Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 11:29, 4 May 2010

Note: I will generally 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. However I can't (borked watchlist among other reasons) watch your talk page (sorry), so reply here. R.F.

FAQ

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

Full ArQuive

Alternatively browse my Talk Archive Index. R.F.

svg version of File:UEFAEuropaLeague.png

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

Minor SmackBot Error

In this edit, the line "|orphan =April {2010" was added instead of "|orphan =April 2010". I didn't feel like it was important enough to stop the bot though. :) Sorafune +1 00:10, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Another example: John of Reading (talk) 06:17, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Already fixed, along with a small bunch of others. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 06:18, 30 April 2010 (UTC).

Pointless style changes

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

• I believe the real edit was the removal of the category, as indicated in the edit summary, which serves no encyclopaedic function. The whitespace/CR removals were merely incidental. Ohconfucius 01:48, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes edit summaries are cool, I should use them more. Rich Farmbrough, 01:53, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

I understand that the reason for the edit was this category. But then why do you need to do several unrelated and unhelpful edits, to no benefit, based on your subjective whitespace preferences? -- intgr  02:08, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Well they wouldn't justify a separate edit. Of article headers, over 80% use that style, so it is not purely subjective. But it's not a big deal either. Rich Farmbrough, 02:25, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

If it's not a big deal, then don't touch it. Even if that 80% figure were true -- maybe because your automated edits have touched 80% of Misplaced Pages -- there is no consensus. In fact, various tools like the article wizard and "new section" on talk pages create sections with spaces. And many people prefer that style.

1. Please point me to a consensus
2. Please explain why the no-spaces style is preferable?
3. Back up your figures -- intgr  11:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

High school coordinates

Dear Mr. Farmbrough,

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

• http://en.wikipedia.org/Princess_Margaret_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Queen_Elizabeth_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Sullivan_Heights_Secondary
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Tamanawis_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/L_A_Matheson_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Enver_Creek_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Frank_Hurt_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Fraser_Heights_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Johnston_Heights_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Pacific_Academy
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Kwantlen_Park_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/Guildford_Park_Secondary_School
• http://en.wikipedia.org/%C3%89cole_Gabrielle-Roy_(Surrey)

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

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

imprl

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

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

Unit pref

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

Removing auto-categorization at Template:Infobox law enforcement agency

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

Template:Quick commune19

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

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

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

Portals

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

A12 Authentication

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

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

Discrete mathematics

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

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

Speedy deletion of Template:Portal/Images/paleontology

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

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

Thanks. Svick (talk) 09:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Portal/Images/Paleontology

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

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

Thanks. Svick (talk) 09:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

AWB edits breaking WebCite links

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

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

with

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

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

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

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

Rearranging references

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

That isn't true; I have seen other users bring it up, in other places. However, now that I have informed you, recommencing this series of edits would be appropriate. If you want to get a guideline that footnotes must be in numerical order, use WT:CITE. Lacking that, you need to follow the advice in WP:CITEHOW, which says to keep whatever style is established in each article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:15, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Here is a separate complaint about the rearranging. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:17, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

It's not a complain it's a query and the interlocutor says "there was nothing untoward in the reference re-ordering;". Rich Farmbrough, 13:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC).

It's a complaint. In any case, this is my notice: if you want to run a bot task to put all footnotes in numerical order, then get permission for it first. Otherwise, you should not be running a single-purpose task to rearrange them until you get such approval. It is extremely unlikely to run into so many pages with this problem unless you go out of your way to find them. Getting bot approval will first require actually getting a guideline that says the references need to be in numerical order; the present guideline says instead that you should leave the established style in each article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:25, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

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

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

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

But the truth of the matter is that the references have just got out of order. While I know you love policing minor edits and even better rolling them back, in the end these improvements will happen one way or another. In March there were over 15,000 articles with out of order references, a good 3,000 of those have been fixed, not by me. Many more may have been created. Similarly http style markup will continue to be replaced with wiki-markup, and obscure template names like otheruses4 will be replaced with about. Your rollbacks just waste your time and everyone else's, if you want to vandal-fight get Huggle and find some vandals, otherwise there's plenty of work to be done actually making stuff better rather than getting in the way of the people who are trying to do that. I already built in a versioning system, and hacked C sharp to stop changing , no: to stop correcting - reference order to keep you happy. And in the meanwhile I estimate over 100,000 minor fixes were lost - because you perceive that someone might have done, what they actually have never claimed to have done, on some article somewhere that might one day have its references re-arranged. I say, when it is actually a problem, then we deal with it. Why borrow trouble? Thousands of edits have lead to maybe three queries - and CBM. Rich Farmbrough, 14:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC).

The reason I feel strongly about the referencing rearranging is because it isn't a minor fix: the order of references is a key choice when writing, and should not be changed lightly. So the AWB changes don't make stuff better; instead, they destroy the effort of editors who went out of their way to arrange the references carefully.

Evidence rather than supposition points to it notbeing a choice. That is what I keep telling you. Not one person has said "my carefully ordered references were put out of order and now the article is broken".

The problem is that SmackBot didn't stop changing the reference order. I check the bot's contribs from time to time, and just this weekend SmackBot was still rearranging references, which is why I blocked it. It had two other errors that I also posted to the bot's page. You didn't reply there, but today you were manually rearranging references en masse. It's far from best practice to respond to a problem with a bot by making the bad edits yourself while the bot is blocked. I do not think it is likely that you would get a bot approval to rearrange references, and such things should not be done without approval once someone has objected.

Yes because it was doing a different task form a different computer, without the special hacked up CBM version of AWB. And mostly to articles with zero references, let alone 2 in a row.

The most productive thing here would be for us to figure out how to fix SmackBot once and for all, and then simply leave reference order to the editors of each article. I have been in touch with Magioladitis, and he is thinking of adding an option to AWB to be able to disable its controversial changes while keeping the other general fixes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

As far as that goes Mag should look at my proposal on the matter. It is hard work to set up, but it would resolve the gen fixes disputes ongoing. Rich Farmbrough, 15:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC).

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

It happens I am prepared to do it manually, to protect the wiki from the consequences of other's foolish actions. You will notice the log was moved from being a bot log to a mere log of runs last time you engaged in this blocking activity. The runs are also being done on the hacked version of AWB, which means that and disordered references are staying disordered, therefore I am not working the claimed intention of your block, which is to keep the references out-of-order, despite no scrap of evidence supporting this as intended in even tiny minority of articles, let alone one which has sufficient currency to allow a significant number of other articles to be disfigured. Rich Farmbrough, 01:31, 4 May 2010 (UTC).

The issue is that when a bot is blocked because it is broken, it's not appropriate to run the task under your main account regardless whether you think the task is desirable. This is particularly true here, because you have had great difficulty keeping the bot under control. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

2010-5-3

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

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

Top Gun Talwar

What's up with Top Gun Talwar?

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

Balko, Oklahoma

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

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