User talk:Trappist the monk/Archive 9

Citation Style 1 templates
{{Cite arXiv}}	arXiv preprints
{{Cite AV media}}	audio and visual media
{{Cite AV media notes}}	AV media liner notes
{{Cite bioRxiv}}	bioRxiv preprints
{{Cite book}}	books and chapters
{{Cite CiteSeerX}}	CiteSeerX papers
{{Cite conference}}	conference papers
{{cite document}}	short, stand-alone, offline documents
{{Cite encyclopedia}}	edited collections
{{Cite episode}}	radio or TV episodes
{{Cite interview}}	interviews
{{Cite journal}}	academic journals
{{Cite magazine}}	magazines, periodicals
{{Cite mailing list}}	public mailing lists
{{Cite map}}	maps
{{Cite medRxiv}}	medRxiv preprints
{{Cite news}}	news articles
{{Cite newsgroup}}	online newsgroups
{{Cite podcast}}	podcasts
{{Cite press release}}	press releases
{{Cite report}}	reports
{{Cite serial}}	audio or video serials
{{Cite sign}}	signs, plaques
{{Cite speech}}	speeches
{{Cite SSRN}}	SSRN papers
{{Cite tech report}}	technical reports
{{Cite thesis}}	theses
{{Cite web}}	web sources not covered by the above
See also	Specific-source templates; Citation Style 1 wrapper templates
	v; t; e;

Logging skipped pages for further attention[edit]

Can you create a Project page, perhaps a subpage of the User page, with a list of pages attempted but skipped by the bot for one reason or another? This would allow us to go in manually, and see if further attention is needed.

This is partly in response to this comment at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Monkbot 16, in which Trappist the monk mentioned that pages Ad valorem tax and Ad hominem had been skipped by the bot during the trial run. The History at those two pages shows no trace of its passage because they were skipped, so how are we to know which pages may need examination?

Something like this would be nice
Monkbot skipped pages log 2019 September September 05 Ad hominem; rev=913591564; access=2019-09-05_13:57:21.123; Err=12345-22 (Parse error, line 22); Log=12345-abcdefg-6789 Ad valorem tax; rev=870501885; access=2019-09-05_13:57:21.456; Err=12345-4 (Parse error, line 4); Log=12345-abcdefg-6789

I'm assuming you can just grep the logs or create a bot that will, and dump the skipped articles into User:Monkbot/Skipped pages/2019/September or whatever organization would make sense to you wrt to bot design and expected volume of skipped pages. On the Project page, I'd like to see a bulleted list, one bot-unprocessed article per bullet, wikilinked to the article, appended with some error code meaningful to the bot (if any), plus any additional reference string or link which would help you get back to the original bot run or log, in case you needed to follow up some weird individual case. Doable? Adding Primefac. Mathglot (talk) 21:16, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, the bot could do a dummy edit to the article, logging its passage and error code in the history; then no Project page would be needed. Mathglot (talk) 21:18, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Umm, pages that get skipped will be retained in Category:CS1 errors: deprecated parameters; isn't that sufficient?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:50, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see what that category page has to do with Monkbot. There seem to be hundreds of pages listed there, and none of the few I checked seem to have anything to do with pages skipped by the bot. And if they are mixed in there somewhere, however would one find them? Your bot does generate a log, right? Mathglot (talk) 22:02, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how bots work, but at least one bot I have seen traverses categories in alphabetical order. That way, humans can look at the bot's contributions, see where it has reached in the alphabet, and look at articles in the category that are in the section that has already (presumably, with a few caveats) been traversed by the bot. If Monkbot has the ability to start at the top of the category, we human gnomes can follow behind it and work on the strange cases. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:10, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95:, following behind it is my intent, also, but that only works for the ones it touches, not the ones it doesn't touch, right? A log solves the latter case. Mathglot (talk) 22:12, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Articles that the bot's Task 16 fixes will no longer appear in Category:CS1 errors: deprecated parameters. The articles that the bot ignores or can only fix partially will remain in that category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:14, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, sure; but it will also retain anything the bot screws up, or wasn't programmed to handle, or forgot. Any batch process, especially one intended to touch tens of thousands of objects, leaves a trace of its activity so what it does can be monitored. Output logs are not the latest technology; this is SOP. Working the way you recommend, requires the a priori assumption that the bot always works as you expect it to. A poor assumption in programming, especially for a one-off. Mathglot (talk) 22:24, 6 September 2019 (UTC) Mathglot (talk) 22:24, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The list of articles that the bot process can be alpha sorted. There isn't a way that I know of to 'program' that into awb so it will rely on me remembering that I need to sort before running.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:35, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Monkbot is a user account with automated (bot) privileges. It uses WP:AWB as its calculating engine. Task 16: remove replace deprecated dead-url_params is the sixteenth task that Monkbot has been permitted to perform.

Because Category:CS1 errors: deprecated parameters lists all articles with deprecated cs1|2 parameters, that category is the source that task 16 will operate on. Task 16 will replace all instances of |dead-url= and |deadurl= with |url-status= in each or those articles except when the article is skipped by awb because the article contains private unicode characters (there may be other reasons for this kind of technical skip that I'm not remembering), because the article has a {{bots}} template, because all of the offending cs1|2 templates have html comments. This last condition is the condition that caused task 16 to skip Ad hominem and Ad valorem tax.

If there are two cs1|2 templates that have the deprecated parameter and one of those templates has an html comment, the other template (without an html comment) will be fixed but the article will remain in CS1 errors: deprecated parameters. This condition is much more likely than an outright skip.

AWB maintains a list of articles that it skips. It is possible to save that list though I'm not much convinced that saving the list is really beneficial because those articles will already be listed in the category.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:32, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If it's not difficult (i.e., on the level of redirecting STDOUT or STDERR, or similar?) can we do it, just in case? Mathglot (talk) 23:17, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely sure why this list is needed, but maybe if you explain where in the "process chain" this task will assist, I might understand better.

TTM loads all of the pages in Category:CS1 errors: deprecated parameters into AWB
Monkbot proceeds through the list, making changes where necessary and skipping what should be skipped.
Any pages not edited by Monkbot will still be in the above category.
Pages in said category will be checked by us lowly humans.

Now, AWB does produce a log of pages that were edited and pages that were skipped, and I get "it's easy so why not just do it", but it also takes time and effort to format and copy that information on to Wikipedia, so since the pages that were skipped will still be in the category (and all of the edited pages will be in Monkbot's contribs) I guess I fail to see the usefulness. Again, maybe I'm missing something obvious. Primefac (talk) 01:39, 7 September 2019 (UTC) (please ping on reply)[reply]

Significant HTML size increase due to September 3 Cite template change[edit]

Hi Trappist,

I'm a member of the Wikimedia Performance Team. We've noticed in our performance tests a potential performance degradation for Firefox on English Wikipedia around the time you deployed the latest changes to Module:Citation/CS1. There was also a MediaWiki deployment around that time, but at this stage the template change seems like a possible explanation.

This template change increases compressed HTML size significantly on the articles we track in our performance tests. By as much as 1 or 2kb per article. This is due to the new errors appearing in the HTML all over the place, such as the cs1-visible-error spans.

Adding a lot of redundant HTML not only impacts transfer size (which means it takes longer to load a page), it also affects the browser's DOM parsing time, by having all this extra HTML to process once it's downloaded.

Is the expectations that these errors, and the extra HTML they add to the page, will disappear once editors make the necessary changes to the wikitext? If so, is there any historical example of how long it might take for the enwiki community to tackle the bulk of this work? Just to get an idea of how long the performance impact of this change is expected to last.

Thanks, GDubuc (WMF) (talk) 07:55, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just so I understand, for a long time we have been told that we "don't need to worry about performance". I don't know where that comes from but I see it pop up periodically. Are you saying that that statement is a myth? Where are performance / size / whatever limits specified?

Are you seeing the 1 or 2kb per article on every article that cs1|2 touches? If you are then something is probably broken that doesn't manifest itself in ways that I know how to test.

Can you give me an example of what you mean by a lot of redundant HTML? So I can see them, what articles do you track?

cs1-visible-error and cs1-hidden-error spans have been part of cs1|2 rendering for a very long time, they are not at all new.

Generally, when newly updated, for whatever reason, there is a flood of new error messaging that eventually gets reduced by bot, by gnomes (sometimes to zero occurrences, sometimes to some other amount). This recent change was a bigger flood.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:26, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It might be more effective to ping @GDubuc (WMF):. WP:FAST by its own text seems to apply more to regular edits, and excludes changes to widely used templates, but I am not an expert. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:48, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If bots take care of those, that's fine then, I imagine the amount of new errors should get fixed quickly. I guess we noticed that particular spike both because it was bigger than before and because it might have affected disproportionately the 3 test articles we track (this is where I saw a 1-2kb increase, we don't track this data site-wide). Already we've noticed that on one of the articles editors have cleaned all the errors and we're back to the same DOM size as before (and same performance for Firefox). What's important, I think, is that there are efforts to clean them up (by bot or manual work) when big spiked of cs1-visible-error and cs1-hidden-error happen. It ensures that the impact on readers is short-lived.GDubuc (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that, but could you please answer the questions that I asked?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:17, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Trappist the monk: See Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. I read it again and it seems to reflect my understanding. The point is not that it's impossible for what we do to affect server performance but it's extremely rare and in any case the WMF will step in if it becomes necessary. It almost never makes sense for us to consider server performance in the things we do by ourselves. E.g. it's rarely useful in discussions to say something like 'we shouldn't do this because the servers may get slow'. I wouldn't say we should absolutely never consider it, and the page seems to reflect that. There are things which higher level editors can do which can have an effect. These are so rare that it rarely makes sense for us to worry about them. Still if you are doing something which will have a massive effect on hundreds of thousands of pages it may in very rare cases make sense to ask if it will be a problem, or change the way you are doing things. (Not so relevant here but I also emphasise server performance for a reason. If you do something to a page and it now takes 30 seconds to load instead of 1 second, you probably should worry about that performance and see what you can do to return to a more reasonable loading time. As the page says, do worry about individual page performance when you can measure it.) But even then, it's still not something to stress out about and you're probably fine just not worrying about it most of the time. In the event that there is an issue, the WMF will step in if it becomes necessary. Of course if they do step in, they shouldn't be ignored. While I can't speak for the WMF, my read of the situation is not that the WMF is saying you made an error in not consulting them or considering performance. The point as I see it is that they detected a problem and needed to know if they need to do anything or it is going to resolve by itself soon. Nil Einne (talk) 17:02, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How do I use Monkbot?[edit]

Hello. I've been looking over the page User:Monkbot and can't find any directions on how to use it. I've never used any bots before actually, so I'm a little ignorant on the subject but was expecting some kind of instructions on the page similar to as at User:Citation bot/use. Also I did a search for general information on how to run bots on wikipedia but can't seem to find anything. Can you or someone else who follows this page help out? I'm particularly interested in using tasks 14 and 16.--Jamesy0627144 (talk) 04:39, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You don't. Monkbot is my bot account.

