User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Talk Archive 8

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[edit] Archive

See: Talk Archive Index

[edit] Smackbot alphabetizing categories

On pages for sports players, for examples Barrin Simpson, I think it would be a good idea if you did not alphabetize the categories. The categories were listed in a specific order for clarity, first the ones dealing with birth year and living people category, followed by the teams they have played for, sometimes in chronilogical order, sometimes not. By alphabetizing them it makes the categories look like a random mismash. Tnikkel 06:13, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I can't scope it by article type, so for the rest of the capitalisation run, I've turned it off. Rich Farmbrough 10:55 11 March 2006 (UTC).
On the other hand, compare the list you had before, to what you think is good now. I don't think I broke anything there. Have you any other examples?Rich Farmbrough 11:39 11 March 2006 (UTC).
I'm not sure I'm seeing your point about not breaking anything. The edit your bot made ordered the categories: year of birth, team he played for, living people, team he played for. Before Smackbot it was ordered: team he played for, team he played for, year of birth, living people. After I editted after Smackbot it was ordered: year of birth, living people, team he played for, team he played for. My preference is that the teams he played for be grouped together, and that birth year/death year/living people be grouped, and other logical groupings of that nature. The article conformed to this preference before SmackBot, and after I editted after SmackBot, but not after SmackBot's edit.
For other examples of where I think categories should be grouped logically and not alphabetically, check out pretty much any person in Category:Canadian Football League players (or subcats), or Category:National Football League players (or subcats). For one specific example, look at Doug Flutie. With the number of categories on that page I think that grouping categories logically is even more important, otherwise it just becomes a random looking list.
I don't think that sports people are the only examples, but its the only one that comes to mind right now. For example, any person should have birth year/death year/living people grouped together for easy maintenance. Tnikkel 20:35, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Doug has this list

[[Category:1962 births|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Roman Catholics|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:American football quarterbacks|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Arab Americans|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Boston College Eagles football players|Flute, Doug]] [[Category:British Columbia Lions players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Buffalo Bills players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Calgary Stampeders players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Chicago Bears players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Heisman Trophy winners|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Living people|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:New England Patriots players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:People from Maryland|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:People from Massachusetts|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:San Diego Chargers players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:Toronto Argonauts players|Flutie, Doug]] [[Category:United States Football League players|Flutie, Doug]]

Apart from Roman Catholic it's alpha order. Rich Farmbrough 13:45 19 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Felbamate rm caps in section header

Would you please revise the edit you made 10:59, 11 March 2006 (UTC). You have made "U.s." and "U.k.". If you are using a bot to do this, it should not be done under your account (I believe). If you are doing it manually then you are being rather careless. You are responsible for your edits regardless of how they are performed. Colin Harkness°Talk 11:41, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Further to my response on your talk page ("Of course"), please note that there is a currently a problem with Wikipedia displaying the wrong version of articles. I've just been around the block making the same changes several tiems because there's this problem, probably synchronising between the squid caches. That's probably why I didn't see my mistake. Rich Farmbrough 12:11 11 March 2006 (UTC).

See also your change to Epilepsy 11:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC). I strongly encourage your to use "Show changes" before submitting your edits. Colin Harkness°Talk 13:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Show changes wasn't helping, because the version being compared with was wrong. Believe me, I looked at almost every diff of every edit I made to those pages to try to work out what was happening - and I am not a novice at using Show changes or history. Rich Farmbrough 17:47 11 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Re: Anna Hazare

Hi there, I didn't add the inuse template to this article. Rupakbiswas did in this edit. Cheers, Cmdrjameson 17:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks for drawing my attention to the existance of inuse templates though, I hadn't known about them before now. Cheers, Cmdrjameson 18:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tennis - RM caps in section headers and/or minor fixes using

Hi, would you mind explaining me why you transformed the tennis files into something hardly readable, like in 1994_French_Open_-_Men's_Singles and so on? What was wrong with the originals? Regards, Darius Dhlomo

Sorry, a mistake. All fixed now. Let me know if you come across any others. Rich Farmbrough 18:37 11 March 2006 (UTC).
Thanks, mate!! Good work! Regards, Darius Dhlomo

[edit] Stub template should go after categories

In this edit you moved the stub template before the categories. This should not be done, as the stub category is less important than the others. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 18:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

How very odd. Further up may talk page you will see flamage because stubs went to the end, which is what has always happened if the "sort" option is on. I shall investigate further. Rich Farmbrough 18:42 11 March 2006 (UTC).
In your next edit you wikilinked a date that's part of an external link. That one is somewhat my fault though, as I forgot to add a references section. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 19:12, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I've found the reason, the template was "California State Highway Stub" instead of "California-State-Highway-stub" I'm fixing about 100 pages, and moving the sutbs to the end. In at leat one case [1] it has been in the wrong position since day 1. Rich Farmbrough 12:37 19 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Cats

I too have had a stub template moved in an article I've been watching. Although the stub template generates a category (as do many other templates), it is not a category itself. It generates text and the editor will have placed it where he/she thinks best. Wrt sorting categories - please please stop this madness. Where is your authority that you can whizz through Wikipedia imposing your view of "tidy" on everyone else? If you can point to some where that there was a large consensus that it was a "good thing" to have sorted categories and that it was "essential" that all articles be brought into line, then I'll accept it.

