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I will generally answer here. R.F. Warning: a therefore can become a wherefore (George Orwell)

IMPORTANT. Due to the volume on this talk page I archive semi-manually, a 2 day archive time is not fast enough to keep it clear and a is too fast to allow me to deal with every thread completely. If you feel that a thread has been archived too soon please copy it back here and note that you have done so both on the thread both on archive and here. Thanks. RF

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About bots and categories - clarify request

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Railway

Conversation - actions required.

Hi, did you correct those Burmese infobox errors afterwards? Can you move all of the Gare de... in Category:Railway stations in France categories to ...... railway station. There is consensus to do so at WP:Trains. They should be in english.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:34, 6 October 2010 (UTC) E.g Gare de Colmar should be Colmar railway station.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:35, 6 October 2010 (UTC) See #Burma .. let me know. Yes that's not hard, when I get back about 5pm I'll get on to it. category:Paris Métro should not be a sub cat of Paris railway stations as this puts rolling stock into a station category. Rich Farmbrough, 13:03, 6 October 2010 (UTC). OK Gare de, Gare du and Gare d' I take it are fine to move, how about: Gare Maritime de Cherbourg  Done Gare Maritime de Dieppe  Done Gare Montparnasse Gare RER de Saint Germain-en-Laye Gare Saint-Lazare Gare TGV Haute-Picardie ? Rich Farmbrough, 13:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC). Mmm I'd go with: Gare Maritime de Cherbourg = Cherbourg Maritime railway station Gare Maritime de Dieppe = Dieppe Maritime railway station List here. Rich Farmbrough, 17:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC). Hang on a moment - I'm new to this but can't find the consensus for change described above. (Yes I tend to favour the Gare de .. title obviously.) Don't look at Category:Railway stations in Germany either :) . Lot's of stuff like Mannheim Hauptbahnhof. Particularly there is an objection to things like Gare d'Avignon TGV are in fairly common use in English, as are others. I'm worried that if you bot this it will make a mess eg consider Gare du Nord.Sf5xeplus (talk) 18:16, 6 October 2010 (UTC) Look on the talk page - specifically Manheim Hauptbahnhof and Gare du Nord are mentioned as exceptions. I don't think even if I was "botting it" I could affect the BBC pages... Or perhaps you mean the content of pages? There is no intent to do a search and replace (As far as I know.) Rich Farmbrough, 18:31, 6 October 2010 (UTC). Yes funny - I linked to the BBC to show an example of common usage.Sf5xeplus (talk) 18:38, 6 October 2010 (UTC) I'd also suggest (can that be demand) that the ones moved be moved back. This Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Trains#Railway_stations discussion hasn't really established a consensus for such a big change. Also despite being an English word too, I don't feel that 'maritime' is the correct English translation, possibly 'marine' is better, but fundamentally its usage is specific to the name - a literal translation probably won't make much sense. Although not English the French names satisfy Misplaced Pages:Article_titles#Deciding_an_article_title, especially recognisability. This definitely seems to have been an error in your judgement in honesty.Sf5xeplus (talk) 18:27, 6 October 2010 (UTC) Of course you can Revert (using "undo" - not roll-back if you have that) - then go and Discuss - its part of the BRD cycle, although with a month elapsed form the discussion, it's not that bold. Just drop me a note to let me know which bits if any you revert - or if you wish discuss then revert if necessary. Rich Farmbrough, 19:05, 6 October 2010 (UTC). I might have but as I'm not objecting to the other changes they exceptions with "Maritime" would seem out of place. There seems to be a few examples in english of the usage that's been proposed/changed ("xxx maritime station"), I'm not sure if "xxx harbour station" or "xxx port station" is better or worse. Must do more research before acting.Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:16, 6 October 2010 (UTC) Note Just to make it clear - I've changed my position (on naming) from object to neutral - you can ignore the above.Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:50, 6 October 2010 (UTC) (Thanks for the note: RF.) Will try to get back to this today or tomorrow. Rich Farmbrough, 11:52, 8 October 2010 (UTC). More Anyway far be it for me to stand in the way of progress - if the station name is simply "gare de xxx" then I don't object to "xxx station" etc. I'm not sure about the ones with "maritime" in. However you did get the capitalisation wrong, its railway station (lower case) eg King's Cross station. (ok so some USA stations use Railroad Station with caps, but that's for another day). Sf5xeplus (talk) 18:51, 6 October 2010 (UTC) Yes that is what was suggested, and normally I love WP's "down" style, and regularly take Dr Blofeld out the back and threaten him with his own sharks for using capitals in things like "Splurgle District". However thinking about it for a moment will reveal that it is not that simple. If the name is "Gare d'" then Station is part of the name. Though I argue elsewhere that, for example Kingston University is also Kingston university, so "downing" is a fairly safe operation, where as "upping" is not (Manchester universities <> Manchester Universities for example), in this case I think the cap is justified. I am open to persuasion however, more: if you can get consensus from WP T on either style I will go with that quite happily . I would indeed personally prefer just "Station" or "station", since to my ear "Railway" is the default. Other varieties of English, however, may vary. Rich Farmbrough, 19:01, 6 October 2010 (UTC). Category:Railway stations in Belgium could be an example of precedence - 1/2 of it speaks French of a sort (or maybe that's wrong too). As an additional capitalisation of gare is not always done (except at the beginning of a sentence) eg , also http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=+site:www.lemonde.fr+le+monde+gare Le Monde uses lower case if not leading a sentence. eg No idea what the official French ministry of spelling and culture position is on this controversy.Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:13, 6 October 2010 (UTC) That's interesting. I am, sadly, an expert in neither Walloon (as I remarked earlier today, funnily enough) or railway stations, although there is a fascination about abandoned underground stations that probably speaks to either a deep character flaw, or to much "Quatermass" as a child. (Hobbs End I think? OR was that the good Doctor?) The place for discussion is is most likely the WikiProject. You can cut and paste this wholesale if you wish. Rich Farmbrough, 19:18, 6 October 2010 (UTC). Or maybe I should take your opinion, my doubts, and the talk page suggestion as consensus for lower case? IDK. I'l think on't. Rich Farmbrough, 19:19, 6 October 2010 (UTC). I've left a note at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Trains#Capitalisation_of_french_railway_stations and on Blofeld's page too. I can let you know (though I've suggested others post here since I'm fairly certain this is a non-controversial thing already decided). I can let you know. the reason I'm hassling you about this is because I'm under the impression that you have 'thousands' of station articles to name change..? maybe that's not the caseSf5xeplus (talk) 19:34, 6 October 2010 (UTC) Thanks. It's about 400 - see the list I mentioned. I was planning on creating redirects to the Gare du Nord articles - an of course anyone could move back specific items. Oh and yes, re: Le Monde, French capitalisation differs from ours for proper nouns (e.g. Académie française) but that's about as far as my knowledge takes me. Rich Farmbrough, 19:49, 6 October 2010 (UTC). There seemed to be no objection to moving the pages to lower casing e.g Rouen railway station. These really should be moved as Gare means nothing to most non French speakers. I personally prefer the Railway Station capitalised but consensus at WP:Trains seems to be lower casing. "railway" station is necessary as "station could refer to bus station, tram/cable car station or even a scientific research station.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:41, 6 October 2010 (UTC) Thanks for the notes, will try to get back to this today or tomorrow. Rich Farmbrough, 11:52, 8 October 2010 (UTC).

