User talk:Lightmouse/Archives/2008/November

Dates of birth and death
Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers). Lightmouse (talk) 19:43, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Relief at last
Lightmouse, think of all the people who've been annoying you over the past few days. I can think of quite a few. Here's the remedy. Tony  (talk)  14:45, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Lool. I have done those before. Yea you both need to go for picnic to relax. --SkyWalker (talk) 14:57, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Tick the "Manic model" box. Like a machine-gun. Tony   (talk)  15:27, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have done that. Pretty cool. I have send the link to my sis. She is one who keeps doing it whenever she finds that sort of cover. Not sure what is the name of such cover. Do you know?. --SkyWalker (talk) 19:18, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Bubble Wrap. – xeno  ( talk ) 19:20, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks Xeno. :D I will remember that. --SkyWalker (talk) 19:32, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Haha, funniest thing I have ever seen here. Lightmouse, I'm glad you have a sense of humour. As do all your fans. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Reading Royals Roster
I'm guessing this was a bot that did this, but on the Reading Royals page there were edits that removed all the spaces between the players in the roster. Please do not do this as the spaces are there to make editing the roster easier. There are almost daily roster moves made by the ECHL team which require moving chunks of the template around, so please leave the spaces between each player. Thanks. Shootmaster 44 (talk) 04:51, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That's an AWB general fix. You might want to put comments in those spots to prevent that from happening. --Closedmouth (talk) 05:16, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Date links
Can you please stop removing links to dates as there seems to be more discussion about this at WT:MOSNUM of late (and IMO, there doesn't seem to be consensus for removing date links at this point)? —Locke Cole • t • c 12:49, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If you are right that there is no consensus for removing date links then there are a lot of editors that need to know. Please can you announce this at WT:MOSNUM. Lightmouse (talk) 13:15, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The style guides are quite clear about this: dates and date fragments should not be linked. Please stop criticising editors who are working hard to improve WP. Locke, perhaps you'd like to offer to assist rather than sniping from the sidelines. Tony   (talk)  14:12, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The style guides reflect what I can only describe as a small group of people trying very hard to push through their point of view. Also, I don't appreciate that you believe simply because you (and a handful of others) insist on unlinking dates that it automatically means people who don't are "sniping from the sidelines". What work would you have me do? Perhaps I should follow Lightmouse around and revert his edits? Afterall, that's my position, but then I'd be no better than you or Lightmouse. So I ask again, please stop until this has been sorted out rather than forcing your point of view. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * As you may or may not be aware there is actually already ongoing discussion at WT:MOSNUM. In the interests of keeping people from having to revert your edits should it be decided to keep date links you really should stop (it's borderline disruption since you are now aware that there's an issue with the lack of consensus). —Locke Cole • t • c 00:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

If you believe that the MOS is a small conspiracy to make Wikipedia worse, then it should be easy for you to get a larger group to support a change to the MOS. It is not an issue for my talk page. Lightmouse (talk) 11:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Locke Cole, I wish you'd give it a rest. A lack of consensus appears to be very much part of the way you see it, but strategic linking is just too great a trend on WP for that to matter. Tony   (talk)  11:54, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I've gotten a dev to respond to me about making autoformatted dates work for IP editors/users, and as that was the primary concern with linked dates (AFAICT) that should be enough to warrant stopping for now. See WT:MOSNUM. —Locke Cole • t • c 23:13, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Would that involve every single Wikipedia reader choosing which date format they would prefer? --Closedmouth (talk) 02:58, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Not at all. A default could be chosen by the community which could possibly be overridden on an article by article basis. My point is that carrying on with unlinking dates is not consistent with carrying on a good faith discussion for other options... —Locke Cole • t • c 03:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I fear that the developer's time is being wasted. The IP-sensitive route has been discussed to death and the realisation was that there's a viper's nest of technical and other issues that will never be solved. What will you do for Canada, or India, where both formats are in use, for example? Above all, you seem to be fixated on the order of the month and the day. I never saw you riling against the international date that appears after everyone's signature, nor the one at the bottom of every WP page. Do they cause nausea? Tony   (talk)  02:30, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
 * First the devs wouldn't respond to you people. Now that I've gotten a devs attention you're saying it's a "waste (of time)"? Did you even read my messages on WT:MOSNUM? I explicitly stated that we may be able to add a magic word/syntax to specify the time format for an article and use a default where no specifier is present. Others have suggested using the headers sent by a readers browser, though this may require using Javascript (since doing it on the server side might have cache issues). There are options and if you'd step back and take a breath, we might be able to move forward with something the community will accept. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You haven't answered my key question. Tony   (talk)  13:21, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * As I indicated at WT:MOSNUM (BTW, thanks for flaming the ForestFire) I'd rather we agreed on one format for all articles and then provide a tag/markup to change the format on specific articles (something like which could be stuck at the top of the article but obviously with a way to specify an alternate date format). Unless there was some other "key question" I missed. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The "key question" is why you invest so much emotion in the order of month and day, and why we're wasting time talking about this stuff. Tony   (talk)  03:02, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll answer it as soon as you do Tony, because your own arguments apply to yourself just as much as they do to me. Specifically why do you invest so much emotion in the linking of dates and the lack of order in the formatting of dates? Why are you wasting our time on something this trivial that should be left alone or fixed properly rather than being removed? —Locke Cole • t • c 05:09, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Because I care about what our millions of readers see—not what makes only a few editors complain, for some reason. Tony   (talk)  10:51, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I care about what they see as well, but I have the ability to understand that there are technical solutions that are far better for those millions of readers than simply removing date formatting altogether. —Locke Cole • t • c 20:02, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I would like to point out once again that your bot isn't qualified to make the call whether a wikilink to a date is relevant or not. This requires human judgement. --dab (𒁳) 13:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Please provide an example from the contributions of Lightbot and I will let you know what my human judgement is. Lightmouse (talk) 13:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Date-auditing script
I've been using your script for a while, and have noticed that the [delink ISO to dmy] and [delink ISO to mdy] will only delink correctly if the ISO date has two sets of square brackets (ie 2001-01-20 will become 1 January 2001); it merely de-links a date is surrounded by only one (ie [[2001-01-31]] will become 2001-01-31). Is this by accident or by design? Ohconfucius (talk) 15:04, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it should give the same ouput for both input formats. Please give me an example page and I will investigate. Lightmouse (talk) 16:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the script in a while so I'm not sure about the order it does things, but the delink_ISO_to_dmy function doesn't convert unlinked ISO dates. If they're unlinked first (by script design or user choice), nothing else will change. Gimmetrow 16:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Aha. I think I have the explanation. The delink_ISO_to_dmy function is new. I created it for a few users to test it. It is intended to operate on both input formats when links are present. If the links have been removed by another function, then it has no effect. Once we are confident that it works as designed, I intend to merge it into the other buttons. Please provide feedback on this function and it will help our confidence grow. Lightmouse (talk) 17:12, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I set up a test page at my sandbox. Therein, you will see that I formatted alternate dates thus: yyyy-mm-dd and yyyy-mm-dd . Running the [delink ISO to dmy] and [delink ISO to mdy] scripts will only delink correctly if the ISO date has two sets of square brackets. Nothing happens if there is only one set. So, unless I substitute the intermediate hyphen with ']]-Ohconfucius (talk) 16:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * PS, I have found an annoying number of articles with citation templates where editors have inserted ISO dates. So far, I have been getting rid of these by inserting the prerequisite number of square brackets. It would be useful to have the script automatically convert the '|date= yyyy-mm-dd' or '| date= yyyy-mm-dd'(with space) also to dmy or mdy. And what about '|accessdate= yyyy-mm-dd'? - people seem to have this parameter default set to ISO. Should we change these to dmy or mdy too? Ohconfucius (talk) 17:09, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * *ahem* editors inserted ISO dates because it is what the instructions said to do at the time. And now, unfortunately, thanks to people just running around delinking all those templates without making a bot to fix articles, a HUGE number of articles have screwed up references. SO I agree, we need something that can convert both date and accessdate from ISO to mdy whether they are linked or not. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 16:16, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There's a line which "protects" dates from the script, but the regex only seems to match yyyy-mm-dd style. It actually does convert ISO dates linked as yyyy-mm-dd outside date= fields. Gimmetrow 02:34, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I successfully used the script before to convert ISO dates to mdy, but tonight it isn't working anymore. I tried both "all dates to mdy", then tried relinking the ISO dates and using "delink ISO to mdy" but neither worked. I was trying to use it on List of InuYasha episodes (season 1)‎ as part of a need to fix all of that series episode lists to use mdy instead of ISOs with the removal of autoformatting, as ISO dates are to confusing for readers. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 06:19, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I certainly think there's a case for retaining the ISO links on the article mentioned above. Japan uses yy mm dd like China; also, the dates are within tables. Simply de-linking without conversion would be appropriate, IMHO. Ohconfucius (talk) 10:42, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You are doing nothing wrong. It is the script. It is not working for me either. --SkyWalker (talk) 06:33, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I am very busy but will work on this soon. Lightmouse (talk) 08:33, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

