User:Humanbot

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Main - Inactive - Mini

Status: ~~spelling~~ ~~spelling2~~ ~~spelling3~~ NOTE: THIS MEANS ALL PROJECTS ARE DONE

Humanbot is not a real bot. Rather, it is a distributed system for fixing mistakes on Wikipedia. It automatically sends you to the right page, makes the change for you, even presses the preview button so you can check it! You just need to check the edit is reasonable.

It is similar to human-controlled bots, but now everybody will be able to "control" it. Edits are made under your username, contributing to your edit count and remaining your responsibility.

You need Mozilla Firefox, Greasemonkey 0.5 beta or later, and a special script. See the images below for how to install, turn on, and use the script.

This only works with the (default) Monobook theme. Feel free to petition on the talk page.

Thanks to User:JoeyDay for his kind hosting of the server for this!

1 Select a project
2 Changelog
3 Progress
4 Help
5 Quotes
6 Interested people
7 To-do list or wishlist

[edit] Select a project

This has been moved. Just press "on" in the auto-edit box on the left.

[edit] Changelog

Note: not every server change is recorded here. The minimum version now allowed is in bold.

Version one was the initial release.
Version two was a compulsory upgrade which allowed you to browse on other tabs. It is blamed for reducing people's productivity while it was turned on. ;)
Version two-two was a server change to show you in the green box how many changes were left.
Version three was a compulsory upgrade to work with unusual titles (including "&", "(" and ")" characters)
Version four was an optional upgrade a few minutes later to show you how many characters the current article was. Now, when it says "Wait." you have some idea of how long it will take. :)
Version five was a compulsory upgrade to move servers.
Version six added the yellow message box and tracking of who fixed an article.
Version six-two was the associated server change and also added timestamping of when an article was fixed.
Version six-three shows a list of top contributors on that page - climb the rankings!

[edit] Progress

actual data spelling actual data spelling2

Note: more accurate/specific data can be retrieved.

[edit] Help

Step 1: How to install the script

Step 2: Activating the script

Step 3: Using the script

[edit] Quotes

<Hemanshu> hello r3m0t, thanks for creating User:Humanbot
<Hemanshu> I am addicted :)
<telsa> worryingly tempting.
[after completion] <AlexTM> Well, maybe a short break won't hurt ...
[after completion] <biot> great job on that project
[after completion] <Angela> what could I do that would amount to 157 edits?
                   <Luigi30> Humanbot? Oh wait
[after completion] <AlexTM> r3m0t, humanbot now really finished?
                   <r3m0t> AlexTM, yes
                   <AlexTM> *sigh*
                   <r3m0t> why the sigh?
                   <AlexTM> r3m0t, 'cause it was fun while it lasted ;-)
<CryptoDerk> [...] and because you spam

[edit] Interested people

The following people are interested in Humanbot.

If you want to receive updates, watch User:Humanbot/announce.

talk Dungodung
talk Sasa Stefanovic
talk The wub
talk ugen64
talk JesseW - still interested, but don't need to be on the mailing list
talk Bluemoose
talk smoddy
talk Trevor macinnis
talk Fawcett5
talk Pak aran - let me know when the server to download it is no longer access denied thanks :)
talk Scott Davis
talk Sango123
talk Bratsche
talk Alai
talk Andre
talk Catherine
talk Lotsofissues A tremendous innovation. No longer will spelling be one of our weaknesses.
talk Spangineer — ditto.
talk AlexR
talk Foolip
talk kmccoy
talk Paul Tracy
talk Mgm
talk Tadanisakari - Thanks for this great script.
talk Mark Lewis
talk David Newton
talk JJLeahy
talk Master Thief Garrett
talk Ciaran_H
talk Alphax
talk Gabriel Beecham/Kwekubo
talk Aydee
talk Sasquatch
talk Gflores
talk Bart133
talk American Patriot 1776

[edit] To-do list or wishlist

Anything, anybody?