Printworthy

SmackBot duplicate tags feature request

Minor issues

Snoqualmie, Washington

Someone has messed with the Snoqualmie, Washington Page - the "Location" has trash in it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.136.218.242 (talk) 20:50, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

DNB

I've left a comment at WT:WP DNB#Bot_building about the new Magnus Manske tool in the area (Magnus put it together in a couple of hours after the meetup). I've never been exactly sure about the merits of importing text from Wikisource other than in an article: but I think the merits would be improved by a number of possible "added value" steps. One of those would be to take into account the output of this tool, and only import articles for the project to work on which come up as "none found" with that matching tool. I.e. remove or sort according to what the tool finds, which can be (a) no match, (b) very plausible match, (c) inconclusive run with numerous candidates none of which is a great fit, (d) > 50 hits. There is actually a good argument for first doing that sorting into four. The case (d) is one either for human intervention, or for another layer of matching attempt. Case (b) is the sort of stuff I'm going by hand, and invites work expanding stubs and adding the ext lk back. So anyway case (a) is the most fruitful at this point for an import.

And what else? Imported text should be topped-and-tailed in some way to make it more useful (will need a lead section, should finish with reference using {{cite DNB}} and attribution using {{DNB}}, both filled in with wstitle=). There is actually a lot of scope for stripping out parts of the article too: certainly the sections, and with more intelligence much of the inline refs between parentheses. NB the use of small caps within parentheses for author names, which should be a clue.

Charles Matthews (talk) 13:18, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Risk list bot

Bibliographies

This is just a personal opinion, mind you. Like I said, I am, rather slowly, assembling bibliographies of the various geographical areas of the earth. As they would deal with things like the local flora, fauna, people, culture, and the like, they could also serve as the basis for things like, for instance, Bibliography of South American military history, which would be a selection of books about the military history of that area drawn from the bibliographies of the main states/regions themselves.

That will not however include such things as the sciences, or philosophy, or the major religions, and certainly not off-world topics like astronomy. They would probably need to be created entirely separately.

My own basic choice would be to maybe have others create bibliographies for the sciences, business, and other topics that don't have clear geographic ties.

I would think the items to be included would best include separate books/works on the topic that have been reviewed by academic journals and other reputable specialist magazines, and/or included in books or articles of bibliography of that topic.

There are obviously questions regarding how long to make these bibliographies, and that's a separate matter entirely. The bibliography of physics, like the bibliography of Christianity, would be potentially endless. For such broad topics, maybe the best way to proceed would be to look at the various extant reference works, like encyclopedias, that deal with the topics, and to start include only those works which are included in the bibliographies of the articles in those encyclopedias. That would be a start, anyway. John Carter (talk) 17:15, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

The bibliography of physics should probably include some well known wide ranging texts, Weidner and Sells, Richards, Wier, Zehrs and Zemansky I think are two, the vade meca of various fields, seminal works, and key references (Handbook of Physical Data?) and cross references to detailed, bibliographies of mechanics, relativity, gravitation, string theory, etc... Rich Farmbrough, 12:57, 9 November 2010 (UTC).

Ask Fred, and Ed. Rich Farmbrough, 22:26, 19th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

IPA dump search

Note to self

Need to check on enzymes. Rich Farmbrough, 10:39, 18 November 2010 (UTC).

Burma

Hi. What's the chances of you being able to use your tools to help with dabbing for Burmese settlements. Check out Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Burma (Myanmar)/Township templates and User:Dr. Blofeld/Burma#Repeated places names...♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:57, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

What I'll do first is draw up all of the templates. Once that is done Abok should be linked inside two different township templates when currently it is just Abok and so. Most of them do not even have dab pages...Once I've drawn up the templates hopefully you will be able to read the what links here and run something... example:Ahlaw. Perhaps you have something which will be able to read the ... Township links and generate dab pages like Ahlaw with Ahlaw Paungbyin and Ahlaw, Tamu linked. Bets thought to wait until I've created all the templates so the links can easily be accessed in the what links here.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

What I envisage is a script which reads .... Township , e.g Ahlaw being linked in the template named Tamu Township and extracts the name and dabs them e.g as Ahlaw, Tamu. It would need to generate pages and also correct the existing links in the templates. Might need BAG approval. I've also proposed it to Plastikspork. Perhaps you could contact him and decide the best way to do it. Meanwhile I'll continue making the templates after I've stubbed some of the few missing township articles for Bago region..♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:30, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Norway

