User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2010 May

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Pointless style changes

Hi, why are you making pointless whitespace changes like this with your AWB? Every once in a while I see people like you automatically converting articles to one style, then someone else comes along and converts them back to their preferred style. Nothing is improved, you only waste time of people who monitor their watchlist because it takes longer to figure out what content was changed. -- intgr [talk] 01:39, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

  • I believe the real edit was the removal of the category, as indicated in the edit summary, which serves no encyclopaedic function. The whitespace/CR removals were merely incidental. Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:48, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
    • Yes edit summaries are cool, I should use them more. Rich Farmbrough, 01:53, 1 May 2010 (UTC).
I understand that the reason for the edit was this category. But then why do you need to do several unrelated and unhelpful edits, to no benefit, based on your subjective whitespace preferences? -- intgr [talk] 02:08, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Well they wouldn't justify a separate edit. Of article headers, over 80% use that style,[citation needed] so it is not purely subjective. But it's not a big deal either. Rich Farmbrough, 02:25, 1 May 2010 (UTC).
If it's not a big deal, then don't touch it. Even if that 80% figure were true -- maybe because your automated edits have touched 80% of Wikipedia -- there is no consensus. In fact, various tools like the article wizard and "new section" on talk pages create sections with spaces. And many people prefer that style.
  1. Please point me to a consensus
  2. Please explain why the no-spaces style is preferable?
  3. Back up your figures -- intgr [talk] 11:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

High school coordinates

Dear Mr. Farmbrough,

I notice that you gave the coordinates here with your bot for this high school in BC, Canada. I have been adding some high res. photos to some schools in Surrey BC, Canada (in Metro Vancouver) and it would be nice, if you (or your bot) had some time, to add coordinates to other high school articles below which I provided photos for....just to give a sense of completion to them. Its a slightly long list below. So, please take your time--if you can--adding coordinates in your free time:

I hope you can help. PS: I am a trusted user on Commons but mastering metadata coordinates is beyond my scope. Regards from Canada, --Leoboudv (talk) 06:31, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

This was added a long time ago here. Having said that I can look at my database.Rich Farmbrough, 06:47, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

imprl

If you're going to continue running the AWB task for a long period of time, you might wanna fix the spelling of "Imperial" that you have. :-) I wasn't going to mention it, but it seems you have a long list. Killiondude (talk) 07:31, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, sorted. Rich Farmbrough, 07:33, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

Unit pref

Your plan sounds like a good one, but it would be great if we could use a term other than Imperial, since Imperial units are not square miles. The areadisp subtemplate has a list of alternatives. Or if there is an even better label not included here, we could always use that and convert all transclusions to that term using a bot. This could be a good idea, since we could then strip out all the other choices from the switch statement. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 15:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Removing auto-categorization at Template:Infobox law enforcement agency

See reply on my talk page. Vegaswikian (talk) 16:23, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Template:Quick commune19

Are you still using this, or should it be deleted? Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 03:49, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

And Template:Blank alba infobox? Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 03:57, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 15:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Portals

I think it would be useful if you could do similar changes to Template:Portal box as you did at Template:Portal. Thanks -- WOSlinker (talk) 08:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

A12 Authentication

Hi Rick and all,    While going through this A12 page, i thought of posting a question related to this. In my view A12 authentication is not required at all. What is requires is return of MN-ID from AAA. Having said that i'd say AAA need not require to check for password value. AAA need to play a role of Authorizer only. AAA should get IMSI/ESN from request and return corrosponding MN-ID into RADIUS Callback-ID attribute.    Please throw a proper light on same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sumit.pandya (talk • contribs) 09:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Well the IMSI is public knowledge. Having said that I have no idea how these things work. You could try the author of the A12 Authentication article. Rich Farmbrough, 09:16, 3 May 2010 (UTC).

Discrete mathematics

I haven't quite understood some of your edits to Discrete mathematics: you appear to have inserted some portal test code, which then interfered with your attempt to state the portal name directly. I've changed the portal reference to what I think you intended (diff). -- Radagast3 (talk) 09:25, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Well the end result is good, the first was to check default behaviour with no icon, I have since added an icon for Discrete mathematics, so that plus your edit, it's all good. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 15:34, 3 May 2010 (UTC).

Speedy deletion of Template:Portal/Images/paleontology

A tag has been placed on Template:Portal/Images/paleontology 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. Svick (talk) 09:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


Speedy deletion of Template:Portal/Images/Paleontology

A tag has been placed on Template:Portal/Images/Paleontology 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. Svick (talk) 09:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

AWB edits breaking WebCite links

Hello. I notice your edits titled "delinking ISO style dates using AWB" have been breaking all WebCite-archived sources. For instance, this edit replaced 

http://webcitation.org/query?date=2007-08-11&url=http://www.pgwodehousesociety.org.uk/awwwnorman.htm

with 

http://webcitation.org/query?date=11 August 2007&url=http://www.pgwodehousesociety.org.uk/awwwnorman.htm

Please check your logs to repair all that damage, and more importantly update your script. Thanks. 62.147.9.150 (talk) 11:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

This was nearly half a year ago. I can more usefully find all articles with invalid web-cites and fix them. Rich Farmbrough, 11:40, 3 May 2010 (UTC).

Aunt Dahlia and Gussie seem to be it. Rich Farmbrough, 13:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC).

Top Gun Talwar

What's up with Top Gun Talwar?

checkY Answered on user's talk page. 13:17, 3 May 2010 (UTC)~

Balko, Oklahoma

I am looking for information about Balko, OK. Why is it named Balko? Who was the first to settle there? Etc... Wbalko (talk) 14:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

You might want to ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Oklahoma. Rich Farmbrough, 15:12, 3 May 2010 (UTC).

Rearranging references

You need to stop rearranging references. At your present edit rate, it is not possible that you are actually reading the text of the references and deciding which one is most relevant. Moreover, the AWB "rules of use" (see WP:AWB) are clear that one should not make edits merely to change the capitalization of templates. They also say that one should not do anything controversial with AWB - and rearranging references without reading them is certainly controversial. So edits such as [1] are inappropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:11, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


That isn't true; I have seen other users bring it up, in other places. However, now that I have informed you, recommencing this series of edits would be appropriate. If you want to get a guideline that footnotes must be in numerical order, use WT:CITE. Lacking that, you need to follow the advice in WP:CITEHOW, which says to keep whatever style is established in each article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:15, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Here [2] is a separate complaint about the rearranging. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:17, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
It's not a complain it's a query and the interlocutor says "there was nothing untoward in the reference re-ordering;". Rich Farmbrough, 13:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC).
It's a complaint. In any case, this is my notice: if you want to run a bot task to put all footnotes in numerical order, then get permission for it first. Otherwise, you should not be running a single-purpose task to rearrange them until you get such approval. It is extremely unlikely to run into so many pages with this problem unless you go out of your way to find them. Getting bot approval will first require actually getting a guideline that says the references need to be in numerical order; the present guideline says instead that you should leave the established style in each article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:25, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Regarding [3], the issue here is only for footnotes that are back-to-back, and the version you cited did not have any footnotes back to back, so it had nothing to say about them. The first edit to add named references put the footnotes out of order, so the "established style" for that article is that back-to-back footnotes do not need to be in numerical order. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

