User:Nixeagle/Talk/Archive/2

(Kevinalewis)
Hi, The obvious use - which I'm sure you have though of is identifying Novel articles, find a category description within the article and assigning suitable Categories and Stub notices in the bottom as appropriate. Obviously stubs will either need to be derived from general stub assignments already made "Book" or "Novel" or perhaps an assessment of article size. It would be nice to do this before the Stub people manage to delete all our stub templates though. as you might see a number have been put up for deletion. You may debate here I am watching this page.:: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page)  07:00, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

My first comment (EAGLE)
I have been programming a bot that can potentially be used for this project. It's name is Gnome (Bot)
 * The code is versitile...Oh let me get to the point. What uses do you think this project can have for a bot. Anything will do, as it will not be hard to make the program do it!!! I wanted to do something different that could help this project.

ThanksEagle (talk) (desk) 02:43, 4 March 2006 (UTC) Please respond on my page.

P.S. The bot is nearly done!!! (beta) as it is untestedEagle (talk) (desk) 02:43, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Response to you (EAGLE)

 * Sounds great, the only problem is that the bot still has to go though testing, and debugging. Is there a way to hold off the stub people for about 2 weeks?? By than I think I can get the bot fully functional and accepted here on wikipedia. The problem will be to get the bot to recognize what category is which... perhaps you can help me think of keywords to look for. The regex is going to take more than 2 weeks to set up...as the testing will require me to watch it's edits. Please talk with me...I really want to help. Eagle (talk) (desk) 15:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


 * P.S I will go ahead and state that the perpose of my bot is for this project, Thanks for giving me somewhere to work!!!Eagle (talk) (desk) 15:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


 * P.S2 Also if we go any further with this, can you do me a favor and mention the bot somewhere in the project disscussion pages, It will help me in proving that my bot is usefull according to WP:BOT. Thanks agian!!Eagle (talk) (desk) 15:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Bug (EAGLE)
As of right now my coding has hit a small runtime bug, Untill I find it, (hopefully before I get out the hammer) the bot can't do much...The problem is in the get category function. Aboslutly needed if the bot is to be used for adding categorys, I will let you know when it is fixed!!!Eagle (talk) (desk) 15:27, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I found the bug, Is working as expected!!!Eagle (talk) (desk) 16:13, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

(EAGLE)
Which stub categories are being proposed for removal???Eagle (talk) (desk) 15:35, 4 March 2006 (UTC) I looked at the up for deletion and found 3 novel stubs. 2 I could defend as I could reasonalby write code to find these. Unfortonatly the 3rd Spec-fict-novel-stub I can't defend, as I cannot see how to find specific keywords, or regex formulas for this.Eagle (talk) (desk) 15:45, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

(Kevinalewis)

 * Pretty much given up on that one myself. I think we will just see that one go, nevermind. We need to get back to the articles soon anyway. The other two are the only ones at the moment. :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page)  19:34, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

(EAGLE)

 * Can you please post on my page, Sorry for the inconveince, and what do you think I should do with the bot, What to start with???Eagle (talk) (desk) 06:32, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Request for some help (EAGLE)
Sorry for the mishmash above, (Ill just add to it) Seeing that you are a programmer, perhaps you can help me come up with regex formulas, (I just realized that you knew how to program). They need to be something that are very specific as to minimize false hits ect.Eagle (talk) (desk) 15:50, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Successful Trial Run (EAGLE)
The bot made perfect user assisted edits to wikipedia. Not to worry they were done in a sandbox. If you want to see go to User:Eagle 101/Sandbox.

Pushing it (EAGLE)
Give me an idea of what category to start with, this will be what I use to go for a bot flag. The code is done, besides making sure that it make no mistakes on wikipedia!!!