In the meantime, I would suggest you put the installation and usage instructions onto the monobook page. Keep up the good work. Ohconfucius (talk) 11:48, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Done. Lightmouse (talk) 12:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * P.S. Is there any way of seeing how many people are using the script? Ohconfucius (talk) 11:50, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes. Just go to the script page and select 'What links here'. Lightmouse (talk) 12:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I have now updated the code for 'delink ISO to dmy' and 'delink ISO to mdy'. I removed the protection for 'date='. It should now work as you expect. The protection was put in place because of some weird issue with citation templates. I don't know if it still applies. Citation templates make my head spin and I have no idea how they work. Please test this out on citation templates and check with the citation people to see if they are ok with it. Lightmouse (talk) 15:44, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Delinking ISO is working for me in regular linked ISO text(yay!), but it is only partially working with the citation templates It doesn't work at all on unlinked ISOs. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 16:16, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Try now. Please check that the citation template people are ok with this. Lightmouse (talk) 16:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That's the fun part. Half the templates have been delinked without fixing the date format, while the rest are still using autolinking. Its frustrating how half-way its being done :( And yay, that worked!-- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 16:54, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I ought to mention that my preferred citation format is This clearly distinguishes publication date from accessdate, and I object to changing the ISO accessdates to non-ISO styles. Gimmetrow 17:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Author (dd Month year). Title. Publisher. Accessed yyyy-mm-dd.


 * I quite like that visible form too. As I said (twice), I don't want to be drawn into discussing acceptable citation formats. As you know, the code did check for 'date=' and I removed it on request. I would be quite happy to put it (or something more focussed) back. Would it be enough to check for the term:

Lightmouse (talk) 17:27, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * '|accessdate='
 * '|accessdate ='
 * '|date='
 * '|date ='


 * I can agree with no ISO in the text, but you would need to distinguish non-template cites. You could have a function which excluded anything between ref tags. Some articles have date=ISO consistently in the references section, and these probably shouldn't be changed automatically. Gimmetrow 18:50, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It would also be good if "All dates to mdy/dmy" could be made to ignore the title tags of references, since those may not be using the same format as the article which is fine since its the exact title. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 18:52, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * While you might like the accessdate to remain ISO, but isn't what is currently actually called for by the template. Cite web now specifically says to use the full date rather than ISO. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 17:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * As a statement of fact, fine, but what's your point? Gimmetrow 18:50, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * If you don't agree with it, you need to request the change at the template, not ask that the script go against existing consensus. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 18:52, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you're overstating the weight of template documentation. I'm one of the invested parties here, and I'm reminding other invested parties (who likely have this page watchlisted) that changing certain ISO dates doesn't have consensus. Gimmetrow 19:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think I am, but if changing ISO dates have no consensus, please show this, as the dozens of people running around changing it all over the place seem to think it does, including admins who are (not always correctly) trying to fix the templates to automatically reformat the dates without the need for the script to run. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 21:04, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

This is looking like more than I want to take on. I think I will remove the 'delink ISO to dmy' and 'delink ISO to mdy' options. The other functions delink ISO to unlinked ISO. That seems a safe option for now. Lightmouse (talk) 00:48, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think having it as is fine, since it gives the choice. The delinking options are proving extremely helpful for episode lists where folks used ISO and they now have to be changed to regular dates, so I hope you won't remove these functions. The only minor contention seems to be ISOs in citations, so maybe as an alternative, make those separate functions so they can be used or not used based on editor choice? -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 01:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

It is not just citations, there are quite a few templates that use ISO. I am actually very pro-ISO but was persuaded by popular demand to include this function. I would like to see agreement to permit ISO in citations and agreement as to which search strings I need (see my suggestions above). If we can make progress on that, I will turn it back on. Of course, it would be much better if the citation people took this task on for themselves. Lightmouse (talk) 01:08, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I like ISO myself, use it all the time in my web applications. However, it was agreed in the Anime and manga project that they should never be used in our episode and chapter lists due to the potential confusion for readers who may not be familiar with them, and for readers who may read yyyymmdd as yyyyddmm, and thus be perceiving incorrect information. Before you added this function to the script, we were having to manually correct dates in older lists (not fun for a 200+ series), but after you added it, those lists could be fixed in just seconds! -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 01:14, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * LM & C, how about the function which only work on |date=yyyy-mm-dd, |date=yyyy-mm-dd, and |date=yyyy-mm-dd? ISO conversions are OK for article which are inconsistent, but I would hope script users wouldn't change an article like Pilot (House) which is pretty consistent. Gimmetrow 01:20, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The issue for me is the inconsistency: we have accessdates which are almost universally in ISO within the templates. However, the 'date' fields are often in a mixed format 'mmm dd, yyyy', 'dd mm yyyy' 'yyyy-mm-dd' within the same article, even for example in the Pilot (House) article referred to above, where we have ISO dates in the '|date' field. That 'mix' makes little sense to me because it implies that date presentation in templates would be exempt from the WP:MOS guideline. I certainly think that the script should act on square bracked dates in '|date=' even if we all agree to leave '|accessdate=' alone. Ohconfucius (talk) 06:56, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, on that we can certainly agree! Of course, the big reason is the whole "no more autoformatting, no more datelinking" came down, and now all the different templates are in various states of change making things, IMHO, way worse than they would have been if the autoformatting had just been left in. For now, I'm just converting all to the appropriate mdy or dmy depending on the article, since it seems to be the only way to get that consistency back. -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 14:17, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Corporate:Founded
I am going to create a "Founded" template to act like Birthdate and Deathdate...Can you rig the Lightbot to "not" de-link them. (They should only be once from the Infobox...)Mjquin_id (talk) 19:02, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Please give me a link to the template and I will investigate. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 00:44, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Stopped the bot
Please stop making edits that only remove four brackets like this or this. They're fine edits if done in conjunction with other helpful changes, but alone, they're an unnecessary waste of resources that clog page histories, among other things. Thanks! --MZMcBride (talk) 16:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I am happy to do so and I think AWB 'general fixes' is a great function. I will restart the bot with general fixes switched on. However, I left it off because I have seen a couple of comments where people said bots were not permitted to include 'general fixes'. Can you reassure me on that point please? Regards. Lightmouse (talk) 16:40, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it depends if the changes are manual or automatic. General fixes with an unsupervised (automatic) bot are discouraged. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Lightbot was running in automatic mode when you stopped it. I will restart the bot in automatic mode with general fixes off. If you want me to switch 'general fixes' on, let me know but if I get into trouble for it, I will have to refer people to you. Lightmouse (talk) 17:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

