User talk:Dr pda/archive1

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Contents

[edit] Thanks...

Great work in correcting typos and such on a few heraldic pages. Well done. Evadb 12:57, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heraldry...

Great work on Ormond, Dingwall and Kintyre. If you ever need more heraldic work, my user page has a list of Officers of Arms and Offices of Arms that need creating/editing/expanding. Keep up the great work.--Evadb 22:52, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

PS - I like your Lord Lyon template at User:Dr pda/Sandbox. good work.--Evadb 23:01, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
All of the Scottish Officer of Arms red links have been taken care of. I think that you can begin adding your wonderful new template to the pages now. Well done.--Evadb 12:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
The template looks great. Nicely done.--Evadb 18:33, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Great continued work in heraldry. I like your new Francis Jones article. Well done.--Evadb 12:32, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Dr pda 12:38, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Lord_Lyon_King_of_Arms

"What is your source for this? "

I was going on memory of having read this long ago. Performing a quick google I get back "Sir Malcolm Innes as Marchmont in the first issue of Double Tressure (1979) describes the inscrutible workings of the Court of Claims at the time of the 1953 coronation noting that the said court refused to Lyon the designation Lord Lyon King of Arms in the ceremonial (though the Earl Marshall of England continued to so style him in correspondance)"

Now of course that entry could be wrong as could my memory. Of course it would hardly be the unique if Lyon was entitled to one style in Scotland and another in EnglandAlci12 16:41, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

See my reply on Talk:Lord_Lyon_King_of_Arms#Court_of_Claims. Dr pda 23:29, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portcullis Pursuivant

You Wrote:
Hi, I noticed in the list of office holders you've changed post 1820 to 1820 for James Pullman. I put post 1820 because I was unable to find evidence of the date of his appointment, but found George Frederick Beltz listed as Portcullis in the ceremonial for the funeral of George III (Supplement to the London Gazette of Feb 19th 1820, reprinted in The Times Feb 21 1820). Thus Pullman's appointment musy have occurred some time after this. (I find Pullman mentioned as Portcullis in 1830, so he must have been appointed some time in the preceding decade). Perhaps pre 1830 would have been better than post 1820. Do you have evidence for his appointment in 1820?--Dr pda 17:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Ooops...sorry about that. I'll revert my mistake as soon as possible. Keep up the great work on these armorial biographies. Well done.--Eva db 06:54, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal?...

Hey. I've proposed the creation of an heraldic portal. If you think that such a thing would be helpful, you can voice your support HERE and hopefully we can get the heraldry category items organized better. Thanks for all your hard work on heraldic topics.--Eva db 08:46, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template Help...

Hello. I'm working on a template of the different offices of arms in the CHA (similar to the College of Arms and Lord Lyon one that you created). If you can help me get rid of all the red links, then I think we can give it a go. The sandbox version is HERE. Keep up the great work. Thanks.--Eva db 11:54, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SMILE...

Eva db has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Smile to others by adding {{subst:smile}}, {{subst:smile2}} or {{subst:smile3}} to their talk pages. Happy editing!

[edit] OBE

Thanks for the thoughts about the OBE Categories. It is much appreciated and it saved me MUCH time.--Eva db 13:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Great continued work on heraldry articles, Doc. You are doing a wonderful job, and I especially appreciate it around this time when my year gets busier and I have less time to commit. I'm also going through an rfa right now, so it is a bit stressful. Thanks again.--Eva db 09:33, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

I appreciate the work you did on Lord Bingham's page - he is such an important part of our justice system in the UK and he deserves to have a good picture of him posted and correct info in his profile. I'm still fairly new to wikipedia and having someone to clean up the articles on our more distinguished Lords and Ladies is invaluable. Cheers! Biicl 15:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ecclesiastical heraldry

I've had this article listed at WP:PR for a week with no response except the automated suggestions. I don't know what else I can do with it. It's over 20kb so possibly not appropriate for WP:GOOD. Do you think it could go for FAC? I am encouraged by the statement that FAs may be marked so as not to be showcased on the Main Page. Gimmetrow 21:24, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that about the crown. It seemed peculiar. Gimmetrow 17:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Any more comments in regard to featured article? Have I addressed the concerns you listed?Gimmetrow 00:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

Updated DYK query On 29 July 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Charles Murray Kennedy St Clair, 17th Lord Sinclair, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Many thanks for the well written and well referenced article. Look forward to more contributions at DYK. Cheers -- Samir धर्म 23:38, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Order of the Bath and other Orders

Thank you for your helpful comments. I, for one, was confused and completely agree that the three categories need to be distinguished as you suggest. I have added more Bath CfD today. - Kittybrewster 16:53, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

The various people of the Bath have now been transported. I have done the obvious ones and left a few for you. - Kittybrewster 17:31, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I rather suspected it might be GCB but hadn't time to look it up before you did. Is your edit word for word from the statue as Maj Gen and Admiral and not equiv at all. Alci12 13:56, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Fwiw if you're editing those lists, List_of_Knights_Companion_of_the_Order_of_the_Bath shows the same inconsistant name/title selection as many other wiki lists. Take David Dundas (though there are othes), he's listed with his baronetcy (created 1815) when he gained his KB in '04. Yet Wellington is listed by the form he was known at the time he gained the KB. Also Andrew_Mitchell on the list points to a tory MP of the 1980s/90s :-) Alci12 15:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Parser functions

Thanks. I think I'll give it a rest for tonight, but you can see my attempted code at User:Valentinian/Sandbox/Code or the revision history of Template:X9. I can make it work if I just get the thing to write "Needed-class", but I want it to give one message if the page already exists and one if it doesn't. The text works and so does the If / then feature, but there is a bug giving either an unexpected "{" or "}" . I'll try giving it a look another day. I noticed that the other projects don't normally have this feature, I don't know why. WP:Film has it, but sorts the articles into the unassessed category. But I think the template is getting into shape now. I have added (but deactivated) code for taskforces so that feature works. So does the "requested images" feature. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 22:12, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Nice job! That feature was driving me nuts, but it works like a charm now. I guess we just have to create the redlink categories and we'll be in business. It is a bit odd that no "standard" template exist for this kind of thing, but I think the HV (or is it VH?) one is getting pretty useful now. Thanks again. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 23:38, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I knew such a list existed somewhere, but it was one of the thing I hadn't got around to fix. I think I'll give it a try adding the "Infobox needed" feature the bot apparently loves. Just for the fun of it. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 23:45, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heraldry Reply

Good Doctor,

Thanks for the kind words on the rewrite. I think that it will help bring it up to FA status, though I'd wanted to wait to nominate it until it had been looked over and reviewed. Your concerns are legitimate and good, and I recognize that this is simply a starting point. Thanks, too, for the support of the officers of arms in the ODNB idea. Unfortunately, I don't think any libraries in my area of the US have ponied up the big bucks for these volumes. I'll have to leave the work to you and others. Your busy schedule is very understandable, so please take your time. As the end of the marking period draws nigh here, I'll be busy marking papers and entering them into the computer, as well. Keep up the great work.--dave-- 14:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re Ref fixer

Dr pda,

Huge thank you from a fellow heraldry buff (albeit not skilled enough to help much around here). Kudos on your detective work, everything's working fine now. Thanks again, Fvasconcellos 21:24, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blanc Coursier

