User talk:Bluebot/Archive1

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[edit] Bot action 24 july

you appear to have removed a line in Aegis (disambiguation) on your last pass. The line read "* Aegis Group plc, independent British research, media planning and buying company." was this intentional? Ohconfucius 09:39, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

No, this issue has been reported below, the MediaWiki software has clealy given my bot an old copy of the article to edit, see this diff and it is clear that your edits were ignored for some reason. Martin 09:56, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Tx Ohconfucius 01:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bot bug?

Hi bluebot. Why did you edit the source code accompanying this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dirichlet_distributions.png? Now it doesn't work :(

I've changed it now thanks Martin 14:45, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reaction centre

If you look at the discussion page of the photosynthetic reaction centre you’ll see that a lot of people have put in a lot of effort to make it what it is now. I don’t believe the good article tab is ‘premature’. Please don’t remove it again.

Thank you --Miller 20:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)Image:Signature george.PNG

[edit] Deleted images

Why were these userpages deleted? ⇒ JarlaxleArtemis 05:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed source citation

Why did you remove the reference to Carl Smith's book in Gettysburg_Union_order_of_battle? This was the source of the regimental strength numbers, and AFAIK was written in accordance with the Cite_sources guidelines. Geira 23:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

All the bot did was change See Also to See also, I think you are confusing the edit made by someone else afterwards. Martin 00:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A request

Could you use the bot to remove superfluous whitespaces between sections or at the end of an article? I'm tired of fixing them :) --Tothebarricades 10:27, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Not really, it might muck up the formatting if it's fully automated, but my semi-automatic software does do this, see WP:AWB. thanks Martin 12:04, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Appreciate you tidying up Also see -> to See also in several articles I've worked on. Thanks, Jtneill - Talk 23:36, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Ditto for bringing one of my articles into correct MOS form. This is a great use for bots! In the rush to contribute/edit substance, not everyone remembers the WP style conventions and standardizing the articles is tedious work. Three cheers! Ckamaeleon 00:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks from me too! I love you Bluebot! You have almost immediately fixed all the new articles I come up with!!! --Tyciol 07:33, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Another thanks from another user that just created some new articles. Way to go Bluebot!Elijahmeeks 18:46, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Hey thanks for the cleanup on Policharki. It was my first article. Rayana fazli 09:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the style corrections in Italian Tomato. Kinglag 23:52, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the corrections in Edith Kaplan. Not only were they helpful, but they taught me better wiki syntax! Kslays 20:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pokemon

Do you fancy changing all instances of Pokemon with Pokémon (with the accent). The previous is never right. I requested bot status for this and seemed to get approval until you removed Win98 functionality for WP:AWB. --Celestianpower háblame 23:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, if it's possible then it'd be good to change all of the capitalisations to "Pokèmon". --Celestianpower háblame 18:05, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Wow - just two mistakes (now corrected)! Thanks! --Celestianpower háblame 20:03, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subst:ing request

Could you please subst: all uses of {{PATH}}. All it does is insert [[Port Authority Trans-Hudson|PATH]] into articles. I don't want to add the TFD tag to the template as it would be massively disruptive, but once its substed then I will nominate it. Thryduulf 22:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure, although I belive there is a bug at the moment that means you cant properly see the "what links here" so I may not be able to do it soon. Martin 22:18, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Automation Idea

I have noticed there are a rediculous # of articles that need stubs. I wonder if there isnt a way to have a tool guess the correct stub if an article is categorized. I am guessing this would vastly speed up stubbing these articles. Any thoughts? -Ravedave 02:17, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Bots are too stupid!, sounds like a job for WP:AWB. Martin 10:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Cool. I wasn't sure if AWB would be able to handle it. It definitly needs a human to say yes/no. Think its a possibility? I know C# and I have a little spare time, how hard do you think it would be? -Ravedave 17:01, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Problem is how do you recognise the categories, as there are thousands of them. I have already made a program that scans the database, and can locate the unstubbed articles, so finding the untagged stubs is ok, and AWB automatically adds the stub tag if the article is short, I just can't think how you could program it to automatically guess the type of stub, any ideas? Martin 17:51, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
I dont know how realistic this is but here is my guess.
1) Tool is given a short article A that is categorized, but not stubbed (and needs to be)
2) Tool looks at the other articles in that category until it finds one that is a categorized stub.
3) Repeat for every category that A is in.
4) Present possible stub categories to user, so they can pick the best one, or reject them all.
OR
1) Tool is given a short article A that is categorized, but not stubbed (and needs to be)
2) Tool takes the words in the 1st sentance and searches Category:Stub_categories for categories that share wording with it.

[edit] Request for null-edits

Hi, Bluebot. I've modified a template that was inappropriately adding a category to articles to which it was applied? Could you null-edit all the articles in Category:WikiProject New Hampshire so that the inappropriate articles don't show up there anymore? Thanks! — Fingers-of-Pyrex 21:54, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

sure. Martin 21:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
There is a strange problem with that category, it won't scroll past the 2nd page. Martin 23:12, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks so much

I ran into your bot doing some routine work on a series of pages that I'd edited previously - just cleaning up and making them compatible with the Manual of Style. Bluebot did some great work on this. Very nice job. Anabanana459 07:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request

Good work! A lot of these things that the bot currently does are things that I find myself correcting. Could you make a bot that capitalizes the first letter of internal links in "See also" sections. I see this problem all the time, often en-masse. You might want to code in the exceptions to this rule (eBay, etc.) but even if it got those wrong it would constitute a massive improvement (given that those article titles are in caps anyway. Savidan 22:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Certainly something to think about, probably more suitable for WP:AWB, as that isnt fully automatic. Martin 22:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External link / external links

It would be good if Bluebot could leave the section title as "External link" if there is only one link. To be on the safe side, it could look for any * or # at the beginning of lines in the section, and only change to "External links" if there are two or more. ··gracefool |☺ 23:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

It never changes the pluralisation. Martin 23:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, my bad, that's good. ··gracefool |☺ 00:59, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Legend of Zelda-related articles

This bot has been playing havoc with the sections (correctly) entitled "Link". Since this is a clear special case, can anything be done about it, apart from manual correction? Setokaiba✌≝ 20:53, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bad bot

Don't do that again. Otherwise keep up the good work. — Ian Moody (talk) 20:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok sorry (and to above as well) Martin 20:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually pretty humorous =) --mboverload@ 22:03, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] links really is an IRC command

See this edit. That wasn't a links section, the section is about the IRC command /links. Thanks. madewokherd 19:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Maori to Māori

Hi there, would it be possible for Bluebot to go through and change 'Maori' to 'Māori'? Also change any 'Maoris' to 'Māori' (the usage of 's' as a plural is incorrect but is unfortunately used by some people, hopefully there will not be too many of that though). Many thanks. --GeLuxe 01:30, 29 January 2006 (UTC) (I edited a mistake in my own comment --GeLuxe 08:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC) )

[edit] External Links -> External links

Edit: Nevermind -- found the right section of the styleguide. How annoying ;) cruinne 15:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requests

How about some of my grammar pet peeves? Do you think your bot could handle changing instances of "on accident"( a mistake which needs to die a horrible, stabbity death) to "by accident"? And "alot" to "a lot"?