Basically its on your word, and GO!!!Eagle (talk) (desk) 04:08, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Bot flag (Martin)
Hi, if you are running that slowly then you will not need a bot flag. thanks Martin 22:52, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Stub stats(Grutness...wha? )
Hi - I've made a couple of comments from a WP:WSS regular's view at Wikipedia talk:Statistics. Basically it boils down to "yes, automate the counts, but please keep using bins rather than exact numbers". Grutness...wha?  23:08, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

(Conscious) WP:WSS/ST update
Absolutely, please go for it. Automatic updates will be of great help. (Though it means I'll need to find another use for my code, but I've spent not so much time on it...) Conscious 05:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * a slight (tiny) quibble. Normally we dont use "<" once the bins reach pages, so you don't need to change "5 pages" to "<5 pages". "5 pages" simply says that the category goes onto a fifth page (801-1000 stubs), which is exactly the ame (or near enough) to "<5 pages" meaning "less than five complete category pages". Other than that it looks really good! Grutness...wha?  06:01, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I've been hoping somebody would create such a tool, so it is a great initiative. Thumbs up from here! --Valentinian (talk) 12:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


 * You see, I'm not using a bot, but rather a list that Alai generates from database dumps. I then run a (local) script to update WP:WSS/ST. So if your bot worked, it would save some work. Conscious 06:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, the main point of my script is to check every line against this regexp:, ignoring everything after the last link to a template. You can take a look at the full source. Conscious 06:20, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Book stub > Novel stub
You said "If possible, leave the ones that should be book stubs on here. I want to know how accurate my regex was... thanks"


 * Have been I think it amounts to one so far and I added a note beside it. :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page)  10:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

your message...
Your message has me confused, and I think it might benefit from more context. What category are we talking about? And what did I do that caused a problem? — Mar. 9, '06 [19:47] 
 * Oh, ok. I assume you're using a regex to only search the section header, so it would be sufficient to just de-link the header, rather than removing the entire discussion thread. — Mar. 9, '06 [20:02] 
 * So, it should be okay to leave the items on the page without links, so people can still check to see recent results, no? Personally I think it would be better to split sfd into pages so that the inactive stuff would be on a different set of wiki-text, where it won't confuse the bot, but still be visible to the human reader, see CFD for an example. — Mar. 9, '06 [20:12] 

Nevermind, I see what you mean. — Mar. 9, '06 [20:15] 
 * It didn't occur to me to remove it from the master list, because I seriously doubted anybody kept the master list up to date, and I forgot it existed. — Mar. 9, '06 [20:26] 
 * Ok. I think I fully understand now. Originally I thought you were talking about the SFD page, so I was confused, yet again. (end of thread). — Mar. 9, '06 [20:33] 
 * I must admit I wasn't sure what you meant either, because I never knew that WP:SC was a shortcut (I always use WP:WSS/ST), and because it wasn't me who deleted those particular stub types (I just tidied up the residue, as it was). The redlinked categories and stub-types are always left until the discussion at WP:SFD is archived, so that one or the other doesn't get accidentally left behind. Because of that there may be a couple of days lag between the deletion of a category and its removal from the list. BTW, there's no problem with the "<" symbols - I just didn't want you making extra work for yourself by adding them all by hand, which is what it looked like you were doing! Grutness...wha?  02:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Not an admin thing - just an archivist thing :) Apart from leaving a note on the SFD talk page and adding it to the instructions at the top of the SFD page, I can't think of any way round it. opefully that'll be enugh to remind us to remove it when the stub type is deleted. And yes, your work IS very much appreciated! Grutness...wha?  02:58, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi yet again (as soon as I leave my talk page there seems to be a new message there!). I added a note on the SFD page and its talk page - if you want to add a "Bot running" warning at the top of the stub type list, feel free to do so - but also say that you're going to do that on the st=u type talk page. As for - I removed that from the stub list about quarter of an hour ago when I deleted the category, so you only need to purge the page! Grutness...wha?  03:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * My typo. it should read stub type talk page - that is - Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types (the talk page of WP:SC). Grutness...wha?  03:48, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Just make a box and say something like this:

BOT RUNNING:  Please do not edit this page while this message is present.


 * Add it to the page whenever you run the bot. BTW, I don't know what admins have to do with it - it isn't admins who edit that page, it's general users, particularly those in the Stub sorting Wikiproject. Grutness...wha?  04:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