Philip,

Thanks for the additions to the Blanc Coursier Herald page. The image is also great. My sources were a bit scattered as I read them, so it's nice to have a bit of unity. I'll get sources on those citations today or tomorrow. Great work.--dave-- 01:23, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I've found the two sources that I used for the missing references on this article. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to use this citation method. If I give the sources to you, can you cite the two lines that you tagged?
  • "Blanc Coursier's Tabard" H.L. Gandell. The Coat of Arms Vol XI No 81 January 1970, 11.
  • "Arms of Walter Aston Blount, Clarenceux" John Brooke-Little. The Coat of Arms Vol VII No 63 July 1965, 256.
Can you put those in the right spots? Thanks.--dave-- 23:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, looks great!--dave-- 14:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Flag maps

Thanks for the hint. I'll assign a few more images to this category. Nice image of Canada, btw. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 23:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

This one:

I also noted a similar creation for Ontario. See: {{Canada-geo-stub}} and {{Ontario-geo-stub}}. Cheers. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 00:38, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images from Burke's

This image was photographed from Burke's yes, although I cannot remember which edition. I shall check. I'm not sure what the copyright is on coats of arms, it couldn't belong to the artist as one can easily have it on notepaper &c. and I can't imagine it belongs to Burke's. I must admit copyright isn't something I know a lot about and advice would be appreciated.--Couter-revolutionary 14:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Forgive the interjection. Burke's Peerage Ltd sold all their printing blocks to Heirloom & Howard Ltd who in turn sold them on to whomever. I wonder whether that makes an image taken from a block the property of the artist who made the block on the instruction of Burkes or the property of Burke's or the person who now owns the block. - Kittybrewster 14:51, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stronge_baronets

I made the comment about the seeming use of mental on metal to Kitty b4 tidying the abreviations to the full words. I'm not clear what you're saying though was the original entry wrong - ie a copying error from Burkes blazon - or were you guessing what it should be Alci12 17:27, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Flagmaps

Hi Dr Pda

Remember we talked about flag maps a while ago? It looks like the idea is spreading. Both this page and a corresponding category are growing well. A Canadian is apparently working on maps of Canadian provinces (.png) and a Czech editor has created images for a number of other countries, e.g. Denmark, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and a very nice image of Iceland. All of the latter in .svg format (some of them by request of me). A few months from now, this material could be even bigger. Cheers. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 19:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal

Thanks for updating the HV portal. Great work.--Eva bd 15:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coat of arms of vermont article

Hi dr pda. Would you please outline the weaknesses in the article? I understand the blazon terminology is not college of herladry material, but it is a legal statute. The image is originates with the Vermont Secretary of State, and references and links are included. Thanks. CApitol3 05:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Dr pda, thanks for your input. Will get to work on this. CApitol3 03:14, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] main page code

It was close - just a little over-enthusiastic with curly brackets. Apart from that it works a treat. Thanks Yomanganitalk 01:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Leon Radzinowicz

Was just wondering if you could give me some help on this article please? I'm struggling to decide which particular category of knight to put him in, and based on your contributions you might know. Thanks. One Night In Hackney 03:26, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Just to clarify, that would put him in this category [1]? I'm slightly confused as Mick Jagger is listed in that category, despite having KBE after his name, and they seem to be rather different things from what I can see? One Night In Hackney 03:50, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Great, just wanted to err on the side of caution. Thanks for the help. One Night In Hackney 04:34, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prose size script

Nice! I was working on something similar. I really like the color feedback. Gimmetrow 07:33, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Beautiful - works like a charm - nice work ! Sandy (Talk) 22:09, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Love it! Thanks for creating this! Gzkn 03:52, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Is there a reason the page size link is visible when editing a page? It generates an error. Perhaps it should either do fewer operations when document.forms.editform exists, or not be present at all?

Also, I've rewritten the ref-fixing script. Updated, more readable version is at User:Gimmetrow/fixRefs.js. Currently functions from a toolbox link rather than a tab. Gimmetrow 18:45, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Dr pda - I found one for you to check. Apparently (perhaps because its title didn't entice many to read it) B-movie flew under the radar at WP:FAC - it looks like it was promoted on support from Project members, without receiving a serious review, and it's massive. I believe it's now the longest FA (longer than Ketuanan Melayu and poorly cited), but the size checker misses some chunks of text because of their listiness. The size checker comes up with 84KB of prose; I come up with 91 KB doing it with the old cut-and-paste method (whopping in either case); I thought you'd want to look at the listy prose the script misses towards the bottom of the article ? Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have the prose script include blockquotes, and lists with bullets? Gimmetrow 19:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I've had a quick look at B movie, and the couple of bulleted paragraphs at the end only give me another 1KB. If I add in the captions from the images I get up to 6 KB, so maybe it's this which gives the discrepancy between the two methods.
Including lists is non-trivial. The script works on the HTML of the page, and basically just takes everything between <p></p> tags. Since this corresponds to the 'readable prose' (wow, an actual use of the markup part of HTML!), I don't have to do much processing to work out what is prose. The * or : style wiki markup produces plain <ul> or <dl> lists; the problem lies in trying to distinguish bulleted/indented sections which should count as prose from those that shouldn't, e.g. External links, See also, and many navboxes and infoboxes. I would like to fix this (among other things it would allow checking the size of talk pages). I have some vague ideas of how to go about it, the most general solution would be to allow clicking on a paragraph/bullet point etc to include/exclude it from the count. Unfortunately I'm busy at the moment, so this won't be fixed quickly :(
Regarding blockquotes, there seem to be a number of different ways of producing these. Using the <blockquote> tag (or a template which does, such as {{quote}}) puts the text inside it into<p></p> tags, so it does get counted by the prose size script (see e.g. Augustine of Hippo). Using a single colon to indent produces a <dl>, which is the same problem as above. A template such as {{cquote}} actually puts it in a table. If I get the click to include/exclude working that would handle these cases as well. Dr pda 00:52, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for looking. Well, whether 91 or 84KB, B movie still seems to be a new record, as Ketuanan is at 81 by the script's count. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Dr pda . . . I've searched all over your userspace, but I can't seem to find your prose-size calculator script. Where might this be located? Thanks, — BrianSmithson 22:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess I should put a link to it somewhere :) It's at User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js, instructions/explanations are on the associated talk page. (Special:Prefixindex is useful for finding subpages if you don't know the exact name, eg like this). Dr pda 00:52, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I must be doing something wrong, though. I get the link in the toolbar, but whenever I click on it, I only get a bunch of square bullets with no text. I've tried it on Cameroon and B movie with no luck. Any idea what gives? -- BrianSmithson 02:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Did you do the addlink thingie on the talk page instructions? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:18, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
It looks like you've got the addlink function included, so the only thing I can suggest is to force your browser to reload your monobook.js page, i.e. go to User:BrianSmithson/monobook.js and for Mozilla/Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R), Internet Explorer: press Ctrl-F5, Opera/Konqueror: press F5. You usually have to do this after making a change to a .js file. Dr pda 02:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
It works at home fine. Apparantly, it is incompatible with the Japanese version of Windows Internet Explorer such as my school uses. :) — BrianSmithson 12:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

New request. On permanent link pages, the script generates an error dialog box: "Could not find article on first page of Wikipedia search." Perhaps it shouldn't try to get the wikitext size if the path contains /w/ or oldid? Gimmetrow

A recent change to User:Omegatron/monobook.js/addlink.js has disabled addlink for me, and consequently our scripts. No luck after reloads. I left a note at User_talk:Omegatron. Gimmetrow 18:15, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
They still seem to be working here ???? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:36, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, whatever it was, it's working now. Gimmetrow 20:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome Thanks and Help

Hi Dr_pda :-), nice to see other ZEUS members around! It looks like you've been pretty busy on wikipedia, I am so far just looking out for vandalism. I'll have some questions about a few things, so if you don't mind I'll post them here if I can't work things out for myself... Jferrando 13:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FA history template