And this points out the essence of the problem: if you do not know about the topic of the article, and you have not read the references being given (not the citations, but the actual references), then you have no way to tell which order is better. In this case, the next edit [4] was not just a drive-by: the editor added a lot of information and apparently was familiar with the topic. That's the sort of person who should decide which reference is most important. In some cases, it may be better to rearrange them, but it requires careful article-by-article work, and cannot be done automatically. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

And this leads to a deeper problem: even if an article had in-order footnotes at some revision, the article could also be in the "most-important first" style. Without actually looking at the references of the article, there is no way to tell. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

But the truth of the matter is that the references have just got out of order. While I know you love policing minor edits and even better rolling them back, in the end these improvements will happen one way or another. In March there were over 15,000 articles with out of order references, a good 3,000 of those have been fixed, not by me. Many more may have been created. Similarly http style markup will continue to be replaced with wiki-markup, and obscure template names like otheruses4 will be replaced with about. Your rollbacks just waste your time and everyone else's, if you want to vandal-fight get Huggle and find some vandals, otherwise there's plenty of work to be done actually making stuff better rather than getting in the way of the people who are trying to do that. I already built in a versioning system, and hacked C sharp to stop changing , no: to stop correcting - reference order to keep you happy. And in the meanwhile I estimate over 100,000 minor fixes were lost - because you perceive that someone might have done, what they actually have never claimed to have done, on some article somewhere that might one day have its references re-arranged. I say, when it is actually a problem, then we deal with it. Why borrow trouble? Thousands of edits have lead to maybe three queries - and CBM. Rich Farmbrough, 14:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC).
The reason I feel strongly about the referencing rearranging is because it isn't a minor fix: the order of references is a key choice when writing, and should not be changed lightly. So the AWB changes don't make stuff better; instead, they destroy the effort of editors who went out of their way to arrange the references carefully.
Evidence rather than supposition points to it notbeing a choice. That is what I keep telling you. Not one person has said "my carefully ordered references were put out of order and now the article is broken".
The problem is that SmackBot didn't stop changing the reference order. I check the bot's contribs from time to time, and just this weekend SmackBot was still rearranging references, which is why I blocked it. It had two other errors that I also posted to the bot's page. You didn't reply there, but today you were manually rearranging references en masse. It's far from best practice to respond to a problem with a bot by making the bad edits yourself while the bot is blocked. I do not think it is likely that you would get a bot approval to rearrange references, and such things should not be done without approval once someone has objected.
Yes because it was doing a different task form a different computer, without the special hacked up CBM version of AWB. And mostly to articles with zero references, let alone 2 in a row.
The most productive thing here would be for us to figure out how to fix SmackBot once and for all, and then simply leave reference order to the editors of each article. I have been in touch with Magioladitis, and he is thinking of adding an option to AWB to be able to disable its controversial changes while keeping the other general fixes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
As far as that goes Mag should look at my proposal on the matter. It is hard work to set up, but it would resolve the gen fixes disputes ongoing. Rich Farmbrough, 15:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC).

It's also inappropriate to run bot tasks under your own account while the bot is blocked (look at the history of [5]). — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

It happens I am prepared to do it manually, to protect the wiki from the consequences of other's foolish actions. You will notice the log was moved from being a bot log to a mere log of runs last time you engaged in this blocking activity. The runs are also being done on the hacked version of AWB, which means that and disordered references are staying disordered, therefore I am not working the claimed intention of your block, which is to keep the references out-of-order, despite no scrap of evidence supporting this as intended in even tiny minority of articles, let alone one which has sufficient currency to allow a significant number of other articles to be disfigured. Rich Farmbrough, 01:31, 4 May 2010 (UTC).
The issue is that when a bot is blocked because it is broken, it's not appropriate to run the task under your main account regardless whether you think the task is desirable. This is particularly true here, because you have had great difficulty keeping the bot under control. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

2010-5-3

In this edit [6] you changed "references" to "reflist". As WP:FOOT says, "The choice between {{Reflist}} and <references /> is a matter of style; Wikipedia does not have a general rule." As you are aware, WP:CITEHOW says not to change from one style to another at random. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to assume you have fixed the problem with your bot, and so I will not contest your unblocking of it, although I find it quite inappropriate to do so without contacting me. The next time that I need to block the bot, I'll take the matter to ANI as well. There is no reason that the same coding error should continue to (re)occur for months. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

As I point out in my block message, regardless whether you think it has good effects, there is no bot authorization to rearrange references. As I said, if I see this problem again, I will block the bot and take the matter to ANI. Unblocking your own bot in order to avoid fixing would be an abuse of your administrator abilities. However, I assume that in this case you have fixed the problem before unblocking the bot. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:59, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 3 May 2010

Template:Expand

Hi Rich,
do you have any plans on how Smackbot should handle {{expand}} and {{multiple issues|expand=...}}, regarding the TFD? It could probably remove the tag if an article is marked as a stub, as suggested.
Just asking since I was asked to remove it from {{multiple issues}}.
Cheers, Amalthea, watching your page. 12:37, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I can't believe that the tfD passed. Rich Farmbrough, 12:39, 4 May 2010 (UTC).
Heh, pretty much what I said, but I didn't follow the TfD. Amalthea 14:05, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
No I have picked myself up of the floor, SmackBot already does remove it from stubs. Rich Farmbrough, 12:54, 4 May 2010 (UTC).
:) Amalthea 14:05, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
There are on;y 20,000 uses of Expand, only 10% on stubs. WP:DRV? Rich Farmbrough, 23:57, 4 May 2010 (UTC).

Hey

How are you doing? You seem not yet reply me about this question for some weeks already.--Gzyeah (talk) 03:57, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Re:Ganeshbot stubs

Hello Rich,

Yes, some of the older stubs may have missing taxonomic cats. It is on my to do list to work on. Recently I have been making sure that the family categories do exist. I also make sure the articles do not link to disambiguation pages.

I think you are referring to the space in between <br and />. I will change it. Thanks for the tip. — Ganeshk (talk) 10:55, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot rearranging stub tags

Hi, though SmackBot is one of the best bots (and me saying that, it's no mean compliment ;-) ), I find it a bit irritating that it shuffles categories to above the stub tags.