[edit] New fixes to make

Important note: Suggestions for new spelling mistakes should be added directly to Wikipedia:List of common misspellings.

Change See Also to See also. a common miscapitalisation. Bluemoose 10:26, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ditto "External Link" and "External Links" in headers, both of which should -> "External links" -- The Anome 08:24, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
- No, "External Link" should be "External link" if there's one. We're not innumerate (or, at least, we're not meant to make our users think that we are :-)). James F. (talk) 16:21, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- Could these two not be done by a standard bot? I can't see the need for checking. the wub (talk) 12:05, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  - You have a point. I'm not here just to boost edit counts! ;) I'll update the User:Grammarbot codebase - they were always meant to integrate. r3m0t ^talk 13:58, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Faux "British" spellings

Here's a good category of spelling mistakes that should be fixed. As you all know, the British/Canadian/Australian versions of plenty of words end in -our rather than the American -or. However, even many native speakers of British English get things wrong when the word is modified — for about half of the -our endings, it should properly revert to the -or form when modified. To make this absolutely clear, this is NOT an America vs. Commonwealth distinction - in these cases, the -our form is always wrong. Examples as follows:

arbour, but arbourist -> arborist, arbouretum -> arboretum
clamour, but clamourous -> clamorous
clangour, but clangourous -> clangorous
colour, but colouration -> coloration
glamour, but glamourous -> glamorous, glamourless -> glamorless, glamourize -> glamorize, glamourise -> glamorise
honour, but honourary -> honorary, honourarium -> honorarium, honourific -> honorific
humour, but humourist -> humorist, humourous -> humorous
labour, but labourious -> laborious
odour, but odourous -> odorous, odouriferous -> odoriferous
rancour, but rancourous -> rancorous
rigour, but rigourous -> rigorous
tumour, but tumourous -> tumorous

If you decide to take this up, you should be careful to point out in the edit summary that this is NOT a Brit vs. US change to avoid reversion,, and perhaps make the edit summary point to here or elsewhere that makes this distinction.

Cheers, Fawcett5 15:29, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Most of these are (surprisingly) highly debatable. We're currently on IRC with a bunch of UK residents playing "stump the r3m0t" and finding actual current usage examples of all these "errors". While calling Fowler's and the OED foul prescriptivists. It's all go here ;-) - David Gerard 16:26, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is wrong. For example both 'coloration' and 'colouration' are correct spellings in UK English, c.f. OED. -- Solipsist 18:50, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Even though both spellings may be correct, i dont think it is right that we use both different spellings, i think it would be best if we standardised and choose one or the other. Bluemoose 08:54, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Standardization (I prefer using z!) seems a dangerous path. "Coloration" may be acceptable UK usage but it looks alien to me and I shall not be using it.Richard Barlow 09:59, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I dont mean standardise between american and english, but as there are apparantly 2 correct english spellings, we should choose 1 of them and stick to it. Bluemoose 10:21, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You may be better leaving that to the bot rather than trying to convince stick-in-the-muds like me! I won't revert if they get changed. I just think heading this section "faux" is plain wrong when more than half the examples listed are not incorrect at all. Richard Barlow 10:44, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there is any need to standardise spellings, even within UK English. If it ain't broke - don't fix it. -- Solipsist 13:36, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. Richard Barlow 15:22, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree too. Standardization is for suckers. --Tubby 20:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Personally I don't care about how much these misspellings have crept into this already linguistically-debased society, I myself would mercilessly change these spellings if they caught my eye. Oh I would find some other minor change to make so it wouldn't look so pointless, but I would be sure to make it! Wikipedia's goal is to offer an academic level of writing perfection, and part of that is, surely, that we spell correctly, even if the outside world can't.

