User talk:Betacommand/20091101

Robotic link removal
Please stop BLINDLY removing my links and citations. You're not even bothering checking the sources or the other edits that go with my changes. You're obviously using a robot. p.s. NOT EVERY LINK IS SPAM. LINKS TO DETAILED PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORDS OF INFORMATION ARE ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stokies (talk • contribs) 08:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Arbcom Enforcement Request
I am filing an arbcom enforcement request. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 08:52, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Filed. --69.225.9.98 (talk) 09:33, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

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Request to resolve the above
I'm going to put something down here as a suggestion, then link your mentors to it. For whatever reason, you and User:IP69.226.103.13 / his various addresses are trapped in some kind of dispute based on a poorly perceived interaction over at the bot pages. I'm wondering if you could agree to try avoiding this particular user? Not as some form of formal ban, because that's not necessarily warranted - but as I've tried explaining to him, the two of you have managed to wind each other up over nothing and it would be easier to resolve if one of you took the initiative in some way to make up. This is deliberately vague, because I can't make you do anything - but this would really help bring this to an end. Fritzpoll (talk) 22:56, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I want to see a peaceful solution to the current conundrum as much as anyone, but I do not think that this approach is the best option. The root fact of the matter here is that numerous users/admins and two crats have raised concerns over the same content that I have, the best probable solution would be to remove the single common issue in this situation. βcommand 00:53, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That's fine, but those admins, crats and other users (including myself) are capable of watching out for this user and any problematic content - I am only suggesting a voluntary disengagement on your part. Nothing official, nothing formal - just a lowering of the temperature so that this doesn't mistakenly get wrapped up in old history. Fritzpoll (talk) 09:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

This is not vandalism
. It is quite obviously a mistake that it was put on the userpage not the talk page. Do not mark such reversions as vandalism. Viridae Talk 21:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Updates?
At the risk of incurring the wrath of the drooling headhunters, would you please update high use NFCC and the same for articles? Thanks, --Hammersoft (talk) 15:30, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ βcommand 15:51, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Abbey Road, 490 uses. Hahahahahhahaha! --Hammersoft (talk) 16:22, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Would it be possible to create a similar type of report that shows fair use images used on userpages or templates? --Hammersoft (talk) 16:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * that already exists. ~betacommand/NFCC9.html βcommand 16:46, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * And Ive added those to cronjob so they should automatically update at ~20:00 UTC. βcommand 21:10, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Cool! Thanks! --Hammersoft (talk) 19:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

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Discussion on ConnectomeBot
I opened a discussion at the VPR (Village Pump Proposals) and advertised it at the External Links Notice Board about a bot you commented on at RFBA, ConnectomeBot. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 03:28, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

In my capacity of in-house communications officer, I updated the Forum for the Future's Wikipedia page in line with Wikipedia guidelines, in a neutral tone and providing external links to verify the content. I would appreciate it if you could offer guidance as to where you believe PR is present so that I may amend the text accordingly. It is important to us to have a more detailed presence on Wikipedia - Forum is a sustainable development charity and not a commercial venture - our intention is to provide information on the organisation's work and projects only.

Your specific feedback would be greatly appreciated

Liz Evers (talk) 14:09, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in SecurePoll feedback and workshop
As you participated in the recent Audit Subcommittee election, or in one of two requests for comment that relate to the use of SecurePoll for elections on this project, you are invited to participate in the SecurePoll feedback and workshop. Your comments, suggestions and observations are welcome. For the Arbitration Committee, Risker (talk) 08:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 16 November 2009
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Troubles Arbitration Case: Amendment for discretionary sanctions
As a party in The Troubles arbitration case I am notifying you that an amendment request has been posted here.

