Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Before My Ken (talk | contribs) at 20:56, 9 January 2009 (→Decade links). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

'Eighteenth century'

Your bot has delinked the term 'eighteenth century' in at least two articles (Nationalism and Nationalism studies), and I don't understand why. In both cases, it is useful for the reader to be able to read about the eighteenth century in general in order to get a greater sense of the historical context of these two subjects. Could you please explain your reasoning? – SJL 00:00, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

The guidance at Misplaced Pages:CONTEXT#Dates says:

• Chronological items—such as days, years, decades and centuries—should generally not be linked unless they are demonstrably likely to deepen readers' understanding of the topic.

It has been extensively discussed many times. However, if you disagree, don't my word for it or the guidance. Feel free to ask other people at wt:mosnum for an opinion about those articles. I hope that helps. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 00:29, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Right, but my point is that in this case there clearly is a need for linking to the article on the eighteenth century, as it is "demonstrably likely to deepen readers' understanding of the topic." I can see why using the bot to delink numerical dates would be helfpul, but I imagine that the majority of linked centuries are there for a reason. – SJL 05:53, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

In the ideal world, where such an article is genuinely capable of providing a proper context, yes. Although the 'eighteenth century' article isn't as useless in this respect as the date articles (collectively), it merely contains a collection of trivia which is of doubtful use in deepening understanding of the article linked to it ostensibly for that purpose. Ohconfucius (talk) 06:14, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree on two grounds. First, the quality of the article being linked to does not determine whether linking to an article on that subject is useful (if that were true, nobody would ever link to stubs, and those stubs would never be developed as a consequence). Second, in this particular case, knowing that the eighteenth century includes the French, American, and industrial revolutions, for example, is helpful to someone who is researching nationalism and its study. Situating social phenomena in a time line is often very useful in explaining them. – SJL 19:07, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

We are not discussing quality. We are discussing relevance. The current method of most articles about chronological items do not provide real context. For an exception, see 1345. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:28, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Lightbot: possible to be more constructive?

Today Lightbot made two edits that showed on my Watchlist. Frankly, I think the edits are rather useless. Would it be possible to make other improvements to articles while doing "Units/dates/other"? Then the bot would be a little more constructive. The bot may have approval for the current edits, but I just felt like I had to let you know that the edits do not sit well with me. Regards, --Commander Keane (talk) 12:35, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry that the edits don't 'sit well with you'. As you say, the bot is approved and there have been extensive discussions at wt:mosnum for years about this issue. You may not have encountered it in your articles before, but Lightbot has done many tasks prior to this one. It will continue to do many tasks after this one. I think the bot is useful and constructive but I respect your alternative opinion. I try to combine tasks where I can (believe me, I prefer to reduce article processing) but it makes the code more complicated and reduces the ratio between hits and false positives. The cost of false positives is much higher than cost of repeat edits. With mass edits like this one, it is safest to keep it simple by only doing one task at a time. Thanks for the suggestion though. Regards. Lightmouse (talk) 12:59, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

You can also turn off bot edits on your watchlist if they annoy you. --Closedmouth (talk) 13:04, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough reply Lightmouse. Don't worry, I have encountered Lightbot a lot! And Closedmouth, I know you can turn off bots for the watchlist, but I like to see what bots are doing so I do not create more work for them when working on future articles :-) I don't know where to suggest new Toolserver tools, but perhaps a tool could be created that takes an article name and shows the edits that bots can be are expected to do. For example at Whaling in Australia the tool could have shown that the years need delinking, that "Twentieth century" needed delinking etc. That way humans can use the tool to bring the articles up to the current style guideline and give bot operators a break.--Commander Keane (talk) 13:54, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

And thanks for the positive follow-up. I don't know about tools either. However, if you look at Misplaced Pages:Peer review you will see the phrase:

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review ...

