

As a past participant in the discussion on how to handle the Georgia pages, I thought you might be interested to know that there's a new attempt to reach consensus on the matter being addressed at Talk:Georgia (country)#Requested_Move_-_July_2006. Please come by and share your thoughts to help form a consensus. --Vengeful Cynic 03:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] County Names

Your bot tagged Ardmore, Pennsylvania as in Deleware County, Pennsylvania. It is in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Superm401 | Talk July 3, 2005 01:44 (UTC)

[edit] CSD Proposal 3-B

You voted or commented on Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/3-B or Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/3-A or both. I have proposed a revised version, at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/3-C. This version is intended to address objections made by many of those oppsoed to 3-A or 3-B. The revised propsal refers explicitly and directly to the criteria at WP:MUSIC. If you have not already done so, please examine the revised proposal and vote on it also. Thank you. DES 6 July 2005 05:47 (UTC)

[edit] Translation

Hey, I haven't been active for a while. Any progress on the translation project? Ausir 8 July 2005 15:59 (UTC)

Still working, though to be honest, I haven't been working on it quite lately. Been a bit busy. I'll see what more I can do. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) July 8, 2005 17:11 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-licensing

I agree to license my contributions to US state, county, and city articles according to (CC-by-sa).

Cheers,

Acegikmo1 21:35, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand. User:Patricknoddy 7:25 (EDT) September 10, 2005

[edit] Red Mulberry

Hi Ram-Man - nice start on Red Mulberry, unfortunately, the pics are White Mulberry (a widely naturalised invasive species throughout the eastern US); Red Mulberry leaves are not smooth and glossy like this, and are more heart-shaped at the base - MPF 12:36, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ram-Man - too true, the ever-difficult question of who to believe! Best I can suggest is to find a few books with identification keys in, and feed it through all of them. I fear anyone can get things wrong (me included, but the PA Dept of Cons people too). You might also want to try seeking other opinions on e.g. Gardenweb trees forum or the UBC plant idenification forum; post the pics there and ask what species people think it is, and go for any consensus. Another problem in this particular case is that Red and White Mulberries will hybridise freely; a lot of mulberries are hybrids between the two (e.g. the popular cultivar 'Illinois Everbearing'). - MPF 20:03, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Good luck on the search! - MPF 21:27, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] rambot: 2000 census

user:rambot writes: "As of the 2000 census", but I think it is much better if he use "As of the 2000 census", because so we see better the source and other statistical and methodical information (i.e. not 2000, but 1 April 2000). -- Cate 11:44, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the advise. I'll make it happen. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 11:50, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Licensing

Hi, I have finally got around to looking at your dual licensing suggestion and added {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Tri-2.5}} {{WikimediaTextLicensing}} to my user page. I must confess that I would have done it sooner except that the whole issue is like tax law to me—it is important and needs to be understood but is nevertheless very boring to read about. Jll 22:51, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

And having wandered back to the 'pedia after an extended absence, I'd just like to piggyback on here to confirm that all my contributions are fully PD, as per the pretty little template on my user page. --Bth 15:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Frederick, Maryland

The Frederick County, Maryland and related city articles have Point of Rocks, Maryland listed as Point-of-Rocks, Maryland in the county reference box. Point of Rocks, Maryland is correct based on the county website, but I'm not sure how to fix it. Kmusser 16:24, 8 August 2005 (EST)

[edit] Would you be interested in expanding the Rambot to other include other countries census info?

