User talk:Bluemoose/archive10

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/archive1
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I might reply here or on your page, I'm a bit crazy like that.

Contents

[edit] AWB

When I, for the french wiki, google the word "Economie", all the page with accentued names are "broken", the accentued letter vanish.

And I find that the regular expressions are very complex to use with this program. That isn't easy Perl regexes !

See you soon !

[edit] My RfA

Hello Bluemoose, and thanks for voting in my recent RfA, which passed with a tally of (68/19/3). I appreciated your comments, which I hope to take on board in order to gain your respect in my work as an administrator. Sam Vimes 19:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Automation.

The template used for original albums is currently orange (see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Albums#Colors for more information on the range used for different albums). This colour has generated a fair amount of complaints: some of them are aesthetic, others a wee bit more serious than that.

Could you possibly automate a process of changing this colour throughout the encyclopaedia? It would be rather tedious to implement manually. Perhaps teal or some other shade of blue would be appropriate.

Please let me know if you are available to help with this effort. --Folajimi 01:14, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB

As you're one of more active admins on adding approved users, I would like to ask you for a small correction. My account (Klemen Kocjancic) and my bot's account (KocjoBot) were both approved and are on the list for a while. But someone accidently placed KocjoBot between users and not bots. Could you please correct this? Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 20:38, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE:Code project Copied from User talk:Werdna648

Hi, I am collecting lots of code to make a .NET library of useful wiki stuff, see the sourceforge cvs page for the actual code. So far I have got lots of code for formatting articles, getting lists of articles (e.g. from categories, whatLinksHere etc.) code for scanning the database dumps and more. Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to contribute your bot code? If I remember correctly you didnt want to freely distribute it for risk of vandals using it, but I guess this doesnt matter now, as there is already another .NET bot framework available (I just prefer yours though). Anyway, see what you think, I think the components would all complement extremely well. thanks Martin 20:28, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

After consideration and a scared look at the requests backlog, I've decided to allow this, provided I get write access to the cvs/svn (to update the code). Werdna (talk) 09:35, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Of course, let me know what your SourceForge user name is, and I'll add you as a developer. p.s. I just added functions for listening to the IRC recent changes feed, so with your code it will be a pretty comprehensive suite of code. thanks Martin 17:25, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Werdna648; suprisingly. Werdna (talk) 01:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Great, I've added you now. Feel free to upload your code, or I can do it if you like, but bear in mind that there is already comprehensive code for creating lists of articles (in file getLists.cs), and a function to get the html of a page (file tools.cs), so this won't need to be duplicated, thanks! Martin 13:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I (finally) got around to committing. You probably got a commit notification about it. Looking forward to helping you out with this.Copying to Martin's User talk page Werdna (talk) 07:00, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Excellent, thanks a lot. Martin 08:17, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Get on IRC

I miss you =( --mboverload@ 08:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB bug

When editing userpages with a silly practical joke "new messages" bar, AWB still reports this as new messages and doesn't let you edit the page. I assume that AWB checks for the present of the CSS classname as the new messages check. Perhaps it could do a regex on the link as well, to see whether it matches http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:*&redirect=no (I don't know regex syntax!) Many thanks. haz (user talk) 12:15, 28 June 2006

Another Bug - please do not use AWB to "fix" dates in date articles. [1] It's creating unwanted changes. Rklawton 13:37, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I was correct in my action, that notice is not necessary any more. Martin 13:47, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
You are going to have to explain this to me. Perhaps I'm being dense. AWB changed more than the notice.

This is correct:

[[{{PAGENAME}}]] is the 120th day of the year in the [[Gregorian calendar]] (121st in [[leap year]]s), with 245 days remaining.

This is not:

[[April 30]] is the 120th day of the year in the [[Gregorian calendar]] (121st in [[leap year]]s), with 245 days remaining.

The note above these lines explains why:

<!-- Do not change [[{{PAGENAME}}]] it preserves the date correctly formatted and stops robots from delinking it. -->

All 367 date articles are coded this way. Is it your intention to revise them all?Rklawton 15:25, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

No it is not my intention to change them all, just as I come across them. The reason for using the PAGEMAME keyword was because some bots occasionally replaced the wiki-linking of the title with the proper syntax for bolding, however on date articles wiki-linking is needed to keep the date formatting, this issue has since been resolved, and thus the warning message and use of the keyword are not needed. Martin 15:37, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi Martin, thanks for fixing AWB to know what to do with date pages. It's still best to leave them as they are, because it slows down people who reflexively delink article titles, and other automated process. Rich Farmbrough 15:39 28 June 2006 (GMT).

Whichever way you all want to go ahead with this is fine by me. However, I recommend uniformity for all 367 articles. Without uniformity, two (or more) editors might end up reverting each other citing non-uniform date artices by way of example. Rklawton 15:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Query API

Hi Martin. I just stumbled once again over User:Yurik/Query API. Could we explore that for use on AWB? Especially the what links here for templates smells like a nice candidate (example query for cite book, listing the first 500 entries). We could use the XML format of the output. I might give it a try on MWB once I'm finished/bored with my Special Replace zoo. Cheers! --Ligulem 08:43, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, doesn't look like it would be too difficult. Also, in AWB I have moved the replace special files to a separate subfolder, so all the files can be added there, previously I had merged the classes together. Once I have been able to add you as a dev you can just add/overwrite all the new stuff into there. Martin 08:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB enquiry

This is mainly just a question. You removed my name from the AWB requests for registration page, but didn't add me to the check page. Does this mean that I was refused registration? Thanks --Richard0612 14:59, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, like it says on that page, the tool is for more experienced editors, as it could be mis-used. Martin 16:31, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks for clearing it up. --Richard0612 16:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for off-wikipedia help

Hi Martin. I'm really interested in using AWB on Wikia. I realise that you made it specifically for Wikipedia and don't provide support for it elsewhere, but I wondered if you would consider helping out anyway? Jude helped me by adapting it to run on Wikia, and with the set-up, but for some reason it won't work for me. It worked just fine there for Jude, but when I try it freezes at "loading changes". Do you have any idea why it might do that, and would you be willing to help me get it going? I understand if you don't have the time or inclination of course :) Thanks -- sannse (talk) 11:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

To do it properly would be more work than I have time for at the moment, sorry. In the future I might make a cut down version that is more adaptable. Martin 15:39, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, thanks anyway -- sannse (talk) 21:13, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] yes, i did write the entire article

It clearly states on my userpage that I used to do editing under the IP address 24.59.115.54. And as such, you just asserted something that is not true. I think you should be more careful when you make statements in the future. Cheers, HalfDome 15:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not in the habit of reading your user page. Martin 15:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] new dump

hey martin! i know you're on a wiki-break, well deserved too, but might you have time to run my new regex with the new dump? the searcher still doesn't quite work for me (crashes), and i just got this new widescreen monitor and i'm excited to be able to run two copies of AWB in the same viewing space! :D plus, i think this is the first time i'll be using the '/s/b' action around each instance, so it should all be very parsimonious. JoeSmack Talk 19:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

p.s. i recently broke 20,000 spelling fixes. yay! i'm trying to make it to 30k before wikimania. ;) JoeSmack Talk 19:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow, that is a lot! I'll run the latest regex tomorrow hopefully, thanks. Martin 19:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thanks much martin, i really appreciate it. :) JoeSmack Talk 19:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Algorithm for creating the namespace names

Hi Martin. Sannse now asked me for AWB support for Wikia. I hope you don't mind if I try tweaking MWB for that. I just started thinking how to handle that zoo of wikis.

While thinking, I had the following idea I'd like to share with you:

I was thinking about the question: How can we find out the names of the namespaces of a given wiki automatically?

Then I found this algorithm (examples in paranteses):

The URL seems to be redirected to the correct name for the special page for exporting pages in all wikis and tries to export the page 0 (it doesn't matter if that page exists or not). For the fi wikipedia this gives an interesting xml output that contains:

<namespaces>
<namespace key="-2">Media</namespace>
<namespace key="-1">Toiminnot</namespace>
<namespace key="0"/>
<namespace key="1">Keskustelu</namespace>
<namespace key="2">Käyttäjä</namespace>
<namespace key="3">Keskustelu käyttäjästä</namespace>
<namespace key="4">Wikipedia</namespace>
<namespace key="5">Keskustelu Wikipediasta</namespace>
<namespace key="6">Kuva</namespace>
<namespace key="7">Keskustelu kuvasta</namespace>
<namespace key="8">MediaWiki</namespace>
<namespace key="9">MediaWiki talk</namespace>
<namespace key="10">Malline</namespace>
<namespace key="11">Keskustelu mallineesta</namespace>
<namespace key="12">Ohje</namespace>
<namespace key="13">Keskustelu ohjeesta</namespace>
<namespace key="14">Luokka</namespace>
<namespace key="15">Keskustelu luokasta</namespace>
</namespaces>

And the url (redirected) is http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toiminnot:Export/0.

