User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2010 October

Previous · Index · Next

Speedy deletion nomination of The Queen's Award for Enterprise: International Trade (Export) (1972)

A tag has been placed on The Queen's Award for Enterprise: International Trade (Export) (1972), requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing no content to the reader. Please note that external links, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, interwiki link, rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article don't count as content. Moreover, please add more verifiable sources, not only 3rd party sources. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content. You may wish to consider using a Wizard to help you create articles - see the Article Wizard.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you plan to expand the article, you can request that administrators wait a while for you to add contextual material. To do this, affix the template {{hangon}} to the page and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Abductive (reasoning) 05:17, 2 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Hi!

Can you redo your fixes to The Hands Resist Him ? I reverted YouTube links, which we don´t use, but had to revert your edits also in order to do that. Thanks. --Againme (talk) 20:26, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes I can redo some of them. thanks for letting me know. Rich Farmbrough, 20:32, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Never mind, I already did it. :=) --Againme (talk) 20:41, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 21:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

--

Followup on Jacob Barron

FYI, you may now speedy Jacob Barron that you once tagged uncategorized. It appears that neither the league nor the team's site are aware of the guy's existence. The claimed awards were issued to other people. And the real (the other) Jacob Barron is a very skinny kid playing American football for UC Davis [1].

These uncategorized pages are one big can of worms. East of Borschov 18:40, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

• woops, did not realized you're blocked. Oh well, sort it out and get back. East of Borschov 18:42, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

They certainly are. Port Adelaide Football Club is probably more appropriate as "our" JB may well be the one mentioned in http://www.newtown.tased.edu.au/parents/newsletters/newsletters2005/Newsletter%2020.pdf. Regardless, speedy is the way to go. Rich Farmbrough, 19:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Speedied. Rich Farmbrough, 00:06, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Pages to check (note to self)

1. Demographics of Peru
2. FastTrack
3. Elizabeth Howlett
4. ATLAS experiment
5. STS-80
6. Formiciinae
7. 24 Hours of Daytona
8. Honda Accord Hybrid
9. Scalable Link Interface
10. SuperQuest
11. Government of Ukraine
12. French European Constitution referendum, 2005
13. Kennecott Utah Copper
14. Hal Foster (art critic)
15. Wazap!
16. David Glass (businessman)
17. Studies related to Microsoft
18. The Academy for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering
19. NK SAŠK Napredak
20. California Heaven
21. David Belfall
22. History of the English fiscal system
23. Saving Jane
24. List of the largest fixed satellite operators
25. Transnistrian border customs issues
26. Fenway (MBTA station)
27. War Stories with Oliver North
28. Mahon Tribunal
29. Air Reserve Technician Program
30. Hayley Peirsol
31. Dakar Accord
32. C.D. Olivais e Moscavide
33. Extra Space Storage
34. Space (Ibiza nightclub)
35. African Union Mission to Somalia
36. Zhdanovichi Stadion
37. Zack Hexum
38. List of South African films
39. Iraq War troop surge of 2007
40. DanceLife
41. Oxiana Limited
42. Sony Music Studios
43. Sarah Wykes
44. Linux gaming
45. Aviant
46. Cathedral School for Boys
47. Tamara Lorincz
48. Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge
49. When Women Rule the World
50. Egyptian films of the 2000s
51. Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq
52. FIFA Street 3
53. 2008 NRJ Music Awards
54. Crime and violence in Latin America
55. Imperium Romanum (video game)
56. List of CNN anchors
57. Gujarat International Finance Tec-City
58. TVP HD

Rich Farmbrough, 15:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC). --

Telecom Corridor Genealoy Project article

Hi Rich,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecom_Corridor_Genealogy_Project

I'm working hard on the article above. It is though my first time working with wiki. In the past few days I responded to the notablity comment in the article with adding many secondary references.

What am I doing wrong - why isn't the notice going away.

Hope you can help me. I'm currently not logged in, but my user is Ninabach2111.

Best,

Nina —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.20.102 (talk) 18:43, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Nina, best person to ask is User:Mean as custard who added the tag. As a seperate point you should find some categories for the article, maybe Category:Social networks. Also clear up the text and headings of surplus capitals "as a Tool for Economic Development ", for example. Rich Farmbrough, 09:45, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

--

Dating dead link templates now done by AWB genfixes

rev 7199 adds {{Dead link}} to the list of templates that date is added when missing in AWB's general fixes. This will help you reduce SmackBot's extra code a bit. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, the examples on {{dead link}} use lower-case invocation. I hope that this can be respected. —Sladen (talk) 16:46, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

AWB only changes undated tags to dated ones. The result is for example {{Dead end|date=November 2010}}. There are no bare replacements but the capitalised version is used. diff -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:48, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the diff, which clearly shows the rule in work that you are referring to. This change could be argued to be captialisation by the back-door, and I would not wish to see Rich put in that position unintentionally. Please could we consider a lower case {{dead link}} insertion to reduce the chance of Rich receiving further unintended rapprochement—in this case for edits that aren't caused by his personal/Smackbot's ruleset, but instead by upstream AWB.

I think another very important change to reduce feedback (dicussion thread frequency on this page) is for AWB to use a dynamic summary line where the summary given lists the rules that were specifically activated in that edit (tersely, and only at least as many as will fit)—rather than generic summaries of "general fixes" which (again I have observed) have lead to threads on this page in times when an edit relevant summary might have avoided the discussion by helping other editors to discern what the actual change was (rather than just see a Rich/Smackbot edit and thinking "ooohh nooo, *sigh*, I wonder what has been carpet bombed this time..." (paraphrasing). I hope that changes in this direction would help Rich to be able to continue constructive editing sooner, again without risk of rapprochement: thus increasing the signal/noise ratio here and ensure that the real bugs don't scroll off the top. —Sladen (talk) 17:13, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I just extended something we 've been doing for a long time for other maintaince templates and shouldn't be confused with the capitalisition done by SmackBot. (AWB doesn't change {{dead end}} with {{Dead end}} (undated)) We discussed on having more detailed edit summaries. This is a work in progress I could say. Thanks for the feedback. I am just trying to help by simplifying SmackBot's code by integrating a part in AWB's core an make it customable. By the way, tagging/untagging done by AWB is shown completely in detail in edit summary. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. I have a feature request based on - I think - Bearcat's suggestion. That is to end-tag {{More categories}} where only birth/death, living cats are present. Rich Farmbrough, 16:31, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Probably of course to include hidden or unhidden cats such as

1. Category:Year of birth missing
2. Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
3. Category:Year of birth unknown
4. Category:Date of birth missing
5. Category:Date of birth missing (living people)
6. Category:Date of birth unknown
7. Category:Place of birth missing
8. Category:Place of birth missing (living people)
9. Category:Place of birth unknown
10. Category:Year of death missing
11. Category:Year of death unknown
12. Category:Date of death unknown
13. Category:Place of death missing
14. Category:Place of death unknown
15. Category:Missing middle or first names

Rich Farmbrough, 16:41, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

--

Wikipedia templates needing cleanup

What's up with this page. I'm assuming it was created by accident. Does it need moved somewhere or deleted? --D•g ^{Talk to me}/_{What I've done} 23:20, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 23:46, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

--

Template:Pufc

FYI: Template talk:Pufc#Date error and this diff. I've changed {{puf}} so that at least new additions will use the new date parameter and have just about finished going through all transclusions to fixe the date/log parameter where it was passed incorrectly, but there's at least one bot and possibly some scripts that will still use the log parameter.
Amalthea 21:13, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah #time: fails on those date formats. Rich Farmbrough, 21:33, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Yeah, I looked at your diff at the time but didn't realize that either. Amalthea 22:39, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

---

B.J. Nikkel

An IP has removed the references section, if someone could fix that. Rich Farmbrough, 11:09, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

Done. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:13, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 18:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

--

Proposed deletion of Live At the Blue Note 11/14/2000

The article Live At the Blue Note 11/14/2000 has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Has not received enough third party coverage to meet the notability requirements of WP:NALBUMS.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 01:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge to artist/discography. Rich Farmbrough, 06:07, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

--

ANI thread

Anyone that is wondering I will get back to that later. Rich Farmbrough, 17:40, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

3am time for bed. Moar soon. Rich Farmbrough, 02:05, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Scratch that, off to BRFA. Rich Farmbrough, 02:24, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

-- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Femto Bot (talk • contribs) 12:06, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Your attention

Rich hi :) Can you give your comments here please? Wifione _....... ^{Leave a message} 06:59, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Looking... Rich Farmbrough, 07:10, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

 Done Rich Farmbrough, 07:16, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

zanks :) Wifione _....... ^{Leave a message} 09:13, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I might be doing something wrong here. I put the changes you suggested and tested it against the said edit. Didn't kind of match. Wifione _....... ^{Leave a message} 09:45, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

---

SmackBot STOP bug

To stop Smackbot, the instructions given at User talk:SmackBot are to place the string "STOP" in that page and a new section link is provided to do this. This "STOP" string continues to be the present, but the bot is making edits[2][3] including the very capitalisation changes under discussion[4]. Making edits while stopped appears to be a bug: please could you either (a) adjust the documentation to clearly state how to disable SmackBot, (b) fix the bot to not make article space edits when intentionally stopped following the instructions. —Sladen (talk) 14:52, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Appears to be a layer 8 issue (where the operator had restarted it despite the ongoing dispute over the nature of the edits). –xeno^talk 14:54, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I am not interested in a witch-hunt and I am quite happy to believe that this is a bug, in which case it is easily fixable. I have noted above[5] that one of the points of conflict that see here are reported bugs that go unfixed. I am reporting the issue in the hope that it can be fixed. I look forwarded to Rich confirming that this was the case and that it has been genuinely fixed, either with amended documentation or amended code. —Sladen (talk) 15:07, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• With all due respect neither of the edits changed capitalisation. The purpose of leaving a message is to stop the bot not to block it. The bot was stopped. I tested the possibility of restarting a minor task, which does not touch Cite templates, and discarded it after a couple of edits, as too complex to do straight away. Rich Farmbrough, 09:53, 30 September 2010 (UTC).
  • The third of those diffs, this edit, shows a change from {{silicate-mineral-stub}} to {{Silicate-mineral-stub}}. Amalthea 10:00, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
    • Very well spotted indeed. I see that one-bit change has SmackBot now blocked. Or was it just the blocking admin's impression that SB was blocked and had been unblocked by me? I can't tell. Oh well, fun to watch the pile-on at ANI, while unable to defend myself there. Rich Farmbrough, 16:23, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

It's irrelevant who noticed what; a Bot's owner was notified that a Bot under their control was misbehaving (running whilst "stopped" and making controversial non-BAG approved changes) . The Bot's owner responded by denying the situation and flatly contradicting the reporter(s)' notifications to the contrary (...rather than just taking and accepting the bug report, and acting on it). As above[6], my perception of conflict at this Talk page stems from being critically aware of other editors rocking up by the dozen, reporting bugs and seeing those useful bug reports disputed, or ignored. This thread/report is another example of that.

Now I try to get past the first level of rebuttal (hard work), but many others do not bother and that means that bugs and issues are getting lost/ignored, which is not helping to improve Wikipedia. —Sladen (talk) 17:05, 30 September 2010 (UTC) (Things do sometimes get fixed—thank you Rich—but it often takes multi-rounds to get the issue looked at[7], one fortnight ago: eventually got fixed but it took multiple rounds.

Well your original post said "I have no idea what the bot is trying to do" so I explained that to you two minutes later on your talk page. Your clarification one minute after that, [8] (which might have been an edit conflict with my reply) went un-noticed, since it was on the bot's talk page not mine (so I got no orange bar), and an edit to the existing comment. I replied to your comment on my talk page within about 4 minutes, and resolved the problem, which meant fixing not just my code but the broken archiving on the talk page in question, which had been broken for months, possibly years, correcting the page layout and the talk page archive, and rebuilding the ruleset twice (which takes about an hour each time) - during which I made no unrelated edits and Smackbot was stopped. So while I understand that it may have looked like "multiple rounds" from my perspective I answered every post within a few minutes, and spent some time working on the bug once it was clear what the bug was. Rich Farmbrough, 18:20, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Thank you for your analysis of the resolved and thanked situation from a fortnight ago. Could I draw your attention to the two paragraphs before the footnote. The plan here is to try to get you unblocked—could you please provide an equivalent level of analysis about what the bug report above was caused by, what change(s) have been made to fix it, and how that the bug fix prevents Smackbot operating when nominally stopped. —Sladen (talk) 18:47, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Firstly three edits is not "running" in any real sense of the word, there was not as Xeno said and "ongoing dispute over the nature of the edits" except with regards to the silicate=>Silicate which I missed at the time and others missed since, and is not really what the dispute is about, although peopel are trying to enlarge the scope aa much as they can,it would seem. The dispute was about the "Cite" templates - and even then at three different levels, one concerning diff noise in user edits, one diff noise in bot edits, and one "idontlikeit" addressing the actual change itself. I do respect all three arguments, the difficulty comes, as so often, when trying to hold a discussion with several people who hold the different views at the same time. And it is compounded when some of them jump into other threads on the page and try and weave all the disparate issues -even mild mannered requests for information- into a tapestry hung from a single nail. Xeno's comment to a dead thread (in which, incidentally, I had said i had no objection to the other editor's proposals, and then admitted I was wrong on the content of a guideline) was a case in point - as was your comment, I believe, on a thread about correcting dates. I made some attempts to refactor the page but decided it was simpler to just restart, as I had read everyone's comments, and everything would be on the archive page - which is clearly signed at the top of this page. I posted the nature of the problem in the top thread of this page. Doubtless I should have simply persevered with refactoring the page, or been clearer in the new thread that that was why I was archiving the page. Easy to be wise after the event.
Furthermore you and others misunderstood the nature of "stopping" which I have explained above. The purpose of leaving a message is to stop the bot not to block it. The bot was stopped. I tested the possibility of restarting a minor task, which does not touch Cite templates, and discarded it after a couple of edits, as too complex to do straight away. Not unreasonable actions. Rich Farmbrough, 20:31, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Thank you for responding to this and for providing the new documentation at User:SmackBot/What the stop button does. —Sladen (talk) 23:59, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

---

FYI

See here. –xeno^talk 21:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have added the link myself. Q Science (talk) 21:03, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

---

Category:Wikipedia articles needing cleanup from August 2010

Any idea what's up with the cleanup categories? Most of them are populated but redlinked. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 22:17, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes some people changes the template, and hence the cat tree, once User:Femto Bot gets approved (and I hit go) the cats will be created automatically. If any of the old cat tree become empty, they will nominate themselves for speedy deletion (neat huh?). Rich Farmbrough, 22:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Hmm, I don't think that will work. You can't categorize a page via parser function without an actual (null) edit. Amalthea 22:38, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Works for me, but maybe Heisenberg applies? Rich Farmbrough, 00:20, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

Or maybe not. Rich Farmbrough, 00:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

Might need to mess with the dates, and then I can have a null edit done by bot. One for tomorrow. Rich Farmbrough, 00:31, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

OK I'm puzzled - guess I'm missing something about CSD category. Rich Farmbrough, 23:51, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

It works. Rich Farmbrough, 13:46, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Dab page needed

Ho-oh should possibly dab to Fenghuang. Rich Farmbrough, 16:26, 30 September 2010 (UTC). --

ETA for dumps

ETA 2011-01-08 21:36:43... ?Rich Farmbrough, 16:39, 30 September 2010 (UTC). -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Femto Bot (talk • contribs) 14:30, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

wp:ani remember?

Hi. Could you spare a moment to comment at wp:ani (the section with your name on it). I know you are very busy man, but it was the reason you were unblocked for ;) Sf5xeplus (talk) 22:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes I have it open, guess I would get an edit conflict.... Rich Farmbrough, 23:27, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

One for tomorrow. Rich Farmbrough, 00:31, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

4.5 hours and 81 edits... —Sladen (talk) 00:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

So... when you requested to be unblocked to allow you to comment at ANI, you actually didn't have anything to say, and was just lying to get around the block? And that you might have an edit conflict isn't a very good excuse for not commenting.... I'm not impressed. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 05:26, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

It wasn't an edit conflict, it was somewhat more sever than that. Please see my comment on ANI. Rich Farmbrough, 07:26, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

OK not what you meant. Rich Farmbrough, 07:29, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

As I understand, the situation is/was this:

1. User:Femto Bot(!) ("copied from ANI - due being unable to save while I was replying"[9]) and User:Rich Farmbrough ("Oh well, fun to watch the pile-on at ANI, while unable to defend myself there."[10]) state that Rich is prevented from responding to WP:ANI
2. User:Magioladitis ("suggested unblock so Rich can comment in WP:ANI. I think this is more urgent"[11]) and User:Sladen ("Rich: I'd prefer to see you make this unblock request on the basis of contributing to the WP:ANI discussion, it is more immediate concern"[12]) suggest asking for an unblock to respond to WP:ANI
3. User:Rich Farmbrough requests ("unblock|To join the discussions at ANI."[13] asking for unblock to be able to respond to WP:ANI
4. User:Wknight94 grants unblock request[14], giving Rich the ability to respond to WP:ANI
5. Time passes…, lots of edits do happen, but not to WP:ANI
6. This thread gets started as a prompting to reply to WP:ANI
7. First response marks it as unimportant ("tomorrow"[15]) and second response—later retracted for completely missing the point—disputes the prompting ("It wasn't ..."[16])

Rich, I appreciate that you have since added a comment to ANI. In deference to Wknight94, for having put their credibility on the line, please could you let us know:

• Why, after asking for right-of-reply you did not immediately use it, but went off to do other things?
• Why, after further prompting you did not immediately act on the prompting, but instead argued the prompting?

—Sladen (talk) 15:26, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

See you assume that "tomorrow" means unimportant - whereas it actually means "too important to do at 1:30 am." Rich Farmbrough, 15:48, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

1. Anything things? Someone broke something, it needed fixing. That's why I asked for an unblock. Second request was to comment at ANI. I clarified with Wknight64 on his talk page the scope of the unblocking.
2. The other edits were relatively simple, there is no point rushing into ANI half cocked, especially as the thread was somewhat long and convoluted. I could spend days responding there,and still only scratch the surface.
3. As should be apparent from my retraction I misunderstood KingPin to be talking about why I didn't respond to ANI in the first place - which was a block within 8 minutes while I was not editing - lesson learned I should have dropped a one-liner "Response being written". I have made three responses at ANI plus one forwarded by Xeno.
4. As for KingPin's

was just lying to get around the block

I don't really feel the need to respond to this kind of stuff.

1. Also I wonder at the assumption that ANI is more important than the encyclopedia. Seems like the tail wagging the dog. I know people have a glorious time at ANI, RFC, ArbCom, 3RR etc etc, and I don't begrudge them it, and indeed those places serve a purpose. But the operative word is serve - not rule. Rich Farmbrough, 15:46, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

There is no assumption about priority, only your own assertions. It is my understanding that you considered ANI so important that you requested an unblock on that basis. The unblock does not prevent you doing other things; but if other things was what you actually had in mind then the unblock request should have truthfully been made on those grounds. As you've probably noticed, your unblock request to do other things was not the one that got you granted. —Sladen (talk) 16:14, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreeing with Sladen here. As to my lying comment, in the unblock you said that you were requesting unblock so as to be able to comment at AN/I. It's apparent from your actions after the unblock, as well as your comment above, that actually the reason you requested unblocking was to do "other things".

Which I see as lying, and do think could use a response. While were talking about this stuff, I should just say I think you'd find people get on with you much better if you apologise when you do mess up, otherwise you (not on purpose) give the impression that you think you are above this. For example, you slapped a maintenance tag on the main page, maybe you would care to explain why that was? This is one of the things which got you blocked, and I haven't actually seen you address it (I might have overlooked something of course). - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 16:22, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Read my reply to Sladen please. Rich Farmbrough, 17:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

Yes I was picking up "Main page" on a list from the toolserver. I went through the list maybe 8 times (regenerating it every time) and obviously hit skip for main page 7 times. One time I messed up. yes it was a mistake, yes I make them, all the time, everyone does, and yes I apologize for any difficulty it causes. But I also fix them up - and not wishing to get defensive - if an un-cat on the main page was that big a deal, why wasn't it reverted by another admin before I got the message on my talk page? Rich Farmbrough, 17:27, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks for addressing this issue. Were you actually examining each individual edit, or just the list of pages to be edited? I'm surprised you could have missed the main page if you went through the list 8 times, but these things happen. However, this is exactly the reason we have process like BRfA, peer-review will often spot things which one person can easily overlook. Often lists of pages/categories will be created on-wiki, which will then be examined by a whole group of editors (often from a WikiProject), and this massively reduces the risk of this kind of thing happening. As to it not being undone, you've hit the nail on the head. Because you are making these edits from your main account (which has +sysop), and making edits in massive batches, it means it's piratically impossible to actually review your edits, which means things like this can go unseen very easily. I think anybody would admit that having a maintenance template on the main page is a very large mistake, and I don't think you can pass it off as no big deal. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 17:44, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

On a pragmatic angle; two things would solve this: (1) Patch AWB so that it refuses to change "Main Page", even if asked to, (2) Patch AWB to enforce its own rule #2, that it is not used from a +sysop-enabled account, even if asked to. —Sladen (talk) 19:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

1) The actual problem is that Rich has modified the AWB code to allow it to run in automatic mode from non-bot accounts. And it's fairly obvious he had it running in auto-mode when the main page edit was made. 2) That's not what rule 2 says, and AWB actually has admin-only features (like deletion) in it, so it shouldn't prevent it being used by administrators. –xeno^talk 19:45, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I think we all aware that this episode is down to human error; but lets not broach that because it's not constructive or useful. Short of seeing Rich getting blocked in the future, lets see what we can do it minimise the collateral that might cause that. We already know that Rich has custom everything and I don't see why these two can't be part of those customisations. If you have a better idea, please also suggest it. —Sladen (talk) 23:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

You may also want to think about the appearances you have created.

Largely I may say, in the eye of the beholder. But yes, point taken .Rich Farmbrough, 17:27, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

As pointed out, the unblock reason that was accepted was so you could, primarily, present you side of the situation at ANI.

Well, yes and no, see above.

As soon as you were unblocked you ran after other issues on templates and articles. After 4 and a half hours, and being chided about it, you pointed to getting to ANI "tomorrow", and have clarified it now as your having been too tired to adequately participate there.

And when you did get to ANI, it was during your 3rd block of editing after the block was removed, more than 17 hours after you were unblocked, and did squat to address the issues that were brought to ANI and resulted in you block.

Like I said it's a big thread. Rich Farmbrough, 17:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

And this isn't even touching on you 'bot request.

As an admin, would you honestly find this acceptable behavior from another editor? Or would you have expected the addressing of the ANI, addressing community concerns about the editor's interaction with the community, to have been prioritized as the first few edits after the block was lifted?

- J Greb (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

There is just too much to do there, it's not "first few edits" it's about de-constructing 48 hours of character assassination, by people who are just "chiming in", settling "old scores" or - even the good faith ones - have not bothered to read the material in question. Rich Farmbrough, 17:27, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

I can appreciate your point here about having to essentially catch up, and that your implication that you dislike ANI (methodology if I'm reading right, not the fundamental premise), but it still causes problems. Among them is a perception that you have a disinterest the community component of Wikipedia and that you'll do whatever you can to continue do what you want, and only what you want. Neither of those is a good thing for others to have.

Posting a simple comment to the ANI thread just after your block was lifted to affirm what you are going to do and not do while editing articles, templates, cats, etc until this has run its source would have alleviated some of this. Even if you had to hold your nose while doing it. Including a comment that you also needed some time to really parse through the multi-part thread to sift issues and pitchforks before giving a fuller post on your position wouldn't have hurt either.

- J Greb (talk) 17:53, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

See #Cite for your request. Does the dif need to be included here as well to underscore it? - J Greb (talk) 17:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The ublock request replied to was specifically to attend to problem. The reason said that I had "agreed to respond at ANI" - which I had never said I wouldn't and if I hadn't been blocked before I could respond, would have done. You can read my earstwhile reply here or on ANI. Rich Farmbrough, 17:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

Request: "To join the discussions at ANI."[17] and "Yes [I agree to avoid continuing an automated (or semi-automated) task despite messages (and complaints) about that task.]"[18].
Unblock: "User agrees to participate in ANI discussion and to stop doing what he was blocked for"[19].