What about just going more slowly and making the edits manually with general fixes enabled? That seems like the best solution to me. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:17, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I am not that fussed about general fixes. They are a nice to have but not essential for me. Lightmouse (talk) 18:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

But those of us who think these edits are a spurious waste of expensive resources and a source of bad edits are that fussed. It is not the idea of delinking silly datelinks that I have objected to, but your unwillingness to slow down and edit with more care. You appear to be hiding behind a guideline, when the problem is that you are making programmatic changes without adequately overseeing them. See, up at the top of the page...words to the effect that "Wikipedia needs $6million..."? Wasting that $6 million on resources for massive and unsupervised edits is a Bad Thing. sinneed (talk) 04:25, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You used the phrase 'bad edits'. Please tell me which edit is bad. Lightmouse (talk) 10:15, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Exactly. I, too, would like to know where the trouble lies. Lightmouse's bot has done superb work—a lot of it—and saved our editors a lot of trouble, for relatively few errors, which are usually fixed after the event. Bad edits? Tony   (talk)  10:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Lightbot is consistently disruptive. If it is activated again, without absolutely clear consensus what it should be doing, and consensus that it should be done in a quasi-automatic fashion, it will be time to request that it be blocked. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:30, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Generally supportive
From what I've been able to see, Lightbot is performing well and I hope that any glitches remaining can be worked out.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 03:09, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Jonestown, Demerara
Your Bot, seems to be in a monthly dug-of-war with Lonewolf BC. I hope things work out, there. GoodDay (talk) 18:39, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Year in subject links
I have stopped your bot. I don't see anything wrong with creating links for "year in subject". I can understand delinking them if the target page is a redlink though. This is one such edit that shows what I am referring to.--Rockfang (talk) 17:08, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Aha. That is an excellent example. The format October 6, 1995 breaks autoformatting. It is a fairly common error that is difficult for a human to detect but easy for a bot. If autoformatting is to work, then we need full-time bots to track down and fix errors like that. I am surprised that more people don't complain when autoformatting is broken like that. Lightmouse (talk) 17:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in but, for what it's worth, this is a very similar edit to the ones I was discussing here. Mlaffs (talk) 17:51, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There are two issues here:
 * A concealed link that breaks autoformatting such as:  October 6, 1995 
 * A concealed link that does not break autoformatting such as: First air date = 1995 
 * I believe that you were talking about the latter. Lightmouse (talk) 18:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

FYI, I have reverted your bot again on the same article I linked above.--Rockfang (talk) 21:48, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You are breaking autoformatting. It is a common error and you are not alone in being unaware that it is wrong. Please check this with somebody else (e.g. at wt:mosnum) if you don't believe me. I am not making it up. Lightmouse (talk) 23:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't really care about autoformatting honestly. But what your bot is doing is ruining links.--Rockfang (talk) 00:54, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse, I swear that I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, but now I'm really confused as a result of your comments here regarding autoformatting. If I'm understanding the diffs I'm reading correctly, Lightbot is removing bare day/month and bare year links citing mosnum/overlink, which makes sense to me - if there's no contextual reason to have the link, it can come out. The script-assisted edits in your own account previously have been removing links around date components that were adjacent, which appear to have been for the purpose of autoformatting, again citing overlink - again, this makes sense to me, since autoformatting has been deprecated. However, Lightbot is also removing piped links as in the example above, still citing overlink, with your explanation now that those edits are being made because the piped links are breaking autoformatting.

The latter set of edits is where I'm lost, because making an edit solely to support autoformatting would seem to be discouraged by overlink, and you !voted in support of that change to MOSNUM when the big, huge discussion was going on.

Given the example above, wouldn't the correct edits in support of overlink have been to turn October 6 into October 6, but to leave 1995 alone, since the former is only useful for autoformatting but the latter provides context? Mlaffs (talk) 01:47, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. I wholly support your suggestion. :) Rockfang (talk) 01:59, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. The avyear infobox template is in limbo at the moment (recently partially unlinked by Lightbot), 100 plus 'year in aviation' articles are now not easily accessible, the template is used totally in context. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)   02:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It is no good voting on my talk page. Lightbot can't do it. Remember, the error was caused by an editor that turned 1995 into 1995 within a full date, thereby breaking autoformatting. Lightbot merely undoes the error. If you want something other than undo, then you have the following options: I don't care which option you choose. Lightmouse (talk) 11:07, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * simply fix the broken autoformat yourself as a manual edit. Any editor that understands that it is a broken autoformat should know what is possible. Your suggestion is one method available to you.
 * seek approval for a bot that will use your method to fix broken autoformats. Lightbot is not currently able to use your method.
 * put a clause in the MOS that describes your method to fix broken autoformats. This will, in effect, create approval for Lightbot

Comment by Tony1: Rockfang, I fully appreciate your desire to have gateways in the article to the year-in-radio set of pages (I myself am a member of the WikiProject Years, and have an interest in the improvement of all chronological pages). But what concerns me is the "concealed" nature of the display of the links. When a year-in-X link look like part of an autoformatted date (which is a quite separate function from linking), readers are highly unlikely to "get it".

Even when the (now deprecated) autoformatting mechanism is not broken, a "concealed" piped link to a year-in-X page ( 1995 ) is likely to be ignored by many readers who might be tempted to click instead on an explicitly piped, or in this case, simply unpiped, equivalent in the "See also" section. Since a single important year-in-X page (chosen by you, the expert) leads to all sibling pages via a prominent navigation box at the top, this appears to be a much better way to provide a gateway as a service to the readers. Tony  (talk)  12:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Script bug
Hey Lightmouse, don't know if you've fixed it already but your script buggered up a bit in this edit. - kollision (talk) 22:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Second regex after //month+day piped to number in fix_common_errors - includes a $2 in the replace text. By the way, should it match Jun and Jul just in case? Gimmetrow 23:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks guys. Lightmouse (talk) 00:44, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Lightmouse and Gimmetrow: is this the same issue? Dollar signs still there. I wouldn't have expected the script to correct the screwed-up formatting. Perhaps it can be made to do so easily? The issue remains as to how best to deal with the large number of script edits I did yesterda in the "music/literature/poetry in year" articles.  Tony   (talk)  10:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * My script does not produce the dollar sign. If yours does, then your script is out of date. Try clearing your cache.
 * If you have a friendly admin, they can do a mass rollback. Otherwise, you and I can do it by hand. Lightmouse (talk) 10:37, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I can use AWB go through your contributions and fix these errors. Leave it to me. Lightmouse (talk) 10:40, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that would be good. Yes, you're perfectly right—my intransigence in not updating my version of the script is to blame. It works beautifully now. Tony   (talk)  10:53, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Done. Lightmouse (talk) 13:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * In Tony's diff above, 29 September 2007 becomes September 29 2007 (no comma). Is that fixed? Gimmetrow 17:54, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I see an instance in Tony's diff where |last=NZPA|date=29 September 2007 becomes |last=NZPA|date=September 29, 2007 (with comma). Where is the instance that you are talking about? Lightmouse (talk) 18:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that's the same case. I don't see a comma. A few paragraphs down there is one with last=Djamoos|first=Anton|date=18 October 2007|publisher=Absolute Punk to last=Djamoos|first=Anton|date=October 18 2007|publisher=Absolute Punk, also no comma. Gimmetrow 21:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, your code still has this bug; all_dates_to_dmy_or_mdy works does this right and delink_dates_to_dmy_or_mdy does this wrong.
 * Starting with 29 September 2007
 * function part_dates: 29 September 2007
 * function LMdayMonth(2): September 29 2007
 * function all_dates: September 29 2007
 * In the all_dates_to_dmy_or_mdy script, the function LMaddDLinks restores the link around 2007. LMdayMonth was designed to make the date format consistent back when linked dates were the norm - it only works on linked dates or the linked parts of dates. Gimmetrow 02:59, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