If you want to run a bot, create your own bot account, write a task for it, get that task approved a WP:BRFA. Did you read WP:BOTS?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 08:58, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OK thanks. I got confused a little bit because you can request User:Citation bot to run on any page and I assumed your bot was like that. I'm just looking for an easy way to get rid of the red text in the references section even though it now only appears in preview mode. Wanted to run it on just a few pages but if I have to make my own bot that sounds kind of complicated and I'll probably be better off just editing those few pages manually. Is your bot eventually going to visit every page on wikipedia though? Maybe I shouldn't even bother in that case.--Jamesy0627144 (talk) 09:46, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think that you may be talking about something other than the errors that tasks 14 & 16 would be fixing. cs1|2 does not display any error messages in preview that it doesn't also display live. Can you give me an example page to illustrate what you mean?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:54, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I could have sworn I previewed a page the other day and it had a bunch of red text, but I tried it out just now and I don't see any red. Sorry about that, and I'm not going to worry this anymore now that I don't see a bunch of red live or in preview.--Jamesy0627144 (talk) 10:17, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki caches an html version of a page. It does not re-render a page every time it is requested (that takes too much computing power). Likely what happened is you viewed a page that had been cached before the 3 September update to the cs1|2 module suite. When you previewed it, the page was re-rendered with the error messages. If you want to see those messages, you can add this to your User:Jamesy0627144/common.css:

.citation-comment {display: inline !important;}

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:38, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Monkbot removing format=PDF[edit]

Why is Monkbot removing |format= from URLs linking to PDF files? SLBedit (talk) 00:19, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Give me an example of where you are seeing that?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:21, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies, it's not's your bot; it's Citation bot (talk · contribs). SLBedit (talk) 00:29, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Monkbot[edit]

I see you use AWB, as well as run MonkBot. Would it be possible to run Task 16 on AWB? That way general fixes could be performed as well.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:18, 12 September 2019 (UTC).[reply]

Monkbot task 16 is running on awb. I have chosen to never do general fixes with anything that I do with awb because I do not want to be responsible for edits that I do not control.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:28, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) Rich Farmbrough. there is also the point that turning on genfixes would slow it down – not something you'd want with the huge number of pages that Task 16 has to get through. --NSH001 (talk) 20:53, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It would be negligible. Trappist is running AWB throttled, unless I am very much mistaken. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:00, 12 September 2019 (UTC).[reply]

Ah, I got the impression that you were using python for some reason. I understand your concerns wrt general fixes. I wish I could bring myself to put a BRFA in, but it still brings back bad memories. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:00, 12 September 2019 (UTC).[reply]

An additional population of articles for Monkbot 16[edit]

I see Monkbot 16 crunching away at the deprecated parameters category; it seems to be doing well. I have noticed that many/most of the articles in Category:CS1 errors: invalid parameter value are also in need of dead-url= fixes, typically where we have updated a wrapper template to pass |url-status= instead of |dead-url=. A typical example is {{cite Sports-Reference}} (a wrapper) with |dead-url=. If Monkbot can fix those as well, that would be great, since the effect on watchlists would be less than human editing. If not, let me know and I'll start chipping away at them. It looks like there is a stable population of 3,000 to 4,000 pages in that "invalid" category that are really deprecated parameter fixes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:48, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If what you are suggesting is like the fix I made to {{cite Sports-Reference}}, I think that I will decline. I don't really want to train task 16 to write template code. If you have a list of templates that are simple wrappers then I can feed them to the bot and see what we get.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:55, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for being unclear. The proposed bot edits would be like this one, to an affected article that was in the invalid parameter value category, not in the deprecated parameters category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:23, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

When task 16 encounters those kinds of citation templates, it skips them. I'm working with short lists of articles so when I've collected some number of articles that were skipped (because private use area unicode character, because an article transcludes a portion from another where the error actually resides, where the template is an uncommon redirect, where the template is a wrapper around a cs1|2 template, ...) I deal with them before setting the bot back to work. When I encounter an article with {{cite Sports-Reference}}, I'll add it to the list of recognized templates that the bot can fix. That's easy; the painful ones are the transclusions because the errors show up in the transcluding and transcluded articles and the transcluding has to be null edited after the transcluded is fixed.

I know, running off at the mouth; does that make sense?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:45, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That all makes sense. I really should think less about it and let your bot edit until it gets stuck. Then we can look at what is left and figure out how to process it. At this point, it looks like the deprecated parameter category membership is holding steady despite Monkbot's edits, because the module changes are taking a while to filter into the article population.

BTW, I made a pretty good pass through template space and fixed a bunch of dead-url parameters, so you shouldn't run into too many transclusions of outdated templates in the deprecated parameter category. If you do run into templates that I missed, let me know here, and I'll do a search for similar problems. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:27, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is rather a David vs Goliath sort of contest: one older win 10 box (assisted by who knows how many gnomes) vs a server farm. Ultimately, the little guys shall win.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:03, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Monkbot malfunctions[edit]

Hi, I noticed a number of instances where this bot is blanking pages, for example here and many others around this time. —Bruce1ee^talk 13:11, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the report. I've seen that happen with other bot tasks which leads me to suspect that the problem lies within awb and not necessarily in the bot task though I don't know why. awb has been running this task for multiple days and thousands and thousands of edits. During that time I have not restarted awb. When I tried to run the bot task against articles that were blanked, the bot appeared to perform properly (I did not allow a save) and I notice from the bot's contributions page that the bot returned to normal editing so whatever broke did not stay broken. I have killed awb and will restart. Please let me know if this problem happens again.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:11, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Monkbot is editing AFD[edit]

I don't think your bot should be editing 5 year old AFDS [1] It says at the top "No further edits should be made to this page." Dream Focus 00:24, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. Template renderings are not frozen when a page gets archived. The cs1|2 templates are not static; they get updated, fixed, new features, etc. Some of those updates, fixes, new features cause the archived pages to become members of the various subcategories of Category:CS1_errors. If monkbot and gnomes did not repair those cs1|2 templates in the archived pages, those pages would live in the error categories forever as clutter.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:21, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Publisher[edit]

BBC News is a publisher, not a website. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:17, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You don't say, but if you are talking about Monkbot/task 14, that task does not write |website=BBC News. If I am mistaken in this belief, show me where task 14 made such an edit.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:28, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite the same thing, but equivalent: [2], changing publisher to |work=BBC News within {{cite news}}. Not a problem in that particular instance, as I was able, in the next edit, to sneakily side-step the issue by simply deleting, as unused, the whole citation. But I do agree with Yngvadottir, as you're aware already, that BBC News and similar organizations are publishers. --NSH001 (talk) 12:07, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BBC News is the eponymous publication of BBC News, a business division of BBC. {{cite news}} is a cs1|2 periodical template. cs1|2 periodical templates cite articles in publications (the 'work'), not in business divisions. cs1|2 periodical templates produce metadata using the standard's journal object. When a work or periodical parameter is left blank or omitted because editors misuse |publisher= for the publication, the metadata are incomplete (the metadata standard does not support the concept of 'publisher' in the periodical object) – those who consume such misused {{cite news}} (and the other misused periodical templates) cannot know the publication that holds the cited article.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:53, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't give a rat's ass for metadata, which so far as I can gather means "machine data we feed to more or less nefarious corporations" and should never outweigh either accuracy or comprehensibility for human readers. As NSH001 says, BBC News is a publisher; they produce articles and videos that appear on various linked websites, with names including "BBC Future" and "BBC East Anglia". The bot edit in question was made to Hvaldimir, where recent tinkering with the citation templates also produced an irremediable red message because one reference is to a particular website produced by a Norwegian newspaper, and for accuracy and clarity both need to be cited, especially since newspapers/publishers aren't linked in the article to prevent a sea of blue in parts of the references. This tinkering—for the benefit of said corporations at the expense of clarity and accuracy, not to mention assuming bad faith of editors where much of the misuse you speak of could probably be attributed to not understanding the terminology used in the templates, or to differences in regional usage (UK newspapers don't seem to italicise newspaper names)—is making me regret using the citation templates at all; I think if I return to writing articles for mainspace I'll go back to simply typing it all in in plaintext. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:18, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

machine data we feed to more or less nefarious corporations. Do you have evidence to support that rather extraordinary claim? The metadata are available to anyone with reference management software; Zotero is one such tool used by human readers. Of course it is possible that 'nefarious corporations' (whatever those might be) are consuming the metadata because, after all, everything here at en.wiki can be used by anyone or anything (nefarious or no) for any purpose (also nefarious or no).

BBC News does publish articles in an eponymous website, BBC News (here's one), so does BBC Future (example). I expect that the regions, are best cited as |department= of |work=BBC News.

I do not deny that the cs1|2 templates are complicated; they are. We put error messaging into these templates so that editors who misuse them through naivete or ignorance can learn from their mistakes; if you don't know that something is wrong, you won't fix it nor will you learn to do it correctly.

