User talk:Rjwilmsi/Archives/2008/December

Named refs insertion script

Hi there Rjwilmsi. Would it be feasible for either your script, or its operation, to be modified so that it only acts on articles if there's already a named ref present? Not all articles have adopted a citation/referencing style where named refs are useful or desirable.

I am thinking particularly of those established following WP:CITESHORT, to me having named refs does not really add anything or save on any coding, indeed it can make it more of a hassle to maintain and keep track of. For articles set up this way there's often a conscious decision to avoid using named refs, in my experience and practice at least & no doubt for others as well.

While I appreciate your script can be beneficial and avoids repetition in those articles with full reference citations given between <ref></ref> tags, it's not necessarily of benefit where the full reference citation is given once only in a 'References' section biblio-style, and the citation tags against individual statements need be no more complicated than <ref>Smith 1994, p.123</ref>. Regards, --cjllw ʘ TALK 08:38, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

The value of named refs in your example is that multiple uses of the exact same short ref are combined under one entry in the references section to use number a, b, c etc. rather than a series of entries with the same value. When the shortened references are to different pages of a book, I'm not combining them, nor is it appropriate to do so. A good example is this edit of mine where the references section is tidied up, while the same information is available to those reading the page. Thanks Rjwilmsi 13:57, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

As I wrote on a different occasion, I am all in favor of named references, but I need your feedback on the example that you give. There are four references to Fleisher & Bensoussan, 2007, three under a,b,c in note 2 and one hiding awkwardly with something else under note 1. What would you (or your script) do if each of these references cited a different page number from the same source, Fleisher & Bensoussan, 2007? Would we end up with four different notes, or is there a more clever solution? --Zlerman (talk) 14:20, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

If there are four references to four different pages then my script won't do anything to them – they are different references. I'm not sure of any way to combine references to different pages (scripted or otherwise) or even whether that would be an appropriate thing to do. Rjwilmsi 16:20, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

• Yep. They are different references/footnotes if the page numbers are different. -Fnlayson (talk) 17:12, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

North Sea

I have seen you removing dupe cite fields on articles using AWB. Could you do that on the North Sea article as it is under a GA review. Thank you very much Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 04:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. Rjwilmsi 07:59, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you!! Very much!!!SriMesh | talk 03:59, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Forest Rights Act article

Hi there. I undid your changes to the Forest Rights Act (India) article because I was not clear what the aim was, and in some cases - for instance on the section numbers of the Act in question - the changes were wrong, changing section 3(1) to section 31, 4(2) to 42 etc. Could you let me know what the idea behind the changes was? Then could reinstate them except the mistakes. Shankargopal (talk) 11:36, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

There was nothing wrong with my edit. Look at the references section in the marked up page before and after my edit: 6 duplicate references are combined (by using the named reference feature of mediawiki) to make 29 (rather than 35) and use the "1 a b c" mediawiki functionality. Thanks Rjwilmsi 12:11, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Accessdate change

Hi there, I'm just curious what this edit was for. —Heavyboat (Talk) 17:39, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Accessdates use the ISO date. When the discussion at Template_talk:Cite_web#Arbitrary_date_format_change and date RFIs reach conclusion, the intention is to add a new parameter to specify the format of all citation dates – either per citation or per article. Rjwilmsi 17:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate refs

Thanks for your work on this - I think you have been coming across and fixing some of my early Wikipedia edits - I can now do dup refs but back then I didn't know how! Sterry2607 (talk) 06:38, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Likewise - thanks for showing the way with duplicate references, I knew my work wasn't quite right and your examples will help my improve my other edits. Wikiwayman (talk) 11:49, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: Here's a juicy one!

We've been picking away at the CIA statistics on the "Demographics of" articles, and we're almost to the point where we can specify simple straight-forward AWB search/replaces (pretty much just push the "save" button). It appears like it is going to take a lot of passes with AWB to get these done. Just your cup of tea.

I'll be in touch.