It's a pretty accurate synopsis I'd say; somebody asking off their own back is unlikely to be refusing… We can resort to William Jefferson Blythe III levels of arguing over the meaning of "is", but I don't think it's worth it. —Sladen (talk) 01:08, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not really interested in which unblock request was the one granted, if the question even makes sense. However for those that are, the unblock message is placed after the first unblock request, and to, I thought, forestall any such bickering I clarified with Wknight64 the scope of the unblock. Obviously I must try harder. Rich Farmbrough, 02:30, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

I think you need to be interested in why you were unblocked (this could be the "trying harder" bit; in which case all is good, and this is solved). It was (abundantly) clear to me—and I presume User:Magioladitis—that your original request had a cat in hell's chance of being granted amicably; which is why I—and I presume User:Magioladitis—suggested that you didn't bother pursing it and instead pointed you in another direction.[20] You (thankfully) chose to follow this recommendation and that left you unblocked within the hour. Your further (sensible) proactive clarification with User:Wknight94 afterwards got you: "simply agree to stop any batch editing as soon as you start getting objections" with the note/proviso "ANI would like some further concessions regarding batch edits, so you should discuss things with them".[21] I can post the whole clarification here, in green, if it really helps but the meat is what I've posted and particularly what I've underlined. It matches the above unblock messages, and it matches your revised unblock request (the one that got granted). —Sladen (talk) 03:38, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

How's this coming along? I believe the "further concessions" are those mentioned at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Conditions that would satisfy X!, Kingpin13, MSGJ, and others, but I haven't seen a response/follow-up posted from Rich yet? —Sladen (talk) 00:34, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

It's fairly evident that you guys will keep plugging away forever at this - it will be "Why did you split my comment on your talk page?" .. "when replying to the RFC about refactoring other people's comments you said "xx".. but .. Aha ! I have a diff proving that you were in fact editing an article on Chinese gunpowder at the time." If you actually have anything cogent to say, say it. Rich Farmbrough, 17:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Unblock

{{unblock|To deal with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Cleanup#Correcting_to_apply_to_all_namespaces category problems. Rich Farmbrough, 18:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC).}}

Could you clarify for the reviewing admin what needs to be done? Is it AWB work? Or just some edit to the template? –xeno^talk 18:50, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Not AWB, (although the change is throwing hundreds more pages into SB's queue, which with the current category lag will take time to sort out). A new category structure may need constructing, and the discussion needs to be informed of a few things,, and maybe the template revised in-line with that. Rich Farmbrough, 19:03, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

(edit conflict) Moreover, can you just clarify that you will be a little more responsive when people raise issues about your edits? I.e., make any future blocks unnecessary? Wknight94 ^talk 19:04, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I suggested unblock so Rich can comment in WP:ANI. I think this is more urgent right now. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:06, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Rich: I'd prefer to see you make this unblock request on the basis of contributing to the WP:ANI discussion, it is more immediate concern and would be easier to grant. Talk of "throwing hundreds more pages at SmackBot" may not endear everyone. —Sladen (talk) 19:14, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Let us then say "Throwing hundreds more pages into Category:Articles_with_invalid_date_parameter_in_template which is going to create problems for me, and is unlikely to be addressed by anyone else." Rich Farmbrough, 19:24, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

{{unblock|To join the discussions at ANI. Rich Farmbrough, 19:25, 30 September 2010 (UTC).}}

You were blocked for continuing an automated (or semi-automated) task despite messages (and complaints) about that task. Can you agree not to do that anymore? Wknight94 ^talk 19:56, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Rich Farmbrough, 20:00, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Okay, thank you. I've unblocked. Wknight94 ^talk 20:05, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Rich Farmbrough, 20:08, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

--

Category:BLP articles lacking sources from May 2006

It was in CAT:CSD. Nyttend (talk) 12:21, 2 October 2010 (UTC) --- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Femto Bot (talk • contribs) 16:20, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Thread copied from ANI - due being unable to save while I was replying to it

Context at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Please block Rich Farmbrough - thousands of unnecessary capitalization changes.

Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

SmackBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)

Recently, the AWB bot has been making totally unnecessary capitalization changes. These were being "discussed" on Rich Farmbrough's page, here and here. He said that he fixed the problem, but a day later, it was back. When brought up again, his response was to blank (archive) the page. Therefore, I request immediate halt to this use of this bot until this issue is addressed. Q Science (talk) 20:54, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

• The fact that so many have complained to Rich about pointless template capitalization changes and other sundry changes such as = = spacing around headers == makes it clear that these are not uncontroversial edits. As such, they represent a violation of WP:AWB#Rules of use #3. I had laid off complaining about R.F. botting from his main account, but only because the edits were by-and-large useful and uncontroversial. This is no longer the case. These types of edits that change articles from how they were intentionally set by other editors to suit one bot-op's personal preference should stop unless they are approved by BAG. –xeno^talk 21:00, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

• Would there be any objection if a regular editor simply hit the big red button on SmackBot's user page until an admin deals with the matter? Delta Trine ^{Συζήτηση} 21:03, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Neither the bot nor I are editing at the moment, nor will we be for some time. I have revised the ruleset on Cite templates, as I said. When people start destroying the structure of the talk page the choice is to revert or archive. I had 35 threads, all pretty much dead, it seems reasonable to archive them - all accessible and new messages can still be left. I have now revised the rulset further and removed the Cite templates completely, restoring the status quo ante. Rich Farmbrough, 21:16, 28 September 2010 (UTC).

Do you want me to copy this over to ANI? As I mentioned to you prior you to collapsing it, you shouldn't be changing the first-letter capitalization for any templates without consensus or approval; if a human editor used {{small case}} then it can and should remain small case. I'm also a little concerned at your characterization of good faith criticism as "vandalising the talk page" (since amended). –xeno^talk 21:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that would be cool. I'm away for the night anyway - and dropping comments into multiple unrelated threads is what I was referring to - I have moderated my language a little. Rich Farmbrough, 21:31, 28 September 2010 (UTC).

Ok. –xeno^talk 21:33, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Multiple threads are the strong indicator here. If there are no errors, then there are likely to be no threads—something impossible, which is why it is important that we take the time to report bugs here, not just revert the change. Thirty threads means thirty problems that didn't work out. If any of them are repeats, it means that the original bug wasn't fixed—and that is the conflict that I watch at work here. Editors report bugs, and the bugs go unfixed. Editors report again, unfixed again; ... If a issue point is controversial (and not a clear-cut bug), then it should not be being altered en-masse by automated means (including pseudo-automated means).

• Not so the page was approximately
  • 2 outdated/test messages
  • 1 technical discussion
  • 1 thread about a template
  • 1 about an IP vandal
  • 1 about an apparently deleted item
  • 1 about something from 2009
  • 2 requests for article fixes
  • 1 request for a feature
  • 2 discussions about categorization (or not) of WADS and SWAT
  • 2 thanks
  • 4 notices
  • 1 advice of an edit conflict
  • 3 request to look at tagged articles
  • 1 query about MediaWiki limitations
  • 2 error reports
  • 2 about the current issue, one an instruction to stop, one a query.
  • and 1 *ahem* request to be a pen-pal.

Rich Farmbrough, 06:32, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

And 1 about header spacing. Rich Farmbrough, 09:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

One option might be to pick a number here (eg. five). As soon as this number of threads are open and not yet archived, then hold off the edits until one of the threads gets auto-archived. This would ensure that all threads got the attention deserved, ensure that all bug reports were seen and not missed, and ensure that the edits being done really were of an above-average quality and truly uncontroversial nature. —Sladen (talk) 02:43, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

That's a good idea, I've actually dumped auto-archiving by date anyway as there are too many problems, albeit minor. Many thanks to Mizabot and WerdnaBot and the others for years of service. Rich Farmbrough, 06:39, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

Sorry, but that's nonsense.

What is? Rich Farmbrough, 10:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

Sladen: "If a issue point is controversial [...] then it should not be being altered en-masse by automated means [...] One option might be to pick a number here (eg. five). As soon as this number of threads are open and not yet archived, then hold off the edits [...]" – You: "That's a good idea, [...]". Amalthea 12:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

If you want to continue doing bot tasks (or bot-like editing) without explicit BAG approval, then your tasks better be completely uncontroversial or backed by solid consensus, and you be extremely responsive to concerns brought to you. If a task is challenged then you better stop right away, instead of waiting for five threads with complaints.
Over the past couple of days it seems to me that you just wanted to sit it out. You claimed you changed your AWB rules, but you were in fact still doing it. My AGF ran out. Amalthea 10:21, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes it was matching {{Cite Web}} I think. I have removed all four (journal, news, web and book) from the generating rules as of build 553. Rich Farmbrough, 10:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

… which still wouldn't suffice. Changing the capitalization of the first letter of any transcluded template is quite obviously not non-controversial. Amalthea 12:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

There are three issues that I see here:

1. Running an unapproved automated bot on your main account - explicitly disallowed by the bot policy
2. Not responding to concerns about your bots, and blanking instead - bad bot operator practice
3. Continuing to run tasks which quite obviously do not have community consensus - bad bot op practices and violates Consensus

Those three issues, combined with the continuation of this for a long time, has resulted in a block. Unless you can give reasonable explanations for these three points, I see no other way to go except to remain blocked, and if necessary in the long run, a ban from operating automated tasks. (X! · talk)  · @490  ·  10:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC) OK let me address these:

1. I will restrict AWB runs on my main account to modest proportions, and document any over, say 100 edits, on my talk page before running them. AWB runs can, of course, be stopped at any time by leaving a message (any message) on the user's talk page. I will respond to any such message and allow at least 20 minutes for a re-response before continuing.
2. Yes, agreed, editors were leaving comments in unrelated threads, and the page had become a mess. I attempted a re-factor and gave up - I should have been more patient. I wasn't implying that discussion was over, juts that there was nothing on the page that needed to stay on it, and we could continue in new threads.
3. I have removed the inline Cite templates and can also remove the header spacing. These are minor facets, and I understand Amalthea's concern's over diff noise - which related not to bot edits, but regardless, I have removed them (the inline Cite templates) from the build number I gave elsewhere and onwards.

Rich Farmbrough, 10:11, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Can you also please remove the change of {flagicon| to {Flag icon| and of {noflag} to {No flag}, both per previous talkpage requests? Thanks — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 12:04, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

NP.Rich Farmbrough, 15:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

--

Blocked

I've henceforth blocked you from editing until the issues surrounding your unapproved bot are resolved. Despite the much good this bot has had, it's also creating much disruption. Just today, it tagged the Main Page as uncategorized. It took 12 minutes to self-revert. It is adding spacing changes which are clearly not uncontroversial. Despite multiple warnings, it continues to do so. Thus, I have blocked you until you can resolve these issues. (X! · talk)  · @924  ·  21:11, 28 September 2010 (UTC) --- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Femto Bot (talk • contribs) 17:35, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Threads

• 
  Silly putty
• 
  Slinky
• 
  Fluffy kitten

I understand people feel strongly about things, but please try to keep your conversations in the appropriate threads. Rich Farmbrough, 20:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC). --

Catch you later

I'm off for a nap. Rich Farmbrough, 14:56, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

I should be so lucky. Rich Farmbrough, 16:00, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

--

SmackBot

Hello, this was initially an article written to be placed into 'website' catagory. Not sure how or why it changed or if it made it there and was removed or revised, but that is where it originated. I'd love to place it into a few cats but am not sure how to go about doing this at the moment. Your comments and help would be appreciated, thank you. Charvelguy Charvelguy (talk) 18:23, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

The contribution is listed as Thepublicrecord.com thanks, Charvelguy (talk) 20:23, 3 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Thank you! Charvelguy (talk) 17:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Not like you at all!

[22] Philip Trueman (talk) 17:13, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean a mustache like mine, or our revert conflict?! Rich Farmbrough, 17:15, 3 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Note

There's no need to change it to a week because the IPs only do that once (it's a coordinated attack also). --Bsadowski1 21:37, 3 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Feedback

I update my article Youssef Elsisi with categories and added more content and a new section for awards. Please let me know with any feedback. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Selsisi (talk • contribs) 01:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC) ---

AfD

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bible study (Christian) since you contributed to the article.Jaque Hammer (talk) 14:23, 4 October 2010 (UTC) ---

DNB00

I was looking at instances of "DNB00" in the main namespace, assuming that they should all be made now into uses of {{DNB}} and {{Cite DNB}}. One thing that comes up in the search, which was mainly about catching the interwiki style of link s:Smith, John (DNB00) and replacing it, is that in some cases the floruit wikification has got into templates, and throws up a DNB00 as a result of "fl." being linked. I thought that these happenings, however caused, should be tracked down now. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:13, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah as in John Hamilton - "apprehended with a halberd in his hand " - know what he feels like. OK worth a look. Rich Farmbrough, 13:00, 3 October 2010 (UTC).

I found 13 candidates looking for DNB ,and followed by [floruit on the same line, all should be OK now - most you had been there first or were false positives. Rich Farmbrough, 13:56, 3 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks. See you at the next Cambridge do? Charles Matthews (talk) 08:23, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Date feedback

"October 31–1 November 1918"→"31–1 October November 1918"[23] —Sladen (talk) 00:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Nice catch. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 00:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

Remark: This isn't an AWB bug. I tried it in Sandbox with rev 7205. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:20, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes I'm kinda not using AWB right now.... Rich Farmbrough, 07:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

I scanned Wikipedia and didn't find any more back-to-backs like this. Rich Farmbrough, 15:04, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

--

New section

Not that this really matters but the sticking point is stuff like

     <Replacement>
       <Find>{{\s*(Citation[ _]+style|Cleanup-references|Cleanup-citation|Ref-cleanup|Citationstyle|Citation-style|Refstyle|Reference[ _]+style|Reference-style|Cleanup-refs|Citestyle|Cleanrefs|Refclean|Refsclean|Source[ _]+Style|Sourced[ _]+wrong|Ref-style|Refcleanup) *([\|}\n])</Find>
       <Replace>{{Citation style$2</Replace>
       <Comment />
       <IsRegex>true</IsRegex>
       <Enabled>true</Enabled>
       <Minor>false</Minor>
       <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions>
     </Replacement>

If you make this case sensitive you can catch all the [Cc] using the above trick, but you would have to at least split out the R and S templates giving 5 rules - so better to have two.

     <Replacement>
       <Find>{{\s*(Citation[ _]+style|Cleanup-references|Cleanup-citation|Ref-cleanup|Citationstyle|Citation-style|Refstyle|Reference[ _]+style|Reference-style|Cleanup-refs|Citestyle|Cleanrefs|Refclean|Refsclean|Source[ _]+Style|Sourced[ _]+wrong|Ref-style|Refcleanup) *([\|}\n])</Find>
       <Replace>{{Citation style$2</Replace>
       <Comment />
       <IsRegex>true</IsRegex>
       <Enabled>true</Enabled>
       <Minor>false</Minor>
       <RegularExpressionOptions></RegularExpressionOptions>
     </Replacement>
     <Replacement>
       <Find>{{\s*(citation[ _]+style|cleanup-references|cleanup-citation|ref-cleanup|citationstyle|citation-style|refstyle|reference[ _]+style|reference-style|cleanup-refs|citestyle|cleanrefs|refclean|refsclean|source[ _]+Style|sourced[ _]+wrong|ref-style|refcleanup) *([\|}\n])</Find>
       <Replace>{{citation style$2</Replace>
       <Comment />
       <IsRegex>true</IsRegex>
       <Enabled>true</Enabled>
       <Minor>false</Minor>
       <RegularExpressionOptions></RegularExpressionOptions>
     </Replacement>

which isn't bad because it's only 569 more rules, not the 5000 odd you would get from breaking out the individual redirects - although the processing time should be roughly the same.

As it happens there is a far more efficient way to do it: but my point is that it is very easy for people from the outside to say "why don't you (or doesn't he) just do X" - like the software engineer who very kindly came and offered advice on building some assertions into the bot, completely missing the fact that AWB is an application, and therefore "sanity checks" like counting characters before/after was not an option. (Well again it is an option, albeit a slightly crazy one, but I only know that because I have been working with AWB regexes for years - and I am not even that good at regexes - although I did get them to perform arithmetic. ) Rich Farmbrough, 17:10, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Still far too much complexity/duplication. I (think) tou've got two different operations going on here; (a) changing template names to some consistent end result if they were not ("canonicalisation") and (b) removing spaces from an existing template invocation (I think). So:

       <!-- (1) Canonicalisation -->
       <Find>{{\s+(clean(up)?-?(ref(erences|s)|citation)|
            |(cit(ation|e)|ref(erence)?|source?)-?([Ss]tyle|clean(up)?)|
            sourced[ _]+wrong)\s*([\|}\n])</Find>
       <Replace>{{citation style$2</Replace>

       <!-- (2) Spaces to hyphens -->
       <Find>({{citation) (style)</Find>
       <Replace>$1-$2</Replace>

I appreciate that those won't be quite what you want (since I can't workout what the second part is for—if you explain it, I'll try to codify it), but it should get you close-enough that you can tweak + test further. —Sladen (talk) 17:32, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes you are absolutely right there are two things going on (although no spaces to hyphens). In near perl syntax what should be happening is something like:

• s/{{[ _]*(\w[ \w]*?)(?:[ _]{2,}|_)/{{$1 /g;

to regularise all templates on the page and then separate rules to consolidate redirects, then the spelling and format fixes, and finally the relativley simple dating stuff.

However - like a fool - I was trying to avoid touching templates other than the clean-up ones. I did however remove leading :template: etc in one rule.

Fun though that is there are 569 clean-up templates and consolidating each set of redirects (this is how I was doing it years ago) is very cool if you can do it automatically and not get any false positives.

For example your rule matches {{Reference cleanup}} - which happens not to exist but could be a navbox about Farenheit 451 (this is exactly the sort of problem SB used to run into until I unrolled the complexity into two main rules per template). The other thing is you have to anonymise all the unwanted brackets with ?: or the numbering goes to pot $2 should probably be $5 or $6, maybe even depending on which branch of the "or" you take. Rich Farmbrough, 17:54, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

--

some random title

lorem ipsum etc.. Rich Farmbrough, 19:52, 4 October 2010 (UTC).
[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 20:13, 4 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Your recent edits

Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you must sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 16:21, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

[X] copied from User talk:Femto Bot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 19:51, 4 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Edits

These edits did not date any tags and should not have been saved. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Rich Farmbrough, 12:42, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 19:50, 4 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Illogic capitalising in defaultsort

Hi, I stopped the bot because it is capitalising non-intuitively, see here: Defaultsort for UTF-8 is "UTF-8", not "Utf-8". Apart from changing from correct spelling, since not all UTF-pages are edited, the sorting order ends up wrong in Category:Unicode Transformation Formats. UTF-8 should be before UTF-9. The bot should not over wikipolice the rule (I know the DuBois situation). -DePiep (talk) 14:23, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

---

es

I think your edit summary in AWB is not correct any more, e.g. here. -DePiep (talk) 14:32, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes - thanks. Just wanted to get that done. Rich Farmbrough, 14:47, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Talkback

Replied at my talk. Amalthea 20:14, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

↑ Amalthea 21:12, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

---

SmackBot unblock

{{Unblock|Not doing that any more.}}

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 21:36, 4 October 2010 (UTC) ---

The Signpost: 4 October 2010

• News and notes: German chapter remodeled to meet Foundation requirements, and more

• In the news: Spanish police pursues BLP vandals, Jimbo interviewed, advice for experts and spammers

• Book review: Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia, by Joseph Reagle

• WikiProject report: Hot topics with WikiProject Volcanoes

• Features and admins: Milestone: 2,500th featured picture

• Arbitration report: Tricky and Lengthy Dispute Resolution

• Technology report: Code reviewers, October Engineering update, brief news

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 00:50, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

---

General fixes

Testing indicates that GFs will fully date 15% of the undated articles. Rich Farmbrough, 15:13, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

Current backlog is 10,000 near as. Rich Farmbrough, 15:13, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

Are there any other other templates that would you like AWB to date them with GFs? I recently added Dead link but I bet there are some more. -- 16:27, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Mag. No, it is all perfectly cool, once I am convinced that I can actually run a bot without being stopped by one admin for using General fixes, or another for not doing so I will get that 15% out of the way and get back to BRFA. Rich Farmbrough, 16:33, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

And some have wondered why I havent started to use my own bot! Good luck in the quest brave knight! --Kumioko (talk) 17:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you - that gives me an idea User:Sir Lance-a-Bot? Rich Farmbrough, 17:39, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

---

Lisa Shannon

Hi,

I'm wondering if I could add a mention that Lisa contributed an essay, "A Simple Run," to the 2010 book The Enough Moment, Fighting to End Africa's Worst Human Rights Crimes, by John Prendergast with Don Cheadle (pp. 221-223).

Or is that impossible, because there's not a third-party site that references her contribution to the book?

Thank you!

Nell 01:33, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 01:36, 5 October 2010 (UTC) {{subt:Autp}} ---

SmackBot rides again

Could you explain the purposing of putting </noinclude><noinclude> back-to-back.[30][31], still I suppose that it's legal... I am however baffled by the recursive <noinclude><noinclude>[32] on another edit. An adjective distance 237&nbsp;km should have been 237-kilometre ...[33]. I believe Flag template renaming/recapitalisation/adjustments[34] (as you, not the bot) was something raised very recently, so probably preferable to rescind this before it is raised again/seen as antagonistic.[35] Hope that helps. 34/38 == 89%, passable, although not ideal. —Sladen (talk) 04:27, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes. It's simplicity. It is always safe to add that cliché to a template, and (so far) it has fixed the big red letters every time. However it is fairly trivial to add a rule to remove that, and I would say also probably safe, although removing an empty noinclude wouldn't be. Rich Farmbrough, 06:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

Well that's less baffling - the template had a dangling <noinclude> .. and therein lies an example where my above "proabably" is justified. If someone creates a template with a mismatched tag at the end, you have just changed what is probably a minor tansgression (there could be legitimate reasons for it in meta-templates) into a major one. Rich Farmbrough, 06:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

Ok I'll raise an AWB bug on that. Rich Farmbrough, 06:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

Actually I won't. A non-breaking space is an improvement over a normal space, and expecting the devs to code for the linguistic cues as a bug is asking a bit much. Also it's a little fiddly to make a feature request out of, when there's really useful stuff needed. But I will drop a note on the talk page, so that they can take it into account. Rich Farmbrough, 06:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC). Done

If it has a space, then clearly it needs dealing with (analysing). If it has either a hyphen, or a &nbsp; then clearly it was analysed. A &nbsp; insertion is not necessarily better, because it is implying a quality assurance that is not there: and one cannot then send in (a more intelligent) bot to find it. —Sladen (talk) 07:00, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Why not? Rich Farmbrough, 07:12, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Triathlon&diff=prev&oldid=388638544 Rich Farmbrough, 08:17, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

I expected to find that it was Smackbot that broken it in the first place (it wasn't, SB was the edit immediately after!).[36] —Sladen (talk) 08:49, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Rich Farmbrough, 06:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

(Now also inserted into the above). [37] —06:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC)Sladen (talk)

Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 06:31, 4 October 2010 (UTC).I

Oh BTW it's not "recursive" but IKWYM. Rich Farmbrough, 06:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

So 34/38 is now 37/38? or 38/38? Enquiring minds want to know. Rich Farmbrough, 14:53, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

It's still 34/38 (and always will be, being something of its time in the past...); three <noinclude> issues and a WP:MOSNUM-adjective issue. Hopefully the report has enabled the rules to adjusted, so that if the bot were to run over the same inputs again, it would be 38/38. Enabling the rules to be fixed for the future is the reason why I post here—if you have fixed these then great, run it for another ~40 edits and I'll have a look and see if I spot anything this time.

Can you confirm that you have altered sufficient the rules, such that if they were run again, the same edits would not be made as they were this time? —Sladen (talk) 19:35, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

OK there are 4 things you challenge. 1-3 your suggestion would be a bug. SmackBot is correct. Number 4 your suggestion would be an improvement, for which I am preparing a BRFA, but SmackBot's change is not wrong. I have explained carefully, I thought, the reason for 1-3. I have demonstrated with the Triathlon example that there is no reason to stop putting a non-breaking space in adjectival measurements. I thought we had dealt with the reflist issues. Rich Farmbrough, 19:45, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

I don't think I raised any {{reflist}} issues. Regarding the rest, I have raised them, I'll allow you to act on that information however you wish. (The fifth was {{flagicon}} and was one that you made under your own account, and this (if you are not using AWB on main account anymore) was presumably human, rather than a bot). —Sladen (talk) 21:13, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes indeed, Reflist was the task that was running. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 21:20, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Orphan tag on Lisa Shannon page

Hi, will you please remove orphan tag now?

Thank you, Nell 01:45, 6 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Your question at VP/T

RF, your question at VP/T has been worked upon, maybe you want to take a look. -DePiep (talk) 16:01, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Rich Farmbrough, 16:27, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Is it not possible...