And, if it's possible, Ho-oh to Ho‑oh, Ho-Oh to Ho‑Oh, [[Ho-oh]] to [[Ho-oh|Ho‑oh]], and [[Ho-Oh]] to [[Ho-Oh|Ho‑Oh]]? You probably can't tell the difference, but the target in each case contains a ‑, a non‑breaking hyphen( a.k.a. ‑ or U+2011) instead of a regular hyphen. This prevents the name from being split when it occurs at the end of a line. Best not to change the capitalization of the O because fans can't seem to agree or find any official sources( Pokémon and character names are usually written in all caps in official materials) -- WikidSmaht (talk) 01:59, 2 February 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Bluebot substition change request

Also posted to Bluemoose:

I have just altered WP:SUBST to suggest that {{lived}} and associated templates not be auto-SUBSTed: I'm going to attempt to have them auto-include biographies in [[Category:living people]] if no deathdate is specified, and obviously this is going to be volatile information which will be ruined if SUBSTituted out from under. Please could Bluebot therefore refrain from SUBSTing these particular templates for the foreseeable future? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:56, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Null edit request

I learned about Bluebot from this Help Desk discussion. Could you send Bluebot on a null edit run of the articles on this "What links here" page? Thanks! --Aaron 23:06, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

  • It worked! Thank you very much! --Aaron 17:36, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry about all the "External links" fixes

Thanks for fixing all of my "external links" problems. I'm just learning and need to read more of the manual of style. I'll try to fix any others. THX. Mike 21:33, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where's the source code?

Hi, I'm interested in building/running bots. Is the source code for this one published anywhere? - Samsara contrib talk 18:28, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_the_python_wikipediabot Martin 20:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] External Links - External links

Ah, I see. Thanks, bluebot, for keeping my style in line with Wikipedia practice! What a cool idea, an automated checker.  ;) Penguin2006 09:01, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks Bluebot

I've been remiss in not thanking you for cleaning up my revisions to the James (Jimmy) Tompkins article. Great job!!!

Tweeker 04:58, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links vs. links

Argument closed. Fallon17

[edit] Thanks for the heads up

Regarding the Links -> External Links section naming. I try my best to keep up with the manual of style. :P --Matt 15:30, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Substituting templates

Please read through Wikipedia talk:Template substitution before substituting any more templates. It's (arguably) harmful, and the only reason they should be substituted is the few cases where non-updatability is the intended purpose. Server load is not a good reason, according to Lead developer Brion Vibber. — Omegatron 16:15, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, but I have only subst'ed templates per that page, so if it changes, then I change with it. Also, I haven't for a while anyway. Martin 17:02, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Ok. — Omegatron 17:34, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can your bot help?

Hi, Template:Infobox Aust school has recently had the spelling of "enrollment" changed to "enrolment" because in Australian English, the word is spelt with one 'l': [1]. I was wondering if your bot would be able to assist us in changing all the pages that transclude the template to use the new spelling of the parameter, and if not, whether you could suggest someone else's bot or another method that we could use. Many thanks. enochlau (talk) 05:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

(Replied on user page. enochlau (talk) 05:39, 26 February 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Removing blank lines under headings

Hi, why are blank lines under headings being removed [2]? Talrias (t | e | c) 10:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

The bot is fixing heading errors, and at the same time standardising other minor things, like excess white space. Martin 11:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm all in favour of fixing the heading capitalisation, but I find the extra blank line under the headings makes it easier to read the article when editing. I think it is helpful, not excess. Could you stop making this change in future please? Talrias (t | e | c) 11:15, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with bluebot in removing the extra whitespace, overall most ppl seem to agree as well. -Ravedave 16:07, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • The removal of white space annoys me as well. According to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)#spaces, the white space under headings is okay:

    Spaces above and below headings are completely optional. Spaces between the == and the heading text are also optional (==Heading== vs == Heading ==). According to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, these extra spaces will not affect the appearance of the heading in any way; the rendered page is identical.

    It would be a different matter if an editor were simply changing the formatting to suit his or her preferred style before copyediting. But in this case, the change is being done arbitrarily.
    -,-~R'lyehRising~-,- 23:49, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
No extra space is way more popular (based on analysis of the database) and is the standard used on featured articles. Martin 01:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks Bluebot for cleaning up after my mistakes. You're a very a helpful bot and if there was a barnstar for bots, I'd definately give it to you :). (Is there?) —Mirlen 14:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

You can give one to my owner ;-) Bluebot 15:02, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
You're a smartly trained bot, lol. Alright, then, to your owner it is :). —Mirlen 21:27, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links>Further reading?

Possibly this should be done at some point per Wikipedia:Cite sources#Further reading/external links. One advantage is that it is correct whether there is one source below or several (none of that External link/External links bother). However, making the change would probably be problematic in that I'm guessing there are many pages with both an External links and a Further reading section, and automating a change would result in two sections with the same name. Шизомби 19:56, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor Complaint

I hate to bump up the complaint counter to 8, but Bluebot judged a bit of code as incorrect and attempted to correct it. The following code:
<sup>[[Aleut Restitution Act of 1988#External Links|[1]]]</sup>
As you can see above, Bluebot judged [1]]] as a mistake, and fixed it by changing it to [[1]]. However, the singular [ and ] around 1 are decorative, and the other two ]]'s right of the "1" are to end the internal link.

Just to let you know about this, but on the other hand, I appreciate the work Bluebot has done! Kareeser|Talk! 15:39, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TY

The bot has corrected 8 of my articles today, heh, I guess that speaks to its need on WP ;) Sherurcij (talk) (Terrorist Wikiproject) 23:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Natural Gas Pipelines

Nice work on the pipelines - since I'm watching every page in the category my watchlist now shows about 80 edits by Bluebot, but they were all good. --Ignignot 20:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:welcome

WP:SUBST says that the welcome template {{subst:welcome}} should always be subst'ed when placed on a usertalk page. Could you get Bluebot to do this, I was trying to do it myself but there are far too many for a human to do (about 4000) even with (non-bot) AWB to help. Cynical 11:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Priory School

Please could you have a look at Priory School which was recently edited by Bluebot? Something seems to have happened to the formatting, but I can't see what's wrong with it. Thank you CarolGray 11:21, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Just for clarity, that was not an automatic edit, a bot alone couldn't make those changes. I fixed the silly eror I made, thanks. Martin 11:24, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks CarolGray 11:34, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A request that I feel that others from the Counter Vandalism Unit should have made

Could you please regularly check the contribs of all users with Willy, On Wheels, Willypedia, Is Communism, etc. and, if they have a ton of inappropriate pagemoves, add the following:?

