User talk:Andrewpullin

andrewpullin's talk page

Bot Approved
Just thought I would drop by and say that your bot has been approved :)  ·Add§hore·  Talk To Me! 14:49, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

SpaceFactsBot
Seems to be adding blank lines to the beginning of the section. Rmhermen (talk) 22:38, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Think I found the issue. Thanks for spotting it! Andrewpullin (talk) 03:31, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

EU flag / ESA "flag"
First of all, thanks for the work of your bot - it is greatly appreciated.

However, I have one request. The problem is the bot added back the EU flag to represent the ESA. The ESA is not an sub-organization of the EU (ESA and EU have "only" a "framework agreement establishing the legal basis for cooperation"), and it would be better to add the ESA "flag" icon (named "Not the esa logo" – a story of its own…) which is now available as SVG.

So could you be so kind to replace this: 🇪🇺 🇪🇺

With this: ?

Kindest regards, Tony Mach (talk) 14:20, 5 March 2014 (UTC)


 * While we are at it: Could you add a link for ESA as well and modify the color? The light blue seems out of place there…


 * 🇪🇺 ESA


 * Not the esa logo.svg ESA


 * Tony Mach (talk) 14:38, 5 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Done. I Tested it and it seems to work.  Thanks for finding the ESA flag.  I had meant to track one down but never go around to it :) Andrewpullin (talk) 14:53, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry... now it is actually done. I didn't see your second note about formatting the ESA link.  That is now done as well. Andrewpullin (talk) 15:02, 5 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Now I need to track down all the other places where a better ESA flag is needed…


 * And I have actually not tracked down the ESA flag,I just created something that looks very close to the ESA logo: Simply the letters "esa" in Arial font. (The original ESA logo has additionally a little piece missing in the "e", but at that font size it is invisible anyway…) Tony Mach (talk) 18:08, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

SpaceFactsbot
Andrew - might I ask the purpose for this bot, and the change of the numbers on an apparent regular basis? Alan Davidson (talk) 08:24, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Soyuz TMA-18M SpaceFactsBot
Hey, there was a crew change-out for Soyuz TMA-18M. Aidyn Aimbetov and Andreas Mogenson landed on Soyuz TMA-16M at the end of their 10 day mission, and now Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly are on the crew of TMA-18M for their return flight next year. Your bot is continuing to treat Aimbetov and Mogenson as "in space". A direct transfer like this hasn't happened since you made your bot, so I think some code might need to be changed to address scenarios like this.Astrofreak92 (talk) 19:16, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi Astrofreak92. You are correct, this was the first transfer to a new vehicle, which is definitely causing a problem.  My code uses the data from spacefacts.de, and they do not include active missions in their calculations of cumulative time in space, they only update that when they land.  I wanted this to be a bit more "live" information, so I calculated based on the time in orbit of a particular crew vehicle... another piece of information available on spacefacts.de (I simply subtract the current time from the launch time).  However, on cursory inspection, there is no quick way to determine how the crews have switched vessels.  I should be able to hack it together, but I'm a little busy right now.  In the interim, I propose updating the bot to: show the cumulative time in orbit based on spacefacts.de stats, and not include those currently in orbit.  That way it will at least be accurate to the most recent landings.  I will also add a note saying that those in orbit are not currently shown.  I'll then work on updating my code ASAP assuming I can find some useful info at spacefacts.de to consistently handle this scenario (which may be more frequent with NASA considering making spare seats on SpaceX/Boeing available for tourists).  If you have any further feedbacks or suggestions, let me know.  Andrewpullin (talk) 14:03, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your responsiveness! Astrofreak92 (talk) 21:03, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Took a bit of work... but I think it is working properly now (and calculating totals properly). Fans of the Danish and Kazakhstan astronauts / cosmonauts will be disappointed that they plummeted down the rankings.... Their 9 day trip was up to 28 days I think before this fix.  Let me know if you notice any problems. Andrewpullin (talk) 09:29, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

HTTP, HTTPS and bots
Hi! Soon (June 12) all traffic to Wikimedia sites and API:s will need to go over https:// instead of http://. Your bot SpaceFactsBot seems to be affected by this.

