User talk:DefaultsortBot/Archive 1

Unnecessary edits?
What's the reason to add a defaultsort Aavikko? -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:56, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ummm...erm...hmmm. I guess the idea was that every article should have one.  Matt (talk) 19:58, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * When was that decided? I disagree with that unless someone gives me a good reason. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:05, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that's WP:Biographical metadata's goal. Carcharoth asked for it here.  Matt (talk) 20:52, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I think 4 days to approve a bot that will work in thousands of articles was fast. I have some concerns of that happens with articles for two people, what happens with cases as above and what happens if in some cases the defaultsort is not the one connected with the yob/yod categories. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:11, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * There were concerns like this brought up at the BRfA. The result was that, if the page has a Lifetime tag on it, and it has a sort key included with it, then the bot skips over the article, since this causes Lifetime to transclude DEFAULTSORT.  As far as categories that are manually included, the bot only removes their sort keys if they are equal to the value that the bot is going to insert for DEFAULTSORT.
 * As far as the quickness of the BRfA, I can understand your concerns. I really can't answer with certainty why it was approved so quickly.  Part of it may have been because it was a function that was requested by another administrator (Carcharoth).  I guess also (and forgive me if I come across as presumptuous here) that I've proved myself as a capable bot operator (something I couldn't have done without your help!), and that the BAG members trust what I'm doing.  However, as always, I welcome your input on whatever I can do to improve the bot's operation.  Matt (talk) 20:43, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

In this one the sorting is already in the hsnis template. DEFAULTSORT is unnecessary. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:13, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I assume you mean hndis? hndis provides sorting for Category:Human name disambiguation pages category, and does not transclude DEFAULTSORT, so I would argue that a DEFAULTSORT is still warranted in a case like this.  Matt (talk) 20:43, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * In which other categories should this article be categorised? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:59, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know that there's any I can think of right off the bat, but it's probably something that WikiProject Biography would want to keep track of, so they may add categories to the page at some future point in time. However, the point remains that adding a name parameter to hndis causes the article to be correctly sorted only in Category:Human name disambiguation pages.  In any other sort of listing, it will still be listed under the T's instead of the A's.  Matt (talk) 22:08, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as I know Wikiproject Biography is dealing with talk pages. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:13, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * &lt;shrugs&gt; Got me. The idea was that, for people such as Carcharoth that are trying to find and organize articles about people and get disambiguation pages set up for people with the same name, it would make it easier for those people to find those articles and get them sorted.  Hence, even though there's no categories that the article would apply to now, that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be in the future, and having a DEFAULTSORT tag on there now ensures that anyone who puts categories on the page in the future doesn't have to bother with making sure that it's sorted properly when they do it.  Matt (talk) 23:17, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * OK. Let's say I could agree even this idea to add the defaultsort for... precaution it's a bit... well ok. I am not sure. This is the first time I see a discussion about this subject and it's in a... bot's talk page. :S What about the rest of my concerns? I really thing that sometimes the BAG team is really acting fast. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:54, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, what haven't I answered for you to your satisfaction? As for the BAG, you'd have to ask the BAG about that.  Like I said, I don't know why they approved it so quickly.  Matt (talk) 00:15, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Until 26 February 2009, Categorization said: ""In the absence of a, the default sort key is the article title. It is therefore not technically necessary to provide a  value if the article title is the desired default sort key. However, it is still a good idea to provide an explicit  in these cases. Explicitly stating a default sort key is preferable to having no default sort key, as this leaves a record of the decision that the title is the sort key. Leaving it blank means that later editors cannot tell which articles have been checked for default sort and which have not.

Some editing tools, notably AWB, will attempt to infer an appropriate  value if one is not provided. For example, the most appropriate default sort key for Acacia acanthoclada is the article title, yet that article is also in Category:Acacia with the sort key "Acanthoclada". If "Acacia acanthoclada" is not explicitly declared the default sort key, then AWB may declare the default sort key to be "Acanthoclada". There are also several bots that add DEFAULTSORT if existing category sort keys are in agreement, and remove the un-needed category sort keys: see the requests for approval for SmackBot XIII and BOTijo 5.""