Just a wild idea. I will see if I can do something with that on MWB. Sorry for abusing your talk page ;) --Ligulem 22:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I'm not 100% sure what you want to do with this page, it is useful for knowing what the namespaces called, but that isn't such a big deal, as they all use the english names under the hood. Also, many different wikis have all sorts of little differences between them that makes working with them a bit of a pain. Martin 23:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Well I was thinking about a replacement for hard-code things like this. Especially for code snippets like strcategoryns = "Categoria:", which can be replaced by using key="14" from the above output because all wikis use key="14" for the name of the category namespace. I know that "under the hood" there are generic names, but for generating the URL's to access pages the local names must be used. If you know of an elegant way to access that mapping from generic names to localized names then I would be interested to know. There are some variables for use in wikitext at m:Help:Variable. But they are not much of a help to extract the namespace names. --Ligulem 09:14, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Uupps. Stupid me. I'm wrong. Apologies. For the URLs the English names can be used for all namespaces (example: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Management is automatically redirected to http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Management). Very interesting. I wonder why we need variables like strcategoryns = "Categoria:" at all... --Ligulem 09:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes because, for example, when a user loads up a list of articles we need to be able to identify what "Categoria:" means, and also, when re-categorising, we also need to know what they call their category namespace. These things aren't important for basic functionality, but are still needed. At least that page is good for finding out what all the namespaces are. Martin 09:35, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Uh. I forgot. Of course yes. I should think first before typing ;). Many thanks for reading and replying. Have a nice day! --Ligulem 09:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply

1) I can't see how it matters much if one quickly catches the mistake.

2) Saying that my writing on a topic that I am quite familiar with and very fond of, that I tried to carefully create for the benefit of anyone honestly wanting to learn about the topic, is a "mess", I consider to be a personal attack. I try to be very careful to not start making personal attacks in Wikipedia, because, yeah, they do not serve the community. But, I absolutely *love* a personal attack war, and once someone starts, I feel fully justified in responding in kind, and, man, it is fun for me.

3) If you have a reference for this, then I'll believe you, and I'll completely defer to your preferences for "different from" accordingly, but neither of you two have been able to offer me such a reference, which makes me doubt one's existence (especially since you have referenced other things.)

Best, 24.59.124.238 13:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

1) Yes, it doesn't matter that much as you reverted yourself quickly, but the point is that you clearly didn't look at what you reverted, that is a serious thing to be doing.
2) What the hell? I said it was a mess because you re-introduced a typo that I just fixed!, you called me a "bozo" because you couldn't even be bothered to look at what I did!, and you are offended! My god!
3) Why are you pushing this point? I said I don't care enough to revert/argue/whatever, but you seem to want to argue about it anyway. Wikipedia policy is to use the spelling of the fist editor. the Manual of style says on spelling "If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor", but like I have said at least twice, I really don't care that much whether we use American/British, the only reason I changed it initially was because I thought it stop the slow-revert war going on in that page.
Also, please log in. I'll assume good faith and assume that you have just forgotten, but others would just jump to the conclusion that you are User:HalfDome incognito. Martin 13:40, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

1) Hm, okay. I'm not going to claim for a second that I didn't make a mistake, and I obviously knew that long before you said anything. I think that I fully rectified the mistake, including with my edit summary. I think it is ridiculous to claim that this is a "serious thing". The only possible value I can see for you to even bring this up is you desparately needing something to attack me with.

2) Honestly, I think you are going to be quite hard pressed to claim that "clean up your mess" is not a personal attack.

3) Oh my... "pushing this point"? "argue"? I asked you to reference something that you claimed. How is that in any way a "point" or even "argumentative"? BUT, since you did give me your reference, I can look it over and note the following: You left out the rest of that sentence. The full sentence reads, "If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article." Before I got to the article, it was quite short and even had a stub note on it. I tried to respect as much of the pre-existing content as I could when I started editing, but at least 90% of the final product had to be mine. And you can note that in the four months since, the only change to my writing (aside from the "different from" stuff) has been your spelling correction. It seems to me that I would fit the description of being the first major contributor.

I usually browse with cookies disabled, and it makes logging in be somewhat of an inconvenience. That is why, for a long time, I didn't use an account. However, once my ISP stated changing my IP address, I found that it was harder to keep track of what I had done, so I started logging in for changes I wanted to keep track of. This quick little revert wasn't worth the effort, though, and since you started communicating to me with my IP address, it seemed that for consistency sake I should stick with it.

Cheers, 24.59.124.238 15:38, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Please just leave me alone. Martin 15:46, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, fair enough. Consider it done. 24.59.124.238 17:48, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Still on break

Thought I'd drop by and say hi. I have a lot of Real Life stuff going on still but will be back soon.

-- That Guy, From That Show! 15:36, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Small but important suggestion for AWB dev build

GREAT work - I love that it shows the replacements in the edit summary now! F..... AWESOME WORK! However, you need to use [WP:AWB|AWB] as the new text can cut off the link to AWB, as here. I have tons of edits using this new feature if you want to see some real-world testing. Thanks! --mboverload@ 04:13, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Addon: Remove the \b from the edit summaries as well, pretty useless I think. THX! --mboverload@ 04:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see a difference, but it works fine =D --mboverload@ 10:23, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Lets just talk on my page. --mboverload@ 10:28, 19 July 2006 (UTC) Use more descriptive SVN change logs =D --mboverload@ 08:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories for deletion

I just re-restored this page you speedily deleted. The prior speedy delete of this page was overturned on WP:DRV with the requirements that it be relisted on WP:RFD (Where it is now). One of the major complaints in the DRV was that the deletions were out of process speedy deletes/premature RFD closures. If you object with this reasoning, please talk page me. Thanks, — xaosflux Talk 19:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good templates

I noticed in the histories that you are familiar with both Template:Goodtypes and Template:Good (economics). I'm wondering if the one can be transcluded into the other and some other connotations covered as well. Please the discussion ... never mind CQ 12:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fritz Mannheimer

Thanks for putting back the categories. I accidentally deleted them. Mowens35 14:59, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 72.130.18.78 using cracked version of AutoWikiBrowser?

The IP 72.130.18.78 (talk · contribs) seems to have made an edit using AWB. I thought that AWB could not be used by anonymous users? The IP has only made one edit so far. --Ixfd64 18:16, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Its prabable that a legitimate editor just became logged out between loading the page and saving the edit. thanks Martin 18:36, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone can edit, including idiots

How do I get this in that postition (near Wikimania registration) on my user page? The one and only Cliff 02:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Try something like:

<span id="coordinates">From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anybody can edit, including idiots.</span>

Martin 07:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bell polynomials

I may have totally missed the point, but the section numbering does not appear any different to me whether that heading is there or not, maybe whatever bug it was has been fixed? Martin 15:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

No, you're wrong. Look CAREFULLY at the section numbering. Without that header, it numbers a subsection as if it were a main section. Michael Hardy 15:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally I would consider it wrong now, as "Convolution identity" is now a sub of the "definition" which doesn't make sense to me, but I'll respect your wishes. Martin 15:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

"Convolution identity" can be considered an appropriate subsection of "Definition" because it introduces another characterization of the Bell polynomials, and, at least from the point of view of deductive logic, either of the two equivalent characterizations could be taken to be the definition. I'm going to think about how to edit the article to make this clear. Michael Hardy 17:56, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unstubby stubs empty

I cleaned the last of the list out. Will there be another dump at some point or will the page disappear? Cheers! Stormbay 16:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

IThere is another project doing the same thing, so there won't be any need soon. I also want to automate/semi-automate the process to get it all done quicker. Martin 20:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Good! Thanks! Stormbay
Martin put in automatic stub removal in the latest dev release. He's fastzorz =D --mboverload@ 21:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB question

I've noticed some slow down on my computer when using this program, why does it take so much CPU? FullMetal Falcon 01:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

First, what'your OS and system specs? Second, what's the version of AWB you're using. And third, what settings do you have? --mboverload@ 02:18, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB forced update

Can you allow older versions to be used please? Re-downloading new versions day after day can get a bit annoying.

Other than that keep up the good work.--Andeh 19:33, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Each version is available for at least a week normally, so it's not too bad, it is also important that everybody uses an up-to-date version. Martin 19:39, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Why is it so important that only the latest version is used? Unless there's some exploits that you don't mention I can't see why it's so important. I wouldn't mind it bugging me that there's a new version when I run it.--Andeh 00:32, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Because your use of the software doesnt only affect you (as a normal piece of software would) it affects the whole community, so it is important that everything is done as properly as it can be. Martin 08:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea: how difficult would it be for AWB to look at the "Check Page" to see if a later version has been enabled and throw up a MsgBox to that effect? —Phil | Talk 11:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:AWB

===>A trifling matter, really But annoying nonetheless. I was directed to you from here. If you can help me out, please respond there or my talk page. Thanks. -Justin (koavf), talk, mail 01:15, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A barnstar, what more could you hope for?

THREE barnstars!
These are all in a bunch because I have been thinking about these for a long time, so please don't consider it me just dumping a bunch of awards on you. It's like getting your paycheck held for 3 months, but without the having to eat ramen from a tin can over a hobo fire part.

I present you this for putting in a crazy idea that I had and uploading it within I think 24 hours. You are really here to help others and I salute you. -mboverload@
I present you this for putting in a crazy idea that I had and uploading it within I think 24 hours. You are really here to help others and I salute you. -mboverload@
For your truly endless work on AWB. I watch how much you do each day though SVN and it's great. You're invaluable, and I really do mean that Martin. -mboverload@
For your truly endless work on AWB. I watch how much you do each day though SVN and it's great. You're invaluable, and I really do mean that Martin. -mboverload@
I award you the WikiMedal for Janitorial Services for letting so many editors do stuff that would usually be a pain in the ass. -mboverload@
I award you the WikiMedal for Janitorial Services for letting so many editors do stuff that would usually be a pain in the ass. -mboverload@

--mboverload@ 11:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Non-official barnstar

The AWB Barnstar
For all the features you stick in AWB and the design. -- mboverload@ 11:11, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] User:Bluemoose/Uncategorised lists

Hi, just in case you don't have it on your watchlist. User:Bluemoose/Uncategorised lists is finished. Please don't make a new one, cause I am starting to really hate lists. :) Garion96 (talk) 20:17, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I want you to know that there are a handful of lists that you may want to add to the Uncategorized lists page in the Category needed page. I think that if you were to put them there it would not only help us with the backlog, the lists might find categories easier. --Willy No1lakersfan (Talk - Contribs) 22:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dev version borked

Revision 105 is the last working version. I couldn't find your email listed anywhere, sorry. --mboverload@ 20:54, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Click "Email this user". What is wrong with the newest dev verion, in reality it shouldn't be expected to always work, but I thought it should be at the moment. Martin 21:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I sent you a few emails, one of which has an urgent dev bug. --mboverload@ 08:56, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Email

Your email address in wikipedia must be broken, I haven't gotten any email responses. --mboverload@ 01:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC) pssssst, get on IRC if you can, thx =D --mboverload@ 08:11, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline

What's your timeline for the next release with the new find and replace system? As you know (hehe) it uses a new settings file syntax, and I develop on your dev versions, so if you have any idea of a release date that would be great. As you know the older versions of AWB won't read my new file.

Also, if you need me to put up regextypofix on a static page (e.g. www.mboverloadspage.com/regextypofix.xml) I can do that for the new framework. I also have an idea. Let me put a message into the file. AWB will read that message whenever it updates and then display it. =P I'm really proud that you're at least throwing around the idea of incorporating RegExTypoFix =D --mboverload@ 04:10, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Feature suggestion: When making a new find and replace line have it inherit the settings above it. I have to check case sensitive and regex each time. This is very minor, don't worry about it. --mboverload@ 04:18, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Feature suggestion: In the find and replace dialogue have a checkmark box. If you check it, after you type something into the "find" section it will automatically add on \b to each end --mboverload@ 04:20, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Feature suggestion: In the context menu of the edit box in AWB have an option to open it in an external editor. With the amazing abilities of Microsoft Word or OpenOffice this could be a good feature for anyone who is super-dedicated to completely fixing the article. RegExTypoFix doesn't do grammar checking or anything even remotely advanced as what you can do when the spellchecking is user-controlled. --mboverload@ 04:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Latest dev and RETF

RETF isn't working in the latest dev version, thought I should let you know. --mboverload@ 21:23, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually I think it doesn't work period. It seems to me that it's skipping all the articles, like it does when you skip if it has this text in it function. --mboverload@ 22:17, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
It still has all the duplicates that stop it working properly. When the "Skip if no typo fixed" option is on it should skip everything that doesnt have a typo, with the option off it doesn't doesn't skip anything. Martin 22:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh, even with the fixed list, just committed it, try it out yourself. --mboverload@ 22:36, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

IRC --mboverload@ 08:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New section on AWB article

Where should this go, if you think it should be included? Feel free to do anything to it, I'm really not sure where it should go, if it should be included. --mboverload@ 20:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that's good. --mboverload@ 21:11, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I always forget to update the manual with new stuff. Martin 21:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Wow, that's wierd. I moved the retf section down, but in the history is shows that I undid your change. Sorry, I have no idea how that happened without an edit conflict. wtf... --mboverload@ 21:28, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah I guessed, seems to happen occasionally. Martin 21:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possibily simple feature suggestion

Tell me if it already acts this way somehow: When you select "Skip article when no replacement made" or "Skip when no typo made", how can I make it so it doesn't skip if only one of those makes a replacement? I'm scared to edit and burn though result lists if I'm skipping some. --mboverload@ 13:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

This is not possible, it would be very complex to implement/use due to the number of different features it would apply to. Martin 14:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Just to make sure we are on the same page, I recognize that my question isn't worded well. If I select both "skip when no typo" and "skip when no replacement", it will skip all articles that don't replace BOTH a typo and a replacement. Is that what you read my question to be? I'm not trying to be anal, I promise =D --mboverload@ 23:02, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that's what i meant as well. Martin 09:38, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of notable alumni from New Trier High School and New Trier High School

Hello Bluemoose,

I'm hopping that I could get your opinion or suggestions on the pages I've listed in the heading. Some weeks ago, I copyedited the New Trier High School article. During this process, I decided to move the List of notable alumni to it's own page because it was very long and begining to dominate the article. In the school's main article, I simply left a link to list of alumni. Now, a large number of pictures of alumni have been added to the two articles and I'm concerned about whether or not they should be there. My gut feeling tells me that they are unnecessary and perhaps detrimental to the two articles, and may not be appropriate since all are copyrighted images already on other articles. However, I didn't feel comfortable just removing them for some reason. So, I decided to seek out a more experienced Wikipedian for advice. I'm happy to do whatever cleanup myself, I'm just looking for a second opinion before I do anything. What do you think? Thank you for any help you can give me.--Dekkanar 12:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I don't see a problem having the images there, though i can understand why you might, I would raise the issue on the talk page (and possibly the talk page of the main school article) and see what response there is, otherwise: Be bold! Martin 13:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Dead-end pages/A-K

In the last few weeks/days I went through the A-K list of dead-end pages and finished it today. In my opinion, it certainly would be worthwhile to update the lists because I encountered A LOT of articles that were no longer dead-ends (estimate: 40% during the last few days). And some of them had been wikified quite some time ago. I have no clue as to what is involved in updating the list, but I expect the same (a lot of wikified pages) will be true for L-Z.

This was also posted at Wikipedia_talk:Dead-end_pages#Updating_this_list. Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:12, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'll update it again as soon as there is a fresh database dump, which probably will be fairly soon. Martin 13:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Martin, I actually had another question for you regarding the number of links in an article. As a reseacher, I would be interested in obtaining an overview of how many articles have a given number of links. Meaning a list like this:

  • X articles have 0 links
  • Y articles have 1 links
  • Z articles have 2 links
  • Etc....

Do you have any suggestion on how to generate such a list or can you help me with that? Any comments or suggestions are welcome. Regards, --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 09:15, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply Martin, the statistics page contains a lot of useful information, but indeed I would be interested in a more detailed analysis of the number of links per page. It would be no problem to have them in bands of say 5 (1-5 links, 5-10 links etc...) if that makes things easier for you. Only the number of articles without links should be alone then (so not articles with 0-5 links combined, but 0 and 1-5 separate). Then the list would look like this:
  • X articles have 0 links
  • Y articles have 1-5 links
  • Z articles have 6-10 links
  • Etc....
I assume that is would you suggested, is that right? Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:22, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I moved the list from my talk page to a user subpage. I'll have a look at it later and let you know if I would be interested in anything else. BTW: pages with over 1999 links? That is a huge amount. Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 14:54, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Enforce inclusion of categories

Hi Martin - I've made a proposal that would put some of your projects out of business, so I'm inviting your views on it. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:29, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RETF

Sorry =( I just commited what I hope is a fix, can you check it for me? --mboverload@ 19:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

it's ok, it wasn't wrong, i just wanted to clear it up, thanks. Martin 21:42, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a timeline on the next release? I'm not concerned or anything (I have the latest build all the time, lol). If you don't tha's fine, I'd just like to know before so I can stick in the latest fixes and additions before you compile and upload. --mboverload@ 00:29, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully fairly soon, i'm a bit busy at the moment, but i'll cech with you first whenever it is. Martin 10:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bug report

It says Typo xml does not exist in current directory when I attempt to turn RETF on using a settings file. Try it yourself.

  1. Start AWB
  2. Turn on RETF
  3. Save settings file
  4. Close AWB then reopen
  5. Load the settings file

And you will not be able to ever turn on RETF until you restart AWB. Even File > Reset settings doesn't work. --mboverload@ 06:55, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

hhhhmmmm, ok thanks, i probably wouldn't have noticed until it got released. Martin 10:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
This is more serious than I thought. Loading any settings file will screw it up. --mboverload@ 10:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Nothing that hasn't been released is serious ;-) Martin 10:54, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
But *GASP* I'll....I'll...have to use the CIVILIAN version! =D --mboverload@ 10:57, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Don't worry, its fixed now, i'll release this version later today (probably in around 8 hours or so), so make sure any new typos are ready by then. thanks Martin 11:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Was just about to strike it out, thanks. I'll get around to tidying it up --mboverload@ 11:02, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
oh yeah, can you enable the latest version? =D --mboverload@ 11:07, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
lol, I just went to look at the diffs to see where you changed the version. I found it, went to the check page, then realized it was protected. hehe. --mboverload@ 11:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok I have committed my chages to SVN. I'm too sleepy to push the version number back to an enabled version, so please give it a quick test. Thanks =D --mboverload@ 13:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, but you can always test the debug version, that doesn't check the version number. Martin 15:52, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uncategorised articles

Hi, there is a discussion here about using a bot to tag all uncategorised articles with the {{uncat}} tag. It seems to be too much work for a bot searching through the million+ articles. But would it work if a list of articles is taken from the datebase dump and that list will be feed into a bot? A bit like your uncategorised good articles list. And related, if you're interested, please look at this proposol here. Wikipedia:Enforce inclusion of categories. Also, if you are still on wikibreak, ignore this message. :) Cheers, Garion96 (talk) 11:11, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nitcentral article

Hi. There is a motion afoot to delete the article on Phil Farrand's website, Nitcentral, as you can see here. If you have an opinion on it, can you chime in? Thanks. Nightscream 17:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB scare off template

Could you create a template which if added to an article AWB automatically ignores it or gives a warning? For example {{noawb|ask permission before editing with AWB please - Andeh}} gives the custom warning to the user using AWB?