Hi Rich. A while back I began adding infoboxes to Norwegian villages, mostly unreferenced stubs lying around from 2006 which were created by Punkmorten (Geshicte). Given that he won't so much as make the tiniest edit to Norwegian geo articles these days, somebody has to do it.Basically it just adding an infobox with the location info county etc and a pin map like Kjelvik. I was wondering if you could copy the that infobox and use some sort of script to add infoboxes (and copy the coordinates from the bototm of the page into the infoboxes to the rest of the villages by county of the Category:Populated places in Norway. So far I've done Finnmark and Sog. Browse Category:Villages in Akershus for starters for example.. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:57, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

What's troubling you Rich? I also need your help with User:Dr. Blofeld/Country year templates.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:42, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Villages, North Cyprus

Hello, I wondered if I could ask you for help? Some time ago someone started a stub for all the villages of North Cyprus. The problem is that they used the Greek names, which are today historical (they have not been used since the war in 1974). Today the Turkish names are used. Hence, as I understand it, according to WP:NAME (see the discussion on Gdańsk vs Danzig) the Turkish names should be used in the articles (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

I have started moving some of the villages of the Kyrenia District -however, it takes for ages for me to do so. I would very much appreciate some help. Thanks, Guestworker (talk) 01:56, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Is there evidence that the Turkish names are used in the English speaking world? Rich Farmbrough, 19:21, 30 November 2010 (UTC).

Hi, you can look at any guide-book in English of "North Cyprus" or "Northern Cyprus" (Books which are published in the English speaking world) and you will see the the Turkish names are used. Thanks, Guestworker (talk) 06:53, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Re: Misplaced Pages:Database reports/Unlisted stub types

I like what you did with this report on the stub templates. Can it be updated? Can a similar report be run for the Categories? Finally, could these be automatically set to update, say, once a month? or even once a quarter? Dawynn (talk) 20:30, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's pretty much what I planned, if they are going to be maintained. However it looked like there were other lists doing a similar job that had not been attended to for a significant period of time. Rich Farmbrough, 17:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC).

Note there is a report for "Uncategorized Stub types" too ]. Rich Farmbrough, 05:24, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

Revive Wildbot?

A few folks would love to see someone revive and/or take over Wildbot. You've been mentioned a couple times: Up for it? --W☯W 20:25, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

List of townlands of County Cork

I note that you've tried to slim down the above page a bit. I took the matter of size to WikiProject Ireland but they didn't seem particularly interested! As you have been around Misplaced Pages a fair bit (apparently you've got a few thousands edits under your belt), I wondered if you had any ideas on how to make the article accessible to Joe Bloggs. Would splitting it up into List of townlands of County Cork, A–E etc. be acceptable? What's the point in having a page which 80% of readers won't be able to access? Thanks. —Half Price 20:42, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Splitting by barony would make more sense. Rich Farmbrough, 23:31, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

Yes, though significantly more troublesome. OK, thanks. —Half Price 11:23, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Except that I already did it.... Rich Farmbrough, 11:25, 20 December 2010 (UTC).

Yes, sorry, it isn't hard at all! —Half Price 16:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox wine region

Being f Fixed. BTW, hundreds of users have used the wrong infobox on UK school pages (maybe other countries too, I haven't looked yet). Do you know of a quick fix that retains the data? I can't use AWB on my computers. Cheers. --Kudpung (talk) 00:57, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh? Which template? I thought that there was a resolved discussion which ended up unifying the school (educational institution) infoboxes. Yes I have a fix for this sort of thing. Rich Farmbrough, 06:38, 31 December 2010 (UTC).