{| class="messagebox standard-talk" style="width: auto;"
|-
| [[Image:Nuvola apps important.png|50px]]
| '''This user is a suspected [[Wikipedia:Sock puppet|sock puppet]] of [[Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress/Willy on Wheels|Willy on Wheels]]''', and has been [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy|blocked indefinitely]].<br><small>See [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Special:Log/block|page=User:{{PAGENAMEE}}}} block log]</small>[[Category:Wikipedia:Suspected sockpuppets of Willy on Wheels|{{PAGENAME}}]]
|}

It would be a great favour to Wikipedia. Thanks. Drahcir my talk Image:Smile.png 21:16, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

This bot edits articles, it has no functionality for checking users and their contribs, sorry. Martin 00:07, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Star Wars Redirect

I was wondering if Bluebot could fix all the redirects happening from here and change them to go to Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. Jedi6-(need help?) 03:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikifying

The bot adds the wikify notice to articles that don't need it - not because they aren't wikified, but because they're going to be deleted soon. Can you remedy this? Possibly if it only gets added to an article that's been untouched for a few days? DS 19:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll try and limit it, but note that it never adds a template to an article that already has any other template. Plus if the article is deleted then there the problem is gone anyway. thanks for the feedback. Bluebot 19:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
And now it's putting the stub tag on attack pages that are minutes old. Again, this feels rather inappropriate. DS 14:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
It tags pages when they are off the first 50 page list, if attack pages havent been noticed by then, then it is probably good that they are given some kind of tag, otherwise they will not be found for a long time. Plus it does try and detect vandalism before hand - which it has done quite successfully. Martin 14:41, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stub template on DAB pages

Hello there. I notice that you have been wikifying some articles recently (eg. here and here). Unfortunately, the side effect of this change is that you are adding {{stub}} to disambiguation pages, which is incorrect. Please modify your behaviour. Thanks. --TheParanoidOne 07:01, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

A bot could not possibly tell the difference between a stub and a disambig (when it isnt tagged), at least this way the disambig is identifyed. Martin 09:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I've just - via a database scan - tagged about 150 untagged pages as disambigs, hopefully this will drastically reduce the number of false positive stubs. Martin 11:00, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Change of disambig page format contrary to MoS(?)

Regarding this edit; I don't understand why BlueBot changed the style of the page. The Manual of Style for disambigs on subjects with a "primary" topic says the first layout was correct. Fourohfour 16:06, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

That was actually me, I was tagging pages that didnt have the template, and I changed that while I was at it, as I believed it was the wrong format, having never seen a page set out like that before, I'll change it back. thanks. Martin 16:11, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stub tagging and edit summaries

Hi; wow, what a busy bot! I notice a large number of edits summarised as bold formatting title, where a stub-tag is also being added. While both of these are Good Things, could you tweak the edit summaries to reflect both changes? (I might be biased, but I'd tend to think that the stub-tagging is the more significant of the two, if either, given that it represents a categorisation (of sorts).) Minor point, I know; keep up the good work! Alai 17:38, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor bot issue

Hi, and thanks generally for all the bad-link fixes. I think, if it's possible, it might good to adjust the bot to account for instances where a last name is being put in brackets, to indicate that someone being quoted didn't say the last name.

In the Joe Maneely article, for instance, the quote was "...Marie [Severin] said his pencils were...", with Marie Severin's name linked. It looks proper and good at this old page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joe_Maneely&oldid=42614141#Quotes

where it read: "...Marie [Severin] said his pencils..."

whereas now it reads: "[Marie Severin|Marie Severin] said his pencils were"

For now I'm leaving it the way the bot changed it, so that you can see it on the live page. I truly hope I'm not causing any difficulties, or asking for something that the bot just simply isn't capable of. Thanks again, — Tenebrae 21:49, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out, I'll look into seeing if it can be changed, but really normal brackets should be used for something like that anyway, I have changed it now. thanks Martin 22:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bug Editing Code Page

The bot deleted a couple spaces in an example file on RSS_(file_format), which made the example there less readable. Just a heads up

[edit] Removing tags?

Can this bot remove tags from main article space? i'm thinking about the "goodarticle" tag that has been added to hundreds of articles without discussion or consensus. a list of all the articles affected could be seen by looking at "what links here" on the template page, then it would run through them all simply removing that tag where it appears on the main article page (and not on the talk page space or wikipedia space). if this is not the use of this bot, please let me know what would be more suitable. thx! Zzzzz 16:09, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Sure, it could do that, but I would only want to if it was decided that it was definately the right thing to do. thanks Martin 16:11, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

thanks for the quick reply. its currently under discussion but i'll let you know in a day or 2. cheers. Zzzzz 17:17, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

it looks likely we'll go ahead with this (probably sunday but hold your horses until we give the final word, discussion is here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Good_articles#The good article tag on main article space. the bot is needed for step 2 only.).

in preparation, how do i prepare the request for bluebot?

this is the list of articles to do: Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Good_article BUT not any articles on the Talk: space or on the Wikipedia: space.

this is the text to delete (i.e. replace with nothing): {{good article}}

this is suggestion for the edit summary text (if possible): remove premature addition of good article tag. see [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Good_articles#The good article tag on main article space]]

do you need a rollback script too? its easy in this case, as all the affected articles are already listed at WP:GA, and their talk pages are all marked with {{GA}}, and their corresponding talk pages all belong to Category:Wikipedia good articles.

here is the list of articles to be done:

Biology Bird Bolivia Brain Bacteria BASIC Bioinformatics Cell (biology) BBC Canada Charles Darwin Computer Carbon dioxide Chicago Bears Chicago, Illinois Dice Drawing David Beckham Ernest Hemingway Eukaryote Methylenedioxymethamphetamine Football (soccer) Film Glacier Horror film Houston, Texas Halloween Iran Insulin Industrial Revolution Internet Explorer Japan Kurt Cobain Lipid Los Angeles, California Monty Python Megatokyo Mickey Mouse NATO Nutrition Ordinal number Oscar Wilde Prion Pennsylvania Protein Polymerase chain reaction Pope John Paul II Pepsi-Cola Piet Mondrian Punctuated equilibrium Quark Rhode Island Rush (band) Richard Dawkins Race and intelligence Star Wars Silent film Steel Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Singapore Shanghai Stephen Jay Gould Santa Claus Sonic Youth Snowball Earth Syd Barrett Television The Legend of Zelda series Tuatara The Band Tsunami The Smashing Pumpkins Tibet University of Texas at Austin Volcano Wassily Kandinsky Spider Banana Globalization Sesame Street Social anxiety Kitchen Sequoia Sumo Green Day Final Fantasy (video game) Final Fantasy IV Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy VIII Final Fantasy IX Salt Lake City, Utah Darth Vader Eutrophication Virus Jacksonville, Florida Hatshepsut Filling station Video game crash of 1983 Toronto Newark, New Jersey Mammoth Cave National Park Ammonite Glasgow Tobacco smoking Illinois Institute of Technology Contact lens U.S. Route 66 Victoria Cross Super Mario Bros. Neil Young The Lion King Mitochondrial Eve Myers-Briggs Type Indicator 1964 New York World's Fair Opus Dei Black Flag (band) Goleta, California Van Halen Toussaint L'Ouverture Christina Aguilera Torquay Chinese New Year Oasis (band) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Treasure Island The White Stripes Emergency department Southern United States The Star Wars Holiday Special ITunes Harlem Renaissance Diane Keaton Guayaquil 1973 oil crisis Wells Fargo Effects of nuclear explosions Vacutainer Danske Statsbaner Bottlenose Dolphin Music of Texas Fitness landscape Tom Brady Opera (Internet suite) Phineas Gage Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Special education Policy debate Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Gay bathhouse Lostprophets Half-Life 2 Coffee Facebook Collapse of the World Trade Center New York City Hawaiian architecture Snakebite (bite) Polythiophene Model M Keyboard Ohio Wesleyan University Streetlight Manifesto Hurricane Iniki Hurricane Gloria H5N1 Palpatine Sinclair Research Ltd Podcasting Spira (Final Fantasy X) Google Geology of the Capitol Reef area 2005 Atlantic hurricane season Junta (game) Hopkins School Robert Clark (actor) Mammal classification Eruption column Sears Catalog Home Diamond cut Carolingian Gospel Book (British Library, MS Add. 11848) History of Earth Bobby Fischer $100 laptop 1997 Pacific hurricane season Scotch College, Perth Presidio of Santa Barbara Hurricane Katrina Sassanid army Lost (TV series) Female hysteria Cubeb Shigin Schuttern Gospels Southern Pacific 4449 Hurricane Nora (1997) White Mountain art United States Pere Marquette 1225 Nepenthes rajah Photosynthetic reaction centre Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. Mythology of Final Fantasy X Jordanhill railway station Dog

