User talk:BattyBot/Archive

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A brownie for you!

Nice job!! P10kaka (talk) 17:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Yum - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Removing stub tag

Hallo, I noticed the bot removing two stub tags in this edit. Now I'd probably agree that article is not a stub, but I worry about a bot removing stub tags automatically. I don't see it on the bot's page as one of its defined tasks. What rules does it use in removing stub tags? Sometimes an article has one or more stub tags which provide much more detailed classification than the Categories yet given to an article (eg a biog which may have Category:Living people as its only category), so by removing the stub tags useful information could be lost. PamD 09:49, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Pam! I've added a note on User:BattyBot to explain that changes made while performing its defined tasks are AWB's general fixes. There's a link to the list of these general fixes in the edit summary for each edit BattyBot makes. In particular, AWB "Removes {{stub}} if article has more than 500 words (comments, categories and persondata are excluded from word count)."

I'm glad that this article contained a good category, and agree that some do not. However, the beauty of the wiki concept is that nothing is ever lost - every edit can be seen in the Page history. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Edits Break Format

I noticed the bot seems to break the table layout as seen in this article [1] ♠♠ BanëJ ♠♠ ^(Talk) 11:12, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi BanëJ! Sorry that my bot's edit broke the table. I manually added the missing curly braces to Nicky Wu in these edits, and then sucessfully reran the bot in this edit. I've reported this as a bug to the AWB developers. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:34, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Categorizing

So wait, why am I being de-categorized? The Uncyclopedian (talk) 22:34, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Uncyclopedian! Per WP:USERNOCAT: "User pages are not articles, and thus do not belong in content categories such as Living people or Biologists. They can however be placed in user categories – subcategories of Wikipedians, such as Wikipedian biologists – which assist collaboration between users. See Wikipedia:User categories for further information."

Looking at this edit, Category:American Wikipedians was not changed since it is appropriate for user pages, but the others were converted to links because they are intended only for articles. While BattyBot just converts the categories to links in case the user page is an article draft, you may want to remove these category links.

Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 23:12, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Further to the above, re this edit: the page was already prevented from being categorised because of the <nowiki>...</nowiki>. The "category" does not exist, and is not intended to: it is a piece of copy&paste text which I use when creating or amending articles. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:24, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Another, here: again, none of the categories were active - they were either within a HTML comment tag or the surrounding parser functions meant that the page could not have been in the category. Essentially it's the difference between {{cite journal}} and {{subst:cite journal}} - they do exactly the same job. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:07, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Redrose! You're right that the bot should not have made edits to these pages. I apologize for the inconvenience I caused you. Thanks for letting me know! GoingBatty (talk) 01:21, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, believe it or not, all the categories I gave to myself are true. I actually was born in 1995, I actually was born in New Hampshire, I actually am of Irish, German, French, Moldovan and Indian descent, and I actually am a living person. Oh, and one other thing, please reply to me on my talk page next time. The Uncyclopedian (talk) 21:12, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I was only born in New Hampshire, I don't live there currently however. Just thought you wanted to know. (I currently live in the state of Oregon, FYI) The Uncyclopedian (talk) 21:18, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for contributing to Tax uncertainty

Just came here to thank you for your valuable contributions. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:28, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. I've made some manual updates to the article as well. GoingBatty (talk) 16:56, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, that's great. I tried to add the author/reporter's name to the first reference, but I can't get it right. This by the way is the reason I always use bare URL's - I find the templates too complicated to handle, and I am not sure they really buy us anything(?) Ottawahitech (talk) 18:30, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Your addition of |author=[[Sandra Block]] was definitely a step in the right direction. I changed it to |last=Block |first=Sandra so it will appear as "Block, Sandra" without the redlink. The benefit of citation templates is to format citations in a consistent way, as an alternative to formatting the citations by hand. If you prefer to use bare URLs, you may want to use Reflinks to create the citation templates for you - although you should always double check that Reflinks creates the right parameters. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 23:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Bot changing things on user's sandbox

This is not a gripe, but I thought I ought to let you know that whilst I appreciate the good job most of the bots do on Wikipedia, you may want to take a look at your coding so it doesn't interfere with a user's sandbox page, which will naturally contain errors. As it is this correction has highlighted one I missed when I copied the article to the proper wiki page, so I will need to correct it. Rimmer1993 (talk) 10:59, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Same issue. I tend to work on major revisions in my sandbox rather than adding revisions to articles on a piecemeal basis. I'd appreciate it if I didn't see bot edits to my sandbox. Please fix. Wyvern t (talk) 15:44, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Same issue here. The bot added colons to categories despite them being commented out. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:03, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

BattyBot has been approved to make only ONE change to user pages: remove article categories from user pages per Wikipedia:Categorization#Categorizing user pages, which states:

"user subpages that are draft versions of articles should be kept out of content categories. If you copy an article from mainspace to userspace and it already contains categories, remove them or comment them out. Restore the categories when you move the draft back into article space."