I've put your FA history template into the template space (at template:FeaturedArticleHistory). I began rigging up one for Hubble space telescope at User:Raul654/test. I dislike your pass/fail terminology (if a FAR nom fails, does that means it's still a featured article? It's confusing). Normally we use promoted/failed for FAC, and demoted/"Still a featured article" (but that's clumsy, let's just say 'retained'). However, if you use anything besides pass/fail in the arguments, the template renders a ? instead. (See my hubble example). Can you fix this? Raul654 19:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

We use Kept/Removed at FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:40, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I was planning on moving it. I've changed the output to Promoted/Failed for FAC, Kept/Demoted for FAR and added Nominated for BP (Brilliant Prose) and Kept/Demoted for RBP (Refreshing Brilliant Prose, e.g. here) in case it would be useful to list these events as well for some of the older FAs. This is all controlled by the template {{fahistoryoutput}}. To make things a bit more fault tolerant the template will accept other values for the result parameter in addition to these, namely Pass, Fail, Keep, Remove, Nom (the last for BP only), all with or without the initial capitalisation. I've added some documentation to {{FeaturedArticleHistory}} as well. Dr pda 01:35, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Does/can it include peer reviews as well? Raul654 01:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
It does now (with e.g. action1=PR). It currently outputs Reviewed as the result regardless of the value of the result parameter; let me know if you would prefer different behaviour. Dr pda 01:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I like it. I renamed it to template:ArticleHistory (It occured to me that non-FAs will use it; especially since it essentially obsoletes the FAC, FAR, Mainpagedate, and oldpeerview templates). I've also done proof of concept testing using DNA too. The other demoted-repromoted-articles at WP:FFA (there's only about 10 or so) should be done by hand to test this. If it works for those, it should work for everything. Raul654 02:10, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Does it handle main page date to come, later switched by Schutzbot to main page date, once the article appears on the main page? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Two mental notes - (1) since SmithManly wants to stop doing it, it might be preferable to request that Schutz tweak Schutzbot to do the mainpagetocome tagging. (2) At some future point, once we get all the articles tagged with the artilce history template, someone may want to go through all the archived FAC nominations and put them into some logical ordering (since right now it's a complete mess with no order whatsoever). Raul654 02:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Also, some wikiprojects have their own assessments (Example; Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Operation Linebacker). Perhaps a "Project review" action (or something like it) that behaves exactly like the PR action should be added. Raul654 02:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes it handles future main page dates. The {{ArticleHistory}} template compares the current date to that given in the maindate parameter. If it's in the past it displays this article appeared, if it's in the future it displays this article will appear, so no need for a switch of templates. I'll see about adding Project Review tomorrow. Dr pda 02:48, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Very nice! Raul, not sure what archives need ordering (thought they were filed by month now?). There are lots of us who can get it done when the time comes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:59, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Whenever an article goes through more than one FAC nom, the first (or more) FAC noms have to get page-moved elsewhere. There is no standard naming scheme for these moved nom pages, and in fact finding all of them can be a pain in the ass. It would be better if there was a standarized naming scheme. Raul654 03:06, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, ok - yes, that problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:09, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
So the discussion is going on here? Yes, there is no standardized archiving, and I would like to standardize it and archive failed FACs as they end. Once it is standardized, the bot can keep it standard. On the history template, how about oldid options for each step? Gimmetrow 03:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Putting this here, so all the pieces will be in one place. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/GimmeBot. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:32, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't bother trying to code WikiProject-specific stuff into this, actually. It'll just be another complicated setup to maintain (there are a lot of very different "reviews" run by various projects), and the relevant things are all linked to from the relevant WikiProject's template anyways. Kirill Lokshin 05:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
There are pros and cons to having WikiProject stuff included. It was trivial to add the functionality, so I have (action1=PPR for Project Peer Review, or action1=AR for A-Class Review); whether it is used is another matter. The template also now supports a optional revision id for each step (e.g. action1oldid=6112635). If provided the date is linked to that version, if not provided the date is unlinked. (This also takes care of the functionality of oldid parameter to the FA template). Dr pda 00:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, ok; so long as the WikiProjects don't have to do any extra maintenance work here, I don't particularly care. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 00:07, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
My goal is a template a bot can maintain. The FA bot is not going to be adding project peer review info, though it can change all the "class=??" fields to "class=FA" for promoted articles. Could the "current status" be determined by the template based on the last action, rather than as a separate field? If not, it's ok. I have the bot nearly ready for a trial run, but using the current template system. It won't be easy to convert to the history template until the old archives are organized. Some of that can be automated. By the way, it appears the most common style of archive name is /archiveN (lowercase a, no space), much more than /ArchiveN, /Archive N, or /archive N. There are 12 /Attempt N among the FACs, and Charizard has apparently been archived using AfD style numbering for 4 archives, with redirects from /Archive 1 and /Archive 2. And then there is this one and this one! "Chicago, Illinois" has multiple styles, with one non-archived page, "Chicago, Illinois1", /Archive 1, /Archive 2, /Archive1, and /archive1. Gimmetrow 01:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
FAC instructions currently say Archive N, so that's what I'm doing lately. (I'm preparing to travel and won't be around, Gimmetrow, but pls look at how I handled Nick Drake, per our earlier discussions. Doesn't seem right to put a facfailed tag, when it didn't fail, was withdrawn with support, and it won't be in Raul's failed file. As you and I discussed before, I went ahead and archived it, cleared out the redirect, leaving a link to the archive - ready for next nom. Let me know what you think of using that system - if we clear the redirect, the problem we mentioned earlier is resolved - new nom finds file with link to old nom - could help with the New York City problem - that is, we set it up so they can't avoid seeing old FACs when submitting new nom.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I also want to have the bot archive pages automatically and clear the redirect. The nomination procedure would be so straightforward: just add {{fac}} and follow the link to write nomination text. The bot can archive current nominations as they close, but to really implement the straightforward procedure universally, all the old FACs would need to be moved too. There are about 3500 pages in the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates prefix, and about 500 are obviously archive pages already, so that would leave about 3000 to archive. At bot speed (one move + one edit = one page/minute) that is still 50 hours of continuous action - without even updating "whatlinkshere" for the moved pages. I'm fairly sure I would want specific WP:BOT approval for that sort of activity level. Gimmetrow 01:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

For articles that have never passed FAC, the "currentstatus" argument needs to be able to handle "none". Right now, it generates a ? if none is passed. Raul654 03:07, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Currentstatus supports the value FFAC (or facfailed if you prefer) for Former Featured Article Candidates, i.e. those which have never passed. Gimmetrow, I'm reluctant to try to make the current status automatic as this value is also used as a switch to control which text is displayed at the top of the template. Making it depend on the last action would involve a lot of parsing of parameters and values and 6 levels of nested if statements, each level of which would need to contain 50 lines of text for all the possible options. The WikiProject functionality is mainly there so that all reviews relevant to the article can be listed in the one template if desired.Dr pda 12:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
The bot has added the template to this month's FAs and some of this month's FFACs. The bot is not creating entries in the template for older archive pages because in a number of cases, it would take some detective work to figure out the event date. I suppose they could be added with date "Unknown". Gimmetrow 14:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I saw the bot had been at work, and was going to mention the cases with old noms to you. I see Raul654 has already been through and added the old noms and PRs. I guess once all the old FAx's are converted to the new template this would not be necessary, though if the bot was going to do the conversion this feature would probably be desirable. (Regarding the conversion, the way to go would probably be for someone(s) to do the ones with multiple noms, which would leave only articles with a single nom, which should be easy for the bot to handle.) I fixed a couple of links which were pointing to /pagename rather than the correct archive, but these seem to come from when the noms were previously archived, so are unrelated to the bot. I've added a few dates/oldids and I see what you mean about detective work, although the articles I looked at had {{facfailed}} and {{oldpeerreview}} in the edit summary, so it wasn't too bad (btw, date=unknown will generate an error for the template as it currently stands). I might write a script to simplify getting the oldid given a date/time. I have a couple of questions about the bot:
  • If the template is already present with a couple of old noms, can the bot handle adding the current nom at the end?
  • Can the bot add the oldid for failed fac's as well as promoted ones?

