User talk:TheFearow/Archive Jul 2007

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[edit] Jacob Katz

What is so inappropriate? 2 seconds I start writing an article, and already it's deleted. I'm surpised that there wasn't an article on him to begin with. Much less well known historians have much longer pages.

Please refrain from inventing non-existent "policies," in order to intimidate editors out of creating pages about significant figures towards whom you are hostile, due to your political POV. Such behavior is highly inappropriate, and not in accordance with our policies. Thank you.
70.23.167.160 20:28, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Apologies

Hi,

   Sorry bout that, joke between two friends (me and Scrauny) that got out of hand, I'll leave our squabbles in real life ;-)

AviatonIsLife 23:52, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ok

I hope it's not a problem but I also removed the text from Scrauny's user page, rather than leave someone else to do it. Still working out how not to step on peoples toes.... AviatonIsLife 23:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Editor review

I reviewed you, and I make a standing offer to nominate you for adminship whenever you are ready. Shalom Hello 16:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Based on the comments of Dragons flight and After Midnight at WT:BAG#Joining, I don't think you would pass RFA if I nominated you today. I'm not concerned about the edit count in the least, but they pointed out some other issues that I had not considered. However, if you continue to contribute at the current rate, and if you gain a better grasp of policies and procedures, I think you would be ready to apply in about two months. Shalom Hello 21:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll copy the comment by Dragons flight for easy reference:

:Oppose. An important chunk of bot approval is having a good sense of whether a given potentially automated task as actually a good idea to be persued en masse. After reviewing your contributions, I don't see enough evidence of experience working on articles and dealing with policy issues to trust that you have developed that good sense. So far you've recorded ~1100 edits, 2/3 of which in the last month alone. Many of these are fairly minor things (tagging and various simple cleanup tasks), and while these are helpful, I'm looking for more evidence of collaboration and involvment in article writing than you've shown so far. In my opinion, a solid foundation of wiki activity should be a precondition to participation in BAG. However, not to worry, if you stay involved you should establish that in a few months. Dragons flight 06:56, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

If you replace "bot approval" and "participation in BAG" with "adminship", you will see the gist of what to expect in the oppose section of a hypothetical RFA. Basically the same issues apply. Basically I'm okay with a low edit count and a single month of experience given your unique talents and expertise, but Dragons flight wants to make sure you see the "big picture" of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. The way to resolve this is to branch out and try new things. I see you recently started welcoming new users with a custom welcome template. That counts as a "new thing." Adding cleanup and stub tags to articles also counts as a "new thing" - by the way, I do that on newpage patrol, not only when I sort through backlog lists. But the real concern seems to be about community involvement. You've done a couple of bot approval requests and deletion discussions, but not nearly enough for most people to trust you closing a deletion debate. That's one of your weak points. There are all kinds of resources I can show you for commenting on, and even closing, deletion debates. You should balance your comments between new or abandoned discussions, which require a minimum of users to show consensus and reach a result, versus long controversial threads, which can train you for dealing with difficult conflicts in the community. Ironically, the same user who offered the critique above has designed a bot to help with AFDs: User:Dragons flight/AFD summary. Take a look and try to make use of it. Best regards. Shalom Hello 22:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

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P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot 21:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deadbot and Unicode

Just noticed your bot seems to have rather serious issues with wide characters. Some examples: [1][2][3] Looks like it ends up decomposing some (but not all, e.g. [4][5]) into their component bytes or something? Cheers, cab 06:06, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I see there's a thread on this above. cab 06:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

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[edit] Image:Qxz-ad60.gif

Hi, thanks for creating this ad. I've reworked it slightly, while keeping the colours, text and animation the same:

  • Changed the font to Gill Sans, to match the font used on most of the other ads (it's also the font used by the Wikimedia Foundation)
  • Added a border
  • Made the green area slightly lighter to avoid clashing with the blue text
  • Rearranged the bottom part, so that the text is less squashed
  • Faded from the last frame back to the first, to make it loop a bit more nicely