UK newspapers don't seem to italicise newspaper names nor do US newspapers but neither are they citing themselves. If you are claiming that newspaper names should not be italicized then perhaps your first step is to raise the issue at WT:CITE because WP:CITEHOW instructs editors at en.wiki to italicize newspaper names in citations. In your example from Hvaldimir, reprduced here:

{{cite news |url=https://www.vgtv.no/video/176284/frykter-at-spionhvalen-skal-lide-samme-skjebne-som-hollywood-stjerne |title=Frykter at "spionhvalen" skal lide samme skjebne som Hollywood-stjerne |trans-title=Fears that the 'spy whale' will suffer the same fate as Hollywood star |website=VG TV |publisher=''Verdens Gang'' |date=3 May 2019 |type=video, 2 mins, 55 secs |language=Norwegian }}

"Frykter at "spionhvalen" skal lide samme skjebne som Hollywood-stjerne" [Fears that the 'spy whale' will suffer the same fate as Hollywood star]. VG TV (video, 2 mins, 55 secs) (in Norwegian). Verdens Gang. 3 May 2019. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

you use the newspaper's name as the publisher. At the bottom of the linked article, the publisher appears to be the corporate entity: VGTV AS — Verdens Gang. As a corporate entity, the publisher is not italicized.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:40, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot find our article on BBC News (publication). — Fourthords | =Λ= | 16:24, 16 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Woohoo[edit]

Wishing Trappist the monk a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Mjs1991 (talk) 08:59, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Monkbot[edit]

Is doing a great job overall. If possible, if it at some point could take over the job of doing the task of the defunct Yobot it would be great. Cheers.--BabbaQ (talk) 23:34, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No thank you. I have enough to keep myself occupied without taking over some task that another editor wrote. Yobot's operator/author is still around so perhaps your best course of action it to take the matter up with the bot operator.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:59, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Precious anniversary[edit]

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 04:57, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:Monkbot/task 16: test[edit]

would it be possible to remove this page from Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls? thank you. Frietjes (talk) 23:42, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

done.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:00, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bot not adding bot edit/minor edit tags[edit]

It's a bot so the former should for sure add that....and it does seem like what it does are minor edits. So...can you? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 12:37, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On my watch list, articles that are touched by Monkbot are marked as bot and minor edits. Currently task 16 and occasionally task 14 is all that is running. Can you give me an example that shows what concerns you?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:44, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm I think it must have been a bug because it seems fine now. Sorry to bother. Heh. :D ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 12:21, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Idea[edit]

Hello

I have a idea can I tell you? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jicco123 (talk • contribs) 18:41, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you want.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:31, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I want make a "new" design for the mergers and acquistions is this possible or will it change back? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jicco123 (talk • contribs) 20:03, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what you mean by mergers and acquistions so can't say anything about a "new" design.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:39, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

here a example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dell_ownership_activities — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jicco123 (talk • contribs) 14:32, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Consider copying the table into your sandbox and make the changes there. Then, when you have the table as you think it should be, do one of these:

per WP:BOLD replace the existing table and hope that other editors agree with your change
start a discussion at Talk:List of Dell ownership activities linking to your sandbox and explaining why you think the article should be changed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:58, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mhm yes I know

But i only want to delete unnecessary information Can I Show you my playground? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:C1:E702:BA42:CC44:4F8E:27E1:E492 (talk) 15:33, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you wish. Better would be to discuss with editors interested in the article.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:55, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Okay thanks I have a other question why is so often in refs the archive links? example a company was bought for 6 billion but the archive says 6.333 billion? why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jicco123 (talk • contribs) 07:54, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline for Monkbot?[edit]

Monkbot has been filling up my watchlist lately. Thanks for the good work. Out of curiosity, how many articles per day does it do? How long do you expect it will take to go through all of Wikipedia? --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 00:23, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's about halfway through the alphabet over the past two or three weeks. Probably as long for the second half. I'd hazard that it will need to run a time or two more from the top again as more articles have entered the deprecated categories. --Izno (talk) 00:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)

Task 16 is touching 20k–25k articles a day. When it started on 8 September there were 420k-ish articles in Category:CS1 errors: deprecated parameters. At the time monkbot could not keep up with the number of articles that MedaWiki was adding to the category so the article count rose to a high of 459k-ish. Since then, with the help of some friendly gnomes running there own awb scripts, the article count is down to 217k as I write this. MediaWiki is still adding articles to the category and we can expect that to continue for the next few months though the amount of work required to keep the category relatively clear will be much less.

I suck at predicting the future so that is about the best answer I can give you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:38, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Slugger O'Toole: There is an option in your watchlist preferences to hide bot edits that might be useful. -- Dolotta (talk) 17:02, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Dolotta: and Trappist. I'm not opposed to seeing it. I am just completely ignorant of how the bots work and was asking out of curiosity. I am also very glad there are people like Trappist who code and run them. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 19:35, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Could you go comment here: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Monkbot. Thanks! --evrik ^(talk) 15:44, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Collaborate on something?[edit]

Hi, Trappist. I'd like to collaborate on something with you, or at least get some advice. I have an idea that could address concerns on both sides of the style issue under debate. Are you at all open to that? I'm being sincere. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:46, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:22, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That is genuinely kind of you. I appreciate your being the bigger man and helping transcend our differences. I hope you like this proposal.

I accept it's settled that "cite web" is going to italicize "website=." That means there is no cite template left that would allow Chicago Manual of Style or other widely used styles. Other editors have told me that, of course, Chicago Manual of Style and others are still allowed — just don't use a template. But templates are de facto here, which in a practical sense makes those styles disallowed on Wikipedia. I honestly don't believe that is your intent. What I propose is a template such as "cite organization", where the only differences with "cite web" are that "website=" and "publisher=" are swapped out for "organization=" and "owner=", with organization non-ital.

I know you prefer italicizing websites. But I don't believe you want to forbid others from using Chicago Manual of Style and others styles. I'd like to try to create this template. I'm not a programmer, and I imagine there are standard modules where only a couple words and lines of programming might need to be changed. Would you point me in the right direction for this? Are there instructions somewhere on Wikipedia? This would allow Chicago Manual of Style and others to be used efficiently and, importantly, with a consistent look.

You're miles past other editors in this regard — heaven knows I respect your expertise. Will you help? --Tenebrae (talk) 15:15, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you want a CMOS formatted version of {{cite web}} perhaps the best thing to do would be to create a {{cmos web}} template so that it is absolutely clear what you intend. Creating {{cite organization}} might imply that {{cite organization}} is part of cs1 so should follow the rules of cs1; and editors would notice the style difference were such a template used with cs1 templates. Further, perhaps {{cmos book}}, {{cmos journal}}, and {{cmos news}} because if you are going to go to the trouble of developing one template, once the fundamentals are done, implementing the differences required for the others should be relatively easy (caveat lector: should be).

Developing {{cmos web}} will be difficult and will take some time. If you are looking to make something like {{cite organization}}, which obeys CMOS rules, part of cs1 then the development task is likely somewhat easier (or not if my experience with MLA is any guide) but I think that you will need to gain some sort of consensus for it; just so you know, I think that I would likely oppose because CMOS and cs1|2 do not obey the same rules.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:02, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your graciousness and collegiality, Trappist. This technical background is still confusing to me, but it's a start. All I hope to do is create a template that follows one of the allowed options already at WP:CITESTYLE; whether anyone uses it or not is up to them, so I'm not sure what would need consensus. But, one step at a time. I hope I can come to you with questions. Thank you again — this is a wonderful example of Wikipedians putting aside small differences for the larger good. You're a good person, Trappist.--Tenebrae (talk) 14:51, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you want whatever template that gets created to be a member of the cs1 family (listed in the box at right) then I think that you need consensus for that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:45, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

First off, I've finally figured out that "CMOS" means Chicago Manual of Style. Because I've seen the abbreviations "cs1" and "cs2," I thought CMOS had something to do with that. I used Chicago Manual of Style as an example, but other cite formats do the same in terms of italics, so CMOS is just one of multiple such styles.

Whatever it's called, the sole difference is that two fields will be renamed and one of those fields will allow either italics or not. That's it. I can't program, so I was hoping to copy-paste something extant and then change just those two things. Do you think that would work? --Tenebrae (talk) 14:57, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

CMOS has nothing to do with cs1|2; it is its own separate style.

At the Chicago / Turabian Website Citation page that you linked in the website italics RFC, there are CMOS examples. Here is one such:

Smith, John. “Obama inaugurated as President.” CNN.com. http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/01/21/obama_inaugurated/index.html (accessed February 1, 2009)

Compare with {{cite web}} (really should be {{cite news}}):

{{cite web |last=Smith |first=John |title=Obama inaugurated as President |website= CNN.com |url=http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/01/21/obama_inaugurated/index.html |access-date=February 1, 2009}}

Smith, John. "Obama inaugurated as President". CNN.com. Retrieved February 1, 2009.

More than just the font style of CNN.com is different: the url is exposed, and the access date is bracketed and uses different static text.

The cs1|2 citation templates rely on one of the more complex suites of Lua modules at en.wiki. The root module is Module:Citation/CS1. That module employs seven other modules and a custom css style sheet to do the work. There isn't copy pasta with a tweaked sauce recipe that will do what you want. This is why I suggested that you start from the beginning to create {{cmos web}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:45, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I see these among the options at that Chicago / Turabian page linked above:

Smith, John. “Obama inaugurated as President.” CNN.com. http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/01/21/obama_inaugurated/index.html (accessed February 1, 2009).
Smith, John. “Obama inaugurated as President.” Cable News Network. http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/01/21/obama_inaugurated/index.html (accessed February 1, 2009).
(when no author listed) Cable News Network. “Obama inaugurated as President.” CNN.com. http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/01/21/obama_inaugurated/index.html (accessed February 1, 2009).

I appreciate everything you're saying. You're going out of your way to help steer me in the right direction. I have to believe there is a way to do this if one is not a programmer. And I think I'm making progress. In all sincerity, thank you. You've been generous with your time and I will try my best to take up as little of it as possible.