There is a discussion going on on Wikipedia talk:2004 Encyclopedia topics about how many of the still missing articles are of non-US cities. It was observed that the census data for many of these countries is(or may be) available. As you are the known master of census importing, your opinion of this was requested. Please join the discussion. Thanks! JesseW 10:02, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

We just need to find out where the census data is. If you know of some sources, please do share them with me! — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 23:32, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Well, here's the Brazilian city data, from the link I mentioned above. Let me know if you are going to work on that, or if you want more... JesseW 17:52, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
Please add any new ones to Geographic references. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 18:02, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

We have already generated articles on Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian towns at Polish Wikipedia. By the way, could you please e-mail me rambot's database files? We could then generate the American towns at pl: ourselves. Ausir 00:35, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I could send you the data, but it's over a gigabyte of information scattered around in a number of tables, but if that's what you like, I probably could handle that. Speaking of those other cities, do you have the data from those to trade off? I could make great use of them. What were your sources and are they listed at Geographic references? Let me know what you'd like to do. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 23:28, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
Maybe it would be easier if you generated the articles in English, compressed them, sent them over to us, and we made a translation script? As for the other ones, I'll later add them to Geographic References. Ausir 23:37, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

We have created Botopedia, an international project for generating such articles and sharing data. Why don't you join? :) Ausir 11:05, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rambot hanging out by pump

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Three_year_old_error_in_bot-generated_article is about a Rambot article. (SEWilco 19:17, 8 September 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Past tense for city articles

Hi there. I was wondering whether you'd given any thought to switching the Rambot city articles into the past tense. To me it grates somewhat to read, "As of the census of 2000... there are" rather than were. I realise Rambot probably has a lot of pending tasks and this is hardly high-priority. OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 15:06, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually I tend to limit the number of mass edits, because there are so many articles. Because of this, I tend to do a number of updates at a single time. This is a relatively simple fix that I can do the next time I decide to update or maintain all the articles. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 16:23, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox demographics

Hi, Ram-man. I'm trying to create an infobox for demographics. Your bot's gathered a nice collection of data, and I'm trying to format them into an infobox in conjunction with Wikipedia:WikiProject_Massachusetts. Can you give me (as a relative newbie) some pointers?

[edit] Bot to Add Governmental Information in New Jersey, etc.

I have been adding information to numerous pages regarding federal and state representation for municipalities in New Jersey. You'll often hear people say that you should contact your legislators about an issue, but often, people have no idea who their representatives are.

I have already compiled a spreadsheet that contains data on the New Jersey legislative and congressional districts ofr each of New Jersey's 566 municipalities, plus a full list of the representatives in each of the congressional districts and the 40 State Senate / Assembly districts. What I'd like to do is to create a bot that would create something that looks like the following entry for my hometown Teaneck, New Jersey and updates each entry automatically:

[edit] Federal and State Representation

Teaneck, along with the southern portion of Bergen County, is part of New Jersey's 9th Congressional District, represented by Steve Rothman (D, Fair Lawn). New Jersey is represented in the Senate by Jon Corzine (D, Hoboken) and Frank Lautenberg (D, Cliffside Park).

Teaneck is part of the 37th legislative district of the New Jersey Legislature. District 37 is represented in the State Senate by Byron Baer (D) and in the Assembly by Gordon M. Johnson (D, Englewood) and Loretta Weinberg (D, Teaneck).

[edit] Rambot articles

So, would it be possible for you to generate all the articles as text files (identical as wiki articles), zip them up and e-mail to me like the Italians did? :) Ausir 06:51, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User categorisation

Greetings, Ram-Man! Please accept this message as an invitation to categorize your user page in the category Category:Wikipedians in Pennsylvania and removing your name from the Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Pennsylvania page. This page will be removed when all users have been removed. Even if you do not wish to be placed in a category, could you take a moment to remove your name from the Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Pennsylvania page? Thanks!

