User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2008 March

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At the time many conversations "ping-ponged" between the talk pages of the users involved.

Template:VCS

A month ago, SmackBot made several edits, which, I assume, was to replace "Template:VC" with "Verify Credibility". Unfortunately, there exists "Template:VCS" which is for Volusia County Schools. This became "Verify CredibilityS". While I know that bots always make mistake, it would seem to me that this mistake could have been avoided. For instance,instead of using "Template:VC" possibly using "{{Template:VC}}". While I understand that it was a bit silly for the person who installed the template to use "{{Template:VCS}}" instead of "{{VCS}}" such mistakes should be forseen. For an example, please see this diff. I will fix the errors myself, I simply felt that you should be aware of this mistake.--Vox Rationis (Talk | contribs) 21:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

On the one hand the coding is considerably more subtle and complex than that, on the other, had you not let me know the bot would have carried on making the same mistake. Many thanks. Fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 23:05 2 March 2008 (GMT).

More complex? than I am greatly mistaken, as the edit summary appeared to be merely AWB, a program which i am somewhat familiar with (and have had to learn to expect such mistakes). But then, I probably don't know the half of bot creation. All in all, SmackBot is doing a good job, so keep up the good work!--Vox Rationis (Talk | contribs) 00:17, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Editing Ruud Lubbers entry

Thanks for your post on the Lubbers disc page on 12 February. Almost from the beginning I have been trying to get some serious discussion about the edits on the Ruud Lubbers page. So far I really haven't been succesful. If you have time to read carefully the discussion page you will get an idea of what has been going on. It is frustrating and I am not really impressed with how the WP admin has handled this either. It took me some time even to get a response from Godwin which included an off-wiki exchange where it was suggested that I had created my own problem and the insinuation on the disc page that I was a "professional critic". The only explanation I have seen as come from Fpbat who is clearly not representing WP and is clearly is unfamiliar with the way WP works. I have tried to make adjustments to the proposed text and have included quotes from Mr. Lubber's supporters as well as links to longer texts. I have waited vainly for some response. It seems to me time to move beyond the present text and try out the Revised Proposed Text, however, I don't want to get in an edit war. Finally, if you do have time to read the Disc page carefully, can you offer me some idea of mistakes that I made as well as alternative suggestions. If you can't find the time, can you suggest somebody who might be interested in helping. For the next month I will be in and out of China and will be in and out of contact with WP so that there may be delays in my edits. --Joel Mc (talk) 09:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Completely multiplicative function oops

Howdy, I just redirected completely multiplicative function to multiplicative function, since it was just a brief definition. I had checked the page history, but I misinterpreted your edits as cleaning up an existing article, not turning a redirect into an article. Oops. So I didn't mean to revert your edits.

Should I revert, and try expanding the article? I don't know how to make it much more than a stub, but I can wikify, stub sort, add cats, etc.

I guess what I'm asking is, what is the focus of the article, and why shouldn't it just be added to multiplicative function? I don't mind expanding, but I just wasn't sure how to get past my gut reaction of "this should be merged". JackSchmidt (talk) 22:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I reverted my redirect and tried to expand the article a little. It's still pretty slim, but I think it is a good stub now. It could definitely use examples. I'm afraid I don't have the mindset to check the examples at multiplicative function#Examples to see which are totally multiplicative. I also made the redirect at totally multiplicative functions point at the new article. JackSchmidt (talk) 22:45, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

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What makes you so good

Since you are the user that has made the most edits to wikipages i was just wondering how do you do it, as in do you spend every single day of every single second on wiki because i could think that is the only way you could do it. The main question i want to ask is do your eyes get sore after being on the computer for so long? Im only on there for maybe and hour or two a day and my eyes are so bad now, i need to change my glasses often because i dont give them enough rest. You know what they say, have a break for 10min every 1/2 hr but im sure you know im hooked on. Whats your secret? Are your eyes still good? Can you help me out because you would know. Thanks, its been an honour to get in touch with you. Roadrunnerz45 (talk) 13:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The reason my edit-count is so high is that I'm not daunted when something needs to be changed in many places, and I'm doing a lot of minor fix-ups. For example I tagged 3000 maps of US counties as GFDL, and made a manually checked tidy up to about half the album articles. Most of my edits (90%) are made by User:SmackBot and there are about another 10 bots that have made more edits than my account. I also run up a fair few edits manually testing stuff for SmackBot, and fixing the exceptions that SB can't cope with. Rich Farmbrough, 15:34 5 March 2008 (GMT).