That may be the kind of thing you mean. I saw it before but the coding was beyond me. Lightmouse (talk) 14:14, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

• I cannot agree with Commander Keane more as to the uselessness of the edits he pointed out. Am I correct in understanding that he believes humans should make those changes? These useless edits are what bots do best, and I am sorry they do not sit well with him. I delink dates too, and I am glad I don't have to do them by hand, one by one. Ohconfucius (talk) 14:23, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I must concur with Commander Keane. I don't remember seeing any clear consensus emerge at the date linking RFC for the kind of edits your bot is making. -- Earle Martin 17:29, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you could provide an example and I can investigate. Lightmouse (talk) 18:16, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Pick any article where your bot is indiscriminately removing year links. For example, Latymer Upper School, where I have twice had to revert it for removing a link in the introduction to the article. -- Earle Martin 10:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the example. Now we can see what the issue is. Firstly, a reader would have to want to click on the link '1624'. Secondly, they would have to learn something of relevance to the article. Things of relevance to the article should be the in origin article itself. The only section of relevance is a repeat of something in the origin article. Lightmouse (talk) 11:59, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but you are completely off the mark with your second and third points. Firstly, believing that you know what the reader wants is a bad idea. The number of potential reasons for clicking on a year link is as large as the number of potential readers of the article. Secondly, your idea of "relevant only" is fatally flawed. When I follow year links it's because I want to know what happened in that year. In this case, I am able to find out that in the same year that the school I went to was founded, Cardinal Richlieu was appointed as an adviser by Louis XIII. Is that relevant to Latymer Upper School? No, not at all. But it enriched my knowledge as a reader, and that kind of freeform learning is something you seem dead set on preventing. -- Earle Martin 17:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not set against preventing anything. The points you make were all made in the recent RFC at wt:mosnum and debated extensively there. Since your points are about date linking policy, perhaps that is where this discussion belongs. Lightmouse (talk) 17:34, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. My point was not to bring the discussion here, but that the recent RFC did not conclusively demonstrate consensus that dates should be delinked. Until such a consensus is clear, you should not be running a bot that performs this activity. -- Earle Martin 19:40, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Earle, we've spent months debating the usefulness of these links to chronological articles. There were two RfCs on it, and I think that the consensus is quite clear. Our Featured Articles and Featured Lists have already implemented this change months ago. Numerous editors voiced support for the change even before it happened—see User:Tony1/Support for the removal of date autoformatting. Indeed, if you want to bring the subject up again, feel free, but don't be surprised if you see a rash of editors suppressing a discussion that has been brought up many times. It is time to move on. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:27, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

"It is time to move on"? How patronizing. I certainly will be bringing the subject up again. And as I pointed out above, no overwhelming consensus was displayed in the RfCs that year links should be expunged in their entirety. I don't know also why you're pointing at some discussion of autoformatting which has nothing to do with the point here. -- Earle Martin 10:27, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

1930s

Hi, your bot did some "cleanup" recently which might be "less than desirable" -- can such be prevented? I, for myself, do not really care, but I think the rules are that an article where non-free media are used has to be linked from the rationale "somehow". Best, 18:13, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

You think it is 'less then desirable'. I think it is desirable and improves the article. You may be interested to note that guidance at Misplaced Pages:CONTEXT#Dates says:

• Chronological items—such as days, years, decades and centuries—should generally not be linked unless they are demonstrably likely to deepen readers' understanding of the topic. Articles about other chronological items or related topics are an exception to this guideline.

If you don't care, then perhaps you will accept an edit from somebody that does. I hope that helps. Lightmouse (talk) 18:33, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

W, although I'd agree this this isn't a good edit, it's ultimately not a problem in this case. It looks like that image was removed from the 1930s article back on December 2nd, so the fair use rationale is no longer needed.

That being said, Lightmouse, please have another look at the diff that W provided — the edit that the bot made was to remove a link to the article from the file namespace. Had the image not already been removed from the article, the effect of this would have been to break the fair use rationale for the use of that image within the article. This definitely falls outside of Misplaced Pages:CONTEXT#Dates. I suspect that your bot is coded to skip past the Image namespace, and it may just need to be updated to also skip past the File namespace now that the namespace has been converted. I've seen that change cause problems in other areas as well. Mlaffs (talk) 19:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see now. It was a bad edit. I have stopped the bot from doing that now. I haven't time to respond in detail right now, I may want to discuss the nature of file namespace etc a bit more when I have time. Thank you very much for the feedback. Lightmouse (talk) 19:18, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

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)