Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:43, 28 December 2006

Merry Christmas To ALL

Likely to be away from WP most of the next few days. Rich Farmbrough, 12:54 24 December 2006 (GMT).

Note: I will answer on your talk page (and usually copy here), and look for your responses here. If you see my answer here and it's not on your talk page, I'm either not happy with it (haven't finished writing it), or I forgot to copy it over. R.F.

FAQ

Please feel free to read my FAQ. R.F.

Full ArQuive

Alternatively browse my Talk Archive Index. R.F.

ISBNs & 13 digits

Hi, I see your bot has been making lots of ISBN fixes in pages in my watch list - thanks. Will you be able to automatically change them to the 13 digit versions or do I need to start going through & doing them manually? — Rod 21:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rod, yes in principle it can do it. I'm only 90% sure it's a good idea. If you have some articles suitable for testing the principle it would be a good pace to start. Rich Farmbrough, 21:47 21 December 2006 (GMT).

Why might it not be a good idea - presumably all the library catalogues , booksellers etc will be migrating to the 13 digit version?— Rod 08:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Well the start date was 1/1/2005 and an awful lot don't seem to have done it yet, with 9 days to go. We could do with a proper survey. I quote myself...

It seems most European libraries are not accepting 13 digits yet. Compare:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0385504209
• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=978-0-385-50420-1

Looking at the Karlsruhe the first returns many hists, the second hardly any

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=9780385504201

does a little better. Rich Farmbrough, 11:31 18 December 2006 (GMT).

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 09:19 22 December 2006 (GMT).

OK well if none of the other sources are actually implementing it we could probably sensibly leave it for a while - I only asked because I've just sent a new document to the British Library & it had to have the 13 digit ISBN included.— Rod 10:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's a good sign anyway. I did have a scheme that would have swapped over at midnight - see {{auto isbn}}. Rich Farmbrough, 10:14 22 December 2006 (GMT).

I see you've done one (Robert Dunning) on Charterhouse, Somerset but it doesn't work when you click on the ISBN & go to amazon.co.uk (which I tend to use), for other test on pages I've done many of the refs on you could try Chew Valley or Chew Valley Lake, which are both FA or Chew Stoke, Chew Magna, Kennet and Avon Canal and Mendip Hills which are GA status.— Rod 12:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, all the Amazon's fail, Barnes and Noble, Alibris and Abebooks all work. It's very patchy, and many people seem to be waiting to the last minute. (It's also hard to find a good ISBN for testing - anything popular enough to be world-wide seems to be publishe in many languages/fromats.) I've emailed Amazon. It may be possible (but silly in a way) to re-write book sources to coerce 13 digit ISBNs back to 10, if the right parser functions have been introduced. Anyway, I have done a few hundred articles to seed the collective conciousness, I may just let it trickle away (there are 84,000 ISBNy articles). Rich Farmbrough, 13:48 23 December 2006 (GMT).

Having had some time to think about this more, I'm considering using multiple ISBNs. By providing a 10-digit number we can allow easy entry and verification against what is printed in older books. By providing a 13-digit number we support the new standard. Better still, we support books that have both a hardcover and a softcover edition; these have distinct ISBNs. It's a little cumbersome, but maybe it's worth it. --KSmrq 12:58, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

On the Chew Valley artcile I've tested "Ekwall, Eilert (1928). English River-Names. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-869119-8" & it fails on both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. The one I had to send to the BL had a different final digit in the 13 digit version as well as the initial 3 added ie 1-86043-399-5 becomes 978-1-86043-399-3 this may be complicating the additions?— Rod 14:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I had heard that a new 13-digit ISBN numbers were being introduced, and it's nice that Amazon now supports this new format, but is it really necessary for us to convert all of our existing references that have 10-digit ISBN numbers to 13-digit codes? None of the books I own have 13-digit ISBN numbers, so I'm in favor of leaving those references the way they are. You don't really expect us to convert all of the 10-digit codes, do you? If so, checking for mistakes is going to become that much more tedious. In my opinion, it would be better to do something else, like simply changing the labels for the old codes from "ISBN" to "ISBN-10" instead. --Jwinius 21:15, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I hope you have consulted widely about this. Old ISBN contain errors and you risk introducing new ones, severing references to obscure citations, that may remain unnoticed. If your advice from librarians (not singular), reseachers, booksellers, et al condones your approach, I will say no more. Your chastising categorising could do with improvement too. Do you focus on what you like, not what you hate on Wikipaedia? A new user, Fred 14:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Bot run

OK, the run is done. Why don't you consider making a new area of review and start it by moving all the "A's"left on the current invalid file. I have checked and no new "A's" have shown up. I am now into the "B's". Happy holiday Ekotkie 18:42, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh-oh....all of the A's have changed color back to true blue instead of haze blue (If someone has looked at an item) Any idea why that happened? How can we keep track of our progress?