Feel free to revert my changes if you disagree with them. Thanks – Gurch 11:50, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with DeadBot

I think DeadBot is having problems with some non-ASCII characters. This seems to be causing a problem in some instances. Example. – Quadell (talk) (random) 04:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

This was solved several threads up, and again slightly below that. Please read talk pages before reporting problems. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 05:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Oooh, testy. – Quadell (talk) (random) 19:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I just always get annoyed by this, as it happens alot. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 20:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Old Deletion

I just noticed this: 08:56, 11 September 2006 Deville (Talk | contribs) deleted "Windows rot" (deleting per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Berkeley of the West) Out of curiosity, was that a mistake, or did that RFA have something to do with it? Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 08:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

That was definitely a typo, sorry. If you look at the deletion log for that time period (e.g. here) you will see that I deleted the article "Windows Rot" right after I deleted "Berkeley of the West" (here is the AfD page for the former) and I must have copypasted the wrong link. -- Deville (Talk) 15:40, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for your support and comments at my RfA
Hi Matt, It still amazes me that otherwise "anonymous" editors take the time to place !votes and comments on RfAs. Whilst I would have normally thanked you at the time of you leaving your message, the importance of my not appearing to be canvassing prevented me from so doing. Now that everything has progressed successfully I can finally thank you. I intend to uphold a style of good adminship and will welcome your further comments at any time in the future, even if they are in the form of admonishment. I will be happy to help as an admin wherever and whenever I can --VS talk 23:39, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deadbot alive?

Just curious - any reason why there's been no deadbot activity in three days? CitiCat 03:09, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DeadBot Improper Tagging

Your bot has been making mistakes when tagging articles with the {{deadend}} template. Please stop & fix these problems before continuing. In particular, dab pages, redirects, & soft redirects should not be marked.

  1. Dab pages: A dab page will have only as many links as required to disambig the term. This template does not belong on dab pages.
  2. Redirects: Redirects are not dead-end pages. It is inappropriate to tag them[6] and it breaks the redirection.
  3. Soft redirects: Soft redirects consist of one and only link by purpose. They are not dead-end pages & should not be tagged[7].

In addition, I have seen the following two problems:

  1. It has tagged at least one page that had plenty of links[8]. Something is wrong in how it is determines its threshold for a "few links".
  2. It is not handling UTF-8 correctly and is breaking articles by converting such characters to gibberish[9].

I also don't understand why this template would be applied to stubs. If something is already tagged as a stub, that would seem to be sufficient. A stub, especially a true stub with only a couples lines of text, is not going to have a lot of links.

Thanks. -- JLaTondre 13:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Uh.... it tags {{copyvio}} pages too. Don't do that. --Alvestrand 13:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Yep, I just found that[10] to. -- JLaTondre 13:38, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
It is also tagging {{wi}} pages[11]. These should not be tagged either. -- JLaTondre 14:17, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been going back through the bot's contributions log. I've made it through articles starting with N. Since it's in reverse order, that leaves M-A still to be checked for the above errors. -- JLaTondre 14:34, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

After seeing this edit, which places the tag on a page that is full of links, I have disabled the bot. --Alvestrand 15:51, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Looking through the log, I also found this edit, which I don't understand at all. May be another instance of the UTF-8 bug mentioned above. --Alvestrand 15:59, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
It stopped anyway, but that is a serious bug. I'll do a rollback if necessary? Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I am working on this, is passed a 100 edit trial without error and it was running unattended, if this ever happens again block immediately. I'll fix up these bugs, and I apologise for this. Is any manual rollback necessary? I thought I fixed up those bugs, however apparentally not. All those fixes will be in place ASAP. I will answer some questions below:

  • It just tags pages on the DEP list. If they have enough links, remove them from the DEP list and the bot won't add them. It does NO checking of the page by itself.
  • It seems to be tagging ANY page, I put a filter in for most pages however it doesn't want to work for me - I think I missed the copyvio and wi templates.
  • For soft redirects, I will also make it ignore those and remote them from the DEP list.
  • For stubs, it is tagging pages on the DEP list, and the DEP list is generated by pages with less than 1 link, however it may have changed.