...to simply have AWB recognize when templates aren't capitalized and leave them as they were? Ditto = = spacing around headers == ? –xeno^talk 14:46, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I can take out the spacing rule, and I have removed the cite stuff. Rich Farmbrough, 09:23, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

What about the rest of the templates? Their capitalization shouldn't be changed absent community consensus that automated processes may capitalize en masse. –xeno^talk 12:48, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

It is non-trivial and non-constructive to remove the capitalisation of clean-up templates - the reason is explained in my FAQ. It is minor but unhelpful to remove to for stubs. It is trivial to remove it for most other templates SB has accreted - though no-one is, I hope, advocating infoboxes beginning with lower case "i". Rich Farmbrough, 16:09, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

People are advocating that template names be left as found… —Sladen (talk) 16:32, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree with that. The first person to introduce a style, wins? That's one of the reasons we have bots, to improve readability and uniformise the articles in a same style. I certainly prefer Infoboxes with capital ""I" and I can locate them much easier. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:25, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

You may find templates more readable/recognizable when they are capitalized. However, you must realize that this view is not universally held: some feel that small-case first letter is preferred for most templates to prevent them from looking like the Start of a sentence of prose. And even still, there are those who could not give a toss but do not want to see edits flip-flopping back and forth, bloating diffs with sundry trimmings that make it hard to see what the actual meat of an edit was. –xeno^talk 18:27, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I also don't like the diffs created of SmackBot sometimes because it's impossible to check them for mistakes. I just made a global comment. I also don't like with SmackBot/Citation Bot conflict and we have to find some sort of agreement. Moreover, yes there are some low-value edits that can be done in addition to some crucial edits and some low-value edits really not worth the try. Removing spaces from header titles I think it's a dead end since we have hundreds of thousands of headers with spaces. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:38, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Well there are at least 3 bots (2 of which I was unaware of until yesterday) putting spaces in. Otherwise they would be vanishingly small I would say. Rich Farmbrough, 07:45, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

I understand your rationale for capitalizing templates. What I don't understand is why you're still doing it after you've received so many objections to the practice. Seek community consensus to implement a guideline suggesting that template names should always be capitalized, or build in logic to leave them as you found them. –xeno^talk 18:25, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Rich: please confirm that you have removed all header-spacing or template capitalisation-related rules from AWB/SmackBot/AnyOtherBotUnderYourControl and that you have no intention of re-inclusion; then we can get this thread closed too. —Sladen (talk) 14:22, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I guess you didn't read my reply to Kingpin on ANI? Hang on I will do as you suggest and make a single demonstration edit. Rich Farmbrough, 14:27, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Ok bad idea. Either the edit is not made at all or it works. Demonstrates nothing. However I can let it do a pre-pass run and illustrate my point. Rich Farmbrough, 14:36, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Sigh, that doesn't work either. Rich Farmbrough, 14:40, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

OK -here are the rules User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough/SmackBot.xml. Which ones should I remove? Rich Farmbrough, 14:52, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Simple, quick answer. Anything in the Find/Replace section with <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> will likely need refining/adjusting. To take an example such as:

    <Replacement>

      <Find>{{\s+Infobox </Find>

      <Replace>{{Infobox </Replace>

      <Comment />

      <IsRegex>true</IsRegex>

      <Enabled>true</Enabled>

      <Minor>falsetrue</Minor>

      <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions>

    </Replacement>

Combined with always running as Skip if only minor replacement made (should) mean that (a) capitialisation adjusting doesn't happen, (b) such an edit is marked as minor (== allegedly uncontroversial, with a policy document showing consensus to back it up), and so a greater amounting of invaluable diff-busting page edits will simply never happen at all. Does that make sense? Magioladitis: is that the correct way to go about this? —Sladen (talk) 15:25, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

• • • • • • • • • • • • See new section *********************

Actually the simplest thing is to dump all of them. BRFA them back as and when needed. Rich Farmbrough, 15:57, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Except that CBM will block if I run Gen fixes without fixing the code. Lolcats and roflcopters. Rich Farmbrough, 15:59, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

If someone would be kind enough to unblock SmakcBot. I can at least run when I get a recompile through, and maybe run reflists sooner. Rich Farmbrough, 16:03, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

(edit conflict)I would support CBM in further blocking until adjustments have been taken; I think the thing to do here, is perhaps to show the before-and-after Smackbot configuration files to BAG and ask for a short test-run/temporary unblock, where it should be immediately clear that the second XML is considerably smaller, and (likely) to be less volatile. Personally, (just for me...), I would like to see a move away from generic summaries and cluster bombing (such "Gen[eral] fixes", which is vague and opaque) to summaries that state exactly what is being done (eg. it does exactly what it says on the tin, and no other rules are enabled outside of the that scope during that edit; so if it's doing "date managling", state that, and if it's doing "Infobox tinkering", state that and which precise fields).

In an ideal world, we should not have to block and it should be possible for an editor to just stop (self restraint) when politely requested. Resorting to blocks has only happened here because an editor didn't stop when asked (repeatedly FWIW). —Sladen (talk) 16:36, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes? SB was blocked when it obviously wasn't running - as anyone could see. I was blocked within minutes of being given information that there was an ANI report, which at the time cited incorrect diffs. Femto was blocked without anyone ever communicating anything about it to me, or disputing its edits. It's fine - I don't mind the blocks (wasn't that a 1970's record) but don't fool yourself, or try to pretend to me, whichever it is, that Admins- or even 'crats are temperate. You only need to look at the last few days ANI to see admins being indicted for bad blocks - despite the absurd process at RFA that is supposed to ensure they are all of god-like stature. Rich Farmbrough, 16:46, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Please show the code for the "cite" template since that is what started all this. Looking at the example above, it looks like Replace is the problem, not RegularExpressionOptions. Q Science (talk) 16:25, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Search for zzzzz.Rich Farmbrough, 16:27, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Hey I did it for you.

Code

<Replacement> <Find>{{\s*(Cite[ _]+bookzzzzzzzzzzzz) *([\|}\n])</Find> <Replace>{{Cite bookzzzzzzzzzzzz$2</Replace> <Comment /> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <Minor>false</Minor> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> <Replacement> <Find>{{\s*(Cite[ _]+journalzzzzzzzzzzzzz) *([\|}\n])</Find> <Replace>{{Cite journalzzzzzzzzzzzzz$2</Replace> <Comment /> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <Minor>false</Minor> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> <Replacement> <Find>{{\s*(Cite[ _]+newszzzzzzzzzzzz) *([\|}\n])</Find> <Replace>{{Cite newszzzzzzzzzzzz$2</Replace> <Comment /> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <Minor>false</Minor> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> <Replacement> <Find>{{\s*(Cite[ _]+webzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) *([\|}\n])</Find> <Replace>{{Cite webzzzzzzzzzzzzzz$2</Replace> <Comment /> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <Minor>false</Minor> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement>

even re-formatted the code. Rich Farmbrough, 16:30, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Although I'm not sure which part of "dump all of them" means you want to look at them. Rich Farmbrough, 16:35, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

You should be able to match against [cC]ite and re-insert this as $1ite, but really I think those could all be rolled up into one rule matching (Cite|cite)[ _]+(web|book|journal|...) *→$1 $2—having the present amount of copy-and-paste duplication is unwieldy. —Sladen (talk) 16:49, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, also see new section - similarly I could roll up "Citation needed" "Page needed" and "Year needed" but simplicity is the key here. The compute time for the four matches should actually be faster than for the combined one (or at least not much worse), see Boyer-Moore-Horspool unless Microsoft have done something really silly. In the above example the replacement would be {{$1 $2$3 - this is the sort of thing that bites you in the behind when you try to optimize things that don't need optimising. Of course it does when you try to optimise things that do need optimising too, but in that case it is worth it. Rich Farmbrough, 17:20, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Execution speed is secondary to programmer time, maintainability and size[38] (ability to audit). Copy-and-paste code means that something eventually gets missed accidentally when updating. If something goes AWOL, it's irrelevant how fast it goes AWOL—in fact the slower the better, since it's easier to for humans to review. —Sladen (talk) 21:00, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Proposed version User talk:Rich Farmbrough/SmackBot.xml Rich Farmbrough, 16:52, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks, that example is exactly what I wanted to see. (I tried the page you suggested, but did (do) not see anything similar.) I think the real problem is obvious - when the code makes the change, it is capitalizing the template name. (In other words, the problem has nothing to do with the search.) As you know, many computer languages are case sensitive. Even though this one is obviously not, it is my opinion that the style used in the examples should be followed by the script. In my opinion, this is less confusing for everyone. In the case of "cite", the examples are all lower case. When I add a citation to an article, I copy and paste the example code and modify that.

When a bot comes along and makes case changes, that is equivalent to telling me that I made a mistake and that I should not do that again.

This is such a basic flaw in perception that it staggers me - but perhaps it explains a lot. The purpose of automation is to make our lives easier, not to reprimand us : what you are saying is tantamount to saying "when the servers dish up my wiki-ccode as HTML they are telling me I should have used HTML to write the page." Bots make changes to pages for a number of reasons:

1. To correct errors - these can be errors that fall class you describe above, (like for example using the header "External Links" instead of "External links") or far more minor, or far more extreme:
   • More minor <BR> => <br /> You can put <BR> in your wiki-text all day as far as I, and I suspect almost everyone in the world is a concerned. But it is still a "good fix" to change it.
   • More major copyvio this will actually get you a little reminder "that you should not do that again".

   As far as the middle ground is concerned, stuff like "External Links" the territory, metrics or however you want to see them are actually changed by the presence of bots. If some editor is routinly putting "External Links" on, say 100 articles per month without bots it is a minor problem. In a botted world it is almost negligible. This is very fine grained - for example I template people who subst clean up templates that SB can't de-subst, because I have to deal with them manually. Every time SB gets smarter the subset of examples I template gets smaller.

2. Because stuff has changed - templates, policy, style, guidelines, external URLs
3. Perfective maintenance - good example REDIRECT: -> REDIRECT - nothing "technically" wrong with the ":", it parses beautifully. However there are at least three cases on record of it breaking an external tool.
4. And so forth...

Putting it another way if I were to say:

"When an editor comes along and makes case changes, that is equivalent to telling me that I made a mistake and that I should not do that again."

it would raise a few eyebrows to say the least. Rich Farmbrough, 09:27, 3 October 2010 (UTC).

Therefore, unless it really is a mistake, and the examples are changed to say that I am making a mistake, I strongly prefer that the code on web pages should also be lower case. I am not suggesting that lower case is better than upper case, but that automated tools should follow the examples. In those cases where the examples use upper case, so should the script.

That said, I propably won't support your changes. Perhaps you should read ANI:Changes to cite template to understand why. Q Science (talk) 01:28, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

• [39] . Although I'm not sure which part of "dump all of them" means you want to look at them. Rich Farmbrough, 09:27, 3 October 2010 (UTC).
  

--

Re: Doing too much

I'm glad my words helped you. I was afraid that they were too self-centered, partly because I don't want to come across as narcissistic but mostly because I have seen this same thing happen too fucking many times. Dedicated, skilled contributors -- who do more than I do here -- one day find that the chronic push-back has overwhelmed them, & in response act rashly not boldly. Maybe this could be avoided if established or senior editors were treated with more respect, but that would likely give certain individuals more power than they should have. (If I simply mention a certain ArbCom case opened in the last few days, will that point you to a sufficient example?) I don't know if that cure would be better than the illness. I'm not even certain that gradually reducing one's responsibilities here is the best cure. But I am certain that opening an account on a website like Wikipedia Review & ranting about the conditions here is not a good solution; better to just throw up our hands & move on than to let the dynamics here control us. -- llywrch (talk) 20:40, 5 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Talkback

New messages at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 2, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 1 and WT:BAG ;). Cheers, - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 08:10, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

In regard to the two BRfAs, are you looking for a bot flag for the bot in regard to either of these? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 10:40, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, to de-clutter watchlists, but, at the moment, mainly for Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot which is editing in Category space. Rich Farmbrough, 10:53, 6 October 2010 (UTC).

Okay, I think I'll just go ahead and approve the 0, 1 and 2 BRfAs, but one more question about the latter two first: Are you just looking for approval for your own user space at the moment, and will you be creating a new BRfA in future if there is sufficient demand to make it worth your time allowing other users to use this system? As to the SmackBot stopping, that's fine, since it's only you who's got to put up with it ;). I do think it's a bit of a shame AWB insists on using this setting, and doesn't allow a separate stop page, but ah well :D (actually, while we're on this subject, I noticed you sometimes use Smackbot to edit User_talk:SmackBot, not really a problem, but not strictly in-line with BOTPOL). Cheers, - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 11:09, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay, all three marked as approved. If you're actually writing a message you're better off using your own account though. Remember some people will have bots not showing on their watchlist, so using bots to reply to talk page messages can mean replies aren't seen. Oh, by the way, if you use chrome (and other some other browsers presumably, I imagine a guy like you uses firefox ;)), you can use the incognito window to get a window with separate (but not logged) cookies etc. Which enables you to have two accounts logged in at a time, which could make that easier (I use the same method to have two email accounts open simultaneously) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 11:41, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Attention needed here

Hi there. Do you have time to please take a look at this issue? A new editor is adamantly adding non-notable films into this list. The editor has received several cautions and explanations on his talk page, however he does not respond. With his additions he has vandalised the format of the page. Your administrator's intervention is required. Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 18:36, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Looking at it. My talk page is suddenly busy... Someone should get to him on AIV though, a first glance it doesn't seem like vandalsim, that is maybe a little strong. Rich Farmbrough, 18:45, 6 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Template recapitalisation

{{refimprove}}→{{Refimprove}}.[40] {{unreferenced}}→{{Unreferenced}}.[41][42][43] {{cleanup}}→{{cleanup}}[44] ...and those are all in the first dozen I happened to review just now. I thought we had stopped recapitalisation? Please stop. —Sladen (talk) 14:51, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

These are all being dated. And by AWB GF's not my rules. Rich Farmbrough, 15:01, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

AWB's general fixes are making the capitalization change? –xeno^talk 15:07, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes I threw out my 5609 rules and just use GFs. I explained this four times on this talk page - seems no one reads? Rich Farmbrough, 15:09, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

[45] <-- indeed... someone should let the devs know that changing template capitalization is a point of contention. –xeno^talk 15:15, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Um.. except it kinda isn't. Find me 5 people who score less than me on Baron Cohen's test and give a non-breaking space about any template capitalisation, much less clean-up templates capitalisation. SmackBot had been capping almost all cites for over three weeks - and certain cites much longer than that - before anyone left it a message - and that was a result of them not reading what I wrote here. Rich Farmbrough, 15:28, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

Reads to me as "I'm right and they're wrong" and that's not a good attitude for a botop. Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#autotag makes disputed capitalization changes. Are you suggesting the people who dispute the capitalization changes are autistic or something? –xeno^talk 15:33, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Not at all, I was referring to the fitness test for immigration into the UK introduced in his first Parliament as a solution to all the country's problems. Rich Farmbrough, 15:42, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

Then you ought choose your words more carefully, given that almost all of the search results for "Baron Cohen's test" relate to the autism/Asperger's spectrum test - which would represent a shockingly inappropriate personal attack. –xeno^talk 15:49, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah I see. Under that interpretation I would have been suggesting that if you could find more than four of them, then at least one of them would be as far along the spectrum as me. Quite how that would have constituted an attack is unclear. Whereas accusing some one of lying, not wanting to communicate, having a bad attitude, being "a layer 8 issue", acting like a deficient bot.... seem like attacks to me. Not that I take it personally. Rich Farmbrough, 17:00, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

When I said layer 8 issue, I meant that it was not an error in SB's programming, but an issue where the person behind the keyboard had restarted the bot. –xeno^talk 17:06, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Is cool. Rich Farmbrough, 17:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

So any objection to doing the rest of that 15%? Rich Farmbrough, 18:34, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

I understand templates that already have a date are not changed (capitalised), like AWB does (not). -DePiep (talk) 18:52, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

That is correct to the best of my knowledge, as long as you don't count the replacement of "fact" with "Citation needed" (and possibly similar). Rich Farmbrough, 18:56, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot just made 1 edit. Rich Farmbrough, 18:10, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

I await with interest, and not a little trepidation, the heat death of the universe. Rich Farmbrough, 21:22, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

--

STOP

cuz its deleting my talk page

Please can you give some more information. I can see that your talk page was moved to Talk:Me,Mannix Chan earlier today, but I can't see the connection between that and SmackBot. Please could you give more details, or the URL where you are seeing the problem? —Sladen (talk) 10:59, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

It's Ok I replied on their talk page. They had blanked it. Rich Farmbrough, 11:00, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:01, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot

Tempalte: Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. * Terminal user: Femto Bot. Terminal timestamp: .

Rich Farmbrough, 10:49, 8 October 2010 (UTC).
10:49, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Update to [[]]

Tempalte: Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. * Terminal user: Femto Bot. Terminal timestamp: .

Rich Farmbrough, 10:44, 8 October 2010 (UTC).
10:44, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot

Template:  Approved.. * Terminal user: Kingpin13. Terminal timestamp: .

Rich Farmbrough, 11:26, 8 October 2010 (UTC).
11:26, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
--

STOP

stopstop ---

Rootkit

Good day. Could you please investigate why your bot keeps breaking the inter-wiki links, as it keeps doing here (Note the link for "kh" at the bottom of the article.) Thank you. Socrates2008 (Talk) 09:51, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes of course. Rich Farmbrough, 10:10, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

Seems there is no kh:wikipedia? Rich Farmbrough, 10:11, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

kh=Cambodia - yip, looks like a typo by someone. Socrates2008 (Talk) 10:54, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Lincoln Re-election

I can't believe I'm bothering you with this (my OCD kicking in !) Merriam doesn't have the hyphen in "reelection". I didn't change it back though; the hyphen looks better to me. We have been working real hard on the AL article for a failed FAC. We actually had one comment that we didn't have enough hyphens in the article. Anyway, we are expecting an second copy edit in a week or so, then may do a GAC. Thanks for your review.CheersCarmarg4 (talk) 14:41, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Great! I have a large pot of hyphens, please help yourself to as many as you need. Rich Farmbrough, 14:54, 7 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Sect-stub

You may want to add {{sect-stub}} in your list of redirects, since SmackBot fails to add date to it. Check this diff.

You may better want to send this for deletion since the name is confusing and out of the standards for maintenance templates. Just let me know. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:20, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes as I said above there are 570 tags and 1-2,000 redirects that are turned off, to avoid accidental capitalisation. Should be resolved at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/SmackBot_35 some time in the next 18 months or so? <chuckle> Rich Farmbrough, 14:57, 7 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Bare subst tag

In this edit [46] the bot added bare subst tags again. There were several other edits with the same problem. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:53, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Hm... This may have with something I added in AWB's code. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:56, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 14:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

It appears to be because subst won't evaluate within <ref> tags. Why doesn't AWB just take the date from PC clock? (I guess because it might not be set correctly...) –xeno^talk 15:00, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The bug caused because I added {{Dead link}} to the list of tags that must be dated. :( -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:02, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Won't the same problem appear if someone put a fact tag into a ref tag, like <{{subst:void}}ref>{{fact|date={{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}}</ref>. This is perfectly possible for an explanatory footnote that has text in in.

This issue with bare subst tags has been a recurring problem for the bot. I usually see it caused by HTML comments, when the bot tries to date a tag that has been commented out. I don't think I've seen the ref tag issue before. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:19, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't find this documented anywhere either. I wonder if it's a regression. Can #tag be used instead? –xeno^talk 15:24, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

AWB knows not to date tags in comments. Let's remember that this is a MediaWiki bug in that we ought to be able to subst within ref tags (known bug to me, don't know the bugzilla number). Rjwilmsi 15:28, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

It's T4700 and its many duplicates. –xeno^talk 15:31, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

(e/c) It's good to hear that about HTML comments; presumably that error was unique to SmackBot. If I see it again, I'll let you know.

The issue with parsing being somewhat broken inside ref tags is well known: bugzilla:2700. But this is the first time I have seen it affect SmackBot's edits. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:33, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed SB never leaves them in ref tags, and should not anywhere, when it is running it's full ruleset. However since I am running at at GFs only, which is about 15% success rate on this particular task (and of course now it has been stopped, say half way through, will be maybe 8% for the next run, and about .25% for the run after that), the only way I have of checking I am not saving edits which don't date a tag is to look for stuff like {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}} post edit. Once I get the BRFA approved for bringing back the canonicalisation of tags, the hit rate will go back up to 99.5%+ (based on the fact that a run against 1000-ish generally leaves less than 5 undated - and some of those might be skipped). Until then T4700 will triumph. However, be of good cheer, such tags will bring the pages to the attention of SB every time it does a dating run. Rich Farmbrough, 16:37, 6 October 2010 (UTC).

Wouldn't it be easier to simply stop "canonicalising" (which isn't needed) the tags? –xeno^talk 18:16, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Which bit? The underscores instead of spaces? The spelling errors? The multiple spaces? The outdated tag names? The short cuts? Or do you just mean the case of the first letter? Which either no-one, or almost no-one objects to except for inline Cites? You can trawl through my and SmackBot's talk archives, you will find several mentions of it but only one objector - except recently (i.e since the 24th/28th in terms of general diff noise - but that's a separate discussion). I know it may seem like I am being wilfully obtuse, but if you review the thread Headbomb left, and see what people actually said (which, sans telepathy, I generally take to be what they mean), there was one person actually complaining about the change per se (viz Headbomb), and apparently only in relation to non-bot edits, although he clarified that later. And that was specifically "Cite". I am not sure if you "don't give a toss as long as it doesn't flip flop" but that is how I read it. But regardless "the {{Cite looks out of place when compared to the standard", certes only about 10% of Cite templates are capped, but over half all templates and 98% of {{Infoboxes are capped. Similarly I would wager over 80% of clean-up templates are, and I would challenge the suggestion that when someone type {{wfy}} they are hoping that it gets replaced with {{wikify}} rather than {{Wikify}} - I use wfy, cn, unref, uncat myself.

So would it be easier? Yes I suppose it would - I could change the rulebase to replace wfy=>wikify Wfy=>Wikify - but that seems pointless to me for the reasons above. And that level of detail-wank, I'm sure would bring someone boo-hooing because vS => verify sources didn't preserve the capital S, or because they had lined up their cleanup templates by choosing redirects with the same number of letters is they lined up perfectly and why is a bot ruining the aesthetics of their page? I guess I'm saying I'll put the BRFA in, which is easy, and I'll advertise it at VP, which is easy, and if there is contention, then we can have an RFC on capitalisation of tags, with people !voteing on caps, lower, keep the same, make each page uniform, and if more than 3 people bother to vote for anything but "Lamest RFC ever" I shall PMSL. But on the other hand I can at least change the rule-base knowing that there is actually anyone (or three) who think it matters. Rich Farmbrough, 20:27, 6 October 2010 (UTC).

(You didn't have to type so much - Sorry for being unclear =) Just stop changing {{cleanup}} to {{Cleanup}} [read: only change being capitalization], and I think you'll be fine. –xeno^talk 20:40, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

AWB only catches 15%. Out of interest why is that Rich – list of dated templates in AWB too short? Rjwilmsi 09:42, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, partly that, I have 569 570 templates I date, plus about another 1-2000 redirects. Partly, possibly that the other AWB bots have eaten a percentage of the bot food (e.g. maybe it was 25% and 10% have been done by other AWBs), partly that SmackBot fixes not just Date= but relatively obscure typos like fate=, 20010, "Seeptember" as well as the common "Spetember", "Septmember" and "Sepetember" it is particularly good at January, knowing the word in about 80 languages. You can't spend 4 years dating millions of tags without developing into a little bit of a niche specialist! For yet more details see SB's latest BRFA. Rich Farmbrough, 09:55, 7 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Hell is other robots and Robotics project assessments

Hi Rich

I have replied on the Robotics page here. There is a previous discussion in the archive also here.

Sorry I didn't respond sooner but I have been away for just over a month due to holidays and flu and the parameters on the archiving were too short so I only just found your question in the archive.

thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 14:52, 6 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot

Template:  Approved.. * Terminal user: Kingpin13. Terminal timestamp: .

Rich Farmbrough, 11:44, 8 October 2010 (UTC).
11:44, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
--

STOP

SEE:From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search [edit] Speedy deletion nomination of Me,Mannix Chan You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article. A tag has been placed on Me,Mannix Chan requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article, which appears to be about a real person, individual animal(s), an organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content, does not indicate how or why the subject of the article is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think that you can assert the notability of the subject, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hang on}} at the top of the article, immediately below the speedy deletion ({{db-...}}) tag (if no such tag exists, the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate), and providing your reasons for contesting on the article's talk page, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. You may freely add information to the article that would confirm the subject's notability under Wikipedia guidelines.