Because I have found it makes editing easier when one puts the stub tag at the end of the "actual" article, offset with 2 empty lines (so that it will be a bit offset in the article as displayed - I think it's ugly when the stub note creeps up so closely on the article itself). And below the stub tag, categories, interwiki, defaultsort... - all the automatic tags that do not belong to the article proper. IONO how other users do it, but I think it has been the usual way as long as I can remember. It might also mess with footer infoboxes - these drop-down things -, but I have not checked (the infoboxes must not be offset, they will only look good when separated by one empty line from the main article).

IONO if this can be fixed, but I think it should, because it makes editing easier to have a clearly offset bunch of code where all these tags go. Now, one gets categories directly below the article proper, then a break, then the stub tag and the interwiki tags. Doesn't affect the output, but looks strange in the code - I always mentally "stumble" over it. Cheers, Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 11:09, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Heya... Saw your note on D's talk page. How about splitting the difference... literally. Move only the "-stub" templates below the categories. In theory, those templates will eventually get removed anyway. Just a suggestion. (And I'm a SmackBot fan, too! *grins*) - UtherSRG (talk) 11:51, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

That's what it does. Rich Farmbrough, 12:59, 5 May 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot & Template:IndigenousAustralia-stub

I think SmackBot is at least occasionally adding WPBIO templates incorrectly because the article has the above stub template eg [7] & [8]? Or that's what seems to be common to those 2, otherwise I can't work work out why it would be doing this. Misarxist (talk) 11:12, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes there's a problem with the stub category tree (these are sub-cats of "people stubs"). Back to the drawing board a bit on that one. Rich Farmbrough, 13:01, 5 May 2010 (UTC).

I imagine...

...that old habits die hard, but please see WP:NEWSECTION. Thanks! –xenotalk 17:00, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Hehe, I thought of you when I saw the edit, xeno. :)
Cheers, Amalthea 17:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
'Twas what prompted this note! ;> –xenotalk 17:13, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
'Tis what I thought. Amalthea 18:18, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Can be javascipted? Anyone? Rich Farmbrough, 23:55, 4 May 2010 (UTC).

 Fixed

Nice! You should copy/move it into a separate js so that xeno can advertise the script from now on. :) Cheers, Amalthea 08:55, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
Anyone who actually knows javascript can improve it massively in a few moments. Rich Farmbrough, 08:58, 6 May 2010 (UTC).
That reminds me, MediaWiki code is modifying the section headers a little when it creates the auto summary: it will remove all "[[:", "[[", and "]]" for one. Amalthea 09:10, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

How did you add 5,000 WPBography that fast?

I am impressed. How did you generate this list? did you just run in subcategories of ...? Cheers, Magioladitis (talk) 15:15, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes see above. And pirates. Rich Farmbrough, 16:59, 5 May 2010 (UTC).
Better turn genfixes on. Genfixes for talk pages are 100% safe and we need to add missing headers. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Less than perfect edit

Just FYI, your edit added a really odd DEFAULTSORT, presumably an assistance script that choked on the malformatted existing category, or something. No biggie. Studerby (talk) 20:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you saw presumably that the was the apparent sort order of the only "category" there? maybe worth looking for more "non categories" like that, non-existant cats are already on my mind. Thanks for letting me know. Rich Farmbrough, 20:16, 5 May 2010 (UTC).

Thank you

Thank you, for your portal updates. -- Cirt (talk) 01:08, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

You are welcome! Rich Farmbrough, 01:09, 6 May 2010 (UTC).

Hello

Not sure if your a bot or a real person! But if this is a bot pls be aware that it replacing portal links with there templates (this is great), however its doing it to the actual temples aswell, thus rendering the whole process useless. Pls see examples --> [9], [10] and [11] this are a few that i have seen. not sure if the bot has done this all over....just FYI i have fixed the ones i have seen...Moxy (talk) 01:20, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

checkY Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 02:50, 6 May 2010 (UTC).

Portals

I noticed on my watchlist that you removed the break= parameter from a portal call inside Template:maths rating. Unless you can point me to a discussion where it was agreed to remove break= from all portal template calls, you should not be removing it. Template:portal supports it; I checked. Removing the break parameter from portal templates would break other templates that depend on them, like our maths rating template would if it didn't call template:portal directly. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:34, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

For the record, I don't care about the hardcoded images one bit, provided that the edits to remove them preserve the other existing parameters. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:39, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Rrich

Hi - just wondering - are you aware that your span tag trick is also making your page name show as "Rrich Farmbrough" (at least I believe that's the cause)?  7  02:37, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's about the best I can do with the trick. Rich Farmbrough, 02:39, 6 May 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot

SmackBot recently added a WPBio banner template to Talk:BabaKiueria, although BabaKiueria is a film, not a person. Do you know what caused the misclassification? —Paul A (talk) 02:43, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's the stub category "Category:Indigenous peoples of Australia" stubs which is (wrongly) a sub category of "Australian people stubs" Rich Farmbrough, 02:47, 6 May 2010 (UTC).
(I will go through and check al the cat later on.) Rich Farmbrough, 02:48, 6 May 2010 (UTC).

Portal templates

I did not see any functional advantage to your edits to Template:Alabama portal, Template:Colorado portal, Template:Connecticut portal, Template:Florida portal, and Template:Nevada portal, so I reverted your edits. These templates were sized to have a uniform height, and they can be resized and left justified. Please see Wikipedia:List of U.S. state portals. Please let me know if these reversions cause you any grief, or if you have any other suggestions. Yours aye, Buaidh (talk) 03:30, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Greetings

Greetings Rich Farmbrough - Just letting you know that I've courtesy blanked & db-bio tagged Rhiannon Casey Dewar!. I've just seen at its History that you editted there recently. Cheers! --Technopat (talk) 10:45, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Greetings

Hi there - I have discovered i cannot load pictures and logo's to the pages. How would i go about doing this or do i need to ask somebody such as yourself to do it for me.

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Laurenfindley (talk • contribs) 13:45, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot

What do you know about Father's Rights???? I'm one of the guys who invented it in 1993 with my first book: Surviving the Feminization of America. Asa Baber was my mentor. Jeff Leving tried to get me to write HIS book. I worked in D.C. with Stu Miller and the American Fathers coalition and published articles on fathers from Penthouse to the San Francisco Chronicle. I don't even know who Bettina Arendt is!!!!

And I don't know who you are.

Leave my stuff alone. Leave ALL my stuff alone or I am going to make sure whoever the hell runs wikipedia knows about you. Go find someone else to bother.