Kurt Kaiser Article tagged by Smackbot

Rich,

I just reverted the tag from smackbot from my article, the references are now in the article. However, if they don't meet spec, please feel free to re-tag me and drop me a note on my talk page Thanks ! Kosh sezWe don't need no stinkin FUR!! 18:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Rich, I saw your message. Thanks! Regarding my signature - you could say it's activism. The "FUR" is wikipedia's Fair Usage Requirements. I think they're just a touch bureacratic, but that's just me !

We don't need no stinkin FUR!! 04:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

No content in Category:Articles lacking sources from February 2005

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Category:Articles lacking sources from February 2005, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Category:Articles lacking sources from February 2005 has been empty for at least four days, and its only content has been links to parent categories. (CSD C1).

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Category:Articles lacking sources from February 2005, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click here CSDWarnBot (talk) 20:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Deleted Rich Farmbrough, 21:55 6 March 2008 (GMT).

Speedy deletion of Template:Asbox/whatlinkshere

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

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

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Missing references

Hey Rich. Please see Wikipedia:Bot requests#Missing references section. References are added to many articles with the {{GR}}-template, but the articles are missing a references section. I know you did something similar to this with a list made by User:SQL. Could you take a look at this. Rettetast (talk) 21:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

FYI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:John_Buscema#Request_for_Comment_-_Integrate_two_versions

--Skyelarke (talk) 14:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Merging merge templates

I just thought i would give you heads up that i have suggested the merger of {{Mergeto}} to {{Merge}}, athough they are not tagged yet until someone can add the merge tags. Simply south (talk) 16:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Help with creating a template

I have been trying to figure out how to create templates, and I have been having a lot of difficulty. I have been using Sandbox, but have not succeeded in making it work out.

In particular, I have been having trouble with making a page-top template. I want to make one called "Template:Barenotability" that can be placed on the top of an article that seems to barely meet notability requirements. I want it to say something like the following:

This page seems to just barely meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. This notability may be disputed, and it is possible this article may be proposed for deletion. Please help by adding references, or if no more can be found, merging this article.

The purpose of this template would be to motivate the improvement of existing articles that are minimally referenced.

I have also been trying to figure out how to create the templates that appear at the bottom of many pages that list many article within a category, but I think I have nearly mastered that. These have become popular, and I would like to create some myself.Hellno2 (talk) 00:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Nobots

Hello. I was tracking down how {{nobots}} appeared in MacBook Air.[1] What is SB and what does it break in the article? Gimmetrow 00:36, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

It is a bot account, nearly all edits are made using AWB. There was an AWB bug which did funny things to the text "802.11g" or something similar, probably now fixed,I will check later. Rich Farmbrough, 18:35 9 March 2008 (GMT).

SmackBot

Hi SmackBot,

I have been writing an article entitled "Syngas Fermentation", and I have been trying to find users related to this article. If you do not mind, I want you to look at my article, and give your comments in terms of the article. I can change and include more information according to your comments.

Could you please check my article, and give your comments.

Thanks a lot Regards,

Ferit Isik —Preceding unsigned comment added by Feritisik (talk • contribs) 04:45, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Made a few cahnges, but basically looks good. Needs expanding. Rich Farmbrough, 18:47 9 March 2008 (GMT).

InUse tags

Hi, it doesn't look like you quite got to the bottom of the inuse issue (22nd Jan) - I've just had an edit conflict with SmackBot over at Morphometrics which was tagged with {{inuse}}. Thanks, Verisimilus T 14:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Thankks, fixed. (I had escaped a metacharacter.) Rich Farmbrough, 15:09 10 March 2008 (GMT).