AWB is getting used by a lot of Wikipedians so it could come across any user space or something you just don't want AWB editing for whatever reason. What do you think? Thanks.--Andeh 21:29, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and is duplicate articles on articles list a known bug? :| --Andeh 21:29, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

In general it's the other way around - AWB users should ask the userspace owner before editing their pages. --mboverload@ 22:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Medium bug

Try converting a user page to talk page and you'll see what happens. Talk:User:Mboverload --mboverload@ 01:47, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't get that happening at all, is there a way to reliably reproduce the error. Martin 09:01, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes

Can you give me a quick overview of the new changes, and what I should do now? --mboverload@ 22:00, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so how do you allow people to edit that page if it's protected? Should they work on /Typo_development?

I have been getting a few times where AWB will just stop after Saving, and I will have to "start the process" again. This is pretty minor, just wanted to give you a headsup. --mboverload@ 10:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Typos are case sensitive, right? I'm sure they are, but I need to make sure - please respond on my talk page/get on IRC. thx --mboverload@ 07:46, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reduced edit summary?

Hi, as RegExTypoFix is growing in popularity it starts taking up the recent changes list. The current edit summary is

Could it possibly be reduced down to

  • RETF Typos: succesful → successful, using AWB

or

  • RETF Typos: succesful → successful (AWB

What do you think? I guess you were the right person to ask instead of mboverload, but i'm sure he'll respond anyway. :P --Andeh 11:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

The RegExTypoFix part of the summary is fully customisable, though i think i'll change the default to your suggestion, the last part wouldn't really make sense if it just said AWB, as a lot of people wouldn't know what this meant. Martin 11:46, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Damn right. =D The drop-down list of edit summaries is completely customizable by you (and me and Martin can change the default lists and such). I like to boost my own ego and put in "mboverload's RegExTypoFix" some times, hehe --mboverload@ 12:25, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Ok, Martin has changed it per your first suggestion. I think the full name is better, but I'll just change it manually. --mboverload@ 12:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. :) Keep up the good work.--Andeh 12:38, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cut extra HTML from diff view

Brilliant! --mboverload@ 10:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diff font size

No longer lets me go below 150% --mboverload@ 02:29, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

whoops, its good having these picked up before it gets released. Martin 12:32, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos

Hi, thanks for working on Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos, i noticed on a few occasions you have added a ";" to various parts of the find+replace, such as here, having that exrta character will stop the regex working, so be careful not to add it! thanks Martin 13:11, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your message, Martin. I'm mystified. Apart from an early addition of "our's", I've been working on early lines only, so how these semicolons can appear so far down in the file I cannot imagine (I edit line 68, and a semicolon appears in each of 768 and 1145!). I didn't even scroll down that far in the edit window.
I think this is likely to be a software glitch, since these semicolons didn't come from my keypresses. I'm using Opera version 9.00, but will try Firefox, and will periodically do a search for ";" to see if any are creeping in. That should indicate whether the blame lies with Opera or with the Mediawiki software...
Sorry to make a nuisance of myself! Euchiasmus 13:25, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB Bug

Hello. I would like to report a AWB bug. Even if "add all to watchlist" option is unmarked it adds all edited articles to watchlist. However AWB is great help for me. Thanks! - Darwinek 21:52, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't find this happens, do you have the wikipedia preference enabled to add all articles you edit to your watchlist? Martin 22:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I now found that yes, it was enabled in my preferences. However with version 3.017 I hadn't this problem. - Darwinek 09:04, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] mb <--> martin

I'll use this section to converse for a bit =D

Is the word attribute for the word, or the misspelling of a word? I think it would be valuable to have it the misspelling of the word. --mboverload@ 12:33, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

There are multiple misspellings so it can't be that, the misspelling is in the regex, it is important this is the correct spelling so we can sort them properly and easily locate duplicates, which i have done a few already just in the handful that i have been through. Martin 12:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Oh yeah, duhhh, stupid me =D --mboverload@ 12:45, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

With the letter headings, how am I going to sort the list alphabetically? I have a massive addition of new words coming up. --mboverload@ 12:30, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

If you have less than ~20 just add them manually, if more then sort them and add the headings back afterwards. Or just make a new section for new additions. They were never in proper alphabetical order before anyway so its not that bad. Without the sections it is very difficult to keep track of where you are, also it will help avoid edit conflicts. On a different note, now i have sorted them alphabetically, it is clear there is an enourmous amount of duplication, I think with a bit of work we should be able to get below 1000 regexes. Martin 12:39, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bluebot Request

A couple of months ago, you used Bluebot to prepend {{Architecture}} to the top of all the talk pages in Category:Architects. I recently got a request over on Bot requests saying that bluebot had missed the subcategories when prepending the message and requesting another bot finish the job. Would it be easy to do this with Bluebot? I was trying to do it using AWB, and I was having some difficulty. Thanks, alphaChimp laudare 14:55, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

When i did it before a couple of people moaned that they didnt think the template was appropriate, so i don't really want to get involved with it again. Martin 15:31, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uncategorised articles

Hi, regarding your message here. I put up a link in the village pump and some other places. The response, as you can see, was overwhelming... Personally I don't think many people would care about such a massive job. It only helps the encyclopedia. But of course, I am not the one with the bot. :) Also, the consensus in the proposal Wikipedia:Enforce inclusion of categories seems to be going towards automatically adding the uncat tag. Perhaps those two jobs could go together. Garion96 (talk) 01:40, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'ere you go!

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
I was looking over your userpage and contributions, and I'm amazed you don't have this one yet xD So, in recognition of your many, many, many great edits, here it is – one more for the barn. Cheers! — riana_dzasta • t • c • e • ER • 06:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Now you can quit grumbling about it on your userpage :p — riana_dzasta • t • c • e • ER • 09:27, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regular user with bot permissions

Greetings; maybe an odd question here. I have the need to replace about a thousand transcluded templates (Lady Aleena requested I assist in moving some WinXP userboxes to a new format); a very simple task, but without automation, it'll still take forever, even with AWB. For such cases, is it possible for a regular user account (such as mine) be allowed auto-save bot capabilities? Thanks for your help. -- Huntster T • @ • C 10:07, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

You need to have permission to run an automatic bot, see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals. Martin 10:32, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

I'm still trying to figure out how to format it without messing up the rest of your page! Lawilkin 20:53, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

I award you this golden barnstar for your tireless work writing and supporting AWB. You're a first-rate developer and you fix bugs and implement new features with an amazing speed. Long may the great work continue! --kingboyk 21:22, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I award you this golden barnstar for your tireless work writing and supporting AWB. You're a first-rate developer and you fix bugs and implement new features with an amazing speed. Long may the great work continue! --kingboyk 21:22, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Well deserved. However, technically this is the Golden Wiki. I consider it a bigger honor than any particular barnstar... well done. Now fix my bugs, eh? ++Lar: t/c 19:45, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Excellent work on Bluebot!

Thanks for your work on Bluebot - it really helps to have an automated process for standardising Wikipedia entries! Is there a guide to creating bots? Autarch 17:11, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Medium-length articles can be stubs

Your bot just did this. The little changes are certainly for the better. However, this not-so-short article is a stub. Routh has a certain degree of different kinds of notability. In Britain (where I don't live), he seems best known (or remembered) as somebody on TV. At present, the article covers in some detail one small part of his career -- the part that I happen to know something about. Routh is no Mozart (he's not even a musician, as far as I know), but I think his article is now a bit like an article on Mozart that covers Idomeneo, mentions that he wrote something called Don Giovanni, and is mum about the rest. Cheers -- Hoary 04:04, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, I disagree that it is not a stub (after all, no articles is ever complete), but I respect your decision. thanks Martin 08:40, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Launderette

The Launderette meets wikipedia's guidelines, yet has been nominated for deletion after months of existence. Why is this? Evrenosogullari 20:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

It appears to be because it is not considered notable. Martin 20:06, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notable glider pilots

Yes, I suppose you are right to shorten the title. I can't think of a way of getting what I wanted without my previous cumbersome effort. I was trying to show that gliding is something that famous, successful people do. Consequently I wanted to avoid listing people who were just famous as glider pilots. However let's give your way a try. JMcC 12:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for starting the reference section. I will try to expand it, but much is common knowledge among glider pilots so the references will probably have to be to a few specific events that are on the internet. I think we should leave leave some sentences about methods of launch and staying up in the Glider article. A summary of this information helps explain how a glider is used and helps the article stand on its own. However some of the sub-titles would help break up the large section in Gliding and I will do this soon, but not after midnight as now. Give me a week or so and I will ask, if I may, if it is getting it up to scratch as a potential featured article. JMcC 23:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Would you have another look at the Gliding article to see what else has to be done to get it up to the standard of a featured article? I would be most grateful of your expert opinion. JMcC 14:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My Bot

Can you give me the AWB regex for subsuting {{lifetime}}? thanks for your assistance. Betacommand 23:56, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB Access

Hi, Martin. I've done a name change per [2]. Can you please update my access for AWB if it doesn't happen automatically? Thanks. --After Midnight 0001 11:29, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, done. thanks Martin 11:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks much --After Midnight 0001 14:29, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Allow me...