Rich Zubaty —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.253.135.100 (talk) 06:07, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Smackbot question - edit to Nathanael Boehm

I am having trouble understanding what happened on this SmackBot edit: [12]. It looks like the bot removed references. Thanks! Jminthorne (talk) 07:39, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

This is broken, probably because User:RHaworth moved the page, deleting several revisions of the target, presumably excluding this one. Look at the diff before and after SmackBot's edit [13]. SB simply does not "prod" articles (although most new people articles with a lower case surname are eminently proddable), and only adds a very few tags, excluding COI and Notability. Rich Farmbrough, 07:51, 7 May 2010 (UTC).

svg version of File:UEFAEuropaLeague.png

Hi, you requested an svg version of File:UEFAEuropaLeague.png. See de:Datei:UEFA_Europa_League.svg. Maybe you want to upload it here, too. Cheers --Saibo (Δ)

Archive please. Rich Farmbrough, 23:57, 9 May 2010 (UTC).

Singeing the king of Spain's beard

Rich, this is a page Smackbot visited in March this year. I have reverted to the original page layout and translated the original article as was requested. I have left one paragraph for deletion with reasons on the discussion page and I am now about to add the references. I have started a discussion on whether this a world view article in the discussion page. Let me know if there is further to be done!! Thanks Jkslouth (talk) 15:46, 7 May 2010 (UTC)jkslouth

This looks good. SmackBot by the way merely dates clean-up tags (and does a little cleanup) - it doesn't place them. Rich Farmbrough, 00:12, 10 May 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot erroneously added WPBiography

SmackBot added WPBiography to an article about a company. In trying to discover why this happened, the only clue I found in the article is that it contains {{UK-architect-stub}}. That stub, unfortunately, applies to either an architect or a firm of architects. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 21:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Template:Expand

I noticed that you attempted to get the deletion of Template:Expand reviewed by putting a "deletion opposed" template. Although that edit was reverted, I have now taken the matter to deletion review. Just letting you know. Best wishes. Immunize (talk) 18:28, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 22:15, 9 May 2010 (UTC).

Incorrect change of Template:Main with AWB

Hi, in this edit to Artificial intelligence, you changed {{Main|Outline of artificial intelligence}} to {{Main}}, which doesn't work. AWB alone doesn't do that for me, so I think you have an error in one of your custom rules. Could you fix it? Thanks. Svick (talk) 15:36, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

 Fixed Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 22:16, 9 May 2010 (UTC).

please leave "| break=yes"

{{{inline}}}

You may have noticed my placing portalboxs on many many catagoies. I use the "|break=yes" on purpose there and elsewhere (like below). As you remove all the obsolete paramitors, would you leave that one in, since it is unrelated to you main purpose. I can also give you a list of most of the pages that are ready changed unnessarly, if you are willing to put them back in. Thanks. şṗøʀĸɕäɾłäů∂ɛ:τᴀʟĸ 20:49, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
checkY Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 13:09, 11 May 2010 (UTC).

The Wikipedia Signpost: 10 May 2010

Comment

Hello Rich Farmbrough, I really like what you have done with the portals, such as what you did to the Augusto Rodriguez article here: [14], however I think that you should know (in case you didn'y already know) that User:CBM is undoing your portal work, example:[15]. Just thought that you should know in case you would like to discuss the issue with him/her. Take care. Tony the Marine (talk) 16:09, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Tony. Rich Farmbrough, 05:21, 12 May 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot dating {{adoptoffer}}

I have just added a date requirement to {{adoptoffer}} and there is no obvious way to persuade users to adapt to the changes quickly. Every time the template is added to a page - which will add that page to Category:Undated adoption offers - it needs the text |month={{subt:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}} inserted before the final }}. At Bot requests they recommended SmackBot - do you mind helping me out? strdst_grl (call me Stardust) 12:26, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Not a problem. Rich Farmbrough, 13:32, 12 May 2010 (UTC).
Thanks! strdst_grl (call me Stardust) 15:40, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Portal changes

Could you point out the bot request to change the syntax of the portal template? If there is not one, you should stop changing them immediately. I do not believe a massive overhaul of a widely-used template should be carried out without any public notice. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:53, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I am sure that you will find plenty to oppose and revert. Rich Farmbrough, 23:55, 9 May 2010 (UTC).
I am sure you are aware that large sets of edits require bot approval even if you plan to use AWB. In this case, have you announced the changes on a village pump or otherwise advertised them? — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:59, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I noticed this because of this edit on my watchlist, which seems to have removed several see also links without explanation. A separate benefit of bot requests is that they lead to code testing. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:02, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I have started a section on ANI here. Unless someone else has a strong reason not to, I plan to revert the portal changes as an unapproved bot job in a couple hours. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:23, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I have a very strong reason not to. You would be reverting for no good reason. As you have often done in the past. I have hinted to you that this is not a good idea. If something is broken by all means revert but reverting that IP who changed "otheruses4" to "about" simply because you can is just foolishness. Rich Farmbrough, 00:36, 10 May 2010 (UTC).
It's also not a good idea to run bot tasks without seeking approval for them. I think you've been told that in the past, too. I know you've been here a long time and done lots of good work, but you're still subject to these little processes we have, I think. Equazcion (talk) 00:40, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Seems CBM is reverting at 4 edits per second - fantastic making pages worse at that rate. I wish he would get Huggle and spend some time with that instead. Rich Farmbrough, 09:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC).
Your evasiveness regarding your own edits detracts greatly from any sympathy I might have otherwise had for your criticism of their being reverted. Equazcion (talk) 09:39, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Coming to this late, I've just noticed you made major changes to Template:Portal without any discussion beforehand. I would like to ask you not to do this in future. There may be merits in this system, but other editors should be given the change to evaluate them. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Use of Citation needed in a template

I am thinking about using the Citation needed template in Infobox weather, in an #if statement, to display when the source parameter isn't used. But dating it using the #time function would cause them all to have the current date, which is incorrect, it should be dated when the weather infobox got added to the article. I would have to keep the date parameter empty, my concern is that when the bot is alerted to an article using Citation needed without a date, but then can't find the Citation needed template, what will happen? 117Avenue (talk) 06:24, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

We have got around this before by simply adding a "date" parameter to infoboxes. SmackBot then treats the infobox as a cleanup template. Only problems are: Smackbot isn't very good at multiline templates, or nested templates. An alternative would be to simply put a "{cn}" in the footnotes field by default (i.e. in the cut and paste copy) but this is not fully satisfactory either. Rich Farmbrough, 08:09, 12 May 2010 (UTC).
A date parameter won't work because I am trying to tag articles using unsourced weather data, if the user hasn't input the source parameter, he's not going to input a date. 117Avenue (talk) 04:33, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Motto of the Day

Hi there, Rich Farmbrough! Thought you might be interested in Motto of the Day, a collaborative (and totally voluntary) effort by a group of Wikipedians to create original, inspirational mottos. Have a good motto idea? Share it here, comment on some of the mottos there or just pass this message onto your friends.