Dr pda 22:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Yes, the bot will add new actions to the template if it exists. (One difficulty is making sure it doesn't accidentally add a new action identical to a previous action.) At the moment it is also checking for {{fac}} and {{featured}} and removing them. It could try to check for {{facfailed}} and {{peerreview}} but getting the proper sequence of actions is non-trivial. The bot could probably figure out oldids for failed FACs, but the facfailed template didn't have an oldid option. The bot was originally designed with the fac/facfailed templates in mind, not the ArticleHistory template. It's designed to maintain the FAC process, not so much to convert templates, though it could probably generate simple ArticleHistory entries. Gimmetrow 23:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Not just old peer reviews, but any conversion bot would also have to take into account the old brilliant prose articles too (the DNA article tipped me off to this). It should be almost trivial to generate lists of BP articles which did and did not pass the refreshing BP process. A conversion bot could simply slurp these lists and use them when adding the tags. Raul654 23:02, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I wrote the bot to place the FA tags at the top of the talk page before anything else, except the skiptotoc template. I see you removed that template on one talk page. You don't want that first? Gimmetrow 23:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
There are certain templates that I tend to shoot on sight - Skiptotoc and talkheader in particular. (I really, really don't like them) Raul654 23:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Good gracious - you mean this is actually going to happen? Oh happy day! --ALoan (Talk) 19:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

  • This combo template will work for the FA pages because they will be archived and stable, and the bot will be performing almost all the FA-related page moves, and can maintain the template. If an article has a Peer Review and is then archived to make way for a newer PR, will anyone update the old PR link in the template? Some diffs to look over. Gimmetrow 03:33, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
    • The creature feep on this project may need a check before it includes V0.5 and V1.0 stuff too. The original bot design with the former templates was trivial - there was a {{fac}} and it got replaced by {{featured}} or {{facfailed}}. Now it's very complex. As the ArticleHistory template grows, the template is becoming a big collapsible table. Well, we could have put all the former templates into a nice collapsible table too. Also, could you move the documentation for {{ArticleHistory}} off to the talk page next time you edit it? I know it's noincluded but it's in the way. Gimmetrow 05:01, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
      • The creatures have fept as far as they are going to :) I added the GA support after a request from User:ExplorerCDT, so that the GA status could still be seen after an article has been promoted to FA. The bot and the template have different motivations (the template was intended to make it easier to see what had happened in cases with multiple FAx activities; your bot was designed to automate FAC maintenance); it is basically just coincidence that they happened around the same time. I think the template offers more than just hiding all the current templates, the dates in particular make the sequence of reviews etc. clearer. I'm impressed with how the bot filled in the template on Talk:Linus Pauling. Regarding archived Peer Reviews I guess the instructions for requesting a second PR should be modified to include updating the links in the whatlinkshere of the old archive. (The instructions at FAC should probably also say this). Dr pda 06:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
        • The FA bot procedure should make it so FAC archives only rarely need to be moved again, so updating the whatlinkshere links should be unnecessary. [removed] Does the combo template support "Unknown" for a date entry? Gimmetrow 17:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
        • Also, something is broken in the template now. Look at Talk:GoldenEye - there is no oldid given for the first action, but it shows a bluelink with &oldid={{{action1oldid}}} Gimmetrow 05:34, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
          • Fixed. Dr pda 06:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
      • As I suspected: a request for V0.5, V0.7, and V1.0. Gimmetrow 23:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
        • Small bug at Talk:The_Cat_and_the_Canary_(1927_film) - WPR doesn't show reviewed. Here are a couple more fairly complex ArticleHistory edits: [2] [3] I'm guessing the section tag somehow caused the oldid for the first entry for Tesla not to correspond to the date. Gimmetrow 07:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
          • Fixed the WPR bug, also added actionNdate=unknown (lowercase only) support as an undocumented feature (to encourage people who add the template manually to supply the dates). Not sure why the oldid for Tesla doesn't work, I can't see anything giving that date. A couple of comments on the last bot run:
  • The date for the first (failed) fac on Talk:The Lord of the Rings (1978 film) is wrong; this is the date the page was moved to /archive1 (Dec 06), not the date it closed (Jan 2006).
  • I was going to comment on the fact you used the date of the last comment in a peer review rather than the date it was closed and {{oldpeerreview}} added, but on consideration it makes more sense to have the date as you have done it.
  • I thought I saw a case where a {{main}} template hadn't made it into the ArticleHistory template, but I can't find it now, so maybe I confused it with a DYK template, or it's been fixed. Dr pda 01:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Round 2

I'm quite happy with how the template has turned out. I agree with the above that it's probably a good idea to say 'this much and no more'. Remember, the purpose of this template is to document an article's *history* - that is, all the various reviews an article has gotten. Now, with that said, I can see two directions to take this :