SmackBot and interwiki sorting order

Hey. It seems that your bot has suddenly begun to change articles' interwiki sorting order from alphabetical word-based order to alphabetical two-letter codes. I don't know if you intended the bot to do that or not, but I think this is a very bad thing. There is no written policy, but the alphabetical order based on the local names of the languages has become the de facto guideline with the very large majority of articles using it. See Wikipedia:IL#Sorting. Thanks, Prolog (talk) 22:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello

• Do you have a right to protect pages or to edit protected pages or article? {Jennyandalizapurok4 (talk) 05:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)}

I Just want you to protect the article of Angel Locsin

• There are so many wikipedians that are keep on editing her article. I want you to full locked her article also to Regine Velasquez. {Jennyandalizapurok4 (talk) 05:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)}

Snowball Earth

Nearly done; just fixing reference issue Verisimilus T 19:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

All yours. Thanks for your patience! 19:33, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

NPOV on John Zizioulas Page

Hi, I notice you've removed a POV-statement tag from the John Zizioulas page. It looks like you tried to replace it with a section template, but the formatting's not correct so the template doesn't come up. As the page is currently protected, could you correct the formatting so that the template appears properly on the page? Seminarist (talk) 21:00, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Seminarist (talk) 22:31, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

cite web: accessyear etc.

Mind explaining why you just made the accessyear= parameter on {{cite web}} optional? It seems to me that knowing a reference was archived on April 15th isn't any help in understanding it unless you also know what year it was archived in. Thanks! RossPatterson (talk) 23:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Editing Ruud Lubbers entry: Repeat of request for help

I don't believe that I got a response to the request below. Is there something I am not doing right, are you able to suggest a next step? If you are to busy or have any other reason for not being able to help, can you point me in a direction where I might find help. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for your post on the Lubbers disc page on 12 February. Almost from the beginning I have been trying to get some serious discussion about the edits on the Ruud Lubbers page. So far I really haven't been succesful. If you have time to read carefully the discussion page you will get an idea of what has been going on. It is frustrating and I am not really impressed with how the WP admin has handled this either. It took me some time even to get a response from Godwin which included an off-wiki exchange where it was suggested that I had created my own problem and the insinuation on the disc page that I was a "professional critic". The only explanation I have seen as come from Fpbat who is clearly not representing WP and is clearly is unfamiliar with the way WP works. I have tried to make adjustments to the proposed text and have included quotes from Mr. Lubber's supporters as well as links to longer texts. I have waited vainly for some response. It seems to me time to move beyond the present text and try out the Revised Proposed Text, however, I don't want to get in an edit war. Finally, if you do have time to read the Disc page carefully, can you offer me some idea of mistakes that I made as well as alternative suggestions. If you can't find the time, can you suggest somebody who might be interested in helping. For the next month I will be in and out of China and will be in and out of contact with WP so that there may be delays in my edits.

--Joel Mc (talk) 09:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

--Joel Mc (talk) 02:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Bot question

Hiya, I've been thinking that I'd like to get the articles in Category:Accuracy disputes sorted by date, so that we could tell which articles have been tagged for a long time. Currently the bot seems to be adding dates to the tag properly, but we don't currently have a set of "dated" categories. Could you please advise on how we might be able to get this rearranged, so we could sort the category a bit? Thanks, Elonka 21:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks.  :) Now that I'm admin, one of the things I've been doing lately is trying to locate old disputes, and nudging the participants to either resolve the dispute or delete the disputed section. Having a "sorted by date" option will make it easier to find the old stuff.  :) --Elonka 21:37, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Great work! Fast turnaround too, thank you. I'll get to work on some of the older stuff. Think this would also be worth a mention at WP:AN? --Elonka 23:18, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: Cleanup templates

Whoops, which article did I subst a template on? I'll go back and undo it... but the only article I see in my history for March 12th wasn't substed...? --bd_ (talk) 04:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Protection of Template:Content

I have turned off the cascading of the protection of {{Content}}, in accordance with the standard protection of templates. The template is still full-protected, but pages transcluded within it (such as its documentation page) are no longer covered by the protection. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, didn't mean to cascade it. Rich Farmbrough, 09:17 13 March 2008 (GMT).

re: Cleanup templates

Hi Rich, thanks for letting me know about the subst info. Could I have an example where I've incorrectly subst'd something recently, though? I'm just curious as to when/where I made that kind of mistake; I just don't recall subst'ing a cleanup-related template recently, since I've tried not to do that. Thanks for letting me know about that, anyway! :) --JamieS93 11:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Here, rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 11:42 13 March 2008 (GMT).