You may want to read the guidelines for specific types of articles: biographies, websites, bands, or companies. Mean as custard (talk) 07:28, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

[edit] SmackBot stop [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:16, 8 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 35

Template: SmackBot 35. * Terminal user: Fram. Terminal timestamp: 09:58, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:24, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Mirror Bot

Template: Mirror Bot.
Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough.
Terminal timestamp: 14:53, 3 October 2010 (UTC). *

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:24, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 5

Template: Femto Bot 5. * Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough. Terminal timestamp: 02:17, 6 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 4

Template: Femto Bot 4. * Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough. Terminal timestamp: 11:47, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 3

Template: Femto Bot 3. * Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough. Terminal timestamp: 03:17, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 2

Template:  Approved.. * Terminal user: Kingpin13. Terminal timestamp: 11:33, 6 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 1

Template:  Approved..
Terminal user: Kingpin13.
Terminal timestamp: 11:33, 6 October 2010 (UTC). *

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot

Template:  Approved..
Terminal user: Kingpin13.
Terminal timestamp: 11:33, 6 October 2010 (UTC). *

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:16, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot

Template:  Approved..
Terminal user: Kingpin13.
Terminal timestamp: 11:33, 6 October 2010 (UTC). *

Rich Farmbrough, 12:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC).
12:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Re:WikiProject India banner

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at Tinucherian's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

-- Tinu Cherian - 11:33, 8 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Nomination for deletion of Template:FULLFULLPAGENAME

Template:FULLFULLPAGENAME has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. -Porchcrop ^{(talk|contributions)} 04:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC) ---

"Update status of bot task"

This "task" is making an awful lot of edits, around 100 or more just today. Perhaps you should have it report to a subpage, rather than your user talk page? –xeno^talk 14:41, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

It will be a little quieter now. Rich Farmbrough, 14:50, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

I had clobbered the clobbering device as it was clobbering itself. Rich Farmbrough, 16:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

--

SmackBot

oh that was not you. i am very sorry

No problem at all. Rich Farmbrough, 12:07, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

--

SmackBot

Thanks to Smack Bot for correcting the mistakes made on the citation text in my Allen Timpany update. If only Smack Bot could be used to correct all of Allen Timpany's mistakes the World would be a better place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.75.123.51 (talk) 11:02, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot is always happy to help. Rich Farmbrough, 11:31, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 36

Template: . *
Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough.
Terminal timestamp: 22:32, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 22:33, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
---

STOP - Annoying merging of references messing up quotes

Smakbot is normally very useful, however in this edit it has merged references to the same urls and in the process has dumped and confused two different quotations that I had included which where different in each case. I suggest that references with quotes are not merged. I realise that I could go to the length of creating a notes group but that seemed like too much complexity for this modest article. Thanks. Note that I had already left this message on your normal talk page before noticing your request to 'stop the bot' if it was causing damage. PeterEastern (talk) 03:58, 9 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 04:17, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

See thread above. This was a false report on my part. Apologies. PeterEastern (talk) 07:51, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Annoying merging of references messing up quotes

Smakbot, normally very useful, however in this edit it has merged references to the same urls and in the process has dumped and confused two different quotations that I had included which where different in each case. I suggest that references with quotes are not merged. I realise that I could go to the length of creating a notes group but that seemed like too much complexity for this modest article. Thanks. PeterEastern (talk) 03:58, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Looks like it merges two instances of "n 1992 the police were given a new weapon when the first speed cameras were installed in west London. Trials on the M40 had shown just how frequently drivers broke the limit, when cameras capable of taking 400 snapshots on each roll of film had used up their quota in 40 minutes." and two instances of "the coalition Government is fulfilling a Tory pledge to do away with the yellow boxes which snap speeding drivers, by drastically slashing the funding that local councils receive for road safety." - am I missing something? it's a hard diff, especially with my eyes. Rich Farmbrough, 04:16, 9 October 2010 (UTC).

Oh dear, sorry. After all these years I should probably have learnt to trust computers more and not to jump to conclusions without checking thoroughly. You are indeed correct that I copied the reference and the quote for some reason and SmackBot was therefore completely correct. Thank you for your rational and factful response. I am of course very pleased that reference merging is now deployed - spotting and merging duplicate references is very handy functionality. PeterEastern (talk) 07:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 4

Template: .
Terminal user: VernoWhitney.
Terminal timestamp: 22:49, 8 October 2010 (UTC). *

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 23:03, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
---

Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification

Hi Rich! I saw you deleted Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification under criterion C1. The category should have had an empty category template if it didn't. A bot recreated it automatically, but it looks like it was recreated broken. Could you see about restoring the deleted version, or if there was more to it than a simple C1, could you catch me up, please? Thanks. --Bsherr (talk) 16:57, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Heh, ok! Looks good. Sorry, I didn't even notice Femto was yours (though I should've known; you've got about a hundred now, right?) I'm waiting for my bot approval so I too can short out my propensity for dumb mistakes. :-) --Bsherr (talk) 17:59, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I noticed your MirrorBot request a few weeks ago. Very clever! What's the {{cat/Cat affair you speak of? --Bsherr (talk) 18:06, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I opened my big mouth on the bot approval discussion. I don't know if it's relevant specifically to the batch of rules you're seeking approval for with that particular one, but I'm a Smackbot fan. --Bsherr (talk) 18:52, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh, please. Big bot runners are backops celebrities. Spend a few months building meta templates with me and tell me how many barnstars you get. Perhaps eventually I'll get one promoted to featured template status? Oh wait... :-) --Bsherr (talk) 19:15, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Yup, Template:Uw-block is "mine" (with Mechamind's support in implementing). I've been trying really hard on Template:BLP (see User:Bsherr/sandbox1), but there's no consensus due to lack of quorum. I like the idea of having a way to call for help with a template. I think the best would be to branch off of Template:Help me. But then I think about the degree to which that might overlap with a prospective "code help" template, which I also think would be a good thing. And then, I think about whether there's enough volume on "Help me" to warrant subtypes in the first place, and that maybe "Help me" should just be promoted as being for template issues too (and code issues). So I'm not sure what's best. --Bsherr (talk) 19:34, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Ugh, tell me about it! While I use it, I'm still not convinced I understand safesubst based on the WP:Substitution page. --Bsherr (talk) 20:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 35

Template: .
Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough.
Terminal timestamp: 15:32, 8 October 2010 (UTC). *

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 15:47, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 35

Template: .
Terminal user: Fram.
Terminal timestamp: 14:59, 8 October 2010 (UTC). *

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 15:02, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Articles about date formats

You should have SmackBot ignore them: [47]. –xeno^talk 18:56, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Pathological cases are hard. Notice however that AWB did not touch the similar dates in quotes. Those guys are hot programmers. Rich Farmbrough, 20:12, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 4

Template: . *

Edits by:

Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough.
Terminal timestamp: 23:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough, 17:05, 9 October 2010 (UTC).
17:05, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 3

Template: A user has requested the attention of a member of the Bot Approvals Group. Once assistance has been rendered, please deactivate this tag by replacing it with {{t|BAG assistance needed}}. . *

Edits by:

Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough.
Terminal timestamp: 14:21, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough, 17:05, 9 October 2010 (UTC).
17:05, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Eurycoma longifolia

Yesterdays revision by you or one of the other Wikipedia savvy editors who did the last modifications requested citations on the use of Eurycoma longifolia in supplements for bodybuilders. I included such citations today. Naturally these citations refer to commercial sites. I worry that participants who patrol new edits may delete these citations as spam. It is not my intention to promote quackery by linking to it. But it's'hard to discuss quackery without citing quackery sites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.82.66.204 (talk) 11:30, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes I know what you mean. I had the same problem with "toplist" -blindingly self evident to anyone who has been browsing for 10 years or more, but not subject of any "reliable sources" - it is as if no one had ever published anything on, say, cats, and we weren't allowed to mention them. The motivation is quite clearly good (to stop crackpots, quacks, self-promotion etc.) but occasionally we need "Ignore all rules". I'm sure they will be either left, improved or removed <insert smiley>. Rich Farmbrough, 11:39, 9 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 5

Template: Approved for trial (25 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough.
Terminal timestamp: 14:24, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough, 17:06, 9 October 2010 (UTC).
17:06, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Smackbot comma

1. [48] ".,"
2. [49] "reason=date October 2010|date=October 2010"
3. [50] "date=September 2010|date=October 2010" ×2 + "date=October 2010|date=October 2010"
4. [51] "reason=date october 2010|date=October 2010" ×2
5. [52] broken URL

(95/100, 95%). —Sladen (talk) 22:21, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks: the first is desired GF's, the third is because the bot can't make assumptions that a reason field is meant to be a date field. The second is a minor AWB bug, that I have seen before (maybe in the last day or two), but not reported, it wouldn't affect SmackBot if it was running with it's own rule-base, unless it was running GF's first, which I sometimes do, because in order to deal with certain things I have to disable some skips, which means AWB GF's can put stuff inside places where the MediaWiki software can't see it, which means my reg-gexes need to clean up after the GFs. It's an art, you know, not a science. Ill log that bughttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough&action=edit&section=9 though, FWIW. Rich Farmbrough, 22:43, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

And thanks for the fourth one: that's actually a fixed URL though:

• Before: [347=x-347-359656&als[theme]=AT+Law+and+Policy Terrorism Profile - Uganda] Privacy International
• After: [347]=x-347-359656&als[theme]=AT+Law+and+Policy Terrorism Profile - Uganda Privacy International

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 22:48, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

Hm perhaps I should have said partially fixed.... Rich Farmbrough, 22:49, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

It should be

• Working: Terrorism Profile - Uganda Privacy International

Will log a buglet. Rich Farmbrough, 22:53, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

(edit conflict)×2. Could you have a look at the first one again, it inserts "Millennium Stadium., which" when possible fixes should either be Millennium Stadium. Which" or Millennium Stadium, which" AFAICT. Thanks for taking them upstream. Any idea on the broken URL? —Sladen (talk) 22:51, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes sure. Rich Farmbrough, 22:53, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

The devs were talking about this very problem, this particular combination is non-trivial because it could be (for example) "...Millennium Stadium Ltd., which..." I will check the feature request page and see what happened. Rich Farmbrough, 22:56, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

• Comma: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#References_before_and_after_punctuation Y
• Url: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#Complete_.5B.5D_replacement_inside_URLS_by_replacing_.5B_with_.26.2391.3BY
• Date/date order effect: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#Dating_tags_before_fixing_.22Date.3D.22_.3D.3E_.22date.3D.22 Y

Rich Farmbrough, 23:13, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

Excellent, could I ask you to look at the third one again, there is no "reason=" field involved. Just a double-insertion of "date=". —Sladen (talk) 23:48, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll double check but you cite "reason=date october 2010|date=October 2010" ×2; yourself. Rich Farmbrough, 23:50, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

Ah no it's just my counting. Rich Farmbrough, 23:52, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

Numbering by your diffs 1= comma, 2=reason (not-a-bug), 3=Date/date order effect, 4=reason (not-a-bug), 5=url. Rich Farmbrough, 23:55, 5 October 2010 (UTC).

Okay, for (2) and (4), is there any chance those could be detected and at least flagged for a double-check by a human (who can see instantly what the matter is)? —Sladen (talk) 00:28, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

If I put in a BRFA - and it's not that I can't write code to pick up these cases, nor yet that they are vanishingly rare, it's the principle of "first do no harm" : for example suppose someone writes "The July 2010 Stadium was opened in September 2010." and someone else flags it "{{Clarify}}", ({{Clarify|reason= date=September 2010}}) then taking the reason out would be wrong. The reason parameter is usually harmless. Further SB usually runs every day, I put extra effort into trying to run just before the end of the month, so the chance of getting the wrong month by more than a day (not that that is much of an issue in small numbers anyway) is remote. Except when some silly **** blocks the bot - which will cause mis-dates for about 6000 articles. Rich Farmbrough, 00:40, 6 October 2010 (UTC).

BRFA being prepared: archiving for section link. Rich Farmbrough, 16:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
--

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 35

Template: A user has requested the attention of a member of the Bot Approvals Group. Once assistance has been rendered, please deactivate this tag by replacing it with {{t|BAG assistance needed}}. . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 23:34, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
2. Rich Farmbrough at 23:30, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER wsa by Xeno at 16:21, 7 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:34, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 23:34, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 23:30, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough, 23:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
23:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 4

Template: A user has requested the attention of a member of the Bot Approvals Group. Once assistance has been rendered, please deactivate this tag by replacing it with {{t|BAG assistance needed}}. . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 23:20, 8 October 2010 (UTC).
2. Rich Farmbrough at 23:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 23:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by at 23:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 23:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough, 23:26, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
23:26, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 35

Template: . *

Edits by:

Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough.
Terminal timestamp: 20:28, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough, 19:36, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
19:36, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Update to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 37

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 17:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

Terminal user: Rich Farmbrough.
Terminal timestamp: 17:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough, 17:49, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
17:49, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 36

Template: A user has requested the attention of a member of the Bot Approvals Group. Once assistance has been rendered, please deactivate this tag by replacing it with {{t|BAG assistance needed}}. . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 23:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 23:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 23:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 23:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough, 23:37, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
23:37, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
--

Name drop

I've just mentioned your name at the move discussion over at Template talk:Plot2, hope that was ok. Actually, I wouldn't mind your input there, as you can probably offer more insight than I. Regards. PC78 (talk) 23:15, 12 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Where...

...is the task approval to replace a template with a template redirect? [53] –xeno^talk 15:51, 12 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 15:57, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Should be fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 15:58, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Much obliged. –xeno^talk 15:59, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

It still seems to be making the changes: [54][55][56][57]. - Bilby (talk) 16:08, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmph, need a bigger spanner to hit the bot with. Rich Farmbrough, 16:11, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks Bilby. Rich Farmbrough, 16:15, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

No problem. It all seems good now. :) - Bilby (talk) 16:19, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Replacing template with template redirect

Why are you replacing the WPBiography template with a redirect? [58] Wishful thinking? If you want WPBiography to be moved, initiate a requested move discussion. Ditto {{Film}} [59]. –xeno^talk 13:22, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Because it is easier to read. WP stands for Wikipedia too. Rich Farmbrough, 13:55, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

I don't think you should increase the transclusion count for a page because you think it is easier to read. –xeno^talk 13:56, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Why wasn't this moved to WikiProject Film? -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:16, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I passed over it in my standardization runs (as with any other that looked like they would be disputed), see Template talk:Film/Archive 2009#Template name for the last discussion on it. –xeno^talk 14:17, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes there are five non-standard, of which four have the standard as a redirect. I have had a couple of queries about using the redirect but no complaints. Personally I don't have the energy to even raise these last 5 issues, although often people are quite amenable to change, if the case can be made. At the time of the last "film" discussion there were hundreds of non-standard banners, so it was a different situation. Biography will probably not mind as long as they aren't given a misleading impression that they need to do something different or onerous. Roads - I steer clear of since SPUI days - I guess that shouldn't be a problem, but you can't always tell. MILHIST again,no reason for them to oppose except that they seem attached to their VVVETLA. As for the other one the less I have to do with that banner the better - it is putting a coding overhead on 3 million pages for no reason other than obduracy and a desire to retain the status quo, and I'd rather not have anything to do with it. Rich Farmbrough, 14:29, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

If you'd rather not have anything to do with it, don't change it into a redirect =] –xeno^talk 14:37, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

That is the only one that doesn't have a redirect! Rich Farmbrough, 14:46, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Oh, you mean the maths one. –xeno^talk 14:50, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

"increase the transclusion count for a page". Do what John, pardon, come again? Rich Farmbrough, 14:31, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

By replacing a template with a template redirect, you've increased the number of pages transcluded by one (before: WPBiography; after: WikiProject Biography & WPBiography). –xeno^talk 14:37, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

OK I would use the term the other way around (increasing the transclusion count of {{WikiProject Biography}} by one), but it makes sense either way. I don't see it as a problem though, redirects are cached, talk pages are low traffic, Mag will have them moved in a trice... Rich Farmbrough, 14:44, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

If and when they are moved via the standard channels you can use the WikiProject Foo names; until then I don't think it is a good idea to replace them with redirects, lest you be accused of attempting to change the name by fait accompli. –xeno^talk 14:50, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

@xeno: Hm... This seems it was before the big standardisation process. I think we could try again. I think now it's obvious that all projects should follow the same standards. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:33, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Go for it. –xeno^talk 14:37, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Template_talk:Film#Renaming_to_WikiProject_films. Please your opinion there. Support will be appreciated :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:57, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

• I don't know if I was unclear, but my question was also a thinly-veiled request for you to not replace templates with template redirects. –xeno^talk 15:52, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Failure to adhere to conditions

As far as I can tell, this bot was unblocked in consideration of your expected adherence to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough#Conditions that would satisfy X!, Kingpin13, MSGJ, and others. It appears the bot is once again changing initial-letter capitalization without consensus/approval [60]. This appears to be done by AWB's general fixes or autotagger; that being said, you are responsible for your tools and ensuring they edit in a manner compliant with the unblock conditions. –xeno^talk 13:06, 12 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 13:12, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

After the initial fun of the pile-on while I was blocked, everyone lost interest in discussing any solution there - DaPiep who seems to have a little problem and GiftigerWunsh, who seems more calm commented nearly four days later. My previous offer on my talk page went unreplied to. However I will review leaving the first letter on a page uncapitalised - I am unclear whether you or the IP actually think {{Talk header}} is an abomination, see it as your civic duty to reign in changes which mean a page starts with a capital rather than lowercase, regardless of personal preferences, are trying to protect me from the howling mob, or a bit of all three. Rich Farmbrough, 13:54, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

I just think that the initial-case of templates is an entirely personal preference, and bots shouldn't be changing the case absent a community consensus that ucfirst is preferred (I would similarly query a bot operator whose bot was doing the opposite, i.e. Talk header-> talk header), but realize that this is (now) an AWB general fix issue that at least one of the developers is refusing to address - leaving you in a sticky situation where you (or your bot) risks being blocked unless you reprogram the framework or turn off general fixes. –xeno^talk 13:59, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

It's no problem I can work around the Talk header thing one way or another. However the majority of templates on WP are ucfirst, (even given that we are all lazy (or busy) and often type lc when it doesn't break stuff) so that is some kind of general consensus, although I accept that mileage varies with "Cite". An example: a stub sorter asked me to tag with "stub" instead of "Stub" - not because of stylistic preferences, but because deleting the capital S and typing a small on, on the scale and speed they worked at was a productivity issue - of course I was happy to oblige. Rich Farmbrough, 14:18, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

I wish they would just change it to leave the caps alone. My bot seems to make these changes too! And I'm not as proficient as you in AWB's code (read: not at all), so working around it will be harder (read: impossible) for me. –xeno^talk 14:25, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

← Instead of arguing on Talk/talk header, I think we have to start tracking editors who add talk header to talk pages without any obvious reason. I tried to get this template deleted at some point but there were reactions. The result is that some editors solely add Talk headers in talk pages, sometimes they even create talk pages with only that. I asked to a Filter to avoid these cases but nothing happened. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:23, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

While I agree that editors shouldn't be added talk header willy-nilly, that's a red herring to the issue in question (i.e. the same concern would apply to {{skip to talk}} -> {{Skip to talk}}). –xeno^talk 14:25, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

It is a shame (on the red herring) that so many articles have effectively empty but existent talk pages - had we had hidden cats when Projects took off it would probably not have happened. But it used to be very effective when editing an article to see a blue talk page link hinted that there was something worth looking at. Ah http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org ... Rich Farmbrough, 14:40, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

We could do that. I don't see many talk pages that are just talk headers, though. Rich Farmbrough, 14:40, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

What about pages with talk header but no ==sections== and no archives? In that case, I could see a case being made for simply removing it. –xeno^talk 14:42, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Or simply deleting the talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 16:12, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

...if there were no WikiProject banners. –xeno^talk 16:13, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

natchRich Farmbrough, 11:13, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

--

SmackBot

Hello Rich Farbrough, i would like to report this partly incorrect edit of your bot. Wikiproject magic is something different than wikiproject Magic:The gathering. greetings --Narayan (talk) 17:18, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I guess the : Tripped something up, although it is odd. A real bug report! Rich Farmbrough, 17:28, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Ok found it, will check out the existing mtg pages and move them to the full name. Then review any that might have been wrongly changed. Rich Farmbrough, 17:36, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Done. Hope that helps. Rich Farmbrough, 19:42, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Seems like everything is ok and corrected now, thanks! --Narayan (talk) 21:11, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

---

SmackBot

Hi Rich. The SmackBot is replacing {{Film}} with {{WikiProject Films}} on talk pages (comme ci), but the latter just redirects to the former. I don't know if you can change this or not, but thought I would let you know. BOVINEBOY2008 04:39, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. All but a handful (over 500 IIRC) of projects use WikiProject XXXX and the home for their banner template and WikiProject XXXX is valid for all but one. Rich Farmbrough, 07:29, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Picking nits: Can you check the "do not use section edit summaries" ? –xeno^talk 16:49, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

'tis done. Not sure the advantage though. Rich Farmbrough, 17:14, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Just cleaner edit summaries (the section isn't relevant). –xeno^talk 17:32, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Generally people are asking for more info. CBM demanded a build number. Gurch wanted no build number though. Someone else wants more detailed summary. I'm for streamlining it, it's all bytes. Rich Farmbrough, 19:38, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Relevant details, but the fact that the unsigned template being subst'ed was in xyz subsection hardly seems relevant. –xeno^talk 19:41, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

One wikipedians RD's are another's wikicruft. p Rich Farmbrough, 19:43, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

---

Talk header

Haven't you been requested many, many times to stop making capitalization changes? Why is SmackBot right now changing {{talk header}} to {{Talk header}}? Phantasten (talk) 10:45, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Sock: red linked? Only edit is <refernces/> => {{reflist}}?

•  Sounds like a duck quacking into a megaphone to me

Rich Farmbrough, 11:00, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Was there a need to be juvenile or suspicious? I edit at fr:wp and wikispecies under a different username and here as an IP, not usually bothering to log in. I'd like an answer to my first question, please. Phantasten (talk) 11:08, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes there was a need to be suspicious. A sole trivial edit which is one that the same type of person that has a problem with capitalisation objects to: I can find you examples of editors (admin) claiming that change breaks policy. Why don't you use your fr. and wikispecies identity here, choosing instead what looks like a throw-away account? As to being juvenile, you have a choice, on my talk page, between being met with good humour and sensible discussion, or just sensible discussion. Personally I think I am doing well to maintain good humour when people are behaving the way they have recently: although not choosing to follow "noticeboards" closely I was unaware that several of them had boxes of megaphones. <shrug> Rich Farmbrough, 11:22, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

I'm unaware why you think someone would use a sock account to ask if what your bot is doing is legitimate and approved. Your suspicion is puzzling (also unexpected and unwarranted). How do you suggest I go about getting an answer to my post? Is a noticeboard my best option here? The stop button on SmackBot? Phantasten (talk) 11:33, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

People do funny things on WP, like make threats. But I can answer your questions, let me check a few facts first. Rich Farmbrough, 12:47, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

OK I have reviewed 3,000 threads in my talk archive, E&OE, prior to 21 September 2010 the number of requests was 1. Rich Farmbrough, 13:29, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Seems like a bit of a selective count, then. Did you include threads like this, where you just brushed off the concern? –xeno^talk 13:45, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

No I explained that {fact|July 2008}} was wrong and wouldn't work , and therefore the edit wasn't inconsequential - most users choose not to see, or don't know about hidden categories. Moreover I also said 1 request (E&OE), therefore if you do succeed in finding request number 2 or even 3 out of 3000 threads (and far, far, more comments), I shall not be chastised, although I will admire your patience. I will still say the answer to "Haven't you been requested many, many times to stop making capitalization changes?" is no. I haven't reviewed post HEADBOMB, but as far as I can remember there were 5 people active on my talk page. Without being picky "many" to me would imply more than 6, let alone "many many". And this is what I find frustrating. We are chasing a chimera here, arising from a legitimate concern - or to be more accurate, two legitimate concerns, of Headbomb and Amalthea. And the noise created on my talk page in those few hours meant that I missed the messages that actually mattered from Headbomb - and were also the reason I cleared my page (and hence that much drama ensued) and have my own bots look after it now. Rich Farmbrough, 14:11, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

A bit of semantics, then. I think you've had many people query you about these unnecessary capitalization changes, whether or not they specifically requested you to stop making them is another story, I guess. –xeno^talk 14:16, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I skimmed your last couple of archives before asking and took away an impression—and apologies that I didn't phrase well. My question was not meant to be taken that literally, anyway, I really just wanted to know why the {{Talk header}} edits were being made. (An AWB issue, perhaps, as mentioned by Xeno.) (I have no idea what E&OE means.) Phantasten (talk) 14:25, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

errors and omissions excepted. –xeno^talk 14:26, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I guess it would have been clever to have tried searching first. Sorry and thanks. Phantasten (talk) 14:30, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm just glad we have this encyclopedia around to help us when we're arguing about template case ;> –xeno^talk 14:32, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

It's more about "Talkheader" "Talkpageheader" "TalkHeader" etc => "Talk header" than "talk header" => "Talk header". As far as the queries are concerned I'm not going to do a census of them but most of them were either the < .01 % of edits that are dealt with in the FAQ, or some other aspect of the edit was missed or not understood., such as changing Date= to date=. Rich Farmbrough, 16:43, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

---

Can you suggest-a-bot

Hello (again). Sorry to bother you. I need a bot to do a simple swap of two terms in ~2000 articles. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Trains#Ignoring_right_or_wrong_-_can_we_fix_the_articles for all the sordid details. I've added a request at bot requests, but all I need is the name of a bot operator that has a bot that would do this. Can supply a list of containing the swaps. Do you know of such a bot, I'm sure one already exists.. Thanks.Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Ignore this, a volunteer has appeared. on Wikipedia:Bot_requestsSf5xeplus (talk) 22:50, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

---

WP:Talk or WP:Harass

Hi. Talk or harass. you choose. Now. -DePiep (talk) 23:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Come back when you can form a proper, civil sentence. Rich Farmbrough, 23:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Re: Minor bug with transclusion counter

Yup, good spot. Fixed now (I think). Of course, it's still broken for people who try to rewrite the URL themselves, but there's no way to fix that AFAIK. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 16:54, 13 October 2010 (UTC) ---

The Signpost: 11 October 2010

• News and notes: Board resolutions, fundraiser challenge, traffic report, ten thousand good articles, and more

• In the news: Free culture conference, "The Register" retracts accusations, students blog about Wikipedia, and more

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Smithsonian Institution

• Features and admins: Big week for ships and music

• Dispatches: Tools, part 3: Style tools and wikEd

• Arbitration report: Tricky and Lengthy Dispute Resolution

• Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 07:41, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Okhotsk Airport

you put an unreferenced banner in a 1 sentence stub? I find this ridiculous and will have it removed.

err no hard feelings --Poohunter (talk) 08:03, 17 October 2010 (UTC) ---

Bug report

[61] WP → WikiProject Islam? Where did that come from? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:24, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Martin. Came from the unused (probably never used) WP:Islam template redirect. There are about 4 templates like this, I've reviewed the ruleset, and an checking transclusions of WikiProject Islam now. Rich Farmbrough, 17:21, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

 Done Edits reviewed and rule-set clean, but I still need to change the rule-set generator. Rich Farmbrough, 02:14, 16 October 2010 (UTC).