  1. Getting the template deployed - there are *many* articles (literally thousands) that should be converted. That's going to be time consuming.
  2. At some point, perhaps proceeding in parallel with step 1, I want to implement a meta-project template. Talk pages are becoming clogged-to-the-brim with wikiproject templates that really serve no purpose. 99.9% of wikiproject-tagged talk pages were tagged because someone saw the article and said to himself 'oh yes, this might be tangentially related to wikiproject ______'. As a corollary, 99.9% of the articles tagged with a wikiproject tag never receive an iota of attention from that wikiproject except to tag it. (Case and point - this edit). It is this template that could incorporate Titoxd's Wikipedia v.05 et al request. Raul654 23:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
    It should be pointed out that the second issue has been discussed many times, and, so far, nobody has come up with a satisfactory solution. The simple WikiProject templates could be replaced this way; but the templates used by the larger and more sophisticated WikiProjects often have (many) additional features coded into them. Trying to replace them all with a single template would either involve (a) creating something that would be an utter nightmare to maintain, and would likely sweep right past the MediaWiki template limits or (b) breaking all the projects' existing functionality, neither of which is really a good idea. A somewhat more practical approach might be a true meta-template—one that would format an arbitrary set of self-rendered WikiProject templates in a set form (e.g. a show/hide block), in other words, while still allowing each sub-template to be called separately from the talk page. Another (less realistic?) option would be to lobby the developers to create a proper metadata namespace for all these templates.
    (It's worth noting, incidentally, that the primary purpose of WikiProject templates—and the reason that they were created in the first place—is to recruit editors to those WikiProjects. This makes applying them largely a pragmatic consideration; any attempt to significantly restrict this will have rather unpleasant consequences for the projects' ability to deal with editor attrition, with all that entails. [This is aside, even, from the various other problems it would cause with things like the article assessment system, etc.]) Kirill Lokshin 00:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
    Agreed that v0.5 etc are not relevant to the ArticleHistory template. Regarding deployment it appears Gimmebot is capable of handling the conversion for at least moderately complicated cases (although this was not its intended purpose), however this does require template for all previous FACs etc to be on the talk page, which is not always the case. My feeling is the complicated cases should perhaps be done manually, then hopefully Gimmebot could be turned loose on the rest without requiring any extra programming. I suspect Brilliant Prose status may have to be done separately; speaking of which is the date of the original brilliant prose nomination relevant, or just whether it was kept in the Refreshing Brilliant Prose of Jan 04? Dr pda 01:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Don't even bother trying to get the original date. Just whether or not it was BP, and whether or not it was kept. Raul654 01:26, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm only looking for {{mainpage date}}. If some other main page template is used too, it's going to be missed. I think LotR(1978) was the last page on which I used last edit to figure out date of close. Now I'm just grabbing the last date on the page. Not ideal, but for the sake of getting an oldid I think it is adequate. I figured out why Tesla got the wrong ID, fixed it, and fixed the one other page it happened on.
  • Above I gave some page stats. There are about 3500 pages in the WP:FAC prefix, and 500 of those are archives of other FACs. So there should be about 2500 articles that have only been submitted to FAC once. I will have to test it a bit, but the bot should be able to handle most of those. I can think of a few complications that would not be worth programming to handle, so I can just write out a log of pages with "problems" for people to look at. The approach for the bot will require at least three page edits per archive, and probably four. Since this is not a time-sensitive conversion it can be done slowly, but even at one edit per minute, four edits per page means 15 pages per hour. At that rate it would take 7 days of continuous operation to process 2500 archives. Gimmetrow 01:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • There is a message over at User_talk:GimmeBot about GA info. I haven't programmed anything about GA or Wikiprojects into the ArticleHistory part of the bot yet. (It does update the class=GA entries in wikiprojects to class=FA for promoted articles.) Are we doing this? I don't see any reasonable way for the bot to figure out an oldid for GA lines. Gimmetrow 04:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't object to putting GA information into the article history. Also, I don't consider the oldid to be essential. If it makes your life considerably easier, don't code it.
    • Also, did you see my comment above regarding the brilliant prose articles? If I were to generate a pair of lists (the original BP articles and the ones that passed refreshing brilliant prose) could you incorporate these into your bot? Raul654 04:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
      • I'll see what I can do about GA then. The bot has code to delete the GA template if an article is promoted, but I'm not sure if any of the promotions demonstrated that - often you beat the bot to the article. As for the BP/BRP, you're talking about a list of articles? I could just have a short single-purpose bit of code that went though the BP list and placed an articlehistory on those pages (if they still exist) - presumably it would be action1 for all of them. How many pages does this involve? Gimmetrow 04:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Meta Project template

Hello again. I somehow lost the trail of the conversation over Christmas, but you've done a great job on the template (I've just used it to put Harry McNish up for FAC). With regard to the giant catchall project template idea that pops up every couple of months, I've made an alternative suggestion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council#Meta_Project_Template, and would appreciate any comments. Yomanganitalk 10:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Hmmm. I had not realized the template also handles ongoing FACs. I think this option should be removed from the template. If it is currently undergoing FAC, then the article should just use {{fac}}, to keep it as simple as possible for other editors. This is a fairly complex template and I'm concerned about the difficulties editors may have using it. (In relation to the oldid value, articles tend to change rather dramatically during a FAC, so I think the version at the end of the process is more relevant.) Gimmetrow 14:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I would prefer the talk page look like the following for ongoing FACs:
 This article is a current featured article candidate. A featured article should exemplify Wikipedia's very best work, and is therefore expected to meet several criteria. Please feel free to leave comments.
    • I think editors should be able to use either, this one is slightly more complicated than {{fac}} it is true, but if you can handle it, why not use it? Nobody will need to update it until the end of the process, and it may already be in use on the page if there have been previous FACs, demotions, perr reviews etc. With regard to the oldid, the one at the end of the FAC process would be (hopefully) the oldid for the article promoted to FA or failing that for FFAC, so when FAC is in the history it needs to be the oldid at the start of the process, no? Yomanganitalk 14:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
      • FAC is a temporary stage. It doesn't need to be part of this template. If we remove that functionality from the template, then editors will use {{fac}} which is simple, straightforward, and essentially impossible to do wrong. The oldid for a FAC will be irrelevant if it is not in the template, but yes I suppose for a temporary stage the start version would make sense. It's just yet another thing the bot will need to recognize and fix, along with the 50 or so variations that human editors will use if the template allows it. Please, remove FAC from the template. Gimmetrow 14:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
        • Bearing in mind that {{fac}} is very easy -- if the bot will do the conversion automatically, I see no reason why that functionality shouldn't be removed from the template. Raul654 18:02, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
      • I don't see why it needs to be dropped. It's one less template and it could easily be changed on the FAC page to say how to update using the new template. AN id number isn't needed and can be added at the end of the FAC. The Placebo Effect 23:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] remove GA functionality from FA History template

hi, you added some fucntionality for GA status to the above template. In the past, there has been considerable opposition to attempts to merge GA functionality into FA functionality - see for example the long heated discussion at Template talk:Featured (sections "Good -> featured article status" and "NOinclude and further discussion on GA/FA"). could i ask you to please remove that functionality, to respect the precedent set by Template:Featured? otherwise it will simply inflame a new war. thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.27.141.208 (talk) 16:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC).

It seems something of a non-issue, now that peer reviews and AFDs have also been absorbed into the template. Kirill Lokshin 16:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

i disagree - the arguments presented at Template talk:Featured are still perfectly valid. and GA is not, and never will be, a wikipolicy like PR or AFD. while you personally may not care, the vast majority of users who entered the discussion were anti-inclusion of GA material.

They were anti the inclusion of GA material in an FA template, not in an article history template which is what this template is. Yomanganitalk 16:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
And PR isn't an official policy of any sort (and neither are the various WikiProject reviews). Kirill Lokshin 16:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
As one of those editors who really dislikes GA, and don't want it to become any part of FA, I am not at all opposed to it being in an article history template, because I also dislike cluttered talk pages. (Aside, I'm getting questions on the implementation of the ArticleHistory template - when are you all going to be ready for prime time? People are unclear if they should implement it themselves, or wait for the bot to go through. Also, is manual help needed yet?) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
The bot is past "trial" stage, and it's waiting for approval. Figuring out oldids for each step is tedious and repetitive - if people want those they should wait for the bot. The bot will do a one-time run to convert old FAC articles to the new template, and will strip out other relevant templates from the talk page at the same time. I keep discovering more templates - just came across {{oldpeerreviews}}. The one-time bot run could be a few weeks off. Gimmetrow 21:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

eh? if this is being used as the new Template:Featured then ALL discussion related to that template must be considered. i can see the need to include PR and AFD - as they both provide actual links to other pages were further discussion has taken place - but GA has no link, because there is no discussion, so is not useful in any case. wikiproject reviews should also not be included. why is v0.5 included or not included? seems very arbitrary.