txt.value = txt.value.replace(/([^,\]] |[^,\] ])\[\[([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])\]\]/g, "$1$2"); The added comma in below comes from the same issue. My regex to delink isolated years only delinks 4 digit years with a non-space, non-comma or non-bracket character before, or with a space before and a non-comma, non-bracket before that. (That will falsely delink the relatively rare case of a year with two+ spaces between month/day and year; if it came up much I would fix it.) Gimmetrow 03:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks guys. Gimmetrow, you provided a line of regex. Are you suggesting that will solve it, if so where would it go? Lightmouse (talk) 08:42, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm suggesting that more restrictive handling of linked years in part_dates might handle this problem. Gimmetrow 12:14, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I will work on this. Lightmouse (talk) 15:16, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think I have fixed this but I need feedback from beta testers. All you have to do is go to your monobook replace the current script with:

importScript('User:Lightmouse/monobook.js/test_script.js');
 * The two scripts won't work together. Lightmouse (talk) 15:46, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Autoformatting Dates
I've seen some references to autoformatting in relation to complaints about your bot, but I can't seem to find any current information about wikipedia formatting dates based on user preferences when they aren't linked. I know I worked on a solution for the pages I am most concerned about to switch them from ISO YYYY-MM-DD to DD MMMM YYYY (since we - or at least I - didn't realize that those dates were displayed as YYYY-MM-DD to anonymous users even when linked. Now we don't have linked dates (good) and they are readable (good) but they don't format according to user preferences (bad - though they do format to my personal preference ;).

Can you point me in the right direction for programming/style changes that will allow dates that are not wikilinked to be autoformatted? TIA

BTW - I created a template today that converts dates formatted as DD MMMM YYYY to ISO format for use in tables with class sorting ISO date Trödel  18:39, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't really know. You could try asking the same question at wp:mosnum. The people that like to modify dates are probably all there. I did see something about autoformatting at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4582
 * I hope that helps. Lightmouse (talk) 18:43, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I now realize that hidden links can negatively affect date autoformatting but I thought since such autoformatting was deprecated anyway that the bot would be stripping the links off of the month-day portion. Instead, it's now taking links like 1976 and stripping them to much less useful or informative links to 1976--and leaving the rest of the date link intact so it's now a simple deprecated autoformatted date. This is not acceptable behavior from the bot. Strip the bare date links, that's apparently consensus, but leave the useful "year in radio" links intact, please. There's been no such consensus to strip those of their meaning. - Dravecky (talk) 16:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The bot can't do that. As you now know, the error was caused by the addition of a concealed link. All the bot can do is detect and undo the error. You are welcome to help improve Wikipedia by finding and fixing these common errors now that the bot has resulted in you being better informed. If you want to work together on this, we can but I am disappointed that you are suggesting the bot is wrong for correcting an error caused by somebody else. Lightmouse (talk) 16:57, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The bot is wrong for deliberately converting a useful link into a known deprecated link. If the bot can't handle it, the bot should just leave it alone.  As it is, I'll be spending all morning undoing the wreckage caused by the bot...and that's only if the bot stays shut down or stops stripping "year in radio" links down to bare "year" links. - Dravecky (talk) 17:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Try not to be so aggressive. You would not have known about the hidden error if Lightbot had not fixed it. If you want to put the blame for the error on somebody and use the word 'wreckage', blame the person that caused the error, not the person that fixed it. I don't seek your gratitude for fixing errors caused by others and/or allowing you to become better informed but I do expect you to avoid attacking me. If you disagree with the activities of the bot, there are plenty of places you can go to complain or to lobby for an increase in its scope. Lightmouse (talk) 17:25, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm asking very politely that the bot stop acting outside whatever mandate you believe it has and stop unlinking "date in radio" links, especially as it's converting them to specifically deprecated autoformatted dates. The bot itself it creating hundreds of shiny new deprecated autoformatted dates by breaking existing links to a more useful article, one that is relevant to the radio station article from which it is linked.  I don't seek your gratitude for alerting you to the errors caused by your bot but I do expect you to avoid creating new problems or to fix the bot before reactivating it. - Dravecky (talk) 17:36, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * ADDENDUM: Consensus had previously been reached that 1) "year in radio" links were not to be unlinked by this bot and 2) that the sort of autoformatted dates the bot is currently creating are deprecated. Given these two facts, the behavior of the bot is against consensus and thus the bot should either be fixed (to strip the links from the month-day set instead) or to simply leave the "year in radio" links for manual correction. - Dravecky (talk) 17:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you that autoformatting is not good. Lets be clear, somebody else created the autoformatted links and somebody else broke the links. You clearly do not believe me so please ask for a third party opinion at Wikipedia_talk:CONTEXT. Lightmouse (talk) 17:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Just to be clear, in many cases I personally added a link pair like " July 4, 1976 " to an article so 1) I created that link pair, 2) I did not realize that it broke autoformatting, and 3) I acknowledge that date autoformatting is now deprecated and is being removed by the bot. Also to be clear, Lightbot is converting my example above to " July 4, 1976 " which 1) created a new yet deprecated autoformatted date link pair and 2) removes the useful, on topic link to 1976 in radio.  Given that there is no consensus for an urgent removal of date autoformatting, I'm simply asking that the bot not undo "date in radio" links if it can't, as you note, handle them properly. - Dravecky (talk) 18:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Addendum: A conversion to " July 4, 1976 " would be completely acceptable and meet both of our goals. - Dravecky (talk) 18:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, now we are getting somewhere and we can talk a bit more calmly. This issue doesn't just apply to radio articles, you will find the same error with all 'year in blah' concealed links. There are many editors that acted as you did and there are also many editors that take a bit of convincing that there is an error that needs addressing. If you remove the day+month, the bot won't touch the radio link. I am not sure if it is possible for the bot to do it but you could easily do it with a script. If you don't have a script, I can help you set one up that will do exactly as you suggest i.e. convert to July 4, 1976. Lightmouse (talk) 18:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I would, perhaps, be calmer if I hadn't just discovered that you've reactivated the bot and concealed the stopping mechanism while this discussion is taking place. I've been working hard to assume good faith up to this point but your behavior in this matter is testing that resolve. Please have your bot cease this improper unlinking of "year in date" links immediately. - Dravecky (talk) 18:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I was not concealing the stopping mechanism. I was struggling to get you to understand that placing concealed dates in full dates is an error. You were sounding more aggressive. The only way that I could see of getting you to investigate was to direct you to a page that gives you a third party opinion. I have been complaining about this error for months, if not years but the error never got fixed. Well, it looks like now we might finally get some action. I have made a small change to the bot so that it is much less likely to encounter the error in radio articles. I will make a bigger change if we get some progress on fixing radio articles. I hope that helps.