Thanks, and if you have any more queries or need me to do anything further, say so below. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the bot needs to check the page before tagging it. The DEP is generated from a database dump, and people add links to pages at lots of different times - many of these won't be aware of the DEP list. It's irritating to see a page you've just added links to get the "deadend" template slapped on. Also, I like to keep "works in progress" in the DEP - for instance, I don't remove a page I've marked with {{prod}} until the page is deleted, even if it has links on it.
If you don't know how to fix the UTF8 bug, you may have to stay away from pages with bytes > 128. --Alvestrand 22:01, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm, I think i'm going to do a couple changes to the bot, first of all i'm going to make it ignore the page if it contains unusual characters, as well as if it contains more than 5 links. In my original bot proposal, I asked if it's a good idea to remove ones with more than X links, however no-one liked the idea, so I assumed there were other factors. For the pages it ignores, they will be added to a list (User:DeadBot/HumanCheckNeeded) where any user can check over the ones it believes needs the tags but I have made it ignore. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 22:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
I'd set the limit at 1 or 2 links, but otherwise, seems good to me. Note that a LOT of articles have "unusual characters" of various types - one of the ones noted above seems to have been using shaped quotation marks, which are very hard to tell from the normal ones. --Alvestrand 17:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I think i'm going to leave the tagging job for a bit, while I can refine my code. SO for now, it'll be normal bot only (some tagging, but mostly as a test). Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 20:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Good. I've unblocked the bot again, so that it can get back to the task of removing redlinks. --Alvestrand 21:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
FWIW, I've gone through the Category:Dead-end pages from June 2007, and removed all the inappropriately marked pages.--Kathy A. 15:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
Ok. I am holding back on this task for now, until I can sort these out. Chances are that I won't be able to run it soon, but at least most pages that should be tagged are tagged. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 20:57, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RfA thanks

Image:Water drop animation enhanced small.gif

Hi TheFearow. Thank you for your support and kind words in my RfA, which passed with 95 support, 1 oppose, and 1 neutral !votes. It means a lot to me to have your individual support and the collective support of so many others. I truly will strive to carry myself at a level representing the trust bestowed in me as I use the mop to address the never-ending drips of discontent in need of caretaker assistance.

Jreferee (Talk) 08:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
 Image:Admin mop.PNG

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/JodyB

I formatted your comment for autonumbering. —AldeBaer (c) 22:59, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your request for adminship

I think it would be wise for you to withdraw your RFA. Despite some support, it seems unlikely to succeed, and you have received constructive criticism and assurances that a few more months of editing will enable you to enhance your user access level. If you would like to withdraw and maybe try again in a few months, I can perform the withdrawal and archiving for you. (It's actually pretty simple: just put {{subst:rfaf}} on top of the page and {{subst:rfab}} on the bottom; remove the template from [[WP:RFA]], and archive it under "Unsuccessful requests for adminship" as linked in the template at the top of [[WP:RFA]].) Alternatively, you may wish to leave the request up if you'd like to see more comments. I wish you good luck, and I must thank you for your work on Deadbot - it makes sorting the Dead-end pages easier for me. Shalom Hello 15:04, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Thank you for participating in my RfA. It was successful, and I am now, may God have mercy on us all, an administrator. Look at all the new buttons! I had heard about 'protect,' 'block user,' and 'delete,' but no one told me about 'kill,' 'eject,' and 'purée.' I appreciate the trust the community has in me, and I'll try hard not to delete the main page or block Jimbo. -FisherQueen (Talk) 17:53, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Developerzeus

I'm just curious how you believe the username implies that the user is a Wikipedia figure? Jmlk17 21:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

No worries, thanks for the reply. I got it figured out :). Happy editing! Jmlk17 22:36, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Welcoming

Thank you again for the welcome Fearow. The links are most useful and I am learning the ropes and showing my interests. The MediaWiki link on your page is interesting also. I will have a good search there. Addisababa 03:47, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My recent RfB

Thank you so much for your participation in my recent RfB. Though it closed with 72% support (below the required 90%), I'm still quite pleased at the outpouring of support shown by a fair percentage of the community.