That's a strawman. It is not supposed to include *all* content - it is supposed to include reviews of its content - the FA review, GA review, Peer review, wikiproject reviews. (And I would like to echo Sandy's comment that I'm not a fan of GA, but I also greatly dislike clutter on talk pages). If you read the template's talk page, you'll see I've advocated another meta template to absorb the functionality of wikiprojects, and that that template should absord the v.05 et al templates. Raul654 19:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm a little unclear why the template contains AfD material. Gimmetrow 21:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I suppose it's tangetially related - the most basic review of an article we can give is to determine whether or not it belongs in Wikipedia. Raul654 02:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I have a question - can someone look at Talk:Lord Voldemort and figure out where that unsightly space above the article history template is coming from (presumably something in the article history template), and fix it? Raul654 02:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, at the bottom of Talk:History of saffron Raul654 02:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
The space in Saffron is due to {{WP India}}, which is protected. I saw the top space on Voldemort a few days ago. Still not sure what in the AH template is causing that. Gimmetrow 03:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I just discovered Category:Wikipedia_GA_templates. How should these be handled? I really don't see the point of writing code to check for 10+ variations on a GA template, most of which have only a handful of uses. Gimmetrow 04:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

You mean the specialised ones like {{GA-actors}}? I saw those a while ago, and thought it was too complicated to include in the template, so I didn't :)As you say there are only a handful of uses, so I would say just leave them. If the editors working on the articles in which they occur want to incorporate them into the template they can do that manually. Btw thanks for fixing the whitespace issue. Dr pda 04:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
A seperate GA template for every concievable subject of an article? Ridiculous... Ignore them all. Raul654 04:44, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
To be fair, they seem to correspond to one of the CD selection organizations, and they include a category. But it would have made more sense to implement these variations with an option within one template. Gimmetrow 03:15, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's an interesting problem: Talk:Leonardo da Vinci Article is a formerFA and currentGA. (It's also listed with one of the specialized GA templates, but pretend it's the general one.) With the combo template what one text should be displayed? Also, since these texts include categories, whichever one is displayed, the categories for the other one must also be included. Gimmetrow 03:15, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I've taken care of that already in {{historyoutput}}. For all 'failed' categories (and also successful FARs) the action parameter puts it into the appropriate category. There is actually some doubling up as the text produced by currentstatus also includes category links, but this doesn't hurt. In general I think to get all the categories right the precedence for currentstatus should go FA, GA, then your choice of what it most recently failed. (and of course if you leave the specialised GA template alone you can have both in this case:) ).Dr pda 04:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
OK. I can see that, but would it look odd to have the template display a GA text along with a mainpage text? Also take a look at Talk:Linus Pauling. The bot logic currently puts it as FFAC. Should this be FFA? Gimmetrow 04:48, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
see Template talk:ArticleHistory. Dr pda 15:10, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Round 3

Some code in historyoutput still supports a BP action. Can that be removed entirely? Also, in regard to the various GA templates, I think the categories they use could be lists outside the template (on the line with the closing brackets), making the minor GA templates obsolete. Or, there could be a "categories" option that would allow a list of the CD selection categories. What do you think? Gimmetrow 02:31, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I left the BP stuff in there because I know I had seen at least a couple of articles which used it, and I didn't want to break them. Search shows up Talk:Chess and one other which has subsequently been fixed, so I don't know whether there are more cases since the search index was last updated. I guess I could go through all the uses of the template (or at least those by User:The Placebo Effect, since that's the only person who I think has used it) and check.
Regarding the GA templates, the specialised templates seem to have been developed in July/August 2006 by User:Maurreen, who has only made one edit since Sept 2006. As you've noticed, they're not particularly widely used. The idea seems to have been some sort of categorisation of GAs, although there are really only categories for people, art and geography. Before adding this sort of functionality to ArticleHistory it might be a good idea to raise it at the GA talk page, to see if it is wanted.
As you also noted, these templates put the article into a sub-category of Category:Wikipedia CD Selection. The subcategorisation of this category again seems to have been the idea of User:Maurreen, and there also exist a host of templates such as Template:WPCD-Africa. Again there are only a handful of events in these subcategories. It makes sense to use the GA template to put articles into a GA subcategory of the CD selection (if all GA's are included automatically), but I'm less sure about about using the GA template (or GA part of ArticleHistory) to categorise the CD selection.
This probably requires more thought/discussion. As regards implementation, I would probably go for a categories or gacategory parameter (e.g. gacategory=actor, =writer etc) which would handle the categories, rather than simply passing them as unnamed parameters, for ease of usability. Dr pda 20:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Use of BP can be checked by creating a dummy category if the option is used, and see if anything pops up. Gimmetrow 21:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Added a categories parameter, currently used on Talk:Bruce Springsteen, Talk:U2, Talk:Taylor Hicks, and Talk:Paul McCartney. This gets rid of another template. Probably can be left undocumented for now. Gimmetrow 02:36, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

For the automatic conversion to the AH template, at present the bot is only looking at info currently on the talk page. I think the bot is going to start with current FAs. To what extent is information on, say, older FAC attempts worth digging up for a current Featured Article? These seem to have been routinely deleted in the past. Gimmetrow 02:47, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I was assuming that the cases with multiple noms and other tricky cases would need to be handled separately or manually. I think old fac attempts have been deleted, because they clutter up the talk page, and can be confusing if the article subsequently gets featured. (There are exceptions, however, see Talk:All That, which is just crying out for ArticleHistory). I think it's worth including this information in ArticleHistory, but probably not worth coding the bot to do it, or prepping the talk page manually (in that case, you might as well just add the template while you're there). If there's only 500 or so pages with multiple FACs and it will be another week or two until the bot is ready, then given that there are already around 200 articles which have been tagged with ArticleHistory, there's probably time to handle them manually. Getting the oldids is now less tedious, with my latest script, so I'll try to deal with these, as I have time. --Dr pda 20:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
If I'm understanding Placebo's new post at talk FFA, we have a much bigger list of FFAs. Baseball may be interesting - if I'm understanding Placebo's list, it's about to be FARC'd for the second time. It was apparently brilliant prose, then failed RBP, then was promoted, and now is at FAR again. If this is correct, will the template deal with two FARCs? I guess so, as long as we're within the ten items? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Baseball didn't have the RBP action listed. It does now. I'll process a few FAs and see if any problems start showing up. Gimmetrow 21:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Note

Dr pda, can you remove that fac template above at some point after this discussion has run its course? I keep track of the category of articles in FAC, and don't want that to end up in your archives, showing up in the cat forever :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:17, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Done (subst:ed and removed category). Ditto the category coming from the ArticleHistory. Dr pda 17:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Over at Talk:New_York_City I edited the template and now the years appear as 2007, though they have 2006 in the template. Do you see that too? Gimmetrow 06:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes I've seen that behaviour in a few cases. The appearance is often different between (eg) /wiki/Talk:New_York_City, and /w/index.php?title=Talk:New_York_City (i.e. in diffs/preview). A null edit or ?action=purge often seems to make it go away. It seems to occur with dates in the format 18 September, 2006. I presume this is some sort of bug in the #time parser function where the comma causes it to assume no year is given, and thus use the current year. In fact this bug is reproduceable at Special:ExpandTemplates (try putting {{#time:F j, Y|18 September, 2006}} in the input text box, and then playing around with the date.) I guess someone should mention this on bugzilla. The workaround is easy, just don't use this date format. I fixed the example on the template talk page a while ago to make sure it didn't have the comma. Dr pda 17:38, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at Talk:Autism - Joelr31 types "no longer FA" on the talk entry when articles are FARC'd, but the script doesn't pick that up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Same at Talk:Psychosis. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:42, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
It should recognise it now. For some reason I hadn't included 'FA' in the list of words the script looks for. You may need to refresh your monobook.js to make the change take effect. Dr pda 19:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

New news, see talk page at WP:FFA - we are no longer calling RBPs FFAs. According to the folks who've been around, they were never Featured articles, so we can't call them former featured articles - instead we're calling them failed featured article candidates (FFACs). I've removed the ones we added from WP:FFA, and will go back and re-do those on the list at the talk page of WP:FFA. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:22, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Another request :-) Can you get rid of the articlehistory template above? It's populating the Category:ArticleHistory error. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Never mind; it's been GimmeFixed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Long overdue Barnstar