--

{{citation needed}}

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at Template_talk:Citation_needed#Reinserting_Merge_discussion_template.
Message added 07:02, 17 October 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

:| TelCoNaSpVe :| 07:02, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

---

SmackBot

This bot, User:SmackBot, tagged an article as unreferenced with a category, plants.[62] Does this bot have a dump of such articles? Can this bot be used to locate and tag unreferenced articles in a specific category? I have used the Cat intersection tool to find some such articles, but it does not pull them all for some reason. I would like the unreferenced Algae articles added to a task page in the WikiProject Algae area, if possible. Is there a link to what this bot does? Yes, I still want the other link, also. Thanks. --KMLP (talk) 09:28, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

1. Not as such - I could make a list of Algae articles that needed tagging, as of the last dump: tag them and then make a list of algae articles with an unref. tag. (No I have not forgotten your other request - I have 6 tabs open related to it.)Rich Farmbrough, 00:23, 18 October 2010 (UTC).
   

That would be very useful, any way I could put all unreferenced algae articles in one location and begin referencing. Can you create a subpage at Wikipedia:WikiProject Algae with the list of unreferenced algae articles?

What other tags can you add? The orphan tags on non-stub algae articles would also be useful, again, with a list, if that's doable? I assume it would require more than is already coded for, to not orphan tag species articles, but I can hand readily remove orphan tags from the species if I have a list. Thanks for the help! --KMLP (talk) 00:43, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I see you're just adding the orphan tags even to stubs, but that will actually work for sorting the articles, so please just continue. Thanks. --KMLP (talk) 00:45, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

• The unref articles I could find, extending the search to Category:Algae were:

Rich Farmbrough, 01:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks, got them on their own page for work. --KMLP (talk) 01:40, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I turned up another 36 that need some sort of tag change, but so far none have had "unref" added. Will note here if there are any. Rich Farmbrough, 02:27, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

--

Theater Aachen

A bot made an entry about dates on Theater Aachen which I don't understand, please explain here, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:38, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It is just noting that that article uses dates like 12 May 2101, not May 12, 2101. Rich Farmbrough, 12:40, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks. You seem to look at the future, smile, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:43, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Talkback

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at Train2104's talk page.
Message added 19:03, 13 October 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

---

Proposed deletion of The Queen's Award for Enterprise: Export & Technology (Combined) (1974)

The article The Queen's Award for Enterprise: Export & Technology (Combined) (1974) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No content. Wikipedia is not a list of things that didn't happen. Completionist dreck.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Abductive (reasoning) 06:27, 16 October 2010 (UTC) ---

List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe

I can see why you made this edit. However, the article's name was changed from Countries of Europe to List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe in order to exclude countries that are not sovereign states. Consequently, the discussions linked are no longer relevant to that page. Are you OK to delete the links, or shall I? Daicaregos (talk) 07:47, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. Appreciate it. Best, Daicaregos (talk) 07:59, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Welcome. Rich Farmbrough, 08:18, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

trivial edits again

This edit [63] did not date any tags, despite the edit summary. The AWB people tell me that you can tell AWB not to save if only general fixes are applied. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 11:37, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Rearranging references

[64]. I will block the bot if future runs have this problem. I have reported this on probably a dozen separate occasions now, it's time to fix it permanently as you said you would. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:46, 18 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:50, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Mārtiņš Lācis

As a relatively significant contributor to the entry for Mārtiņš Lācis (the creator of the entry seems to have been banned), you might be interested to know that I proposed the Deletion of it, due to lack of notability. -The Gnome (talk) 15:15, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Oops. I placed the tag in the Discussion page. Moving it to the front. -The Gnome (talk) 15:36, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

IOOF

Hi Rich! No big deal - I'm just a bit puzzled. This edit says you changed

[[Image:Odd Fellows Hall and Marker.JPG|thumb|[[Odd Fellows Hall (Occoquan, Virginia)]].]]

but I can't spot the difference. Can you? Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 13:32, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It looks like the difference doesn't survive a cut and paste. Barring errors I cut three lines from each revision and pasted them into User:Rich Farmbrough/temp100. I then swopped the first and last three lines and saved, and the edit didn't register. Rich Farmbrough, 13:43, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Given that you made the edit manually, what were you trying to achieve with it? — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:49, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Migrating the problem items of Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases. Rich Farmbrough, 13:51, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

I meant, what were you trying to achieve when you edited that particlar line of the file? You did it by hand, not with AWB, so you went out of your way to edit that line about the image. What did you have in mind when you were editing it, given that there is no visible difference in the output or source code? I'll dig out od and figure out what the actual change was. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:57, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Was obviously done by AWB. –xeno^talk 14:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Edits that use AWB should all be marked as such, especially when the user is already responding to complaints about AWB use. I think this must have been an accident. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:39, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that Rich's reprogramming of AWB to omit the 'using AWB' line represents a violation of the letter and spirit of his unblock. –xeno^talk 14:51, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I just determined that myself, using wget - of course I was puzzled why my tests hadn't worked (last time I saw something like this it was an invisible Unicode character). the reason is that my javascript strips trailing spaces out which means I was comparing post-processed text with post processed text. As to why the diff doesn't show it, as it usually does, MW bug I presume. There are several in the land of Diff. Rich Farmbrough, 14:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Bare subst tags

Another critical error from today's run: [65]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

This is a critical error because the tags could get substed by accident at any later point, which would make the date wrong if that point is several months in the future. It's extremely fragile to have these things floating around in articles. However, I thought AWB was able to avoid this problem by temporarily stripping comments and nowiki blocks, or some similar method. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:27, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be less wrong than if it wasn't there: example - gets 30 November by an edit and gets put in November's pot - aliter with no subst: present it gets dated by a bot the following day and gets put in December's pot. Moreover the movement of a few articles from one monthly category to another, even after they have been tagged is not a major concern (although I am considering steps for BLPs, notability and promotional cats to prevent this being done deliberately). The main thrust of the exercise is to put articles in monthly pots to provide 1. ability to ensure that "hard cases" aren't left forever 2. some kind of progress indicator. Rich Farmbrough, 12:39, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Don't you use the timestamp in the categorylinks table to try to tell which month the article was actually added to the category? — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:47, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Also, since the thing was commented out in the first place, it would never show up on a progress indicator. The reason it was tagged was by side-effect when some other tag was dated.

Still, this is an error in your bot that you need to fix before starting it again. It should not be adding bare subst tags to articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:50, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Reference templates are messed up now

I think your edit here may have caused a glitch in the template. It now displays like this on all pages where it is used. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 20:22, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes. The way the template now displays in article space is not the same as it appears on the template page. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 20:25, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

As Rich appears to have logged off I have made an request at ANI as the template is fully protected. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 20:48, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I reverted your edit to the template for purely technical reasons. Feel free to reinsert what you were doing without accidentally breaking the template. :) --Conti|✉ 20:55, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all. Rich Farmbrough, 21:55, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

Turns out someone broke Findsources, and that there was some previous discussion on this. Rich Farmbrough, 22:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

{{Findsources}} was last edited some two weeks before you made these edits (Is it still broken then?). To me this implicates you did not take a look at the effects. No sandbox, no testing, no aftercheck in article space. Also, I cannot relate "some previous discussion" to these actions. Did you see that (undisclosed) discussion, and acted according to its outcome? Did you miss that discussion, and does it in hindsight have implications for your intention in this? Whichever way, quite obfuscating explanation here. And since you are at a template-maintenance level that can unprotect-protect templates, could you also maintain the /documentation? -DePiep (talk) 07:24, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Agricultural marketing

What changes did you make here? I am totally confused. Thanks Agricmarketing (talk) 19:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 23:32, 18 October 2010 (UTC).
Rich Farmbrough, 23:32, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Category:All accuracy disputes

I've undeleted Category:All accuracy disputes, which you deleted as an "empty category" as it has several hundred entries and is populated by a template - {{Self published}}. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 21:04, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. It was empty, but someone who didn't know what they were doing tampered. Rich Farmbrough, 21:54, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

Could that "someone" be you? How come you saw an empty cat? -DePiep (talk) 09:50, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Could that someone... be Mack the Knife? Rich Farmbrough, 10:33, 20 October 2010 (UTC).

Rather attributing blame, could we just please ensure that whatever process caused the cat to be deleted is fixed. —Sladen (talk) 10:40, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I was looking into that, Sladen, but RF's evasiveness was not helpfull. (Also, there is another "someone" Richard introduces, and has moved to Archive quite fast. This someone has not been found yet).

This is what happened:

• 17:52, 14 October 2010 [66], Template:Selfpublished(edit talk links history): RF rm link to Category:All accuracy disputes from code. es:remove "all..." cats, cut down on category clutter.
• 19:05, 15 October 2010 [67], Category:All accuracy disputes: RF deleted the cat. es:C1: Empty category.

Notes: The template was the only template (left?) that created links to Category:All accuracy disputes. CSD:C1 requires four days of empty cat. All edits have been undone by now.

There was discussion at the VPP/More maintenance-templates are mentioned.

I conclude Richard is the one ("someone who didn't know what they were doing") that emptied the category. -DePiep (talk) 12:10, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:BLP unsourced

Resolved

See Template talk:Refimprove#RFC: Should a link to a commercial search engine be included in the template Refimprove for the discussion.
Amalthea 22:08, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I found PBS's edit comment on {{Unreferenced}} a few minutes ago. Funny how people revert without dropping a note. Incidentally that was discussed on Village Pump, and my comments there were somewhat naive - I was half expecting protests, as happens with anything and everything. Instead there was quiet acceptance, and even jollification, followed by silent reverts. Guess I'm going to have to find a way to see when I get reverted, otherwise we just get BR and no D. Thanks again for the note. Rich Farmbrough, 22:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

Heh, you mean like a watchlist? :) But yeah, I was in one such small VP discussion once too and added it to Template:BLP sources 18 months ago, but it hadn't near the participation from the RFC, so …
Cheers, Amalthea 22:29, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed - and it is more usable than I thought, the remaining 20k items were nearly all low-traffic non-articles (I had got up to "V" cleaning the articles out). I do sympathise with the points raised at the RFC - but the bottom line seems to be "it's OK to drive experienced editors to Google, but not inexperienced ones" or "We can give Google traffic but not be seen to be giving them traffic". I'm now waiting for my Google T shirt for putting over 1 million links to their site, however briefly... as someone said think of the page rank! <chuckle> Rich Farmbrough, 22:51, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

Watchlists... y'know... —Sladen (talk) 00:06, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot dif info

This [68] is really no big deal, but I assume you may wish to program the bot so it's not leaving behind both the {{cat improve}} and the {{uncat}} tags together. Regards  -- WikHead (talk) 18:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, would be good. Consider it on the list. Rich Farmbrough, 20:38, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

rev 7306 Tagger: don't mark as {{uncat}} if has {{cat improve}}. Rjwilmsi 14:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Nice. Rich Farmbrough, 15:44, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

There are only half a dozen of these wiki-wide:

• Heilpraktiker
• John FitzGerald (career coach)
• Miles Meadows
• Miss B Hollywood
• Registro de Identidade Civil
• Reverse Expo
• RubyKaigi
• StarGames

Rich Farmbrough, 14:13, 20 October 2010 (UTC).

Should all be fixed now. Rich Farmbrough, 15:35, 20 October 2010 (UTC).

Today

Speaking about your edits today alone, you seem to have managed to break every single one of AWB's Rules of Use, as well as a number of other Wikipedia policies/guidelines - Presuming that it is AWB you are using to make your recent high speed edits. Frankly, why? You keep going on about how much you just want to help Wikipedia and dislike it when people get in your way. But your edits aren't helping Wikipedia..

• Are you actually checking your edits? If so why are you continuing to make edits which you know aren't wanted? And which you've said would stop? If not you're not abiding by WP:BOT.
• You are using your main account to make bot like edits, possibly using a bot, although you always seem to like to avoid that subject for some reason..
• You said you'd stop messing about with title whitespace and template capitalisation, yet nearly all your recent edits seem to change this. This edit and this edit in particular are disappointing. The edits are clearly insignificant and controversial.
• You've managed to abuse rollback in an edit war with another admin.
• Why aren't you using edit summaries?

I strongly suggest you stop making these edits.. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 12:33, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I wanted to give Asperger a kick to get it out of the category "Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from January 2008" which was inhabited only by Hans and possibly Ron. Rich Farmbrough, 12:44, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Oh really, so how exactly would changing the template capitalisation help with that? Don't you think that maybe removing {{by whom|date=January 2008}} would have been a better method? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 12:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Not really, that would have failed to move it into Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from January 2008 Rich Farmbrough, 12:50, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

I see.. I didn't spot the difference between those two categories before. Still unacceptable, you should know much better than to use that as an excuse for controversial edits, a null edit (note: NOT dummy edit) would have been more suitable. Using an extreme example, it wouldn't be okay for me to vandalise a page, and then say "well the page need an edit to make it update it's categories" would it? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 12:54, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not an extreme example, it's something completely different. That's like comparing a polite offer to buy a coffee for a stranger in a McDonalds queue with pulling out a semi-automatic, spraying the customers and insisting on being served first. Rich Farmbrough, 23:25, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

It's not completely different, but yes it's not a particularly good example. Ignore my example then, and please address the actual concern behind it. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 10:59, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I edited a couple of articles and made small, or even insignificant changes to get them correctly catted, maybe I should have null edited them. I can't get excited about it. On any measure (bandwidth, database size, editor time, aggro) this thread is more expensive than the edits. Rich Farmbrough, 15:29, 20 October 2010 (UTC).

This thread wouldn't exist if you would observe editing guidelines, community norms, and the conditions of your unblock. –xeno^talk 15:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

dead link template used in a ref

See Kevin Yoder. I added the dead link template at the end of a ref, and the bot added SUBST and such which made the References section look very odd. Flatterworld (talk) 16:16, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, known bug, awaiting bot approvals to implement fix. Rich Farmbrough, 20:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

The Signpost: 18 October 2010

• News and notes: Wikipedia fundraiser event, Frankfurt book fair, news in brief

• WikiProject report: Show Me the Money: WikiProject Numismatics

• Features and admins: A week for marine creatures

• Dispatches: Common issues seen in Peer review

• Arbitration report: Climate change case closes after 4 months

• Technology report: Video subtitling tool, staff vs. volunteer developers, brief news

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 01:25, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 4

Template: Approved for trial (7 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

1. MBisanz at 23:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by MBisanz at 23:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 11:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 23:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 37

Template: A user has requested the attention of a member of the Bot Approvals Group. Once assistance has been rendered, please deactivate this tag by replacing it with {{t|BAG assistance needed}}. . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 14:29, 13 October 2010 (UTC).
2. H3llkn0wz at 14:49, 13 October 2010 (UTC).
3. Rich Farmbrough at 15:22, 13 October 2010 (UTC).
4. Rich Farmbrough at 14:30, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 17:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 15:22, 13 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 14:30, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 22:41, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 38

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 15:47, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 15:47, 13 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 15:47, 13 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 15:47, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 22:41, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Stacey Slater

Hi Rich

Can I ask why SmackBot made this edit to Stacey Slater's talk page? From what I can see it doesn't seem to have changed anything, the links that the bot edited are still going to the same page and they didn't previously seem to have been redirected. Very confused as to why the bot has carried out the edits --5 albert square (talk) 02:00, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 02:04, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks for the explanation, it's appreciated and good luck with the catchup!  :) --5 albert square (talk) 02:18, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Orphan tags

Your tasks say that SmackBot dates orphan tags, not that it places them. Can I see the task about adding orphan tags to articles? Is it somewhere else? Thanks. --KMLP (talk) 17:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I'll dig around, although it may be just part of the AWB general fixes, which I am a big fan of, that have developed enormously over the past 5 years. Have you had problems arising form it? Rich Farmbrough, 17:18, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

I'd think they're part of the autotagger. –xeno^talk 17:20, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I have a problem with orphan tags and most maintenance tags that are put at the top of articles while they are being created and do not serve to alert the reader of article deficiencies, but are instead to attract editing fixes. It should go on the talk page. But that's another discussion.

I think that creating a good, needed article is more important than orphan tagging it, and, giving an editor a reasonable amount of time to create the article shows this. It also prevents sending editors off creating unhelpful and unneeded links in the midst of writing their article--something bots can't check for.

So, this was not an AWB fix, as I understand them to be guided by humans, it was listed as a bot edit. I would like to see what the algorithm is for adding orphan tags to articles for the bot task. Thanks. --KMLP (talk) 17:50, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Well I'm assuming that you are talking about Megabias? The the reason that the bot visited it was to date the "Expand section" tags, however it couldn't do that due to the limitations recently place on it my me, in response to some events. Normally that would mean it would skip the article, but since the autotagger (as xeno rightly says) tagged it as orphan (the algorithm being "no (zero) main-space links, not a redirect, dab or sia") there was a successful dating of a tag.

If you want to keep AWB bots and most people off your work in progress then I would suggest {{In-use}}.

Sorry the tag inconvenienced you, hope that helps. Rich Farmbrough, 18:26, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Is it so much to ask, give an editor 24 hours to create an article, rather than demand they know preventative measures to be allowed to edit unencumbered for a reasonable amount of time? I'd still like a link to the discussion about the bot applying orphan tags. Thanks. --KMLP (talk) 07:42, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

There is no time limit on creating articles, just because there is a tag, doesn't mean that it's your responsibility to fix it. Implicit approval for general fixes is here. There is much discussion since about the GF algorithm for orphaning, the upshot being that an optional setting (which I use) will only tag if there are zero mains-pace links, where the guidelines suggested tagging on 0, 1 or 2. As far as I know no one has suggested a grace period for tagging, things get speedy deleted within minutes of creation - tagging is fairly mild in comparison, and it would be exceedingly difficult to implement. Rich Farmbrough, 21:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Tthere is a generally accepted community grace period for tagging when it comes to newbie editors, although the megabias tag was outside of it, please see:

Special:NewPages--"don't bite the newcomers, cleanup tagging within minutes of creation can discourage new users."

--New page patrolTagging anything other than attack pages, copyvio, vandalism or complete nonsense only a few minutes after creation is not likely to be constructive and may only serve to annoy the page author.

It's in bold on both of these pages. The community considers it important.

I am trying to bring in scientific editors and photographers to wikipedia as a project, to edit in areas which need a tremendous amount of work from writers who are experts in their areas and can write well for the general reader. While anyone can edit, it's not always true that anyone can write good articles at an appropriate general encyclopedia level on some highly technical aspects of phylogenetic systematics, evolutionary molecular biology, taphonomical biases, electron microscopy in the life sciences, and algae sensu lato.

I would like to understand how bot tagging works, so that I can explain it to other editors in my project. The link you give me is for a request to fixing ISBN numbers. I am concerned with how the orphan tagging task has been approved by the community, not general fixes to ISBN numbers. Thanks. --Kleopatra (talk) 15:52, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

OK I should be able to find community discussion on automated orphan tagging - I thought you were talking about SB's specific authorisation. As far as a general explanation of bot tagging is concerned, I can't answer fully for other bots, but SmackBot is unlikely to visit a page that is a few minutes old, or indeed untagged (this page had "Expand section" on it) - the reason for this is that a standard run takes in the order of hours, other stuff is generally driven off database dumps which are likely to be at least a few days old. The possible exception is if it has a broken HTML ref tag, or similar, even then the chance of it being a few minutes old is slim. Moreover the "Uncategorized" and "Stub" tags will get the article pretty quick help by the experts at categorization. Rich Farmbrough, 16:13, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

Yes, I don't see SmackBot in the "tagging articles in two minutes category," but I do point out this lack of consensus for doing just that whenever I run into a wikipedia editor who thinks there is no community consensus against it, as there is. Yes, I do want to see SB's specific authorization for orphan tagging. You have a lot of bots, you appear to work with the community; I though I'd start here, with this particular authorization. I can find the community consensus at the orphan project. --Kleopatra (talk) 16:32, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I feel like an idiot. I thought you did lots of useful stuff with bots, and I checked the type of edits you made, excellent article clean-ups of all sorts of details, although I was concerned about this task, and couldn't understand it from the bot page; but still, it seemed like you would be useful for editing some encyclopedia pages. I see below, however, that you are caught in the discuss-behaviour-forever-loop, due to having irritated someone, for, it appears, excessive capitalization of templates? I would like some help from a bot-wielding editor for homogenizing and cleaning up large groups of articles. Maybe you can suggest someone else or let me know when you will be back editing rather than not editing? The articles I edit have very small audiences and huge irregularities in codes. I am editing as much as I can, and I have AWB, but they need someone with technical understanding of templates, categories, sorting references, etc. (I was reading your edits to encyclopedia articles, not to wikipedia and talk pages, which is how I missed it.) I'm still interested in the bot task, but, not cut-throat interested, so I leave that. Oh well. --Kleopatra (talk) 08:39, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Would be better not to misspell template in your edit summaries

Just for completeness. Rjwilmsi 19:53, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes indeed, or anywhere else. I always type "tempalte" these days:- I was wondering if javascript could fix it in the search box. Rich Farmbrough, 20:00, 15 October 2010 (UTC).

• Moreover, what makes these edits different than those that you were recently blocked for? Given the repeated spelling error, it's clear you're using some kind of automated process - (probably AWB, but you've hacked out the "using AWB" bit). This is inappropriate. –xeno^talk 19:57, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Do you never use ctrl-V or the edit-summary drop-down list? Rich Farmbrough, 20:00, 15 October 2010 (UTC).

Pull the other one - it's even got the AWB section-edit summaries. Even if you're doing this manually (which strains credulity), it's a violation of the spirit of your unblock. –xeno^talk 20:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

There was never any suggestion that I was limited to browser edits. Not by any sane person. Rich Farmbrough, 01:05, 16 October 2010 (UTC).