And for a non-programmer I've gotten this far in one day (and the cite name is just a placeholder; I didn't call it CMOS since ALA and MLA also seem not to ital and so something more general was needed:

{{cite organization|url=https://nathansfamous.com/about-us/|title=''"About Us"''|organization=[[Nathan's Fammous]]| accessdate=September 10, 2019}}

And again, the name is just a placeholder. Here's what I'm continuing to work on:

I know it's rudimentary, but I'm proud to have gotten this far so far. --Tenebrae (talk) 19:22, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, those examples are there too and they are as consistently different from cs1 as I showed.

If I take your actions as intent, you want to make {{cite organization}} be a member of the cs1 family and are not interested in creating a CMOS compliant template, right? That being the case, this conversation should probably be ended and a new one begun at Help talk:Citation Style 1.

Module:Citation/CS1 doesn't know anything about |organization= (hence the error message: Unknown parameter |organization= ignored). It also doesn't know anything about {{cite organization}} so it does default formatting of |title= assuming that |title= holds a book title.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, no, of course I want to make one that's CMOS compliant. It's just that like most Wikipedias, I can't code one from the ground up. And since CS1 itself says, "Wikipedia does not have a single house style," that gives the impression CS1 can be used for different styles. Would adapting a CS2 template be a better way to go? --Tenebrae (talk) 11:42, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia does not have a single house style quote is from WP:CITESTYLE. It may have been a goal early-on for cs1|2 to be all-styles-for-all-editors but that goal is wholly impractical. cs1|2 is its own style and as such cannot easily be made to be another style; I know this because I tried integrating MLA into the cs1|2 module suite and that experiment was a failure.

There is only one cs2 template {{citation}}. It differs from all of the cs1 templates: its element separator (a comma, not a period), static text is not capitalized, |ref=harv is the default state. Otherwise, {{citation}} uses the same module suite as cs1.

If you want a CMOS-compliant template or templates, writing it from the ground up is, it seems to me, the path forward. And yeah, that isn't easy. Before you even think about coding it, start by defining what it is that you want the template to do. What parameters will it support? How does each parameter interact with other parameters? How shall the value assigned to each parameter be rendered? No doubt there are other questions that must be answered before coding actually begins.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:48, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I can't code — I'm an editor and journalist by trade, and basic HTML is my technical limit. That's why I was hoping to adapt an existing code, since I've done that in similar situations through trial and error.

It sounds like in order to allow the widely used CMOS and other footnoting formats, I'd have to beg/convince a Wikipedia coder. I guess the next step is to see if someone is interested in helping out. As it is, it sounds like your having changed cite web to disallow wiki markup is forcing everyone using a cite template to adhere to what those of us in my field consider an eccentric style.

I do appreciate your having engaged in discussion; that was gracious. I've no doubt you have Wikipedia's best interests in mind. Yet those of us who can't code seem to be at a disadvantage now over an issue that hasn't to do with technical matters but style matters, and that strikes me as antithetical to Wikipedia's egalitarian nature.--Tenebrae (talk) 20:51, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What the bibme site mentioned above doesn't explain is the CMOS cites above are only for bibliographies. They would have to be used with adapted versions of {{sfn}} or {{harv}}. Bottom line: if you haven't used a style a lot outside Wikipedia and don't own the paper manual don't try to write templates to implement the style in WP. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:27, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just seeing this now, and it's in technical-speak I don't understand. The last point I made above is that people who can code hold the rest of us hostage since they can force their eccentricities onto the rest of us — like italicizing organization names, which virtually no professional journalist/editor does. And those of us who aren't programmers can't respond with an alternative template for those who don't want to be forced to use an eccentric de facto house style. --Tenebrae (talk) 07:25, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On Wikipedia, there is consensus for websites and works to be italicized, and for publishers not to be. This house style is not 'eccentric', and was tested in widespread RFCs on the issue. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:54, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For Monkbot[edit]

Path slopu has given you batteries! Batteries promote WikiLove (📖💞) and hopefully this one has made your day more powerful. It is the power source best preferred by bots. 🤖 Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else batteries, whether it be someone you have had robot wars with in the past or a good friend.

This is for your valuable efforts in contributing to Wikipedia.--PATH SLOPU 10:39, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Spread the goodness of batteries by adding {{subst:Batteries for you}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message!

Path slopu has given you motor oil! Motor oil promotes WikiLove (📖💞) and hopefully this one has made your day more efficient. It is drink best preferred by bots. 🤖 Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else motor oil, whether it be someone you have had robot wars with in the past or a good friend.

This is for your valuable efforts in contributing to wikipedia--PATH SLOPU 10:39, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Spread the goodness of motor oil by adding {{subst:Motor oil for you}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message!

Whoops[edit]

D&KR - soory .... wrong cuplrit it was the next edit.Djm-leighpark (talk) 22:17, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Monkbot on Wikipedia:Press coverage 2019[edit]

It's customary on these pages to have a hidden empty template at the bottom of each section, it's helpful for editors who want to insert something. However, Monkbot removed these. If I reinsert them, will I have to fight with the bot? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Because your blank {{cite news}} templates used the deprecated parameter |deadurl=, monkbot/task 16 replaced them with |url-status=. Because of that replacement, task 16 then looked for and deleted empty parameters in that template. It does this because blank parameters are merely clutter and are rarely, if ever, filled. I restored your blank {{cite news}} templates using the correct canonical parameter names. As long as you do not use any deprecated parameters in cs1|2 templates on that page, task 16 will not revisit.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:41, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Deprecated parameters[edit]

Just so you know, I've found search to be much more responsive to category changes. I took a look at deprecated parameters to see if that has held true. As of right now, search returns 20k results still compared to the 2k in the category.

Might want to continue the run. :) --Izno (talk) 12:25, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, monkbot is still running. For the last couple of weeks I've been running two simultaneous instances of Monkbot; one on the category listing and one using a search listing similar to yours.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:32, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a similar, overly broad search that will yield more results (89,000 at this writing), along with some false positives. Thanks to Monkbot for its diligent work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:03, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Related improvements[edit]

While you're at updating markup it could you also update archive-url and archive-date too please? See Template:cite web. -- 109.79.76.70 (talk) 11:37, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean what I think that you mean (replacing |archiveurl= with |archive-url= and replacing |archivedate= with |archive-date=), the horse has pretty much left the barn. If you are talking about Monkbot/task 16, that task is just about to be retired because articles with |dead-url= and |deadurl= are now only dribbling into Category:CS1 errors: deprecated parameters.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:46, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Should've asked sooner but better late than never though. -- 109.79.76.70 (talk) 13:47, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Still, too late is too late. Modifying the bot to do what you want will require work on my part to implement that functionality and, likely, a new WP:BRFA to approve it. Too much effort for so little gain. And, |archiveurl= and |archivedate= are valid and acceptable parameter names, just not the canonical, preferred names.

Perhaps in future bots I'll include renaming parameter aliases to their canonical forms as ancillary changes made to cs1|2 templates when those templates are modified according to the bot's primary purpose.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:58, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for considering it at least. (I'm not sure what the exact reason for the change in those parameters was but I certainly prefer to see less deliberate misspellings when I'm trying to edit markup, makes real mistakes easier to see.) -- 109.79.76.70 (talk) 14:29, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hyphenated parameter names were adopted as the preferred names in accordance with this RfC.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:35, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Citation templates[edit]

Hi Trappist the monk! After the recent change in the Module:Citation/CS1, I and other users have noticed a 'broken' behaviour in the citation templates: if the title is not specified, the url does not work, and an error message is displayed. While this may be OK for {{cite book}}, it is problematic for templates like {{cite encyclopedia}}, where 'title=' is reserved for specific entries, but where multiple entries from the same work may be referenced in an article. I have a number of reference work templates that transclude {{cite encyclopedia}}, like {{Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit}}, {{Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium}}, and {{Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit}}, where this has led to problems, for example this behaviour:

Lilie, Ralph-Johannes; Ludwig, Claudia; Pratsch, Thomas; Zielke, Beate (2013). Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit Online. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Nach Vorarbeiten F. Winkelmanns erstellt (in German). Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

Can you please correct this/revert to previous behaviour? Thanks, Constantine ✍ 08:23, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The change was discussed here: Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 58#cite encyclopedia without |title=.

For {{Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium}} I might suggest something like this (not tested):

|encyclopedia={{#if:{{{title|}}}|[[Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium|The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium]]}}
|title={{#if:{{{title|}}}|{{{title}}}|[[Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium|The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium]]}}

additionally, remove |article= because {{Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium}} does not support |article-url= and, because this source lies behind a paywall, set |url-status=subscription (when there is a url present) as a notification to readers.

If you are feeling more adventuresome, consider rewriting these templates to use Module:Template wrapper which will give editors access to all of the cs1|2 template parameters.

I looked at how {{Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium}} is used in Abydos (Hellespont). There, {{harvnb|ODB|...}} templates point to the {{Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium}} template. That's ok, I suppose, for readers who are reading the article online, but the three-character string 'ODB' does not exist in anywhere in Abydos (Hellespont) § Bibliography. A perhaps better method would be to use {{harvc}} which is explicitly intended for this kind of citing where multiple contributors to a single work are cited. Here is an example taken from Abydos (Hellespont):

I have rewritten the several {{harvnb|ODB|...}} templates (exposed here for clarity but in an article would be wrapped in <ref>...</ref> tags):

Brand 1991, p. 2134
Hollingsworth 1991, pp. 1476–1477
Kazhdan 1991a, pp. 1094–1095
Kazhdan 1991b, pp. 1706–1707
Kazhdan 1991c, p. 1216
Kazhdan 1991d

In §Bibliography a {{Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium}} template (written here as {{cite encyclopedia}} to hide the missing title error) followed by the several {{harvc}} templates for the individual contributions:

Kazhdan, Alexander, ed. (1991). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504652-8. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
- Brand, Ch. M. "Tzachas". In Kazhdan (1991).
- Hollingsworth, P. A. "Nikephoros I". In Kazhdan (1991).
- Kazhdan, A. (1991a). "Kallipolis". In Kazhdan (1991).
- Kazhdan, A. (1991b). "Ports". In Kazhdan (1991).
- Kazhdan, A. (1991c). "Leo of Tripoli". In Kazhdan (1991).
- Kazhdan, A. (1991d). "Kephalas". In Kazhdan (1991). – a Royal Holloway University of London login page? is that the correct url?