For the Arbitration Committee

Seddon talk|WikimediaUK 16:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * How am I a part of this case? βcommand 16:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Repetitive edits
Per my talk page note, Beta please conduct automated edits as discussed. Please run one test page, then go ahead on the rest if it looks good. Thanks! Franamax (talk) 22:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Worked great, thanks. Unfortunately, there was a little detail I missed in the spec, I've emailed you about it. Franamax (talk) 23:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As asked I am going to preform the regular expression replacements on the requested pages. (this is not automatic rather an advanced find and replace within my browser) and per your permission I am exempt from the edit throttle for these few edits. βcommand 03:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I was under the impression that you were still under a restriction that stopped you making any automatic edits. Has this changed? The last time I saw was your appeal to arbcom to have it lifted for a specific task, which was denied. Viridae Talk 04:53, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * And Franamax doesn't speak for Arbcom. Viridae Talk 04:53, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Its not automatic editing. βcommand 04:54, 19 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I just asked Beta to figure out a regex. It's meant to reduce some page sizes and he knows how to do it, and I don't see anything in particular wrong with the edit timing either, it looks to me like tabbing. If there is a problem, I'll answer for it, Beta was just helping me. Franamax (talk) 05:00, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It is FF with tabs and advanced find and replace. If needed I can do a screen capture to prove it. βcommand 05:02, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Beta, thanks for this work, it saved me a ton of time. As it happens, it looks like I will have to run all the pages again (" ' " is "& # 0 3 9 ;" when returned from the API doncha know, and it looks like even the urlencode magic borks it - unless you can global fix those too).

In future, if I'm going to ask you for help, I'll keep it on-wiki so everyone will know how trivial the request is. If I'd done that this time 'round, people would have known that you'd already told me you would be doing it with standard editing tools. I mislabelled this thread as "Automated edits" when I meant "Repetitive edits" (changed now, serves me right for being in a hurry at the time).

For anyone wondering, this was just a global reshuffling of pre-existing text in many thousands of URL's. I've had occasion in the past to trawl through Beta's .js files (back when the community briefly considered blanking them) and I knew he has some powerful tools, which I'd already evaluated as being non-automated. I would do it on the command line with "awk" and "sed", global replace is not automated at all, and Beta knows how to set this stuff up more quickly than me. Plus I know he was doing it by hand because I spotted a mistake he made by accidentally putting a link in the wrong spot, that doesn't get done by bots, it's done by humans! (And it wasn't that easily spottable, but I have eagle-eyes) Franamax (talk) 21:59, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * is this what your looking for?
 * Yeah, looks like you got it. I checked all the reports, it's the #039 within the links, it clicks through OK, all looks good. MBK004, MQSchmidt and M Bartlett are run with my updated program so s/b OK already. If you get a moment, try to think of a page title someone may have edited that uses %notation > ascii-128, i.e. %7A. I haven't found one of them yet to check how well my UTF-8 to URL scheme works. I'm not sure of your hours, I might start rerunning before you get to this, so anything changed after 19Nov will be redone already. Drop a note if you're going to start & thanks! Franamax (talk) 02:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Gorizont (newspaper) confirmation links were removed
Dear Betacommand,

Thank you for checking my article. You have removed all external links from this page. We do not mind to have it removed but the reason we have placed those links was to confirm notability of the subject and to palce the prove of each statement we had presented in the article about the newspaper. For example, you have removed links to cultural events and education programs pages where sponsosr of those events were listed. We used those links as a confirmation of Gorizont really was sponsoring thsoe big events. Also you have removed the external link to the radio site we use to confirm that citation of this site is correct. We agree that we may not need to link to electronic instruments newspaper had created but we do not know how to act in the situation if our statements and citations would be not proven by links. Please advise. --Михаил Дмитриев (talk) 07:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Please be advised that we had to undo your changes. However, we took for consideration your concern very serious and removed all external links that we could. At the same time we had to restore and save those links that we need to confirm our content is verifiable. Please review our changes and let us know if we are in agreement by now or you still have some concerns. Thanks. --Михаил Дмитриев (talk) 08:44, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Multiple tags
Dear Beta,

Thank you for your input. By the number of tags you put on the article I may assume you got sort of angry. I did not want to cause you any bad feelings. Honestly, I feel sorry I even started to write this article. I have so much trouble here and need so much work on a daily base to save this article that it is now just a matter of principle to save it for me and my community. I can see your points but I need you to look at the history of this project to understand how did we get here. At the beginning it was a short article about the paper that we feel important for our community. It has no "tone", no "news release" etc. It simply described the paper, the short story of it, the peculiarities of the publication etc. The article was attacked for the reason the subject is not notable. I hope it was not "notable" simply because the paper is in Russian and serves to Russian community. Although, I could have that feelings since I found many less notable publications are listed in wiki with no problems. Well, I thought, may be I need to bring more information to explain why it is notable, at least for large (70,000+) group of people who live in Colorado and outside? I did a lot of searches in internet for any possible citations, I contacted newspaper asking them for some materials, I said I am working on the article about them for Wiki - and they smiled - why do we need it? Well, I asked the editor to go over my English and correct it (seems still not enough). And now I am in a position it hard to understand where to go: on one hand the neutral and simple article was not good with notability problems, and now it is too self promotional. OK, than please help me to make it right. Tell me what should I do. Completely rewrite it? Remove all links you consider to be a spam? I'll be happy to do that and reduce it to any level you advise. And would I expect that next editor come up again with not enough verifiable information and not notable subject? I ask you, please, to enter into communication with me, not just put tons of tags on the article. I assume editors here are for help, not for punishment or discrimination. Am I correct? --Михаил Дмитриев (talk) 20:01, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I am not discriminating or punishing, rather I am highlighting issues that need addressed. If I was better at writing prose I would give a hand, but I'm not that strong in that area. Rather I do my part on wiki by gnoming. βcommand 22:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your first communication with me. I do not know what is gnoming. Wiki said gnoming is traveling gnome prank. (BTW "Traveling" in this wiki article seems to be misspelled). And a prank, - it indicates, - is a trick to purposely make someone feel foolish or victimized, usually for humor. It makes me lost even more. I agree that you did a great job in making me feel foolish or victimized but it does not help much with an article.

History page of the article shows that at the first time you kindly visited and edited it the minor change was done – some links suspected for spam were removed. It was undid by an editor I asked to help with English and than I contacted you to explain that it is not the sign of disrespect to your input but an attempt to save references needed for the article. At the same time I did eliminate all references I could, following your suggestions. However, in response to that undid action your second visit left very nice track – so many tags that the article hardly may survive.

I like your personal page about stupidity and it’s contagious forms. I hope I did not get this syndrome yet regardless I certainly have significantly limited English. On another hand, I have some experience with that you call writing prose and editing. Once I had two English Literature professors editing “my writing”. Actually, it was writing of one of them, but another though it is my. It was edited badly. The corrections were delivered to the author, first professor, and he said – your English is not good to edit my writing, we will get it corrected again. It was 8 cycles of corrections – they corrected each other without knowing it is not me. And finally, they said, OK, now your English is kind of OK, we can publish. I did not create this situation deliberately as a joke or prank. I just was scared to tell them in a beginning what happened and how with some missunderstanding they correct each other.

I referred to this story just to show how relative could be conclusions on the style and tone. The editor I asked to help me with English on my article is a very well known English essay writer. Sure, I may assume that my initial writing was so bad that it is unfixable even by such an expert, but tell is it true that all wiki articles are an examples of Pulitzer Prize awarded prose?

Do you see why I have feelings you do punishment (you did it all after second visit of the article in response to undo action of your first corrections). And do you see why do I feel this a sort of discrimination. Should I make an experiment? Should I write an article for wiki about one of many smallest Arabic Colorado paper and prove it will be no actions against those articles with so many tags like in your comment? (Let’s say I am just kidding).

OK, let’s just get practical. As you spent that much time tagging my article, please be so kind to go with me from tag to tag and help me with more particular suggestions to fix it to the level those tags could be removed. Would you, please? And I promises I will not hold any gnomes in a prison of my yard :-) --Михаил Дмитриев (talk) 00:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:GNOME. I am not that great at the type of improvements that you need for that article. βcommand 00:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for clarification. I looked over the page of WikiGnomes and found that after all "WikiGnomes work behind the scenes... making things run more smoothly... like correcting poor grammar". Also "WikiGnomes are considered to be friendly." So, I am glad you are not a WikiTroll.

Now, would you be not offended if I ask you to call for help one of your mentors Matt Bisanz. He seems to be the great writer and the author of many articles. May be he can give us a hand?

Also, let me go over yout tags - Let's just check on how does it look like?


 * It might contain spam. PLEASE INDICATE WHAT ACTUAL LINKS DO YOU CONSIDER A SMAP. I will remove it.


 * Its neutrality is disputed. PLEASE ADVISE - I can remove all explanations and citation showing of why the paper is notable and why it is a part of the history of Russian community in Colorado. Would it improve it?


 * The notability of this article's subject is in question. PLEASE ADVISE how should I fix this. PLEASE remember wiki has lots of articles on similar subjects and no concerns were raised.


 * Its tone or style may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. PLEASE ADVISE what do you mean? Is it written in a rude manner? Any pareticular sentences you suggest to remove? I am opened to any changes.


 * It is written like an advertisement and needs to be rewritten from a neutral point of view. SAME AS ABOVE. Please give me the exact sentence or line to remove. I will do it. I do not mind if you remove all the content you consider to be removed. Please do.


 * It is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. WikiProject Journalism or the Journalism Portal may be able to help recruit one. THIS TAG WAS ADDED BY ME actually in response to your tagging, because I need an expert finally to come and make the order here. Expert from ethnic journalism or ethnic media finally may clear the problem.


 * It may need copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling. PLEASE INDICATE WHAT SPELLING AND GRAMMAR TO BE FIXED? I did not find any grammar or spelling issues in the article.


 * It may need a complete rewrite to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since November 2009. ANOTHER NICE TAG.


 * It appears to represent a biased viewpoint inconsistent with Wikipedia's neutrality policy. Tagged since November 2009. WE ALREADY HAD THAT TAGGED BEFORE? DID NTO YOU TAG FOR Its neutrality is disputed? Why again? YOU DID NOT USE JUST ALL TAGS THAT COULD BE AVAILABLE? IS IT NOT OVERLAPPING BETWEEN TAGS?


 * It may require general cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since November 2009. ANOTHER HIT?


 * It may have been edited by a person who has a conflict of interest with the subject matter. Tagged since November 2009. HOW CAN YOU STATE THAT? WOULD BE ANY READER OF THE PAPER WHO MAY LIKE AND APPRECIATE IT TO BE IN A CONFLICT OF INTEREST?


 * It may contain improper references to self-published sources. Tagged since November 2009. PLEASE INDICATE SELF_PUBLICHED REFERENCE. I will remove it immediately. But what is self-published reference you found? Comunity Newspaper? Westword? Denver Post? Please?


 * It reads like a news release, or is otherwise written in an overly promotional tone. Tagged since November 2009. MAY BE IT STARTED TO LOOK LIKE THAT AFTER CHANGES MEEDED IN REACTION TO NOTABILITY QUESTION? I CAN CONVERT IT BACK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE. IT WAS NO CONCLUSIONS THERE AND NO COMMENTS AT ALL.

Dear WikiGnom, are you really friendly? Please advise. And thanks in advance. --Михаил Дмитриев (talk) 01:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Its grammar needs to be improved. Please do so in accordance with Wikipedia's style guidelines. Tagged since November 2009. ANOTHER ONE ON GRAMMAR? PREVIOUS TAG ON GRAMMAR WAS NOT ENOUGH?

Betacommand- at WP:GNOME we find the description, "...Examples of WikiGnome-like behavior include fixing typos, correcting poor grammar, creating redirects, and repairing broken links...". But what you do is better known as "Drive-By Tagging". You are not fixing typos; you are not correcting poor grammar; you are not creating redirects; you are not repairing broken links. You are not gnoming. You are drive-by tagging. All editors should strive to improve articles which they think are lacking instead of only popping in long enough to 'tag' an article as being somehow 'deficient'. Could you spend more time actually improving articles and less time spreading questionable tags around? After reading your (and your sock-puppets') defenses during the many block attempts against you, your claim that you don't have the 'ability' to write the improvements is extremely hollow. Please use less time 'drive-by' tagging, and use more time actually improving articles. Joe Hepperle (talk) 10:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Please do some better research next time you go to insult someone. Gnoming is doing the background cleanup work that is not associated with direct article writing. At last count I had 41168 mainspace edits which is about 60% of all my edits. Ive done typo corrections, anti-vandalism work and a lot more gnomish work. Tagging articles is part of the behind the scene work that gnomes do. Gnomes act as a support role for article writers. here is about a thousand examples of gnoming. As I have stated creating and improving prose is very difficult for me as my creative writing skills where never that great. βcommand 12:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Umm, have you read the article? It needs a total rewrite/deconstruction last I saw it. I was thinking of dropping in a few tags myself. It's a promotional mess. And no, it has nothing to do with anti-Russian/American sentiment, it's just a messy article and there's no easy reword-a-sentence way out of it. Franamax (talk) 10:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, this article is a really badly written piece of garbage. Another editor is cleaning it up, and I will do some rewriting this week also. This is the first time I have seen an article have tons of tags and be actually under-tagged.


 * There's no need to continue discussing this issue with user:Betacommand who has stated he is not a prose editor. Wikipedia is a volunteer projects and editors select what they will edit. There is no problem with any of the tags on this article other than it needs more tags. I am a prose editor, but primarily a references editor, and another editor is tackling the prose also.--IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Unsolicited advice for the future (probably worth what you paid for it ;-): I've had better success with limiting tags to the most serious issues.  It helps focus people's attention on the biggest issues and usually avoids these defensive scenes from relatively inexperienced editors.  People can't learn everything at once, after all, so it's better to channel their activities into a small number of (ideally) achievable tasks.
 * Also, I'd probably have chosen to convert at least most of the WP:ECITEs to WP:FOOTNOTEs. Deleting them wholesale requires a conversation about the difference between WP:SPAM and WP:SELFPUB'd sources, which could probably wait for another day (e.g., after WP:Notability is demonstrated, since there's not much point in cleaning up an article that's going to be deleted).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:56, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I actually didn't remove any references. rather the article had a mixture of references and bare links. I was drawn to then article due to a webnode link and found that the bare links where being uses in a manor that did not appear to be references so I removed the bare links and left the references. βcommand 23:33, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Some of the "bare links" you removed are called embedded references, and they are considered to be references for the purposes of complying with WP:CITE, not spam or external links.
 * For example, you removed this embedded citation: "Gorizont newspaper was recognized as a voice for the Russian community by .... the American Census 2010."  The link provided is to a news story that quotes the newspaper's editor about the upcoming census, not to some random website.  I don't say that there mightn't be some problems with WP:NOR violations in this statement, but it's not actually spam.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Two requests
Hi Beta! I see in the above that the head hunters are still out in full force.

So anyway, I'd like to make two requests of you.
 * 1) Could you run a query to find out how many non-free images are currently extant (whether in use legitimately or not) on en.wikipedia and report here?
 * 2) I really appreciate the various reports you have running on the toolserver. They've been tremendously helpful! Could I request one more? Not sure how tricky this is, but a report that listed images used in article space more times than there are fair use rationales for such use. I know some rationales aren't machine readable as such. But, such a report would still be useful to find problematic NFCC #10c failures.

Thanks, --Hammersoft (talk) 19:52, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As for part one thats ✅ see ~betacommand/reports/nfcc_count.log and as a heads up Ive moved all the other reports to ~betacommand/reports. As for part two, a lot easier said than done. I need to re-write the code for that. Not sure when Ill get the time for such a complex re-write. βcommand 01:50, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost: 23 November 2009
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User:IP69.226.103.13
Hello and happy Thanks giving, Beta Command. There is a discussion about the above user's antics at AFD currently going on at at ANI here. Thank you and have a good day.Gerbelzodude99 (talk) 21:49, 27 November 2009 (UTC)