There is no cohesion at the schools project of the kind you get with a project like wine for example where there is a standardised template and a regular group of dedicated members who monitor the quality of the articles and intervenes where necessary. School articles are each and every one written by SPA, none of them read the guidelines, and in the same way as many new editors think every new article needs a new cat for it, they think every school type or school district needs a custom infobox. The end effect is that we have 39 different infoboxes out there where all we need are three: one for US Schools, one for UK schools, one for Oz schools, and a generic one for the est of the world. A big team has just recently improved the programme functions of the UK Schools infobox, and I've had a list made at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Schools/UK schools using wrong infoboxes of nearly 400 schools that are using the wrong one. I started to work through the list manually but I felt that this could somehow be automated as I am currently running the schools project pretty much single handed. Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated. --Kudpung (talk) 07:14, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I am pretty sure I replaced all except the UK/Oz ones a couple of years back. And at that time both were completely replaceable with the main infobox - I actually did a trial replacement of each, without loosing any fields. We flatter ourselves that "Ofsted" or "DFES number" is somehow special. Rich Farmbrough, 09:18, 31 December 2010 (UTC).

Hi Rich. Yes, you're right about the DfES and Ofsted fields, but if it was that long ago I guess the 370 on this list are more recent. They have either used deprecated boxes, or copied ones from other school articles. --Kudpung (talk) 19:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Removing noinclude tags

Why are you removing noinclude tags: ? These year pages are transcluded in higher level articles, and your removal royal screws up the entire chain. 68.35.24.151 (talk) 22:25, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining, I was told there was no current purpose. Onlyinclude is a better directive for this purpose. Rich Farmbrough, 22:54, 1 January 2011 (UTC).

I agree. It should be a straightforward task to take all the "year" articles and flip the logic. Even better would be to add a comment next to it as well, so people don't inadvertently remove it. I know I have done the same before in season episode list articles which were being transcluded in another article. Plastikspork _―Œ 23:25, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Project Stamford

I've taken up your invite to join, and hope I can do something helpful. But it seems to me there are clever people than me about.

R.J.Penhey (wikipedian RJPe (talk · contribs) might be a useful addition, although he might not want to get involved, judging by what he has said elsewhere. But his own research expertise is far superior to mine

The obvious person to write about Stamford Castle would be David Roffe. But I can't see that he is a wikipedian, unless you know differently. --Robert EA Harvey (talk) 10:24, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Femto Bot 4

Hi Rich. There don't seem to be any examples of Femto Bot having pinged bag members for this task. Would it be possible to get that done? Possibly on that request itself (hence me commenting here and not there), or by just briefly moving the time down to a couple of hours. If so, I'm happy to okay another trial, but for that particular function. - Kingpin (talk) 15:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok I'll have a look at the code, I was kinda reluctant to enable it even during the trial. Rich Farmbrough, 15:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC).

Well another thing I was going to mention was the times it waits. Basically, any chance of changing your waiting periods to at least 1 week to start off with, since that's what's suggested at BRfA, and seems more realistic than one/two days (alternatively you could write something slightly more complex to get the number of open BRfAs and base the time off that (if there are more BRfAs give BAG more time)). The other thing that needs to be discussed is having the bot turn on tasks once they are approved. How secure is this, could a user pretend to be a BAG member and get the bot to start before it's actually been approved? - Kingpin (talk) 15:08, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

1. Yes time is a moot point. I'll have to think about it. With 12 "active" members BRFAs should be hit fairly quickly, though.
2. Hm yes they could, but they'd fool me too. Rich Farmbrough, 15:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC).
   

1) But of course, when it comes to BAG "active" really does need quotation marks =p. Well either 7 days or based on the number of open requests would be my suggestions. Also, how is the member to message selected? Have you done anything about looking at BAG members who previously commented? 2) Personally, I still think this bit needs to be semi-automated, even just have a pop-up box saying " is about to be , the last person to edit the request was . Continue?". - Kingpin (talk) 15:37, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Well the code to run the trials is still in early stages too. Probably I need to write some new "stop" code since I was relying on AWB built in feature mostly. Rich Farmbrough, 15:39, 5 January 2011 (UTC).