The Working Man's Barnstar
For developing and fixing AWB at lightning-fast speed, this Working Man's Barnstar for you, Bluemoose :) Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 11:59, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB anti-spam suggestion

Hi, just wondering if you could implement a spam removing tool into AWB. Like, if line contains somespamlink.com, remove entire line. I've been trying to remove spam with it but as the links have different descriptions AWB won't allow it. Thanks.--Andeh 15:15, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It's difficult to automatically know what is spam though. As for your problem removing the link, I'm sure there must be some way of making a regex that removes links with the descriptions, regardless of what the description is, or whether it is even present. Martin 15:44, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I mean a manual option, using Special:Search web links AWB grabs that list and allows you to delete the line of spam from each article.--Andeh 17:58, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Occitan wiki

Hi! I created a bot for the oc: wiki! Can you valid it, please? With regards! Cedric31 20:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm not able to help, I think you probably need to speak to one of the oc: bureaucrats or stewards. Martin 21:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB Plugins

Dear Martin. I shouldn't have given you a golden wiki before, as now you've excelled yourself once again there's no higher honour to bestow (unless I propose you for a Knighthood, I suppose :)).

Thanks ever so much for implementing my casually suggested plugins idea - it works an absolute treat and is quite wonderful. Enjoy your wiki break! --kingboyk 12:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Ooh how odd, i just replied to you on the AWB page at the same time. My wiki-break failed a long time ago! thanks Martin 12:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to be a nuisance mate, but I'm still having trouble with the XML objects.
        Public Sub ReadXML(ByVal Reader As System.Xml.XmlTextReader) Implements WikiFunctions.Plugin.IAWBPlugin.ReadXML
            MessageBox.Show("ReadXML")
        End Sub

        Public Sub Reset() Implements WikiFunctions.Plugin.IAWBPlugin.Reset
            MessageBox.Show("Reset")
        End Sub

        Public Sub WriteXML(ByVal Writer As System.Xml.XmlTextWriter) Implements WikiFunctions.Plugin.IAWBPlugin.WriteXML
            'MessageBox.Show("WriteXML")
            Writer.WriteValue("Test")
        End Sub

If I save the settings, the XML file gets this block added to it:

<plugins>
  <Living_People_Biographies_Plugin>Test</Living_People_Biographies_Plugin> 
  </plugins>

...which is all fine and dandy. However, load that same XML file back into AWB (with or without restarting AWB first) and I'm just not getting that messagebox popping up saying "ReadXML". Am I - as I suspect - being a total idiot? --kingboyk 19:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, of course you are being a total idiot. Just kidding, write attributes rather than values (it is much easier to do from AWB perspective this way), I'll update the example to show how I intended it to work. thanks Martin 19:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the "advanced" example already has a basic implementation of writing an option, you need to write an attribute for it to read. Martin 20:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RfA thanks

Thank you very much for participating in my RFA, which closed successfully today with a result of (62/18/3). I will go very carefully at first, trying to make sure I don't mess up too badly using the tools, and will begin by re-reading all the high-quality feedback I received during the process, not least from those who opposed me. Any further advice/guidance will be gratefully accepted. I hope I will live up to your trust! Guinnog 14:39, 30 August 2006 (UTC)}

[edit] Barnstar

Thanks a lot for the barnstar. Garion96 (talk) 22:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] uncat-date template

I noticed that you had created the uncat-date template today and I noticed your robot had applied it an article I had edited. It has been marked for deletion. Should we use it or was it a test template? --- Skapur 01:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, yes, carry on using the template (it was not a test, there was consensus to use it, but that doesn't seem to matter to some people), in the very unlikely event it is actually deleted, it can just be redirected to the old one. Martin 08:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I have remoed the tfd tag --- Skapur 12:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help!

Hi Martin, I've hit a snag which is driving me mad, and Google just isn't helping. It's not really an AWB issue but perhaps you might be able to help?

I want to add a tabpage to AWB's tab control. Since I'd prefer to use the visual designer than create everything programatically, I tried inheriting from tabpage but that didn't work.

Now I'm trying to use a usercontrol, which looks like this:

Namespace AWB.Plugins.SDKSoftware.Kingbotk.Components
    Public Class WPBioSettings
        Inherits Windows.Forms.UserControl

        Private Sub InitializeComponent()
            Me.CheckBox1 = New System.Windows.Forms.CheckBox
            Me.SuspendLayout()
            '
            'CheckBox1
            '
            Me.CheckBox1.AutoSize = True
            Me.CheckBox1.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(3, 14)
            Me.CheckBox1.Name = "CheckBox1"
...

I have the following object declarations:


        Private WithEvents ourtab As New TabPage("WPBiography")
        Private WithEvents oursettingscontrol As New Components.WPBioSettings

and the code looks like this:


        Protected Overrides Sub ShowHideOurObjects(ByVal Visible As Boolean)
            If Visible Then
                tabcontrol.TabPages.Add(ourtab) ' DirectCast(ourtab, TabPage))
            Else
                tabcontrol.TabPages.Remove(ourtab) '(DirectCast(ourtab, TabPage))
            End If
        End Sub

        Public Shadows Sub Initialise(ByVal list As WikiFunctions.Lists.ListMaker, _
        ByVal web As WikiFunctions.Browser.WebControl, ByVal tsmi As System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem, _
        ByVal cms As System.Windows.Forms.ContextMenuStrip, ByVal tab As System.Windows.Forms.TabControl) _
        Implements WikiFunctions.Plugin.IAWBPlugin.Initialise
            MyBase.Initialise(list, web, tsmi, cms, tab)
            ourtab.Controls.Add(oursettingscontrol)
        End Sub

When I enable the plugin in AWB, the tabpage gets added, but no controls are visible on it. The same thing happens if I use this code in a form and compile to an .exe. In other words, it's not an AWB issue rather I'm probably doing something wrong in my code. Any idea what the problem might be? Please help save the little hair I have left! --kingboyk 15:43, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hhhhmmm, I can't really see what it might be, the lack of curly brackets makes my head hurt! Though if you email me the project, I would be happy to look over it properly in my ide, I used to use VB.NET so hopefully I can still remember a thing or 2, I suppose it is essentially very similar to c# anyway. thanks Martin 15:59, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, with the common framework there's very little difference truth be told. The problem has something to do with the user control. Adding a checkbox control to the tabpage works. Anyway... email on way. --kingboyk 16:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Woot woot! You sir are a genius :) --kingboyk 18:05, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Formatting of all source code samples on Generic programming page destroyed

I just realised that all source code formatting on the generic programming page was destroyed by this edit of yours. Since multiple edits have been made since it is not recommendable to simply revert the article. Would you mind cleaning up your mess? Mikademus 10:14, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, but I think removing some whitespace was hardly "destroyed". Martin 10:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wikify_date template

after your edit on the wikify_date template, it no longer seems to work right. Should I no longer be using that template? Also, the {{[[Wikify]]}} template now appears to use the first optional parameter for two things, the date and whether the template is being used on an article or section. Thanks! Schwael 19:01, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey Bluemoose, this needs to be discussed please. Remember Pearle channges wikify to wikify date! Also the template changes you made read like nonsense when a change was made. Further to that there was a change to the wording under discussion at wikify-date that was quite important. Ive moved that across to Wikify talk and also changed the entire template to read like the wikify-date one did. All of this pending discussion of the change. If this was discussed somewhere my apologies, but it still should have been mentioned on the talk pages!!!! --Errant Tmorton166(Talk)(Review me) 19:07, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding to the article list in AWB

Hi Martin, How would you advise doing the following?

I want to put a "manual assessments" mode into my plugin. ProcessArticle() receives an article, ticks the cleanup and relevant boxes, and returns the text to AWB unaltered. The user then previews the changes and decides on the assessment. That bit should all be simple enough (but not tested yet). What I then want to do though is add the talk page as the next item in the list so that the assessment template can be added. I can see a method in the listmaker to add an article by string but not to add it as the next item. What can I do? I'd rather not add the talk pages in bulk at the start although if that's the only way I can do it. --kingboyk 10:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Could you use the "IndexOf" and then "Insert" methods? Though they accept an Article as the parameter, I could add overload methods to do the same by string if you don't want to use the article object. Martin 11:08, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Looks like you already added it? :) I don't mind creating and passing an Article object of course, but I don't use it currently (I have my own Article object). To be honest, I hadn't noticed that your Article objects were publically creatable ;) --kingboyk 12:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] about categories of military personnel

I notice that recently all the categories of Military people were moved to Militory personnel. It seems to me that Military people is a broader concept than Military personnel. I likes to reestablish the category of military people to cover the categories such as Category:Military writers, Category:Military engineers, etc. I am pleased if you can give me your suggestions. --Neo-Jay 16:17, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Hhhmm, I'm not really sure, sorry. Also, I didn't actually decide to move the category, I just did the grunt work on behalf of WP:CFD. thanks. Martin 18:30, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. --Neo-Jay 21:41, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re: bot update

Okay, I will use the new format from now on. But I'm a bit confused as to what you mean by "it's best to update all the by-date tags at once". Is this something I'm not doing, but should? I'm using AWB so if it does that automatically, it should be doing it, right? --W.marsh 23:01, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Long-Overdue RfA Thanks from Alphachimp

 Thanks for your support in my not-so-recent RfA, which was successful with a an overwhelmingly flattering and deeply humbling total of 138/2/2 (putting me #10 on the RfA WP:100). I guess infinite monkey theorem has been officially proven. Chimps really can get somewhere on Wikipedia.

With new buttons come great responsibility, and I'll try my best to live up to your expectations. If you need assistance with something, don't hesitate to swing by my talk page or email me (trust me, I do respond :)). The same goes for any complaints or comments in regard to my administrative actions. Remember, I'm here for you.

(Thanks go to Blnguyen for the incredible photo to the right.) alphaChimp laudare 01:08, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
And thank you, good sir, for AWB. alphaChimp laudare 01:08, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiLove!