For more information, please see Wikipedia:User categorisation and Category:Wikipedians by location. -- CComMack, fellow Pennsylvanian, on behalf of the User Categorization Wikiproject

[edit] Amity Gardens, Pennsylvania

I left a question about this article on its talk page. paul klenk talk 00:26, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Philadelphia Project

Hi i have noticed that you have edited several articles on subjects related to the Philadelphia area. Several other users and myself have got together to creak a project to help improve, expand, and create articles concerning the Philadelphia/Delaware Valley region. While our project is still new, we are inviting people to join us to help it get started off on the right foot. You can find the project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Philadelphia, feel free to add your name and drop off an suggestions that you might have. If you have any questions, drop me a line anytime. Thanks. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 04:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Greetings from the Planet - Not USA

G'day, it seems most of your bot articles do not have the identifier 'USA' in the title, top line, or for that matter anywhere in the first section of the article. Yet wiki guidelines specify this as a point. Would not that be a preferred option, seeing that wikipedia is of places other than USA as well? Just askingvcxlor 22:10, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Geographic references link appearance

Any opinion on changing the appearance of geographic reference links? Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities#GR links (SEWilco 07:16, 6 November 2005 (UTC))

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Cc-by-sa-any

Template:Cc-by-sa-any has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Cc-by-sa-any. Thank you. Since you created that template, I figured you might have an opinion. --Wcquidditch | Talk 18:23, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

In fact, you may want to consider a different license apart from this apparent non-free multli-license -- I just implemented the post-May 19 stop-hand warning. Wcquidditch | Talk 22:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Book reference 2

Template:Book reference 2 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Book reference 2. Thank you. Phil | Talk 15:01, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rambot articles again

Sorry for harrasing you again, but could you perhaps generate all (or some) of the rambot articles as txt files and send them to me? We could generate Polish translations easily from those. Ausir 01:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] largo, fl

Dear Ram-Man

I've been adding to the Largo, Florida page and I'm concerned with all the external links I've added. Is it possible to have too many? I also wonder if the timeline should have a page of his own. Could you take a loo at it?

Thanks,

Mikereichold 01:58, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Creating Pages for ZCTAs

I am interested in creating pages for ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, the means the United States Census Bureau uses to correspond as closely as possible (where possible) to United States Postal Service ZIP Codes. I know that I can extract the data from the Census Bureau web site, but is there any template or guide as to how to use that infromation to create pages? I'm more than willing to do the work, I am just looking to be pointed in the right direction. Alansohn 15:31, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] White Oak, Texas

Hi -- I just came across this: White_Oak,_Texas and was puzzled by this line in "Geography": "The total area is 0.55% water." I can't seem to make head nor tail of it. Can you help, please? Puffball 20:47, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Puffball, the intention of that rather cryptic sentence is that of all the land contained within White Oak, Texas, 0.55% of it (55 parts in 10,000) is water (e.g. lakes). Rissa 01:22, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible New Article for West New York'o philes

A prominent newspaper editor who worked for papers like the New York Daily Mirror named Philip A. Payne lived in West New York, according to an article in the Jan. 29, 2006 Union City Reporter (which I assume was also printed in the Hudson Reporter's other area papers.) There is no article on him as of now, and I have other article I wish to work on, so as a suggestion, if anyone wants to make a one on him, and you want the article as reference, you can see it in full at: http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/9012/philippaynearticle7hw.jpg. You can also begin a section on Noteworthy Residents for that city's page (as I did for Union City), and place him in there. I'm sending this message to all the Wikipedians that I saw on the History page for the West New York article, so you don't have to respond to me about this. Nightscream 00:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help linking counties to cities...

Hi there, Ram-Man. I am trying to massage some census data (ooh, baby) so that we can import it via robot into the Esperanto wikipedia. A resource page at the gazeteer has a database of cities & towns with a county FIPS number. And there's a separate database with counties having a county FIPS number, but the two numbers do not seem to match up. I was hoping for the classic one-to-many relationship (one county has many cities/towns), but I can't see any relationship between the tables there.