And as for being in current "use", where is that, in newspaper columnists' unspellchecked tracts? I've seen some disgraceful errors there. I've already had difficulty explaining the rules of "u" inclusion to Americans, and surely Wikipedia shouldn't be providing such a confusing variety of alternates of the alternates? Or maybe that's just me *looks up the page* OK, me and some other ruthless purists... Master Thief Garrett^Talk 00:55, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Something similar: I notice that licenced and licencing were recently removed from Wikipedia:List_of_common_misspellings with the edit summary "this is not America". This is, at best, an inadequate explanation because the correct British spelling of the verb is always license and hence the inflected verb forms with the noun spelling are, indeed, always wrong in British spelling.

I therefore propose that use of licence as a verb is a Faux British Spelling (and that the inflected verb forms should go back on the misspelling list, though obviously licence itself can't). Same with practice as a verb practise as a noun is a Faux British Spelling. Offencive and defencive would be candidates too, though I had never known anyone be silly enough to write them until I thought to search Wikipedia for them just now.

Incidentally, I have a vague idea I saw it asserted somewhere that some of these c spellings for verbs were correct in some variant of English that was neither British nor American (Ireland? New Zealand? India?), in which case we would need to decide whether they were allowable. Can anyone confirm or deny this? —Blotwell 07:40, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I see Fawcett5 addressed licenced, licencing on the talk page. (I stand by my claim that the edit summary was wrong, dammit, and this confirms my suspicion that I don't know US spelling reliably.) I still think practise (noun), offencive, defencive are faux British spellings. —Blotwell 09:00, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

At 11:00 PM I can't remember which practi*e is which, but the last two are definitely wrong. Or at least I've never seen them in any book I've read. Heck, I've never seen them *anywhere* but just here right now! Weird. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 11:09, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Related to British English vs. American English: It has been pointed out that many Wikipedia articles with titles in one version of English do not have redirects from the other version of English. Is there some way of adapting Humanbot to look for these articles, then check for redirects, and then ask for human input for creating the redirects if they don't exist? BlankVerse ∅ 04:58, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect image tags

These are difficult to spot in the main, but there's one easy one - any image that has {{CopyrightedFreeUseProvided}} but also the words "non" and (/or?) "commercial" in them. James F. (talk) 16:38, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Software or interface changes, performance, accuracy

Support of Mozilla: as soon as greasemonkey does.
Support of Opera, IE and other browsers: never.

[edit] Other wikis

[edit] Two very common grammar/punctuation errors

Two ugly errors that I'm continually seeing all over wikipedia:

Placing punctuation inside quote marks, instead of outside. Unless, of course, the fullstop is part of the quote (which is pretty rarely; 90% of the cases I see are wrong).

Example: The ship was named "Indefatigable." - should be: The ship was named "Indefatigable". MPF 00:22, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I believe this is actually a matter of editorial style, not an error. Fawcett5 12:49, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Standard American usage has them inside the quotes. There's been a long history of organizations going against this, most notably The Chicago Manual of Style.Themeparkphoto 04:06, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

- WP:MOS advocates "logical" quotes. There are not easy to automatically spot, and I doubt people would be interested in correcting them. r3m0t ^talk 15:51, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
- It is a matter of style and a US/UK distinction, but the MoS does take a stand on this point. smoddy 15:55, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC) (With edit conflict, r3m0t, I'd be very keen to check them)
This certainly is not an error. In U.S. English, punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks. Andre (talk) July 2, 2005 20:27 (UTC)
- But on Wikipedia, the manual of style insists on the "logical" British approach. smoddy 2 July 2005 20:37 (UTC)

Placing external link references at the start of a new sentence, when they're references applying to the previous sentence.

Example: It was stated that X happened. [http://www.reference] New sentence starts. - should be: It was stated that X happened [http://www.reference]. New sentence starts.

MPF 00:22, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't this one be a bit difficult to detect? It seems to me that it would be difficult to differentiate between "end of a sentence. [external link]" and "end of a sentence. Wikilink" – ugen64 05:43, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

While that fix seems logical when you look at the source, it looks ugly in the rendered document. The period is pushed far past the last word in the sentence.