MOTD Needs Your Help!

Delivered By –pjoef (talk • contribs) 12:20, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

IndiaStudyChannel page

Hello,

I have fixed the links problem of the IndiaStudyChannel page. More than 3 links are now pointing to it. Kindly remove the orphan tag from it.

Gyandeep Kaushal (talk) 15:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Donaldson Report

AfD was closed as "no consensus", but I think obviously your suggestion was the most appropriate. I am going to make a Dab page for "Donaldson Report" to differentiate between the various reports referred to as such. Regarding the article I nominated (re: TWA 800), what can I do now? Is there another method (Prod?), or should I just make the Dab page, work on the TWA Flight 800 alternative theories for a while, then renominate the page at some later date? LoveUxoxo (talk) 01:36, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

If TWA Flight 800 alternative theories are notable they should stay. If the information on the page is significant and either verifiable or, if contentious and about a living person, verified, then it should stay. Rich Farmbrough, 07:50, 14 May 2010 (UTC).

Template:Arcadia (band)

Rich, there's a serious problem here! I tried adding a video album to this template, which requires the "dot" that separates titles, anyway, as I done this, WP wouldn't accept this and one of those block notes appeared, saying something like "okay" or "cancel". Please fix and correct this "internal" problem, so I can resume editing! Thanks. Best, --Discographer (talk) 21:16, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Major flaw with New Features

Rich, I've had to turn off New Features and go back to Take Me Back because it does not enable anyone to edit a template with inserting the wiki "dot" without disruption, quickly ending the pending edit. Try it yourself, you will find I'm correct. Best, --Discographer (talk) 21:50, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

 · The Videos Lets try ... Rich Farmbrough, 07:42, 14 May 2010 (UTC).
 · The Videos · The Videos · The Videos Seems OK to me... but I have it turned off too most of the time. Rich Farmbrough, 07:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC).
I've got it now, (by switching back to New Features, that is; - one of the developers must have fixed it since I contacted them!) but my computer however pops a box up {"OK" / "Cancel") when I click on the insert toolbar table where the dot and other symbols are displaced while I'm in edit-mode form making it where I have to click on "OK" (or "Cancel"), in order for the edit to proceed. I suppose it's a minor issue, though it could still use some fixing up! Best, --Discographer (talk) 08:36, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
OK I was cut and pasting, but I'm trying that now ••••••••∘, still nothing - and I'm not privileged with any access to the workigs other than the usual admin stuff. Rich Farmbrough, 08:50, 14 May 2010 (UTC).

Template:catmain, etc.

Hi-just wanted you to know that whatever you did to change {{catmain}} is not working correctly. See the header at: Category:Recipients of the Order of Ushakov, it's just showing the soft redirect. --Funandtrvl (talk) 19:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

BAGBot: Your bot request SmackBot XXIV

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot XXIV as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 09:58, 15 May 2010 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

Problem with edits from a while back - NL infobox import

See [16].. See the caption display? |250px|none|alt=|Location of Absdale]] - Please investigate. –xenotalk 22:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

IPA search

Hi Rich,

I have s.t. I wonder if you can help me with. I've been trying to clean up the IPA on WP, linking to the proper language keys and standardizing our transcriptions. However, there are a good number of articles that use the IPA without transcluding an IPA templates, which besides meaning that they don't display properly on IE, makes them difficult to find and verify.

Could you perhaps add onto one of your bots a side search for IPA characters that aren't enclosed in an {{IPA... or {{pron... template, and keep a list somewhere, or flag/categorize? I could then go through and fix them up.

Or is there maybe s.o. else I should ask? Or is there a way to do a search on my own for articles that contain character X?

Thanks — kwami (talk) 07:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

{{Audio IPA too and some interwikis include IPA characters . I am looking at the following list:
ɐɑɒɓɔɕɖɗɘəɚɛɜɝɞɟɠɡɢɣɤɥɦɧɨɩɪɫɬɭɮɯɰɱɲɳɴɵɶɷɸɹɺɻɼɽɾɿʀʁʂʃʄʅʆʇʈʉʊʋʌʍʎʏʐʑʒʓʔʕʖʗʘʙʚʛʜʝʞʟʠʡʢʣʤʥʦʧʨʩʪʫʬʭʮ
Rich Farmbrough, 08:24, 14 May 2010 (UTC).
Preliminary list User:Rich Farmbrough/temp14 will remove all with references to "Azer". Based on dump form 12 March. Rich Farmbrough, 09:00, 14 May 2010 (UTC).
Wow, that was fast! Thanks!
Yes, you were right to exclude {{Audio IPA. Sorry, that slipped my mind.
Azeri only has the schwa, so any other hits in those articles would be legit, though there probably aren't many. (It might be easiest just to remove schwa from the search string, or I can ignore anything w schwa in the article name.)
I'm going through another list right now, and it's past my bedtime, but I'll get to this in a day or two. Thanks! — kwami (talk) 09:12, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Just looking at your exclusion string, "Azer" is probably good if the only hit is schwa, or if the search is case sensitive. But there are several {{Audio templates, sometimes used with unformatted IPA, and it's only {{Audio IPA that I would want to avoid. But I can start with whatever you come up with, and go back to the old list if I have any energy left. — kwami (talk)
Never mind about refining the search any further. I'v gone partway through the list and cut it down to 1200 articles. Probably can eliminate half of the remainder before it gets time intensive.
When the next dump comes along, I have a few requests (additional letters to search for), if you don't mind doing this again (or you could just tell me how), and this time we can just ignore the schwa altogether. It's found in all sorts of things besides Azeri: maybe half the list is hits on schwa. (But it was valuable to do that search at least once.) Also, I'm finding IPA symbols instead of Greek letters in chemical and mathematical formulas, which is rather amusing. — kwami (talk) 00:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Obi Muonelo

An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is Obi Muonelo. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Wikipedia:Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Obi Muonelo. Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Uniq quni error?

Hi,

Some time ago you added an infobox to the Nootdorp article. You wrote: Adding infobox from nl. Wikipedia.
There seems to be a problem with the population reference though. Do you know how to fix that? It's the same code as on the Dutch version and it works there! I think it's this bug (http://geometrus.com/wp/2010/03/uniq-qinu-bug-in-mediawiki/) but I don't know how to fix it.

Greetz,

VH —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vamhendriks (talk • contribs) 14:23, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

There are a number of things - I have fixed the following:
  • Date needs to be iso, not reversed
  • Population needs the punctuation removed.
  • Footnote needs moving to its own field
Also if you can find a figure for the area, the template will calculate the density. Rich Farmbrough, 15:54, 15 May 2010 (UTC).