(copied to user page)

I'm sorry it was so long overdue - was on my list for a long, long time :-) Yes, I saw you had made a change, already refreshed. Loving the tools, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-project template now implemented - your help is requested

Per the above discussion, I've gone ahead and implemented a meta-template for wikiprojects. It is located at Template:Multiproject. I've created a mockup at User:Raul654/multiproject, for Talk:Jogaila. I'd like some help putting a show/hide navframe in, and some parser functions. Raul654 04:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I see someone else has already made it collapsible. I've added parser function support to hide missing entries. See also my comments on Template_talk:Multiproject. Dr pda 02:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Articlehistory request

On the ArticleHistory template, can you implement a Release version option? It would take one of 4 values - nothing (blank), 0.5, 0.7, and 1.0. It would link to

  • Blank entry: Generates nothing (just like any other empty option)
  • 0.5: reproduces Template:V0.5
  • 0.7: reproduces Template:V0.7
  • 1.0: reproduces Template:V1.0 (although apparently 1.0 is suspended so no articles will go into this category)

-Raul654 03:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I've implemented a test version at User:Dr_pda/Sandbox, with examples on the talk page. Nothing uses Template:V1.0, so I didn't implement it. {{Releaseversion}} is used on a few hundred articles, so I did implement that. All of these templates have category/class (and for releaseversion, importance) parameters, so it's not quite as simple as just displaying some more text. Further discussion at Template talk:WikiProjectBanners#What to do with selection versions?. Dr pda 01:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Portal

I've posed a question about automation over at Portal talk:Heraldry#Automation. Gimmetrow 00:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm actually in the process of writing a reply there at this very moment! Thanks for doing this month's updates, I think I must have started updating the DYK at the same time as you were doing the other sections :) Dr pda 00:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image:CB_military_badge.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:CB_military_badge.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. — Rebelguys2 talk 21:34, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for keeping an eye on the coat of arms of Denmark article. Valentinian T / C 22:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Persondata script

First of all, this script is extremely useful and makes persondata tagging much faster. However, I have two suggestions.

  1. Add a space before and after the entry to separate it out.
  2. Advertise in the edit line so that more people know about it.

--PhantomS 22:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. Dr pda 12:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject University of Oxford

WikiProject University of Oklahoma

As a current or past contributor to a related article, I thought I'd let you know about WikiProject University of Oxford, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the University of Oxford. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks and related articles. Thanks! Casper Gutman 16:10, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your persondata script

Thanks a lot for the persondata script. However, I notice it simply replaces the last blank line between the categories and the external links when adding the {{persondata}} template. Can you change it to leave a blank line before and after the comment and template? It would make the template easier to find in edit mode. Resurgent insurgent 02:44, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Small but very dangerous bug in the script: if there are no categories in the article, the script will end up blanking the page and replacing it completely with the persondata template. Try editing this revision of Robert Bunsen and you can see for yourself. Please fix this quickly! Resurgent insurgent 05:43, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Blank lines have now been added before and after the template.
When I was writing the script I considered whether or not to check for existence of categories, but didn't bother, because I thought if people know enough to add an infobox to an article, they (or a previous editor) will add categories as well. (And in fact the example you give had been vandalised which removed the categories among other things). The script now checks for the existence of categories, and if there aren't any provides a warning and adds the persondata at the very end of the article. Dr pda 12:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for making the changes so fast! (And also for not giving your script Yet Another Fancy New Name in the edit summaries. :-) Resurgent insurgent 13:16, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It's having difficulties with some Actor Infoboxes. e.g. try Judy Garland. --Rajah 02:48, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Judy Garland is a special case - the title of the film for one of her Academy Awards nominations contains the word born. This is also the name of the birthdate field in some other infobox, so the script tries to parse the corresponding field as a birthdate and location. If this is the only problem case you've found I'm inclined to just leave it rather than trying to code an exception. The script's only meant to be semi-automatic anyway, a human still needs to check the output to make sure it is sensible, and complete (since not every infobox contains all the persondata fields). Dr pda 21:40, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for the explanation. I figured you'd best be able to parse your code and that makes sense. yes, I agree that the human needs to verify that the information is correct, but I wasn't sure if this was a systemic Infobox Actor error. I've also posted some clarifications on people without traditional last names on the script page. thanks again for making this, I think this is proving to be the most valuable tool for the addition of Persondata (and only a dozen people are using it so far). I was going to write a bot to make Persondata templates from Infoboxes, but I think your script is a better (and human assisted) way of doing that. Cheers. --Rajah 23:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey there. Sounds like a nice idea, but I don't see a difference! I've added the script to my monobook.js, and forced reload,but it still wont show up on (say) Rob Hulse. Any ideas? L.J.Skinnerwot|I did 01:44, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "won't show up". There are four possible situations:
  • In edit mode nothing will happen if the article already contains persondata (which is the case with Rob Hulse, someone else added it using my script on May 2).
  • In edit mode if the article does not contain persondata you will get a tab saying add persondata, next to history, watch, move etc
  • Viewing the article normally, nothing will happen if the article does not contain persondata.
  • Viewing the article normally, if it does contain persondata you will get a tab saying show/hide persondata. Clicking the tab once will make the persondata visible for that article; scroll down to the bottom to see it. Click the tab again to hide the persondata. (Incidentally you can use the presence/absence of this tab to tell at a glance whether the article contains persondata.)

Hope this helps. Dr pda 11:31, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I have used this tool for some day and must say that it is great. There is some articles it wont work on, such as Migen Memmelli. Thought i should let you know since there is maybe something that is not working as it should. And again. Thank for a very useful tool. Rettetast 23:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what's up with Migen Memmelli; when I tried it a couple of days ago it didn't work for me either, but now it does. Dr pda 22:10, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I got it to work on another article I have struggled with too. Did I mention that the tool is great:-) Rettetast 22:16, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Dr pda, thanks again for your very useful script. I was wondering if you could modify it to place an empty persondata template before a person's categories for people with no Infobox. Right now, if they have no infobox, it won't place one at all. Even just placing an empty template would be very nice and the human could fill in the rest. Thanks. --Rajah 14:07, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Done. As a bonus it fills it the name of the person from the article name, and adds birth and death years from the corresponding categories if present. In principle it should be possible to get most of the info from the first sentence, but I don't have the time at the moment to write the necessary parser. Dr pda 22:10, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Works great (after I rememberd to Ctrl-Shift-R. :) --Rajah 23:42, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The script sounds great, but it does nothing in Safari. No extra tab shows up in any situation at all. I get no exceptions or anything in the JS console. Any clue? —johndburger 02:04, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I restarted Safari, so monobook should be reloaded. —johndburger 02:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
It looks like you might have added the script to your monobook.css instead of monobook.js. You will probably need to do a forced reload (Ctrl+Shift+r) of monobook.js after you've changed it to bypass the copy in your browser's cache. Dr pda 08:54, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Argh! I had just added the CSS to always make persondata visible, that's why. Thanks, works beautifully! —johndburger 03:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prose size script

(Barnstar moved to user page)