The conditions of the unblock were "All 'bot-like tasks ... no matter how uncontroversial, to be farmed out to non-administrator accounts". Bypassing "References necessary" to "Citation needed" [69] seems bot-like enough to me (the kind of edit users might want to be hidden by a bot-flag) (and trivial/insignificant). But maybe I'm not sane? –xeno^talk 15:10, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Eight edits per minute[70], without using automation?... —Sladen (talk) 20:12, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Are we playing "Aha!" ? Like I said on ANI it's fun, but it's not productive. I can find you editing at 15 edits per minute, so what? Or other people at 78 per minute... I was blocked by a 'crat within 8 minutes of ANI, despite that fact that there was no editing happening. But 10 days after leaving a query on their page I get no answer. I'm interested in getting some work done, not pissing around with edit rates, which tool is being used, some double standards where I am expected to stop everything because someone objects to one facet of what I'm doing - meanwhile people doing the same thing - automated - just get ignored. Rich Farmbrough, 01:05, 16 October 2010 (UTC).

It's not one facet. It's the same facets I see again here, and again: {{flagicon}}; blanket non-specific edit summaries; claimed ignorance of previous requests (in this case, unauthorised bot-like activity from an admin account); complaining about others instead of reporting to points/questions; ...

I went to great lengths in guiding you to the position of getting unblocked; my hope remains that you will stop doing the actions that you were requested (repeatedly) not to do on various (multiple) occasions—and which ultimately got you blocked.

If you are still getting flak, you are doing something wrong... if you don't want to get the flak, either fix the issues when they are raised (rather than responding by ranting about Wikipedia policies, or the conduct of others)—or resist undertaking the specific activities that are getting you the flak. —Sladen (talk) 01:38, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

You had nothing to do with my unblocking. On the contrary it was your and Xeno's comments in irrelevant threads that made my talk page such a pile of garbage I had to clear it, and prompted Q Science to post at ANI. I'm sure you thought it was helpful, but it wasn't. I also appreciate you taking the trouble to review the reflist edits, but you still don't seem to have grasped that they were correct. And while I'm happy to explain this stuff to you , when you jump in and accuse me of "ranting" I wonder if it's worthwhile. You said, for example in an edit summary "If their weren't errors there wouldn't be threads" - without actually counting the threads or even reading them I guess. There were requests to do work, thanks for stuff, queries, even a Signpost. Not everyone comments only to complain. Rich Farmbrough, 01:56, 16 October 2010 (UTC).

I know how you feel Rich, Magio just got blocked today and I only escaped because I moved onto other tasks. I'm starting to think there's some AWB user profiling going on. --Kumioko (talk) 02:10, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

People think we are here to police each other's actions. We are here to build an encyclopedia. <shrug> It's what I have been doing and what I will continue to do. And with the amount of work I do I expect to draw a fair cross-section of Wiki-life into my talk pages, 99% of them are reasonable, 99% are reasonably intelligent, 99% are reasonably patient. That's good enough, it has to be. Rich Farmbrough, 02:23, 16 October 2010 (UTC).

Ideally editors police themselves. Ideally editors police their bots too. It should not have to fall to other editors to be reporting issues in (unreviewed) bot, or semi-bot edits. —Sladen (talk) 11:57, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

• I've on more than one occasion found WP a strange and surreal place, and this seems to be one of them. 'Could there be just a tiny bit of nit-picking going on?'

  I ask myself... today we have complaints of a typo in Rich's edit summary... So ^&#$(*#+ what??? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:02, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that's what the original reporter is highlighting. The original reporter (I believe) is highlighting the unauthorised use of AWB on an admin-enabled main account (something that contributed to the previous block), the large-scale unchecked mis-spelling being a symptom of this. —Sladen (talk) 15:06, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

• Isn't there some sort of user white list for AWB? I didn't think it was possible to use it without authorisation... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:39, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

• It is possible to download the source code, modify it (to get around the whitelist (note: admins are automatically approved fyi)/allow fully-automated editing etc.) and then compile from a personal computer. Which I believe Rich has done (certainly he's been accused of it many times and has never directly denied it, although he's been asked directly if that's what he's done) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 15:43, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

• This is really off track; nonetheless:

1. I am authorised to use AWB.
2. CBM insisted that I either take out the ref-reordering or stop using Gen fixes. This I have done, with great (and justified - it would seem) reluctance. I have also, since then;
   1. Test-fixed one or two bugs/FRs, which I have posted to AWB pages and removed another GF I disagree with, although I suspect that those changes have been lost when I got new versions of the software.
   2. Recently played with the "using" string so that I can report whether SB is using the damaged version CBM requires - it is reasonably hard in a real life situation to make sure SB always uses it , and I use the proper version.
   3. Put some timing code in to try to identify some timeouts.

That's about it. AWB is my only exposure to C#, and is an intricate, one might say esoteric, piece of code, what looks like an assign or test might invoke scores of procedures across many modules, using both AWB defined and library classes. As regular readers of this page will know, <chuckle> I prefer simplicity. Rich Farmbrough, 16:04, 17 October 2010 (UTC).

Could I just confirm that SmackBot should not be making reference-reshuffling edits such as [71] then? —Sladen (talk) 19:40, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

No you can confirm that on particular editor, has an objection, and therefore I avoid doing it. SmackBot absolutely should be doing it, but one guy has an extreme position on the subject, and I like to go with the flow. Rich Farmbrough, 21:27, 17 October 2010 (UTC).

And what, pray, is wrong with reordering refs??? GACs and FACs insist upon refs being in correct order, so I would consider this to be a boon not to have to do these manually. There really is no pleasing everybody --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:50, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Well quite... What I'm trying to determine here are the bounds that CBM has placed on SmackBot operation above and beyond the general BAG processes. With some hard facts about what has been mandated, we can perhaps analyse those for sanity and get them adjusted if they are not sane or helpful to Wikipedia. Personally, if the edit summary correctly states what is being done and the edit has been checked-over by a human I am supportive! —Sladen (talk) 02:25, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

the edit has been checked-over by a human Um... that would be cool... do you have any idea how many bot edits there are? One of the interwiki bots has done over 10 million edits. The top 174 en:WP bots have made some 39,873,340 according to emijrp's reports - about 10% of all edits. Rich Farmbrough, 03:11, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Wikipedia relies on manual review either via (a) BRFA for a bot account, or (b) an editor eye-balling their assisted edits for a main account. The system works great until some overly enthusiastic editors either (a) skip BRFA, or (b) skip eye-balling on their main account... and that's how we end up with thing like Main Page being tagged isn't it? That your personal main account alone has made 2% of those 39 million edits probably illustrates the impact that ignoring either of the two criteria brings with it.

So once again, back to the straight question. Could I confirm that CBM has requested (above and beyond regular BRFA/BAG) that SmackBot not shuffle-references? (nb. if this is indeed the case, I am quite happy to approach CBM and suggest that it shouldn't be the case... but it requires a straight answer). —Sladen (talk) 03:28, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes he has. See below. Rich Farmbrough, 12:14, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

• I would be totally supportive of any bot doing necessary tasks which are too shit tedious or boring to do manually. I would also like to have it on clear record which, if any, of Rich's edits are not considered 'necessary' by consensus. I don't think any lack of consensus has been proven, only WP:IDONTLIKEIT. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:57, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Bot edits are not bold. The bot does not have authorization to rearrange references because doing so requires manual review. If someone intentionally put the references in a particular order, that order needs to be preserved - only by looking at the references themselves and evaluating them can you decide what order they belong in. If you don't read the references, or are a bot, there's no way to tell what order is best.

The AWB developers have set up a general method to allow bots like SmackBot to disable the reference reordering, so all that RF has to do is implement that properly. It's already a feature of AWB.

In the end, the bot task is just about adding dates to maintenance templates. So there is no reason in the task that the bot should be doing general fixes at all. However, if it is going to do some, it needs to stick to ones that do not require manual review, like changing "5th June" to "5 June". If the fixes are difficult to limit, they could just be disabled, and the bot's approved task would be unaffected.

Also, I'll point out that the error rate for the bot is quite high, higher than any other bot that frequently appears on my watchlist. Today it also resumed a type of breakage in which is adds un-substituted subst: tags to articles. This is another error that has been pointed out over and over, and apparently still isn't not fixed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:36, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Template capitialisation changes

Pure case-changing of templates[72][73][74][75][76]. Again. There's also adjustment of {{self-published inline}}[77]. —Sladen (talk) 14:57, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

You forgot this?

:::Rich: I'd prefer to see you make this unblock request on the basis of contributing to the WP:ANI discussion, it is more immediate concern and would be easier to grant. Talk of "throwing hundreds more pages at SmackBot" may not endear everyone. —Sladen (talk) 19:14, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Let us then say "Throwing hundreds more pages into Category:Articles_with_invalid_date_parameter_in_template which is going to create problems for me, and is unlikely to be addressed by anyone else." Rich Farmbrough, 19:24, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough, 01:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Seriously I suggest you go and download WP:Huggle and run that for an hour, then see if you want to spend time arguing about this capital nonsense. Rich Farmbrough, 01:56, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Not quite sure of the relevance of this to the AWB-capitialisation changes. Perhaps you could respond to the subject at hand and fix the AWB in question (as was previously indicated) rather than ranting about something unrelated. Thank you for the confirmation and reminder of the assistance I afforded towards getting your account unblocked. Bare in mind that some editors people chose to make less edits, of a higher-quality, manually—and the same applies to fighting vandalism. —Sladen (talk) 02:06, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

This is the point, Sladen, you don't see the relevance. You simply have no understanding of what's going on here. I will explain but I fear you will be, as the old joke goes, "none the wiser, merely better informed." The change of the dated category name in the {{Cleanup}} template resulted in hundreds of pages being thrown into non-existent categories. This is interpreted by the template, quite reasonably, as "invalid dates", and the pages are therefore put into a clean-up category, mainly containing things like "spetember 2010", "2010-10-09" and other assorted drek. Then SmackBot comes along and sorts them out. The number of articles with a valid date that is not a valid category is usually about 2 or 3 per day, if that. At the end of a SmackBot run there is an intensely manual phase which involves picking up this sort of thing, creating the categories, or reverting the vandalism, de-substing templates, fixing broken templates and so on and on. To avoid these hundreds of articles gettign dumped in the category was easy enough, but it involved A) getting past your objections to the unblock. B) putting up with your crap on my talk page again, because I didn't run grovelling to ANI. Which discussion, it transpired, was an almost complete waste of time. I'm sorry if I seem a little irritated, it's because I am. Rich Farmbrough, 02:21, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Thank you for the explanation of the general concept of the date-tagged cleanups (which I am supportive of). However, in the case of all of the example diffs provided there are no "invalid dates", there are no changes or adjustments to the dates made (except removing a single trailing space in one instance). The question is thus: why these matches are being activated when there is nothing to change? —Sladen (talk) 02:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The change of the dated category name in the {{Cleanup}} template resulted in hundreds of pages being thrown into non-existent categories. This is interpreted by the template, quite reasonably, as "invalid dates", and the pages are therefore put into a lean-up category, mainly containing things like "spetember 2010", "2010-10-09" and other assorted drek. Then SmackBot comes along and sorts them out. The ususal number of articles with a valid date that is not a valid category is usually about 2 or 3 per day, if that. Despite these being edited they remain in the category and hence after a run of say 1000 article there will be maybe 65 articles on a re-run, 5 that need manual fixing and 60 that have been added while the run was occurring. (The current backlog thanks to this farrago is over 11000 entries.) Of those 5, typically 2 or 3 will have been edited and 2 or 3 not. This isn't a problem. When several hundred or several thousand articles that shouldn't be there get thrown into the queue, it's still not a problem, except to the obsessives amongst us, but I prefer that not to happen. That it did to this extent is directly attributable to you. Rich Farmbrough, 02:45, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

I don't think there's any disagreement about the logic of why, how or when to do sweeps. So, skipping straight to the "SmackBot comes along and sorts them out" part: why are rules getting activated when there is already a valid date (no change required, effectively null edit)? If the honest answer is laziness, then that's fine—having taken my own time to report the issue, with diffed examples, I would like to know that it is usefully being reviewed. (I appreciate your enthusiasm to share the general concept behind the date cleanup and which I don't think anyone has any objection to, but that's not what I have attempted to highlight here with the diffs). —Sladen (talk) 03:09, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

This is not due to the general date clean up. It's due to someone breaking a template, and me being unable to prevent that causeing damage. Rich Farmbrough, 03:19, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Okay, excellent; do you have a diff for the breakage? Which template? (I'm still slightly confused as to how this has any relation on an AWB regex-rule firing when it doesn't need to—what is being reported here). —Sladen (talk) 03:36, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Please could you indicate when you have fixed the rule producing the edits highlighted above. —Sladen (talk) 02:08, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I cant speak for Rich of course but I believe what he has been trying to say is that those capitalization changes have been built into AWB over time (and only recently became an issue to a couple of editors) and in order to completely stop making those changes requires either not using the app at all (because to correct the app requires significant coding changes) or allow a few "minor" and arguably unwanted (some of us want them but others do not) edits process so that other "true problems" like vandalism can be fixed with the bot. In my opinion allowing a few edits like this through so that bigger problems can be dealt with in an automated fashion (allowing for a better product for the readers) is a small price to pay and rather the cost of doing business as they say. --Kumioko (talk) 02:20, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Bot time is cheap. General editor time reviewing superfluous diffs, when they could instead be tackling vandalism, is not. —Sladen (talk) 02:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Again you don't understand. 1. stop reviewing the diffs. 2. Thanks to you SmackBot is running at such a low hit rate it will not be able to run daily soon. 3.Those diffs were not part of SB's normal run, they were part of an approved trial. 4. Bot time may be relatively cheap, but you are not paying for it, nor are you paying for me to make the changes you demand - which are not even wanted by you as far as I can tell. Why I should make my code more complex just because you have become a stuck record is a mystery to me. Rich Farmbrough, 02:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

I appreciate that you personally don't use Watchlists, but other editors do use Watchlists, and this is how come they end up reviewing SmackBot's edits. Just like a potential vandal, if I see an AWOL bot I will review their other recent edits, and I assume that this is how most editors capable of using watchlists work... —Sladen (talk) 02:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot is not AWOL. And if there is a bug, as has happened, there is no point a human reviewing 5 or 10 or even 100 edits, I will generally review at least 25,000 edits if it's a tag-dating issue, depending on the nature of the problem, and fix them up where necessary. Rich Farmbrough, 03:19, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

If you are manually reviewing 25,000 edits (that is more than the number of edits I have ever made to Wikipedia)... why is the error rate so high? —Sladen (talk) 10:39, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

1. "there is no point a human reviewing" where do you get "manually reviewing" from that?
2. "why is the error rate so high?" How high is the error rate? What constitutes an error? Something you don't like? Something bad? Something good but unexpected? An effectively dummy edit? Suppose the error rate it is .1% is that high? How does it compare with, say User:Sladen? With an average editor? With an average admin? With an average anonymous IP? With other bots?

Before calumnizing SmackBot, and by implication me, please try to establish some basic facts, so that you have a grasp of what's going on, rather than just guessing. Rich Farmbrough, 10:50, 20 October 2010 (UTC).

On the occasions where I have done large sample review of SmackBot's edits, the failure rate has been between 5% and 10%; and I have tried to state this in my reports (eg. "95/100"). It's not guess work, it's several years of watching SmackBot walk across my watchlist, cleaning up aftewards, and reporting the bugs here. —Sladen (talk) 11:38, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

You may have done this twice but the only time I am sure of was when you said:

Could you explain the purposing of putting </noinclude><noinclude> back-to-back.[78][79], still I suppose that it's legal... I am however baffled by the recursive <noinclude><noinclude>[80] on another edit. An adjective distance 237&nbsp;km should have been 237-kilometre ...[81].

Since these were all correct (in the sense that for three of them you preferred option was a potential bug and what happened was fine, and for the fourth, the improvement, while sup-optimal, was still an improvement) , your "34/38" rating is wrong, and the actual rating is 100%, not that 38 edits is a decent sample. Rich Farmbrough, 15:08, 20 October 2010 (UTC).

Copyright violation?

Hi Rich, would you please take a look at this article? Keith Jolie seems to be copy-pasted, and after the first edit that created it, the next user (with an IP address), seems to have "edited" little else. The biography page of the guy's website is here: [82] It was, after all, the only "reference" on the page. Thanks. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 03:36, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to look in more detail soon, but for now [this diff] seems to suggest that the discography, at least, was developed on WP. The IP, could, of course be Keith Jolie. Rich Farmbrough, 03:49, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks- I didn't look into it too closely... was going through the lists of musician articles needing infoboxes, and adding them to articles with photos and enough text. I just happened upon that article, but I've learned to be really weary of articles that have plenty of text, little wikification, and only one reference, if that. Either way, I just wanted someone to check it. Thanks again. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 04:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Replacing template with template redirect, again

Previous discussion: User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2010Oct#Replacing template with template redirect

You seem to have a desire to always 'canonicalise' templates, so why, are you actually replacing a template with a tenmplate redirect as here?

If you think {{flagicon}} should be renamed to {{Flag icon}}, please file a requested move discussion. –xeno^talk 14:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

That edit also did something strange to the external links. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes it made them visible. One is on the spam list, normally I would pick it out and preserve the rest, but strangely I find my energy sapped. Rich Farmbrough, 15:13, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

If your energy is sapped, perhaps you should stop making disputed edits - you'd save a lot of time answering questions about them? –xeno^talk 15:15, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

• Even more peculiar, given your recent edit to WP:Redirect [83] (one that supports your position during an ongoing dispute, might I add) that suggests that "eliminating the redirect from a page is almost always beneficial" - but here you go in the opposite direction? (See also: WT:Redirect#Template redirects and WP:NOTBROKEN) –xeno^talk 15:15, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Almost always, see pay me now or pay me later. Rich Farmbrough, 20:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC).
    
    • Please go through WP:RM, don't try to "trickle move" the template by switching templates to template redirects. –xeno^talk 20:51, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
      • That would take more years than I am prepared to give it. Rich Farmbrough, 15:33, 19 October 2010 (UTC).
        
        • Not a very good justification for just going ahead with it. You use automated and semi-automated means to inflict your own personal preferences on the rest of Wikipedia, without discussing first, and without discussing properly afterwards when concerns are brought up - not acceptable. The very reason we have things like BRfA in place (and other means to reviewing these kinds of tasks) is because it is very difficult for a "normal" editor to actually do anything when a user starts making ~10 edits a minute which they disagree with. Especially when that editor then won't properly discuss the issue with them. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 15:37, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
          • Read what I said not what you impute to me. Rich Farmbrough, 15:42, 19 October 2010 (UTC).
            
            • You said (as I see it) that you can't be bothered to go through discussion via WP:RM because that would take too long, and that you feel a okay alternative to this discussing is to simply "game the system" (or "trickle move" as xeno put it) by using a semi-automated/automated tool to change the articles to use the template you prefer prior to moving (or without moving). If this is incorrect you need to explain yourself a bit more than simply "That would take more years than I am prepared to give it" - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 16:05, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
              • • No I said that I would not be prepared to move a template by "trickle move", as that would take more years than I would be prepared to give it. The reference to exponential decay should make that clear. A minimal figure for "trickle moving" that template would be 25 years, assuming no new usages and uniformity of edits. Rich Farmbrough, 16:43, 19 October 2010 (UTC).
                  
                  • Thanks for clarifying, your comments above aren't very clear, but nonetheless, my apologies for misunderstanding. Well in that case, what reason could you possibly have for changing that template? Just a personal preference if I'm correct? Which it is still an inappropriate use of automated/semi-automated editing (I presume you are using a tool of some sort for these edits, correct??). - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
                    • That edit was made with Firefox. Rich Farmbrough, 15:12, 20 October 2010 (UTC).
                      
                      • Perhaps you could answer the whole question instead of just the bracketed aside? –xeno^talk 15:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
                        • I was doing that but I found people would then pick one answer and argue about that so 8/8 of my effort was wasted.
                        • Flagicon is not a word, "Flag icon" makes some kind of sense. The majority of article space templates eschew munged phrases. Simple clear naming rules help everyone. Rich Farmbrough, 15:23, 20 October 2010 (UTC).
                          
                          • Please file WP:RM if you feel this is the case. –xeno^talk 15:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I actually started doing that 3 days ago. However all my time has been taken up here. Rich Farmbrough, 15:54, 20 October 2010 (UTC).

It takes all of 30 seconds to file a discussion. I'm really confused - by removing a few exceedingly trivial and inconsequential rules from your ruleset, you could avoid all the headache. –xeno^talk 16:13, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 5

Template:  Approved.. *

Edits by:

1. MBisanz at 23:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:26, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by MBisanz at 23:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by MBisanz at 23:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 23:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 5

Template:  Approved.. *

Edits by:

1. MBisanz at 23:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:26, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by MBisanz at 23:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by MBisanz at 23:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 23:43, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 37

Template: Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

1. H3llkn0wz at 14:49, 13 October 2010 (UTC).
2. Rich Farmbrough at 15:22, 13 October 2010 (UTC).
3. MBisanz at 23:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 17:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by MBisanz at 23:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by MBisanz at 23:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 23:43, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 38

Template: Approved for trial (5 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

1. H3llkn0wz at 22:50, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
2. MBisanz at 23:56, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:56, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 15:47, 13 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by MBisanz at 23:56, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 12:55, 15 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 23:43, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 4

Template: Approved for trial (7 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by [[User:|User:]] at 11:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 11:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 00:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 36

Template: Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by [[User:|User:]] at 23:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by MBisanz at 23:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 00:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 37

Template: Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 17:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by [[User:|User:]] at 23:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by MBisanz at 23:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 00:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 3

Template: Speedily Approved.. *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 03:17, 2 October 2010 (UTC).
2. Xeno at 14:21, 8 October 2010 (UTC).
3. Rich Farmbrough at 17:07, 9 October 2010 (UTC).
4. Rich Farmbrough at 17:14, 9 October 2010 (UTC).
5. H3llkn0wz at 22:57, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
6. MBisanz at 22:39, 19 October 2010 (UTC).
7. MBisanz at 18:56, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 22:39, 19 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 17:14, 9 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by H3llkn0wz at 22:57, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by MBisanz at 18:56, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 19:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Legal historian

Not sure that this edit actually helps, does it? PamD (talk) 22:30, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 22:42, 22 October 2010 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 4

Template: Approved for trial (7 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

1. MBisanz at 23:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by MBisanz at 23:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 11:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 23:43, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 6

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 11:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 11:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 11:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 11:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Date fixing

User:SmackBot main backlog
Total	46411

Is SmackBot still patrolling Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template? It currently has 550 page in it. --Pascal⁶⁶⁶ 18:31, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Sigh. Yes, it is patrolling it, SmackBot has a back log right now awaiting BRFA. The size of the backlog is in the box to the right. Currently the lack of BRFA means 600,000 wasted page-views a month, next month that would be 1.2 million (a ten thousandth of all WP's page-views) and I would have to stop fixing the 40 or 50 articles a day I can now. However I'm sure that won't happen. Rich Farmbrough, 18:38, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

(Probably double those numbers.) Rich Farmbrough, 20:10, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Got a trail run , so half are are fixed. From the peak of 660. Rich Farmbrough, 16:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases

Hi! Upon the request of another editor, I listed Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases and its subcategories for speedy renaming (for a minor punctuation fix). I have a feeling that one of your bots (SmackBot, maybe?) may be checking this category occasionally or regularly to add a date parameter, and so I wanted to give you a "heads up" so that you would not be caught by surprise if a change is made. If I was wrong, then sorry for the bother. Cheers! : ) -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:43, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes it does, but the renaming won't bother it. I'll look, though, because the sub-cats need renaming too. Rich Farmbrough, 16:06, 17 October 2010 (UTC).

I listed the subcats too, as well as Category:Monthly clean up category (Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases) counter. Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 00:10, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Once the templates are sorted, which I have done, the rest happens by itself, pretty much. Rich Farmbrough, 02:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Thank you! I see that the new categories were created by Femto Bot and have started populating.

By the way ... Wavelength, the editor who noticed the hyphenation issue, also has pointed out about 80 counter categories which use "clean up" (verb phrase) instead of "cleanup" (noun adjunct); see here for details. I know that the categories are populated via {{Monthly clean up category}} (and its ~100 subpages), so could it (or they) be edited to make that change?

For example, Category:Monthly clean up category (Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases) counter → Category:Monthly cleanup category (Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases) counter

I know that it would be simple enough to move the template and its subpages (by checking the "Move subpages" box), but I do not know whether that would: (a) be sufficient to rename the categories, and (b) break something else. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 05:47, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Clean up is better, "cleaning up" would be better still. Or "needing a clean-up". However these categories are only looked at by templates (they enable the counts of items in a category to be adjusted by the number of sub-categories), not even by bots, so I really wouldn't worry about the names: they could by XYZZY001 - in fact, such a name would be better in some ways -- this all stems from supermarkets "clean-up on aisle 2". Rich Farmbrough, 12:23, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Alright, then. Thanks for your help with renaming the "ly" categories. : ) Cheers, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:29, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

WikiBack

But not really editing juts trying to clear the decks a bit. Rich Farmbrough, 00:01, 22 October 2010 (UTC).