Okay, feel free to give me a poke once you're happy with the code. Especially that for the BAG pinging function (also I'm still interested about how you select which BAG member to message, hopefully you aren't messaging the same one the first time every time. Would also be good if you at least started with a BAG member who's already familiar with the BRfA (you could just steal that from AnomieBOT's report)). Just to quickly wrap up for now, here's what I feel should to be done -

• Consider increasing time before a request is considered stale.
• Take a look at some different methods for which order BAG members are messaged in.
• Write up code for the auto-start of tasks, with some form of manual approval (I agree with H3llkn0wz on this, I'm not comfortable with it being fully automated). Best, - Kingpin (talk) 22:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

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United States settlements

Hi. I was wondering if you could run something which adds a pushpin map to every infobox by state. I did start doing it manually previously and removed the census maps but I got sidetracked because of objections to the removal of the census maps. However if you were to keep the census maps and to add the pushpin maps this should be fine. Minot, North Dakota for instance. The majority of the articles have the shoddy census maps in them which mostly leaves you really having to look hard where the place actually is in the state. let alone America. Eventually the pin maps will have the US state inserts so you can see where in America it is. Of course I've proposed we have the option like on French wikipedia for clickable maps but nothing is happening there.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Any thoughts?♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes I did one. May not really suited for AWB because of the complex logic (which I'm not sure of yet) - what other parameters are needed for the pushpin map to work? Rich Farmbrough, 19:35, 19th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

I was assuming "coordinates_region" needs to be defined. Rich Farmbrough, 19:36, 19th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

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ISO 3166 templates

There are 5895 templates in Category:ISO 3166 code from name templates, 4060 in Category:ISO 3166 name from code templates, 245 in Category:ISO 3166 name from code country templates, and 1868 in Category:ISO 3166 code from name country templates, or in total some 12,000 templates you created over 6 months ago. At first glance, none of these is used anywhere. Can you indicate whether and where these are used (and if so, which categories of these are and which aren't), or if they aren't used, why they shouldn't be deleted (per WP:TFD, "Reasons to delete a template 3. The template is not used, either directly or by template substitution (the latter cannot be concluded from the absence of backlinks), and has no likelihood of being used") Fram (talk) 12:50, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes there is a likelihood of these being used as they are designed particularly for infoboxes, where I intend to use them. Rich Farmbrough, 13:31, 26th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

Could you give an actual example for each of the four groups of where and how you intend someday to use them? Fram (talk) 13:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm trying to think of examples where people would prefer to type "ISO 3166 code Hungary Veszprém City" instead of just HU-VM, or if it has to be templated anyway, why it would be easier to have 12000 separate templates than one (or four, or at most one per country) like with Template:CountryAbbr, which actually is in widespread use. Fram (talk) 14:04, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I have nominated the lot at Misplaced Pages:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 January 27. Fram (talk) 15:19, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

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Status update: Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 43

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:

Last edit by BAGGER was by Tim1357 at 03:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 13:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by ] at 03:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 06:19, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 06:49, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Modifying dates?

, . -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:21, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Hm... I just realised is the same article. Was it problem to the script or manual? -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Known (fixed) problem. Rich Farmbrough, 09:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

I am getting confused. Do you use perl for the bot and AWB for non-automated edits from this account? AWB shouldn't be changing the case like in here (line 89). Sorry for the repeated messages. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh yes, that is just a stupid preservation of case caused as a reaction to the ridiculous AN/I threads. Nobody ever asked for preservation of case across template replacement, that I am aware of - it lead to the absurd "iMDB" usage, however that extent of paranoia would have seemed justified at the time, since accounts were being blocked for changing the case of a single letter, or less. Rich Farmbrough, 11:16, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

I tend to agree. After that we adjusted further and if the word is in capitals the casing could change. So, this mean we are past this casing fight? -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:21, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I prefer sentence case, as we use for header, article names, page names and... well sentences, but I have never, despite what has been said, made indiscriminate changes to template casing. The actual preferred usage seems to be lower case for inline cite templates, sentence case for practically everything else, although clearly typing lowercase is less effort. Eubilides felt strongly otherwise, a year or so back. A lot of people, reasonably just don't want to see diff noise. If a name is being changed, a case change is not diff noise. So short answer is yes I beleive we are over the non-battle that some people were desperate to make into a battle. Rich Farmbrough, 11:28, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

Bug in Smackbot?