Would you please put the Invalid ISBN Counter on that page just like the one you are using here on your page?Ekotkie 20:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Library of Congress can't find the 13 digit ISBNs

Rich, the Smackbot robot changed the 10 digit ISBNs to 13 digit ISBNs in UK Dispersion Modelling Bureau and in Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering. As a result, one could no longer click on the ISBNs and then look them up in the Library of Congress or other libraries ... whereas one could do that with the 10 digit ISBNs. I don't know how many other articles have had the same change made by the robot. (I reverted the changes made in the above two articles).

That defeats the purpose of including the ISBNs in the book citation template. Please stop the robot from changing to the 13 digit ISBN's until a solution is found to this problem. - mbeychok 18:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd concur with this - ten digit ISBNs don't become magically obsolete in a week, they just become superceded, but most of the resources will still expect ISBN-10s. Leaving aside the touchy issue of retroactively renumbering sources, this really doesn't seem to give us much practical benefit other than looking modern... Shimgray | talk | 19:00, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I've blocked the bot for now as this conversion seems to be registering multiple complaints. Dragons flight 19:36, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

See also: Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#The_Smackbot_robot_is_making_ISBN_changes_that_are_no_good. Dragons flight 20:40, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Traffic

Hi, I have an idea to increase traffic to Misplaced Pages significantly. Many people are now using Misplaced Pages as a search engine. Misplaced Pages's searching has a snag which needs some good coding. There are perhaps more than 1 million misspelled searches being made every day... how do i know? I don't, it could be much more than one million, you find out. My idea, which has probably been thought of before is to supply a - Did you mean Such as Such? - by matching misspelled words and terms to their most relevant article. At present this is in place suggestion for terminology sorting based on relevancy, but not for misspellings. Please let me know what you think, and if you could assist with proposing it. Thanks. frummer 00:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

no, i think we need to get rid of redirects. There are a few reasons why. About the server load, whose the man to ask on that? About the algorithm, we can talk more about it once we know, there would be a trail period, i think. Another idea is to integrate a dropdown in the search field so as to enable searches in wikicommons, wiktionary etc in two clicks, similar to ie7's. frummer 09:26, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the barnstar.

I'm on a hiatus from Misplaced Pages at the momement, generally due to my belief that we here at WP just have too many edits per second per reviewer, but I am happy about my ISBN/OCLC work, so thanks for the recognition. Your ISBN bot work has been certainly useful, too. JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Merry Christmas To ALL

Likely to be away from WP most of the next few days. Rich Farmbrough, 12:54 24 December 2006 (GMT).

Homelessness article and possible promotion again ?

Hi Rich. Happy Holidays ! I had a question about an addition by an anonymous editor who has posted the material before and it was taken out due to promotional reasons. The user, User: 71.231.50.116 added a section in the Homelessness article on "Ending Homelessness". It might be a promo for the organisation. Thoughts ? The user has been warned already and the material taken out. User talk:71.231.50.116. Best Wishes and Happy Christmas ! --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 19:24, 24 December 2006 (UTC) (talk)

Thanks Rich ! Merry Christmas ! --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 14:07, 25 December 2006 (UTC) (talk

SmackBot ISBN edits

I've seen several cases where SmackBot found errors in ISBN numbers. In the article it leaves a message "please check ISBN ... too short". For the edit summary, it leaves "ISBN formatting/gen fixes using AWB)". If it is leaving a "please check", I think it would be better to leave a more descriptive edit summary, such as "please check ISBN", so a person will know to look at it. (I fixed a few today.) Bubba73 (talk), 23:35, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, well done fixing ISBNs. Good idea about the edit summary, I will think about it before the next run. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 16:05 27 December 2006 (GMT).

User:SmackBot edits

Hello Rich! Great bot you're running, but I noticed SmackBot making a couple minor errors , . See here for a few more. Hope you can figure out what went wrong! Cheers, Dar-Ape 16:32, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 16:36 26 December 2006 (GMT).

Reference

Dear Mr Farmborough, Can you please give an explanation to:

... appropriate MoS. I come down on the plural, while I am against computers making number mistakes in onter contrexts, I prefer the consistancy. I also run ...

if there is one. Should I check my 'References library'? Toodles, Fred 16:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot edit summaries

I was looking through the edit history of an article, and noticed that there's an error in the edit summary: Replace deprecated tmeplate using AWB. As you can proably see by now, template is spelled wrong in the edit summary. Can this be fixed? --GVOLTT 06:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

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