{{harvc}} doesn't support |url-access= but I can see that in, this case, it should. I'll fix that. Fixed; |url-access=subscription added to the above {{harvc}} templates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) ~~12:25, 7 October 2019 (UTC)~~ 14:31, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, thanks for the very detailed answer, I'll have a look at your suggestions and start implementing them. Constantine ✍ 08:39, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This user gives false information[edit]

This user edited a page on Rochas okorocha adding false in informations Blessedbukason (talk) 07:45, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is a bot. It can not add ”false information”. It’s not the bot that added that info. So you might want to retract your statement.--BabbaQ (talk) 22:15, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

According to edit all it did was fix this [link]. What exactly was "false" about that? A sentient pickle (talk) 17:58, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

SVU Season 14 Episode Traumatic Wound[edit]

1. Have You seen this Episode? Yes or No?

2. did [Alex, Jake, Britt, Louis, Ralph] know 100% that [Gabby was Going to Get raped]?(2601:243:400:B5E0:BDE4:3A1D:457F:9CA0 (talk) 15:55, 9 October 2019 (UTC)).[reply]

Why not?[edit]

Your name was in Revision History for SVU Season 14, so did You watch [Traumatic Wound episode]?(2601:243:400:B5E0:BDE4:3A1D:457F:9CA0 (talk) 17:47, 9 October 2019 (UTC)).[reply]

I have restored your original post. I have never edited Svu season 14. My bot has, but I have not. The answer to qestion #1 is: no.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:19, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Kate Smith[edit]

I'm not tech savvy so I don't really know what I am doing here. I want to ask a question regarding Kate Smith. I remember that there was a very serious trauma or physical condition Kate Smith had in her early life that when she recovered, she promised to sing to praise God & our country. Do you know what had happened to her? What was the show she had in the early 50's? I would sing, "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain" right along with her as I watched her sing it on her show. Thank you...Joyce Erickson in Hollywood, CA — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joyce Erickson (talk • contribs) 10:47, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have no knowledge of Kate Smith. If what you are looking for is not in the Kate Smith article, perhaps ask your question at Talk:Kate Smith.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:12, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Monkbot corner case[edit]

Here an empty dead-url is replaced with a url-status, nd not removed, because there's a duplicate parameter. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:04, 16 October 2019 (UTC).[reply]

Yep, duplicate parameter did not get removed. At this point in the bot's life, I doubt that I will do anything about that since I am about to retire the bot.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:20, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox Chinese[edit]

Circling back to this. White Whirlwind 咨 22:04, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

done

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:10, 16 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Make a page for Shehnaz Pervaiz and Huma Nawab[edit]

Hi. Can you make pages for Shehnaz Perviaz she is a great actress and hostess, appeared in many comedy dramas and serious dramas, TV programs. She also appeared in quddusi sahab ki bewah many more. Huma Nawab is a famous actress in 1990s dramas and film, she left the acting industry but she returned in 2019 she has appeared in Mein Na Janoo drama. I tried to make pages for them but i was unsuccessful. Can you make pages for them. I would be really grateful.

Thank you.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.185.78.229 (talk) 17:56, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not the person to do that. There are editors at Wikipedia:Help desk who can point you in the correct direction.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:16, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you![edit]

	The Technical Barnstar
	Thanks for putting up with all of my questions about Module:Lang. It's a remarkable piece of work! Wug·a·po·des 03:46, 19 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Question[edit]

I'm going to be honest, I am asking you about a subject I don't have the slightest idea about, so please excuse my ignorance.

Some time ago I asked here if it was possible to change the auto-generated name of the code "ruo" from "Istro Romanian" to "Istro-Romanian". I've been wandering around templates a bit and seeing their edit histories, it seems you are the best person for this. Do you know if it is possible to make this change or it doesn't depend on Wikipedia? Thanks. Super Ψ Dro 11:38, 20 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't clear to me that ruo → Istro Romanian is wrong. The ISO 639-3 custodian, the IANA language-subtag-registry, and glottolog all use Istro Romanian without the hyphen. Others hyphenate (ethnolog); others prefer 'Istroromanian' (Encyclopaedia Britannica). It's all a muddle

For me, I would not change {{lang}} to hyphenate because the language-code standards upon which {{lang}} relies do not hyphenate.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:11, 20 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Message[edit]

Hello Mr. Monk

My name is Monica Perry and I viewed the film “A Warm December” cir: 1970 starring Easter Anderson. I was so moved by the film that I wanted to share my amazement of the story line and the role she played with Sidney Poitora as starring male and director. I was wondering if you had an address or a email address? I was a teacher and I had a student with the same illness. I just would like to praise her for all she has done for the black community. I maybe contacted at: [redacted] or by phone/text [redacted] Cary, NC USA

Thank you, Monica A. Perry, M. Ed

Sorry, all that I know about the film is what I have read in the Wikipedia article.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:41, 20 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Message: Good, do you have the cost of production and materials? regards Grizzly APC — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sylas (talk • contribs) 06:14, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

By: Sylas — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sylas (talk • contribs) 06:13, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what it is that you are talking about.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:12, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you sir[edit]

I'm trying a lot to rebuild the article. U helped me a lot. Thank you so much sir Karna fan club (talk) 12:21, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Understanding the CS module and configuration[edit]

Can you please explain to me how the module distinguishes the "dead" and "live" parameters in the url-status parameter. I see them all listed in the configuration, but I don't see anything that helps to say that "live" means alive, "dead" means dead, and the remaining parameters all are the same functionally.—CYBERPOWER (Trick or Treat) 22:16, 24 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's not really clear to me what it is that you are asking. At the moment, the code supporting |url-status= also has deprecated code that supports |dead-url=.

The default state for |url-status= is dead. This is set in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration, at line 419.

Keyword validation occurs in Module:Citation/CS1 at lines 2312–2327. The function is_valid_parameter_value() (line 1915 et seq.) emits the error message when the keyword assigned to the parameter is not recognized.

The static text definitions are at Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration lines 26–29. Which of those to choose is determined by the code at Module:Citation/CS1 lines 3323–3360 where the local variable Archived is created. Whatever ends up in that variable is what ends up on the rendered article.

Did I answer your question? If no, perhaps you can be more specific about what it is that you want to know.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:50, 24 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite. So I'm getting IABot to auto-configure itself based on the CS1 configuration page. But when I get to work on url-status, I see ['url-status'] = {'dead', 'live', 'unfit', 'usurped', 'bot: unknown'},. But "dead" behaves differently from "live" which also behaves differently from "unfit", "usurped", and "bot: unknown". They are all grouped together. What I want to know is how the module differentiates the meaning of these values, so I can have IABot do the same.—CYBERPOWER (Trick or Treat) 23:06, 24 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That bit of code is just a list of valid keywords; they could be in any order, it doesn't matter to Lua; if the keyword assigned to |url-status= matches one of those five valid keywords, then no error message. At the end of the validation (Module:Citation/CS1 at lines 2312–2327) the local metaparameter UrlAccess has the validated value provided in the cs1|2 template or, in the case of an error (keyword not found in the list), an empty string. How the module behaves is based on the content of UrlAccess after validation which determination is made at Module:Citation/CS1 lines 3323–3360.

But I'm pretty sure that I still don't understand what it is that you want to know. Of course cs1|2 behaves differently given the different keywords, that's to be expected isn't it? You can see that I'm fumbling here...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:31, 24 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Trappist the monk, Okay I see it now. The keywords are hardcoded. That doesn't make much sense though. If the keywords are inside of the configuration, why would those same keywords be hardcoded in the module elsewhere. That doesn't make it very easy to adapt to another language when ported over. I would suggest adding 3 config options to the Configuration page such as "UrlStatusLive", "UrlStatusDead", "UrlStatusOther", and then have the module draw on that. That way other languages can easily port and localize it. That adds the benefit of automated processes being able to easily adapt to changes in the template and adjusting it's settings entirely on it's own. This is what I'm trying to do with IABot.—CYBERPOWER (Trick or Treat) 02:04, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Got there in the end. You are talking about internationalization. i18n support has been a long slow process driven by comments and complaints from editors at other-language wikis. None, so far, have complained about the pre-defined lists of parameter values so nothing was done to change how that works. If I am going to change how |url-status= works, I should also change how the other parameters with limited-value sets work. I'll think on this.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:03, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Trappist the monk, If anything it will make it easier for IABot to distinguish which values in the set are "dead", which are "live", and which are "others". I want to build IABot to automatically adapt to configuration changes to the module and automatically adjust the cite template parameter maps. —CYBERPOWER (Trick or Treat) 15:37, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have tweaked the Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox. There new tables associated with the limited-keyword parameters. These are:

keywords – each key in the table has a value that is a table of acceptable keywords that are aliases of that key; this allows a non-English Wikipedia to use keywords in its own language; for example |url-status=mort for a Wikipedia that uses the French language

keywords_lists – maps keywords in the keywords table to their respective parameters (['affirmative'] and ['id-access'] excepted; these are shared by multiple parameters)

This satisfies, I think, the needs of i18n from the cs1|2 perspective. Does it satisfy your needs?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:21, 27 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OCLC in URL[edit]

In my CS1 cleanup, I've noticed a lot of citations that look like this, roughly:

{{cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/moby-dick/oclc/905207797|title=Moby Dick|last=Melville|first=Herman|date=1851|oclc=905207797}}

Since the OCLC parameter is already defined, should the URL parameter, in these cases, be deleted as redundant? -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 19:00, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. |url=-linked titles should link to the actual source that is being cited (the book, in your example Moby Dick).