[edit] Problem using ArticleHistory script

Hi there. I've been trying to use the script at User:Dr pda/articlehistory.js. I pasted the subst thingy into my monobook.js, and the Article History button has appeared in the toolbox. However, when I click on it, even on pages where something should happen, all I get is a "click here to manually enter a date" at the top of the page. Am I doing something wrong? Carcharoth 00:38, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Check your popup controls and cookie settings; they were getting me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:39, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, I turned off the pop-up blocker, but I don't know what to do with the cookie settings (they are set to allow cookies, if that helps). Something called the Javascript Console says "Error: invalid quantifier {" if that helps as well. Carcharoth 01:12, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
When I installed the script, I know I had to just keep tweaking something, but I can't remember if it was firewall, popups, cookies, or what. It just finally started working :-) Poor doc, having to deal with us techno-dummies :/ SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, all my scripts have "just worked" for me, so I'm not entirely sure what needs to be done. I would suggest a forced refresh of your monobook.js, which I think you need to do every time you change it(Firefox/Mozilla/Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R), Internet Explorer: press Ctrl-F5, Opera/Konqueror: press F5.) If this doesn't do anything you may indeed need to change your browser settings. The fact that you get at least the Enter date manually box would seem to indicate that javascript is enabled. The script uses AJAX (i.e XMLHttpRequest or ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") ) to load the history page of the article "in the background". Since it is the history which is not working for you, it may be that there is some setting preventing the loading of this page (maybe some advanced Javascript/ActiveX settings, or possibly it's a firewall issue; it shouldn't have anything to do with cookies). The error message you quote doesn't enlighten me unfortunately. A quick Google search indicates this is usually a problem in a trying to match a pattern (Regular Expression), which I do do in the script, but it works fine for me. FYI I'm running Windows XP/SP2 and Firefox 1.5.0.10. The script works in IE6 as well, but I haven't tested any other browsers/operating systems. Dr pda 12:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Maybe it was my security level under internet options (IE); but I really seem to recall it being related to popups somewhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:55, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

All fixed now. I installed the latest version of Firefox, which means I'm now running version 2.0.0.3. Previously it was 1.7 or 1.0 something (can't remember which now!). Anyway, I clicked article history and it works just dandy! I'm off to give it a roadtest! :-) Carcharoth 21:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prose script

I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth here since the tool is so awesome and you created it for free, but it's not working on some pages all of a sudden for me. For some reason the page size button doesn't appear on Lawrence Taylor and History of the New York Giants but appears on most other pages. Any insight as to why? Quadzilla99 17:08, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Note: This is relatively recent it worked on those pages before. Quadzilla99 17:09, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, not sure why this might be happening, it still works OK for me. The only case I've coded into the script for the page size link not to appear is in when the page is viewed in edit mode. Apart from that, no ideas. FWIW Lawrence Taylor is 30KB, and History of the New York Giants is 43KB. Dr pda 08:54, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
hate to be a pest but, the bottom left of my computer screen says done but with errors on page, with a yellow triangle with a black exclamation point in the middle. The page size button doesn't appear at all. Quadzilla99 18:09, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, something is weird on these two articles. My article history and page size scripts are working fine on other articles, but they don't even show up in my toolbox for these two articles. (IE 7). Seems that there's something in these two article that is bombing out the script. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Both are fine for me in Firefox, and not working on IE. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 18:51, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I put the text only in User:SandyGeorgia/sandbox and still have the error, so it's in the body of the article; feel free to mess around in my sandbox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:03, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, this is so weird. I replicated it three times; here is the change that brings back the scripts. [4] Greek to me ?!?!? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:21, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I narrowed it down futher; the scripts come back when I delete the 1981 from the section heading. [5] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Apparently, the error shows up when the heading starts with the number. Nice detective work. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 19:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I was going to fix History of the New York Giants, but it has a lot of them, so thought we should wait to see what Dr pda says — maybe the problem can be fixed now that we know what it is ? Of course, if they were the Red Sox, I'd have to fix it right away :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:33, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
According to the time stamps, it took me an hour to find the problem — can't accuse me of being a techno-brainiac :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:37, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
It's kind of weird because the script worked on those articles before and I haven't changed the headings since. Quadzilla99 20:02, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
There's probably some recent change at the meta level. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi all, I have a deadline coming up in a couple of weeks so I don't have time to look into this. It seems to be a problem in IE but not in Firefox. However I suspect Sandy is right in that there has been some change in the Wikipedia javascript, which is called before any user scripts, including mine. One easy way to rule out whether it is my scripts which are giving problems is for any of you whose use other scripts to just remove mine from your monobook.js and see if you still get problems. Maybe someone at the Village pump will know more. Dr pda 20:34, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Good luck with that deadline! I left a note for Gimmetrow; he may know. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Link to Village pump post. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:08, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Dr pda, there's a lot of info now at the Village Pump, but it's Greek to me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, I tried to install it myself Dr pda, and I can't get it to work right. Would you mind helping out an old codger out if you get some time? Howard Cleeves 15:19, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
It looks like you've done everything OK. If it's still not working go to User:Howard Cleeves/monobook.js and do a forced refresh of the page (Mozilla/Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R), Internet Explorer: press Ctrl-F5, Opera/Konqueror: press F5.) If you then go to any article you should see a "Page Size" link in the "toolbox" in the left-hand column. If this doesn't work I'm not sure what is happening, unless you have javascript turned off in your browser, or you have changed the your Wikipedia skin from monobook to something else. Dr pda 04:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some discussions on metadata, persondata and sortkeys

Not sure when you will see this, but I thought you might be interested in Wikipedia talk:Persondata#Persondata on a subpage, as you developed a script to add Persondata. There are also some discussions ongoing about sortkeys for biographical articles, and how to standardise them and use a bot to make the different sort keys consistent and find out which article don't have them. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Polbot 3 and User:Polbot/ideas/defaultsort. Carcharoth 01:08, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm quite busy at the moment, so I probably won;t be able to participate in the discussion. Dr pda 04:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Hey, as busy as you are, it was very kind of you to take time out to think of me with a kind word! Best regards, and I hope to see you active soon, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "standing in for GimmeBot"

Beautiful. My deepest thanks and appreciation. I'm still too upset to do it myself. Are you going to get the ArticleHistory as well? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. Yep, ArticleHistory is done, you caught me in the middle of doing it. I've added a couple of notes about the templates used for tagging closed FAC/FARs to your otherwise excellent checklist. --Dr pda 17:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, you're a dear :- SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

User:SandyGeorgia/sandbox scrolls off my screen now, probably my lousy IE7. Any way to fix that? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Is that any better? Dr pda 17:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Much better; a bit of scroll off my screen, but manageable and readable. Thanks ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Your work on this is much appreciated by many. Geometry guy 23:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I see Gimmetrow is now not on wikibreak just yet, so hopefully I won't have to do it again in the near future :) Dr pda 00:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Dr pda, since Gimmetrow is busy, can you peek in on this conversation, in case he doesn't get to it? Thanks ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gratia

Thanks for editing my 'English medium' article. Go raibh míle maith agat! Eog1916 18:12, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible bug in articlehistory.js

I'm trying to help clear the backlog from WP:UCGA and I will tell you your script is super-awesome 99.9% of the time. I found one case that might explain why it fails the other 0.1%. Trying to invoke the script on Talk:Ravenloft (D&D module) will not bring up anything at all - I get the "Click here to enter a date manually" which brings up a dialog but doesn't return anything with valid input. My hunch is the ampersand in the article title is what causes the confusion. It's not a high priority for myself , as we're done to about 50 articles left, but I'd thought I let you know of the possible problem. --Masem 22:28, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the heads-up. You were right, it was the ampersand - the Wikipedia variable which held the page name had it encoded as \x26, whereas the URL needed it encoded as %26. I've modified the script so that it should now handle such characters correctly. Dr pda 00:12, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Does that mean I have to do the ctrl-F5 thingie? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:13, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I meant to mention that, thanks for reminding me. Yes you do.  :) Dr pda 00:41, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm learning :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)