WSS/ST updates
Your edits are stripping off the update dates completely, are turning the counts by numbers of pages into hundreds of articles (i.e. 11 pages -> <2200, which is actually "no change"), and are making the diffs basically unusable on this page. Perhaps you should be doing this on a temp-page until the teething problems are sorted out. (And please also see my comments elsewhere on the scheme for using the bot in this way.) Alai 05:03, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * ... ah, you already did, thanks. I hope I don't seem excessively grumpy about this;  your enthusiasm for doing this is obviously only to be encouraged.  One or two "dry runs" wouldn't hurt, though!  Alai 05:08, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, I'm not suggesting you're doing any worse than being a tad hasty (and maybe that's just my own lack of WP:BOLDness talking). No apology necessary, by any means.  In principle it's a very good idea, but I do think it could be introduced a bit more gradually, and integrated a bit more "seemlessly" (or seem-lite, at least).
 * Personally I prefer the page-count, as a more intuitive way of presenting "round numbers", but sure, it's not a big deal. But if everything's switched over to that format, suddenly the page-diffs will look as if 90-odd categories have changed size all at once...  even if none of them have.  I suppose the same is true for the dates.  I'm not saying you need to revert the changes done to date;  but maybe just leave the first batch as a "sample", and give people time to take note of the change.  Alai 05:27, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I take your point about the dates. Granted the transition would be a one-time deal, so perhaps that's not a difficulty. Obviously I agree that getting rid of the need for "manual" counting is a good idea, but as I mentioned, Conscious has started doing this (I'm not quite sure exactly how) without changing the format at all, and using off-line stats rather than ones that require a bot, which is in principle a much more resource-efficient way of doing it (at least if one already has access to the database). Equally, it may be possible to integrate the two... Alai 05:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

No, I didn't edit the /ST list at all, much less manually! I produced this from a db query, and Conscious edited it in, using some sort of script I believe he said (you'd have to check with him on the details). Alai 05:51, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The issue with updating /ST is much the same either way. The difference is the database query takes seconds, not three hours to run. Currently I'm running the query on a local copy of (part of) the database, from the download site. Alai 06:05, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Nope, I can guarantee that they don't match! /ST lists stub types that're approved/"in good standing"; the feed lists everything with " stubs" in the category name, much of which was never proposed, is horribly undersized, may not even have been noticed by stub-sorters, etc, etc. I assume Conscious's script just ignored the "extras". BTW, if you'd prefer the "Stub-counts" list in a somewhat different format, just say the word. Alai 06:19, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Bot questions
Is the source code for your bot available? You've been making some changes to WP:WSS/ST to move towards a fully automated count of stub types (which is good!) but you seem to have hit a few stumbling blocks (Page counts, Redlink categories, etc). Given the freely editabe nature of the wiki, I'm sure you'll encounter other problems with the formatting of the page that could halt execution. Perhaps if others could look at the source code, they might be able to help you resolve these problems?

How often do you intend to run the bot? I notice that on Alai's talk page, you mentioned only running it on Saturdays. If so, it might be worthwhile to reintroduce the dates in the stub count. --TheParanoidOne 06:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Anything you can provide would be useful. --TheParanoidOne 11:02, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

DB dumps
The database dumps are freely available, if you want to work with them directly. I use a partial dump of the page and category-link information, which is in SQL (specifically, the mysql flavour). The dump of the whole database is in XML, I believe. If you meant my output from the SQL queries, then basically it'd be essentially the same as in the page I linked to, but I could tweak the order, the per-line format, that sort of thing. Alai 06:10, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Eagle! Question about Editing
I just joined and left some discussion comments. That seemed self-explanatory. I am wondering however about editing. I added one paragraph to the article on Marc Edmund Jones. Is that now accepted by Wikipedia and visible to all users? I would guess so, but who has final say? I can imagine someone coming in and removing my paragraph and me re-writing it and on and on ad nauseam. How is all that handled? Who is "the authority"? (What I wrote is known by me to be true and non-controversial, by the way.)

Thanks; still wondering . ..
. . . in a case where there is radical disagreement either about facts or opinions or evaluations, it seems there might be a "football contest" of X changing Y's post on Tuesday thursday saturday and Y going in to change it back on Wednesday Friday Sunday. I guess the key is "trust" here, or hoping that consensus and good will shall prevail. . . I just put the four tildes below; do I need more? (That was enough for the discussion pages.)

Hugh Higgins 20:30, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Transclusion-style redirect
Something that achieves the effect of a redirect, using transclusion. Look at the code of the template in question. Alai 23:21, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
 * No prob. :) Easy to lapse into wiki-jargon on these meta-pages...  Alai 23:26, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Formatting
Sounds like a good plan to me. Good luck with your op! Alai 06:15, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Good answers
Just the kind of answer I was looking for.