Hi Rich,

Thanks for the changes :-) I have one more question for you. I have just undone my revision of this afternoon. I deleted a paragraph with information on a rugby league team that after some searching seems to actually exist (apparently I missed it in the 29 years I've lived in Nootdorp, even though the home stadium is the footballclub where I played football myself!!!). I thought the rest of the paragraph was spam also, but having discovered that I was wrong on the rugby-thing, I'm not so sure anymore. Would you mind taking a look at this text:

The town is also well renowned for its cottage arms industry, producing approx. three quarters of the Netherlands' armaments during the first Gulf War [3]. The town has lost out on such industry in recent years, with industrial giants focusing largely on the teahouses of Amsterdam.

Not knowing if this is a true thing or not, I think some things are at least questionable:

  • How is it possible that something that supposedly happened during the Gulf war has a reference to a 1944 publication (which I can't find anywhere else)?
  • If I Google the word uberbeneigektier (which I can't find in a German dictionary) I only get results pointing to this article.
  • The same roughly applies to LeckerShmecker (apart from references to this article, I find references to a person on facebook and to German cooking sites).
  • The authors of the article in the reference: Goering (Nazi war criminal) and Kandinsky (Russian painter that died in 1944)???
  • From armaments to teahouses???
  • Allthough I overlooked the rugby team (about which I'm still flabbergasted!), I'm pretty sure I would have noticed a weapons of war factory (the town is fairly small...)

What do you think?

VH —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vamhendriks (talk • contribs) 16:56, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

It was IP vandalism. Rich Farmbrough, 18:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC).

So I thought.. Thanks for the action :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.84.215.213 (talk) 18:24, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Tong edit

Hey, just a friendly note. This diff shows that you moved the comment from the cat line to the top. In the future this change shouldn't be made, because the comment doesn't make sense if it's above all the cats. Just an FYI. Wizard191 (talk) 16:45, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, sorted. Rich Farmbrough, 17:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC).
Cheers! Wizard191 (talk) 17:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 17 May 2010

Refs

When I looked through SmackBots BRFA list, I didn't see any of them that included rearranging references. So they all need to use a fixed version of AWB. If I missed something in the BRFA please let me know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:12, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, "common sense" is what I am after too. Adding a "reflist" tag does not inherently require rearranging things in the text part of the article; common sense is that the bot task would not include that. I have carefully explained before why it's bad to automatically rearrange references, and I have also pointed out that you do not have bot approval to do it. These are separate reasons why you need to fix the bot. I am not sure why you are so reluctant to do so. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:18, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
I am going to go ahead and unblock the bot, since I know you are aware of the issue now. I attempted to contact you by just stopping it, but that wasn't successful. The issue is that none of SmackBot's tasks includes rearranging references, unless I have misread the BRFAs. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:26, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Having written several bots and [17], I do not believe that maintaining a development environment is anything out of the ordinary for a bot operator; it's a basic part of the job. All that you need to do to "accomodate" me is to disable a single function in the code, which is the most trivial kind of change.
If you had pointed out that you were going to restart a fixed run, and fix the code for the broken one, I would not have blocked the bot or stopped the fixed run. However, you did not respond at all, and I have no ability to tell which runs you have started. As far as I could tell the bot simply restarted itself, maybe because of a crontab.
I will try to avoid bothering you again today, assuming that the bot code is fixed. If I notice broken edits in the future, I will point them out (of course). — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:40, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Bad formatting on tags?

Hi Rich, I have recently noticed that on some orphaned pages, you have made edits that have introduced bad wikitag formatting. Some examples are:

As you can see, the "multiple issues" tag has somehow been corrupted which is causing issues listed in the tag to not be properly tagged with their respective dates. Minor issue, I know, but I just thought I should bring it to your attention. Thanks. Matt.T.911 (talk) 13:53, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I will probably pick any pages up because of the wrong cats, but I can check my last few thousand edits fro more of the same. Rich Farmbrough, 14:00, 20 May 2010 (UTC).

Your contributed article, Deleteme now

Hello, I notice that you recently created a new page, Deleteme now. First, thank you for your contribution; Wikipedia relies solely on the efforts of volunteers such as yourself. Unfortunately, the page you created covers a topic on which we already have a page - Dick the Mockingbird. Because of the duplication, your article has been tagged for speedy deletion. Please note that this is not a comment on you personally and we hope you will to continue helping improve Wikipedia. If the topic of the article you created is one that interests you, then perhaps you would like to help out at Dick the Mockingbird - you might like to discuss new information at the article's talk page.

If you think that the article you created should remain separate, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag - if no such tag exists then the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate and adding a hangon tag is unnecessary), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. Additionally if you would like to have someone review articles you create before they go live so they are not nominated for deletion shortly after you post them, allow me to suggest the article creation process and using our search feature to find related information we already have in the encyclopedia. Try not to be discouraged. Wikipedia looks forward to your future contributions. Peasantwarrior (talk) 19:09, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Inherit the Wind

My addition to the article on "Inherit the Wind" linked to the article on the Butler Act, which clearly indicates that Scopes was not subject to imprisonment for violating the Act. What further verification could be required for the statement that Scopes was never subject to a sentence of imprisonment? John Paul Parks (talk) 04:19, 21 May 2010 (UT

The user Johannes003 makes troublesome infections to many wiki articles and also he lacks respect . His edits lacks neutral point of view and serves as monopoly. Please warn him to stop his repetitive infections.The wind or breeze 10:31, 21 May 2010 (UTC) Thank you §The wind or breeze 10:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

IMDb agrees http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0376076/awards. Rich Farmbrough, 10:54, 21 May 2010 (UTC). Why you have pasted this in my user talk ? I cant understand . The wind or breeze 11:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)→ —Preceding unsigned comment added by The wind or breeze (talk • contribs) But it was for 2004 and its National Award and its not our issue which is [TAmilnadu's State Award] —Preceding unsigned comment added by The wind or breeze (talk • contribs) 11:08, 21 May 2010 (UTC) The discussion is for the year 1999 and its for Tamil Nadu State Film Special Award for Best Actor. You understood the other way around. The wind or breeze 11:22, 21 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by The wind or breeze (talk • contribs)

Hello sir, I'm the one Johannes who this user is speaking about. He should have first approached me regarding this matter, instead he directly asked you for help and I'm glad he did, I believe he will listen to you. It's about the Tamil Nadu State Film Award (Special Prizes) in 1999. The Special Jury Award for Best Actor was given to Vikram, the Dinakaran site had earlier a full list of the awardees, but since Dinakaran has renovated its website and moved to a new server, the links are no more existent. I still was able to find a link which clearly says that Vikram won the Best Actor Award for Sethu in 1999 [18]. So, problem should solved now, unless he can't proof that Vijay won the Special Best Actor award in 1999, (which he certainly can't since it's not true). What you say? Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding. Johannes003 (talk) 11:47, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Best discuss at Talk:Tamil_Nadu_State_Film_Award_(Special_Prizes)#1999. If you two can't find agreement, then ask for help from one of the film projects. Rich Farmbrough, 12:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot

Hi i am designing a community project for Chelsea and want to make contact with all the Chelsea contributors to Wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarah farrugia (talk • contribs) 11:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

List of family offices in Switzerland

Hi there, I added links which direct to this article from other articles. Is this sufficant? Minders1 (talk) 12:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Military Barnstar

Military Barnstar
I'd like to recognize your recent efforts on general cleanup of many US Air Force pages. The Wikipedia project is greatly improved by your efforts!--Ndunruh (talk) 13:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! And to think I expected to never receive a military award! Rich Farmbrough, 13:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC).

List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War (A-F)

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a search with the contents of List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War (A-F), and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 14:27, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War

Hello, I am working on reducing the Category:Pages with broken reference names. Two pages you created on May 21, List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War (1966) and List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War (1975) have broken references, I gather because you broke them out of the larger List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War. I'm unable to load the older version of the article to restore the references (because of the size, it keeps timing out, I'm only on moderate DSL) and would greatly appreciate it if you would go back and make the repairs yourself. thank you!! - Salamurai (talk) 18:37, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

checkY Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 18:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC).
thanks! -Salamurai (talk) 18:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Oh, man. To me, you have almost ruined the article. It was once the longest article in Wikipedia. Because of this, it loses its position. I really don't like this. Carolingian (talk) 19:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Removing a stub tag

SmackBot has twice removed a stub tag from Video blogging, and I'm not really sure why. Is it from a size threshold or something? Either way, I don't really agree with the decision. And I had reverted the first edit that did it, only to have SmackBot come back and do it again. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 00:43, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the article is bigger than "few sentences". So it's not as stub. Try using {{expand-section}} in order to request expand of a certain section. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Anyway the bot should probably not be edit warring over it :) Does the bot check whether it has already been reverted? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:12, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
No it is AWB. I is only edit warring in that it is happening to revisit an article, no that it is searching out either "long stubs" or it's own changes undone. Rich Farmbrough, 08:35, 23 May 2010 (UTC).

Smackbot and Template:Lede

Re bot edits like this: {{lede}} was changed to be a redirect to {{Lead rewrite}} rather than {{Lead too long}}. Cheers, cab (talk) 07:23, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I have regenerated the rule base. Rich Farmbrough, 10:29, 23 May 2010 (UTC).

Portal box

I just wanted to stop and say good work on fixing the coding for the portalbox template, its much cleaner and easier to use now. One question, since the portal box template can work with 1 or many portals doesn't this make the portal template somewhat deprecated? If the portal box logic were applied to the portal template then there would be no need for the other and we could eliminate 1 of the templates. Just a suggestion. Cheers--Kumioko (talk) 14:25, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes I would like to merge the templates. Unfortunately there are many instances of "Portal" with the image as parameter 2. Rich Farmbrough, 14:32, 22 May 2010 (UTC).
Thats a good point. --Kumioko (talk) 15:09, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I also want to stop by and say thanks for adding the Portal:Capital District box to a bunch of Capital District-related articles. We appreciate it! upstateNYer 21:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Since it relates to the same topic Ill add my comment here. I wanted to let you know that another user is going behind you and redoing the United States Marine Corps portals to the template. --Kumioko (talk) 15:24, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

United States visas by type

Can you help removing WPbiography for all articles in Category:United States visas by type. The tag was added accidentally by SmackBot. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Certainly. Rich Farmbrough, 18:58, 23 May 2010 (UTC).

RfD nomination of Template:Too Short

I have nominated Template:Too Short (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. The Evil IP address (talk) 21:24, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors

Please exclude Help:Cite errors and all subpages from SmackBot. There are several subpages that are used to demonstrate and maintain the error messages and should not be fixed. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:31, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

checkY Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 14:33, 24 May 2010 (UTC).
See the history of Help:Cite errors/Cite error refs without references. I'm not sure how the exclusion is implemented of how it could break. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:40, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

General Cleanup

Okay, I understand your dislike of {{BD}} and {{lifetime}} but it appears that you are putting more than one {{DEFAULTSORT}} on some pages and sometimes they are not identical thereby causing a conflict. I have found three instance in edits that you made in the last half-hour. Are you going to go back and fix those articles or should I continue to resolve the conflicts?

Also, could your clean-up include putting the value for {{DEFAULTSORT}} as the value of |listas= on the Talk Page of the Articles?

Thank you. JimCubb (talk) 18:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry. It seems you were taking care of the problem when I jumped into the middle of it. However, there is another problem.

The template "Northern Ireland by year" seems to have a {{DEFAULTSORT}} value hidden within it. The articles that use it are named appropriately "yyyy in Northern Ireland" and should probably be sorted that way as I am certain you agree since you put {{DEFAULTSORT}} on the 79 pages that use the template. I am not a template writer but you are. Would you please look at the syntax in the template and remove the hidden value? Thank you. JimCubb (talk) 19:05, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. JimCubb (talk) 19:20, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Al B. Romano

Somebody keeps vandalizing the Al B. Romano and I'm having trouble implementing the right procedure for preventing unregistered users from doing that. Does Wiki have such a procedure? Shaneymike (talk) 22:51, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

checkY Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 23:02, 24 May 2010 (UTC).
Appreciate it. I'll totally understand if this article winds up being deleted due to lack of notability and I certainly won't bitch about it if that happens. It just really pisses me off to see somebody act as childish as whoever keeps vandalizing it. You know what I mean? Shaneymike (talk) 23:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot questioning PsychoPy notability

SmackBot put up a notability question mark for the PsychoPy page. I think there is sufficient notability to it: 

 - it is software used by a significant number of people (the homepage has >1500 uniques visitors per month)
 - it is pointed at by other pages on wikipedia
 - it has 2 articles published about it (referenced on the page). Although these were written by the software author they have been through external peer-review as quality control
 - it is an open-source equivalent of other commercial packages, eg. Presentation_(Software) and e-Prime_(Software) that do have similar pages.

I guess the problem is that the page was principally written by me (the author of the software). But I've tried to be totally unbiased and reported solely what the software is and how it came about.

Is there any more I can/should do to convince you and/or SmackBot that this is a genuine page of encyclopedic interest to others? I cringe a little at presenting usage/download stats (e.g. the Presentation_(Software) page above lists their own claims of having 10,000 users as an external reference). But I can add stuff like that if it's needed.

cheers Jon.peirce (talk) 11:15, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

checkY Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:21, 26 May 2010 (UTC).