In a number of complaints above you blame your tools. I'm sorry but you are responsible for your edits. If you can't control your tools and can't be bothered to check their effect with Show Changes then please find something more productive to do instead. Colin Harkness°Talk 21:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image Tagging Image:Exempt.gif

Warning sign
This media may be deleted.

Thanks for uploading Image:Exempt.gif. I notice the 'image' page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this media yourself then you need to argue that we have the right to use the media on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the media yourself then you should also specify where you found it, i.e., in most cases link to the website where you got it, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the media also doesn't have a copyright tag then you must also add one. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then you can use {{GFDL-self}} to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media qualifies as fair use, please read fair use, and then use a tag such as {{fairusein|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair_use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other media, please check that you have specified their source and copyright tagged them, too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any unsourced and untagged images will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Shyam (T/C) 21:24, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I've today replaced that with (self-made) Exempt.png. So I've deleted the gif. Rich Farmbrough 22:03 11 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot on article Carl

In article Carl, Smackbot changed [[Carl (name)]] to [['''Carl''' (name)]]. Perhaps you're auto-bolding the first instance of the article name. If that's the case please avoid that change inside wikilinks. —Quarl (talk) 2006-03-11 21:57Z

THanks Quarl, we thought this was fixed. I'll check for all instances where this could have happened. Rich Farmbrough 22:00 11 March 2006 (UTC).
Cheers —Quarl (talk) 2006-03-11 22:30Z

[edit] St Louis rename

Have you had a chance to get the St Louis redirects, I have a flagged bot sitting idle which can take care of those tonight, looking at your contribs it hasn't been done. I'll have my bot start away on them as I really need something to do :) -- Tawker 06:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Some of the sub-categories still need doing, (Category:Saint Louis University shouldn't change.) Rich Farmbrough 07:29 12 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Removing caps in section headers

Thanks for removing the caps from the section headers in epilepsy.

However, I noticed that you also removed caps from the text of an entire subsection, the one called 'Normal provocants'. (Check the article history.) I can't imagine that you did this on purpose. I wonder if you didn't use an automated method to do this; if so, perhaps you might be able to figure out where it went wrong.

Cheers, -ikkyu2 (talk) 08:38, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate the note. I can fix this problem with my editing aid, so it's really useful that you've told me. Rich Farmbrough 19:28 12 March 2006 (UTC).
I am glad to have been helpful. I often wish that I had the ability to code up such useful aids. -ikkyu2 (talk) 21:41, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] J. R. R. Tolkien

Hi! My name is Mike, and I wanted to let you know that this article is up for Featured Article Status! It is SOOO CLOSE! And as someone who has worked on this article a lot in the past (having checked the history) I thought you could help me fix the inline citations. As I have none of the books in question, I am out of luck, but thought real enthusiasts might be able to help. So, please help, or get those who you know can to help make Tolkien a featured article! Thanks much! Judgesurreal777 18:07, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of Arizona birds

I'm wondering if you botted this one. I don't quite see the point in wikifying the dates of first sightings of birds in a state, it seems extraneous and/or unuseful to do this. Birthdates and historical events make sense, but I'm not sure why the last edit was even made.  :/ -- Miwa 13:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with useful links. Just click on the "my preferences" link, or check out m:Help:Preferences under Date format. Gene Nygaard 17:16, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Gene has kindly replied for me. Rich Farmbrough 18:39 13 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] MOT?

Hey Rich

After you edited MOT (test), it vanished. But it doesn't seem to be a deleted article. Any ideas?


[edit] Transwiki:Casualties of the September 11, 2001 attacks

Thanks for your welcome over on the memorial wiki! I just found it myself recently. Doc 14:52, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikified Dates

Please undo the "wikified" dates you made in the date articles. You have created circular references. That is, you've got date articles pointing back at themselves. Rklawton 22:57, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your note. You are perfectly correct that these are circular references, which are by and large a Bad Thing. However the badness has been ameliorated by the Wikimedia software (since about V1.3 or 1.4 I think) which displays them as bold instead of as links. Since the frist occurance should be bold anyway, this is ok. On the other hand, it also allows date prefernces to work. For a fuller discussion see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Days_of_the_year#Linking_dates_in_lead_paragraphs. Best regards, Rich Farmbrough 23:11 14 March 2006 (UTC).
That's good to know about circular references. I suppose the extra CPU cycles aren't all that significant. However, we now have bolded dates in places where they weren't bolded before (other than as the first word in the article). I'm rather hoping you will avoid this problem with the remaining date articles and review the date articles you've already edited for errors. On a separate note, I'd recommend against running BOTs against date articles anyway. Date articles have a high vandalism rate, and BOTS run the risk of masking such edits. Rklawton 23:20, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Coolio. I'll be able to review date articles on Monday, but with 366 articles to plow through, the fewer edits, the better. Rklawton 00:37, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] election table