The bulk of that text was inserted by me 20 months previous, in response to issues raised at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs/Archive 4. On 26 February, Kotniski completely rewrote Categorization, in the process very much softening the stance taken on this issue. I have no problem with the rewrite, but it think the previous version, as quoted above, does a better job of addressing your concerns here. Hesperian 06:27, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I like that. Thank you, Hesperian.  Any clues as to why the rewrite took place?  Reducing instruction creep?  Matt (talk) 08:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No; no idea. Hesperian 06:33, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know about this discussion. Why the rewrite took place? Because the old version seemed to me vastly overcomplicated and confused in many places. Since no-one objected either when I announced I was going to do it or when I did it, I assume there was general consent. But no objection to restoring parts of the old text, like that above, if they were the product of previous consensus. (Personally I'm not convinced by the arguments about default sort keys being always desirable, but if others are, then it's not a big deal.)--Kotniski (talk) 06:57, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds like reducing WP:CREEP to me. I commend you for it.  I think it's desirable for all pages to have DEFAULTSORTs...but, different WikiProjects may have different wishes.  I think WP:BIOG agrees with this view.  Matt (talk) 07:00, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Musical group names
Not a good edit: Fairground Attraction diff. Two-word band names don't need to be treated like person names -- Foetusized (talk) 15:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * See here. The bot didn't decide that the name should be treated that way, it just copied what was in WPBiography.listas.  Matt (talk) 17:45, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

It is a big mistake to try to shoehorn traditional Arabic names into the European naming scheme of inherited surnames...
On what basis did the bot determine the default-sort in this case?

It is a big mistake to try to shoehorn traditional Arabic names into the European naming scheme of inherited surnames. Most people with Arabic names don't use an inherited surname. There are two parallel Arabic naming schemes. Neither one uses an inherited surname.

People with traditional Chinese names, or vietnamese names, do use an inherited surname -- but it is the first component of the name, not the last.

A limited number of people with Arabic names, who live in the West, or have gone to school in the West, have adopted the European style of naming. Billions of individuals should not have their names shoehorned into the European style of inherited surname. If your bot is just guessing at the surname, you are generating an enormous amount of extra work.

I urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to stop your bot. Geo Swan (talk) 06:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The bot copied what was in the listas parameter of the WPBiography template on the talk page. Apparently this edit is to blame.  Matt (talk) 06:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Geo Swan (talk) 08:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Geo Swan (talk) 08:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorting of band names
In your sorting of the musical group, Nox Arcana, you reversed the words, but this is not a proper first and last name. So no sorting is required. Thanks. Ebonyskye (talk) 21:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The bot copied what was in the listas parameter of the WPBiography on the talk page. This edit from over two years ago is to blame, not the bot.  Matt (talk) 21:29, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

hndis pages
There is no need for a defaultsort where the hndis template has been completed with a name parameter, as in John Bell - hndis does the sorting. – ukexpat (talk) 14:06, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * hndis only provides sorting for Category:Human name disambiguation pages. It doesn't provide sorting for any other categories.  Matt (talk) 18:13, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Understood, but how many other categories does a human name disam page have? – ukexpat (talk) 18:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Depends on the disambig page. I think the general rule of consensus that we're coming to here is that ideally all pages should have a DEFAULTSORT on them...see here and the discussion going on at ANI here.  Matt (talk) 18:28, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT in redirects?
Do you think defaultsort has to be added to redirects as well? Like, ? The first one is marked as "Unprintworthy redirect" so it won't appear in any category. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:22, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Usually when you have to add DEFAULTSORT to a redirect something wrong is happening. For example an incomplete move. Can you report this cases in a file/page so we can fix them? Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 07:24, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Btw, in this case and this one again the bot added a DEFAULTSORT where the value was equal to pagename. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, we can have the bot skip over redirects.
 * You want the bot to tag the redirect with something like Category:Possible cut-and-paste moves?
 * If you look at Hesperian's edits above, the consensus has been that it is still preferred to have a DEFAULTSORT on the page, even when it will be equal to the page title, because it leaves a record that the decision was made.
 * Matt (talk) 07:30, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Where is this consensus? I really disagree. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * See here. Matt (talk) 07:33, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

User:Kotniski proposed same changes in February 24 1:46 and did them... in February 26 11:13 because "no response at talk, so being bold and substituting the improved version" and as far as I can understand in the proposal, under a section called "REWRITE", there was nothing about DEFAULTSORT written. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:55, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Can you please stop these edits until we reach a consensus in Wikipedia talk:Categorization. I raised my opinion there. You are welcome to participate. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