There's more information here. If you need help updating your bot, maybe that mailing list or w:en:Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard might be good places. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 22:39, 29 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the note, as I completely forgot about that changeover! I have updated it and given it a try, seems to work.  I'll continue monitoring. Andrewpullin (talk) 16:51, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Spacefactsbot
Hey, so I've noticed that the space facts bot has not updated the country time in space table in about 5 days. It also has incorrect crew information at the bottom, which I think may be related to whatever issue it's having. Are you active and available to address the issue? Thanks. Astrofreak92 (talk) 17:21, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi Astrofreak92. Yep, it was not working.  I host that on a server at work, and we had a network outage that persisted for several days.  I've brought that server up now and ran it, and it is working again.  We'll see if the cron job kicks in tonight as usual.  There is one small bug (a strange astronaut name problem at the bottom).  I'll check into that once I get home.  Thanks for reporting! I haven't had a chance to check up on it with all the rest of the chaos happening. Andrewpullin (talk) 20:52, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hey again. Has the plug been pulled on the bot, then? Astrofreak92 (talk) 16:19, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * No... thanks for the reminder. I've put in 100 hrs of overtime the last few weeks, so this got back-burnered.  I've put a reminder in to try to do this over the weekend. Andrewpullin (talk) 17:41, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * SpaceFactsBot is back online. I still have a few bugs to update, but they don't currently affect the final table generated (more future proofing it). I will try to make sure it is operational each night for its scheduled update. Thanks again Astrofreak92 for pestering me! Andrewpullin (talk) 09:00, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

New Year 2018 Error - Had an error that resulted in current in-space missions not being added to the List_of_spaceflight_records as of the new year. This was introduced during testing for the earlier problem discussed above. This has now been fixed Andrewpullin (talk) 18:16, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Hey, SpaceFactsBot does not seem to recognize a country for American astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor, so it's had the US at 2 astronauts since she launched. Just wanted to let you know there was an issue, thanks for all your hard work on this! Astrofreak92 (talk) 14:06, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I'm at a conference today, but I'll try to look into it tonight.  Thanks for spotting! Andrewpullin (talk) 14:59, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you had a chance to look into this issue? Astrofreak92 (talk) 02:28, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay. I have been slowly working on the update of SpaceFactsBot to handle the individual space flight records table  (discussed here), and as part of that I was upgrading the code that parses spacefacts.de, to help handle errors for names such as Serena's with special characters (and a variety of other parsing problems).  Anyway, life gets in the way as always - it was a hectic summer and now things are busy at work (University campus).  I've tested what I hope is a now a working version that solves the above issue.  It still needs major work before it can go live for the other table, but it should at least fix this...  Let me know if any errors appear. Andrewpullin (talk) 03:13, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * It seems to be working well, thank you for all of your hard work on this! Astrofreak92 (talk) 17:18, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

SpaceFactsBot and embedded tables
Have you considered placing the tables that SpaceFactsBot updates into templates? This would reduce the bot edit frequency on the main article, and also allow you to create a documentation page for the table and its updates. I'm not complaining per se, I just noticed that most of the edits to that page were from this bot by quite a large factor: https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/List_of_spaceflight_records