No I am not a disputative type who wants to get in arguments about the content. I would save that for discussion. I am glad there is a procedure for resolving disputes. So far I have been impressed by the even-handed nature of most articles, for I am interested in some pretty controversial topics.

My respect for Wikipedia is increasing. I did lose some respect for it a year or two ago when I noted one birthdate for someone was wrong, and it appeared at the top of Google Search as from Wikipedia. If I had been a member then I would have suggested a change - might not have been bold enough to just make it myself.

Further ?? comes to me: Is there someplace to write a justification of a change you make? Suppose I had changed that birthdate: I would have liked to write "Well I have checked x number of sources and all but one give this date." Or something like that, so people would know why I made the change.

Thanks Eagle for the clear response.

Colonel Marksman here
I've got a picture that is simply no more than a poor screen shot of a television series "Invasion America". I know I need to put down copyright stuff on it, but how the heck do I do that with this pic? I would contribute more pictures as well, but how would I work out the copyright information? Invasion America is a series that was never at one point under production and showed only two seasons (one was an edited version for younger audiences). I am still kinda perplexed how I would label these.

Your replies are too friendly. (LOL) Colonel Marksman 19:26, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia: Good Faith and Common Sense
Good replies, Eagle, I am keeping them for reference when needed. Meanwhile, it does sound like good faith and common sense. Thanks.

I thought I put the four tildes under my name. . . but this time did not put a space before them. Shall try again. Good to be here.

Hugh Higgins 06:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Alba: Gnome(bot) as janitor
Hello. Are you still interested in pursuing the idea of using Gnomebot as a janitor on cleanup? If so:

Alba 06:38, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Do you concur with the proposed regexp and 0.001 value for minWikiLink?
 * Can Gnomebot also run the first two requested tasks?
 * Would you be running Gnome yourself, or would you require I do it? (Note: I have existant but limited capacity to do so.)


 * We probably need to test it with a range, say 0.01%, 0.05%, 0.1%, 0.5%, 1.0% -- not actually changing anything, just pulling a short list of matching articles to see where the correct set point is. I pulled 0.001 out of thin air.


 * In the case of very bad formatting, the other two brackets might *not* be there. Remember that the target article set is of those "needing cleanup"!


 * Pages that are already categories should be in the Category: namespace; pages intended to be lists will have "List" in their name; otherwise, a page with a very high number of bullets or containing nothing but a table are highly likely to be lists. Regexps targeting these three items should catch most of the target set with few false positives.


 * What is the next step in the process of bot approval? Do we need to note Gnomebot's new behaviors at WP:B?

Thanks so much, and I'm excited to see Gnomebot fly!

Alba 00:19, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow, what a burst of work!

 * On lists: Do you get the name of the page as well as its text? It would be safer and more effective to search on the article name than the text.


 * On distinguishing list pages from pages with lists: If list is the only major category (i.e., we have /==[L|l]list(\w|\s)+==/ and no other instances of /==(\w|\s)+==/ ) we can safely say it's a list page. Otherwise I would leave it alone. In order to prevent out-of-control bot behavior, a high specificity is more important than a high sensitivity (google the two words together if you don't know the technical definitions).


 * On the number of bullets in a list: I would set the number significantly higher than 5... try 20 or so. There are numerous pages with imbedded lists that would have 5 members, but few with 20+. We may want to set it even higher.


 * The disambig code and lists look fine. Please note that we do NOT want to have to human verify this; the whole point is to reduce human behavior! I know the bot will have to pass RC patrol at first, but the goal is most definitely for Gnome (as the WP:CU janitor bot) to achieve bot permission status and operate silently and stealthily. Alba 02:20, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup tags

 * Sorry, should have mentioned that. The full set of cleanup tags in existance may be found at Cleanup resources.


 * We want to catch, but not  , imho.