I'm currently tabulating and calculating all opposing and neutral arguments to help me better address the community's concerns about my abilities as a bureaucrat. If you'd like, you can follow my progress (and/or provide additional suggestions) at User:EVula/admin/RfB notes. Thanks again! EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A comment?

You say? --Iamunknown 05:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Signpost updated for July 2nd, 2007.

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[edit] GA Review of USB decoration

Dear TheFearow/Archive Jul 2007, I am sorry to inform you that I have failed USB decoration because of several issues, which are detailed on the article's talk page. If there are any comments you would like to make, or any questions you have about the failing of this article, then please forward them to my talk page. Good luck for a future candidacy. Regards, Anonymous DissidentTalk 10:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey - no hard feelings ok? I know how it feels to have a GA fail - not so good. I wish you the very best of luck in improving the article to GA standards. I'm sure you can do it easily. And good luck on your RFA, by the way. Anonymous DissidentTalk 10:29, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
That is a most excellent and admirable way to look at things. Anonymous DissidentTalk 13:17, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] thanks for the welcome

but i used to have an account and it made me realise what complete morons the people who run this place are. 86.137.60.14 18:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RFA

Hi Matt, just a quick note to say thanks for participating in my request for adminship. It was successful and I now have some shiny new buttons. If I can ever be of help, please let me know. Happy editing, mattbr 10:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your Bot

Oops! I must have misunderstood what the discussion said in your RfA. Sorry about that. Captain panda 12:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RFA

Thanks for participating in my RFA. Hiberniantears 17:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Orphan pages

Please triple-check your bot so that it does not put this template on dis-ambiguation pages. I saw it on a dis-ambiguation page Channel 13. Georgia guy 20:18, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your RfA

Hi, I see your undergoing an RfA. I really wish you the best of luck, I know that an RfA can be a harsh process, and if you need anything, feel free to ask. Cheers, Dfrg.msc 07:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bot

Hi, you commented at MedcabBot2's request for approval. I have no prior experience with bots whatsoever, so I needed to ask you once I have the source code, what do I do with it to make the bot start running? Thanks, Cool Bluetalk to me 11:55, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Just a quick note to thank you for contributing to my editor review - I've taken on board your comments, so thank you for taking the time to contribute. Giles Bennett (Talk, Contribs) 15:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

I'm a wikinewbie. Thanks for the welcome, Matt. Not sure if this is how I communicate, but the wiki motto seems to be, don't be afraid to try. Msheff 02:24, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Gnome Week

Gnomes, unite!
You are invited to participate in Gnome Week, a mass article cleanup drive between June 21 and June 28, 2007.
This week, backlogs will be cleared. Articles will be polished. Typos will be fixed. Bad prose will be edited. Unreferenced articles will be sourced. No article will be safe from our reach! The more people who participate, the better Wikipedia will become as a result.
I would love it if you would participate! - Zacharycrimsonwolf
Edit message

23:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Planet deletion

Thank you for your message, however I feel you should have researched more into the subject of your deletion. The Planet is perhaps the largest server company in the world and a company that merged into it has a wikipedia article.