anything else to cover? Zzzzz 19:52, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Non-bolding of title

Hi. In this edit, Bluebot claims to have "bold formatting title using AWB", but nothing was done apart from moving the stub tag around. A bug somewhere? Cheers --Pak21 12:24, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

It got a little confused because it is very cautious in adding bolding, so as not to bold the wrong bit, but it didnt skip it either, I'll fix it. thanks Martin 12:47, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stop messing with subheads in See also sections

JA: Please. Style is a guideline, subject above all to common sense, and not a thing to be enforced by bots. Jon Awbrey 22:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The specific error has been fixed. Martin 23:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Final Cut (song)

On 23-Mar, Bluebot blanked The Final Cut (song) for some reason. The edit summary was fixing bad links so perhaps it was a server glitch, but I thought you might want to take a look at it if you remember what you were doing at the time. Thanks. -- JLaTondre 02:55, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

How odd, I've never seen anything like it before, thanks for letting me know. Martin 08:55, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Piping problem caused by Bluebot

Hi - looks like there's a problem with Bluebot accidentally altering the category piping when it is intended to start the piping with a blank space 9to place categories before the alphabetical list). have a look at this change. Can you fix it to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen? Cheers - Grutness...wha? 01:26, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks Martin 08:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Applying formatting inside links

You appear to be trying to apply bold formatting within an internal link, causing the link to break. --TheParanoidOne 13:03, 1 April 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 00:04, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a bot account operated by Bluemoose. It's unlikely that a bot will want to take part in the survey, especially since you have already left a message on Bluemoose's talk page – Gurch 18:02, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for correcting Oakley, Buckinghamshire. I do try and I am learning!

Would you mind not changing portable HTML entities to Unicode? There's absolutely no need to do that. Dysprosia 22:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll add &prime; to the list not to change. Martin 23:19, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. Dysprosia 00:07, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode of TM symbol

This bot tried to convert to unicode the TM symbol, but actually removed the symbol. Could you look into this? Talrias (t | e | c) 17:13, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

ok, thanks for the note. Martin 18:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Automatic catneeded for uncategorized new articles

I've noticed something while on new page patrol: People often forget to put a category on their articles when they create them. As a result, they go to Special:Uncategorizedpages, which is inordinately long and not at all easy to browse. If an article appears in Category:Category needed, it's easier for someone to find an article and categorize it.

Here's my suggestion: I think it would be useful for Bluebot to go through new pages and put the {{catneeded}} template on each article that doesn't already have a category. Of course, since a lot of new pages fall under the criteria for speedy deletion, the bot probably shouldn't operate on new pages right away -- it should probably wait about an hour or so before checking for the page's existence and lack of categorization.

I don't know if this would be a huge amount of work, or if it would place a huge load on Wikipedia's servers, but it might be useful. Let me know what you think. --Elkman - (talk) 19:29, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, yes it is certainly a nice idea, but unfortunately there are sooo many uncategorised articles it would just flood the uncategorised category and probably the servers as well! As an alternative I have been running User:Bluemoose/Uncategorised good articles for a few weeks (and will update it again very soon), so we can at least start working on the half decent articles without a category.

[edit] Unicode nbsp

Hi, I've reverted your bot's modification of Image:Clear1x1.gif, it replaced &#160; by UTF-8. Two potential issues:

  1. My browser is old and doesn't support UTF-8. But it knows &#160; (aka &nbsp;) among others. Replacing it could cause harm. We're talking about six vs. two bytes, no big advantage, a potential backwards incompatibility (see 2nd point), and the modification with edit history etc. also doesn't come free.
  2. Besides it's pointless, the server (fortunately for me) translates all versions of nbsp (non-breaking space) to the backwards compatible form, your modification had no effect from my POV. IMHO you should stay away from all entities (symbolic or NCRs = numerical character references) up to u+00FF, that's Latin-1 and might be critical (e.g. nbsp in templates). No problem if you modify characters above 255, including windows-1252 128-159: That's no Latin-1, windows-1252 128 is the Euro, as Unicode far above 255. But pleaese leave anything resulting in u+0020 (space) up to u+007E (tilde) plus u+00A0 (nbsp) up to u+00FF (Yuml or whatever it is) alone, they could mean something, especially nbsp. -- Omniplex 20:37, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I have been avoiding certain entities, &nbsp; included, I didnt avoid &#160; because I didnt think anyone would use it over &nbsp;, I appreciate that the unicode version of &nbsp; is not very helpful. The reason I have been unicodifying is not to save bytes, but to make the text readable for humans and computers, rather than exclusively computers. Anyway, I have finished now (apart from main namespace of course), there really wasn't much that needed doing, I think someone else must have done most of it already. Martin 21:08, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. My preference for &#160; is based on a bug in my browser, it treats more than one &nbsp; as single nbsp, but behaves for 160. The old HTML 3.2 entities might be better readable than UTF-8 for users of old browsers, how many might that be, one in ten thousands is a wild guess. Or less... :-) -- Omniplex 01:43, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BR project proposal

Here's an idea that could help: Folks often confuse HTML <BR> and XHTML <br /> trying <br/> as a sort of compromise. While that's valid it's officially (in the XHTML 1.0 standard) not recommended. In other words it has no effect at all with some browsers, which can cause havoc. How about fixing the missing space in <br/> by your bot? -- Omniplex 21:30, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll add it to the list of syntax fixes. thanks Martin 08:51, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but this request is unneeded. MediaWiki software converts the <br/> to <br /> anyway. I see no point in changing pages for such a nitpicky thing. <br/> is valid xhtml. I see no point in encouraging people to type <br />. And even going to change pages for this is totally unneeded. --Ligulem 23:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor mistake

This is another of those you can refer to as "not really a mistake, all it did was change an existing mistake to a slightly less wrong mistake" ... though in this case, I think it changed an existing slightly less wrong mistake to a slightly more wrong mistake. Specifically, here: [3] It changed the heading "Web links" to "External links", though the "Web links" was already a subheading of "External links". So we end up with a heading "External links" and another subheading "External links". Arguably there shouldn't have been a subheading there at all, but at least before it wasn't as obviously wrong. Rare case, I expect. -- GRuban 12:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for pointing that out. Martin 13:19, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Info on scope of bot's activities