The bot was designed to change any article categories from [[Category:Foo]] to [[:Category:Foo]]. This edit to User:Rimmer1993/sandbox and this edit to User:Wyvern t/sandbox were edits to remove your sandbox versions of articles from the various categories, while keeping the categories visible to you. I used an edit summary of "changed article categories to links per WP:USERNOCAT" to try to convey this information, with additional details posted at User:BattyBot.

However, this edit to User:Scjessey/sandbox was NOT appropriate, since Scjessey had already commented out the categories using . I apologize for this mistake on my part, and will not rerun the bot task until I have ensured that the bot will not make this mistake again. Thanks for letting me know! GoingBatty (talk) 00:51, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for letting me know. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:40, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

No problem, i wasn't aware of that piece of advice. Useful to know for future sandbox work. Rimmer1993 (talk) 10:12, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

More of the same

This isn't really an issue for me since I'm about to blank the sandbox anyway, but I just wanted to let you know that the bot is still delinking commented-out categories. In this April 5 edit BattyBot made its normal delinking edit to improperly cover several commented-out categories but I ignored it and simply reverted after seeing the above comments on your talk page. Now today (April 14) I notice that the bot has again improperly delinked all of my commented-out categories. If you've already implemented the change then there may still be some kinks to work out. So I thought I'd let you know.

On a more positive note, it was BattyBot's minorly annoying April 5 edit that finally got me off my butt and made me finish the project that had been on hold for about a year so it's not all bad news. Definitely a useful bot all in all. -Thibbs (talk) 09:27, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Note: I don't know if this is the reason or not, but I should note that the categories weren't individually commented out, but rather they were commented out in a lump. So it was not situation #1 below, but rather it was situation #2:

Hope that helps. -Thibbs (talk) 09:37, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

...And to be even more specific it was really more like this:
<!-- header several external links nav templates DEFAULTSORT

[[Category:Foo]] [[Category:Bar]] [[Category:Baz]]

language links -->

So in other words, the commented-out categories were embedded in a block of commented out material which might make it harder for BattyBot to notice... Again I hope that helps clarify. -Thibbs (talk) 09:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Thibbs! Thanks for providing that example. After the conversations above, I changed the bot so it skips user pages that match:

(<!-*|<nowiki>|<noinclude>|<includeonly>)\s?\n?\[\[Category:

However, that doesn't skip the block example you provided. Therefore, I'll manually make each of the bot's edits for this task until I figure out how to avoid your example. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:23, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

No problem on my part. Sorry to have created more work for you though! Good luck. -Thibbs (talk) 20:45, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

• You should not exclude <noinclude>. Categories enclosed in <noinclude> </noinclude> are active, and should be altered by the bot.

• The method I always use is to enclose categories, along with other stuff, in <pre> </pre>. I've never caught the bot skulking around my userspace, so it may already recognize this situation (although it's not in the regex above), but I figured I'd point it out in case it doesn't.

• Also, would it be possible to only do categories which exist? Some users purposely include redlinked categories on their User and/or User talk pages for humorous effect. Several users include one such category of interest to me, which the bot changed in at least one instance. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 01:53, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Mandarax! Thanks for the feedback!

The example I found with <noinclude> appeared to be inside a template someone was testing, which seemed to be outside the intent of the bot. If I find another one I'll give it a second look.
I've added <pre> to my exclude list. I don't see it used on your user or sandbox pages, which is probably why BattyBot hasn't visited you.
I can't think of a way to avoid purposely redlinked humorous categories, except to limit the searches for user pages that specifically have other article categories, but I am open to your suggestions. I've reverted the edit you provided, and will exclude this category in future runs. They could create something like Category:Wikipedians who worship the Mandarax (but shouldn't have to solely to avoid this bot).

Thanks again! GoingBatty (talk) 03:12, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

A related issue

BattyBot, you should not change links to Category:X2, because it is a test category, not a "content category". WP:USERCAT only applies to "content" categories. Thank you. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:42, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Russ - I've added Category:X1 and Category:X2 to the list of categories that BattyBot will ignore. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:24, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

New to Wikipidea - would like to suggest a change to Furniture Industry Research Association Page

Hello - with my limited knowledge of Wikipedia - I have noticed that you have editied the FIRA wikipedia page at some point.

Can I ask you to make another change to the page for me, as I don't know how to?! It says that the Furniture Industry Research Association is also known as FIRA - International. This isn't correct, as the Furniture Industry Research Association is a membership Association, where as FIRA International is the name of a group of organisations providing support services to the furniture industry, including the adminitration of the Furniture Industry Research Association.