Ah, that's where I did it. Thanks for the reference link. --JamieS93 11:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Bot edits

Hello. Smackbot just did this - I reversed it because it obviously seemed a bit strange. Is there anything you need to look at? Best wishes, RobertG ♬ talk 18:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot

Hello, I am AOEgeek!I am hosting a contest on my talk page to see if anyone can guess who I was before AOEgeek.Look at it![[2]]AOEgeek (talk) 09:01, 15 March 2008 (UTC)AOEgeek

Uh, yeah.I am.Lucky guess.And it's MKguy42192, for your information.AOEgeek (talk) 09:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Huh?

What are you saying?AOEgeek (talk) 09:10, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Bot bad edit

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rotten.com&diff=197928727&oldid=197333825 --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 19:57, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Thnks. Fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 20:41 15 March 2008 (GMT).

subst'ing templates

Hi, I actually didn't realize I was substituting those maintenance tags - must have done it right after I left a talk page message or something. Thanks for catching it though. I'll be more careful in the future. --Mosmof (talk) 00:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Trouble with anonymous 71.111.138.30 on Homelessness in the United States article

Hi Rich. User Special:Contributions/71.111.138.30 has made some POV and unsupported assertions in at least the Homelessness in the United States. I had to revert back the changes again. Can we lock the article ? You might look into this contributor. Any suggestions ? Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 20:40, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Rich. It seems all spurious when I looked at all the anonymous contributor's contrubutions. But let's hope it's over. Im general if we have two rational parties, we can make sense of it. If not, if it's imbalanced, then there is trouble: like revert wars which I am not into. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 13:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

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Your bot has surpassed 1,000,000 (ONE MILLION) edits! Wwoooww!

Since when did that happened? Being the first Wikibot to reached that alarming milestone as the most-edited bot in the entire English Wikipedia, do you have anything to comment? 60.48.95.17 (talk) 09:30, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Whoot! Congrats! :) SQL^{Query me!} 09:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Report for User:SmackBot
User groups: bot
Edits (including deleted edits): 1268091
Edits: 1204472

Heh! SQL^{Query me!} 09:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

It happened quite some time ago, I think Cydebot actually got there first. Rich Farmbrough, 11:48 20 March 2008 (GMT).

But as per WP:BBE, WP:WBE and via using GTools, the highest of all is still SmackBot with 1,269,006 edits than Cydebot with 1,230,261. 60.48.95.191 (talk) 04:55, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Bot acting weirdly

In this edit, your bot not only capitalizes one of the tags for no apparent reason, it also changes the date format for an AFD tag, which seems kind of strange. Isn't that tag supposed to remain unedited until the deletion debate is over? And why change the formatting anyway?--Dycedarg ж 19:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot canonicalises the templates it deals with. As far as the date parameter goes it would be ideal to leave this particular one alone, however it merely links to the log for the day, for the person creating the template to use, it's not too harmful. I will try to fix this fairly soon, however. Rich Farmbrough, 21:50 24 March 2008 (GMT).

Barnstar

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		For contributing so much to the article Pedro López (serial killer) I User Swirlex award you this Tireless Contributor Barnstar.

Resolved

Rich Farmbrough, 18:27 9 March 2008 (GMT).

Magic Tape initial use

I am a Brazilian IP lawyer working on the Magic Tape trademark. I noticed that in the USPTO database, the first use in commerce in dated 30.08.1965, and not in 1961 as you state. See http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=gt3b7d.2.1

Hmm. Rich Farmbrough, 22:49 28 March 2008 (GMT).

SmackBot

Rich, converting a list of properties of a software to prose is hard and does not make much sense IMHO, as a list is a lot easier to capture.

Hence I kindly ask you to exclude the Kolab article from being tagged by SmackBot.

Thanks, Cow0x1

Usual reply.. Rich Farmbrough, 18:27 9 March 2008 (GMT).

HEMU

Last editing on 8th March 2008, inwhich word Akbar has been removed and Humanyu has been added. This is a wrong entry. It should be reverted to Akbar, because Humanyun had died in January 1556 and Akbar was made the King at a ceremony at Kalanaur in Punjab.So when HEMU attacked and won Agra and Delhi in September-October 1556, he had a victory against Akbar's forces and not Humanyu's. Please revert this edition.

Sudhirkbhargava

Not SmackBot's edit, however the change you mention has been reverted. Rich Farmbrough, 18:32 9 March 2008 (GMT).