Great work on the bot by the way, I especially love the very clear timestamps. I do love timestamps. :P It does make me wonder if there should be a bot-specialized version of Template:As of which takes ISO datetimes, display-formats them, and handles categorization of outdatedness (EG if a bot or its data source dies) appropriately for the given dataset. Suppose I'll suggest this on its talk page. djr13 (talk) 10:40, 21 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I hadn't considered it, but that would be a sensible thing to try. I'll try to do some investigating over the new few days. Andrewpullin (talk) 15:05, 22 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi djr13. I've implemented your suggestion.  Please take a look and let me know if this is what you were expecting.  This will get rid of the SpaceFactsBot "noise" from the page, which I think makes sense.  Now when people view the history, they will see more of the major changes submitted by real people, rather than these daily updates. Thanks for a great suggestion!  I'm posting information about this in the Talk:List_of_spaceflight_records for the article so that others can comment on whether they agree with the change. Andrewpullin (talk) 17:10, 23 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that works. I'd recommend using regular sentence-capitalization and spacing for the template name. I'd do this myself but I'm not sure if the bot would recognize a page move? I noticed the bot will revert any changes at all made to the table, which is important to mention in documentation; I had assumed it was just updating the numbers when I made a change to a column header. Would you prefer I suggest this header change on the talk page? Maybe also consider adding navbar (the V T E thing) to the table somehow so editors can access it easier. (...Though now that I'm looking at for the first time in years, I'm noticing there's no definitive way to embed it in a table like this. Nor even a category for actual tables. God damn template categories are a mess in general.) djr13 (talk) 13:34, 24 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi djr13. I'll work on your recommendations above. And yes, this bot completely over-writes the table, though that can be modified as well as technically only the nation stats and astronauts and vehicles in space are changed regularly. That being said, I was having a problem early on with users modifying the columns in the table, adding "notes" and other things, and this would completely mess up the format.  So because of that I am still leaning towards having at least the headers included in the Bot's work...  Anyway, we can see.  I'm flexible as I ultimately want the bot to do what the community users want... I just don't want to have to come manually fix the table every couple weeks when someone breaks something :) Andrewpullin (talk) 22:54, 24 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I totally get what you mean by editors messing with the columns, I had wondered if my change would've confused the bot. I don't know a way to solve that with columns that might drastically change other than adding a hidden comment to each column header to identify the column in a standard way for the bot, which'd likely take complex code to recognize and edit accordingly. Doesn't sound terribly easy, I'd probably go the same route to just take over the whole table. Just have a message on the template page that says "if you need changes say so on the talk page!" and link a template sandbox. djr13 (talk) 10:40, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Blank lines at end of
TotalHumanSpaceFlightByNation had two line breaks before the noinclude, before and after the "stop bot" comment. It's fine now, but I suspect User:SpaceFactsBot may break it again, so I wanted to bring the issue to your attention. Hairy Dude (talk) 16:42, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay in fixing this... been a very busy Holiday. I decided the best method was to use the onlyinclude tag to surround the part of the template that I want to be transcluded.  I hadn't really even though about documentation for the template, so it is good that someone (perhaps a bot) added this... I'll work on it in due course. Andrewpullin (talk) 04:38, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Soyuz
Hello, I add the Soyuz MS-13 that is currently in space on Template:TotalHumanSpaceFlightByNation (this version), but the SpaceFactsBot removed. The MS-13 is suppose to land only next year (the MS-12 in October) and soon will exist, for a short time, 3 crewed vehicles in the station (MS-12, MS-13 and MS-15). Thanks, Erick Soares3 (talk) 19:01, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry it took so long to fix this issue... very busy time for me right now. See the UAE_Flag section below for details Andrewpullin (talk) 04:43, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I just saw now your reply! Thanks! I have another question: is possible for your bot to work in more Wikipedias? Well, a lot of spaceflight articles from the Portuguese Wikipedia need some edits (aev time, time in space, year of selection, mission duration - the list of ISS expeditions need to count the duration from docking to undocking - and so on) and I think that the Spacefacts bot would be really useful. What do you think? Is possible? Erick Soares3 (talk) 12:33, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I am currently revamping SpaceFactsBot to be easier to maintain and more flexible. Right now it is only maintaining the Template:TotalHumanSpaceFlightByNation, but the plan was to automate the maintenance of other statistical data.  Other sections on this page can probably be brought under SpaceFactsBot without too much difficulty, but editing data on other pages will require a more significant bot approval process to be completed.  It's something I'd definitely like to offer the community, but we also have to tread carefully with Bots.  I also would have to get support (such as from yourself) if we were to start handling other languages.  One solution might be to reduce the amount of english in any templates to an absolute minimum, and then have wiki editors re-craft their respective pages to pull in those templates, while keeping their user-maintained documentation in their respective languages...  But that would of course require coordination.  Anyway, all something to think about! Andrewpullin (talk) 16:06, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * is really something to think about. At least in the Portuguese Wiki, I'm one of the few editors that still cares about the spaceflight articles (the Astronomy/spaceflight wikiproject are basically dead) - but there are so much of these articles (STS/Soyuz...) that need some attention with dates/duration that in the end would be really boring to edit all manually. For now I can imagine that an "trial attempt" could me made with the bot only editing some pages (like Soyuz missions from 60s/70s that need these infobox information's) and we see if all went right. Erick Soares3 (talk) 16:58, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

UAE Flag
Good morning. I know you've been busy and unable to troubleshoot spacefactsbot as fast as you'd like, but in addition to the bot failing to include the names of spacecraft currently in space it also does not recognize the citizenship of the new Emirati astronaut on the list! A new " – " section appears on the list that's clearly in reference to him, but it does not yet have the flag or name of the relevant country! Thanks for the work on this. Astrofreak92 (talk) 17:27, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Fixed the issue with the United Arab Emirates Flag. Spacefacts.de was using a non-standard three letter code for the nation, so my script wasn't linking it to the proper code.  I'll start trying to figure out why not all the soyuz are showing up... Andrewpullin (talk) 04:22, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay, the Crew Vehicles have now been fixed. spacefacts.de changed the way they display the title of a spaceflight... after using a consistent approach for years!  Not sure why.  I may email them and see if that was just a mistake  or if they have decided to permanently tweak the formatting.  For now, I have a little hack in the code that picks up the discrepancy. Andrewpullin (talk) 04:39, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Bot offline?
Hey there! I've noticed that the spacefactsbot hasn't updated since September 28, did you pull it offline for maintenance or is that a mistake? Just wanted to make sure you knew. Astrofreak92 (talk) 05:04, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Hey, thanks for letting me know. When I fixed those bugs the other day, I had changed the path to spacefactsbot on my server.  Running it from the command line worked fine during my debugging... but cron wasn't happy as I forgot to tell it the code had moved.  It should work on schedule tonight. Andrewpullin (talk) 13:43, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Questions
Hello Andrew, how are you?

I'm wondering if would be possible to make this boot avaiable on the Portuguese Wikipedia because I'd like to improve the missions articles in a way that would take too much time to do alone:

1-) Missions insignias: make that every mission page have it's insignia (as we see here);

2-) In the Infobox/Mission, make the:


 * "| chamada =" (call name),


 * "| base_lançamento =" (launch base),


 * "| início_data =" (liftoff date/time),


 * "| início_local =" (liftoff place),


 * "| lua_data =" (Moon date/time, when applicable),


 * "| lua_local =" (Moon landing place, when applicable),


 * "| fim_data =" (landing date/time),


 * "| fim_local =" (landing place or coordinates),


 * "| fim_mar_data =" (splashdown date/time, when applicable),


 * "| fim_mar_local =" (spashdown place or coordinates, when applicable),


 * "| data_exped =" (ISS expedition start/Time),


 * "| data_fim_exped =" (ISS expedition end/Time),


 * "| órbitas =" (orbits),


 * "| duração =" (duration),


 * "| altitude =" (altitute),


 * "| inclinação =" (inclination), the same data as Spacefacts (and make it show as a reference);

3-) In the Infobox/Astronaut, make the:


 * "|tempo_espaço =" (time in space),


 * "|seleção =" (year/group of selection)


 * "|tempo_aev =" ("time_eva", when applicable),


 * "|aposentadoria =" (retirement date, when applicable) the same data as Spacefacts (and make it show as a reference);

4-) For all the international Soyuz missions, make the "Tripulação" (Crew) section (or even "Suplentes" (Backup) ou "Retorno" (Return crew)) the same as we see here;

5-) Add this "Succession box", as you see here, in each mission starting Voskhod 1, following Spacefacts order.

6-) In the List of crewed spaceflights, convert all the "text" corrdinates to this format.

7-) Make that every ISS Expedition have an crew table equivalent to the English one (with all the right translations - p.ex. "April-October" to "Abril-outubro").

Pages that might help the bot: List of ISS Expeditions, List of crewed spaceflights and Category:Astronauts by country.