I know you have done quite a bit of importing into the English Wikipedia. May I please ask what your source was for the county-city relationship? Thanks for any help. -- Yekrats 20:52, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Olivesburg, Ohio

Is this town really not in the US Census data; or was there just a hickup in rambot working when it came to this one. I'm asking because a rather bad stub exists for an alternative spelling of the town, Olivesburgh, Ohio, which I came across and was quite surprised to find there was no real article on the correct spelling. I'm sure it's a real place, as google has the standard geographic references to it. Thoughts? JesseW, the juggling janitor 05:53, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. County article spelling

Most of the county articles created by Rambot include the line "Census-recognised communities" instead of "Census-recognized communities" (which is the typical U.S. spelling). As the articles should all be in American English... could you add this to the bot's long, long, long to-do list, please? I'm taking care of the Washington counties, but I think the rest may be a bit too much. Thanks... Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 03:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some recommended changes to Rambot articles

I was looking for, but not finding, template text that shows how Rambot formats city/town/village/etc. articles. In the spirit of the Wiki, since these are to be regenerated with new census data, it seems like there should be a place where anyone can edit how these generated articles should look.

Here are some suggested changes to the current generated articles:

  • Perhaps, since this is an international encyclopedia, the intro sentence should be expanded to include United States.
  • The minus sign for longitude needs to use &minus; ("−") instead of a hyphen ("-").
  • The longitude and latitude values should be linked to longitude and latitude.
  • In the intro, "census" should be linked to census, and in the "Demographics" section, "census of 2000" should instead be "2000 census".
  • At the risk of overlinking, I think that "population" in the intro should also be linked to population.
  • In the "Demographics" section, "median income for a household" should link to median household income.

—Doug Bell talk•contrib 21:04, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

* Also could you link the term "non-families" to a definition? I am guessing the census has a fairly good idea of what a non-family is but I don't... (see: Flaxville, Montana)
Garrie 04:23, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eastern St. Bernard Parish

I was noting the lack of articles on the communities of eastern St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, such as Reggio, Delacroix, Hopedale, Shell Beach, and Yscloskey. ("Alluvial City" is listed on some maps, which I think is either an alternative name for Yscloskey or for the general Hopedale/Shell Beach/Yscloskey area.) A number of those places had populations of at least a few hundreds pre-Katrina. I was wondering if this was some Rambot glitch, or if the census lumps them with somewhere else? (If the later, my best guess would be Poydras, Louisiana, as 3,800 seems plausible to me for the area, but as I say, that's just a guess). Do you have any info? Thanks, -- Infrogmation 18:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New York Hamlet

Hey Ram-Man! I'm not sure how hard this is to do, but can your bot be programmed to change all New York towns that are hamlets from, hamlet (place) to Administrative divisions of New York#Hamlet

This would be easy enough to do. It shall go onto a list of things to do, if I ever get around to it. -- Ram-Man 20:37, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Add 2004 U.S. Census Bureau Estimates

How about adding the 2004 U.S. Census Bureau Estimates only the gross population, not all of the other estimated data.

So take the line that says this:

   As of the 2000 census, the population of the city is NUMBER.

Append something like this as the next sentence:

   The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that as of 2004 the population is of the city is NUMBER."


I guess this rule should probably be generalized to include all places (city, county, parish, etc.).

Data is [here|http://www.census.gov/popest/datasets.html] (somewhere).

Ram-Man, thank you for your consideration. — MicahDCochran 21:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment wanted on Project cities talk

You may want to read/comment here. I brought your name up (in a positive light) as the creator of many of the U.S. city pages.—MJCdetroit 01:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mountaintop, Pennsylvania

Some time ago, you created the article Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, which someone else has since moved to Mountaintop, Pennsylvania. I think that "Mountain Top" is the correct spelling, although the local newspaper http://www.mteagle.com/index.shtml uses the spelling Mountaintop. I live in Toronto and am not familiar with Pennsylvania geography, so I'm reluctant to move the article back to Mountain Top, Pennsylvania. If the evidence convinces you that the correct spelling is "Mountain Top", could you move the article? You would first have to delete or move to a temp file the current redirect at Mountain Top, Pennsylvania. TruthbringerToronto (Talk | contribs) 03:58, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Does it matter where in an article the "Demographics" and "Geography" sections go?

