User talk:Dispenser

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[edit] Re: Frivolous bot edits

Could something be done about some of the pointless edits that some bot do? I just can across User:VeblenBot which updates User:VeblenBot/PERtable and a good chunk of its edits are to simply update the timestamp. Isn't the "does not consume unnecessary resources" suppose to cover this? This isn't the only one that operates in this fashion either. —Dispenser (talk) 01:31, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure anything needs to be done about the policy itself since, as you have pointed out, it already covers this. The approval request for the process you mention can be found here, and it seems the bot was indeed given approval to edit once per hour whether it needed to or not. I assume that the bot is coded the way it is because doing so is usually simpler, and thus less error-prone. I also assume that Mets501, the approval group member who approved the request, decided that one edit per hour was sufficiently insignificant that it didn't really matter – correctly so, in my opinion, since this wiki often sees 20,000 edits in an hour.

I agree, though, with both your statement and the policy's statement that unnecessary edits should be avoided wherever possible. I suggest that you contact CBM, the operator of VeblenBot, and suggest that he modify it to avoid editing when no actual changes to the table need to be made. Such a change would not actually alter the function of the bot in any significant way so shouldn't need approval. You may wish to do the same thing in any other instances you may find – Gurch 13:03, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Stable geohack

Hi, you're quite welcome! I have enough work pouring out of my ears as it is ;-) You'll have to get access to the stable server and the geohack tool by asking River Tarnell or Dab.. Somewhere, there was a list where you could enter your name as maintainer, but I can't find it anymore... Thanks, Magnus Manske (talk) 20:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] SMOG Copyright Violation

I contacted the copyright holder in regards to the SMOG article, and it appears that he is the original author and frequent maintainer of the article. He has since added a GFDL statement to the bottom of his website.

The only other issue I can see is that he apparently invented this system of measurement, being a doctor in Applied Linguistics. His works are original works and may not be suitable for Wikipedia as he is the sole authority on the matter.

I do like his article though, and would like to see it expanded upon. I would like to forward our email correspondence to you if you're interested. ~ Agvulpine (talk) 11:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] named versus unnamed parameters in templates

Halló Dispenser! Are you using IRC? Or Skype? My IRC nickname is gangleri the Skype name is irelgnag . Maybe we can chat about the topic. Best regards
‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏Th‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 05:49, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Weblink checker

What a wonderful thing you created! (BTW, "automaticly checked" needs to be corrected...) I thank you again - it really helps. --andreasegde (talk) 17:55, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Ditto, I've used it on a few article I've created. Very helpful! :) Mahanga^Talk 03:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AutoWikiBrowser Userbox image

I think it looks good. -Gwguffey (talk) 16:36, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What the heck?

What the heck is a good machine parseable datasets? I reaaly don't know about how to program bots and the like. Could you please reply on my talk page? Editorofthewiki (talk) 17:07, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I really just want to know whether you can create a bot from the Insee info and the info from the French Wikipedia. Is that possible? Editorofthewiki (talk) 18:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Single quote in #ifeq

I checked out m:Talk:Migration_to_the_new_preprocessor#Single_quote_in_.23ifeq, and couldn't replicate. --Splarka (rant) 04:44, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

Could you fix the spelling of "foundation" at [1]. A bit more documentation would also help. Thanks and happy editing, Geometry guy 23:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AWB Feature Page

Thanks for helping with the organisation - [2]

=)

—Reedy Boy 11:09, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Just a quick thought. It can probably be categorised better than it is now... Maybe worth moving some more about to sub sections! —Reedy Boy 11:11, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Webchecklink bug?

Is it a bug from webchecklink here, that makes it show all pages from www.experts-exchange.com as "Service Unavailable", while they are accessible from a browser? Or is it a problem with experts-exchange itself? huji—TALK 09:59, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Link check problem with Bath, Somerset

Hi, Thanks for the really useful link checker, however Bath, Somerset is at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bath, Somerset and I've been asked to check the links. It shows 2 x 404 & 2x 400 errors but these all work when you click on them & the URL it takes you to is the same as in the refs. The last one is to a journal that requires a subscription & not a problem - but any advice on the others would be great.— Rod ^talk 18:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] nice work on your link checker

Hi, I saw your "shameless self-plug" and gave it a try. I knew about those redirects, but had never bothered to update them. (Actually, I tested it first on Andrew Sullivan, which is a real mess, but decided not to make any changes for lack of knowledge or interest.) I was so impressed that I added a more detailed description here. One quirk I noticed is that the "Show preview" and "Show changes" buttons seem to work the first time only. --Jtir (talk) 22:43, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] reflinks.py

Thanks for adding the interactive version of DumZiBoT. I have already put it to good use twice.[3] [4] (I changed the edit summary from the default.) The expanded description could probably go at the top, since several people have asked for DumZiBoT to be run on particular articles. --Jtir (talk) 20:45, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

It fails with the following message on articles with foreign characters in their title; e.g., Kemal Kerinçsiz. --Adoniscik^{(t, c)} 18:06, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0x.. in position ..: ordinal not in range(128)

[edit] linkchecker

Hi !

