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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MiszaBot III (talk | contribs) at 14:39, 10 January 2009 (Archiving 3 thread(s) (older than 3d) to User talk:Lightmouse/Archives/2009/January.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Link

I just clicked the "talk" link next to your name...because it was there. Carry on. —MJCdetroit 01:57, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I hope that you got the humor in that. :) —MJCdetroit 15:14, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't understand what you mean. I shrugged and then didn't give any more thought. Now that you have prompted me again, I think you are referring to where I said "Do you believe that people will click on the link just because it is there?". Now I get it. - small smile - Lightmouse (talk) 15:21, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:Onlinesoures

Hi I've just reverted a removal of wikilinked date (example), since the preseeding text states otherwise. Maybe both should be changed (haven't looked at it since I'm only on my mobile). Happy edititing! Nsaa (talk) 22:15, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Nsaa, I have changed both the date and the corresponding text, so everything should be good now. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Date templates for bots

I've created {{dmy}} and {{mdy}} in the hopes that it could make future automated maintenance easier. My idea is to incorporate these into the relevant scripts, so that we can potentially insert these templates to the top of any given article when work is done to unify the formats. This would indicate, in the body of the article, that work has been done to convert all dates (exc ISO) to a given format. Down the line, a bot can be programmed to maintain all those articles which have been so tagged. The tags can remain invisible, as at present, or they can be made to insert markers of some description like the star at the top of each featured article. What do you think? I have already started using it - see here Ohconfucius (talk) 02:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Nice idea. In fact, it might be combined with information about English language variant. It would be worth asking for other opinions. Lightmouse (talk) 10:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Has everything changed?

Has everything gone weird on Wikipeida i.e. the headings are no longer bold and the font's changed, or have I bugged up my options some how? Ryan4314 (talk) 05:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Recommend you delete cookies, etc.--Toddy1 (talk) 06:49, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, all fixed now. Firefox accidentally "zoomed in" Ryan4314 (talk) 13:10, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Lightbot unlinking of solitary years

Since solitary years may be linked on rare occasions, what provision exists to prevent Lightbot from visiting the same article over and over again, and unlinking solitary years, even if the editors of the article have determined that a solitary year link is appropriate? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 14:48, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I've yet to hear a good argument for keeping a solitary year-link. One way of protecting the odd one (I think) is to pipe it. It's very important that housecleaning on WP involve treatment from time to time of an article. Editors are not perfect and deserve automated assistance. Tony (talk) 15:35, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Lightmouse, is it still the case that the bot passes over date links that include a nondate term, so that something like ] can be placed in an article's "see also" section, or in a "see also" line appended to a paragraph? which also alerts human editors that the link was deliberate, valued by someone, etc. Sssoul (talk) 17:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

That is not currently true. But it could be made to be true. Lightmouse (talk) 17:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

(e.c.)I don't think piping would do as Lightbot's currently configured, Tony, as I know I've seen it remove piped links to 'year-in-X' articles — that may only have been in the context of broken autoformatting, though. If piping would work, that would be a great solution, as would commenting as was just suggested. I'm slowly getting sold on the idea that removing these links is useful bot work, but I still worry about the collateral damage. I don't want to sound like a fiend for date linking, but I do think it's important that we find a way to ensure that, where a bot — any bot — removes a solitary year-link as part of a mass clean-up and an editor (in all reasoning and good judgment) does find that rare case where restoring the link provides valuable context, the bot doesn't overrule that editor's judgment and later remove the link again. Otherwise, there's no point in our style manual saying that solitary years should rarely be linked — we might as well say never, ever, ever under any circumstances. I know you haven't heard a good argument yet, but I don't think even you would say that it's completely impossible for a year link to ever be useful, would you? Mlaffs (talk) 17:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

A recent RFC rejected the notion that "year links should never be made". About 35 editors supported the idea that years should never be linked, while about 64 expressed some degree of support for year linking (even if only very rarely). If Lightbot repeatedly unlink years and offers no recourse to protect linked years, it is in violation of consensus and measures will have to be taken to bring it into compliance with the consensus. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Decade links

Hi. Lightbot is deleting links to decade articles, such as 1920s and 1960s, but these deletions really ought to be done manually, as some of them are legitimate. For instance, removing this link to 1960s in the article The Longest Day (film) seems correct, since it's just a generic reference, but this one, in the hatnote to the article on the film The Roaring Twenties, is completely legitimate. If there's some way to have the bot make this differentiation, that would be great, but if not, perhaps it should stop making those types of edits. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 18:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

You make a fair point. A title like that is somewhat of a clue, although not always reliable either way. I will retune the bot to be more conservative. Thanks for the feedback. Lightmouse (talk) 18:48, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

No problem, thanks for the response. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 20:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration

I've requested arbitration over this date delinking situation and the conduct of those involved. You are named as a party. Please see here. Thank you. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)