All latest election results on a national level around the world are now in a template. This was a project for a couple of months and nobody really argued against it. The big advantage is that results can be used in more entries, and that the results are not diferent throughout Wikipedia. Electionworld = Wilfried (talk 18:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Smackbot and US Articles

G'day, It has been pointed out to me that Smackbot is trawling through the US Census articles and fixing layout. Would it be possible to have Smackbot add USA after each location so that it reads, "Horseshoe Falls, New York, USA." Most of the census articles fail to state that the location is in the US. As it is wiki style to actually indicate what country a place is located, this would be a wonderful task for Smackbot.

What do you think?

With best wishes,

Henry Maustrauser 09:28, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

That is a good idea, but may not be trivial, I'm looking to make another run through improving various solecisms. The MoS abbreviation is U.S. rather than USA though. Rich Farmbrough 10:00 16 March 2006 (UTC).
Thanks very much. Will you let me know if it can be done (or if you have the time to do it) and that way I can stop adding them manually. It gets a little tiresome! Thank you, Henry Maustrauser 11:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Some are already happening! Also quite a lot have been done manually by various individuals. My current run will take about another 2 days, then I will re-build the replacement strings to take care of some of the 00.00 % and the redundant word "total" in "has a total population", together with the U.S. part. Anything else you spot about the census articles, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 11:16 16 March 2006 (UTC).
You are wonderful! Thank you very much. I'll go off and edit something more edifying now. Cheers, Henry Maustrauser 11:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi—A bunch of your (SmackBot) Census revisions showed up on my watchlist, and since it became apparent to me that it was actually possible to do census data mass revisions (before it seemed to be like it'd be impossible, especially with over 600+ NJ municipality/CDP/area articles alone)... I wanted to comment that, currently, many articles' Census data sections begin at least one (if not more) sentence with numbers/percentages. This is bad English grammar—numbers beginning sentences should either be written as words (which obviously is not the solution to this, since the numbers aren't like "twenty-eight" or "seven"), or the sentence should be recast to start with something other than the number. Obviously this isn't your fault, but if it's something you could somehow correct while you're making these other corrections, it would be good. (Btw, I have never looked this up in the manual of style, but it's in many style/grammar manuals) Thanks. //MrD9 02:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll have some thinks about this. Rich Farmbrough 08:59 17 March 2006 (UTC).

MoS... MoS... Which one? In Asutralian English, starting a sentence/paragraph with a number of percentage is OK if it makes things more readable. Starting with "Seventeen point nine percent" instead of "17.9%" seems silly. While we are at it, U.S.A. isn't used in Australia anymore, looks weird, not sure of the UK recommendation/usgae. Alex Law 16:15, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think it is a debatable point, but if we can aovid it wihtout making the sentence tortuous, why not? WP has a preferred style (U.S.), which is fine by me. It may of course change in the future, but that's not a problem. Rich Farmbrough 16:26 21 March 2006 (UTC).
The issue of U.S. versus US has been debated at least half a dozen times in various locations around Wikipedia. The outcome has always been to prefer U.S. because that's the majority usage in the United States. Like American politics, American punctuation is very conservative. --153.18.99.87 23:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New regex

I have been testing a new regex in a file called 'datestest.js' (see my monobook). It has dramatically reduced two entire classes of false positives: ISO dates and dates that have the year at the left. It does have some 'misses' and some of these can be cured by running it twice (i.e. clicking on that 'datestest' tab a second or third time). Please let me know what you think. bobblewik 18:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Enlighten me

What benefit do the (hundreds of) apparent self-linking edits achieve (see e.g. [2]). Is it some date preferences issue you are sorting? Pcb21 Pete 23:45, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, most of them are already self-linked, I only had to do 62 days in the from 1st of July to the 31st of December, about a third of the total. It doesn't present any problems, because the software knows it is a a self link (just as it does with our sigs on our talk pages) an bolds it instead of creating a circular link. Rich Farmbrough 23:55 16 March 2006 (UTC).
Yes I agree it seems to be problem-free. I guess I just didn't get the point of the change - The ''' syntax just highlights in bold and the [[ ]] syntax does the same thing, after making the software figure out it is a self-link.. Maybe it is just making things standardized across all date pages? Pcb21 Pete 00:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
That plus if you had a page like "December 25 is the day after December 24" for some people it would look fine, for others it would look like "December 25 is the day after 24 December". Rich Farmbrough 00:04 17 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Minor SmackBot edit summary typo