Hi,

User:Eagle 101 is building a bot which is going to be adding wikification and stub tags to articles. I was wondering what the rules are that Bluebot uses to decide that these tags should be added. I was also wondering what articles it is "patrolling" these days. Back in March, it seems to have been looking at non-initial "Recent changes" pages, but seems to have stopped doing that in recent days. Certainly it seems like a good idea to have somebody's bot watching new articles. It also seems like it would be a good idea to do a database scan to see if any older articles need to be tagged. In order to avoid duplication of effort, I wanted to check what area Bluebot has covered. If there were more info on User:Bluebot about what it has done/is doing, I could point people at that when they ask me questions about this sort of thing.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your fruitful programming efforts,

-- Beland 23:49, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] USCOTW

I saw that you've worked on the Bill Ritter (politician) article, and would like to encourage you to support it in the USCOTW elections. Thank you, Editor19841 22:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alpha Phi Alpha

thanks for the work on the Alpha Phi Alpha article. Is it possible that I can run additional bots on the article, or must the creator run the bot? Also, if I can run, are there instructions on how to do this? Ccson 13:25, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Html vs Unicode special characters

Hi, I noticed in Co-amoxiclav you changed & reg; and & beta; to ® & β. I had always gathered that this was not the prefered method (and indeed had seen both reverted back to html). Has policy changed and have I missed something ? - please advise :-) David Ruben Talk 14:33, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

The human readable form is prefered, and indeed much more common, I have no idea why anyone would change it to a version designed to be read by computers, and that means nothing to 90% of our human editors. thanks Martin 15:12, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics rendered rediculous

I noticed in Temelec, California you inserted inappropriate decimal places into statistics, and also modified some dates (for example, year 2000 changed to year 2200. What?).

I suggest you look harder, my edit was nothing of the sort. User:Penguindude3 changed the dates, I didnt notice. Martin 07:55, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] template fixing

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Timok&curid=3631671&diff=52537738&oldid=34552543

now there is no intro. before, the dab-temp could be regarded as intro. maybe use page title (here Timok) to write: '''Timok''' may refer to: .... anyway great work, best regards Tobias Conradi (Talk) 12:36, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I've added an intro now. btw, this was just the first step in my plan to fix up all the disambig pages, one of the next ones is to fix the introductions, many don't have one at all. thanks Martin 12:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Teplice

Hi,

I was wondering if there is someone who lived or know Parksstrase in Teplice. Currently this steet called Jankovcova. I was born there and trying to located my family's house.

[edit] dear bot or

bot operator,
not that you shouldn't, but why do you go around capitalizing stuff like the c in category:whatever? Kɔffeedrinksyou 21:07, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Harrods

Thanks for cleaning up the various links--schgooda 18:02, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Underscores

Is there a reason your bot is removing underscores from links? Pages within wikipedia use underscores when there is more than one word in the title. Some browsers won't follow the link without an underscore to cover the whitespace. →ΣcoPhreekΔ 13:33, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

That isn't correct, underscores are not needed in wikilinks. I have reverted you reversion, as there were multiple minor formatting inconsistencies. Martin 13:39, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Excuse me, the underscore might not be needed by you, but as the links work correctly with them in, why is it you feel the need to go around removing them? Is there a policy on underscores in links? If so please direct me to it so I can study up on what I am doing wrong. If there is not a policy I fail to see the benefit of your edits. Just wondering →ΣcoPhreekΔ 13:46, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
The point of the edit was to remove the URL encoding in the links, removing underscores was just an incidental change, I can assure you they are not needed ever, the vast majority of links have no underscores, all they do is clutter up the code. Martin 13:49, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I see, no problem it was just that I was using a browser that wouldn't follow the links without the underscore, I've now changed browsers so it works fine. Oh and English spellings are fine, Thank you. →ΣcoPhreekΔ 14:00, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Just an outsider comment – it's not a browser issue, as the MediaWiki software adds the underscores to the HREFs of the links before giving them to the browser, whether the editor has added them or not. They are only removed from the text visible to the human viewer, so all browsers can follow them. You may see this for yourself by viewing the HTML source. ––Mysid(t) 13:11, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment - PB

Is this bot meant to do this? It tried to link the Potters Bar article to the Potters Bar article! (their the same thing!) Simply south 22:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you are looking at the diff the wrong way around, the bot removed the self referential link. Martin 22:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay i just checked and you're right. Whoops! Simply south 14:42, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A thank you

Thanks for the bot-spotting and correction of bad links on this article I've been nurturing on Jaz Coleman. I also learned a few things about formatting by reading this page, including that an accent is appropriate to the word Māori! Denstat 18:21, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moving stubs?

Hello, why is your article moving {{stubs}} and such to after the category? I thought the stub is supposed to remain before the category. -- Frap 08:55, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

My bot never only moves a stub tag, but the reason it places stubs below the categories when it is doing other tasks is because that way the stub category is not placed before the important categories, and because it reduces the chance that the stub tag will join on to the preceding text, as stubs need a double space before them. Martin 11:02, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suit symbols

Please don't replace suit symbols (&hearts; etc.) with Unicode characters. It is difficult to maintain the articles in this way (plus, we'll maybe replace the stuff with something else in order to make the presentation consistent, and Unicode characters will be probably forgotten in search&replace). Thanks. Duja 09:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

The unicode character is more popular, 159 occurances vs. 110 occurances of the html entity throughout the encyclopedia. Martin 10:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
But how am I supposed to edit it except for using copy/paste from Character map? It's a standard HTML 4.0 code. As far as I'm concerned, it's OK to replace &#nnnn; with appropriate Unicode characters, but not HTML codes that are not easily reachable otherwise. Duja 11:02, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Underscore

Your bot unicodified everything correctly except for the underscore: it removed it and replaced it with spacebar where the underscore actually was needed. Reverting.... --Shandris 10:12, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Martin 10:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AutoWikiBrowser and math tags.

The AutoWikiBrowser briefly messed up the bracket used within <math> tags before being reverted by someone else in Lie algebra. It's not a good idea to edit brackets within math tags with automated tools, as the mathmatical meaning may change as a result, and they are not links within math tags anyways. --Kevin Breitenstein 04:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I had just seen that as well, and was just about to implement the same method to ignore maths tags as it does nowiki tags, thanks Martin 09:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks a lot!

Those edits were very minor, but I never would have noticed them to fix! Thank you! Skyeknighton 19:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I second that, Thank you Bluemoose. Fluffy999 23:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Why did you add a space into the < br / >s in the Battle of Kerzhenets article? I don't see anything requiring this in the Manual of Style. Esn 23:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Because it is slightly better syntax, as described above in the section "BR project proposal", but this behaviour may change soon. thanks Martin 00:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I still don't see where it is - could you give me a more direct pointer? I searched for "project proposal" and "br" on that page and didn't find a thing. Esn 01:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
here it is. Martin 08:19, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Svinjokolja

Can you correct anything wrong in svinjokolja? I'm in a hurry.