Update: Thanks for relooking and retagging the article. When I start articles on wikipedia I have a tendency to only put a small amount of data then keep coming back to it to edit the content and wording, before leaving it for others to edit. You can see an example of me starting a now large article on Fred Halliday. I should really spend more time making each article, but I usually only do so in spare moments. 23:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for adminship

On this occasion, your request for adminship was not successful. I hope that you will continue your useful contributions to Wikipedia and may consider standing again in future. Remember, many of the editors who did object are just keen to you continuing to contribute at your present high standard. Warofdreams talk 01:46, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh well, better luck next time, I guess. You are a great editor, and I do hope you continue to be so, and I am pleased with your reaction to the result. You'll do well next time, and next time I will support you. Kind regards, Sebi [talk] 02:34, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Good luck in the future! Politics rule 03:42, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Thank you for your comments in my recent RfA. However, it was unsuccessful. I am in no way disheartened, and I am working on all the constructive critisism I have received. If you have any further suggestions or comments, feel free to drop me a line on my talk page, and I will be happy to respond. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 04:40, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Of course...good luck with your work around here, and I hope to see more of you! Jmlk17 04:44, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Better luck next time

Hey, better luck next time as far as RFA is concerned. I'm sure you are admin material, maybe this just wasnt the right time. Best wishes, -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 06:42, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Yup, a few (or less) months sustained presence around the place will likely be all that is required - especially if it is to the standard of the recent past. I look forward to supporting your next RfA. LessHeard vanU 08:58, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Couple months more, you'll be right. I look forward to it :) ~ Riana ⁂ 08:59, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
You're welcome for the support. :) Acalamari 16:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Thank you for supporting my recent RfA. It unfortunately did not succeed. I still plan to continue to edit however. Hope to see you around. Kwsn(Ni!) 15:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki

Thanks for the tip - much better!--Melburnian 00:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Signpost updated for July 9th, 2007.

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[edit] My RFA

Yea, I suppose I'll give it a shot. Hurricanehink (talk) 18:00, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] By the way...

You mentioned you thought I was already a bureaucrat. I'm mistaken on a regular basis for Raul654, and to a lesser extent, Redux; if I do become a bureaucrat, the confusion will only get worse, I'm afraid :) Ral315 » 18:54, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your RfA

Good afternoon. I am writing to let you know that I got the message you sent me regarding the Rfa. Personally, I think it should have passed, but I can understand why some would think you are not yet experienced. Last I looked, you had something along the lines of 1800 or so total edits. That's very good, and most definitely not too little to become an admin. There have been users in the past that have managed to get the promotion with an edit count in that range. What I think may have got you is your relative lack of mainspace edits, which many users consider to be the most important aspect on what determines a user's trustworthyness. I don't see why this is, to be honest, because we always need different users with different focuses to be administrators. This is the reasoning I used to support you. I think you would have a good chance of a successful Rfa in about 6 months, so here is a few tips which I hope will help you along the way:

1. - Experience is often measured by a user's edit count. Most of us don't want to resort to Editcountitis here, but because this is a project that works on edits, it should be taken into consideration. This is why almost no one becomes an admin if his/her account has under 1000 edits; people just don't feel that qualifies as real experience. As I said before, that you got your edit count to over 1800 in a short time is good, but to give you an idea, many users see 3000 edits as the magic number.

2. - Try to balance out your edits to be more proportional. Wherever your edits are fairly short, spend time making edits in that area. For now, I would recommend making at least 20 mainspace edits each time you log in. This will add up fast. If you can make around 200-400 edits a week, other users will take notice. I surely don't have the time to contribute on that magnitude, but you might, every user is different. It doesn't matter if your busy, anyway, you'll still have a chance at being promoted, but it may take longer. Just keep at it.

3. - Because the actions of any nominated user (as you have seen) almost always comes under close scrutiny in Rfas, you want to be very careful not to give any user reason to object to your nomination. For now, this should not be very hard to do. Try to stay out of controversial topics as much as you can, same with disputes. Don't engage in an edit war, even if you are right and know it. Do so, and these type of things will be used against you the next time you are nominated.

4. - This may be a bit hard to do, but I would strongly reccommend that you do not re-nominate yourself in an Rfa in the future. Simply wait until other users have decided to nominate you. Part of increasing the likelyhood this will happen lies in taking part in administrator related tasks, i.e., WP:AIV, WP:WQA, and so fourth. If you get involved in dispute resolutions, make sure you demonstrate a temparate and civil attitude. What would also help is to participate in various WikiProjects. Do all this, "stay the course", and your time will come.