SmackBot & capitalization in tags

I have seen in several articles this bot (and perhaps other[s]) changing the capitalization of the key word in tags requesting citations, clarity, etc. The most recent one is in King Kong (comic). What possible difference can this make? The change certainly doesn't cause the tags to display any differently in the articles. Honestly, I am expecting a reply opening something like, "The difference is...." It's just that seeing these when I check the edit history of an article I am interested in/working on bugs me, and if I understood the point, they would slide right by me. Otherwise, I wonder if there isn't some better use for the energy/server space/whatever (that should give you some idea of how little I understand of how websites work from the technical perspective, and that I am wide open to a justification of this activity). Thanks. Ted Watson (talk) 20:49, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

The difference is that the parameter "date" is valid and will put the item in a hidden category, in this case Category:Articles with unsourced statements since February 2008, whereas "Date" is invalid. 97 times out of 100 Smackbot simply has to add a date parameter, three percent of the time it needs to fix up an incorrect date, mispelled parameter etc. Rich Farmbrough, 20:54 24 March 2008 (GMT).

WOW! That was quick. Thanks. Also, I must apologize as you are quite correct that it was "date," not the key word, that had its case changed in the linked-in article. I'll see if I can find an example of one with the word "citation" or whatever so altered, but perhaps it's just my memory playing tricks on me. Thanks again. Ted Watson (talk) 21:27, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Reply noted. It was quite unexpected, too. At least now I don't have to try to find one of the other kind, thanks for that. By the way, this very bot, SmackBot, recently added a date to an undated tag on Bruce Lee, but left "date" lower case. Maybe this was simply because this one was a box at the top of a section about a lack of references in general, rather than a little note within the text. But just in case it is some kind of fault, and as we are currently in communication about the process, I thought I'd mention it. Perhaps I'm being overly cautious. Ted Watson (talk) 19:18, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

autolinking of years on |accessyear=

Hello, Rich;

I'm curious as to why you added year autolinks to |accessyear on the cite web template. I've been specifically using "|access-" elements on pages to prevent having changes to year articles show up in the related changes, per the description of the elements on the template page. For example, on List of plesiosaurs, I don't see that there is a need to know about all the changes to 2005 and 2006 when someone checks related changes. In my view, they swamp the changes to articles that are germane to "List of plesiosaurs". Anyway, I just wanted to know your reasoning, and if there is a way to use the cite web template without running into this. J. Spencer (talk) 01:37, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

In general lone years should not be linked, but when they are part of a date 10 April 1962 they should - unless its a literal date in a quote, name of something , URL etc.. This is because it allows date formatting to work. Unfortunately these cite templates are currently rather complicated, and very widely used, so the fact that the date is sometimes linked and sometimes not, depending on the exact parameter used, will take a little resolving. There is an editor who has started working on this, however he is currently behind the great fire-wall of China. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 18:02 25 March 2008 (GMT).

Okay. It just seemed odd that the template page would describe the "|access_" elements as not autolinking to dates, but when used, the year portion would autolink. J. Spencer (talk) 23:28, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Uruguay

May I ask you why have you changed the positions in Uruguayan 2007/2008 football article? Please, review the sources before making changes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.134.32.29 (talk) 03:39, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Of course you may ask. The answer is I haven't. Rich Farmbrough, 16:23 26 March 2008 (GMT).

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SmackBot and template "current sport"

In February I inquired if SmackBot might include the temporal template {{current sport}} in its program of dating templates, similar to how {{current}} is handled, so that it can be easily determined how old the template might be. I think you were going to check on it, and had thought the {{current sport}} template was included. I checked a random 10 instances of the use of {{current sport}}, and it seems these don't come under SmackBot's current attention. Canonicalizing all of the uses of redirects to {{current sport}} would be appreciated too.
Many thanks, Yellowdesk (talk) 12:28, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

OK I've canonicalised the templates and dated them as of this month. SB will date any it comes across and I could do a monthly run to pick up any others. At the moment the regular run works of undated categories and the act of dating moves the articles to a dated category so they don't get revisited. This doesn't apply to {{Current sport}}. Rich Farmbrough, 12:26 27 March 2008 (GMT).

Thank you.
I'm not sure what you mean, about what exactly does not apply to {{current sport}}.
-- Yellowdesk (talk) 14:20, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Place holder

Could User:Place holder be listed as a bot so that it isn't listed as a regular user in lists such as Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits? Gary King (talk) 23:22, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

That would defeat the point. Place holder is used to replace people who don't want to be named in the list, without changing the numbering for people who do. Rich Farmbrough, 16:22 26 March 2008 (GMT).