Here's a red moose for you! Red mooses somehow promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving something friendly to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Make your own message to spread WikiLove to others using Template:smile! Happy editing! --TBCTaLk?!? 02:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Get it? A red moose for bluemoose? Sorry if the moose isn't technically red, since I don't have Photoshop, only Microsoft Paint. Anyhow keep up the good work, as you've contributed a lot to Wikipedia! :D (another ackward attempt at comedy by ☆TBC☆)

Ha, nice moose, thanks Martin 18:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Dynamic inconsistency

Actually, yes, that edit was mine. (I didn't bother to take the time to log in on that machine.) I thought that that category was removed by mistake. Thanks for clarifying. Cheers, HalfDome 00:40, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uncat-date

Hi, thanks for doing so much tagging, just thought I'd mention that the template inserts the category as well, so there is no need to manually add the category as well. thanks. Martin 08:15, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hiya, thanks for the comment on the categorization project. I understand about not needing to also add the category when the template includes it, but there's actually a reason for my seeming madness.  :) When an article only has an "embedded" category via a template, it can still show up at Special:Uncategorizedpages. This is a problem, especially because that list only shows 1000 pages at a time (and only updates every few days), so having "template-category" pages can prevent the genuinely uncategorized pages from showing up. As such, I'm trying to ensure that as many pages as possible have "hard" categories, so that they don't show up on the Special list. We're also using other techniques, such as digging through the database dump, and of course appreciating the hard work by the "new article patrol" volunteers, but every little bit seems to help. Over the last two weeks, we've identified nearly 7000 uncategorized articles, and the list continues to grow. I'm hoping that we'll finally be able to get a handle on it soon though! --Elonka 18:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok great, as long as there is a method to your madness ;-) But are you sure that the special page ignores embedded template categories? I was under the impression it didn't. Either way, I have also been tagging articles, but from scanning the database dump instead, I have been working backwards through the alphabet (i.e. the opposite of the special page). Martin 19:02, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, you may be right, I may have misread a history date and made a bad assumption. If that's the case though, how would you recommend that I configure AWB to scan through the thousand and skip anything that's categorized or stubbed? I know how to make it skip anything categorized (like I can set a "skip if contains [[Category"), but how do I say, "Skip if contains (([[Category) or (stub}})} ? --Elonka 03:36, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sandbox in debug builds of AWB

Hi Martin. Your sandbox is hard-coded into debug builds of AWB. I was wondering if you might change this to an AWB sandbox or at least let me know it's OK to run tests in your sandbox. It's a bit of a pain having to load my own file list each time and I don't want to change the AWB code each time I download a new version :) --kingboyk 11:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Just use my sandbox, I don't mind. Though remember you get your plugin to clear the list and add whatever to it if you like. Martin 12:25, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Namespaces and AWB state

What's the namespace argument in ProcessArticle() for Martin? I've just got to testing stage, and was expecting User talk:Kingboyk/Sandbox to have a NS value of 3 and an ArticleTitle of "Kingboyk/Sandbox" but it's NS 0, title "User talk:Kingboyk/Sandbox". I don't really understand that because 0 namespace is main. --kingboyk 12:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

It would be incorrect to have the title as "Kingboyk/Sandbox", because technically that is potentially a different (mainpsace) article. Testing it, it always gives the namespace as 3 for me, so I'm not sure why you get 0. Martin 12:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I assumed you'd compare namespace and title when deciding on uniqueness, but that just goes to show how bad assumptions can be :) I have AWB in debug mode at the moment to try and find out why I'm getting a value of 0, but either wiki or my connection is sloooowwww :( --kingboyk 13:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm definitely getting 0 values Martin, but it doesn't matter - it's not much of a change to work out the namespace as I have to convert it to an enumerated value anyway.

I'm having a lot more trouble working out when AWB is running and when it's not. The listmaker.listfinished event doesn't work (it raises when I click the Stop button, but not when the list has emptied after processing). I've also tried catching the enabled/disabled events of the start button (figuring that when the start button gets enabled, AWB isn't running, and when it gets disabled AWB is running), but I've found that you're changing the enabled state on/off quite often. As a result I just can't get a decent notification of when AWB is starting and finishing. (I want this info to log, and also so I know when to stop and start my timer).

Could you please tell me how I can get these events reliably or better still (pretty please! :)) could you add to the interface subs which gets called when AWB is starting a run and when it's finished? --kingboyk 17:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

If you add "MessageBox.Show(Namespace.ToString());" to the processArticle method, what namespace does it say for a range of articles?, it works perfectly well for me, indeed much of AWB relies on it working, so I'm sure it does. The ListFinished event fires when it has finished creating the list, not when there are no items left. Martin 18:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Ah, OK on the listmaker, sorry about that :P Any other events I can trap or c/would you add stop/start subs?
Here's AWB hitting a breakpoint in C# Visual Studio. It's showing the VB code (none of my code has run yet) but this is the latest AWB from SVN in C#. Note the correct values for articletitle and text but a namespace of 0:

Image:AWB in debug mode.jpg --kingboyk 18:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

PS Whilst I imagine you're curious as to the cause of this, it doesn't actually matter to me too much now I know it's happening. I use the full title (namespace:pagename), the pagename only, and an enum value for namespace, at various points in my code so it's only a matter of changing which conversions I do. I can call CalculateNS() with the articletitle and convert that to an enumerated value, and strip out any text before the colon to get the short article title (which I might not actually need thinking about it) so it's no sweat. Keeping track of whether AWB is running a task or not is more critical for me at the moment.
How are you adding the article to the list? Every way I have tested it, it has been fine. I'll think about the best way AWB's status can be monitored. Martin 21:09, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Links on page User:Kingboyk/Sandbox. --kingboyk 08:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Ahh, it was a problem with how it was reading the values from queri api when getting links on a page, Ive fixed it now. Martin 09:39, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that's fixed it, cheers mate. --kingboyk 09:56, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh BTW, I noticed when looking through the C# code at namespace code you don't seem to deal with pages named like this: Project:AutoWikiBrowser/Project talk:AutoWikiBrowser. The underlying name in Mediawiki for these namespaces is what I've just written, "Wikipedia" and so on is a local configurable name (IIRC; main point is that project: wikilinks work the same as wikipedia: links). --kingboyk 18:54, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I didnt even know it existed, probably because I've never seen it before, so I guess it doesn't really matter. Martin 21:09, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Little bug

Main.cs, very bottom:

            foreach (IAWBPlugin a in AWBPlugins)
            {
                a.Start += Start;
                a.Save += Save;
                a.Skip += SkipPage;
                a.Stop += Stop;
                a.Diff += GetDiff;
                a.Preview += GetDiff;

last line should be: a.Preview += GetPreview;

While I'm at it, any chance of having the webcontrol or processarticle() (probably the former) exposing two new boolean properties, one for article is new, and one for (when a talk page) attached article doesn't exist? --kingboyk 22:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the bug. HHhhmmmm, I'll have a look, certainly if there is a neat way of doing it I will. Martin 10:03, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Surname and hndis bot edits

Could you tweak your bot to keep it from swapping {{surname}} to {{hndis}}? {{surname}} no longer redirects to {{hndis}} (as of yesterday). Thanks! -- JHunterJ 13:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added to User:Bluebot page

A user added these comments to Bluebot's userpage, so I'm just moving them here. Cheers, Master of Puppets The Walrus! 17:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for you tag and advice Bluebot. I will try to wikify - and I hope other editrors will help. I am new at this.

Njamesdebien 11:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Bluebot - am I getting the wikifying thing better on Dr Patrick Fahey?

Njamesdebien 03:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Categorized Vacht Nacht

Hi there. I gave Vacht Nacht the same categories found at Bris Milah, except it's a Yiddish word, not Hebrew. Bris is virtually universal among Jews and a requirement, whereas Vacht Nacht is at best a custom observed by some (I had never heard about it until my brother-in-law asked if I was doing one, whereupon I hit the books!); but I guess the closest categories we have would be the Bris stuff, so hope that's alright. Thanks! TLMD13 21:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)TLMD13

[edit] Editing your Sandbox

Hey there. It is normally not conventonal for someone to edit a userpage that doesn't belong to them. But I have edited your sandboz to remove the Wikify category, because your userpage shows up on Category:Articles that need to be wikified. I hope I did not interfere with your experimenting. -- Reaper X 18:40, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bot update

Hi, can you update your bot so it uses the new format of by-date templates, as they now have optional parameters, e.g. {{Wikify|September 2006}} rather than {{Wikify-date|September 2006}}, though the old ones do still work of course. Also, (maybe you do this already but...) it's best to update all the by-date tags at once, this saves editting each article multiple times to update each by-date template. thanks in advance. Martin 23:01, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Pearle is now outputting "cleanup" and "wikify" instead of "cleanup-date" and "wikify-date". Let me know if there are any others to be changed over. -- Beland 04:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] From user page

On the David Cameron page, when I tried to revert to the previous "destructive binges" wording about the Bullingdon Club - which I would point out (a) was the settled position for some months and (b) is backed up by the citation, you said I was "adding nonsense to Wikipedia". How dare you! Just because something doesn't agree with your own political viewpoint you shouldn't be rude and dismissive of new user of this site. I will be keeping an eye on this and won't back down to your bullying - any objective person will see I am not "adding nonsense" so if you want a dispute over this, please do keep reverting my edits and being an offensive bully --213.121.207.34 10:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Eh? The only edit I have ever made to that article was to remove "It has not been confirmed that he doesnt blow goats.". So, please take your ranting somewhere else. Martin 10:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
You're such a bully Martin. You ought to be ashamed of yourself! :P --kingboyk 10:35, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plugin released

I've made available a first version of my plugin (User:Kingbotk/Plugin). It's a bit of a nervous time though as I had to make some internal changes today to stop my new templates going to the top of the page (damned stupid {{talkheader}}!), so wish me luck :) I've tested on the sandbox and out in the wild but I just think it's sod law that a stupid bug will have been introduced just before the first launch!