I see that you have started making some changes to radio articles along the lines you have suggested. If you would like, you can use my monobook script that will remove autoformatting. Just let me know. Lightmouse (talk) 18:38, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The only aggressive component to this conversation has been the behavior of your bot towards valid links in violation of consensus. I've been making fixes as I edit, as would any good editor, but I am not comforted by the tone of your 'offer' to fix your own bot to stop breaking proper links only if you feel that others are moving at a pace of which you approve. - Dravecky (talk) 22:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Glitch
Is it possible to exclude image links from the very useful ISO delinking function? See here for an example of what I mean. Thanks for all your good work on this. --John (talk) 18:27, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There has always been a problem with:
 * image links
 * quotes
 * references
 * Examples are always useful to see if a class of false positives can be eliminated. In that example, there is a period followed by a letter ('2005-06-10.j'). I had been permitting period characters because it might be the end of a sentence but I can make it check the next character to see it if is a space character. I don't think I will ever eliminate the possibility of false positives entirely. Thanks for the feedback. Lightmouse (talk) 18:45, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm using an older version of the script so it will do the cites as well. However, I'm not sure how to tell it to ignore the URL fields, so its breaking links to ANN news articles, which we heavily use in anime/manga articles. Could you tell me how to ignore those and maybe reference titles? -- Collectonian  (talk · contribs) 19:25, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

On a separate issue, I used the 'delink date to dmy + common terms' script, which produced the result here. As you see, it inserted a spurious comma which may have been a relic from the 'delink date to mdy + common terms' script. Date delinker (talk) 02:24, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * See above. Gimmetrow 03:22, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I think I have fixed this but I need feedback from beta testers. All you have to do is go to your monobook replace the current script with: importScript('User:Lightmouse/monobook.js/test_script.js'); The two scripts won't work together. Lightmouse (talk) 15:46, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Beta testing complete. Use the normal script. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 11:16, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Blocking your bot
Hello. I have started a section on the admin notice board to try to get your bot blocked. Thought you should know.--Rockfang (talk) 18:47, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I have stopped the bot's operation per the above mentioned discussion. I hate to do this again, but I am going to have to warn you against resuming the bot's operation until the issue is resolved. Ideally I would like to see a permanent resolution (ie. consensus that it is OK to use the bot to remove year and date links) so that these discussions don't keep coming up from time to time. Please note that if the bot is resumed while the discussion is ongoing it will be blocked. Shereth 22:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I note that 'Lightbot' is still going strong per this diff . The article 1920s has an 's' in it and is not piped or hidden. I am very worried about irreparable damage that is being done to many projects. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)   02:10, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the example. Lightbot delinks decades in accordance with Context: Many human editors would delink it too. Lightmouse (talk) 08:37, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * ''Chronological items—such as days, years, decades and centuries—should generally not be linked unless they are demonstrably likely to deepen readers' understanding of the topic. Articles about other chronological items or related topics are an exception to this guideline.
 * I note that the implication of the comments above by Shereth, Rockfang and Nimbus is that users at large and our readers should be denied the benefits of the technological editorial support that bots can provide, where their operation concerns points in our style guides with which certain people take issue. Perhaps we should all go back to using manual telephone exchanges because telephonists were put out of jobs and deserve to have them back in a time of rising unemployment. It seems a fitting analogy. Sure, bots cause false positives, but the benefit they bestow on the project is huge by comparison with the occasional nuisance of a false positive. I do not want to see WP forced back to the last century. Tony   (talk)  09:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I concur. However, while this discussion continues, the bot should stop; what is the rush? If there is ever consensus for this bot to operate, it will catch up with these few days in a couple days; if there is consensus to block it, it should be stopped to avoid doing more harm. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:05, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your supportive comment, Anderson. The "rush" is to make WP better after years of very bad formatting. Fortunately, we have quite a few dynamic, hard-working editors who are keen to put in the time. They see no reason to be confronted by road-blocks at every intersection. Tony   (talk)  13:15, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Delinking common terms
Lightmouse, I reverted an edit by Lightbot that delinked some common terms at Wicca, namely the seasons of the year, because it is felt these have relevance to the article itself (Wiccan festivities and observances are closely tied to seasons). After seeing instances of edit warring between your automated bot and editors on other articles, I would strongly suggest that you somehow create a blacklist for articles already visited, so the bot will not return for a specific amount of time (say, one or two years). Such automated activity is entirely inappropriate. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 02:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It may be appropriate to have a list or category of articles which are never visited by a bot for the reason you suggested, I do not feel there should ever be a 'one visit only' limitation on a bot. The whole point of a bot is that it goes around repeatedly to automatically clean up, as articles are continually "improved", these changes need to be given the once over. Ohconfucius (talk) 03:18, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * While I would normally agree, the possibility for endless conflict (eventually won by the bot after the human gives up) is just too great. Unless the bot could log exactly what it has done on every specific page so it won't do it again (which seems exorbitantly difficult), a non-permanent Do Not Edit list seems the best route. Bots should not be the instigators of conflict with regards to such controversial issues. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 03:46, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for updating Wicca. If you go back in the history, you will see that I also did the same on 21 October. I do have several methods for avoiding false positives but nobody sees the false positives correctly avoided, of course. It may be possible to use a whitelist on smaller runs. However, in this case we are talking about the seasons and I think the best solution is to simply stop delinking seasons in this mass run. Lightmouse (talk) 08:33, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Wicca is a real problem: the high-value links, of which there are quite a few, are diluted by silly ones like "Europe" (where's that?), "British" (Huh? Never heard of it.), "religion" ("mystery religion" is a good link, but why dilute it with a common dictionary term?), and links to the whole of articles such as "Sun", "Moon", and the seasons, where if they're retained at all, section links to more relevant information should be considered. Why is the linking in such an amateurish state in this article? Hunsterit, please explain how the season articles add to a reader's understanding of the topic "Wicca"? I'd appreciate examples and specific locations.  Tony   (talk)  09:09, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Look at the first sentence in this section, I think I made that clear. Seasons are a fairly integral part of the religion. Personally, I think linking them is a good idea in this situation...of course, they aren't valid links in any given article, but here I think they are. Lightmouse, I should point out that the bot *again* delinked them just a few minutes ago. Odd, however, that in all cases, only Summer, Autumn and Winter were delinked...not Spring. As for the rest of the overlinking issue, I will go through the article soon and kill off some of the extraneous ones like Europe and such. Tony1, it isn't necessary to be so condescending when you reply. At the moment, the article is in a state of flux...other editors are considering ways to rearrange and clarify things. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 09:18, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I was still working on the code that will avoid seasons. I will stop the bot and upload the new code now. Lightmouse (talk) 09:41, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Uploaded and running. Lightmouse (talk) 09:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Very nice, thank you. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 10:10, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hunster—I apologise if I seemed to be condescending. Perhaps I've become a little defensive in the face of continual attacks by those who want to maximise linking. Let me know if I can be of assistance. Tony   (talk)  11:01, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Hunster, I don't know if you are reading this section any more but just to answer your comment: "Summer, Autumn and Winter were delinked...not Spring". It would have delinked 'Spring (season)' but 'Spring' is ambiguous. Look at the 'Spring' article and you will see. Lightmouse (talk) 11:21, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, don't I feel silly for not noticing that, lol. Thanks :) — Huntster (t • @ • c) 12:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Date auditing edits
Lightmouse, I notice you have been editing articles to conform to a particular clause in mosnum. I object to these changes, and I have started a discussion at the mosnum talk page, which you can find here. I would appreciate it if you desist from making any further such changes until the issue has been debated. Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 23:32, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't understand. Can you provide an example article? Lightmouse (talk) 10:24, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Look at the first change in this edit. You have changed the date from "December 4, 1864" to "4 December 1864". Now as it happens, I think that's fine if you do that in an infobox, for consistency, but I don't think it's fine to make the same sort of change in article body text. Gatoclass (talk) 10:46, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