The Transhumanist    22:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

add {reflist} using AWB)

in future, i was wondering if you could omit the hidden text: <!--added under references heading by script-assisted edit--> when adding the {{reflist}} to articles? it's probably enough to have it in the edit summary. --emerson7 18:24, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

What would be the benefit of omitting the comment? Rjwilmsi 21:55, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Request

Hi Rjwilmsi I believe you are pretty prolific using AWB for cleanup? I wondered if you could go through the Upazilas of Bangladesh and remove the line which plagues all of the articles on them "As of 1991 Bangladesh censusGR error: 1=Bangladeh". Example Dhamrai UpazilaCould you go through them and replace the first part of the sentence as As of the 1991 census,. let me know, thanks The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:42, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I should be able to do that for you. Rjwilmsi 07:54, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

User:AlbertHerring has already done this for you. Rjwilmsi 07:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

2 column references

Hi Rjwilmsi! I just saw that you unified identical in-line citations in Mongolian language which were exactly one, so it doesn't really make much difference. But as the notes list really takes up much space, I have been wondering whether one could put it into two columns. I think I've seen that before, but I don't know how. It would be nice if you could accomplish this. G Purevdorj (talk) 12:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Use {{reflist|2}} if you want to do that. Rjwilmsi 12:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I just tried it, but it doesn't seem to work. G Purevdorj (talk) 12:42, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It only shows up for some browser formats. Still, Rjwilmsi is right: that is the standard way to do it at Wikipedia. Don't worry about a long notes list. It's OK. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

removal of spacing

[1] What's with the removal of spacing? 86.44.18.218 (talk) 10:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The spaces are unneeded – this is a general fix performed by WP:AWB. Rjwilmsi 12:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Rjwilmsi. According to the AWB rules of use:

Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits such as only adding or removing some white space, moving a stub tag, converting some HTML to Unicode, removing underscores from links (unless they are bad links), or something equally trivial. This is because it wastes resources and clogs up watch lists.

I would consider the edits you made to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator inconsequential. I also consider it a grammatical error to capitalize a non-proper noun in the middle of a sentence for the sake of removing a piped link, as you did with the feeling link in that article. :) ThreeOfCups (talk) 03:10, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I interpret that rule to mean "do not use AWB just to make lots of these types Of edits." Therefore there is no issue if one edit in many hundreds turns out to make no visible difference to the page. However, I don't think I even agree with you that that particular edit was inconsequential. Rjwilmsi 08:12, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

You're entitled to your opinion, but please do consider the point about wasting resources and clogging up watch lists. ThreeOfCups (talk) 02:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Hey, Rjwilmsi, thanks for your ongoing wikignoming. Nice work. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

May I offer my dittos!--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:43, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Awsome dedication! Thank you! -BatteryIncluded (talk) 21:26, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah thanks. Disco (talk) 22:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

AWB and gen fixes

Hello Rjwilmsi. For the most part, the AWB gen fixes you did here are pretty helpful, but by removing the year field from the citations in the References subsection, this causes all of the {{Harvnb}} cites not to work (I think everything else to the other parts of the article other than that References subsection is fine). Can you undo that part of your edit? Thank you, Cirt (talk) 06:04, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

All of them not to work? I've checked and the only one that didn't work was the Pressman entry as it had an incorrect date= with two months in it but no day – a date= field needs a day in it, else month= and year= should be used. By using month and year for that it now works fine (I've made the change). Please post back if any others aren't working for you. Rjwilmsi 08:07, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah I see it now. Thank you very much! Cirt (talk) 08:11, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Paleo diet

Hi, thanks for helping out on the Paleodiet, just one question, why were the dates transformed into the iso format for the "cite web" template? I had used the "prose" format for all dates in the article for consistency. You mind if I change back the iso-format dates into prose dates? YOur other edits are spot on, thanks dude! --Thermoproteus (talk) 04:57, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Change them if you like. Accessdate is supposed to use ISO date but now that it's unlinked will accept any date. Unfortunately the introduction of a datestyle parameter to the citation templates (discussed at Template talk:Cite web) to sort this out is taking a while to agree. Rjwilmsi 09:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