ANI

I have reported your resumption of the unapproved portal bot job at ANI, here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry - here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Rich, your input would be welcome at the ANI thread (I'm especially interested to know if your editing was manual (and if so, how you managed to edit so fast, overlook mistakes, and edit at the same time as editing in other areas), semi-automatic, or fully automated), also, please turn off the bot while that and the BRfA request you just submitted are ongoing. - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:47, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 24 May 2010

Slovakian villages

Hi Rich! I created the Slovakian villages in the wiki dark ages when I did not know about pin maps or infoboxes. They were created with rather redundant district maps. I was wondering if you could make a template like you did with Hungary and add infoboxes to all of the articles with coordinates for pin and remove these maps at the same time? Something like this. I believe that Slovak wiki has the infoboxes and the information can just be copied into English if that would be best...I've added a few to articles like Bruty but this sort of thing would best be done with what I suggested I think. How are you? We haven't spoken for a while. I rather got the impression you got tired of me, understandable.. Dr. Blofeld White cat 09:14, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean broken? I see... Dr. Blofeld White cat 12:12, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of U.S. state portals

I like your rearrangement of Wikipedia:List of U.S. state portals. Originally, this was just a list of U.S. state portals and nothing more. As more things were added, they were put on the right. Your arrangement is much more logical. Yours aye, Buaidh (talk) 18:51, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I was wondering if the page would belong now at a slightly different title, but I couldn't come up with anything satisfactory Wikipedia:List of U.S. state meta-pages is accurate but clumsy, all the other useful terms like list and index are specific items already. Rich Farmbrough, 18:57, 27 May 2010 (UTC).

London Transport

Was this series of edits discussed anywhere? At least one (Crayford Manor House Astronomical Society) has no relationship whatsoever to London Transport, while Holborn Viaduct railway station has had a link to P:LT added immediately below :llan identical existing link. What criteria are you using in selecting which pages get this link added? – iridescent 20:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Look at the history fro Crayford_Manor_House_Astronomical_Society and you will see the net edit is to remove an unwanted navbox. Rich Farmbrough, 20:59, 28 May 2010 (UTC).
Ah, I see. If you're doing the run in future it would probably be worth skipping anything that already has a link to P:LT on it (most of the LT infoboxes include it) to avoid the duplication as with Holborn Viaduct (which currently has three copies of the link). – iridescent 21:03, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes I actually was doing it by hand, I whittled down several hundred articles to about 30. The point was to remove redundant boxes from other pages (by removing a transcluded transclusion) not add them where they weren't wanted. Rich Farmbrough, 21:07, 28 May 2010 (UTC).
Aah, got you. Makes sense now. – iridescent 21:08, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Holborn Viaduct, however you are perfectly correct, I have removed the surplus item. Rich Farmbrough, 21:07, 28 May 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot is awesome

Thanks for making it. I'd been doing things wrong with the formatting of links, and I hadn't been looking forward to fixing them all by hand. It did all of that for me. Keep up the good work! =) Faceless Enemy (talk) 01:39, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough, 17:55, 30 May 2010 (UTC).

User:Rich Farmbrough/temp60

Rich, I'm wondering why your development page User:Rich Farmbrough/temp60 has been added to the Led Zeppelin Project. Probably no big deal but the page is showing up in project stats as needing an assessment, etc. Please remove the project banner from that page when you get the chance. Thanks. --DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 21:36, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Comparison of regular expression engines

Hello, SmackBot has twice deleted a reference on the page Comparison of regular expression engines, making the page kick out on Category:Pages with broken reference names. I don't know what its problem is, could you please make it stop or change the ref's name to something that it will like? Thanks. (Also, your user message on SmackBot's talk page has typos, you may want to fix.) - Salamurai (talk) 21:47, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. Two refs on the same page with the same name, but grouped differently, and using the same group name. I changed on ref name, I should probably have changed the group names. Rich Farmbrough, 22:18, 30 May 2010 (UTC).
thanks. Didn't notice the group names were all the same; I'm about to change that. - Salamurai (talk) 22:27, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
actually, never mind, renaming the groups doesn't actually work. - Salamurai (talk) 22:34, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

On SmackBot, when you "add a new section" a notice appears suggesting leaving a note here instead, that's where the typos were. I just discovered I can edit that notice (User talk:SmackBot/Editnotice) and have done so. (I spend a lot of time proofreading.) thanks for your help - Salamurai (talk) 22:42, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

TY. Rich Farmbrough, 23:02, 30 May 2010 (UTC).

Monthly cleanup categories

I see you are doing something that makes a bit of a problem e.g. in Category:Articles needing additional references from June 2010, so I'll rely on you to make the categories this month. Unless you tell me I can go ahead. Debresser (talk) 10:01, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I felt sure you were going to do something like that sooner or later. If you need any help, please tell me so. Debresser (talk) 10:13, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
It strikes me as rather redundant to have these pages with {{Null}} as their only content. Can't that be avoided? Debresser (talk) 11:41, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I did a few, but am not up to doing all of them. I have no time to create the subtemplates. You may have noticed I am hardly on Wikipedia nowadays. I'll checks those I already did though. Debresser (talk) 11:49, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I made a fix and a small change to Template:Monthly clean up category/to add. Looks nice now, IMHO. Debresser (talk) 12:03, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I had quite some work cleaning up a few mistakes I made before I found out how everything works. In addition, I tried to add a whiteline in front of the TOC, just as there are extra whitelines in front and after the refresh button. I added it in Template:Monthly clean up category/core, but don't see any change. Could you have a look at it, please. Debresser (talk) 12:20, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

That worked. Nice. BTW, wouldn't it be better to have the message before the refresh button? Debresser (talk) 12:29, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I think the refresh button is useful for people who work intensiively on a certain category. But isdoesn't seem logical to have it between the general description of all categories and the specific message. It could come between the message and the TOC, e.g. Debresser (talk) 12:34, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Not completely. :) Sometimes a date-dependend interwiki is added to a cleanup category. Debresser (talk) 12:39, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

And I guess {{As of}} still needs to be done by hand. Debresser (talk) 12:40, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
You had to introduce |datecat= to solve the problem of subcategories, I see. Nice. Debresser (talk) 12:42, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I obviously agree with you not to create dated interwikis automatically. Please consider the placement of the refresh button again sometime. Good luck! Debresser (talk) 12:55, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

The new button is too big. And inconveniently placed. Just keep the old one, but have it right above the TOC. Debresser (talk) 14:18, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Must be a matter of taste. ;-) Debresser (talk) 16:48, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot

Not sure what happened here, but it completely messed up the page. Xeworlebi (t•c) 16:35, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Very oddly there is (was) an empty element in the list of redirects to {{Expand section}}. Fixed for now. Thanks for the note. Rich Farmbrough, 17:27, 31 May 2010 (UTC).
Caused by template: {{...}}.. sigh
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