Just a typo of general [3]. Just thought you'd like to know.--Drat (Talk) 01:22, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, much appreciated. Rich Farmbrough 01:24 17 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Underscores in wikilinks

Your Smackbot just screwed up a bunch of links in Top Gear. While it's good to remove underscores from wikilinks, don't do it in the anchor part i.e after the hash (#). The anchors are given specific names, which includes the underscore. All of those links to sections now simply go to the top of the article. Fix it. Imroy 19:37, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Er, no it didn't. The link anchor was wrong - to Emmy Award#The International Emmys instead of Emmy Award#International Emmys. The link to the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution#Evolution VIII was fine. Rich Farmbrough 20:43 17 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Errors in SmackBot

[edit] Tense

I have just reverted a couple of SmackBot edits (Irvine, California and Cerritos, California), as I believe the Bot is wrong. When writing as of (insert year here) the population of (insert city here) .... the rest of the sentence should be in present tense, and not past tense. --Asbl 16:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know your view. Rich Farmbrough 23:20 18 March 2006 (UTC).
I think you are right if the text is being written at the time spoken of, "as of today we are getting lots of talk messages", but notif it is being written later "as of 12 BC there are no computers" is wrong whereas "as of 12 BC there were no computers" is right. What do you think? Rich Farmbrough 23:32 18 March 2006 (UTC).

Yes, I guess its a function of content, so it's probably best to not create a bot for this application. --Asbl 00:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caps

It's also made a mistake in capitalization: in this diff, the first "as" should have stayed lowercase. -- stillnotelf has a talk page 17:13, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I will have to scan through and fix these. Rich Farmbrough 23:20 18 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Caps and a blank line

SmackBot has made the same capitalization error in an edit to Centreville, Virginia,[4] as well as again removing blank lines that serve a purpose, this time between article content and categories, which are supposed to have separation to make the categories more visible. Please stop SmackBot immediately until you have reviewed Wikipedia style guidelines and have addressed the many problems that are being posted on this page. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:58, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, capital fixed I will search out and fix any others, however there is still, and always has been, a blank line before the categories. Rich Farmbrough 23:20 18 March 2006 (UTC).
My apologies about the blank line. The diff shows a blank line being removed between the Geolinks template and the category, but after your statement, I confirmed that the resultant page does indeed still have a blank line. I guess it's a diff oddity. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I saw that, if I had more energy I'd file a bug. Rich Farmbrough 11:50 19 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot escaping apostrophies

In this edit Smackbot inadvertently escaped the apostrophies in the title "Appearances in Playboy special editions". I've reverted this one, but I guess it's likely the same snafu has occurred elsewhere. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me, it's only in some of the playmates articles. I promised to fix this, and am now doing so. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 00:09 19 March 2006 (UTC).
All fixed. Rich Farmbrough 11:17 19 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot grammar changes

I really don't think it's useful to change all Census 2000 data from present tense to past tense. Ideally we want to print current statistics. The Census 2000 statistics are the most current ones we have, so we use those. Putting it all in the past tense makes it sound like the cities don't exist anymore (or that their statistics are now significantly different, which is usually not the case). This might make sense for New Orleans, but not for other cities. Plus, we'll have to change them all back to present tense when the new Census is published. Instead, let's just leave them all present tense and use whatever are the most current statistics available.

Also, I object to Smackbot making two different types of edits at the same time. This makes it very tedious to revert just one of the changes (either tense or unicoding) should either one need to be reverted. Bots should only perform one type of edit at a time (at least in my opinion). For example, I love the unicode changes you are making, but hate the tense changes. Unfortunately there is no easy way I can keep one but not the other.Kaldari 05:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bot edit summary

Would it be possible to change the bot edit summary so that it is clearer that is is not primarily relinking nazi links? I come across it at different places, and it just looks so wierd to find it at places where there is no link at all..... KimvdLinde 17:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I missed your comment on my talk page earlier. The correction of the links to Nazism is complete, but I would still be interested to know where you saw the edit summary, that idn't have a Nazi/Nazism link. Thanks Rich Farmbrough 11:32 27 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot: arrangement of interwikis

Hi Rich - your bot's rearrangement of the interwikis at Christmas tree is wrong in putting them in alphabetical order of the two-letter codes; they should be in alphabetical order of the language itself, which isn't always the same. Some important ones to watch for:

  • es: (Español) comes before eo: (Esperanto)
  • he: (Ivrit) comes after it: (Italian)
  • ja: (Nihongo) comes after nl: (Nederlands)
  • fi: (Suomi) comes just before sv: (Sverige)

Note that this is not a complete list of all the ones that need care in positioning! - thanks, MPF 18:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been reverted or removed by an automated bot. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. If you feel you have received this notice in error, please contact the bot owner // Tawkerbot2 23:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tawkerbot2

See the bots talk page, during that last squidward attack the diffs comming from the IRC feed were screwed up and it caused some problems with Tawkerbot2, sorry about that, by the time I noticed it (within a few seconds) there wasn't much I could do due to the massive squidward attack. -- Tawker 23:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank You

Thank You!

J.Steinbock

[edit] Sortkey problems

In this edit you removed the space before the "Scenic" sortkey. This moved the article from the beginning of the category to after all the routes. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 11:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB

First of all, isn't it about time to archive this page? It's upwards of 145kb. Next, I have a question about your bot, SmackBot. What settings was it using when the bot made this edit? You can check out Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Quick Q for the context of my question. Thanks! --M@thwiz2020 23:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

These 367 pages should have self links, at least on the first occurence it supports date preferences. Therefore I always (try to) do these pages with manual intervention, or General changes turned off. I've been through the year twice checking and fixing manually, once last Sept, and once in the last few days, so I don't want to undo all that work! Rich Farmbrough 23:10 20 March 2006 (UTC).
PS you're right about the archiveing!
That's funny - while the AWB was still relatively young (about the end of last December), I went though the list of all the date articles and just did general fixes. But why 367 and not 366 (365 days plus leap day = 366)? As for the manual self-linker, you can write a simple regex to do this for you. Do a find-and-replace with regex turned on for:
Find: \|}(\r\n)*(''')?(\[\[)?(''')?(%%title%%)(''')?(\]\])?(''')?
Replace: |}\r\n[[%%title%%]]
This should (hopefully) make your task easier. I've already tested it and it works well, but only if the title of the article comes after the template close (for example, September 21). The regex allows for blank lines between the two, but no other text. I did this to avoid false positives, i.e., I don't want it to self-link all instances of the title on the page. If you have any problems with the regex, feel free to drop by! --M@thwiz2020 00:21, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I see that you have a new regex. [5] The ironic thing is that, according to your comments, you want to prevent robots from delinking the date, yet you're using a robot to leave the comments! --M@thwiz2020 23:01, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SmackBot not reviewing edits

Not reviewing every edit as required by AWB. Blindly piped UK and US in the List of all two-letter combinations.

--William Allen Simpson 13:19, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Now configured to avoid that page. Rich Farmbrough 17:01 23 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot edit to delink month

I reverted this edit because it was incorrect. You may want to double check your bot. —Mike 03:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Now avoiding that kind of table. Rich Farmbrough 15:48 23 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot request

Hi, Rich. Could you, please, exclude the "xxxx in Fooian television" series (such as 1930 in television) from the Smackbot's delink list? These series is one of the few places where linking months makes sense (due to the way tables are laid out). I reverted the changes made so far. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 13:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. Consider it done. Any other requests, or if this crops up again, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 13:50 23 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot, I'm not sure if this is an improvement

Hi Rich, It's good to see the changes being made to the Vermont town pages with SmackBot. However, I feel that it's making some changes that are sort of hard to read in English and I'd like your opinion. The recent changes to the Groton, Vermont page changed this sentence "The per capita income for the town was $14,659. 10.5% of the population and 6.8% of families were below the poverty line. 11.9% of those under the age of 18 and 9.1% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line." to this "The per capita income for the town was $14,659. Below the poverty line were 10.5% of people, 6.8% of families, 11.9% of those under 18 and 9.1% of those over 64."

The sentence that starts "Below the poverty line..." seems wonky. I realize this is trying to keep sentences from starting with numbers, but it seems like the old sentences were a little clearer, even if they had this grammatical undesireability, and I'd lean towards keeping it the old way or finding another solution. I don't feel super-strongly about this, but I wanted to know what you thought? Jessamyn (talk) 17:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not altogether happy with it as it stands. Can you make a better suggestion? Rich Farmbrough 17:38 23 March 2006 (UTC).
I'm still having a hard time thinking of a way to do it without starting the sentence with a number. Possibly something slightly more non-traditional but a little easier to follow. "The town has 10.5% of its population living below the poverty line, which includes 6.8% of its families, 11.9% of its people under 19 and 9.1% of its people over 64." The "its" could maybe be dropped. An improvement? I'd prefer to err on the side of starting a sentence with a number, but that's just my personal preference. Jessamyn (talk) 04:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I liked your version, however there' a technical difficulty inserting the word "town" (city, gore, CDP etc.), also "including" isn't quite right fo families. "There are 6.8% of families living below the poverty line and 10.5% of the population, including 11.9% of those under 19 and 9.1% of over 64s." Regards, Rich Farmbrough 13:08 24 March 2006 (UTC).
I think your latest suggestion is better than either how it looks now, or what SmackBot's original changes were "There are 6.8% of families living below the poverty line and 10.5% of the population, including 11.9% of those under 19 and 9.1% of over 64." certainly not perfect, but a big improvement. Jessamyn (talk) 13:19, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll go with that for now, but running slowly to allow other people a chance to chip in with improvements. Rich Farmbrough 13:23 24 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Delinking months and days of week

I really appreciate your bot delinking months and days of the week from articles. I was wondering if it could also delink isolated years? For instance, the phrase "In June of 2001" is changed to "In June of 2001", but the MoS also recommends that isolated years not be linked, just like isolated months. I've manually removed the links from isolated dates in lots of articles (e.g.), but it's tiring to do manually. What do you think? Is this something you'd be willing to do? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 17:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, count me in that coterie. I think a lot of the opposition is just against Bobblewik himself, and the perception that he's rude and negligent. (I haven't found this to be true, but some people seem to be of that opinion.) Anyway, it might be different if someone else, with a good reputation, were to try. If there's anything I can do toward this, let me know. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 18:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Smackbot suggestion

There was some text on a page that looked like "June 15", which smackbot changed to "June 15". But obviously this should be changed to "June 15". If there's an easy way to recognize such constructs, fixing them would be helpful. — jdorje (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

You are quite right that this would be desirable, and I do a lot of date linking, but because of the current disagreements around the whole date delinking/linking scenario I am being rather circumspect with what I do with SmackBot. In theory, the example you quoted 15 refers to the year AD 15, so even on a technical level there are problems. However there are a number of poeple working on imporving the date links, and there is a request with the developers for a better system of implementing date preferences, so all is not lost. Rich Farmbrough 00:35 26 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot and Chemistry

Minor problem of Smackbot's, it will fix links formatted like ''I love [[encyclopedia]]s'' to ''I love [[encyclopedias]]'', but sometimes that's not the right behavior, see line 350 of this diff. Here it fixed [[Sulfur|S]]H to [[Sulfur|SH]], but the H is not supposed to be part of the underlining. (I instead piped it to thiol, which is better anyway.) Perhaps if you instructed it to not make this change when the display text is in all capital letters or otherwise oddly formatted? If there's no obvious way to tweak the program I wouldn't worry about it, it's not likely to come up very often, but I thought you should be warned. Thanks, -- stillnotelf has a talk page 23:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks I'm not sure how to do this but I'll think about it. Rich Farmbrough 23:36 24 March 2006 (UTC).
OK I've made a change, it its a little complicated by the fact that AWB does some of these off it's own bat, and some are doen through regular expressions I specify. I'll just give it a test. Rich Farmbrough 23:42 24 March 2006 (UTC).
Your initial reply was fast, but the fact that you've already thought out a possible fix is mind-boggling! wow! -- stillnotelf has a talk page 23:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
It seems to work, it should now be very limited in taking capitals into the [][]. Any other issues, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 23:47 24 March 2006 (UTC).
Thanks, nice to be appreciated! R.

[edit] Capitalizing the first letter of all chemical names is incorrect

Smackbot went through the Synthesis and Production section of the article entitled Ammonia. It simplified most of the piped links to various chemicals, with which I have no quarrel at all. But at the same time it also capitalized the first letter of all the chemical names it encountered, which is incorrect usage unless the chemical name starts a sentence. Is there any way to make it recognize the difference between chemical names starting a sentence and chemical names which do not start sentences? (I have just finished changing those capitals back to lower case.

If there is some Wiki style guide that says the first letter of all chemical names should always be capitalized, then that guide is incorrect and something should be done to revise it. - mbeychok 00:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

No, I think this was just plain wrong. Let me see if I can fix it. Rich Farmbrough 00:29 25 March 2006 (UTC).
OK should be fixed now. Please let me know if you see any more issues like this. Rich Farmbrough 00:47 25 March 2006 (UTC).
Rich, thanks. - mbeychok 00:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date Articles

Smackbot is removing the self-referencing date link from date articles. The date link is important because it allows the reader to see dates formatted according to their preference. As such, it's an exception to the self-referencing rule. Besides, with the new software, a self-referencing link is bolded but doesn't appear as a link, so it's no big deal anymore. If possible please roll back your edits to date articles, change the programming a bit, and try again. If not, it's going to take a lot of work to go back and update all those articles by hand. Thanks. Rklawton 02:44, 25 March 2006 (UTC) (see our conversation above [6]).

I have a solution, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. Regards. Rich Farmbrough 03:07 25 March 2006 (UTC).
  • OK implemented for April, it's not the most elegant solution, but I think it's unlikely to be changed by users or bots. (Incidentally there are a lot of people using AWB, and I have seen at least Bluebot delinking them as well.) If you have no great objection I'll do the rest of the year. Rich Farmbrough 11:33 25 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] SmackBot's speed

I've got no particular objection to the formatting edits SmackBot is making, but I'm getting pretty frustrated with getting up every day to find half my watchlist full of masses of SmackBot edits. Would it be possible to slow things down a bit so it doesn't have that effect? Ambi 04:39, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I will slow it down for the time being - but you must have a huge watchlist, I have over 1000 and only three SB edits on it. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 11:24 25 March 2006 (UTC).
I've only got a thousand, so it's quite possible it's just been running through those topics. Odd. Thanks, anyway. :) Ambi 11:25, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
You may wish to vote for this bug. Rich Farmbrough 21:18 25 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Bot changes to U.S. cities

Please be careful regarding your new bot changes to U.S. cities. Many of the changes are ungrammatical, with bad punctuation (example: the use of the comma for the last clause in the first paragraph of each article). You're changing article after article in this way, with these consistent errors. Badagnani 05:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for pointing that out. I assume you mean the last comma in "Snooland is a town in Polk County, West Virginia, U.S., at the 2000 census the population was 33." I would see that as a parenthetical comma: what would be the correct way to punctuate it? What other grammatical errors am I making? Regards, Rich Farmbrough 11:12 25 March 2006 (UTC).
P.S. I've fixed the missing "and". Rich Farmbrough 13:10 25 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot block

Hi Rich, I've blocked Smackbot for three hours because it was delinking years and months. I have no problem with this myself, but it's a bit of a hot issue at the moment, and both sides have agreed not to make any more changes for a day or so until it's discussed more thoroughly. See here for the latest discussion if you want to leave a comment. Sorry for interfering. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 07:50, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually Rich, now that I check the edits more carefully, it seems only to be delinking days and months, which so far as I know, no one objects to, so I'm going to unblock it. My apologies. SlimVirgin (talk) 07:52, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
No problem. Rich Farmbrough 11:28 25 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Converters

I just thunk of something really cool, and I thought you might know if it has been discussed yet. How about an automatic "converter" for measurements so that all measures appear in the user's preferred format? Currency converters would also be interesting, too, though we might limit them to Pounds, Dollars, Yen, and Euros. The currency converter should be able to show the contemporary amount or today's equivalent (user's preference). Rklawton 20:40, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Here and here. Rich Farmbrough 20:50 25 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Links

You're making piped links look bad. For example, this bot changed Mac OS 9.2.2 to Mac OS 9.2.2 —This unsigned comment was added by Angelic Wraith (talk • contribs) .

Thanks, fixed. You say "for example", are there others you want to tell me about? Rich Farmbrough 23:53 25 March 2006 (UTC).

No >_> I'm not telling you :)

Uhh.. well they were on the Apple Macintosh page. I just meant it was doing that sort of thing. I reverted it so I don't see that it really matters. ^_- Dan 03:05, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Smackbot blocked

I have blocked SmackBot for three hours per a complaint on WP:AN/I and a few recent edits I saw delinking dates that should have just been reformatted and formatting trailing s's in piped links contrary to the Manual of Style. I don't know if these concerns have been raised before. If you have any questions, please ask me on my talk page or respond to the thread on AN/I. Hermione1980 01:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

A complaint has been made here as well. I'm not concerned with years being unlinked, I do that myself, but I am concerned about what Smackbot is supposedly doing with the trailing s in links. From the descriptions of others, I am not sure exactly what changes it is supposedly making. Is it changing [[computer]]s to [[computer|computers]] or to [[computers]]? The first is against the manual of style, see here, because it makes it harder to read when editing. The second will either lead to people having to go through a redirect or it will break links that don't have a redirect for the plural form. When editing, I usually make it so that users will be sent directly to a page instead of going through a redirect. Thanks, -- Kjkolb 02:55, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
HI Kjolb, unfortunately I'm autoblocked at the moment so I'm answering on my talk page. The answer is neither of the above. SmackBot is (was) changing things like [[computer|comptometer]]s to [[computer|comptometers]] very much in line with MoS. Also it's not unlinking years, only months and days of the week. Rich Farmbrough 12:02 26 March 2006 (UTC).
Oh yes and things like [[computer|computers]] to [[computer]]s. Rich Farmbrough 22:23 26 March 2006 (UTC).