A little bug in your tool :

In Humanitarian response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, there is the source text

[[Sweden]] || [[Swedish krona|SEK]] 500M (USD 72.2M)<ref>http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/4823/a/36245</ref> || || [[Swedish krona|SEK]] 1100M (USD 159M)<ref>[http://www.frii.se/index3.shtml Frivilligorganisationernas Insamlingsråd - Aktuellt<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> || || 177.2 || 0.5,

and it is converted into

[[Sweden]] || [[Swedish krona|SEK]] 500M (USD 72.2M)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/4823/a/36245 |title=]</ref> || || [[Swedish krona|SEK |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20050101025709/http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/4823/a/36245 |archivedate=2005-01-01}}] 1100M (USD 159M)<ref>[http://www.frii.se/index3.shtml Frivilligorganisationernas Insamlingsråd - Aktuellt<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> || || 177.2 || 0.5

:)

NicDumZ ~ 19:47, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy deletion of Template:UK patent/doc

A tag has been placed on Template:UK patent/doc requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Readability tool

Sometimes the tool comes back with statistics fairly quickly (For example; Introduction to evolution, Bees and toxic chemicals and Dog), but othertimes seems to be slow, so slow that it might be broken (Evolution for example). What is going on? Are those articles just too complicated? Is something else wrong?--Filll (talk) 01:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for implementing a readability analyser. I'm sure Wikipedia needs one of its own, because Wikipedia's conventions require so many elements that should not enter in to the calculations, e.g. UI elements, references list, "See also", links to editions in other languages, various templates that appear in certain article categories.
Even so, I was surprised by the difference in the scores given for Evolution of mammals by your analyser and Juicy Studio's Readability Test, which I've been using and recommending for a few years:

The differences may be due to the factors I mentioned above, but they need to be explained - I expect editors who are sufficiently interested in readability to use your analyser will know and use others.
More generally, your analyser's output needs some explanation, for example:

• What does "Readable proses:" represent? It's wikilinked below the big diagram, but should also be wikilinked at the top of the page.
• What's the big diagram all about?
• Just below the big diagram there's a paragraph that includes the sentence "No direct action should result from the information provided here." What does this mean? If it means "This article is within the acceptable range" it should appear at the top of the output with a suitable caption, e.g. "Overall evaluation". If it's a reassurance that your analyser will not change the article being analysed, it should appear on the input form.
• The same paragraph includes "..highlighed words indicate puncuation." What does this mean? I couldn't make a guess because there were no highlighted words in the output for Evolution of mammals.
• I think I see the purpose of the 2 outer text columns, headed "Wikitext" and "Proses (Marked up)"; but what's the purpose of the one headed "Text"?

You may also want to make the algorithm ignore:

• Directives like the T.O.C. one at the top of Evolution of mammals (I don't want to reproduce it here in case it confuses Wikimedia).
• ASCII art. I used ASCII art for family trees in Evolution of mammals because I thought the clade template had significant drawbacks for both readers and editors.
• That may mean your analyser should ignore all templates except those on a whitelist, e.g. for tables.

Despite all these concerns, I'm doing to put a link to your analyser on my User page - it has the potential to be extremely useful.
PS If you like I could also do comparisions of results for less scientific subjects, e.g. a couple of articles on computer games, which might contain fewer sesquipedalians. Philcha (talk) 09:57, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Collapsible templates

Hi there. I'm an admin over on Memory Beta, the non-canon Star Trek wiki, and we are looking to include the collapsible templates into our wiki. I have tried to do this before by copying over the code, but it didn't work. I wonder if you could take the time to explain step-by-step how to set this up in advance. Thanks for your time (-: --82.37.50.162 (talk) 10:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Navbox rewrite (which adds CSS)

Hi Dispenser, I recently rewrote {{Navbox}} to fix a number of known bugs and to add a whole bunch of new features, including CSS support. Please check out my new code (User:CapitalR/Navbox), the test and description page (User:CapitalR/NavboxTest) and the Navbox talk page to add comments (Template talk:Navbox#Complete Navbox rewrite). Seeing as you've done some work on this in the past and have been pushing for CSS to be added, I'd appreciate your comments, corrections, changes, and suggestions. Feel free to directly edit the code and test page in my user pages. Thanks, --CapitalR (talk) 19:17, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] external link checker tool

Hi dispenser,

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~dispenser/cgi-bin/linkchecker.py only works for Wikipedias, as far as I can see, is that correct? —Pill (talk) 13:28, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Could you tell me...