People want articles to be consistent. The decision has been made that USS articles are supposed to be dmy. Neither of those were my decision, but that is how it is. Perhaps you need to raise the issue of dmy versus mdy with Wikiproject Ships. Lightmouse (talk) 10:51, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Where was that decision made? Can you point me to it? Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 15:16, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know. It is apparent from the articles themselves. Perhaps we should ask at Wikiproject Ships. Lightmouse (talk) 16:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I can safely say that almost all articles on US ships use international format; apparently the US military does, too. It's a widely accepted exception to the US-related formatting rule. You may wish to peruse the battleships category. Tony   (talk)  13:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There is no hard-and-fast guideline specifically about U.S. Navy ships. You are right that in practice, many are d-m-y format, probably because many are based on the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships which uses that format. This sort of thing (changing date formats) is why a lot of people object to automated (or very nearly so) date "audits" from editors uninvolved with the writing of articles. As much as many of us would like Wikipedia (or life, for that matter) to conform to specific rules, the reality is usually more complicated than that. — Bellhalla (talk) 00:30, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Knots
You are converting Knot into Kn again! You have been asked not to do this in the past, and have agreed. Now you are doing it again. Please stop.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Where? Lightmouse (talk) 20:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I guess you have done it in many other places.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * HMCS Restigouche (DDE 257) Revision as of 19:00, 15 November 2008
 * HMCS Kootenay (DDE 258) Revision as of 18:52, 15 November 2008
 * HMCS Terra Nova (DDE 259) Revision as of 19:06, 15 November 2008


 * I don't understand why you make such a big fuss about the template form invisible to readers. I also see that you relinked the dates which has made the article worse. If the 'kn' form is wrong, perhaps we should go to template:convert to see if they want to ban it. Lightmouse (talk) 20:27, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know why you make such an effort to change the "template form invisible to readers". People like "knot" because it's easier to understand. It works. So remove it from your script or automated tool that you are using and just deal with the fact that some people want it spelled out. (Unfortunately, it's that kind of attitude that gets a lot of editors riled up about your and Lightbot's date unlinking activity.) — Bellhalla (talk) 00:20, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This has been explained to you before by various users. Abbreviations like Kn makes the text opaque.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:36, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Even kn (as you used) is opaque. Editors with a limited knowledge of SI units will be tempted to think "kilowhat?" rather than "knot". Best to spell it out in the wikitext.LeadSongDog (talk) 20:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I have proposed a change at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)--Toddy1 (talk) 08:59, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Good. Instead of criticising people that implement the MOS and the template standard, you are better off addressing the guideline itself. Lightmouse (talk) 11:32, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Date auditing edits
Lightmouse, I notice you have been editing articles to conform to a particular clause in mosnum. I object to these changes, and I have started a discussion at the mosnum talk page, which you can find here. I would appreciate it if you desist from making any further such changes until the issue has been debated. Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 23:32, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't understand. Can you provide an example article? Lightmouse (talk) 10:24, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Look at the first change in this edit. You have changed the date from "December 4, 1864" to "4 December 1864". Now as it happens, I think that's fine if you do that in an infobox, for consistency, but I don't think it's fine to make the same sort of change in article body text. Gatoclass (talk) 10:46, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

People want articles to be consistent. The decision has been made that USS articles are supposed to be dmy. Neither of those were my decision, but that is how it is. Perhaps you need to raise the issue of dmy versus mdy with Wikiproject Ships. Lightmouse (talk) 10:51, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Where was that decision made? Can you point me to it? Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 15:16, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know. It is apparent from the articles themselves. Perhaps we should ask at Wikiproject Ships. Lightmouse (talk) 16:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I can safely say that almost all articles on US ships use international format; apparently the US military does, too. It's a widely accepted exception to the US-related formatting rule. You may wish to peruse the battleships category. Tony   (talk)  13:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There is no hard-and-fast guideline specifically about U.S. Navy ships. You are right that in practice, many are d-m-y format, probably because many are based on the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships which uses that format. This sort of thing (changing date formats) is why a lot of people object to automated (or very nearly so) date "audits" from editors uninvolved with the writing of articles. As much as many of us would like Wikipedia (or life, for that matter) to conform to specific rules, the reality is usually more complicated than that. — Bellhalla (talk) 00:30, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Knots
You are converting Knot into Kn again! You have been asked not to do this in the past, and have agreed. Now you are doing it again. Please stop.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Where? Lightmouse (talk) 20:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I guess you have done it in many other places.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * HMCS Restigouche (DDE 257) Revision as of 19:00, 15 November 2008
 * HMCS Kootenay (DDE 258) Revision as of 18:52, 15 November 2008
 * HMCS Terra Nova (DDE 259) Revision as of 19:06, 15 November 2008


 * I don't understand why you make such a big fuss about the template form invisible to readers. I also see that you relinked the dates which has made the article worse. If the 'kn' form is wrong, perhaps we should go to template:convert to see if they want to ban it. Lightmouse (talk) 20:27, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know why you make such an effort to change the "template form invisible to readers". People like "knot" because it's easier to understand. It works. So remove it from your script or automated tool that you are using and just deal with the fact that some people want it spelled out. (Unfortunately, it's that kind of attitude that gets a lot of editors riled up about your and Lightbot's date unlinking activity.) — Bellhalla (talk) 00:20, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This has been explained to you before by various users. Abbreviations like Kn makes the text opaque.--Toddy1 (talk) 20:36, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Even kn (as you used) is opaque. Editors with a limited knowledge of SI units will be tempted to think "kilowhat?" rather than "knot". Best to spell it out in the wikitext.LeadSongDog (talk) 20:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I have proposed a change at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)--Toddy1 (talk) 08:59, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Good. Instead of criticising people that implement the MOS and the template standard, you are better off addressing the guideline itself. Lightmouse (talk) 11:32, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Date Script
I don't think it's loading in for me. I don't see it in my toolbox list after I entered it and did, ctrl+shift+r. Govvy (talk) 13:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Aww, wait, it's only in edit mode I see it, now I see. Doh. Sorry. :) Govvy (talk) 13:23, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a page in your user section that explains your script and it's functions, like a readme? You could use one from a link on your Userpage. Govvy (talk) 13:27, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You may find something was written about it here on Tony1's talk page. Date delinker (talk) 13:55, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think All dates to dmy works so well either. :/ Govvy (talk) 13:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * What exactly is the problem? Can you give an example?