I know it's a lot, but I tried to remember all what need some improvment in this subject. These tasks are viable for the bot? Since these are improvment for past missions, I don't think that the bot would "steal" the edition history - and would be easy to manually work in currently flights. Thanks, Erick Soares3 (talk) 19:51, 21 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi Erick Soares3, this bot is just doing statistical analysis based on a database of spaceflight records. It would be a bit of a leap to program the bot to start modifying all of these articles, not to mention the challenge in getting bot approval.  A lot of people edit those types of articles, adding tidbits of information here and there... so getting a broad consensus to have a bot take that over would likely be challenging.  The other issue is where do I get the source information?  The source I currently pull statistics from (spacefacts.de) is a nightmare to scrape for just the barest of stats.  It would be very challenging to get all that additional information.  And if there is a difference between existing wikipedia information and the spacefacts information, how would we reconcile that?  Anyway, not saying it isn't doable, but it is a huge undertaking 134.117.117.85 (talk) 12:00, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry Erick Soares3, apparently logged myself out before making the above comment :) Andrewpullin (talk) 12:03, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Erick Soares3 (talk) 13:44, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:TotalHumanSpaceFlightByNation
Template:TotalHumanSpaceFlightByNation has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Izno (talk) 16:37, 30 June 2020 (UTC) NOTE: That icon was requested by several people, so my preference would be to retain in To what is this referring? The time the table was last updated? So this is no longer url? This is planned for the later upgrade to the new version, it may also require some cleanup of astronaut pages.
 * I've withdrawn this nomination. I am however concerned/can give some useful feedback about some things in the table and hope you can fix them.
 * ✅ : Remove the use of deprecated NavFrame as I did in this edit. It is super unnecessary to have every country in the ESA in this table. I have no opinion on whether you may want to retain the icon. It is moreover verboten by WP:MOSCOLLAPSE.
 * ✅ : Move the total down to the bottom and then set  on the row in question.
 * ✅ : Make the % column accessible, because at present it communicates only through color. It should have some text also.
 * --Izno (talk) 17:21, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks Izno, I'll make those changes as soon as I get a chance. Thanks for not deleting the template.  Is there a way I should be tagging the template to help prevent this in the future?  I haven't gone through the bot standards in ages... so perhaps I should take another look at those sooner rather than later. Andrewpullin (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think this was just me a little quick on the draw. The reason I nominated it is because it's a single-use template. I don't see a good way around that or much reason to bark up that tree in context.
 * I see a few other things you might consider changing since you're here that I didn't really look into the first goaround:
 * ✅ : Remove the fixed widths on the columns or at least use proportional rather than absolute units. (I tend toward removing the fixed widths.)
 * ✅ : Add  to the table headers.
 * ✅ : Remove the space between the references and between the caption and the references.
 * ✅ Remove the absolute font-size used for the content at the bottom, with or without replacement by relative font-sizes.
 * ✅ : Remove the inline link to spacefacts.de (and I think you can remove that whole parenthetical in that footer row). The relevant references are already provided.
 * I don't really think we need the update frequency in the table itself.
 * ✅ : Use the correct field for "spacefacts.de" in the references, which is website.
 * ❌ : At the bottom, consider trying to get the   onto one line. Whitespace is transcluded so it stacks with other whitespace where it is transcluded.
 * ✅ : Instead of separating the items at the bottom with &lt;br>, use list formatting and plainlist.
 * : Consider linking the astronauts and vehicles. :)
 * Let me know if you'd like me to put together an expected output in case that makes it easier to explain. --Izno (talk) 14:06, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Izno, No need to produce the expected output, I'll go through your above comments. I may ping you when I have everything updated so that you can critic again at that point.  Thanks.  Andrewpullin (talk) 17:07, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Poke. :) --Izno (talk) 05:22, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah... sorry about that :) Izno Like so many IT folks, my life has been insane.  I have been working on a new version, replacing the ancient perl code I hacked together years ago with a nice python app, with a django interface, etc.  However, moving that forward has been a slow process.  So I took some time to implement a number of the changes your recommend.  I have updated your comments above with inline notes.  If you can take a moment to see if my changes meet your requirements, that would be great.  Once I have done a bit more testing, I'll update the  to ✅. Andrewpullin (talk) 18:30, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Remaining items:
 * Move the total down to the bottom and then set class="unsortable" on the row in question. Not done exactly as expected. You correctly identified sortbottom as the correct class but it only works on the actual bottom row. Probably the actual correct thing to do would be to move the entirety of the supplementary content out of the table (this would also better align it with best accessibility practices). Your key particularly probably should be above the table since you have the markers but a screen reader will not understand what those markers mean until after the table. (Or you can turn them into &lt;ref> statements also.) With the removal of the accurate row and the movement of the key data to above the template, that would leave the in-space sections, so perhaps just take them out of the table.
 * I will look into options for moving a this stuff into a better formatted preamble to the table Andrewpullin (talk) 20:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ : Fixed width removed, but should remove the 'style=""' also.
 * ✅ : NEW: Remove style on header row.
 * : Yes, "Table data accurate as of 2021-02-19 0518:0546 UTC". This isn't pertinent to the general user. At most they'll want to know how to update the table, in which case they will discover the template, which says it's bot maintained and/or look at the history. If you really think a date is necessary, add month-year or year in the caption e.g. "as of February 2021" or "as of 2021". Or perhaps just 'Total current human spaceflight statistics by nation" and leave off the date.
 * I agree with this, I just need to figure out the best way to do it. It was requested that I add this line to the table at some point.  I'll see about moving it to some preamble where I will also move the key and the in-orbit astronauts and vehicles.  But figuring out how best to do that will have to wait a bit. Andrewpullin (talk) 20:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ : No, the content currently in publisher should be in website instead.
 * ❌ : Still want the noinclude on the same line as the end of the BotEnd comment.
 * Izno, this is more complicated. The noinclude was added to the template manually, and not generated by my bot.  With the perl mediawiki api, I can only replace entire lines as far as I can tell (I am probably wrong about that, but haven't seen how, I'll keep looking).  I could add that noinclude open tag to my bot's output, but then it means the opening tag is generated by my code, while the closing tag is manually included in the template.  If this is fine, then I can do that.  It just made me worry that it was going to create confusion for anyone else that may eventually be playing with this template... Andrewpullin (talk) 20:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Links not done (but deferred)
 * That all said, my main concern was NavFrame, which is why I stopped by again. Feel free to work the rest at leisure. :) --Izno (talk) 19:22, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Regarding item 6, instead of |} try |} or even |} --Izno (talk) 20:48, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Space bot
I have made a few style tweaks: I would also suggest you rename the template to Template:Total human spaceflight statistics by nation we tend to avoid camel case where we can. All the best: Rich Farmbrough  23:17, 1 July 2020 (UTC).


 * Farmbrough I'll update that as well as soon as I can.
 * With regards to not using the bold for emphasis, are you suggesting that for accessibility issues or cleanliness? I vaguely recall someone asking me to add emphasis of some kind to make it easy to glance as those cells and see the number of individuals and spacecraft, without confusing the first line for such. Is there a preferred way to provide some separation between the title of the cell and the contents?  I could add a blank line, but I remember also being advised against any extraneous uses of spaces/line breaks that would make the table larger :)
 * Ultimately, I've been asked to adapt this bot for a number of other statistical tables, so I'll do a more careful review of the current guidelines for table/template formatting as part of that process as well. Thanks for the feedback.  I presume these issues may also come up as part of the bot review process, which I will have to go through again.
 * Andrewpullin (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Question
Hello again Andrew, how are you? I'd like to make this question: could be possible to use your bot to develop an list? Since I reread the article on Nikolai Tikhonov I started to wonder how many astronauts/cosmonauts/taikonauts retired or died without performing an spaceflight. I think that this could be interesting for Wikipedia and Spacefacts itself, but would take too long to gather the links manually. The bot could do this? At least it could gather the links while the list/table itself is build manually? Could be possible to experiment it in a draft page? Thanks, Erick Soares3 (talk) 01:34, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
 * What is the purpose of this data? Are you hoping to update the pages of individuals?  Or are you hoping to make a list of some sort? Andrewpullin (talk) 01:27, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