Could you tell me why this isn't working? Thanks! archanamiya · talk 14:48, 18 April 2008 (UTC) Never mind! archanamiya · talk 18:55, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Link Checker Tool not working for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Your Link Checker Tool is not working for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Could you look into that please? Thanks! Gary King (talk) 04:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, if we are watching a page, is it possible if when we use your tool to save a page, it saves the watched status, too? If I am watching a page and use the link checker to change URLs, it will have the watchlist checkbox unchecked. But, I guess this may not be able to be done because the script can't check if the page is watchlisted by a user or not? Gary King (talk) 18:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

For your Readability tool, it does not work for Timbaland. Gary King (talk) 21:11, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Dispenser. You have new messages at Gary King's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} template.

Hey, this always seems to hang. Could you look into it please? Gary King (talk) 16:38, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, it finally worked after a few tries. Gary King (talk) 16:51, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sort template metadata

The template metadata that you have added is a very useful column. Could you sort the keys in it alphabetically, though, so that accessdate is always before publisher, etc.? This would make it easier to sift through a lot of links and see which ones are missing information, and it would make it easy to compare between two links. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 04:00, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dead Link Checker error

I got this error when I hit 'Save changes':

<class 'wikipedia.NoPage'>: No textarea found
      args = ('No textarea found',)
      message = 'No textarea found' 

Gary King (talk) 01:54, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Dispenser. You have new messages at Gary King's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} template.

A minor issue, but can you change the contents for <title> to something else besides "Main Page"? This is so that I can reach it more quickly using Firefox 3's new address bar completer. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 04:29, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

What's the timeout time for connections? It seems to be longer than usual for some reason. I feel like it's around 10 seconds? Gary King (talk) 18:34, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-article wrapper to Pywikipedia

Is there a multi-article wrapper for the tools on http://tools.wikimedia.de/~dispenser/view/Pywikipedia, particularly reflinks.py? I'd like to run it against 50-odd articles in a human-assisted-bot format, so that as soon as I save a page it goes on to the next one in the list. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] For you

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		For the work you do on the link checker tool, which makes FAC so much easier. Thank you. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:53, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProxy

Copied from User talk:Daniel. 06:03, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

WikiProxy isn't handling : in titles correctly see Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. — Dispenser 16:01, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe you're after de:Benutzer:Duesentrieb :) Cheers, Daniel (talk) 06:03, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AWB's List Maker

Hey Dispenser, Just thought i'd let you know that im in the process of starting to overhaul AWB's List Maker.

We've made it more modular, so that plugins can be added for extra search criteria and such.

Its removed some of the things that made it more complex, and i've made the combo box now sorted as per your suggestions back in Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_18#Interface_Tweaks

If you SVN update you'll be able to see how much more simpler the code behind is... Was wondering what you were thinking regarding overhauling the designer (as now would be a good time to do so..)

Thanks

—Reedy 10:52, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Outhouse article

Thank you for reforming and putting in the corrected links and references on this article. Really helps! 7&6=thirteen (talk) 12:16, 1 June 2008 (UTC) Stan

[edit] Link checker

Can you help me with a question about your reference tool that was left on my user page? I'm not at all familiar with your tool so I can't answer the question. Thanks. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 04:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Re your message: Can you leave a message for Haha169 about the issue? Thanks. You are better able to explain what happened and how he can ignore the problem then I since I'm still not quite sure what your tool does.

On a side note, when you left the comment on my talk page, your edit altered all of the timestamps on other comments to UTC-4 notation. Not sure what happened there. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 05:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Captive Market

I was just about to use autowiki browser to link Captive market - but you seem to have beat me to it :) Chendy (talk) 11:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Possibilities of normal distribution numbers

It looks like you tagged all the normal-distribution redirects from 68-99.7% as having possibilities. It happens that the article 68-95-99.7 rule covers (I think) pretty much everything those numbers have to say. Is it all right if I remove {{R with possibilities}} from them? Lenoxus " * " 03:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)