Ah, I took a quick glance at the list and saw Place Holder at the top and thought that it was the total of all the users that were replaced with Place holder. I now see that it is listed multiple times. Gary King (talk) 16:42, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot note

Hi there, I noted today that SmackBot made a strange edit. A few days ago, SmackBot properly added the year to an "unreferencedsection" template. Then, a vandal changed the date from 2008 to 2069. SmackBot subsequently adjusted the date to "20069". Any ideas what happened? --Laser brain (talk) 14:14, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes it's doing its best to fix the error. It knows these dates should begin with 200 not 20. Hmm. Rich Farmbrough, 14:17 27 March 2008 (GMT).

Most Active

Good Job for being the most active editer of all wikipedians (besides bots)!--RyRy5 talk 02:49, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Rich Farmbrough, 16:23 26 March 2008 (GMT).

Hhmmm... Like father like son, like Wikipedian like Wikibot. SmackBot is like a chip of Rich Farmbrough's old block, and it is just like the apple does not fall far from Richard's tree! So much for the most-edited-bot-and-user-in-the-English-Wikipedia trait similarities! 60.48.88.32 (talk) 05:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

<Chuckles>... Rich Farmbrough, 19:32 29 March 2008 (GMT).

Minor over mergeto

An extremely trivial edit to ask but could you include a space between the discussion and the date as it makes things easier to read...? Simply south (talk) 19:27, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately David Levy has removed the date display altogether. Rich Farmbrough, 09:02 28 March 2008 (GMT).

SmackBot

I don't think your bot should touch fact tags on talk pages and I reverted you here. Thanks, SqueakBox 03:45, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I also couldn't give an edit summary using your send a message to your bot and that really pissed me off, please fix. Thanks, SqueakBox

Hello! I agree that Talk pages can be skipped too. I've got another example here, and I noticed that in the third change in that diff, text was also changed inside nowiki tags. However such special casing is not really important if staying in the article namespace. Thanks. -- Sverdrup (talk) 00:44, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes you're right about the nowikis. Rich Farmbrough, 19:27 29 March 2008 (GMT).

SmackBot

hi richard i have a note from your bot on Salt Spring Air saying may contain original data, i have listed a good number of external sites for pretty much each claim, comment made. could you visit the site and see if maybe i am placing the links in the wrong section or something. i am pretty new to wiki but do want to make things work. look forward to any direction you can give. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flymebc (talk • contribs) 22:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Fly, that was me, not a bot. I'll explain on your talk page. Nick Graves (talk) 02:29, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Date in reference

Hi, recently your bot changed a bunch of dates in a bunch of references (in article 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt). It changed the date from numbers to text (the month 03, became March), which is nice. The problem however, was that 2008-03-26 for example, became only March 2008. The day of the month disappeared. Bib (talk) 12:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Bib, it shouldn't do that. It's only supposed to be looking at date parameters for cleanup templates. The whole field of dates in general, is, at present, beyond it's scope. Rich Farmbrough, 12:15 30 March 2008 (GMT).

I see you've fixed it now, thanks.Bib (talk) 16:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot: conversion of HTML char-codes to raw Unicode: issue & consequent suggestion

greetings rich. first off, although you've probably heard it many times before, congrats and thanks for smackbot. it does good work, with few errors.

but (you knew there was going to be a but, didn't you), there's an exception:

it passed through French spacing and mungled the examples of different-width spacing in the unicode section. see the 2nd mod block HERE -- note the html charcodes &#8201; and &#8239; have been converted to their raw unicode equivalents, and in the latter example user-content becomes effectively invisible. even given my own knowledge of what should have been there (i created this section (by the miracle of copy-paste)), i thought the code had been completely deleted until i went to replace it and discovered by accident that there was an invisible essentially-zero-width character still between the last word and the exclamation mark.

now i'm in 2 minds as to doing this sort of thing anyway.

PRO: it's technically slightly purer for those on perfectly updated systems using standards-aware (typically paid-for) tools.

CON: it makes the article uneditable offline for anyone without access to unicode-compliant tools, which are much less common than most people think.