Does it matter to the bot (that is, does it affect how well it works)? Does it matter to you -- that is, do you care, personally? Should there be a Wikipedia style rule or recommendation to keep them in a certain spot in each article that rambot creates? I ask all this because I've been moving these sections lower down on the page in the articles for several towns and cities in Fairfield County, Connecticut (see Darien, Connecticut for example). But now I'm being told that it's "Wikipedia style" to keep them up top. There's no such official style that I can find, and if there is going to be a universal "style" or even tradition, it seems to me that those sections should appear low in the article because other, less dry and more interesting sections are better left up top. If you agree with that, or even if you don't care, that helps my position. If you disagree, well, I'd still like to know. So ... whaddaya think? And thanks for creating rambot.Noroton 01:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Can't speak for the Ram-Man or Rambot, but personally I find those sections rather dry and think they ought to be at the bottom, just ahead of Refs, Exts, etc. If the article gets long, they're in the TOC for those who need to look up a fact. Now if there is some compelling or unique item in the demographics, or geography, then I'd have no problem with it earlier. But in that case it might be better to have that fact in its own section. Just my USD0.02.--J Clear 20:22, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I won't be moving them, so if someone else reformats, I will leave the current ordering. The bot isn't intended to make those kinds of decisions, but to leave as much of the status quo in place. Ram-Man 11:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Baumgardener's Covered Bridge Inside Center 3008px.jpg

This image has been nominated on commons for Commons:Quality Images If know of any other images that meet the guidelines please nominate them at Commons:Quality images candidates ... Gnangarra 12:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] US Cities in French-language Wikipedia

A bot is currently needed to create articles on US Towns and counties on foreign language wikis. Much of North America is absent from these wikis. Policy has already been adopted in order to counter eurocentric and francocentric editing. ADM

[edit] Archives

[edit] Erie County, New York

Hey there, I noticed you made the pages for pretty much all the municipalities in Erie County, New York. Just wanted to let you know I created locator maps for the municipalities and a template for Erie County places. OzLawyer 18:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Nice. Most of the U.S. states have been taken care of, but there are still a few outstanding ones. Ram-Man 18:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GR 6 Link

Hi, I was wondering if the GR6 link for the county seat on most US County pages is working properly. I thought that it used to link to a reference on county seats, but now it links to a Bulgarian reference (or at least the 6th ref is now this - which is not very helpful). If I do not hear from you in a few days I will post this question on Wikiproject US Counties. Thanks, Ruhrfisch 16:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

No, it is working correctly. If you follow the link, the top line of the page is "A list of the U.S. county seats.", with a link to the correct information. It is just coincidence that below it are the references. Perhaps it is unfortunate that those are numbered, in conflict, but that's the way it is at the moment unless someone changes it to be a little clearer. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 16:51, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • OK, thanks for the quick reply. I guess I do not understand what the number 6 is for / what 6 refers to (as opposed to just having a superscript GR and looking for the information in the page on following the link). I find it especially cryptic when it is just a superscript 6, i.e. 6. Thanks again, Ruhrfisch 19:07, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Your confusion is understood. Originally the references were numbered, but for some reason they are not numbered anymore. They probably should be, and that was my point. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 22:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: blocking IP

As you wrote [3], you blocked some IP. I must say, It wasn't mine, because I have bot simnce july, and this IP was bot-active in juny too. JAn Dudík 12:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, it was just a coincidence. Please disregard. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 12:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