"You want the bot to tag the redirect with something like Category:Possible cut-and-paste moves?" I think that would be good. Let's see how it goes. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:40, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Stick to articles
Doing this on categories and stuff is silly and usually wrong. Gurch (talk) 05:38, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Random message for DefaultsortBot
Random message. Just need a screenshot for WikiBiff 0.2. Matt (talk) 23:12, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * And another one. Matt (talk) 07:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * And one more. Matt (talk) 07:49, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Not removing existing category sorts
Hi, according to the specification the bot removes the default sort from the categories where it is equal to the inserted value. This edit by the bot has not removed the sort key from the categories though it appears to be the same as the value inserted on the. Keith D (talk) 08:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Look a little more closely at the spelling. The DEFAULTSORT is "Brit" and the category sort is "Birt".  Matt (talk) 08:59, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, my bad - need to get some better glasses. Keith D (talk) 20:03, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * lol, no problem. Matt (talk) 20:04, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Possible cut and past move?
I don't quite understand this edit to a re-direct, placing it in that cat. As near as I can tell, there's nothing wrong w the re-direct. Can you please clarify? Thanks StarM 00:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * See here for the reason. Matt (talk) 00:43, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I see it, don't understand it. I guess it makes sense to some. I don't get why a re-direct would be tagged as a possible c/p move, but if it's deliverate, that's good. Thanks for the heads up. StarM 04:06, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, the basic idea is to help us identify pages that might be copy and paste moves. The basic idea is that "if the page is a redirect, but the talk page still has a WikiProject banner on it, it might be a copy and paste move".  It's not definitive (so far, only about 1/8 of the pages in that category actually are), but it's still helping to find a lot of them that are.  Matt (talk) 04:09, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Got it, I think part of the problem with the banners is bots that add project banners because, say for example, the article is a school and classed as stub. School happens to be in Texas and someone asks a bot to go through and tag all articles in Category:X w Texas project, and maybe assess. I've gotten to the point I quit removing project tags from the re-directs becaause a bot comes along and does what it's asked to do. Thanks for the answer :) StarM 04:20, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Tagging of disambiguation pages seems doubtful
If you look at, you will see that this page is already sorted by means of a hndis invocation, which changes the sort for its category - and it seems doubtful that it should be in any other category.

I see that the subject of dabpages has come up earlier; I can't detect a consensus on the issue, but certainly it's been thought about.

It seems logical to me to do one of three:
 * 1) Take the parameter from the "hndis" value rather than the talk page's "listas" value
 * 2) Skip the edit entirely when the "hndis" is present, and no explicit category is on the page.
 * 3) Remove the parameter of "hndis" when adding the DEFAULTSORT

When the listas parameter and the hndis parameter disagree with each other, it seems the Hippocratic thing to do to report the issue and do nothing.

What do you think? --Alvestrand (talk) 05:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * My general feeling on the matter, in general, is "it's better to have a DEFAULTSORT on the page than not". Given that, I propose another option -- tag pages where hndis is different than listas.  I don't like option 1 simply for consistency's sake -- the bot only uses the first WikiProject banner on the talk page as its source (which, 99% of the time, is WPBiography, option 2 doesn't work because it doesn't put a DEFAULTSORT on the page, and option 3 doesn't work because when hndis doesn't have a parameter, it uses   instead.  I like using categories as a method of tagging pages, because it allows me to tag the page with DEFAULTSORT and allows me a way to track the errors in one edit, instead of having to write code to make multiple edits.  Matt (talk) 05:35, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Ampersand
Listas parameter from the WPBiography template on Talk:Echo & the Bunnymen says "Echo & the Bunnymen" but the bot dropped the ampersand: diff -- Foetusized (talk) 19:57, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * That's because WP:MCSTJR says "Punctuation, such as apostrophes and colons (but not hyphens or periods/full stops) should be removed". Matt (talk) 20:30, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps substituting "and" for "&" would be a better solution than just dropping the "&" -- Foetusized (talk) 11:28, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I can make that change, although I prefer not to, for the simple fact of "I prefer to do as little mingling with the data as possible". Technically speaking, that sort of a situation should never happen, since listas's shouldn't have ampersands in them in the first place.  Matt (talk) 23:49, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Monarchs
Why on earth would you sort English monarchs under "England" when they are sorted by their first name??????? Ian Cairns (talk) 22:18, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If you check the notice that appears when you edit this page, you will see that the bot uses the listas parameter from the biography page, so that is what needs fixing. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:16, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:Lifetime & DEFAULTSORT?
It seems to me in the article Antoinette Halloran was unnecessary because there was already a template Lifetime in the article. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:16, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The bot is designed to look for, not   .  Matt (talk) 18:06, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