 * I came across some ordinal dates without the square brackets which I attempted to convert in UK_Singles_Chart_records. However, I noticed that your 'All dates to dmy' script does not perform that function. Date delinker (talk) 13:59, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Code updated. The 'All dates to dmy' will now fix ordinal dates. Clear your cache and try again. Thanks for the feedback. Lightmouse (talk) 15:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I came across some dd mmm yyyy dates (without square brackets) with commas in Jeff Tarango which I attempted to remove using your 'All dates to dmy' script, but failed. My work-around was to first use the 'All dates to dmy' script, followed by 'All dates to dmy' script. Date delinker (talk) 04:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * PS: whatever happened to the script which transformed ISO to dmy and mdy? Date delinker (talk) 04:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Date linking mistake
Please do not alter the title of books when you perform your mass delinking of dates date audits as you did in this edit. As nice as it would have been for the Comptroller of the Treasury to have titled the book consistently with the article's preferred date style, the title is what it is. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Script to add some metric units with just one click
Thanks for the note on my talk page.

I just pretended I was a typical, naive Wikipedia editor and tried it out here at South Beach (nightclub).

Now, can you go fix that and make it a proper conversion? Gene Nygaard (talk) 16:25, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I would be delighted to make the change, if you can tell me what you define as 'proper conversion'. Lightmouse (talk) 16:37, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It isn't correct, is it? What in the world would it mean to "reduce the temperature ...  by &minus;7 °C"?  Is that the same as raising the temperature by 7 °C?


 * In any case, that conversion is clearly wrong. And you, like many naive users grabbing ahold of a black box like this, cannot even see the problem even when it is pointed out to you that a problem exists.


 * The point is, a black box like this maybe "fixes some common errors" as you claimed on my talk page. But on the other hand, it can easily introduce various other types of common errors, as I have just demonstrated.    It should say that it reduces the temperature by 10 °C, for the precision of the original measurement (though I'd accept "by 11 °C" as a poorer alternative).  Gene Nygaard (talk) 16:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I know that reducing the temperature by x degrees is not the same as a temperature of x. The script currently can't discriminate between those two instances and I am not sure if it ever could. The code is intended as a tool to supplement, not substitute, human skills. Lightmouse (talk) 17:08, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that you like the script in general but would like it to be improved?
 * Or are you saying that you don't like the script and think it should not be available to users?
 * I doubt Gene could have been clearer: the script is not working, and should not be available until it has been fixed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:02, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Date formats
Regarding this edit, I was just wondering what your rationale was for changing from one date style to another...after all, isn't there an arbcomm ruling that forbids that kind of thing? Guettarda (talk) 13:18, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I am trying to bring the article into line with: Mosnum. It isn't always easy to apply the guidelines so if you think I haven't got it quite right, feel free to improve the article in line with guidance any way you think is best. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 13:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Removal of As of (date) links
Instead of removing links of the form As of (year), like As of 2008, as you did this in the article RV Thomas G. Thompson (diff), please replace them with Template:As of. In this article the replacement should have been. Using this method allows editors to quickly find dated statements that may need to be updated or removed in the future. (As you can see from an updated version, the year/date no longer shows in the blue that seems to so greatly bother you.) Removing the link without templating it make the task of keeping our encyclopedia up-to-date for the readers more difficult on everyone. I encourage you to examine the template documentation for all of the options, like upper and lower case, etc. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:27, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Good idea. I will do this. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 13:32, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Objection to non-MOS date conversions
Changing all dates from US standard to Commonwealth standard is not consistent with MOS. In my view, this is unhelpful, unwanted, unjustified. Please fix the problem you have contrived. --Tenmei (talk) 12:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * November 20, 2008-format is universally converted by you to
 * 20 November 2008-format?
 * 1) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Scotland (1906)‎; 11:16 . . (-26) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 2) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Russia‎; 11:16 . . (-41) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 3) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Japan (1930)‎; 11:16 . . (-17) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 4) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Japan (1891)‎; 11:16 . . (-31) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 5) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Ireland‎; 11:15 . . (-97) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 6) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of India (1891)‎; 11:15 . . (-25) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 7) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of France (1914)‎; 11:15 . . (-14) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 8) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of China (1891)‎; 11:15 . . (-26) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 9) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Canada (1961)‎; 11:15 . . (-2) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 10) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Canada (1929)‎; 11:14 . . (-25) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 11) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Canada (1922)‎; 11:14 . . (-22) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 12) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Britain (1931)‎; 11:14 . . (-108) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 13) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Britain (1906)‎; 11:14 . . (-29) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 14) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Australia‎; 11:14 . . (-106) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)
 * 15) (diff) (hist) . . RMS Empress of Asia‎; 11:14 . . (-26) . . Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other using AWB)