I'm not sure if my question was clear enough. I was asking about whether you agree with promotion decisions made by existing bureaucrats, and what differences of emphasis you would have if you disagreed. I feel taht you have answered indirectly by showing your interest lies in other areas. Stephen B Streater 18:19, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Directly, no I don't disagree with any specific promotion. I have a lot of respect for the system, and if you get to the bureaucrat level, I give you the benefit of the doubt. And yes, my interests lie elsewhere, so I am not involved in such decisions that often anyway. I can't really answer your question any more specifically. Hypothetically if I were to disagree, it would most likely be because a person with some controversy was promoted anyway. I tend to err on the side of not promoting. There should be pretty clear consensus, no matter what the vote. But of course it is so arbitrary that you have to draw the line somewhere. And that's the point of the bureaucrat. They make that decision. In addition, it would be a conflict of interest for me to be involved in a vote and then get upset when someone authorized to make (or not make) the promotion does (or does not). — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 18:25, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Re: Your RFA: Hang in there, Ram-Man! You had a rocky start, but don't give up! :) Even if this RFB isn't successful (and it's clearly looking better), you'll be able to learn what people are looking for the next time around. Happy editing! :) Firsfron of Ronchester 21:52, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I was a bit surprised by the initial burst of "negative" comments. I don't know if it will be successful, but I did expect a "battle". It has been interesting. -- RM

[edit] RFA

There was a misunderstanding of question #1. I thought this was in addition to the tasks I stated above. I clarified a bit and hope you reconsider. Morphh 20:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I'll take a look again to see if I should change my vote. Thanks for the heads up. I'd never make a judgement like that on the basis of a misunderstanding, especially since "Oppose" votes are more powerful than "Support" votes! — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 20:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chickie's Creek

I made an article for Chiques Creek (the USGS approved name since 2002) and then found your Chickie's Creek article. I copied the bridge info to Chiques Creek, made your Chickie's Creek and its redirect both redirects to Chiques Creek, and put a note in the Chiques Creek talk page about your article and the bridge source. I was bold and did not do a merge (do not know how to merge). I hope this is OK. I also nominated Chiques Creek at Did you know? and noted your article there too. Ruhrfisch 16:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds responsible. Don't worry, I'm not particularly worried, since the new article is much better and contains at least all of the information contained in the stub that I wrote. Copying was fine, and you don't have to mention my contributions by name. They were not major enough for me to worry about. Thanks for letting me know though. — Ram-Man (comment) (talk) 19:50, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Thanks - had I found your stub first I would have edited and then moved that to what is at Chiques Creek now. It did make DYK, but they cut off the 5 covered bridges phrase. Completely unrealted, but do you know if there is a covered bridge over Conewago Creek (Dauphin / Lancaster Co. border and Lebanon Co.)? Thanks, Ruhrfisch 20:47, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
There is a covered bridge over the Conewago Creek in Dauphin Co. called the Par Line Golf Course Covered Bridge, but the bridge is not a historic bridge, so I wouldn't include it. There are a number of non-historic covered bridges in Lancaster as well, but all of these are built recently and are on private property, so they'd hardly be notable enough for mention. I've found a reference that suggests that there used to be a legitimate covered bridge on the creek, but that it was burnt. -- RM 21:22, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your RfB

I didn't see any explanation of the result of your RfB but I read that you had withdrawn. This surprised me, because your answers persuaded me to move my !vote from neutral to support, and I think you had swayed a lot of others as well. At close, you were at 84% support (excluding neutrals) which I believe should certainly have been a consensus to give you the 'crat flag. What happened? Newyorkbrad 16:09, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I discussed this issue (see below) with User:Redux and he issued a legitimate response on Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship. He actually ruled that I had ~87%, just shy of the 90% to promote. I think that's the highest supported "failure" to date, but well shy of the 25 additional uncontested support votes needed to hit the elusive 90% mark. -- RM 17:56, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I saw Redux's response which was posted after I sent this, and it certainly alleviates the confusion. An argument could be made that 85-87 percent is consensus, but I agree that you are better off waiting and trying again in a few months. Many of the current bureaucrats were promoted on their second application, and after you have a little more well-rounded experience, your reapp should be a shoo-in. Regards, Newyorkbrad 20:11, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My mistake