AWB

Hey there! Can you run AWB through the New Age article, please? It has a lot of overlinking that needs to be removed; too difficult to do edit by edit. Thanks! ~ All Is One ~ (talk) 23:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Delinking is not my thing – better to post at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. Rjwilmsi 23:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, thank you for your time. ~ All Is One ~ (talk) 03:41, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Portland Terminal Company

Thank you for improving the references of this article. You may not have noticed the 12 December bot edit apparently duplicated all of the article except the introductory section. I propose to delete duplicate material, but I'm uncertain which of the duplicated sections contains your work. Could you look over this article and remove the duplicated sections not containing your edits? Thewellman (talk) 01:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I've reverted the bot's incorrect edit and reapplied my changes. All should be fine now. Rjwilmsi 08:45, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Citation Barnstar
		Thank you for fixing all those references over Christmas 2008! Ahunt (talk) 18:40, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Note on my talk page

Please see this note on my talk page, as it concerns something your module did. Thanks :) NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 21:13, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I cannot reproduce this error on the current version of my script. Can you? Rjwilmsi 21:35, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Potential problem with your script

In the article USS Mercy (AH-4), your attempt to combine references ended up breaking two of them. If you are using a script, you might examine what happend to make sure that your script can handle similar situations correctly in the future. You made this edit that produced two broken references in this version. I have since repaired the references in the article, so you need not do anything further to the article. Thanks. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:17, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. The problem is that a reference name can't contain a wiki comment, so I'll add a check for that in my script. Thanks Rjwilmsi 08:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Reading Royals Roster

I am not sure whether you are using a bot to do clean up or not, but please refrain from removing the spaces between the players on the Reading Royals roster. Since the template is fluid (as players move during the season) it is much easier to edit the template with the spaces. So please do not remove these spaces. Thanks. Shootmaster 44 (talk) 08:19, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Removal of those spaces is an WP:AWB general fix, so please post a bug report at WP:AWB/B if you feel it's appropriate. Thanks Rjwilmsi 08:22, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Silver Dagger (song)

Hi, I don't understand why you changed the Joan Baez lyrics like this [2], but as it has been done before [3] I guess there is a reason - only I can't see why the first line of a verse should be attached to the last line of a previous verse, as though they were closer to one another than to their respective verses. I listened to the song again [4] and nothing seems to indicate this. Can you enlighten me? --Duncan MacCall (talk) 09:19, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:AWB has some general fixes to remove the <p> HTML characters, but in this case it didn't work very well. I've amended the article so the problem shouldn't happen again. Thanks Rjwilmsi 10:53, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Question

Danite123 (talk) 23:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)Hi there, I’m researching an article about Wikipedia, and its editors. I wonder if you I could talk to you about Wikipedia, and how you use it, for a magazine about not-for-profit organisations. If you could spare some time and wouldn’t mind answering some questions by email or phone, please contact me on [email address removed for privacy], or leave a message here or on my talk page. Many thanks,

Daniel

Year fields in citation templates

This edit made some welcome changes, but also removed year fields from two citation templates in the References section. I've reinstated them,[5] as they're necessary to get the links from the Harvard citations which appear in the Citations section. Click on Leff 2000 and it will take you down to the full reference with date, in this case "Leff, David (2000–2008)..." It would be greatly appreciated if you could leave the year fields in place, or remove them in a separate edit which can easily be reverted without undoing the other fixes you've made. Thanks, dave souza, talk 22:24, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

The Harvard reference templates need either the year field or a date field using a valid date. In the article you cite, a date of '2000-2008' is not a valid date and neither is 'Spring 1982' (full dates in American or international or ISO format are acceptable, as are partial dates using the month name and year such as 'January 2008' or even just the year, though this would be better set as the year field). In this case the state entries weren't needed alongside the year entries, so I have removed the date field. Thanks Rjwilmsi 22:34, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh well. It seemed useful info, but we'll do without it. Thanks, dave souza, talk 23:26, 30 December 2008 (UTC)