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at Xeno's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Perseus, Son of Zeus

Hi! For your information, I AM Perseus, Son of Zeus's IP address, if you look at the top of the talk page. Could you make my account's user page back to normal? Thanks! 173.49.140.141 (talk) 21:03, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:ANI note

A discussion concerning your edits has been started at WP:ANI#Admin tools misuse by Rich Farmbrough. Fram (talk) 14:50, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Too kind of you. Rich Farmbrough, 00:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC).

Please reply as you have been, not as you did;

I've reverted this edit. Feel free to restore your comment, but do it outside mine. Yes, I am angry that you went out side the norm you have shown, and completely break up my comment, ruining any structure it had. I would expect more of someone who holds the mop. I didn't bother restoring your comment in a regular form because it destroyed mine so much a revert was the only next possible step.— Dædαlus ^Contribs 07:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

What does Smackbot do?

I'm curious to what this bot does. Please tell me! [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 14:08, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 15:38, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

New Messages

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at Xeno's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

- Kingpin¹³ (talk) 17:16, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Fempto Bot weidness

Hi: at Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases Fempto bot has made a bit of a mess with this category creation, so you may wish to check out what happened. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:32, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Ty Ty. See two thread above for the explanation if it's of interest. Rich Farmbrough, 14:04, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

Edit warring

Hi, I noted a possible edit warring by you here. -DePiep (talk) 00:11, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Restop when stopped already...

And yet again, the bot is decapitalising Prime Minister, this time at Feleti Sevele‎. This is at least the fourth time I've pointed this out.-gadfium 05:30, 25 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 15:59, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 16:27, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 6

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Kingpin13 at 12:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Kingpin13 at 12:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 11:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kingpin13 at 12:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kingpin13 at 12:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Dated templates please

When you have a moment please extract SmackBot's list of dated templates and add them to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Dated_templates#Mainspace_rules, or post them to a sandbox and I'll reformat. Thanks Rjwilmsi 11:08, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, sure. Rich Farmbrough, 16:17, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot

Please pardon the newbie question. SmackBot put a comment up on the Swimming-induced pulmonary edema page that I needed to wikify (new article). I put a number of internal links in and I think it's compliant. Can I take the comment down, or will there be another bot sweep to do that, or is there some other process? I am new to the etiquitte. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sipe21 (talk • contribs) 22:31, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes fine to remove a tag if it's no longer needed. Rich Farmbrough, 22:33, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Terrific, thanks Sipe21 (talk) 22:34, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 October 2010

• News and notes: Mike Godwin leaves the Foundation, ArbCom election announced

• In the news: Good faith vs. bad faith, climate change, court citations, weirdest medieval fact, brief news

• WikiProject report: Nightmare on Wiki Street: WikiProject Horror

• Features and admins: The best of the week

• ArbCom interview: So what is being an arbitrator actually like?

• Arbitration report: Case closes within 1 month

• Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 01:48, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Smacking the bot's botty

Take a look at the result of this: distinctly uglier than it had been before! -- Hoary (talk) 11:48, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:53, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes thanks, known bug. Caused by a MediaWiki bug. Corrected normally by SmackBot on the fly but since SmackBot is under interdiction for changing {{silicate-mineral-stub}} to {{Silicate-mineral-stub}} needs me to clean up after manually. Rich Farmbrough, 11:55, 23 October 2010 (UTC).

Please update to the latest SVN

Please update SmackBot to the latest SVN of AWB which no longers makes unnecessary capitalization changes. Thanks, –xeno^talk 02:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 02:53, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

• #SmackBot & Gurnee mills for why this can't happen yet. Rich Farmbrough, 18:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC).
  

Bot needs updating

Hi there Rich Farmbrough, just thought you should know that Femto Bot (talk · contribs) may need a tweak. It recently created Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases, but the category and its subcategories were recently renamed to omit the hyphen between specifically and marked, see Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases. — ξ^xplicit 07:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I kinda did the renaming. What happens is someone repopulates the old subcategory by some means, Femot Bot re-creates it, the article gets moved back to the right cat, then the category se4lf noms itself for deletion. Not ideal, but it works, sorta. Rich Farmbrough, 14:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

Ignore that explanation, it's just never seen someone delete a parent cat before and decided it must be wrong. I raise a low priority bug with myself. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough, 14:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

I already have a feature request in with myself that will cover it. Rich Farmbrough, 14:07, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

Okey doke, thanks for looking into it. — ξ^xplicit 19:11, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 37

Template: Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 17:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by [[User:|User:]] at 23:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by MBisanz at 17:37, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 17:41, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 36

Template: Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

1. MBisanz at 23:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by MBisanz at 23:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by MBisanz at 23:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 23:43, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 4

Template: Approved for trial (7 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

1. Kingpin13 at 12:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kingpin13 at 12:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kingpin13 at 12:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 12:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Burma

Only thing I spotted from the run the other day was that you left in the leader title -mayor so it now comes up with a { } error. Can you ensure they are removed like this?♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:17, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, can be resolved soon I hope. Rich Farmbrough, 09:55, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

OK don't forget!♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:53, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

The error is fixed: the status quo will at least inform that the leader is a mayor, and encourage naming of names. Rich Farmbrough, 17:23, 2 October 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_Crow&diff=140825854&oldid=135073655

I am looking for the name of the photographer. I think the URL above is an edit where you inserted the current American Crow image.

Steve Zaslaw zaslaw@charter.net —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.140.159.226 (talk) 06:47, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Close: it is User:Mdf that is making that change. Rich Farmbrough, 02:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC).

Ok had 10 days to read this...

Talkback: Template talk:Citation needed

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at Template talk:Citation needed.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

— SpikeToronto 07:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Re: ANI

What I meant was that it wasn't enough for you to stop making disruptive edits. You were just recently brought to AN/I and we would have thought that that AN/I case was sufficient to stop you from making further controversial edits without consultation with the community. I believe that you do have good and sincere intentions behind most of your edits, but you needing multiple warning within a short period is overstretching the limit. Bejinhan talks 02:48, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that explanation. Like I said, I do believe that you have good intentions, but you not wanting to answer calls for explanation leaves a lot to be desired. That being said, regarding Roux's bloc history, two wrongs do not make a right. Bejinhan talks 03:25, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

RF again?! Sheesh, as if being sent to ANI barely three weeks ago wasn't enough, your response Uh well I haven't really edited since then.. So after that last time, you didn't really edit and on your return there is this.--Crossmr (talk) 07:31, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 4

Template: Approved for trial (7 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

Last edit by BAGGER was by MBisanz at 23:53, 14 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by [[User:|User:]] at 12:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kingpin13 at 10:28, 22 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 10:37, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Femto Bot 6

Template: Speedily Approved.. *

Edits by:

Last edit by BAGGER was by Kingpin13 at 12:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 16:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by [[User:|User:]] at 16:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kingpin13 at 10:25, 22 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 10:37, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Dated maintenance categories

Hi! Since you deal with templates and categories alot I figured you would be a good person to ask. Would it be possible to take an undated maintenance category (specifically Category:Copied and pasted articles and sections populated by {{Copypaste}}) and alter it so that it uses monthly subcats and takes a date parameter (and is preferably looked after by SmackBot like most/all? other dated maintenance templates)? VernoWhitney (talk) 22:39, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes pretty easy. Rich Farmbrough, 22:42, 22 October 2010 (UTC).

Tis done. Rich Farmbrough, 22:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC).

Thanks a bunch! VernoWhitney (talk) 11:38, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Woot

SmakcBot backlog down to 9999! Off out imminently. Waves to Cambridge mob. <Fx; door slams. Grams: Up and over, Cage's 4:31> Rich Farmbrough, 11:27, 23 October 2010 (UTC).

US places

Hi Rich. Many of the US place articles are in a mess. In particular many contain ugly lists of schools. Maybe you could run a bot to convert education section where a * is located to replace it with a , and convert to prose. The biggest issue with most of the articles is the poor formatting and short ugly sections with long lists and little prose. Also the Rambot data is now ten years out of date. I'd have thought there would be another census this year. Rambot should update with new data. If not then somebody else whould run a bot to update it. We talked about India and Pakistan settlements on wikipedia generally being a pigsty, seriously most of the American place articles are as bad and are in desperate need of a serious cleanup. Basically its areas which are open to a high number of IPs and traffic and things are added sporadically without knowing how to reference/write encyclopedia articles. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:24, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Something like this.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:45, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Not sure I oppose the bulleted list. The 2010 census data will doubtless take some time to emerge -0 I haven;t checked the site for a while. Rich Farmbrough, 20:51, 23 October 2010 (UTC).

Edits to Theorem

This edit [84]:

• Did not date any maintenance tags
• Capitalized templates, although I thought SmackBot had stopped doing that
• Added a DMY tag, although there is no reason I see that this article has any national ties

An edit that claims to date maintenance tags, but does not, must not be saved. The maintenance tag dating task is all about dating tags, not about doing other things. There is no reason that the bot should even be looking at this article for the task of dating maintenance tags. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:52, 24 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 00:53, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 01:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

• • Due to SmackBot being partially broken as noted.
  • No it doesn't.
  • Bug, provisionally fixed.

Rich Farmbrough, 01:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

Edit to Formal language

This edit [85] has the edit summary "General fixes: using AWB (special CBM restricted version)". AWB should not be used to make only general fixes; that is a violation of the AWB terms of use. However, the actual edit appears to be dating maintenance tags, which is a bot task for SmackBot. Bot tasks should not be run under the maintainer's main account, only under the bot account. That's the purpose of bot accounts to begin with. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:54, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah so that means once I have an approval for a bot to do something it is verboten to me? Rich Farmbrough, 01:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

That's the point of getting bot approval, yes. It's not appropriate for bot operators to run bot tasks on their main accounts. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:20, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh. So SineBot's operator is forbidden from signing his posts? Rich Farmbrough, 01:22, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

He/she would certainly not be permitted to run SineBot under his/her own account with a different edit summary. However, I have never seen that issue with SineBot, while I have seen you run SmackBot tasks under your main account before. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:28, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

So exactly what is it that you object to here? I will offer you a choice:

1. That is it the same ruleset.
2. That I am doing things that SmackBot is approved to do.
3. That I am using AWB to do them.
4. Something else.

Rich Farmbrough, 01:41, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

I object to bot operators running their bot tasks on their main account. That certainly includes running AWB under your main account "using the same ruleset" as SmackBot, just as it would include me having one of my bots log in as CBM instead of itself. This includes both the "date tags" and "add refs section" tasks, of course. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:56, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Why do you object? Rich Farmbrough, 02:57, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

In principle, the point of bot accounts is to separate the bot edits from the main owner's edits. In policy, the bot policy requires that bots run under a separate account. You're already skirting with editing restrictions because of violations of the bot policy; running bots on your main account can't help your cause. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:45, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

"AWB should not be used to make only general fixes". That's not quite correct as you confuse "general fixes" with "trivial edits". The simplest form of SmackBot's useful tag dating could be done purely with AWB general fixes. Rjwilmsi 21:12, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

It wouldn't be appropriate to run AWB on numerous articles making only general fixes - they need to be secondary to some other purpose (and would need to be run under a bot account, of course). If someone happened to run just general fixes on an article that person had been actively editing, that would be fine. If I noticed an AWB user running just general fixes over a large number of articles, I would point out the AWB rules to them. In this case, R.F. knows the AWB rules, which include "don't do anything controversial with it". And R.F. has a history of running SmackBot tasks (such as reference sections) on his main account. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:44, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Carl, Rjwilmsi is absolutely correct. For nearly a month SmackBot has been running its dating task solely on GFs. Thanks to various **** it cannot upgrade, and I have to check all it's runs with a pre-parse scan and fix them up manually: basically a combination of the restrictions placed on it. And yet, just when you think things can't get more Kafkaesque (spending hundreds of hours - a whole month, pretty much replying to peoples generally ill-informed assertions, removing every bell and whistle simply because someone objects to the fog-horn) I am still being "taken" to AN - over a couple of purely manual edit. well I say that but the ground shifts. One second it's wheel warring, the next incivility, lack of communication and as you answer one, the old accusations get recycled, threads split and spatter across multiple pages. Peopel who have never seen my name before !vote to restrict my editing rights. In this case, specifically Carl:

1. I am allowed to use AWB manually with any ruleset, subject to the normal editing rules, and AWB's own rules of use which are slightly more strict.
2. I am allowed to (for example) manually date a tag, add a references section, correct an ISBN.
3. General fixes is not only allowed to WB editors there is a function to supreme minor edits only fixes.

The question of whether people want to be a wp:DICK about the actual rules is another matter. Generally they don't - but certainly knowing what the rules are helps.

Rich Farmbrough, 02:15, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Stop - ref section breakage

In addition to this edit [86] which should not be saved I have posted several serious errors to the operator's talk page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:30, 24 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 01:38, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Bare tags again

The bot needs to be stopped until the problem is fixed [87] [88] [89]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:42, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

AWB fixed that. rev 7314 FixSyntax: implement workaround for bugzilla mediawiki bug 2700 (subst within ref tags doesn't work). -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:51, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I looked at the diff in sourceforge, and it looks like AWB is just replacing the subst itself. Is that done just before the page is saved, or only if CURRENTMONTHNAME is already in the text when AWB starts to edit it? — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:54, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

All dates to the templates will be added with no problems even inside references. The saved result will be the wanted one. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:24, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

That's great news - should fix this issue once and for all. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 16:55, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Read up. Rich Farmbrough, 17:00, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

#SmackBot & Gurnee mills for example. Rich Farmbrough, 17:02, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

Talkback

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at Secret's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

STOP

SmackBot stopped to allow you time to comply to Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions#Placed_by_the_Wikipedia_community. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 10:34, 26 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 10:41, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

DNB redirects

You are creating a series of redirects like Allen, William (1793-1864) (DNB00) which are not only highly improbable, but worse, redirect from the mainspace to your userspace, which is not allowed. Please stop creating those, and DB-G6 the ones already created. Fram (talk) 11:31, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Alexander, John (d.1743) (DNB00)

A tag has been placed on Alexander, John (d.1743) (DNB00), requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a redirect to an article talk page, file description page, file talk page, MediaWiki page, MediaWiki talk page, category talk page, portal talk page, template talk page, help talk, user page, user talk or special page from the main/article space.

If you can fix the redirect to point to a mainspace page, please do so and remove the speedy deletion tag. However, please do not remove the speedy deletion tag unless you are fixing the redirect. If you think the redirect should be retained as is for some reason, you can request that administrators wait a while before deleting it. To do this, affix the template {{hangon}} to the page and state your reasoning on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. DASHBot (talk) 12:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

STOP

The bot is still decapitalising Prime Minister. I've pointed this out before. Please fix your bot.-gadfium 05:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 05:25, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your notes. Changed. Rich Farmbrough, 18:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Capitalisation of section titles

See problem report at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Capitalisation of section titles --Kvng (talk) 13:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

This appears to be a form of typo fixing which generally is not permitted for automated bots. Is it an approved task? –xeno^talk 13:49, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I found the approval here; though I'm confused as to why the bot was approved to make unattended spell-checking. –xeno^talk 14:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

FYI Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#Probably erroneous approval for a form of spell-checking (SmackBot). –xeno^talk 14:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 13:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Note

• Yes it's approved.
• Not really spelling checking, unless you want to stretch the term.
• Very low error rate
• Errors easily fixed. (WSOP virtually done - despite distractions.)
• Disputed changes easily removed (see PM and GS above).
• Something nice and uncontroversial ... oh... forgot this is Wikipedia.

Rich Farmbrough, 18:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

I'm not sure what logic you're using., but it's probably best to set out a list of headers the bot can change, rather than the opposite. –xeno^talk 18:11, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

here. Rich Farmbrough, 18:19, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Was also published previously under WP:AWB/Settings (with the WSOP error). Rich Farmbrough, 18:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Ah, so just human error - thanks. –xeno^talk 18:24, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

YW as ever. Rich Farmbrough, 18:27, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Find a Grave

Although its none of mu business I noticed the conversation on Xeno's talk page and thought you might be interested to know that I have fixed all the Find a Grave redirects to say Find a Grave and I am going through now and removing the unneeded parameters for |id=, |grid= and |name= as well as adding {para|accessdate}} currentdate if the Find a Grave entry is used as a reference and pulling about 10 different variations of Retrieved on X date inside the template to to |. I also did this with the Hall of Valor template. I am going to IMDb next followed by several others. --Kumioko (talk) 13:35, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I forgot to mention I am also going to replace the http=find a grave to use the template. --Kumioko (talk) 13:43, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Cool. I guess if the "discussion" continues long enough all the "disputed" changes will be done anyway by the time SB running properly. <wry grin> Rich Farmbrough, 14:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

• Frankly it matters not a jot whether the link is a template or a simple url. If the site is not reliable (which the template itself clearly admits), the community shouldn't have any hesitation in deciding whether they stay or go globally. IMHO, the link, if not a direct citation, should be removed. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:03, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Hm, well not exactly, in general something may be an RS in some circumstances and not in others. Also "External links" don't have to be RS. Rich Farmbrough, 06:07, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

Re: Hawaii watchlist

Tanks for updating the watchlist. Any idea what FemtoBot is doing? It just deleted the update. Viriditas (talk) 21:41, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Robot rebellion I think. Rich Farmbrough, 22:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC).

Robin Black

- Not sure why Robin Black's engagement was deleted. I put it up after confirming with him in person. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.139.217.22 (talk) 22:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Dunno, ask User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz who changed it? I would say because we don't usually consider personal experience a WP:reliable source. Rich Farmbrough, 00:04, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

Okie dokie. No harm no foul. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.139.217.22 (talk) 20:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

possible bug

First, thanks for all of the good work SmackBot does. I think I have encountered a bug, though, related to Template:Dead link. See this edit. It looks like the bot is having trouble substituting the date. Cheers! Novaseminary (talk) 21:45, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for those kind words. Yes you are quite right. This is a known bug due to a change (reduction) in what SmackBot does and I am waiting for a BRFA to be approved which will allow me to fix this. Rich Farmbrough, 21:52, 12 October 2010 (UTC).

Mixed martial arts

Can you please alter the SmackBot. It seems to be going through my articles and destroying my work. It's MMA, not Mma. Please stop your bot because I don't want to manually revert each and every one of your bots edits to MMA pages. Thank you. Paralympiakos (talk) 22:58, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I have prevented this type of edit, and of course "MMA" (which is not changed) is the correct abbreviation. I can't see any reason that mixed martial arts (in words) should have special capitals though, perhaps you can advise? Rich Farmbrough, 00:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

Well spell it out then. Mixed Martial Arts. I feel like I have to battle with the bot every couple of months; it does get frustrating.

I'm puzzled still: SmackBot does not touch "MMA", unless you have an example. Please be clear if that's what you mean.

If you mean the full words, they are not proper nouns, they are not capitialised in the article on MMA. We do not capitalise words in titles and headers that would not be capitalised in running text, apart form the first word.

• Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Section_headings "All of the guidance in Article titles immediately above applies to section headings as well. "

All the best. Rich Farmbrough, 01:22, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

As the full name of the sport, I believe it to be a proper noun, e.g. Mixed Martial Arts, not Mixed martial arts. Paralympiakos (talk) 07:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

OK I'll copy this to Wikipedia talk:MOS for a wider discussion, and to establish consensus. Rich Farmbrough, 07:34, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot query

Rich, can I borrow you for a question at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Template:Cleancat, 2nd nomination, please? --Bsherr (talk) 19:21, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

 Done Rich Farmbrough, 20:13, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

DNB bot

Please be more careful and slow in testing your DNB bot edits. As far as I can tell, this is a so far unauthorized bot you are running, which has e.g. created so far 31 redirects from mainspace to user space which have had to be deleted, and placed 26 articles in user space in (incorrect) mainspace categories. If your bot wuold create less articles, and care would be taken that those few are correct, before proceeding with more tests, then less errors would be introduced and less cleanup would be needed. Fram (talk) 07:19, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

AS far as the first goes there must be an error in my perl: Anyone who can explain why

if (1==0){

do this

} executes will get a special barnstar.

As far as the second - I wouldn't worry about temporary additions to those categories, nobody who browses them is going to be thrown by a user page. Rich Farmbrough, 14:00, 27 October 2010 (UTC).

I have just reverted (rollbacked per rolback of incorret bot edits policy) again some 25 edits of yours, which were utterly pointless, incorrect, and contrary to policy. Is there any reason why you can't test your bot with 2 or 3 articles at a time, and check those edits yourself, and revert them when incorrect? Fram (talk) 14:39, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Hm, did you read my reply? Rich Farmbrough, 14:59, 27 October 2010 (UTC).

Yes. Did you read bot policy, category policy, the last ANI discussion about your bot edits, or even simply my question, formulated twice now? Fram (talk) 19:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Rich, is it so hard just to move this onto a separate account, and comment out the categories while testing? I note that testing in your userspace is acceptable, but it's disruptive to use your own account for this, and in addition it's disruptive to add those categories to user-space pages. It's not hard to fix, and will just make users happier with your edits. As to your code problem, this is exactly why we have processes like BRfA.. However, I assume you're not actually using two constant varibles with values 0 and 1. If you are you might as well just use if ('false') if you're using strings or something, you should use if ($string1 eq $string2) although I don't know if this'll fix your problem, as I don't really know perl. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 19:44, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Kingpin, the cats are now commented out (keep up! keep up!), and as I said they are not the sort of category that actually cause a problem. No really. Which makes me wonder about motivation.

• I am using the literal code 0==1 which I replaced "false" with under the notion that maybe that was being treated as a bareword. 0==1 is of course shorter. I have simply commented out the actual write anyway rather than fiddle with the if code.

• Moving to a separate account. Sure thing no problem. Rich Farmbrough, 19:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC).
  

Ahaha, okay if they're being commented out, the bot runs on a separate account, and only edits in your userspace, that's fine with me. Similar to the whitespace changing, in most cases this isn't really a massive problem, but it's irritating at best (in the case of whitespace, diff noise) and it's not like it's needed. In this case it's going to mess up Category counts (e.g. to assess how many living people pages are in other categories (e.g. unreferenced)), or if someone wants a random sample of living people on Wikipedia (e.g. to edit those pages ;D) then they won't want a bunch of your userspace tests showing up. Very odd that that code was running, perl doesn't think that 0 is 1 for me. Anyway, sounds as if everything is sorted out, so great. Actually, while I'm here just a quick note that you seemed to make an error at Kenneth Atchity which I reverted. Also, you seem to be changing the whitespace in the headers in some of your edits to that page, not a problem for me in this case, since you were changing the header name at the same time, but again, it's easy for you to not do that - so don't. It only serves as a provocation for others (whatever their motivations). - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:26, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Motivation? You are adding categories which are totally unrelated to the articles you are importing. This time, they may not be the most obvious ones. What will it be next time? There is not a single reason for you to be adding these, just like there is no reason to test and develop this bot with dozens of articles at a time, when the errors are obvious after one or two of them. What is your motivation in ignoring policies and just doing whatever you like, even when the same things can be achieved with a lot less trouble and disruption? Note also that this wasn't just testing in his own userspace, but also included creating main space redirects and templates. Fram (talk) 20:14, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes thank you Fram. Rich Farmbrough, 20:42, 27 October 2010 (UTC).

Smackbot added stub tag to dab page

Something went wrong here - the bot recognised the Disambiguation tag, but went on to call the page a stub. Wrong. PamD (talk) 21:58, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Rich, please download latest source code. It fixes the problem. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks I have it, compiling now. And thanks Pam as ever. Rich Farmbrough, 22:33, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

And if it's adding {{stub}}, could it please use lower case "s"? It saves a couple of key-strokes when updating it to {{foo-stub}}, and for those of us who sort a lot of stubs, is a minor avoidable irritation! It may be "correct" for the tag to appear as {{Stub}}, but thanks to stub-sorters such tags don't hang around for long before being sorted! PamD (talk) 09:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I changed this when it was my custom rules for that very reason, Ill drop a note to the AWB team (it's been in my mind to do that), and change my own copy. Incidentally I could make s a little js so that as soon as you opened a page any {Stub} became {stub}. Rich Farmbrough, 09:15, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

Feature request in. Rich Farmbrough, 18:43, 27 October 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot

SmackBot is destroying my ability to manage my watchlist by clogging the database with trivial substitutions of the unsigned template. The argument for substituting that template is weak in any case. Forcing database edits merely for the purpose of that one substitution is counterproductive. Please pull that out of the list of SmackBot triggers. Rossami (talk) 00:24, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Examples:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ACandidates_and_elections&action=historysubmit&diff=390376929&oldid=94182987
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ANotability_%28organizations_and_companies%29%2FArchive1&action=historysubmit&diff=390362783&oldid=158317183
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ADeletion_process&action=historysubmit&diff=390351288&oldid=388602797
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AStrategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation&action=historysubmit&diff=390337826&oldid=371958946
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AG%27day&action=historysubmit&diff=390331736&oldid=295056933
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AU.S._Navy_slang&action=historysubmit&diff=390310669&oldid=160780098

Yes I can see the problem. It was a bit of a catchup, and should not happen again. Incidentally you can tell your watchlist to ignore bot edits if you choose. Rich Farmbrough, 11:03, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

What is the rationale for substituting this template, and please could you link to the relevant BRFA? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

It's supposed to be substed. The BRFA will take some finding as I am rebuilding the task list on SBs page. Rich Farmbrough, 00:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC).