Unblocked. Hermione1980 23:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Sweet, that should reduce my work. It's doing the opposite of what was claimed. I could not find any examples either way, when I did a quick check of the bot's edits. Sorry about the confusion, Kjkolb 02:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SmackBot month delinking

An unfortunate side-effect of your current delinking of months meant that in a whole heap of Formula One articles, the team March Engineering, which was wrongly linked to the month as March has all become delinked. I know it shouldn't have been pointing to March but now it is difficult to find and correct those incorrect links that I've only just become aware of. Is there any way to find all of the occurences of this other than going through SmackBot's contribs? Thanks AlbinoMonkey (Talk) 07:36, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, how about I give you a list of articles that include "Formula One" ,"Formula 1" or Formula one" and a link to March as of earlier this month. Rich Farmbrough 11:23 26 March 2006 (UTC).
OK here it is, all 224 articles - two have special characters but I'm sure you'll know the location of the real article. Some you may wish to ignore, like "2004" Rich Farmbrough 12:55 26 March 2006 (UTC).
Thanks! AlbinoMonkey (Talk) 08:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SmackBot

See: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals#SmackBot_and_AWB_operated_by_Rich_Farmbrough --Francis Schonken 10:30, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sep11 Adminship

Congratulations! You're now and admin at the 11 September Wiki. Have fun! :) Jamesday 22:09, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Remember that you can always take a break from edit wars or other strife. This place is supposed to be fun. :) Jamesday 22:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tawkerbot2

Yea, apparently there were some major major problems with Wikipedia, it appears to be fixed now, sorry about that -- Tawker 23:09, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] html commentary tags

See for instance template talk:footnotestext, comment by Omegatron [7] --Francis Schonken 01:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SmackBot

Wow, it's done so many edits it took forever for me to get back to the time on March 24 which gave me my first concern. I think it had something to do with editing everything on Wikipedia in alphabetical order without some kind of explanation as to what it was doing. Nothing against you, but I think the bot flag was set much too easily without a real explanation of what edits you were planning on making. User:Zoe|(talk) 23:35, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Of Tom Sutton and brackets

That's brilliant! Using the "nowiki" code was genius — and, yes, it's way better to have the brackets themselves not be linked. Makes them stand out properly and eases potential confusion. Kudos to you, man! Spread the word! — Tenebrae 00:07, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Smackbot breaking rules of grammar

Ohiopyle is a borough located in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, U.S., at the 2000 census the population was 77.

Tell me what's wrong with this sentence. Kaldari 02:14, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

PLease tell me. Someone claimed that the last comma is wrong, but didn't reply to tell me in what way. If I know what is wrong I can easily fix it. BY the way, I did write a reply to your previous message, but must have lost it, sorry about that. Rich Farmbrough 02:23 28 March 2006 (UTC).
If you honestly need me to spell it out: In English, sentences are separated by periods, not commas. Also, I don't think the preposition "at" makes much sense in this context. What's wrong with "As of the 2000 census, blah had a population of 77"? That is a clear and concise sentence. I don't see any need to change it. Kaldari 02:31, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, I see what you mean about the prepositon "in" would probably have been better. I'll leave the two sentence struture alone, although I think it's a bit verbose. Rich Farmbrough 02:36 28 March 2006 (UTC).
Will you be cleaning up the comma error? Kaldari 03:02, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes. Rich Farmbrough 09:40 28 March 2006 (UTC).
Just a quick summary of what my previous reply would have said
Yes - we want up to date info and when we get the 2010 census data no doubt Rambot will import it. However it still does not seem right to talk in the present tense about something that is six years old. The population of the US has grown by about 10 million in this period, and Las Vegas by about 41%. Some of the really small places could have seen even more massive percentage changes.
On your second point, I agree with you in principle, however users do not like to see lots of small edits, becasue it "pollutes their watchlists". Perhpas this is something to discuss at talk-bots.
Well, I'm going to tear myself away from WP for a while and get a little real life. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 15:16 28 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Don't need expand if already labelled a stub.

Please read talk pages before removing expand tags. For example, on Annual report[8] I added the expand tag because I'd like that page expanded to include "Semi-annual report" and "Quarterly report". Thanks! Ewlyahoocom 19:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I've put the tag on the talk page. Rich Farmbrough 21:49 28 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Re: RegEx

Line 480 of parsers.cs (in the code) contains a function linksimplifier with comments "changes Dog to Dog and Dogs to Dogs". WP:AWB also lists under "general fixes" (in the manual towards the bottom) that it:

  • Simplifies links like Dog to Dog.
  • Simplifies links like Dogs to Dogs.

I looked at, while it simplifies Dogs to Dogs it will not simplify Changed to Changed, etc. I can't fully understand your request, but I believe that that is what you are looking for, and I can easily modify the code to allow for that. Just drop me a message to let me know. Thanks! --M@thwiz2020 00:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your first regex, the only way to skip dates is to get into the code. As for the second, why not replace it with </nowiki>$1$3 instead of $2$3</nowiki>? --M@thwiz2020 00:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I doubt you'll get this message (since it's archived) but I'll leave it anyways. $1$3 is guaranteed to be a good link while $2$3 might not be. All in all, you need to edit the code. I'll see what I can do to modify Bluemoose's current regexs when I have time (Friday, probably). --M@thwiz2020 01:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
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