Smackbot used a bizarre edit summary "Adding references section" when it repaired the refs and added an uncategrized template. However, the page was in around 12 categories, and Smackbot did not add a == References == section. diff Could it have anything to do with the pending changes protection? Reaper Eternal (talk) 11:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

There was already a references section. The bot knows a number of other things to try though (and as you can see I was "helping" it a little with the capitalisation of "recently") which is why it says "and/or general fixes" . With this particular run I tend to examine the leftovers manually, in this case someone else fixed the problem - which was someone closing refs with the same tag as they opened them. As to pending changes, I don't think it is a problem, although I had expected it to be. Rich Farmbrough, 11:51, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

Bot policy violation

Your current "correct caps in header" edits seem to be a violation of the bot policy, "Bot processes may not fix spelling or grammar mistakes or apply templates such as in an unattended fashion". While some of the edits also make more substantial changes, many of them are only cosmetic, and some have errors, like duplicating the "name" parameter in the persondata here (and is there any reason to intrioduce lowercase when the other ones are uppercase?). You even introduce the birthdate twice (in different formats and case) in one edit. Fram (talk) 11:54, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

The duplicate parameters work fine, so are not a real issue, however I have resolved that problem. The program runs against a list of list of 844 specific headers, and is an approved bot task. Rich Farmbrough, 12:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

Even now the most common is External Links it seems. Rich Farmbrough, 12:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

Could you give a link to the exact approved bot task? Looking through Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot didn't return any obvious matches to this task, only Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot XXIX was somewhat similar but not applicable here (only valid for pages in Category:Misplaced Pages articles incorporating text from the Air Force Historical Research Agency). And even assuming that having the same parameter with two different values doesn't cause problems for whatever tools use these parameters, it is still an error to introduce them. The change of capitalisation will not cause problems as such, but having bots that make our articles internally less consistent is not really the purpose of this... Fram (talk) 12:39, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Roshven

If you have concerns over this page please start a discussion on the talk page. :)

Colinmotox11 (talk) 11:42, 2 February 2011 (UTC) copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Deletemenow

Do you really want this duplicate of Antjuan Tobias deleted? Is this some sort of test? Thanks, Borkificator (talk) 12:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

You passed.. :) No it is sometimes necessary to test on a page in mainspace for one reason or another. I use deletemenow so that people don't worry about whether to delete it or not. It rarely exists for more then a a minute, and I usually delete it myself before anyone notices it. Rich Farmbrough, 12:33, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

As requested, please provide a link to the bot task approval for these changes

As requested, please provide a link to the bot task approval for these changes. Fram (talk) 13:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC) copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 13:12, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Some errors

Not for the first time, Smackbot removes text from hidden comments, making them much less useful: . Other edits also have problems, like the incorrect name in the persondata here. The order of fields in Persondata is also non-standard. And the aproval for this task has also not been provided yet, giving the impression that this is an unapproved, bot policy violating task. Fram (talk) 13:28, 2 February 2011 (UTC) copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 13:40, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Spaces in section headers

Spaces in section headers should not be changed en masse. They may be made consistent within an article, but they should not be changed from the version with spaces to the one without (or vice versa). You did this here, here and here. The same happened here, where you also add the Persondata parameters out of order. And you still haven't provided teh requested evidence of bot approval for this task, which otherwise is a violation of bot policy. Fram (talk) 15:19, 2 February 2011 (UTC) copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 15:20, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

User answered by email. Rich Farmbrough, 15:26, 2 February 2011 (UTC).

Since you have not provided any evidence of your claim that this bot task is approved (not here and not by mail, which is not the best way to address such things anyway), despite four requests by me to do so, I have blocked the bot. Please don't restart the "Correct cap in header and/or general fixes." or anything similar before you have shown some evidence that this has approval. I have no objection to you unblocking the bot solely to continue with the "build p605" edits, which hve approval and don't seem to be problematic (or at least have a much lower error rate, and a much higher benefit rate). Fram (talk) 15:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC)