User talk:BWDuncan

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[edit] A welcome from Sputnik

Hi, BWDuncan, Welcome to Wikipedia!
Hello, bonjour, salut, privyet, konichiwa, shalom, hola, salve, sala'am, bonjourno, and hi! I'm Sputnik. I noticed that you were new and/or have yet to receive any messages so I just thought I'd pop in to say "hello". We're glad to have you in our community! I hope you like this place — I sure do — and want to stay. Wikipedia can be a little intimidating at first, since it's so big but we won't bite so Be Bold and get what you know down in microchips! If you do make a mistake, that's fine, we'll assume good faith and just correct you: it'll take a few seconds maximum! I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Though we all make goofy mistakes, here is what Wikipedia is not. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to see the help pages or add a question to the village pump. The Community Portal can also be very useful. If you want to play around with your new Wiki skills the Sandbox is for you. Here are a few links to get you started:
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Happy Wiki-ing!


- СПУТНИКССС Р 13:46, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Bruce, about the Goiânia event. I am reverting the source/rod change with a slight change to improve the text. If you read the IAEA report you will find that the source is nothing like a rod in shape. The source is way too squat to be a rod.Cadmium

[edit] Wishlist

Hello,

I've only had one dealing with OrphanBot, but it wasn't pleasant, I'm sorry to say. I fully agree with the need for this bot and the principle seems to be viable. However, I have few comments:

  • Even though I forgot to select the license from the drop-down box, I wrote "Taken by me" and "GFDL" in the description. I realise that natural language processing is not infallible, but it would be nice to have something along these lines. Text processing is what Perl is famous for, after all!
  • Can you improve the session handling? Apparently, immediately after I added the GFDL tag, the bot edited the photo and replaced the page with the previous revision which now contained it's helpful notice. Upon checking the page again, I found the GFDL tag had gone. Presumably the bot doesn't understand edit conflicts or something?
  • Is the source for the bot available? I would be interested in reviewing and possibly adding to the code.

Thanks for reading --BWDuncan 17:28, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. Taking them point by point:
  • OrphanBot is probably never going to be applying license tags to images for the simple reason that, while text processing is one of Perl's strong points, image recognition and artificial intelligence aren't. I don't see any reasonable way for the bot to tell a photograph like yours from an image where the uploader labeled it as "self-created" because they scanned it from a magazine themselves, and "GFDL" because Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL. It's a fairly common situation, and I feel it's better to have the image untagged and waiting for human review than to have an incorrect {{GFDL-self}} tag on it.
  • The bot uses the same edit-conflict mechanism as every other editor does. The edit history for the image shows that you uploaded it, OrphanBot tagged it, then you added a GFDL tag. If an edit vanished, it means the Wikipedia software messed up.
  • I keep meaning to make the source available, but it's never been in a stable enough state to do so. Right now I'm testing a major change in how the bot accesses Wikipedia; once that's finished, I'll probably be posting the code.
Thanks for the suggestions
--Carnildo 06:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Glider

Thank you for your contribution to the talk page on Glider. As a physicist you should know that force and energy are different. No-one should dispute that the kinetic energy of a glider comes from converting the potential energy from raising its mass against gravity. The force that makes it go forward, as opposed to vertically downwards, comes from the wings. If you agree, please retract your contribution to stop adding to the confusion on this page. JMcC 15:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)