Anyrode, I've only let a couple of WPBiography activists know so hopefully I'll get some feedback from them and can continue adding features and testing. Also hopefully other people will see this and latch onto the idea. I want to thank you again Martin for implementing the plugin model, it's terrific. --kingboyk 21:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC) PS Not had a chance to look at your AWB changes yet, I'll download from SVN and have a play tommorow.

Hi Martin, Unfortunately the BusyChanged() event isn't always firing, whether from AWB buttons or my own buttons (which raise the Start and Stop events). Sometimes it fires, sometimes it doesn't.

        Private Sub webcontrol_BusyChanged() Handles webcontrol.BusyChanged
            MessageBox.Show("Webcontrol Busy: " & webcontrol.Busy.ToString, _
               "BusyChanged", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information)
        End Sub

Could you investigate please? It's not urgent. --kingboyk 13:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not firing when:
  • I click Start
  • AWB checks I'm logged in, and then fires BusyChanged() where Busy==True
  • I immediately click Stop or send a Stop event. I don't get a BusyChanged() for Busy==False.
There may or may not be other circumstances in which it doesn't fire but this is the one I've pinned down. --kingboyk 13:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Aargh! No! It's firing Stop and then Start again when a revision is presented to the user. This breaks my timer as it only ever records 1 page save. I need to know when AWB starts processing a list, and when it stops processing the list (because the list got emptied, AWB received a Stop event, the user clicked Stop, or there was an error which caused AWB to actually stop rather than pause.) Things that happen in between then I don't need to know about :) --kingboyk 13:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually don't worry about it too much. It's not too bad leaving the timer running... getting notifed of Start was the crucial thing. It would be nice to get the events I described so I can log them but it's not high priority, in your own time. --kingboyk 13:46, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
That's what the BusyChanged event does, and as far as I can tell it is working as it should. It sounds like you have subscribed to the StatusChanged event. Martin 13:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Nah, I subscribed to BusyChanged:
Private Sub webcontrol_BusyChanged() Handles webcontrol.BusyChanged
I'll run another test. --kingboyk 13:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Definitely broken. It's fine until a page is successfully saved by clicking the Save button (yours or mine), and then it sends BusyChanged() (Busy==False) and another BusyChanged() (Busy==True) in succession. Redlink talk page feature works a treat, thanks mate! --kingboyk 14:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I found what was causing a problem after saving, hopefully fixed now. Martin 15:08, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I'll check this later, thanks mate. --kingboyk 10:45, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subgame perfect equilibrium

Hi martin - I hope all is going well! I noticed the copyvio tag on subgame perfection. I suspect you are exactly right in your diagnosis. It's also possible it was copied from here. Either way, I think the easiest thing to do will be for me to rewrite the intro (which I can easily do from memory). I will do that and remove your original edits from the history, so no one gets upset about it. I hope that's cool with you. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 03:53, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Webcontrol question

Hi Martin, Just a quick question: If I receive a diffed() event is there any way of telling if there any changes in the diff? I see IsDiff but I imagine that's True even if there's no changes?

What I want to achieve is: AWB loads page and does cleanup. If there's no changes I want to go straight to Preview (or better still just show the article) so that the user can read it. I'll then trap the skip or save event and load the talk page so they can add the WikiProject banner and assessment. --kingboyk 10:47, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

You have access to the html of the page, from thi you can see if any changes were made. Martin 15:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, in that case I won't bother :)
I have another little problem Martin. I've added one of your webcontrol objects (a **new** one) to a form; I want to be able to save a /Comments page and do it "independently" of AWB on my own form. Unfortunately when I call .LoadEditPage("Title") I get a null object error at the last line of this section:
        public string Status
        {
            get
            {
                return strStatus;
            }
            private set
            {
                strStatus = value;
                this.StatusChanged();

Any idea? Is there anything I need to initialise before using a new webcontrol object? --kingboyk 19:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a new one on me! I tracked it down to the StatusChanged delegate being null, so I declared an empty event handler and it seems to work. Is that by design or some C#/VB quirk? --kingboyk 20:23, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
That was poor coding on my part, I should be making sure it isn't null before firing it, I've changed it now, thanks. Martin 21:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Ah OK. In VB an event can be fired whether or not it has any subscribers. Must be different. --kingboyk 21:47, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
There seems to be quite a bit of code in Main.cs concerning the state of the webbrowser and the page received from the wiki that ought to be encapsulated within the control itself? --kingboyk 22:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
What code specifically? Martin 16:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Various bits and pieces to do with whether we're logged in and how Wikipedia responds etc. --kingboyk 17:45, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
There are properties for various things like loggin status in the webcontrol, I am planning on improving them a bit anyway. The rest of the code is largely specific in purpose, I don't see how much it could be usefully moved, though I'll review it while I'm improving a couple of other things. Martin 21:15, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bosses category

I'm already taking care of that per discussion, at Category:Computer and video game bosses. Thanks. -Shannernanner 16:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Weird namespaces

Hey, you remember my mentioning project: and project talk: namespaces? Well here's a new one on me: I just found a template call using a msg: prefix. And whaddya know? It works! Kingboyk (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

I hope there aren't too many about as my regular expressions don't currently catch them. --kingboyk 17:47, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The msg thingy should have been eradicated, it is leftover from how templates used to work. Martin 21:15, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Champs-Élysées?

where did Champs-Élysées go? --Espoo 19:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Programming woes

Hi Martin, I know this is none of your concern but given how expertly you found my last little bug, I wonder if you might know what's up here or be willing to help find it?:

Assessments are handled by a seperate class, an instance of which is created when the manual assessments box is checked. This instance - and it should be the only instance of the class - is supposed to be destroyed when the manual assessments box is unchecked. I've tested this with breakpoints and the object does indeed get set to null. However, when a webcontrol BusyChanged() event is fired I've observed that an instance of this class is responding. (see picture of tab)

Since I wrote that I've implemented IDisposable on the offending class, and in Dispose() I remove the only event handler created with addhandler(), and explicitly set all owned objects to Nothing (null). Nonetheless I've observed that the class is still receiving events, even after disposal.

Any idea? If not, would you be willing to have a look at the code? --kingboyk 16:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I can't think what might be going on, but send me the code and I'll have a look. Martin 17:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, on its way. --kingboyk 17:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Got it. What is the object called, and where is it being nulled? Martin 18:36, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
It's called AssessmentsObject and it's initialised and nulled in ManuallyAssessCheckBox_CheckChanged in PluginManager.vb. --kingboyk 18:38, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks so much

Hi there,

Just wanted to say thanks so much for heliping out on the Bongo (antelope) article I'm working on. I'm new to this so please help out as much as you can!

Thanks so much again,

Black Stripe 20:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB settings

Hi Martin. Is there a way of programatically having AWB load a settings file? (I couldn't find one). If there isn't, would you consider adding a method to the Plugin namespace to do this?

I want to have a menu item to put the AWB settings to sensible settings for plugin use, and I figured that it would be much easier (and safer) to do this by telling AWB to load settings from XML than to change the values of each control. --kingboyk 16:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

All the stuff for loading settings is in UserSettings.cs, this includes a method which loads a file from a string parameter file name, I guess i could make it a public method, that would not require an addition to the plugin namespace. Also, I couldn't see what was going wrong in the code you sent yesturday, partly because I don't really know VB, in the past when I've had problems like it, I just google about and you generally find some forum with someone who has had the same problem answered. Martin 16:54, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, me too. I tried Google though and couldn't find much (nothing that solved it anyway). I suppose the difficulty is that since I don't know what the problem is I don't know what I'm searching for :) Well, anyway, I've hacked around the issue for now. Thanks for trying!
That method is exactly what I'm looking for, if that could be public it would great. Would I need a reference to the exe or is it in the DLL? --kingboyk 17:28, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
It will need a reference to the exe. Martin 19:25, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
That's not a problem Martin. I know you're hardcore OOP (which is great) but I think that in the case of a plugin (which is an application extension) versus traditional library access it's quite alright to be referencing the exe too :)
Thinking about this again, wouldn't it be much smarter if I embeded a block of XML in a resource file and sent that XML to AWB when I need to change it's settings? Could you make public the method which receives the XML or, if it's the same method you've just made public, add an overload? --kingboyk 09:52, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Just a headsup mate - SVN version is broken. Hits an error (with no plugin installed) when loading an XML file, here:

                foreach (RadioButton rd in gbOptions.Controls)
                {
                    *** if (rd.Tag.ToString() == value) ***
                    {
                        rd.Checked = true;
                        return;
                    }
                }
                rdoNone.Checked = true;

--kingboyk 22:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, fixed it, I knew i would make this error when I wrote that code. oh well. thanks Martin 22:35, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for assistance

Hi Bluemoose. I am currently working on helping to categorize afrikaans wiki to the best of my ablility. However, help is needed to do a little automation. Both the administrator af:User:Alias and I, af:User:Heiko, want to see the af:Kategorie:Voëls populated with the articles in af:Kategorie:Voël. Afterwards, I will turn Kategorie:Voël into a redirct. The naming convention is to use plural titles for categories. Could you help us out please? Thanks. - GilliamJF 10:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't run any bots on that wiki. Martin 18:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Galatasaray article

On the page of Galatasaray i saw a mistake but i cannot revert it becauce the page is under protection , in the Managerial area Yılmaz Gökdel was the manager in 1974-1975 season could you fix this?