Let me be a bit more specific
The general idea here is to migrate nonspecific tags like into more specific categories, so people will be more likely to attend to them. Let's look at a proposed behavior list:


 * Cleanup --> wikify, if low wiki link list
 * Note that we might ought to request wikify-date|XX if this will be a large set
 * Cleanup + List --> cleanup-list, if cleanup and article seems to be a list
 * Cleanup + Image --> cleanup-image, if cleanup and in the Image: namespace
 * Cleanup + Disambig --> disambig-cleanup


 * Add to a cleanup page if:
 * None are found (the obvious regexp is /==(\s+|\w+)+==/
 * Page has been wikified
 * (i.e., NOT a candidate for the wikify tag as per the test for cleanup-->wikify above)
 * Page is longer than 10 kilobytes

Since Cleanup Resources gets edited from time to time, this is now a longer list than I first proposed, but nonetheless I think it covers everything that can be safely automated by Gnome(bot). Alba 13:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

As if I'm not suggesting enough behaviors already...
It would be nice if, once a month, the main list on WP:CU got archived for everything more than 1 month old. Is this possible? (We can ask some other bot to do it if it's too much trouble. I know there are plenty of bots out there that do similar tasks already. Alba 13:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

We are posted to Wikipedia talk:Cleanup.
Alba 13:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

March 21 update
First off, I should mention some things:


 * I also started a discussion on how cleanup should work at Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal. Depending on how that turns out, some minor tweaks might be needed to Gnome(bot) behaviors.
 * There's also a discussion out there (lost the link) to make wikify classified by month the way cleanup is.
 * 10 kb... hmm, never thought of it before. I guess 2000 or 2500 words would work.
 * As for topic classification, it would be very nice to semi-automate but i would be VERY SCARED if we didn't do it as text dumps, at least for a while. Key words may or may not be enough to sort... and we are likely to have a high false negative rate. Alba 03:23, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * It has been claimed that User:Bluebot was already doing wikify assignments to pages with zero links. Since I haven't seen much evidence of this, I make no assertions as to the validity of this claim. Alba 03:27, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Voting rationale on SFD
I see you've just made a number of nominations on SFD, on the basis of their being unproposed and undersized. And yet, you also vote to "keep" (which apparently can't be changed, because it's in bold(?) the SFD on the school types which are, well, unproposed and undersized. If you're planning on being an SFD "regular" I do hope you're not planning on making a habit of ignoring the size criteria, as frankly it's annoying enough to have the creators show up and do so.  Alai 01:58, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I commented here rather than on the page, since I wanted to make the broader point about voting intentions as regards the size criteria in general, not just about this one specific case. Besides, these threaded discussions can get unreasonably long if they spring up in the middle of a "vote".  As I said, these are really small, unless you have a much different definition of "really small" that the WSS page uses.  At any rate, I'm sorry if my "tone" was a tad testy;  I do find the often-marginal struggle to delete the pretty-clearly-deleteable at SFD somewhat frustrating at times, but I shall endeavour not to get too grumpy about it.  Alai 04:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * No, it's not policy at all, "just" a guideline. But if we start voting to keep stub types that're 10-20 articles in size on a regular basis, based purely on a given editor's desire for a type on That Particular Thing (and where it's entirely feasible to merge into a reasonable-sized parent), it'll quickly become next to impossible to delete any of them as "undersized", and before you know it, we'll have about 25,000 stub "types", at which point they'd be pretty useless.  Alai 05:10, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup Taskforce
The article Benson Deng has been added to your desk. Looks like an easy one. Please accept, pass or let me know and I'll reassign it. Thank you. RJFJR 04:46, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * There's a subpage at Cleanup Taskforce/Benson Deng for discussion and comments on how cleanup is going. You can also discuss it on the article's talk page.  You don't have to do anything to accept.  The ahrd part about assigning articles is that a lot of people have gone inactive and when looking for the actives I have to search throguh them. RJFJR 05:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Book to novel autolist
you might need to regenerate this list WikiProject Novels/Book to novel autolist - as someone has very helpfully done a lot of work on it - but unfortunately not removed the titles worked on. :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page)  14:08, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Book --> Novel
Greetings! I discovered your list just yesterday after I had already done some sorting. I will make notes on those remaining. Good luck with your project. Her Pegship 20:42, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I will let you know if I need something generated, but for now I'm OK. Thanks! Her Pegship 20:57, 21 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I shaved a few more off the list. This is very handy.Her Pegship 04:22, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, Yes now have I Thanked you, not sure if I have, anyway long overdue then, Many thanks for all your work on the Book-Stubs > Novel-Stubs issue. This has been a great help. If I have already thanked you treat this as another one. Very grateful. I'm sure we will have need of your services again before too long. :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page)  08:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup--CategoryBot
Hallo, Eagle! It seems that the categorization-by-topic is going to happen somehow, according to this shiny new proposal. They don't mention any sort of automatic categorization system, though--seems like it'll all be done manually, with a taskforce to do it. It might be the best way to do it, or at least the best way to get people involved, which is really the important part. If you're involved in one part of the process, chances are you might continue and do more complex/responsible jobs, right? Good luck with GnomeBot, and I'll keep an eye out for any progress on the Cleanup Disaster (sounds like I'm talking about the mess of some crazy toddlers, heh). Tamarkot 01:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Tamarkot somehow missed the mention of Gnome(bot) on the Cleanup sorting proposal -- I'll have to highlight it better. Anyway, what can be automated, should be automated. Gnome(bot) DEFINITELY will be needed! Anything that Gnome(bot) can classify is one less piece of work for the eyeballs, who will be busy enough. In fact, if we can get some of the topic-specific categorization done automatically, it would be FANTASTIC, as people discussing cleanup sorting have said that they are worried there would be too much work in sorting!!! THANK YOU for working extra on this... although this proposal will have to stay up for ~ 2 weeks gaining consensus. I'll be sure to highlight Gnome(bot)'s role. Alba 12:02, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, heavens, I didn't mean for you to have Gnome(bot) drop its original mission! Surely it can still do the novel sorting -- that's a much slower mission and would be a drop in the bucket compared to the cleanup sorting! Don't abandon your original tasking on my account! Alba 12:30, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Offline for a bit
Eagle, this looks fantastic. Unfortunately I'm about to hop a plane, so I can't give your work the thought it deserves. I'll talk about it when I get back! Alba 17:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Eagle
I had a look at the Gnome bot list and the recommendations it was making and found that I pretty well agreed with all of them. It looks like it will do the job and cut the backlog. I have been going through them by hand and find that the most I can cope with is two or three days a session. Also I have to depend a lot on subjective judgement which is not ideal. Thanks for your support for my ideas. ping 08:26, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Stub types update
I'm very sorry I have made you wait for so long, but I missed your message somehow. So, I'll try to explain how my script works:


 * 1) It gets one line of WP:WSS/ST at a time.
 * 2) This line is updated only if it has a link to a category in form Category: SomeCategory and a link to a template in form SomeTemplate.
 * 3) Then it takes the number of stubs in the category and forms a string like " - <x on date" or " - x pages on date".
 * 4) This string replaces anything after the last "}}" in the line.

If you want more specifics or need help in coding certain parts of this procedure, I'm ready to help you. Conscious 18:29, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Desert Combat
I am putthing this here now to let every one know Gnome bot made this edit.

Is it correct, personally I can't tell.Eagle (talk) (desk) 22:03, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Nothing new
No, I must have expressed myself badly, I intended to ask Alba to look at the suggestions that I had already made to you since I knew he was involved. There was nothing new. Sorry about the confusion 22:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

What is the purpose of Gnome?
Why would arbitrary deletion of cleanup tags serve any function? User:Zoe|(talk) 23:46, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Bot activity inquiry.
Good day,

Could you please explain the reasoning behind a recent edit to the Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay stub which was carried out by your bot? Folajimi 01:52, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Gnome bot complaints
If you are here to complain about gnome bot, please check Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

I have already explained why the bot did what it did.

If your compliant is different than the one on the link, by all means tell me about it I just am puttting this here to direct you to where I answeared one complaint, It may or may not be the same as yours

Eagle (talk) (desk) 03:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Welcomes
Hello. Please don't welcome users [ with inappropriate names]... it only confuses people. — Mar. 29, '06 [03:28] <[ freakofnurxture]|[ talk]>

Novels --> Genre
You asked about task for your bot

As we a getting through the Books --> Novels now, can we think about the next steps.

I have been asked "I notice there is no stub category for horror novels, political novels, or comedy novels"

Could we use the bot to find out if any Book or Novel stubs fit those genre (one at a time I think)

Let me know. :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page)  15:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes the aim being to see if there is a case for such stubs. Not if there are only a few. :: Kevinalewis  :  (Talk Page)  15:59, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Another Novels Project Task for GnomeBot
How about a listing of all articles that claim to be Novels which do not have the project notice in the talk page. 14:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)