SpaceFactsBot is broken
Hi Andrew,

SpaceFactsBot is malfunctioning and hasn't updated since 2021/10/7


 * Hi, the issue is actually with the https://spacefacts.de database where SpaceFactsBot gets its data. I have emailed the site owner and brought it to their attention, they are usually pretty fast fixing issues.  Once that is done, I'll manually run SpaceFactsBot right away so that the table gets updated.  Thanks for letting me know about the problem! Andrewpullin (talk) 12:29, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I have manually updated the table template so that it shows the recent Chinese Taikonauts. The only problem is that due to the database error, the Total Person Days in Space for China is likely not accurate.  But that should be fixed as soon as spacefacts.de fixes the issue on their end. Andrewpullin (talk) 12:39, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I heard back from the spacefacts.de people, and they confirmed they are have already prepped the fix for the problem, and it should be pushed out with a bunch of other updates tomorrow morning. So once that update happens, SpaceFactsBot should also correct everything with accurate stats.  I'll check on the bot tomorrow to see if all is well. Andrewpullin (talk) 12:58, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Andrew, this is an amazing resource you've contributed to space watchers all over the world
 * I'm glad to help out Chen Guangming, though we are all indebted to the great team at spacefacts.de that painstakingly records all of these facts. I simply wrote the code that goes through it and compiles it in a wikipedia friendly format :) Andrewpullin (talk) 02:22, 17 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Heard about the bot's downtime, and checked it out for a minute before coming here -- it looks like the problem is about to be fixed, but in anticipation of future issues, would it be possible to put a link to the bot's codebase on its userpage? I wouldn't mind messing around with some code and submitting a pull request, if it ends up breaking for some reason that's fixable on our end. jp×g 01:15, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * There is actually another problem, apparently the Bot is no longer being issued edit tokens from the MediaWiki:API. It appears this started just a couple days before the spacefacts.de database error, but I never noticed the error as the code was dying earlier due to the database error.  Is anyone aware of any new restrictions on Wikipedia for bots?  Are they enforcing OAuth now or something?  I can't find any information about to suggest a recent change.  If any one has any news, please let me know.  I'll continue to debug.  As for accessing the code base, I can share it, but it is a pretty hacky old perl app I wrote YEARS ago during my earlier days in computer science, and then further hacked it to work for SpaceFactsBot.  So it is sort of a mess.  I've been slowly picking away at a modern version using python, but that is a longer term project that goes beyond just SpaceFactsBot, though I would tie SpaceFactsBot into it. Andrewpullin (talk) 13:38, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * See MediaWiki 1.37/Deprecation of legacy API token parameters * Pppery * it has begun... 20:18, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks * Pppery *. My cpan was not pulling an up-to-date version of MediaWiki::API, and the one I had was not using the new token procedure.  It appears to be working now.  I did a manual test run, and it updated the template correctly.  I've set it up to again run automated at the usual time, so we'll see if my luck holds tomorrow morning... Andrewpullin (talk) 00:14, 20 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Any updates on this issue? The bot hasn't been able to update since December, though it is correctly importing the names of currently-flying astronauts.Astrofreak92 (talk) 00:29, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Shoot, my bad; thanks for keeping an eye on things! I fixed the original problem in October, but then late December I had to move it to another server, and I forgot to update a library path... I was in a rush that day and forgot to go back and check on it.  I just ran it a few minutes ago and it worked, and it should run again on its schedule.  I have a reminder set to check on it to make sure this time!!! Andrewpullin (talk) 00:47, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi @Astrofreak92, appears it is now working.. The Bot ran successfully last night. Andrewpullin (talk) 13:24, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Record human space flight by individuals
Template:Record human space flight by individuals has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Nigej (talk) 14:08, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Turkish astronaut issue
SpaceFactsBot is having trouble with Turkish astronaut Alper Gezeravci, possibly because spacefacts.de uses the official "Türkiye" name instead of Turkey. Astrofreak92 (talk) 23:42, 26 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks @Astrofreak92. That was indeed the issue.  I added a customization to match for that.  Also discovered spacefacts.de was not using the proper name for United Arab Emirates, which was messing up the total for them.  If you see anything else, let me know. Andrewpullin (talk) 02:21, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi. Turkey's name was missing on the chart.(1) But your bot keeps removing it. Could you fix this?--BSRF (talk) 05:53, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi BSRF, I will look into. I think I know the issue.
 * Found the issue. I performed a recent update to fix the Turkish flag (above issue), when I re-enabled the cron job that runs each night, I pointed it at at the wrong directory where I had an old version of the bot for testing.  So my "fix" only lasted 24 hrs.  Thanks for reporting.  There were actually a bunch of other errors in there as that code was almost a year old. Andrewpullin (talk) 15:56, 13 February 2024 (UTC)