[edit] Thai people

I've seen that you have sorted a few Thai people as if they were Westerners, but the convention is that Thais are sorted by their first listed name. Osomec 23:31, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I didn't realise, fortunately I only cam across a few Thais. I did check first by looking at some other articles because I had a vague suspicion that this was the case, but they were ordered by surname as well. thanks Martin 09:46, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs

Hey Bluebot. Just wanted to drop you a line to note that you're currently moving a lot of stubs to the very end of the article after the interwiki links. I know you probably know this, but it's generally a good idea to keep the stub tags either before or after the category links and moving them to any place other than that will likely result in someone else moving them back... blah blah, unnecessary work for everyone. So, if you could modify your behaviour a bit that would be fantastic. --NormanEinstein 19:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I totally disagree, there is no advantage to having a stub tag beside the categories, putting them at the very end has a number of advantages; It means the stub category is listed last, it means the stub tag is less likely to become adjoined to the preceding text (as stubs need a double space before them), and it is a good idea to put maintenance tags either at the very beginning or very end of an article. Also, I would never edit an article to do something as minor as just moving a stub tag. Martin 19:37, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Whatever comes first can we keep the double space after the text. Otherwise short stubs look squashed. Jameswilson 22:35, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely. Martin 23:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Architecture template

Just to alert you that he Architecture Template is being added to some inappropriate pages, eg Talk:List of metropolitan areas by population, Talk:Urban area and especially Talk:Magdeburg rights (which is a legal thing though named after a city). Jameswilson 22:33, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I was doing it per the request here, but it is all done now anyway. Martin 23:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
If it's not too much trouble, I think it would be a good idea to remove the template from some of the subcategories, namely those under Category:Urban studies and planning. The template was applied to many articles where it doesn't belong, from those listed above to Category talk:Public transport to Talk:Streetcar suburb. - EurekaLott 04:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for bot category rename

I'm looking to rename articles in Category:Cults to refer to Alleged Cults because labeling an organization a cult is highly subjective (see Category Talk:Cults and the CFD entry. I'll probably add the request to another bot owners page or two so you might want to check that it hasn't been done yet. If you do get to it, please leave a message. Antonrojo 01:27, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proactively converting HTML entities to Unicode

I would like to discourage you from having your bot convert HTML entities to Unicode, particularly on mathematics articles, for the following reasons:

  1. It clutters article watchlists (there are over 10,000 math articles on wikipedia)
  2. In mathematics, the TeX and HTML entity code name are the same, making consistency easier
  3. Browsers that could otherwise render correct substitutes for HTML entities (which are encoded in ASCII) may not be able to handle equivalent Unicode symbols. In fact, upon encountering a Unicode symbol while editing articles they may display nothing at all. This appears to be a serious problem for text browsers like Lynx (web browser) in particular.
  4. Screen reader software for handicapped users may not support Unicode too well yet, and many users will be running older software for financial reasons.

In my opinion there is no good reason to proactively convert HTML entities to Unicode on articles that already render correctly ("if it ain't broke, don't fix it"). Please consider disabling this feature of your bot at least on the articles belonging to any subcategory of Category:Mathematics. - Gauge 23:26, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor bug

Bluebot made a change to Sierra_Nevada_Brewing_Company that was correct but not complete.  :)

Certainly correct, on the See Also, the first occurrence of the article name definitely should not be a wikilink to itself, but it should be bolded. So I think you would want the diff to look like:

Good work though.  :) Wikibofh(talk) 14:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I know m's minor and N's new, but...

What exactly does b stand for in Recent Changes? I've only seen this for this first time on the RC page of the Animated films category. --Slgr@ndson (page - messages - contribs) 22:51, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Probably b for "bot", though I've never noticed it before. Martin 23:02, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] a minor formatting issue

I reverted bot's change in Sobolev inequality. I think the formatting

Gagliardo-Nirenberg-Sobolev inequality

is not correct, although I understand why bot thinks otherwise. (Igny 14:39, 19 July 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Excellent work!

What a useful bot! Thank you for doing the formatting work that would be tedious for humans (and porpoises). --Gray Porpoise 16:15, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Just thinking about those poor porpoises is what keeps me going! thanks. Bluebot 17:03, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cuneiform and non-BMP characters

Your Unicodifying broke Cuneiform script, replacing Cuneiform entities (in the SMP) with the corresponding characters in the BMP (i.e. downshifted 65536 codepoints). Diff: [5] User:KonstableBot has also been making this mistake (on Phoenician alphabet; could it be a bug in AWB?

I haven't fixed it, because there have been edits made since then. (It's your mess.) EdC 03:25, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Replied at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser. Martin 08:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bot error: Video scaler

Unfortuanately the bot messed up / rv'd the edits I made to the article Video scaler [6]

I fixed it now but just in case this is an error with the bot I thought I should let you know!

That is so strange, in fact I had a suspicion that it must have been the MediaWiki software being odd, and if you look at this diff (which is a normal edit for my bot), it is clear that my bot was given an old copy of the page to edit. very strange. But fortunatel I've never seen it happen before. thanks. Martin 21:41, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I figured that was the case :D and it did look like that was what happened. --Errant Tmorton166(Talk)(Review me) 08:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit]  ? setting Bluebot on groups of pages

Thanks to Bluebot for tidying someof my errors on a few of the articles I've been involved in writing. I was just wondering how Bluebot is tasked to visit pages? would it be possible to have it visit all the pages in a geographical area (or subject area) that are brought together via a template? eg If the bot visited Chew Valley or Mendip Hills could it be set to visit all the pages which are included in the templates at the bottom of the page? (as you've probably guessed I don't know much about how bots work) — Rod talk 10:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bot bug?

See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sulfur_tetrafluoride&diff=next&oldid=56402907

The bot added other Wikis, but did not link to the articles - it linked to the chembox templates. I fixed that, but just keep an eye on this sort of behaviour ;-) --Zureks 11:11, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, it didnt add any interwiki links, it just moved the ones already there (they were in the middle of the article for some reason). Bluebot 11:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bell polynomials

In this edit you ignored the commented-out warning about the section numbering getting messed up if the heading you deleted is deleted. It does appear that the sections get numbered incorrectly as a result. Can you explain why that is not a sufficient concern to you? Michael Hardy 14:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't see what difference it makes, the numbering doesn't appear to change at all, having that heading there looks terribly unprofressional (hence it being in a guideline not to have it), is that not a concern to you?. Martin 14:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

for tidying my 555 Recordings article. Sprinkles 01:21, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stub tags at end? Since when?

Where in the MOS does it say the stub tags have to go at the every end of the article? Everyone else I've dealt with say they go before the categories, and I've had enough of my articles corrected thus that I assumed this was correct. The Bot is supposed to be working based on MOS but I can't find any reference to this one way or the other. Personally I think it's very awkward especially since I have seen end-of-article stub tags mixed up in lists of categories and multilingual interwikis. 23skidoo 14:14, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't say either way in the manual of style. Putting them at the very end has a number of advantages; It means the stub category is listed last, it means the stub tag is less likely to become adjoined to the preceding text (as stubs need a double space before them), and it is a good idea to put maintenance tags either at the very beginning or very end of an article (i.e. out of the permanent text). Martin 14:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
For example: look at this revision, and this one, which you changed, clearly having a stub tag in the middle of an article looks unprofessional and puts the least important category first. Martin 14:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
But it's not in the middle of an article. The article had concluded with the External links section; the Template is considered an extension of the categories and is always below all text (except for the categories themselves). To have the stub tag below it a) looks bad and b) is likely to be missed by anyone who doesn't scroll down far enough (a problem the categories also face, admittedly). The fixed version looks much better (though in the example cited it would look even better if there were more text added to the article so that the stub tag appeared below the infobox. 23skidoo 21:32, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks For Fixing the Formatting on the Talismania Article

I never could figure out how to space those external links properly (I've still got some formatting to learn). Thanks a million.