Many thanks, Tterrab - 05.07.12 — Preceding unsigned comment added by TterrabH (talk • contribs) 08:03, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Tterrab! Editing an article is the same as editing a talk page: click the Edit link at the top of the page, make the changes, add an edit summary, and click "Save page". At the bottom of the Furniture Industry Research Association Wikipedia article is a link to their official website at http://www.fira.co.uk/ which states "Welcome to FIRA International". Therefore, it seems the article is correct. If I'm missing some subtle point, I suggest you post your concern to Talk:Furniture Industry Research Association, so people more knowledgable with the association can assist you. Happy editing! 11:14, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

please run task 4 before task 8

Hi there, recently your bot changed a bunch of unreferenced tags to BLP unsourced. However, almost all of them had a ref as an external link or just not formatted properly. I'm not sure how "smart" your task 4 is at converting unref to ref improve but I don't think bots should be replacing one incorrect tag with another. Please review the poor accuracy of your bot and how it can be improved before you run task 8 again. Thanks The-Pope (talk) 09:59, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi The-Pope! Thanks for the feedback. I dug through your contributions to find an example of an edit you're concerned about. BattyBot's Task 4 uses AWB's Tagger when changing {{Unreferenced}} to {{Refimprove}} if an article has existing references. Since Dag Otto Lauritzen has no references, it would have skipped the article. The instructions at Template:Unreferenced state: "Watch out for lists of general references that someone has incorrectly listed under ==External links==. If the link leads to a reliable source that supports some article content, then that website is a reference, not an external link." I think the process you used to determine that the sources are reliable and supports the article content is not suitable for a bot. However, if you have a suggestion on how to improve the logic, we can open an AWB feature request. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:52, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I've never thought that determining what is or isn't referenced is really suitable for a bot, which is why I was interested to know how you/AWB do it. I think that the unreferenced/living person intersection is also too often incorrectly tagged for a bot to do and should be a database report instead. Bot edits should be more accurate than the average editor and this is just not good enough and probably too complicated for a bot to do accurately. Thanks, The-Pope (talk) 17:25, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

AWB is conservative: it will only change {{Unreferenced}} to {{Refimprove}} if the article contains <ref> (but not <ref group="foo">) or {{sfn}}. It will change {{Unreferenced}} to {{BLP unsourced}} if the article contains {{Unreferenced}} and Category:Living people. AWB's general fixes don't tag articles as unreferenced. GoingBatty (talk) 14:36, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Wrong edit summary

Hi! This edit added had a wrong edit summary. Cheers. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 10:02, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Hellknowz! At the time I made the list of articles for AWB to process, The basement collection had the {{Multiple issues}} template. While the job was processing other articles, other users edited the article and renamed it. By the time my bot got to it, it was just a redirect, and AWB's general fixes just added the {{R from other capitalisation}} template. I have AWB set up to skip all articles that still have the multiple issues template. Glad someone else fixed the issues - that's the most important thing! Thanks for letting me know about this issue. GoingBatty (talk) 16:39, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikify is deprecated

In this edit you replaced {{deadend}} with the deprecated {{wikify}}. I'm not sure what tag we should be using at present for "needs more links", as "deadend" is defined in the Twinkle list as "has few or no links" but then appears on screen as "has no links". Hmmm. PamD 06:59, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Found it, at Template:Deadend: {{underlinked}}. But Twinkle doesn't offer it. Now going to Talk:Twinkle. PamD 07:01, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Already been raised. PamD 07:05, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi PamD! Looks like {{underlinked}} was created on September 29. I look forward to the AWB developers updating the General fixes soon. In the meantime, I'll think about how I can identify all the articles my bot and I tagged with {{wikify}} and change them to {{underlinked}}. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by GoingBatty (talk • contribs) 17:21, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Object to changing of things

It should say "The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's General Notability Guidelines or its notability guideline for ". Link to the general notability guidelines as well as the subject specific ones. Dream Focus 09:30, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

For changes to the {{notability}} template, I suggest you start a conversation at Template talk:Notability, including why you think it would be advantageous to link to both guidelines. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:31, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Teamwork Barnstar
	Can you be my friend please Haloreach1234 (talk) 07:43, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure bots have friends. :-) Seriously though, I agree with the comment that Jethrobot posted on your talk page. If you have a question about BattyBot's edits, please feel free to post here. If you would like help with something else in Wikipedia, please feel free to post on my talk page. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 22:48, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Dead end vs underlinked

Sorry, but i'm getting tired of removing all the underlinked tags from pages that are already tagged with dead end. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 14:44, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't realize that there were so many additions being done. I'll run different tasks until the SVN is released. In the meantime, you may want to add a wikilink and remove the {{dead end}} tag instead. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:08, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Nayaka Article

Sir, This is Premloganathan, Now i am in exam mood, so the preparations of Nayaka article in sand box, it will be expandable in grate manner with historical evidences with gazetteer support of documents. Now i am going to write examination, so i will be back on 10th January 2013, to discuss and continue the same... thanks for timely supports....WISH YOU THE NEW YEAR IN ADVANCE... With warm regards... by Premloganathan--Premloganathan (talk) 12:49, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Good luck with your article! GoingBatty (talk) 00:02, 21 December 2012 (UTC)