Some automated tool make most of the citation templates I've seen that have a worldcat url and an oclc identifier pointing at the same oclc record. This (or these) tool(s) regularly bugger-up author/editor/others name-list parameters so when fixing these worldcat/oclc redundancies, you should fix the other crap produced by these tools. If you are not going to fix the other stuff, do not simply fix the redundancy and move on. The worldcat url is a good thing to look for when identifying these kinds of buggered up templates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:16, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The automated tool in question is Citoid. Previously the WMF has been resistant to change here because |oclc= is not a guaranteed parameter on other wikis. I think Citoid might be smart enough now to know and should change... --Izno (talk) 20:07, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, just checking, since I've been repairing messes made under the "date and year" errors. Thanks! -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 01:36, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Module talk:Citation/CS1/Help[edit]

I edited Module talk:Citation/CS1/Help, changing '' to "". If you are unhappy with this change, please revert. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:19, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Misused publisher[edit]

So I notice your changes in task 14 and the distinction you make between websites and publisher it seems entirely reasonable and logical to me. (Particularly the ones I notice are Rotten Tomatoes is a website published by Fandango Media and Metacritic is a website published by CBS Interactive.)

It seems some users do not agree, or at least I've noticed one particularly active user, and frequent editor of film articles User:Tenebrae. I don't entirely understand his objection, but as far as I can tell it seems to be largely an objection to things being formatted with italics, here's a recent example [3] in the edit summary he writes "Like Metacritic, Rotten Tomaotes not ltal". I can tell you his objection goes back years, I hadn't noticed it in a while but I particularly notice it again recently because he seems determined to fight against changes I know your bot is making, maybe he doesn't realize.

I vaguely recall there being some old style guideline issue saying that print publications get italicized e.g. Variety magazine but websites such as Rotten Tomatoes do not, I've no idea what the logic was. Maybe you'd like to discuss it with him, or find out more. Maybe not. I care about the semantic meaning, not the formatting, so personally I prefer the changes you've made in Task 14. Wikipedia could do with more consistency and greater automation. Best of luck. -- 109.79.176.137 (talk) 20:26, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you.

Search for Editor Tenebrae's name in the archives of this page and in the archives of Help talk:Citation Style 1 and you will see that we have had discussion.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:01, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well that's a can of worms and a bag of wasps and a few other things too. Backing ... away ... slowly ... -- 109.79.176.137 (talk) 22:17, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No mainstream citation style italicizes the names of companies as if they were magazines or newspapers. I don't understand why a handful of editors insist on making Wikipedia some fringe, eccentric outlier. And I don't believe that people who, simply because they can code, should make site-wide editorial decisions and then make us discuss their unilateral changes, which never been previously agreed to by consensus. Does it make sense to cite "Sony Pictures" but then italicize "Columbia Pictures" because it's a subsidiary of parent company Sony Pictures? Does it make sense to cite (on older movies) "20th Century Fox" but italicize "Fox Searchlight" because it's a subsidiary of parent company 20th Century Fox? No.--Tenebrae (talk) 18:39, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Trappist was already aware of your objections, so I wasn't making him aware of anything new. I suppose I can understand that you care about consistency, but I'd settle for Wikipedia being a bit more consistent with itself. If there is anything more left to discuss I don't think this talk page is the right place for it. -- 109.78.237.56 (talk) 22:51, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cite Hansard[edit]

I'm trying to get this template to display |speaker=last, first (so that it will sort correctly in biblio listings), while linked via a new parameter |speaker-link=. I made what seemed like the obvious change to the template, but it doesn't work, see User:NSH001/sandbox. I've tried playing around with a few ideas from the documentation at Module:Template wrapper, using the "Preview page with this template" feature, without success. Either I'm misinterpreting the template and module documentation, or there is a bug somewhere. Can you help, please? --NSH001 (talk) 07:39, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What you want to do won't work because {{cite hansard}} uses |author-mask= to combine |speaker= with |position=. In cs1|2, |author-mask= overrides |author= in the rendering. This works:

{{Cite Hansard| title = Gundagai Flood Sesquicentenary
 | speaker = [[Bob Carr|Carr, Bob]]
 | position = Premier Minister for the Arts, and Minister for Citizenship
 | jurisdiction = [[Parliament of New South Wales]]
 | house = [[New South Wales Legislative Assembly|Legislative Assembly]]
 | url = https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1323879322-27724
 | date = 25 June 2002
 | ref = harv
|_debug=yes
}}

{{cite book|author-mask=[[Bob Carr|Carr, Bob]], Premier Minister for the Arts, and Minister for Citizenship|author=[[Bob Carr|Carr, Bob]]|chapter-url=https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1323879322-27724|chapter=Gundagai Flood Sesquicentenary|date=25 June 2002|location=[[Parliament of New South Wales]]|publisher=[[New South Wales Legislative Assembly|Legislative Assembly]]|ref=harv|title=[[Hansard|Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)]]}}

Carr, Bob, Premier Minister for the Arts, and Minister for Citizenship (25 June 2002). "Gundagai Flood Sesquicentenary". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Parliament of New South Wales: Legislative Assembly. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

I suppose that |speaker-link= with some template code can be used to automatically link the |speaker= portion of the |author-mask= parameter value. Perhaps something like this:

| author-mask    = {{#if:{{{speaker|}}}|{{#if:{{{speaker-link|}}}|[[{{{speaker-link|}}}|{{{speaker}}}]]|{{{speaker}}}}}{{#if: {{{position|}}}|,&nbsp;{{{position}}}}}}}

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:05, 4 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that worked very well. I've updated the template documentation to correspond, but couldn't quite bring myself to update the <templatedata>. (I have a strong aversion to VE.) --NSH001 (talk) 13:52, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Help in SqWiki regarding Module CS1[edit]

Hello, Trappist the monk! :)

We've talked some months ago about the same subject, I don't know if you remember. I asked you to help me configure the module so it categorizes the articles that use the local language in their citations like it does with those that have citations on foreign languages. You said we should be sure to have the latest version of the module before you could help me with that. We do now. We just updated the whole code of all the subpages of it and currently it is the same as the current version of EnWiki except for some changes in the configuration page related to the localizing process. We don't have documentation, sandbox and testcase pages for those yet because our community doesn't use those much anywhere but in the future we may add those too. Can you help me with adding a flag at the configuration subpage so it can categorize the pages that use citations in Albanian (sq) now? The module is programmed to not categorize pages that use citations in the local language but we want to have that for statistical purposes. I think it should be a property category. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Klein Muçi (talk • contribs) 15:04, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Since the issuance of the current live Module:Citation/CS1 suite of modules, there have been several fixes and enhancements made in the sandbox suite. Most notably, in the i18n arena are the changes prompted by Editor Cyberpower678 here; further discribed at the related discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1 § i18n of limited parameter values.

While those changes aren't what you want, nevertheless, they may have interaction issues with your desired changes. I have tweaked Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox and Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox to implement what it is that I think that you want. In ~/Configuration/sandbox I have added a configuration flag, local_lang_cat_enable, that when set to true will cause the modified language_parameter() function to emit a new property category (specified in ~/Configuration/sandbox prop_cats{} – local_lang_source). Simple tests here seem to show that the change works properly.

I think that you should be able to make these changes to the sq.wiki module suite because I don't think that your desired changes are dependent on other changes in the en.wiki sandboxen. If you have problems, let me know.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:32, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I just got all the latest changes from all the sandbox pages. Now I understand a bit better how you use sandbox pages here and what you asked me to do a couple of months ago. It works perfectly! Thank you a lot because that's exactly what I wanted to do. Now I have 3 questions:

Should the property categories of languages (foreign and local) be hidden by default from the module, maybe by having a switch like the error categories have? How is your experience with those here? Do you leave them hidden or not? At our Wikipedia the general consensus was to leave them hidden because they wouldn't be of interest to the general reader and so we had to hide them manually one by one. At the Wikiquote, we're still not sure on how to leave them so that got me asking. Whatever the answer, maybe a switch like the one used at the error categories would be a good idea to have. Don't you think? More of a question than a suggestion.
How exactly are new changes implemented to the module by you? Do you always add them at the sandbox pages, leave them there for a while and then implement them to its pages? What determines the time they spend there? Are the sandbox pages expected to have errors on them? I'm asking so I know how to act the next time we may need to update the module. I always check the module's pages for new changes, not their sandboxes. If you hadn't tell to me get the code from there, I'd have continued ignoring them completely. Now I want to know if I should get the code from there all the time or if I should wait for it to be implemented to the module's pages before I get it. Is it safe to get it from there? How often should I be on the lookout for new changes?
When doing these module updates, do you have any advice on what would be the easiest way to update the configuration page? We can just copy-paste the code on the other pages but doing so with the configuration page erases all translations, which need to be done from the scratch every time an update like this happens. This is also needed when passing the changes through different Wikimedia projects. For example, the Albanian Wikiquote and Wikipedia use the same code (including translations) with the only differences being the changes in capitalization in categories' names. After we finish with the update at the Wikipedia, we always have to spent some time rewriting the first letter of every category at the configuration page to use it at Wikiquote. And this is only if 2 projects are involved. Things get a lot harder if the change would need to be made on a broader scope of Wikimedia Projects of the same language, all of which would have their own minor styling differences. - Klein Muçi (talk) 04:48, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Also, sorry for bothering again with change demands but, is it possible to have a maint cat (or should it be an errors one?) that categorizes articles which have citations without a language parameter? Or does something like this already exists and I'm having trouble finding it? We just found out that we can't get statistics without taking into account how many citations don't have the language parameter set at all. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:01, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Answers:

All categories emitted by cs1|2 are hidden. Somewhere in the category page is the magic word __HIDDENCAT__ (usually in {{tracking category}}); see mw:Help:Magic_words#Behavior_switches. In the current implementation of cs1|2, it is not possible to prevent categorization. There is no switch for that anywhere so I'm not sure what it is that you really want to say. There is a switch to turn-off error messages but messages are not the same thing as categories. Yes, it is highly likely that general readers have little or no interest in the content of the error, maintenance, and property cats. Those categories are there for editors as tools to be used to improve the encyclopedia.
As I write this, at en.wiki, cs1|2 is used on 4,219,563 pages (there are 6,819,835 articles). That means that every little tweak to Module:Citation/CS1 dumps 4,219,563 pages onto the MediaWiki job queue. For that reason, we collect changes in the sandboxen and then update the whole suite at approximately quarterly intervals. So, all development, all bug fixes, all anything that changes the modules is done first in the sandboxen because a little change can disrupt so many many articles. Because the sandboxen are for development, experimentation, ... and because they may be changed by anyone, errors are possible. When I make changes, I attempt to leave the sandboxen in a sufficiently stable state so that there are no glaring errors but I am not always successful in doing that. For you at sq.wiki, I would suggest that you monitor the live en.wiki modules so that you will know when they are changed. You should monitor them all because not all of them change at each update. Wait a couple of weeks in case we discover problems (there is no better test bed than real life). Then, import the changed, live, en.wiki modules into your own sandboxen, make whatever changes you need, test your sandboxen to make sure that everything is working as it should, and only then, update your live modules from your sandboxen.
On and off I ponder how to make a tool or something that will make updating easier. I haven't thought of a way to do that. The best that I can suggest is to compare the current en.wiki ~/Configuration module with its previous version and then carefully add those changes to your ~/Configuration/sandbox; yeah, I know, not easy and not error-free ...

|language= is not required because it is merely informational. It is a courtesy that we provide for our readers. As I write this, sq.wiki transcludes the cs1|2 module suite on 13,755 pages (this link). The various language categories give you page counts for the languages so:

number-of-transcluded-pages [minus] sum-of-the-language-cat-page-counts [equals] number-of-transcluded-pages-without-language-parameters

where sum-of-the-language-cat-page-counts is calculated like this (the 'A' section of Category:CS1 foreign language sources):

{{formatnum:
{{#expr:
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Afar-language sources (aa) |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Abkhazian-language sources (ab) |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Avestan-language sources (ae) |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Afrikaans-language sources (af) |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Akan-language sources (ak)‎ |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Amharic-language sources (am) |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Aragonese-language sources (an) |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Arabic-language sources (ar)‎ |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Assamese-language sources (as) |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Avaric-language sources (av)‎ |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Aymara-language sources (ay)‎ |pages}}|R}}+
{{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:CS1 Azerbaijani-language sources (az) |pages}}|R}}
}}}}

18,830

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:05, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. It was my bad. I meant the error messages. I now remember the module itself doesn't take part in the decision if a category is hidden or not. We're used to treat categories and error messages the same at our community because we leave them not hidden (apart from the languages ones) because of a reason I'll explain at number 4 [Warning: 4th point is a long one because of this]. Now that I think of it, I don't believe the module can interact with the categories in that way, even if it wanted to. Thank you for your insight though as this was what I was looking for.
I hadn't taken into account the vast amount of articles EnWiki has. We have less than one thousand articles in our project and the community is much, much smaller too so we usually just suffice with a Village Pump notice that we're testing something and do the testing live. The disruption is considered normal as long as it doesn't last too many days. That's why I had difficulties understanding fully how you use the sandboxes. Again, thank you for your insight as this was all I wanted to know from that question. If I do plan to do updates from the sandboxes, I'll check the code and its contributors carefully first.
I'm glad you understand the struggle. What you suggest is sort of what we currently do. We copy all the new code and then copy-paste specific parts from the older version. That takes time and sometimes a single, not copied comma can make the whole module not work but that's the easiest workaround we've found. In the first talk we've had, 9 months ago, I've suggested you if we could make the module an ingrained part of MediaWiki or an extension of it. The translations work maybe could be made by using system messages or from TranslateWiki. But you've refused that option as unlikely. To be honest, I still believe it would be a good idea but I'm not that tech-savvy as you so I'll take your word for it.
Thank you for showing me that tool as I wasn't aware of it! It helps with the statistical purposes. The only problem is that it doesn't help much on the reason why we need statistics in the first place. Even though, de jure, we always emphasize on the importance of using citations on articles, de facto, the citations have always been the weakest points in our articles. They have, for far too long, been treated like "incomprehensible important code you somehow need to copy-paste when you translate an article". A few people know what they actually are doing when using citation templates, what link-rot is, what they are putting as citations and where and similar subjects related to the references. Even when articles are being checked by administrators for various reasons, the citations aren't checked much, if at all. So I decided to change that by updating our module that hadn't been updated in years, creating the module's categories, much of which had never before been created, making IA Bot work in our community with the help of Cyber (and letting it put talkpage messages) and writing several posts at our Village Pump on the importance of using citations and their templates in the right way. One of the steps taken in this direction were to make all the categories the module uses not hidden along with its error messages so people actually knew that there was a mistake with their citation they had just added. (The language categories we're the only one that were left hidden after some discussion because they weren't considered errors in the full sense.) This caused a bit of an uproar at first because articles got full of those categories and messages and they thought it was because of the module's malfunction but they soon learned how to fix them (which reminds me to remind you that maybe the help page accompanying the module might need some updates) and started to fix them in order to remove "those things". This, along with IA Bot's messages, have had a powerful impact on raising our community awareness about the importance of citations. Another thing we thought would help on that way was to show them statistics regarding the language of the citations they are using. Most of the users just copy-paste citations blindly without knowing what lies in them so we want to show that actually very few citations are in Albanian, which is true because that category we created yesterday has only 79 articles, despite our project having 77 thousand articles. We also want to show that many articles use citations in very unfamiliar languages for Albanians in general that make them very hard for everyone, readers, writers and administrators included, to verify their credibility (not to mention the cases when links are actually dead). With this, we are hoping to teach them even more about the importance of using the correct parameters and templates and also improve a bit the situation with the languages involved in our citations. We've created a sort of policy for this that requires users to search for reliable sources in Albanian language first, when they're writing an article, and then, if they can't find them, strive to use sources in European languages familiar to Albanians or in languages related to the subject they're dealing with on the article (for example, Norsk isn't familiar to most Albanians but it would work good as the language for a citation related to Norway if no other reliable sources are to be found in Albanian or other languages familiar to Albanians like, English, German, Spanish, Italian or French). With what you suggested, we can get the needed numbers but we can't really find which articles are missing the language parameter in their citations, which in a normal situation wouldn't really be a problem but in our community it would, because that would mean that those articles wouldn't be reached by our approach of familiar language sources further meaning that their information on their citations can't be accessed if it complies with the aforementioned policy or not (more like a guideline than a policy). So, long story short, the language parameter is more than a mere courtesy in our community because it helps us fight a problem regarding the verification process of our citations. Although giving me the way to get some needed statistics about the subject does still help a lot on that direction. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:26, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bot change to archived nowiki content[edit]

Hi! I think this edit is too ambitious -- project page, an archived discussion, deliberate syntax example, nowiki tags. May be the bot should skip non-mainspace pages? Anyway, just letting you know. I reverted it, but I imagine the bot could change it again if it's not running just once through a preset list. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 22:55, 9 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom 2019 election voter message[edit]

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:12, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Second Battle of Ypres[edit]

Left a message on the talk. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 13:10, 19 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Some help[edit]

An article has been published by the lone author over 2 different journals with slightly different titles and mild variations, within. Obviously, that's a single source for all practical purposes but how to mention this fact using CS1? Ideally, I am looking for some sort of end-note that will mention something like:-This article was also republished as .... over ..... FWIW, this will serve as the main citation and this is the (near-duplicate) publication predating by about 4 months, which will be mentioned in the end-note. ∯WBG^converse 15:14, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Is it necessary to cite both? Which did you consult in support of en.wiki's article? Cite that one. If you consulted both because those mild variations are important, cite both separately.

If the mild variations are not important but you still want to cite both: because 2 different journals and because slightly different titles and because mild variations, within and so, because presumably different identifiers (doi, jstor, etc) and because presumably different pagination and other details then: two separate citations with full bibliographic detail (author name can be hidden in the second by setting |author-mask=0). Including both in a single <ref>...</ref> tag is acceptable so your This article was also republished as ... or something similar should do.

cs1|2 templates are single-source-per-use templates. They are not designed to cite multiple sources no matter how closely the multiple sources agree with each other.

Answer your question?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:51, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(cs1/2 templates are single-source-per-use templates. We really should look into deprecating/removing the |lay-*= parameters. Maybe another year or two down the road when we don't have the summer debacle over our heads. :) --Izno (talk) 21:43, 23 November 2019 (UTC))[reply]

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks![edit]

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

publisher vs. work parameters in CS1/2 citations — follow-on query[edit]

Hi Trappist the Monk, I asked for your help a few months ago, see your archive of our conversation. It was essentially about making the choice between publisher and work/website parameters in cs1/2 citations. I've recently been doing some work on some rugby union articles, and the question has arisen in Wales national rugby union team. There are a number of citations that are attributable to Welsh Rugby Union which is an organisation that publishes information on its website www.wru.wales. I've been updating some of the citations and using work=Welsh Rugby Union but another editor has come in and changed it to publisher=Welsh Rugby Union. The changes are contained in this diff. As you can see, he's installed a publisher parameter but omitted work/website. Now in our previous conversation you said "any data in publisher[equals] for these templates does not make it to the metadata" and "It is perfectly legitimate for these templates to have publisher[equals] but they must also have work[equals]" I think I can see why you would want to use the publisher parameter for Welsh Rugby Union as it's an organisation that publishes stuff on its website, so I'm ok with publisher=Welsh Rugby Union, but I think there should also be a work alias included, i.e. website=wru.wales or website=www.wru.wales (never sure whether you should include the 'www') – do you agree and would you be prepared to back me up on that if the other editor reverts me? Cheers, Rodney Baggins (talk) 13:57, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Welsh Rugby Union is an organization that publishes an eponymous publication Welsh Rugby Union that holds "articles". Because this is about citations, we are citing an "article" in a publication. Because publisher-name and publication-name are the same, publisher-name should be omitted. In {{cite news}}, |work= (or alias) parameter should be used because the value assigned to that parameter is included in the citation's metadata whereas the value assigned to |publisher= is not. Readers who consume the citations in Wales national rugby union team via the metadata do not get whatever is assigned to |publisher=.