[edit] Living People

This bot put Lawrence Joel in the "Living People" category. However, he has been dead since 1984... he had not yet been put into a "death year" category. It might not be wise to assume people that are not in a death category are alive. Just a heads up. --TinMan 01:46, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

  • And again it put Antony C. Sutton in the living people category when the article said that he died in 2002 (honestly I know nothing about the guy, just going off the article). I deleted the tag. Thought you ought to know. Cerealkiller13 07:21, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Ok, I've added the death category now. Martin 08:25, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits to chemical compounds

Hi Bluemoose/Bluebot! I am editing, and hence monitoring many edits to, chemical compounds pages, and I see that bluebot is removing stub-marks from these pages. Some of these have now been reverted (this and this, and I think I will check also the others, now). Chemical compounds sometimes contain a chembox, and if that chembox is there, the page looks big, but may be still a stub. Pagesize is not always a good criterium for being a stub! Is there something that can be done about that? --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. The Bluebot also removed stub tags from some dance music artists pages, and while some of those pages seem long, their size is derived from a discography listing, with the text portion being two or three short paragraphs. See Masters At Work for an example. --Pc13 21:03, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi, well to be honest i would disagree that that article is a stub, but i won't argue the point, I've finished for the day anyway, I'll change my criteria to be even more selective tomorrow. Martin 21:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Nope. Those two pages I gave links to are absolutely stubs. Manganese(IV) fluoride contains one sentence, which, apart from the word 'blue' is only containing intrinsic information (for comparison, the article 'red, yellow and blue', containing only the sentence 'The painting "red, yellow and blue" contains only the colors red, yellow, and blue' contains only as extra info that it is a painting), and it contains 3 links. The rest is a completely empty chembox (only question marks). For Anisoyl chloride the situation is almost the same, bit more text, but less links.
Now one could argue if those boxes should be on these pages, while they are completely empty, but if there was one piece of data in it, the box would not be empty, the page would still be a stub, and still contain quite some bytes of. So I think size does not matter as criterium for stubbyness. Sorry. --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:21, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, i was referring to the second comment, i agree with you that it was a mistake, I have already changed the software to filter out tables etc. before doing a word count, which will make it much more difficult for me to make another mistake. thanks Martin 21:25, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
OK, sounds like a great plan! It looked so good, we have so many compound-stubs, is time we get rid of some, and this is a great method :-). Thanks, and see you both around! --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:35, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stub tag removal

Your bot just removed a couple of stub tags (Susanne Ljungskog for one). That article is a biostub. There is a lengthy curriculum vitae (listing of cycle racing results), but a CV is not a biography. As a biography, it is a stub. JFPerry 23:48, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Is Bluebot's criterion for removing a stub tag completely automatic, or does it show the page to a human before tagging it? If automatic, what are the exact criteria? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 21:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I was testing the idea of doing it automatically, though virtually all i have done so far (which isn't that much) was monitored, I have tweaked it quite a lot now, so potentially it could probably be done fully automatically at some point. Certainly I located the candidate articles in the first place using a criteria, which has been gradually tweaked, at the moment it is over 800 words and over 10 links. These are pretty high standards though, generally an article with many less words is probably not a stub. Martin 22:06, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Nathaniel Wyeth (inventor) (1911-1990)

22:20, 16 August 2006 Bluebot (Talk | contribs) (adding living person cat)

If the fellow died in 1990, how do you figure he belongs in the living persons category? --Xrblsnggt 01:45, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

It had a birth category but no death, i have fixed this now. thanks Martin 11:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fixing headings per manual of style

The bot is doing this (see Religion and the internet ) despite guideline as it breaks permalinks. Why? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about, all it did was change "See Also" to the correctly capitalised version "See also" and simplify a link. Martin 11:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Here is the guideline Wikipedia:Guide to layout#Standard appendices That's all. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 12:46, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
We should always be using the correct/standard form though, which is lower cased. Martin 14:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes - I strongly prefer uniformity and the lower case. But we should presume against changing existing capitalisation. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 07:06, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] disambiguation links?

Hi,

Thanks for the good work. What about patrolling pages that use the Template:Infobox Company for disambiguation of [[founder]] or [founder|some text here]] or co-[[founder]] to the pertinent variation of [[Entrepeneur|founder]] ? But be careful, since lotsa people use this infobox.... Thanks Ling.Nut 12:11, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Ditto for infobox company2 tks Ling.Nut 14:08, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shift 4 Article

Thanks for spotting bad "External Links" Mr. Bot! Hackajar 17:55, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please fix errors

Please fix the errors by your bot in changing from disambiguation page templates. I don't see any reason why this should be done anyway, but it should at least be done properly. One error, it looks like anything that begins with a name is converted, even if it is Albert College or Albert Medal to a {{hndis}}. Again, there is no reason for these changes anyway, and they shouldn't be done at all if there are any errors. —Centrx→talk • 21:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Apologies for those mistakes, only very few of this particular change was made, due to the evident complications. Martin 21:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Theta Beta Potata PUNK HOUSE Deletion Review

[edit] Theta Beta Potata

This article was first started by me and was deleted back in May '06. I was reading the punk house article and saw that the link for the TBP article was no longer red so I clicked on it and there was an article back up, started by another user. I dont know who started it because, it was deleted soon after I saw it. The decision made in the "Article for Deletion" debate should be reconsidered. The article is about a punk house not a fratenal organization. It seems that the debate, run by User:ChrisB and results were reported by User:Mailer Diablo. I will post this on their talk pages. This is the first time I have requested a deletion review so please let me know what else I need to do. If there is anything. I am on wikipedia frequently and I want to learn. Thanks. Xsxex 16:28, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image at Fern Rock Transportation Center

While I would like to thank Bluebot for fixing a header in this [7], in the same edit, the bot made an image (the one of the Regional Rail Station) invisible by removing one of the closing brackets. I thought I should bring this to your attention.-- danntm T C 01:30, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the polite note, I'm not initially sure what causeed this, but I'll certainly fix it soon. Martin 11:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
No problem, I'm just happy to help make Bluebot better through my feedback.-- danntm T C 12:36, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Many thanks

Just a quick thank you for tightening up an article for me. I may learn this wiki thing one day.Brasseye 01:53, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs

Hello,

Thank you for your stub submission. You may wish to note that it is preferable to use a stub template from Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types instead of using simply {{stub}}, if you can.

Thanks!

In addition, it's worth noting that redirect pages should not be marked as a {{stub}}, if the target of the redirect is a stub, mark that; not the redirect itself. -- Ratarsed 20:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why have you proposed for deletion

May I know why the page on Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary has been proposed for deletion?