I hope all this helps.The Kensington Blonde Talk 21:58, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RfB

Thank you, TheFearow, for participating in my RfB, which ended unsuccessfully with a final tally of (80/22/3).
I shall continue to work on behalf of the community's interests and improve according to your suggestions.
Most sincere regards, Húsönd 00:06, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Obrigado, TheFearow, por participares no meu RfB, que terminou sem sucesso com um resultado final de (80/22/3).
Continuarei a trabalhar em prol dos interesses da comunidade e a melhorar segundo vossas sugestões. Calorosos cumprimentos, Húsönd 00:06, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks • Obrigado • Gracias • Merci • Danke • Спасибо • Tack • Kiitos
Esker • Köszönöm • Takk • Grazie • Hvala • ありがとう • 謝謝 • 谢谢

I am sorry about your also unsuccessful RfA. Please don't be discouraged and keep up your excellent work in order to attain a successful request in the near future. Best regards, Húsönd 00:06, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bureaucrat

Thanks for your comments. I am Wikipedia's newest bureaucrat. I will do my best to keep your concerns in mind as I perform my duties. Andre (talk) 09:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BAG

Hi, you mentioned here that I should use a certain tag to attract the attention of the BAG. Where exactly should I place this tag? Cheers, -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 05:45, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:RFBOT

Your recent bot approvals request has been approved. Please see the request page for details. When the bot flag is set it will show up in this log. --ST47Talk 11:40, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Thank you for taking the time to participate in my recent RfA, which did not succeed. I appreciate the helpful comments! Neranei T/C 16:41, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Striking your vote

Hello TheFearow,

Thank you for your interest in the Wikimedia Board Election. The Election Committee regretfully informs you that your previous vote was received in error and will be struck according to the election rules, described below.

The Election Committee regretfully announces today that we will have to remove approximately 220 votes submitted. These votes were cast by people not entitled to vote. The election rules state that users must have at least 400 edits by June 1 to be eligible to vote.

The voter lists we sent to Software in the Public Interest (our third party election partner) initially were wrong, and one of your account was eventually included to our initial list. There was a bug in the edit counting program and the sent list contained every account with 201 or more edits, instead of 400 or more edits. So large numbers of people were qualified according to the software who shouldn't be. The bug has been fixed and an amended list was sent to SPI already.

Our first (and wrong) list contains 80,458 accounts as qualified. The proper number of qualified voters in the SPI list is now 52,750. As of the morning of July 4 (UTC), there are 2,773 unique voters and 220 people, including you, have voted who are not qualified based upon this identified error.

In accordance with voting regulations the Election Committee will strike those approximately 220 votes due to lack of voting eligibility. The list of struck votes is available at https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/List_of_struck_votes.

We are aware of the possibility that some of the people affected may have other accounts with more than 400 edits, and hence may still be eligible to vote. We encourage you to consider voting again from another account, if you have one. If you have no other account eligible to vote, we hope you reach the criteria in the next Election, and expect to see your participation to the future Elections.

Your comments, questions or messages to the Committee would be appreciated, you can make them at m:Talk:Board elections/2007/en. Other language versions are available at m:Translation requests/Eleccom mail, 07-05.

Again, we would like to deeply apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Kizu Naoko
Philippe
Jon Harald Søby
Newyorkbrad
Tim Starling


For Wikimedia Board Election Steering Committee

22:05, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Odd bot edit

FYI, this bot edit appears incorrect. It says it's reporting but actually it removed one and didn't add the one it said. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:09, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

haha, seems we both saw it. The removal is legit though, the other user got blocked. -- lucasbfr talk 01:16, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I noticed that too. If it were removing legitimate but unblocked entries, I would have considered hitting the shutoff button. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:25, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
That is incredibly unusual - i'm going to check out my reporting code, and change it over to a simpler way. I have no clue how this happened. It did something usefull I never programmed it to! (This does look suspiciously like a deleted/oversighted revision, but I have no clue why. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:29, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please

Please do not use images on RfA's or deletion debates as they are not a vote they are building consensus, many including myself believe that the images make it look like a vote and any newbies may get this impression so it causes other problems, so please dont use them to aboi confusion :-).