There is no consensus for "ucfirst" as a standard for template calls

I will request both you and your bot to be blocked if you continue making these changes without first gaining consensus for them. You are a valuable contributor, but you cannot simply "plow on ahead" with controversial changes without first gathering consensus after good faith objections are raised. –xeno^talk 03:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

There is no controversy here. Nothing to see, keep walking. Rich Farmbrough, 05:16, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

Of course if BRFA SB 35 was signed off I could at least upgrade my AWB per the previous section. Rich Farmbrough, 05:20, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

You and I must work from different definitions of controversy. –xeno^talk 14:48, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Hm, yes I was wrong there is plenty of controversy. There are no controversial changes here, I should have said. ~~

People have objected to you changing the case and asked you to gain consensus for your belief that lcfirst is incorrect/ something to be fixed. The onus lies upon you to do so, not to put your head down and continue unabated. –xeno^talk 15:12, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Who? Rich Farmbrough, 15:35, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

Me, for one. Do you think I keep asking you to stop because I like giving you a hard time? I don't. –xeno^talk 15:38, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Me too. I declare your ucfirst-edits controversial. By the way, RF, above you wrote my AWB. Is that a private bot? Is it approved? Is there a botoperator, accountable & listening? Tell us more. -DePiep (talk) 21:24, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi DePiep I notice you still have a personal attack on me on your talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 22:07, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

No you clearly stated your postion. You were asking me to stop because many other people had asked me to stop and I had ignored them or brushed them off. Which is fine. We have subsequently established that both those premises are flawed. Therefore I would expect you stop asking me to stop. Rich Farmbrough, 22:09, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

I am fairly sure you said you didn't care about the capitalisation yourself. Rich Farmbrough, 22:23, 24 October 2010 (UTC).

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Rich Farmbrough's persistent disregard for community norms and (semi-)automated editing guidelines. –xeno^talk 22:10, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

And, asking about your "my AWB" is a personal attack? -DePiep (talk) 22:40, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

". Is that a private bot? Is it approved? Is there a botoperator, accountable & listening?" that bit is. Get real. Rich Farmbrough, 01:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

RF, you referred to "my AWB". Does this refer to an unapproved bot you use or used? -DePiep (talk) 20:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

No. Now please stop or I will ask another admin to take a look at your actions. Rich Farmbrough, 20:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

Send in "another" admin for me asking what do you mean by my AWB? I'd say: what do you mean by my AWB? -DePiep (talk) 01:16, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

• I just don't believe this sniping from the sidelines is still going on. You guys seriously need to get a life for insisting any capitalisation changes of templates are controversial. Yes, it's true that a small number of users can create a humongous fuss over any issue, but you guys have been going on too strongly about it for some time now, and really ought to re-evaluate your position in the cold light of day. You're piling on issue after issue after issue as if your stance on any one of your previous issues justifies your stance on this one, or that Rich is wrong in this case. The problem here is not Rich, but you. If you took this issue to the community, few would care one way or the other whether a template ought to be capitalised, or whether it should contain a space or not. You guys would just be looking for humiliation. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:39, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

While some editors have expressed a personal preference for one style or the other, that isn't the main issue.

Indeed, on an objective level, whether the first letter is uppercase or lowercase makes virtually no difference. That's exactly why the bot's mass changes from one to the other are problematic; they flood watchlists, forcing users monitoring diffs to wade though these pointless edits in order to find the substantial ones.

It would be equally bad for the bot to change the first letter from uppercase to lowercase. The point is not that one style is inherently better; it's that the change itself (irrespective of the direction) is disruptive. —David Levy 02:09, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that ideally these edits should take place whilst carrying out substantive edits, but I am at a loss and I really don't know what to suggest. People seem to be coming from left and right, above and below to complain that even I feel besieged on behalf of Rich, and I'm only a talk page stalker!;-) It's only natural that bots take care of the small edits which no-one cares about, and people don't care until things start going pear-shaped – not unlike when the rubbish piles up on roadsides when the sanitation team are working to rule. Due to the problems being complained about, SmackBot is a shadow of its former self as Rich has been forced to remove a bunch of code from it. This would inevitably cause the circle to spiral as an overall larger number of trivial or inconsequential edits will be necessary. Nevertheless, I hope you see the point I'm trying to make: the header of this thread is 'There is no consensus for "ucfirst" as a standard for template calls', and all I'm saying is that I think few would give a FF (ie non-controversial by definition), yet I'm seeing people argue here that it is so. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

These edits should not occur at all. If substantive changes are made within the same revision, that negates the issue of added server strain when the page is saved, but it worsens the problem noted above. (Because the bot combines purposeful edits with pointless edits, users wishing to monitor the former are inundated with the latter.)

Honestly, I don't particularly care whether the first letter is uppercase or lowercase. I just want the bot to stop changing it for no good reason. That is what's controversial, and Rich only adds fuel to the fire with his dismissive replies (e.g. the above "Nothing to see, keep walking" remark). —David Levy 06:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Levy has it. I would also object if someone made the change in the other direction. It is the change that is disruptive, it is the changing that needs to stop, and if his talk page is "besieged", it is because he continues with the changes. Rich, if you need help writing a regex to avoid changing the first letter case, feel free to post at WT:AWB. –xeno^talk 13:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Well this all started off with a "botwars" posting somewhere. I have never heard back form the other party, and presumably it has either stopped or kicked into reverse. But I have a little suspicion in me that says no-one checked? Rich Farmbrough, 15:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

As far "no good reason" is concerned allowing that to pass and sticking to the "stop changing it" bit - be aware that massive changes to the rule-base have eliminated - well pretty much everything - Xeno says (or said) that the bot's changes since 18 October are fine. It is a shame that David has not found any relief in these changes, but there is nothing left to be cut. Rich Farmbrough, 15:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

I just examined some recent diffs and found that the bot indeed ignored all-lowercase template calls. If this is consistent and permanent, it addresses my main concern regarding your bot. —David Levy 18:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Now if only the man behind the curtain can stop unnecessarily capitalizing templates, we can go back to sipping mai tais and playing beach volleyball. –xeno^talk 18:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The current little difficulty seems to be over a silly little number of manual or semi manual edits, that are neither watchlist chaff nor diff bloating. 23 edits capitalising "Jewish", and edit to Hans Apserger and Ron Weasley that I should probably not have saved, for example. All very reprehensible, but hardly ANI stuff. Rich Farmbrough, 15:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Why bother changing {{reflist}} to {{Reflist}}? The fact that you are continually having to make these changes to support your preference kindof supports the position that the de facto consensus is lcfirst. In any case, changing in either direction is unnecessary. –xeno^talk 18:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

As far as diff bloat goes I had suggested to xeno that this was something we could usefully discuss. I suppose that suggestion got drowned in the sea of words. Rich Farmbrough, 15:26, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

I'll try to keep it short and sweet. Rich: (for the umpteenth time) please stop changing template capitalisation. It does not affect the rendering of the page and serves no useful purpose. —Sladen (talk) 20:22, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Xeno has pointed out that the edit I noticed was made in period between the restrictions coming into place and SmackBot being subsequently stopped. —Sladen (talk) 22:16, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Template names with the same misspelling

At 17:35, 13 August 2009, Template:Monthly cleanup category was moved to Template:Monthly clean up category, with the explanation "cleanup is a noun". However, "cleanup" should still be a compound word when it is used as a noun adjunct (a noun used as an attributive adjective next to an immediately following noun).

• http://mw3.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cleanup
• http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/hyphens.asp
• http://www.wilbers.com/part24.htm
• http://www.epa.gov/productreview/stylebook/writing.html

Could you please move Template:Monthly clean up category to Template:Monthly cleanup category, and move all the subpages to corresponding subpages? There is a related discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates#Template names with the same misspelling (permanent link here). (Your talk page is on my watchlist, and I will watch for your reply here.)
—Wavelength (talk) 02:08, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

My OED denies there is any such word. Are you sure its not some twentieth century American invention, possibly derived form the mining industry as reported by Mark Twain in Roughing It ? Rich Farmbrough, 03:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

I am not sure that it is not a twentieth-century American invention, but, even if it is, it shares that characteristic with "Internet" and "Wikipedia" and many words in the field of computing as well as other fields. If you are able to use English while avoiding every word that is a twentieth-century American invention, you deserve a prize for your agility in constrained writing. Anyway, I found the hyphenated form "clean-up" at http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0153900#m_en_gb0153900. I would be satisfied with the hyphenated form, although, according to http://www.onelook.com/?w=cleanup&ls=a and http://www.onelook.com/?w=clean-up&ls=a, the solid compound word "cleanup" appears to be more common than the hyphenated compound word "clean-up".

—Wavelength (talk) 04:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah well: I have moved it to the hyphenated version, though no doubt someone will be along to chastise me for not using RM in a moment. <Chuckle> HTH. Rich Farmbrough, 14:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Thank you. (Unfortunately, I neglected to mention that some of the subpages have the solid compound form "cleanup" in their names. I hope that that does not cause problems.)

—Wavelength (talk) 15:29, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Luckily up to 100 subpages move automatically for (admins at least) and there were only 98. SO there should be no issues. Also I built the template using relative names for subpages, so there should be no problems there. Rich Farmbrough, 18:19, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Perhaps I should clarify what I meant when I said that they have the solid compound form "cleanup" in their names. I meant that they have it in the part following the virgule ("/"). (If there is a technical word for that part, I do not know it.) One example is Template:Monthly clean up category/Messages/Wikipedia introduction cleanup (which has been moved to Template:Monthly clean-up category/Messages/Wikipedia introduction cleanup).

—Wavelength (talk) 19:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes there is a technical term, but I have forgot it quite. The pleasure of having someone say "virgule" on my talk page more than makes up for this momentary amnesia though. As i say, although they are made of human words, these names are really just strings. If Cat:Wikipedia intro cleanup moves to "Articles needing introduction clean-up" (I would be moderately pleased - I actually prefer best a more positive "to be" construciton, although it might be clumsy here "Articles to be cleaned up" - implies we are going to do it, not just we are aware it's broken , and creates positive vibes^{20th C US?} helping things get done) then that sub-template would need to move too. Rich Farmbrough, 19:33, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

PLEASE STOP, SMACKBOT! Do not de-capitalize these things!

I must admit, I kind of saw this coming but was too lazy to preempt it. Okay, here's the deal: please reverse the de-capitalization of section titles (like Band Members, Additional Personnel, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum). These are NOT the same things as page titles and thus there are different rules when it comes to de-capitalization. If there were a page called "Band member", it is proper to de-capitalized the second word because it's a general encyclopedia entry (ideally, I think, both words should be de-capitalized - maybe you could build a SmackBot for this purpose?) But think of section titles as chapter titles. Chapter titles follow the same rules as, say, novels or albums (that is, capitalize all major words, de-capitalize connectors such as "of", "a", "the" [in almost all cases] etc.)

I do have a request. Could you get your SmackBot to change "Track listing" on album pages to "Tracklist"? - This is a much more economical (not to mention widely used) term.

Also, I have one more bone to pick. Could you please return the birthdays/years of people back to links? I find it very annoying now that I can't click on a birthday and see who shares it.

Cheers, Wikkitywack (talk) 01:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 01:10, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. These three things are all subject of more or less discussion:-

1. Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Section_headings "All of the guidance in Article titles immediately above applies to section headings as well. "
2. Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums specifically uses "Track listing" : you could start a discussion there, to have it changed to "Yrack list".
3. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) - after hundreds of pages of discussion, an Arbcom case, and several RFcs.

Hope that helps. Rich Farmbrough, 01:15, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

• Rich is quite right. There is no question that headers like 'Band Members', 'Additional Personnel' are in violation of WP:MOS. Smackbot appears to be acting correctly in this instance. Please take the matter up at WT:MOS if you are not happy about that. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:10, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
• As for links to birthdays, it is not something that Smackbot has 'turned off' and cannot be 'turned on'. The consensus position established at WP:MOSNUM is that dates should no longer be linked unless there is good reason to do so; in such a case close connection (germane) must be demonstrable. Just so that it saves you from typing the date in the search box is, alas, not reason enough to link. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:13, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Editing restriction

Hi Rich, just bringing to your attention my conclusion of the AN discussion. I've declared the proposed editing restriction enacted (cf Wikipedia:Editing restrictions#Placed by the Wikipedia community). It should not be a particularly burdensome restriction, and I hope you will take on board the remarks I made there, which I'll quote here: "I will say to Rich that the community recognises and appreciates the work you do in using and maintaining a range of powerful tools, but that with power comes responsibility, and you do need to ensure that you err on the side of caution in ensuring that these powerful tools, and your use of them, has sufficiently strong community support." regards, Rd232 ^talk 09:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

OK it's not ideal, for many many edits, by many many editors include such changes (I hesitate to say almost all editors, but only slightly). You might like to glance at the section about "mixed martial arts", just copied to the talk page at WP:MoS, to see how seriously I take genuine objections, by editors who actually have an issue with the edit themselves, rather than on behalf of some slightly vague constituency. But no doubt this is the lesser of several evils. Thank you for your time. Rich Farmbrough, 09:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

I've stopped SmackBot briefly (I hope). Please see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Conclusion, and no doubt Femto Bot will copy the stop message in a second.. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 10:36, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

This is the sort of dismissiveness for which you've been criticised repeatedly in this context, but OK. If you think the community as a whole supports what you want to do when there is no demonstrated consensus, it's up to you to organise/demonstrate one. Rd232 ^talk 11:43, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Dismissive? I thanked you in two maybe three places. I am really floored - if you have read half of the discussion you will have seen that virtually none of it was about the "incidents" reported at ANI, but about not simply "no demonstrated consensus" but that there was anti-consensus. The ground gradually shifted as I demonstrated that was not so. In the end all we were left with was diff-bloat on automated edits, and as David Levy, who focussed on the point at AN said, this is no longer a problem. Xeno also said "we can put this one to bed". I am not objecting to the restrictions in that reply. I hope you did look at the MMA thread - did you? That is pretty typical of the feedback I have been receiving for four years. You said you "err on the side of caution" - I happened to think the MMA thread was an excellent example of that. Rich Farmbrough, 20:25, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

I don't want to discuss it any further but, for the sake of clarity, I was referring to "I take genuine objections, by editors who actually have an issue with the edit themselves, rather than on behalf of some slightly vague constituency..." Rd232 ^talk 21:44, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah. Wasn't referring to you. Rich Farmbrough, 21:55, 27 October 2010 (UTC).

I understood that. Rd232 ^talk 14:33, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

When I read the comment in question, "dismissive" was the word that entered my mind (before I'd reached Rd232's reply).

Perhaps it isn't intentional, but you do have a tendency to significantly downplay people's concerns. If an issue strikes you as trifling, you project this perception onto the individual[s] expressing the concern (taking for granted that it seems trifling to him/her/them too, and assuming that he/she/they must be persisting on blind principle rather acting pragmatically).

Again, perhaps this is unintentional. But you need to make a conscious effort to adequately address good-faith concerns, including those that you regard as frivolous.

I wish to conclude this message by reiterating Rd232's mention of your many positive contributions. For obvious reasons, we're more likely to come to you with complaints than with commendations, but that doesn't mean that we (including the complainants) don't appreciate your hard work. —David Levy 00:20, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for that. Well you are doubtless correct - Epeefleche, for whom I also have great respect, also remarked, in praising me with faint damns, that my responses can be "curt". My intention is merely to be brief, polite, and to the point. Much as I enjoy the word-craft of a longer reply, ISTM that "yes you are right, here's what I'm going to to/have done." or "Yes, that is what happened, and I can see the reason that it might be surprising, here's why we do it." has generated many responses of "Thanks for fixing that [so quickly]" or "Thanks for explaining that". It is also interesting that this particular explosion started on 24th of September, not long after I sat down, having caught up the "difficult" dating items and identified three substantial areas where work was needed, (one, the smallest, was spelling fixes for version 0.8 2,400 articles I think) and started trying to do all three by hand. What was acceptable diff bloat at my normal editing speed became a problem, which is fair enough. And the ensuing conversation certainly slowed me down. The other point where perhaps, in this case, I am dismissive, is the editing restriction itself, I am compelled to abide by it on pain of "escalating blocks" what more is to be said? (Although I have blogged on the surprising scope of it, qv.) Rich Farmbrough, 02:44, 29 October 2010 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 39

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 20:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 20:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 20:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 20:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 20:39, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot replacing entities with characters

On Rockstar (drink) SmackBot changed an html entity to the character it represents. If you use the character then it requires that font to be installed. If you use the HTML Entity it just requires a capable font to be installed. It's a UTF-16 character too. Enlormn (talk) 22:54, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Font substitution generally happens regardlessly. FWIW, Mediawiki/Wikipedia uses UTF-8 encoding… —Sladen (talk) 23:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks.. er.. WHS. Rich Farmbrough, 23:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

AFD

A bunch of your articles (Martha Lipton et al.) is now at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2010 October 28. East of Borschov 07:53, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 08:44, 28 October 2010 (UTC).

Sanapia

Expanded.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:57, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Hopefully Rosie and I can compile more sources and DYK it. We are missing hundreds even thousands of notable articles like this across world cultures. Any entry in a national biography is notable in my view and as usual the nominator is confusing lack of content with notability. A quick google books search should have been more than enough to rid of doubt. I have no problem with short stubs of course, I created many in the past myself when I was faced with a similar situation, how do we go about getting notable content onto wikipedia which is misisng enmasse and encourage more editors to develop wikipedia whilst making the initial stub worthwhile? I believe any stub stands a better chance of it becoming a fuller article than if it was missing as at least its identified. The problem of course is actually getting people to do the work and expand them given the already huge backlog of substandard articles.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:10, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

please fix the ref error♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:22, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Epidendrum radicans

"removed stub tag"

Thanks. That's so kind of you — Jay L09 (talk) 19:30, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of "Isaac Moses"

A page you created, Isaac Moses, has been tagged for deletion, as it meets one or more of the criteria for speedy deletion; specifically, it is about a person or group of people, but it does not indicate how they are important or significant, and thus why they should be included in an encyclopedia. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, and the guidelines for biographies in particular.

You are welcome to contribute content which complies with our content policies and any applicable inclusion guidelines. However, please do not simply re-create the page with the same content. You may also wish to read our introduction to editing and guide to writing your first article.

Thank you. WikiTome ^Talk 22:01, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of "Eugene Ostroff"

A page you created, Eugene Ostroff, has been tagged for deletion, as it meets one or more of the criteria for speedy deletion; specifically, it is about a person or group of people, but it does not indicate how they are important or significant, and thus why they should be included in an encyclopedia. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, and the guidelines for biographies in particular.

You are welcome to contribute content which complies with our content policies and any applicable inclusion guidelines. However, please do not simply re-create the page with the same content. You may also wish to read our introduction to editing and guide to writing your first article.

Thank you. WikiTome ^Talk 22:02, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

ANB stubs

I've just stub-sorted Janet Bragg. A couple of points occur:

• The commas before and after the bracketed dates will always need to be removed - could you do this automatically?
• Could you add "was a", so that the mini-stub becomes a sentence and is less likely to upset people? Ideally, of course, make it detect whether following noun is vowel or consonant and adjust to "an", but I think " X (dates) was a artist" is probably better than "X, (dates), artist".
• What's the scope of ANB? Are all the people written about "American"? If so, could you include that in the text - "X was an American Y" (also gets round the a/an problem!)
• I like the augmented stub tag {{-stub}}! PamD (talk) 08:54, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks I'll take your word on the commas. They are not all American, but inserting a/an is trivial compared with some of the hoops. There are a few hundred, many of which will already exist, so I don't expect to get many stubs out of this, bu those that are created and don't need merging will be worthwhile. Rich Farmbrough, 08:58, 30 October 2010 (UTC).

Another thought (had to break off earlier because Mother wanted breakfast...): you could add {{bio-stub}}. Might be better if there are a large number coming through at once which would flood the stubs category - on the other hand, a steady trickle will get themselves sorted more precisely, as in this case, by human stub-sorters. PamD (talk) 09:17, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

It's almost worth trying to make the categories from the data. But as I said there's probably only a couple of hundred, where I was able to find archives of the ANB updates pages. I am doing relatively small batches at a time, because I am going back and turning a few into redirects. Rich Farmbrough, 09:23, 30 October 2010 (UTC).

Recent deletions

Hi,
On-base plus slugging (OPS), McGhee, Brownie, Ascending chain condition (ACC), Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) Classification System and so on - were they part of a backlog for deletion of some kind? There's no specific reason given. Just curious.
--Shirt58 (talk) 09:02, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I think I understand. [[McGhee, Brownie]] should obviously have been [[Brownie McGhee]]. Were the others duplicates of articles with similar names?--Shirt58 (talk) 09:14, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes I miss-created a bunch of redirects. Rich Farmbrough, 09:16, 30 October 2010 (UTC).

Gasp! And here was I, thinking only klewless n00bs made mistakes. Thanks for the clarification.--Shirt58 (talk) 09:38, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

List of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes

Please weigh in on Talk:List of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes#Inclusion of episode segment links, so we can generate a consensus. Thanks, Fixblor (talk) 09:24, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Committee for getting things done

Getting things done? That would be a first for many LOL! Some people should take a leaf out of our book instead of sitting aorund moaning at ANI!♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:33, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

User:Translate Bot. Mmm now if that bot could be programmed to translate content from other wikipedias.... ♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:34, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't it though? Rich Farmbrough, 08:44, 28 October 2010 (UTC).

Red links

Hey Rich, would you happen to know how to fix the red link at Category:Articles needing additional categories from October 2010? and also the redlink'd category at the bottom of Category:Articles needing additional categories from September 2010? -- œ^™ 08:22, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

'tis done. Rich Farmbrough, 08:29, 28 October 2010 (UTC).

Decapitalisation

For some odd reason the bot is decapitalising "General Secretaries". Please don't do this! Warofdreams talk 08:37, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, adjusting the mechanism. Rich Farmbrough, 15:08, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Great, thanks, it's working fine now. Warofdreams talk 22:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

100+ curious items, curious no more

... Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 30 October 2010 (UTC).

Curious in what sense, RF? -DePiep (talk) 18:43, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

The bold lede words are messed up in these articles. Gigs (talk) 19:43, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Then why not edit? Jee. btw, what is wrong so with my first dart LZ1? -DePiep (talk) 19:58, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I am doing, keep your hair on. Rich Farmbrough, 20:49, 30 October 2010 (UTC).

Glad you share your edit todo plan with us, RF. And about LZ1 again, why was that on the list? -DePiep (talk) 20:56, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=LZ1&action=historysubmit&diff=393829877&oldid=304634038 Rich Farmbrough, 21:09, 30 October 2010 (UTC).

So, I confused matters by fixing it - while looking at the list to try and work out what the common feature was, and before realising the answer! I think I fixed one or two more too. PamD (talk) 21:16, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

All good stuff Pam! Rich Farmbrough, 21:29, 30 October 2010 (UTC).

Quote marks in ANB entries

You created the stub Morris B. Moe Dalitz for a chap who was listed in ANB as "Morris B. "Moe" Dalitz". In fact there was an existing article at Moe Dalitz, with a redirect from Morris Dalitz. I think the ANB format of the name suggests that he's going to be listed as either "Moe Dalitz" or "Morris B. Dalitz", but not as "Morris B. Moe Dalitz". Perhaps names with quote marks should just flag up for manual attention? (I've turned your stub into a redirect, and added the ANB reference as "Further reading" to the existing article). PamD (talk) 21:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes that's a good point, as I remarked a few I changed to redirects myself. I'm [almost ?] done with ANB until their next update, unless someone buys me a subscription! Rich Farmbrough, 21:35, 30 October 2010 (UTC).

Jesun

Really? Or did the middle letters of "Jesus Colon" get missed in a finger-fumble? PamD (talk) 23:06, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Defaultsort also very iffy! PamD (talk) 23:08, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

There should be a law limiting the number of diacritics in one's name. Rich Farmbrough, 23:26, 30 October 2010 (UTC).