I don't particularly care for domain-names-as-work-titles. In this case |website=wru.wales is relatively simple and straightforward but there are cases where domain names are too cryptic to be of much use. If you decide to use domain names, the www subdomain name should not be included unless it is required by the site (some sites require www as part of their url though most don't).

Alas, there are editors out there who, for whatever reason, reject the notion that a corporate website can legitimately have the same name as the corporation that owns and publishes it.

I trolled through a handful of the WRU citations. Of the pages with content, they seemed to contain original content so one might invoke MOS:ITALICTITLE, in particular:

"Online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content should generally be italicized..."

with this caveat though: cs1|2 is not and cannot be governed by en.wiki's MOS without it explicitly undertakes to do so (as it does for date formats). The reason for this caveat is that cs1|2 is a citation style. WP:CITESTYLE permits the use of any consistent citation style. Citation styles may mandate styling that directly contradicts those required by MOS.

Many of the WRU citations that I looked at link to live pages that lack content beyond the boilerplate and sponsor adverts so adding links to archived copies of those pages might be something that needs doing (or find better sources).

Decisions about what happens on any article must be arrived at by consensus of the editors working on that article. While I believe that you are correct in using |work= (and aliases) as you have described, I am not a magistrate who can decree that cs1|2 citation shall be done in certain ways (would that I were, such power would have made these past few months less stressful). You can, of course, ping me into a conversation on this topic should one get started.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:28, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your speedy and comprehensive reply (again). I'll see what I can do and might quote you on the metadata thingy, and if it turns into an "amicable discussion" with said editor then I may very well ping you for input. P.S. I've been trying to provide archived versions of those live WRU pages that lack content beyond the boilerplate and sponsor adverts, that's pretty much how I got into this situation in the first place! Cheers, Rodney Baggins (talk) 15:40, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My first attempt to impose the rule of law :) Rodney Baggins (talk) 10:47, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NEED HELP[edit]

Hello my name is Alisa. I am from the company q-home UK, we recently bought a Clock Corner in Doncaster and we are searching for a writer, who can write an artical in wikepedia about this clock — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alisa1239 (talk • contribs) 10:36, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I am not that person. If the clock is notable, someday, someone, will write about it. You can also request an article.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:33, 3 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I could help Ben Kein (talk) 09:43, 9 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just thought it was cool[edit]

Just wanted to say I think your knowledge of gaming systems is cool. Where in at, the southeast in the states, I couldn't tell you one person that has ever had or let alone have the Sega Master System. I enjoyed it although I was a Nintendo to the core. I feel like bringing out my very near mint collection of Nintendo Power Magazine and reminiscing. I have number 48(Batman Returns) through around issue number 140ish. Have have a few earlier ones. The first one I ever bought and still have, is the strategy guide for Super Mario Bros. 3. It was red and I believe number 13 if I'm not mistaken? Anyway, I do not mean to bother and it is random but I don't know anyone that knows about older systems like myself. You probably know more and wanted to give you props on your knowledge of the subject and all subjects that you contribute to. Have a good holiday. AteTuyenTAte6Tin (talk) 19:06, 9 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To write an article on Bangariya it's located near Siyaljori[edit]

So please write on Village Bangariya Vivekcky (talk) 12:32, 11 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I am not that person. If the village is notable, someday, someone, will write about it. You can also request an article.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:45, 11 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

IUCN[edit]

Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to converting those templates. I'm not particularly short on Wikipedia tasks to do myself, but I might opt to convert a bunch myself when I'm getting tired of adding parameter switches to redirect templates for a couple hours straight and need to "reset" by doing a different task for a bit. Had a couple of questions: looking at your edits so far, it appears pretty straightforward. That true, or are there special cases I ought to be aware of before working on it? Further, is there any list or category of them somewhere, or just the good old "search and you will find"? (If relevant, I intend to do it manually not through AWB, simply because I tend to be just as fast that way and find it much easier to catch myself if I make a mistake, either prior to actually saving (preferable) or right after (unfortunate, but at least it allows me to fix 'm immediately)) AddWittyNameHere 16:15, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

{{cite iucn}} adds a couple of categories when it detects oddities in the parameters that it is given. You might start with the content of these cats:

Category:Cite iucn maint (0)
Category:Cite iucn errors‎ (0)

To see maint messages add this to your css:

.citation-comment {display: inline !important;}

There is some, probably inadequate, documentation for the messages emitted by the template at the template's doc page; if you're interested, that could probably be improved.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:31, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

All right, thanks for the quick response! I suspect that should be enough for me to do some work on it one of my next breaks from rcat-templating. (I'll see if I can also do anything about the template's documentation, but no promises. Depends on if I feel capable of adding anything that's an actual improvement or not) If I end up having further questions after all, is it okay if I come back to ask you or would you prefer me to go to the template/module's talk pages instead? AddWittyNameHere 18:18, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Of course you can come back here. If you don't want to attempt the documentation problem (who does?), that's ok; pointing out deficiencies would be helpful. Thanks for volunteering.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:31, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good. :) Suspected as much, but it never hurts to ask. I know my tendency towards wordiness can occasionally get on folks' nerves a bit, even if most are too polite to actually say so.

I try, but conversational brevity is no talent of mine.

And yeah, fixing documentation isn't really anyone's hobby or priority, I'm suspecting, but someone needs to do it. (A feeling I'm very familiar with. I'm certainly not adding tens of thousands of parameter switches to diffuse the contents of Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names because I particularly like doing so)

Pointing out deficiencies should be something I'm capable of at utter least. If I forget to do so or don't get around to it, please feel free to remind me in a couple of weeks or so. AddWittyNameHere 19:24, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Providing script code for cite-web errors[edit]

I would like to know if you can provide the script code that needs to be run inorder to correct this issue. Adithyak1997 (talk) 10:32, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure that the module code that caused the {{cite web}} errors that everyone was complaining so vociferously about has been corrected. If you are seeing occasions where {{cite web}} is emitting Cite web requires |website=, please show where that is so that I can fix the module.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:09, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am actually not getting the above issue. Instead, please check this page. Adithyak1997 (talk) 12:13, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know where you got that version of ~/Configuration but it is not the current version. The error message is complaining that it can't find the table punct_skip{} which exists in the en.wiki version of the live Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration but does not exist in your supposedly-same version. That you had to manually add support for missing_periodical is further indication that you do not have the current version.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:39, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot. It worked. Adithyak1997 (talk) 13:49, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Season's Greetings[edit]

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 02:07, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cite News[edit]

Thank you for revising the news references in SS Golconda (1887) - can see the point of all those, and I have reviewed Template:Cite news to try to understand it properly. I always feel guilty when a fellow editor takes time to clean up after me! But, to be honest, this full template seems daunting, but I would try to use it if it was more easily usable through WP:REFTOOLS - or am I missing something. Davidships (talk) 15:09, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

cs1|2 has a lot of parameters. That being so, it isn't surprising that WP:RefToolbar doesn't support them all – after all it also does not support the other 20-ish templates that make up cs1|2. Were I you, I would not feel guilty about some other editor cleaning up after you; its what happens at en.wiki.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:50, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - I'll take that as a kind seasonal gift! Davidships (talk) 16:56, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Weller's Salamander[edit]

Just thought I'd say that our names are not a coincidence. As the article says, they are found on Grandfather Mountain - my uncle Worth Hamilton Weller died young falling off the mountain. I've been told recently someone's writing a play about him. But the article doesn't mention him. Doug Weller talk 17:11, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Don't know why I need to know that but, still, thanks for the note because it caused me to discover yet-another-non-working-form of iucn url so the next one like it will be fixed by my script.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Neef to modifey Chamar[edit]

This has no ancient facts, This cast peopel was buddhist but due to ashoka empire end they make untuchable to take them down for whole cummunity forever. SirjiIndia (talk) 16:59, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, but my talk page is not the place for this discussion. Perhaps you should discuss at Chamar?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:26, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A Joyous Yuletide to you![edit]

Carole of the Bells by Pentatonix

Hello TtM, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2020.
Happy editing, $7&6=thirteen (☎)$ 20:07, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck[edit]

豊かな十年へようこそ/WELCOME TO THE D20s

Miraclepine wishes you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a prosperous decade of change and fortune.
このミラ PはTrappist the monkたちのメリークリスマスも新年も変革と幸運の豊かな十年をおめでとうございます！
フレフレ、みんなの未来！/GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FUTURE!
ミラ P 04:02, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To: Monkbot[edit]

From: SmilyChase

(: Smilychase (talk) 10:34, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Monkbot 15[edit]

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Monkbot 15 has been approved! Please see the BRFA for details. Happy editing! --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 10:12, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Date format modification[edit]

I would like to know what change needs to be made in order to make both the dates "22 December 2019" and "2019 December 22" as a valid one. Note that I need to change this in Malayalam Wikipedia. As of now, this change is suggested. If in any case it is not required, I may revert it. I mean if any strong opposition comes. Adithyak1997 (talk) 13:01, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In ml:Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation search for case-sensitive 'yMd'. At en.wiki that format is not supported so anything to do with that format is commented-out. Uncomment (there are multiple places that this must be done).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:54, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. It worked. Adithyak1997 (talk) 16:14, 27 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

in lang capitalisation[edit]

Hello. When the bot switches {{LL}} to {{in lang}} please can it ensure the language code is put in lower case otherwise eg this produces red-linked categories (contrary to WP:REDNOT) such as Category:Articles_with_Japanese-language_sources_(Ja). There's quite a lot from the last day or so. TIA Le Deluge (talk) 22:00, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing that out. Fixed in Module:Lang/utilities (see your example). A null edit should fix those articles with redlinked categories caused by non-lowercase language code.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:50, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The other thing we're getting is that in lang is creating WP:REDNOT categories based on three-letter codes when the two-letter category exists, eg fin and fi or nor and no. You can see them here - most of them are at the bottom, but eg the Norwegian ones is #5. I don't know what they best way to handle it is, presumably there's some lookups you can do on three-letter codes to convert them, or test for the existence of two and three letter categories? Le Deluge (talk) 11:48, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed in Module:Lang/utilities. Thank you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:24, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]