Johnny200 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, done. Martin 18:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Excuse me sir but I think you should change it back. The whole reason the article was placed on protection was because of this Johnny200 is an anonymous user who kept vandalizing the article reverting it to false information. You'll notice his what he has been doing on the edit record for the Galatasaray article. They have tried to ban him but he is using a dynamic IP which is difficult to ban. This link (http://www.turkfutbolu.net/bildiriler/bildiri_6_Nisan_2004.html) shows that Jack Mansell was manager in 1974-1975. Just put "Mansell" in Edit, Find and you will see. He is trying to use you as an adminstrator. The truth is he is trying to change the article so that it appears as if there were never any foreign managers at Galatasaray. I don't do not understand what he is doing because at times it seems like he has a anti-Turkish agenda and then at other times a over-nationalist Turkish agenda. I don't think he knows what he is doing either and maybe he just revels in attempting to ruin other people's work. In any case, I think it would be best if it were editted back as you can see he was using you to get around what got the article placed under protection in the first place. Sorry and thank you for your time. Waya 5 19:12, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I have reverted it now, I did try and check the fact, the only references I could find appeared to back up the claim. Martin 19:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
UPDATE: If you look at his contributions you will notice that you are not the first administrator he has tried to contact to change an article that he was the reason for its protection. Also, in the link I provide http://www.turkfutbolu.net/bildiriler/bildiri_6_Nisan_2004.html if you search for Jack Mansell you will see "teknik direktor" which means "technical director" which is how a manager or coach is referred to in Turkish. Waya 5 19:28, 21 September 2006 (UTC)



[edit] Barnstar

The Technology Barnstar
For giving us AWB. It's an awesome tool! Awesome does not start to describe it. :) - Ganeshk (talk) 19:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Galatasaray

Mansell was coach for the 75-76 season not the 74-75 you can check this on galatasaray.com

thank you for your time :)


Johnny200 , 21 September 2006 (UTC

[edit] Thanks

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.

Thanks for reversing the deletion Bluemoose. I wasn't 100% sure of how to deal with it at first and had asked for assistance (above) from both Bluebot and Girltiger. Yet before they were able to answer, you had done it already. Thanks again. What can be done retrospectively to Actionperson? In other words, what do we do about Actionperson? Though without a shred of evidence, it is highly probable that 218.186.9.3 and Actionperson are one of the same person.Wilfred Pau 11:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB / C# charsets

(kindly referred here by Kingboyk) Hi, I'm developing a plugin in C# (which I've not used before), modifying the example on the plugins page. It wraps a call to an external script (I'm a perl coder so in my case it's a call to wperl.exe), writes the existing page content to STDIN, and reads the new page out of STDOUT (along with a flag that says whether a change was made). I'm having some problems with charsets - I can't work out why, but non-Latin chars seem to get mangled whatever I do. I've played around a bit with Encoding.UTF8 / Encoding.UTF16 stuff, considered passing the data as Base64, and so on, but drawn a blank - while I suspect the problem is C# using different charsets for the page text and the StandardInput, I can't really tell. If you could give me some advice or know who could, that'd really be great. Thanks! Pseudomonas 13:55, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really sure to be honest, my knowledge of Perl is not great at all. All I can say is that C#/.NET has handled all the fonts flawlessly in my experience. It would be interesting to allow people to combine their Perl scripts with AWB, so I wish I could help. I'll have a dig about for C# + Perl wrappers anyway. Martin 14:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I can probably handle doing the perl bit if I can know that the C# bit is definitely reading/writing UTF8 to the external program. At the moment it's hard to tell what's going on. Pseudomonas 14:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
According to this webpage, strings use the UTF-16 character encoding. Martin 15:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks for the link. It seems that the streams aren't Unicode by default. Using
           psi.StandardOutputEncoding = Encoding.UTF8;
           psi.StandardErrorEncoding = Encoding.UTF8;
          System.IO.StreamWriter myInput = new System.IO.StreamWriter(perlProcess.StandardInput.BaseStream,Encoding.UTF8);

seems to fix it. Now I can get on with the fun perl bits :) Pseudomonas 21:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that's great, let me know how you get on. Martin 21:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I've put the script up on User:Pseudomonas/AWBPerlWrapperPlugin I linked to. I'm using it to deconvolute external links (currently to amazon), by pulling them apart, or opening them and screenscraping where necessary. AWB is great, thanks :) Pseudomonas 09:33, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Glad to hear you got it working. I've put your page into Category:AutoWikiBrowser plugins to keep my plugin company :) --kingboyk 22:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not allowed to use AWB

Hi there, recently, you've granted me acces to use AWB, however, I get a error message saying "You're not allowed to use this". What's wrong? -- Selmo (talk) 00:42, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Try clearing your internet explorere cache. I have improved the login mechanism recently anyway so in next version in might be a bit better. Martin 08:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
It works now. Thanks! ---- Selmo (talk) 19:00, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] problem with bluebot

bluebot just modified Template:Infobox musical artist 2/color selector, with a message "Unicodifying". Unfortunately, the result was that the parent template, Template:Infobox musical artist (which is widely used), stopped working properly. I reverted the change, but you might want to look into the problem before it does it to other tricky templates like that one. -- Xtifr tälk 16:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Luckily, I just had been studying those templates with an eye toward some minor enhancements, so when things went south, I was able to diagnose and repair the damage quickly. I do hope you're able to find a workaround soon, as I strongly approve of what bluebot is doing in general. Just not in this particular case.  :) I wouldn't mind a status update once you get things sorted out, although I can certainly understand if you don't have the time. Thanks, Xtifr tälk 03:31, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Still not convinced that busychanged() is always firing :)

Hi Martin, as per subject line :)

(My Start and Stop buttons raise the AWB events Start and Stop, of course. Note that my webcontrol object reference is acquired in Initialise() and doesn't ever go out of scope.)

  • Click my Start button, receive busychanged busy=true
  • Get login screen and login. AWB loads main page and then stops, but I don't get a busychanged event.
  • Click my Start again, no event
  • Click my Stop, get event busy=false
  • Now, if I click Start then Stop quickly, AWB throughs up a null object box, and I don't get any busychanged event at all. I'm fairly certain I've been able to simulate other situations where it doesn't fire.

--kingboyk 22:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The login in screen does not affect the busy status (though I could change that), clicking start again does not change it because it is already true. not sure about last one, I'll have a look. Martin 09:35, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Btw, I've found the latest SVN version to crash and barf a lot so have gone back to the last public release. --kingboyk 10:18, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
What problems dod you have with it? Martin 10:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC) I fixed the error it had. Martin 11:37, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] XML

(bump)

I presume for XML settings you mean this routine:

private void loadSettings(string filename)

which is still private.

Also, perhaps that could be split into 2 methods, with the code that actually parses the settings being perhaps an overload of loadSettings() which takes an xmlreader stream argument? --kingboyk 23:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC) --kingboyk 10:18, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it was more complicated than I thought at first, so I haven't got around to doing that yet. Martin 10:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
OK mate, thanks for the replies. No rush on any of this just so long as isn't forgotten :) --kingboyk 11:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB for other Wiki Project

I would like to use AWB on another wiki project is it possible to configure it for something other than the wikipedia and associated wikis? --—  KaiserB 19:11, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

It already works on most wikimedia websites, to make it work for a different website it would be possible to alter the code, as it is open source. Martin 19:26, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Economics graphs

Hi, I had started reading a few econ pages when I discovered this little graph - may I know the name of the program you used to draw it and whether or not there is a guide out there I can refer to while creating my own graphs? Thanks. --Yuyudevil 19:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I have just used an art package, like paint shop, I imagine there is a much better way of doing it though, there must be a guideline somewhere. Aha, I've just found Wikipedia:How to create graphs for Wikipedia articles. Martin 11:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your expertise...

Hello! I'm not too familiar with how to write bots on Wikipedia, but I ventured over to WP:BOT and I saw lots of posts from you. Wikipedians at the WP:RD are increasingly in need of a bot to help with archivals. Would you be able to help us out? --HappyCamper 03:38, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, sorry, but I don't run bots like that (mine tend to do long runs of formatting rather than timed archivals). I am pretty sure User:Werdnabot would be able to help though, that bot does lots of archiving in other places. Martin 08:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Ah! Thanks for the idea, it's really helpful! --HappyCamper 11:14, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB registration

Hi there. I see that you cleared the names for new registered users for the AWB (Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage) but I wasn't authorised. Is there a reason for that? I know I have just under 500 edits on the Main space but I have been registered for a long time (since April) and I've never shown any signs of being a vandal. The reason I'm interested in using AWB is to do some repetitive macronisation of some Japanese language articles per WP:MOS-JP, as we've been talking about here. It's very tiring doing it all "by hand" so to speak! Bobo12345 14:51, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've added your username now, thanks. Martin 15:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please stop BlueBot

There are valid reasons to use the ArB template, especially when the arabic is the title, and should be bolded. -- Jeff3000 18:18, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The point is that a single user, without any discussion, decides to depracate the templates. That's not due process, and any mass changing should not be done, unless there is a discussion, and consensus agrees that this is the right thing to do. -- Jeff3000 18:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Norwich Arts Centre Link

Hi Bluemoose,

Was wondering why you felt that a "Ats in Norwich" link to Norwich Arts Centre http://www.norwichartscentre.co.uk/ is a spammy link.