What about this and this? Rettetast (talk) 19:25, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * And this. Rettetast (talk) 19:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I made the change so that it would recognize  , and while I was there, for some reason I decided that matches should also be case sensitive (which they don't need to be).  Matt (talk) 19:37, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I was very near the block button, but your quick action saved the clean block log. :-) Rettetast (talk) 19:39, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem. Don't forget, leaving a message here will stop the bot until I tell it to continue.  Matt (talk) 19:41, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe you should make that fact more prominent. I did not se it, and i looked for it. Maybee in the above edit notice. Rettetast (talk) 19:47, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Although the notice is at the top of the user page.  Matt (talk) 19:57, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Premature block
Sorry about the block. It seems that someone using metadatatest.js had added lots of incorrect defaultsort info to band articles, which was then picked up by this bot. I've unblocked and will take the issue elsewhere. Kaldari (talk) 16:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Meh? You blocked the bot?  Wow, I didn't even notice.  Looks like the bot wasn't even running at the time.  Oh well, I guess no harm done.  Don't forget that leaving a message here will stop the bot until I get it going again.  Matt (talk) 16:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

SORRY GETTING DEFAULTSORT WRONG IS THE PROBLEM
Yes, you can play "ignore the problem", but that doesn't solve it.

This is the erroneous edit I'm talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fibonacci&diff=293162199&oldid=292883635

Listas parameters are unreliable, so stop the DefaultsortBot, it disturbs Wikipedia. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:10, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Listas follows the same rules as DEFAULTSORT. There's few other things that do, which makes it about the most reliable source for a DEFAULTSORT tag.  Unfortunately, it's only as reliable as the people that added the listas in the first place.  So please, fix the listas, and fix the DEFAULTSORT, and no, I'm not going to stop the bot.  It's not even running at the moment.  Matt (talk) 19:14, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Did I get it wrong?

 * First question, if you don't what people to post messages here when they think an incorrect edit is made why would you direct them here?
 * Second Question, As I read the the topics above it seem the bot editor takes no responsibility for the bots edits, is that correct?
 * Third question, It would seem inpropert to default sort to a leading lower case letter, is there is valid rationale for this edit?
 * Jeepday (talk) 00:21, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Follow up - These comments "In almost all instances, it is another user's edits that need to be fixed, not DefaultsortBot.", "Please look at the talk page's history and determine who added the incorrect sort key, and notify them of the mistake.", "Comments telling the bot that it got the DEFAULTSORT on a particular page wrong will be speedily ignored." in the header of the talk page edit screen would seem to be counter to, "The contributions of a bot account remain the responsibility of its operator, who must be prominently identifiable on its user page. In particular, the bot operator is responsible for the repair of any damage caused by a bot which operates incorrectly. All policies apply to a bot account in the same way as to any other user account. Bot accounts are considered alternative accounts of their operator for the purposes of the user account policy." Jeepday (talk) 00:39, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Many of the messages that I get here are along the lines of "Why did you put THAT in for the DEFAULTSORT?", when the answer is plainly visible on the bot's user page. However, most people fail to read it, and leave those sort of messages here anyway.  It gets annoying to deal with when people are stopping your bot for that reason.  This is not to say that I don't take responsibility for those edits, but you have to realize that the bot is working off the work of other people (specifically, the listas parameter of the WPBiography template on the talk page), and those people need to take responsibility for their edits as well.  If the bot were to start malfunctioning, then yes, I would step in, take responsibility for those edits, and work to repair the issues that the bot had caused; however (and I've had this conversation with other people before), the bot can't operate properly if people don't give it the proper input, and it's not causing extra work when it simply copies a wrong value from the talk page.  As for the third question, yes, it is improper to start off a DEFAULTSORT with a lowercase letter.  This will be fixed before the bot's next run.   Mikaey,  Devil's advocate  04:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)