CON: some of the unicode codes' characters are not directly creatable on our current keyboards/OSs —that is, they CAN NOT be manually entered, and in some cases can not even be clearly or even visibly observed–can YOU determine at a glance in an edit-window that a gap in the text is not a normal space but actually a non-breaking space?— and in some key cases are not even visible: once they've been forced from being display-time characters to also being edit-time characters, most people lose the ability to directly enter them, and in some cases (eg varying-width spaces) may lose the ability to even see they are there.

but clearly i need to keep SmackBot away from the typographic examples.

i looked at {nobots}, and was about to exclude poor ole smackbot despite his sterling service and well-meaning edits. then i stopped and thought.

i do NOT want to forever exclude smackbot from hoving to with dustpan and brush, monkeywrench and oilcan, tidying up and improving common errors that may be inserted in future by later editors (none of us will be here forever {existential angst} )

but i DO need him not to munge my spacing examples.

then a penny dropped.

SUGGESTION:
modify SmackBot to have a context-sensitive ruleset.
CASE: where an article is tagged Category:Typography, he does NOT execute the html-code-->unicode-char conversion rules.

"simple as that", he says, secure in the knowledge that it's not him that would have to be making them changes...

LESS ARCHITECTURALLY-ARDUOUS SUGGESTION (which in many ways is superior to the above) :
you the developer do one single personal manual pass through the code's config data for the unicode chars smackbot will seek to convert, and remove at devel-time any character with typographic significance (perhaps best defined as: invisible behaviour different from a typewriter font; in particular: spaces).

for now, i'm going to {nobotno,badbot,down!} the article. but it'd be nice not to have to.

i remain,

yours in mutual futile pursuit of perfection,

Sal

Saltation (talk) 11:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I have a solution, but it's not perfect.

First realise that SB is almost exclusively run on WP:AWB, so excluding SB's "general fixes" will likely only buy you time (as another AWB bot will arrive).

There is however an option to ignore nowiki'd text, and a bunch of other stuff. SB is supposed to have this turned on, but sometimes I turn it off to get to picture captions - and forget to turn it back on.

So I've nowiki'd the unicode, which will probably keep most AWB bots away from them, including SB, provided I don't forget an leave the switch off.

Be aware, however that the next AWB gen fixes to hit that page will probably remove those <p>s you have put in the blockquotes.

Rich Farmbrough, 13:49 31 March 2008 (GMT). (tweaked 14:54)

Rich, you're a legend. Thanks.

Since I think this is a nontrivial issue for this and other articles, I've posted the problem (and the workaround's problem implied by your last line) to the Bug page on AWP. Please don't hesitate to update or delete it if you feel it is not appropriate.

Saltation (talk) 16:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Unspecified source for Image:NASA-apollo11-AS11040-5904.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:NASA-apollo11-AS11040-5904.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, then you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, then their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 16:35, 31 March 2008 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. MECU≈talk 16:35, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Goons!

Dude! I just saw your home page, and saw you kicked in for the Goon Show page. My esteeeeeeeeem and all-leather zeppelin for you just climbed immeasurably; yea, almost unto the point of climbing so high as to upset Nelson's Statue.

You realise... this means the END of the horse-drawn encyclopaedia!

Farewell!!

Grytpype-Thynne: And so saying, he climbed into his atomic dustbin and drove off.

Salgoon: Did I? Well, I might have been told a bit sooner than this.

FX: Clatter of lid. Insanely fast revving, enormous explosion, screeching of wheels (fades, with mad revving and intermittent explosions)

Salgoon: Hi! Someone's stolen my dustbin! After it in the key of E!

GRAMS: E#, suddenly sped up

Greenslade: I say, listeners. They've all gone.

FX: a piece of string

Moriarty: Owwwwwwww. Grytpyppe, Grytpyppeeeee... what was that?

Grytpyppe: Do you know, I haven't the faintest idea.

THEME TUNE

Saltation (talk) 17:26, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

"Wikify by month" categories

Hi, Rich. When creating new "Wikify by month" categories (e.g., Category:Wikify from April 2008), the dated tag in the message must be manually updated. If you simply copypaste from a previous category, that category's month will appear in the new category. If you know of a way that allows the month to be automatically updated when a category is created, please let me know. In any case, I've corrected the month in the "Wikify by April 2008" category. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 18:01, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I know, I wrote the template :) .... I hope that was the only one of the 27 cats I made yesterday that I missed the change. I am thinking of writing a bit of java-script to make the new months cats. Rich Farmbrough, 18:45 31 March 2008 (GMT).