Hi there, Ram-Man. You are absolutely right. You did not withdraw, since your RfB actually ran to conclusion. It was my mistake. Here's what happened: I had been reviewing the Bot election (where you are a candidate), and, as you know, the deadline there is September 9. Then, when I came around to check on RfA, I saw that your RfB had been closed. When opening it, don't ask me why since I don't know it myself, but I misread the deadline header in ISO format reading "09-07", which, of course, reads "September 7" (and it is linked to the date). But somehow my brain processed "September 9", crossing the wires from the date of the bot election and the number "9" in your deadline. That got me thinking that your RfB had closed 48 hours shy of this alleged deadline I had in mind. I started looking for a post from you withdrawing, but I couldn't find any. Then I saw this edit summary, plus the fact that VoA had changed the header nearly an hour before I came around without being reverted, and all of this indicated to me, at the time, that you had withdrawn.
Because of this misread, I closed and archived your RfB without assessing the result. I have now, of course, gone back to your RfB and analyzed it. Unfortunately, I did not see a support consensus that would be sufficient to promote to Bureaucratship. I discounted one vote in the "oppose" column, and gave less weight to another opposer who has been registered for less than a month but has a history of valid contributions during this period of time, but the consensus was still around 87%. The standards for promotion to Bureaucratship are a little different from those for Adminship. Generally, a support consensus of at least 90% is required, plus a guideline that needs to be taken into account, especially in close calls: the "no substantial opposition" guideline -- you mentioned Essjay's promotion: his final consensus was actually at 89.97%, although there was substantial opposition, which made it a judgement call that did stir some polemic. But with a final consensus in the vicinities of 87%, we cannot promote to Bureaucratship. But as NoSeptember said in my talk page, if you address the concerns raised by the opposition, a future RfB can indeed be successful.
Unfortunately, I cannot alter the edit summaries where I wrote that you had withdrawn, but I will issue a public statement at WT:RfA rectifying this situation. Please accept my apologies for this misunderstanding on my part. Cheers, Redux 17:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

An honest mistake, and one which I *fully* understand. Thank you for your comments in properly closing the request. Had you said that 87% was enough (for some reason), I probably should have objected, since IMO the people who objected were all stating the same basic reason for opposition. I'm not even sure I would have been comfortable at 90% (which wasn't far off), being that I believe there was "substantial opposition" in the form of a serious concern about lack of experience. -- RM 17:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Hey Ram-Man,
I followed your RFB closely. Sorry you didn't get promoted. I was also confused by the "withdrawn" comment, and I'm glad it was explained here. I thought your request was well-reasoned and your answers to the questions were quite logical. Best of luck on any future RFBs you may have, and happy editing! :) Firsfron of Ronchester 20:04, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I hope you win next time. :) Dlohcierekim 22:20, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:BAG

Welcome to the Bot Approval Group. Its gonna be nice having some help in there! If you like userpage meta icons, feel free to copy or use mine User:Xaosflux/BAG. See ya around! — xaosflux Talk 01:57, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed. I'll spend some time this week working on whatever there needs to be done. Now that there are more people, we should all be able to go a little easier on the whole process. -- RM 02:26, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Elissonbot

On this request, it looks like you have approved it for trials, but the discussion also has the close out tags on it, we dont usuually use those until the trials are over as well. — xaosflux Talk 18:15, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll get this process down eventually. Thanks for the help. I'll be an expert soon. -- RM 20:09, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:BOTREQ

hay VoiceofAll sugested once we aprove a bot let it stay on the page a little before wwe archive Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 02:07, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

If you didn't already do it, I'll place it back. -- RM 02:09, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
no problem, yeah we can go ahead and list it in the archive but give it a day or so on the page before you remove it, but you can still do every thing else Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 02:13, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
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