Dinesh Kannambadi

I didn't, I only added a template asking for the article to be categorised, which you have done now, thanks. Martin 21:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs and disambigs

Hi - I notice that Bluebot is indiscriminately adding {{stub}} and {{uncat-date}} to short articles, many of which are actually untagged disambiguation pages (which shouldn't get either of those templates). Not sure if there's any way to stop that happening, but if there is it'd save a bit of work further down the track... cheers, Grutness...wha? 00:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I like to try and find all the untagged disambigs before hand (though I hadn't this time), but at least they get tagged properly this way. thanks Martin 08:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of stub?

Mostly, it seems that if it's Bluebot-marked, the edit is OK.

But I wonder about The Skulls (U.S. Band) - the edit removed the {{band-stub}} tag I'd added, and added nothing in its place, which removed the article from all music categories. I would like to know the reasoning... --Alvestrand 16:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Because that article is not a stub, stubs are short articles that need expanding, that article just needs to be formatted properly. I have now added a proper category. thanks Martin 16:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Italicizing within Links

I'm late to the game, but when I checked one of my articles, the BlueBot had italicized a word within a link. Yucky formatting! Anyway, I manually corrected, if you've already corrected the bot, ignore me. --JulieC 18:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no code in my bot to anything like this, can you point to what you are referring to. thanks Martin 19:08, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Genidiot&diff=64662143&oldid=50254981 --JulieC 20:58, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
You may consider my article non-sense, but it pointed out a bug in your script and us therefore useful. --JulieC 13:28, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] George W. Helme middle name

Hi, I am reasonably sure that George W. Helme's middle name is Warne. Although I don't have any documentation. I am a decendant of GW Helme's Living in VT. THanks for the research and work you have contributed.72.92.143.154 23:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)Bill bcalfee@verizon.net

[edit] Champs-Élysées?

where did Champs-Élysées go? --Espoo 19:17, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

From Place de la Concorde to Place Charles de Gaulle, of course! -THB 23:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BASDAI

Bluebot: I am floundering trying to discern an existing category for: (Medical) Diagnostic Tools. BASDAI is a validated test to determine the effectiveness of drug therapy (or the need for it) in Ankylosing Spondylitis. Thanks for any assistance and/or tips on categorizing. Apparent Logic 04:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I've added Category:Medical tests as well. Martin 08:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wikify?

Hi Bluemoose, your bot recently edited the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israellycool page adding a wikify tag. I'm not quite sure though what further needs to be done to make it compliant. I could make some guesses, but if I get it wrong your bot would simply re-add the tag on its next run. Could you provide some more detail as to what exactly needs to be done (or alternatively, is there any way for me to run your bot against the article so that I can verify that I'm succesfully fixing it?)

QuengHo 23:55, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

That article has few internal links, and probably too many inline external links, further than that it is ok. thanks Bluebot 08:10, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you!

Thank you for fixing the header mistakes on the articles I've written! Vera26 07:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Section header correction correction

As per this edit, the "External links" section should always be pluralised (not "External link"). Cheers, violet/riga (t) 14:48, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no consensus on this issue, so I am not changing the pluralisation at all. Bluebot 15:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
The general agreement is that it should always be pluralised, and is shown that way at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings). violet/riga (t) 16:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:Guide to layout it says There is currently no consensus on whether or not the singular or plural form of the section name should be used, although plural is more common, so I'm sticking to the safe side and not changing it at all. Martin 17:20, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Please contribute to Straw Poll

Hi, we are having a straw poll in order to save the "9/11 Conspiracies" page from generalized disorganization. Could you please help us out by casting your vote? Thanks --146.115.123.152 18:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Underscores vs. spaces in [[Links_like_this|links]]

Hiya Martin! I just saw that Bluebot eliminated the underscores in some links in Radius of curvature (←such as right here). If you use a pipe to change the link name displayed, shouldn't you use the raw URL article name (i.e., including underscores and——e.g.——"%27" for "'")? Personally, I don't care, but I figured the raw URL would be preferred, since it would likely require less conversion. ~Kaimbridge~ 22:14, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

In terms of conversion it doesn't make any difference, because the parser has to standardise it all to start with. URL syntax is confussing to most people, so it is good to keep the wiki code as simple as possible. thanks. Bluebot 22:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

For correcting the error I made in trying to correct another error on the "Raffles, Gentleman Thug" page. Not sure why I messed it up like that, really. Edward Wakelin 01:10, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Space conversion in easytimeline links

Hi, Bluebot stopped by Lunar geologic timescale and changed some links in an easytimeline block that used _ and %20 for spaces. This broke the timeline as the easytimeline plugin uses spaces to separate attributes - see the post-bot version at [8]. Perhaps you should tell Bluebot to skip over easytimeline blocks entirely, the syntax inside those can be a bit complex and fragile at times. Bryan 05:01, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Bryan, I have implemented the fix now. Martin 08:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode vs markup?

My main complaint is that I sometimes grab an article, throw into an ascii editor, search and replace, and move back, and then find a bunch of ? characters about 3 days later!

What's wrong with ascii-code markups? Tom Ruen 18:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The unicode is the standard format we use, I strongly suggest you use a better text editor, as many many of our articles contain all sorts of fancy unicode. thanks Martin 18:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help and Advice

Article Jane Hutcheon was placed under semi-protect after vandalism by an anonymous person on September 15. Again, on September 20 2006, the "Personal Life" paragraph was deleted by Actionperson without a reasonable cause. A check on his editing record shows he has done only one edit, ie the Jane Hutcheon deletion.Wilfred Pau 02:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removing underscores "_"

Hey, um, your bot removed the underscores of "SDL_image", "SDL_ttf" in Simple DirectMedia Layer etc. Those are the actual names of the libraries... I will put them back, but I'd hate to do that all the time :) -- Amenzix 13:04, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikification request

You put a wikification request on the article Rudolf Steiner's views on race and ethnicity. Could you clarify what needs to be done on the talk page there (it has created some controversy)? Thank you. Hgilbert 15:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Do not "unicodify" mathematics articles

The Wikipedia mathematicians have decided repeatedly and overwhelmingly that it is a BAD IDEA to automatically change entities to unicode in mathematics articles. Please immediately stop your bot from doing this.

If you have any suggestions about a general solution so this doesn't happen again in a few weeks or a few months (with another bot), please let us know at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. It's highly annoying that we have to stop this again and again. --KSmrqT 14:25, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

What symbols are you referring to? Many symbols are already not converted. I would add that wikipedia overwhelmingly uses human readbale unicode, not computer readable unicode. However, there are of course specific exceptions to this. Martin 14:35, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Katie Couric

Regarding the category in Katie Couric article, Jewish Americans or American Jews: My concern is that you changed the category in the Couric article BEFORE it has been determined that American Jews is the more appropriate name for the catgory. It is under discussion. Why did you change it? Ward3001 00:13, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Because the discussion had been closed and filed for move (not by me). Martin 09:10, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 11'9''01 September 11

Your edits [9] to 11'9''01 September 11 seem to have distroyed the intewiki links. The same problem appears in the English wikipedia also. It is not possible to just link to "[[11'901 September 11]]". -- Petri Krohn 00:45, 27 September 2006 (UTC)