Kindest Regards
Rlest 16:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes but see this discussion at AfD, and this at WT:RFA, they will be removed if you continue as deletion discussions and RfA's are not a vote but building consensus, that is why {{Support}}, {{oppose}} are salted to prevent usage.... Rlest 12:04, 16 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] My RfA

Thank you for your support in my successful RfA. I appreciate the trust you and the WP community have in me. Carlossuarez46 21:40, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deadbot at WP:UAA

Deadbot reported the name User:Jimmyjama for the reason that "it matches badword jimmy." Is there a reason "jimmy" is listed as a bad word? It's not quite the same as "jimbo" and I can see a lot of false positives occurring. Leebo T/C 13:40, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Looking through the blacklist, it seems there are a lot of strings that may cause large numbers of false positives. Have you considered using a whitelist in conjunction with it? Leebo T/C 13:46, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • The bot reported User:DietRichCola because of the sub-string "Die". I think this is another case where a whitelist would be a good idea. DES (talk) 19:06, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • It also reported User:Nalgenebottle because of the sub-string "bot" Perhaps, thi should only trigger a report at the end of a name? DES (talk) 19:26, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UAA request

Can you please refine your bots reporting mechanisms. There has been an overly large number of false positives often reporting in uaa backlogs. I would personally like to see a much higher accuracy rate.` -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 20:50, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. i don't see much way to reduce the falsue positive rate on WP:UAA reports simply by editing the balcklist, except perhjaps by pruning it drastically, until such features as whitelists and/or regex matching, or other more sophisticated matching than simple substring inclusion is implemeted. I'm not clear how well the other running bots cover this task, and whether it makes sense for you to suspend operations of thsi bot until such features are available. DES (talk) 21:03, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I will start pruning the blacklist for items that provide an exceptionaly largte number of false positives. I have removed the word "bot" from the black list as this three letter combination is very common outside of the usage you are trying to prevent. It is not my responsibility to fix your bot so I ask that you expedite any fixes you are working on. Thank you. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 21:05, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you should take a look at HBC NameWatcherBot's blacklist and whitelist, as it was working pretty well. They don't have to be identical, but I think it would be helpful, since there are some strings (such as "oral") that may seem clear at first but result in a lot of unanticipated results. Leebo T/C 21:08, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Leebo here. The HBC namewatcher bot had a high accuracy percentage. It also gave warnings for names with low confidence and ones that often produced false psitives. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 21:09, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
It does, however I am implementing some new features. Feel free to prune the list, and I will implement the rest (whitelist, flags, regex) once I get home from college. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:10, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DeadBot and UAA

So far the Bot's input at UAA is far fom unproblematic. There are two main problems at the moment:

  1. Its badword list if far too simplistic. It needs to be able to distinguish legitimate uses of badwords - for example although "cock" can be problematic, it is not if combined to make "cockpit", "cocktail" or "Hiscock". The list needs to made more sophisticated, at the moment the Bot is just generating silly numbers of false positives.
  2. It reports names that have already been reported by other Bots and blocked - see this sequence for an example [12], [13], [14], [15].

These issues need resolving soon or the Bot should stay away from UAA until they are fixed. WjBscribe 19:54, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to have it carry on doing the things it does well - like usernames similar to existing users - without it doing the badwords until those are sorted? WjBscribe 21:21, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
OK, in that case I suggest your Bot stops doing the UAA reports. There are already 2 Bots dealing with username vios so it should all be covered while you work on those problems with its reporting functions. WjBscribe 21:31, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Well I'll watch the situation for a bit and see - the problem is its hard to know if a name your Bot reports would have been reported by one of the other Bots anyway. WjBscribe 21:46, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Signpost updated for July 16th, 2007.

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[edit] An Eye for an Eye

Did you mean to put a db-nonsense tag on An Eye for an Eye (film)? I saw you did a cleanup edit first, and it doesn't look like a nonsense page. CitiCat ♫ 04:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:Flatts

Flatts was blocked indefinitely. Pants(T) 04:16, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AWB usage

Please do not use AWB to make insignificant edits as per the rules of use. Examples are in these edits [16] [17] [18]. Improper use may lead to removal of access. --After Midnight 0001 10:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Oops - I have been previewing rather well, but I must have misread some. Ive noticed the diff engine highlights some lines with no difference, i'll watch more carefully in future. Sorry! Also, I thought reorganising the stub tag orders etc was significant, its still a minorish edit, but its useful and worthwhile. If i misunderstood that part of the manual, please forgive me, and i'll stop doing that now. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 10:37, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Regarding stub tags in particular, other bots, like the pywiki bots, I believe, actually move the stub tags above the categories and AWB moves them below the categories. So if operators of each type made runs to fix stub tags, they would just revert each other all day long. --After Midnight 0001 10:50, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Ok, that is unusual, is there any way to selectively turn off that behaviour? The general fixes etc are very useful, but I don't want to be doing something that a bot reverts several days later. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 10:54, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
No one makes runs to merely move the tags, they just get moved around while people are doing other tasks. As a result, there is no need to turn that feature off. There's no problem with you moving the tags and making other whitespace edits in the course of making a "real" edit to that same page. For example if you are typo fixing with general fixes turned on, and a typo is fixed, there is no problem in the tag moving at the same time. However, you should have the feature set so that if no typo is fixed, it will skip the page, so that a "general fix only" edit isn't make. I hope that clears things up a bit. I'll watch your page for a bit in case you have other questions. --After Midnight 0001 11:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bot

Fearow,I added a word to your DeadBot's bad word list-just trying to help.--Xterra1 21:13, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Thank you for participating in My RfA which closed successfully. I am honored and truly more than a little humbled by the support of so many members of the community. It's more than a bit of a lift to see comments on my behalf by so many people that I respect. I'll do my best to not disappoint you or the community. - Philippe | Talk 20:27, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Enfield 8000 & Constantine Adraktas

I've just had to revert this article again. It's obvious this editor means well but he doesn't seem to understand the problems with COI and NPOV (not to mention referencing). Have you any ideas? ELIMINATORJR TALK 23:01, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

  • He's obviously got some good info (and images) on the subject; I wonder if he'd be willing to share it with other editors so the article can be written in a NPOV manner? ELIMINATORJR TALK 23:14, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Polticians of Afghanistan

Hello. Please change the category back to Politicians of Afghanistan'. The reason for this is that not all politicians there are Afghan. For example there are Uzbek politicians, etc. We should use the term that is most accurate. Thanks for the effort, but if you could change it back using AWB that would be better. --Behnam 00:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for feedback and good points. I added citations to all the additions/modifications I made. The one exception is "The Shipping Fiasco" element but that deletion is already is explained in early discussion. Emccsm 03:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks (Again)

Thanks for the help. I have found it quite stressful here especially regarding NPOV and making sure that my edits are up to standard.

I have a question regarding speedy deletions & spam: How well known do you have to be within Wikipedia until you can remove the spam /advertising headers at the top of some of the articles? The ones that I am referring to are: Chumby and Addiction Foods (New Zealand's company) both of which I have made changes to to tone them down to make them less spammy.

Kind regards

SimonHarvey 09:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DeadBot adding extra spaces?

Hi - can you take a look at Wikipedia:Dead-end pages/P-T (look at the source)? It seems to me that a lot of extra spaces have been inserted after deadbot's dash - is it possible that the bot is inserting extra ones? --Alvestrand 02:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Signpost updated for July 23rd, 2007.

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[edit] Nobots

Thanks for the help. I tried it on my main page, but they still kept coming. Thanks again.Squad51 22:03, 24 July 2007 (UTC)