Original: We're on Wikipedia[1].
Worse: We're on Wikipedia.[2]

Putting the reference link in small, superscripted text and removing the external link icon would allow the your fix to work decently, though. — 131.230.133.185 1 July 2005 20:41 (UTC)

No. MPF was entirely correct. It is very similar to the difference between, "George Bush is a very stupid man (according to many Democrats). John Kerry is the Antichrist." and "George Bush is a very stupid man. (According to many Democrats) John Kerry is the Antichrist." The link must clearly show that it refers to a particular sentence. Personally, I would do this with endnotes, but inline links should indeed be formatted in MPF's way, for clarity's sake. smoddy 1 July 2005 23:44 (UTC)

I strongly disagree — it's clear by convention that a footnote or number block applies to the material preceding it, never following it. Trying to squish it in before the period just separates the period from the final word in the sentence, making the end of sentence more difficult to read. Deco 01:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Repeated words

Seems to me that Humanbot would be ideal for finding and checking repeated words (e.g. those at User:Topbanana/Reports/This article contains a repeated word) the wub "?/!" 10:37, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ideally it would ignore legal combinations like "that that" (as in "considering that that movie was a bestseller..."). Otherwise you have to read the sentence about three times to ensure it wasn't correct before, and we don't want Humanbot users breaking acceptable grammar. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 11:26, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Had had" ("he had had his appendix out") and some homophones ("she records records for a living") are also exceptions. Can't think of anymore offhand. Pak aran 04:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Oh, "win win" can be legit too. Pak aran 04:18, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, no, that should be "win-win" because it's a reference to a games score, like 5-nil or whatever. Therefore, instead of having scores, it's a win-win situation. Master Thief Garrett^Talk 05:39, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Win-win situation" takes a hypen because it's a compound modifier. I don't understand the comment about it being a "games score." DavidH July 3, 2005 00:19 (UTC)

"Had had" is always bad English - in Pak's example, you should write "He had his appendix out", no repeated 'had' necessary. Better yet, "He had his appendix removed". And avoiding consecutive homophones is always possible via some creative writing ("She makes recordings for a living"). Repeated words are always bad English, there are no legal exceptions. It should be "considering that this movie was a bestseller" or "considering that the movie was a bestseller", or, better yet, "as the movie was a bestseller". Proto t c 13:29, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

"Had had" is certainly not incorrect English, and neither are repeated words. Consider the following sentence: "If I had had a car I would have driven to work". It is an example of the 'Past Unreal Conditional', and is different in meaning to "If I had a car I would drive to work", which is the present unreal conditional. The first is telling us that 'at the time being referred to' the writer didn't have a car, whereas the second is telling us that 'at present' the writer doesn't have a car. I agree that you could re-write any of these sentences to avoid the repeated word, but that is a matter of subjective style, not grammatical legality. Robin McKenzie, 20 August, 2005.

Piece of trivia - make this sentence correct by adding punctuation marks: (Start) Peter had had had had but Simon had had had had had had had the teacher's approval (Finish) Perhaps you see how ridiculous the situation can get sometimes?! Mark Lewis 22:19, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I remember this as a riddle: Q: "How many 'had's can you use consecutively in a sentence?". A: "11. Ann while Bob had had had had had had had had had had had the teachers approval". (If you want the punctuated version, click here).

[edit] Google Maps links

Many people add Google Maps links to articles, when a use of {{coor d}} (or if in external links, one of the {{geolinks-US-cityscale}} wtc templates) would be preferable. The lat/long is in the Google Maps URL, so it's easy to convert that (remember to replace negative with S or W). Scale might be a bit harder - I think there are scale arguments for coor d but I'm not sure how to use them. --SPUI (talk) 23:17, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Possessive: S's or S'

There is an uncertainty in some words that end in s and for possessive to add the 's or to make it s'. I think we should use what The Elements of Style say. WpediaIsNotPaper 3 July 2005 14:41 (UTC)