 * Which article? Lightmouse (talk) 12:39, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The MOS says:
 * ''Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the more common date format for that nation. For the U.S. this is month before day; for most others it is day before month. Articles related to Canada may use either format consistently.
 * ''In certain subject areas the customary format may differ from the usual national one: for example, articles on the modern U.S. military often use day before month, in accordance with usage in that field.
 * I hope that helps. Lightmouse (talk) 12:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Aha. Your systemic standardization approach is designed to resolve date format disputes on a non-individual basis?
 * You can make a unilateral change across the Canadian Pacific fleet, which is considered reasonable, as long as it results in consistency across the fleet -- which you construe as an over-all enhancement of Wikipedia quality? Yes? No?
 * I had been following the convention already established in whatever article I'm working on; but your position appears to be that this nicety doesn't matter because happy-go-lucky Lightmouse will standardize post hoc? Yes?  No? --Tenmei (talk) 13:02, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The 'convention established in the article' is relevant but it is a secondary consideration. See Mosnum. I hope that helps. Lightmouse (talk) 13:10, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you. In this instance, your work not only improved the quality of Wikipedia texts -- you also affected the level of sophistication I'll be able to bring to bear in future articles I create or edit. --Tenmei (talk) 03:42, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Removal of links to years in poetry
I noticed that Lightbot removed links to years in poetry and years in literature with this edit at Thomas McCarthy (poet). I assume it's been done elsewhere. It seems the links, in lists of books or works, would seem useful. Could we stop this from happening? Reconsideration (talk) 12:52, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The topic of concealed links comes up frequently at wt:mosnum. The problem with concealed links is that people will treat them just like ordinary year links i.e. ignore them. That is why many people and projects say that links should indicate that they are not just plain year links. That article is an excellent example, some of the concealed links go to 'poetry' and others go to 'literature'. I have edited the page so that the links are wysiwyg. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 12:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I didn't realize that and edited it back (I thought I'd made a mistake). I'll change it back to your version. Is it possible to keep lightbot from removing the link entirely? -- Reconsideration (talk) 13:04, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It is technically possible for Lightbot to stop removing the links. But since the links look like ordinary year links and will be ignored, what is the point of them? Lightmouse (talk) 13:07, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Why so certain they will be ignored? These aren't links in regular prose but in lists devoted to works. If widespread -- and they've been in a lot of lists of works -- readers will figure it out, although perhaps not immediately. I've never seen a list of works that links just to the regular year, only to poetry or literature. Reconsideration (talk) 13:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Another problem is that the full phrase "1930 in literature" can look a bit bulky on a list. See T.S. Eliot. I think it would make the list a bit harder to read, therefore annoying to readers. Reconsideration (talk) 13:25, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It seems self-evident to me that concealed links that look like a year link will be treated like one. But your counterargument about them figuring it out is sufficiently interesting and general to be raised on one of the MOS pages. I agree with you that the wysiwyg link is longer. I would be happy to see what other people at the MOS talk pages think about this trade-off. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 13:30, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup, I think we sometimes lose sight of how hard it is to get the average reader to hit a wikilink. This is partly what underlies the clear movement in WP towards more selective linking and, as at issue here, more explicit linking. Reconsideration, can you link me to a problem example where it's apparently clunky to make a year-in-X link explicit in the running prose? I'm interested in trying to determine the possibilities for doing this, and hard examples are the acid test. Please be aware that the "See also" option gained considerable support on this page when touted last month: rather than linking in the main text, there's the possibility of selecting the most important year-in-X links for the topic and listing them as you wish in the See also section at the bottom, as gateways into all articles in that class. Remember that there's a user-friendly nav box to sibling articles at the top of all year-in-X articles. I hope this helps, and I look forward to further discussions on the matter. Tony   (talk)  06:20, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Spiritualised: Royal Albert Hall October 10, 1997
Just to let you know, I reverted part of your edit to Royal Albert Hall October 10, 1997 because the name of the album does have 'October 10' that way around, not '10 October'. --VinceBowdren (talk) 14:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Lightmouse (talk) 15:25, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Changing the titles of references
Please refrain from changing the title of references cited in articles as you did in SS Kroonland (diff). As nice as it would be if all reference titles were in accordance with Wikipedia style guidelines, regrettably, we must keep the references titled as they were published. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:28, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for spotting that. Lightmouse (talk) 15:32, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Changing dates in quotations
Please refrain from changing dates that are parts of quotations is you did in edits to SS Caserta (diff), SS Czar (diff), SS Dante Alighieri (diff), and SS Duca d'Aosta (diff). As nice as it would have been if Admiral Gleaves had followed our Wikipedia style guidelines when he published his book, he was, regrettably, long dead by the time they were established. Please respect the dead by not altering their words. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I will investigate. Lightmouse (talk) 16:30, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot Edit Summaries
"Date audit per mosnum/overlink/Other" - I am curious (nothing more): what is 'other'? TalkIslander 11:59, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * 'Other' could be something that is done in addition to a date edit such as deleting a double space inside a link. Lightmouse (talk) 00:08, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Error in prose introduced by Lightbot
Hello Lightmouse, it seems that the Lightbot bot is introducing errors in some of its edits. See here for an example. It removed the link to 2008, and added the template, but this resulted in the sentence reading: "As of November 15, As of 2008, a total of 489 humans ". You might want to take a look at why the bot did not notice this, but I would also suggest caution on removing links for dates in some lists, as some update per month/day, not per year (such as space related lists). Cheers, Ariel ♥ Gold 20:59, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The article already contained an error. It contained the format November 15, 2008 which is wrong. I was not aware that people made had been making that error. However, now you have brought my attention to the fact that editors are making such mistakes, it is possible for Lightbot to work around it. It will remove the incorrect links in exactly the way that you have done. Lightmouse (talk) 00:26, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I didn't notice that the article previously used the "as of" link for the year 2008, because it read normally when you looked at the article. (I never click on dates or years anyway, they take far too long to load. hee hee) Thanks Lightmouse! <font color="8B00FF">Ariel <font color="F64A8A">♥ <font color="007FFF">Gold 01:28, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * And thank you for the feedback, I am now aware of another mistake made by editors that I can fix. Keep up the good work. Lightmouse (talk) 01:32, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Same problem in "As of the census of [ [ as of 2000|2000] ]". { {As of |the 2000 } } census produced syntax error message --JimWae (talk) 21:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, I can't see a syntax error message. What did it say? Lightmouse (talk) 00:26, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It said "numerical expression expected..." - but "" is not complaining now --JimWae (talk) 01:05, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know why it gave that message for you but not me. I have added the template using a different mode and it seems fine now. Lightmouse (talk) 01:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Warning regarding unlinking of dates
As this practice (and the actual manual of style guideline) are currently in dispute, you should probably back off of unlinking dates until the dispute is resolved. Prior ArbCom cases have looked unfavorably on editors who attempt to force through disputed changes on a massive scale as you (and other editors) are doing. Specifically, Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes_and_characters_2/Proposed_decision, which I quote:

Continuing this behavior could be considered disruption. Please stop and instead participate in the ongoing discussions at WT:MOSNUM and elsewhere. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:06, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey Lightmouse, just so you don't miss it, here's a question I asked of you at WT:MOSNUM: "Is it possible for you to publish some statistics on how many pages your bot visited, how many delinks were made (per page avg. and total #), and how many complaints on how many pages you received? That would give us an idea of the degree of acceptance, or not, of your bot's actions."--Goodmorningworld (talk) 16:34, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't speak for Lightbot/Lightmouse, but in my own case, I've gone back and reviewed my changes. In the month of October I edited about 8000 articles, usually using either Lightmouse's script or my own very similar regexes. I would guess, conservatively, that about 70% of them involved some date delinking. (This is an entirely manual review of my editing history, so figures are approximate.) I received complaints from 5 editors on my talk page (plus Tennis Expert's objections and reverts). So that's 6 out of 5600, or just slightly more than one in a thousand. I think such a low level of objections indicates widespread acceptance of delinking. There is consensus, despite all the claims to the contrary from a small number of editors Colonies Chris (talk) 14:00, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * CC, thank you for the reply: very interesting data. It is even more lopsided than I would have guessed, and good news to proponents of auto date delinking. I would urge you to disseminate your figures as widely as possible on relevant Talk pages. Be prepared, however, for challenges from opponents. If there is a way for you to open up the data to general review, please consider doing so. Thanks again.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 22:40, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course it will be challenged; by CC's own description ("I would guess", "Figures are approximate", etc.), the results are far from precise. They don't even account for the reality that, for the most part, most editors who see the edit summary have no idea that the whole endeavour is contested and under review. Furthermore, many editors (and readers) do not understand - let alone dare to venture into - the murky world of Wikipedia's guidelines and policies. When faced with an official-sounding edit summary, they just assume it is what must be. We cannot presume that the only objections are from those who actually go so far as to respond on CC's talk page. --Ckatz <sup style="color:green;">chat <sub style="color:red;">spy  23:05, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Anyone can review my edit history and my talk page, and someone could no doubt write a script to do a more thorough analysis. The number of articles I edited is easily verifiable, only my estimate of the proportion that involved delinking is approximate. But even if my estimates are quite a bit off, the overall conclusion remains the same - the proportion of objections is tiny. And as for the idea that we should somehow take acccount of 'silent objectors' - I'm speechless. You can prove anything you want by imputing motives to people who haven't said anything. I think it's reasonable to believe that if people don't object, that means they don't object. Colonies Chris (talk) 01:03, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Chris, I'm not questioning your intentions; only saying that this data you've provided cannot be taken as the "widespread acceptance" it is described to be. People may not object for any number of reasons; in this case, many of them probably don't even know they can object to it. I could go through every article you, Tony, and Lightmouse have delinked, relink the dates using the same edit summary you're using, and in all likelihood the same general population of IP readers and less-experienced editors who didn't object to your edits wouldn't complain about mine either. --Ckatz <sup style="color:green;">chat <sub style="color:red;">spy  01:24, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Exactly right, Ckatz. No one but Colonies Chris and his handful of cohorts objected to my relinking of dates.  Tennis expert (talk) 08:18, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * As the admin said on your talk page, can you work out whether you've retired or not? I had a feeling from William's tone that he was rather hoping you had retired. Chris's "handful of cohorts" is spinnish of you: hundreds of WPs have expressed their enthusiasm for the removal of meanignless blue-splotch bruising in our text, but only a dozen or so have been screeching blue murder over it. Loudness and aggression doesn't make consensus, and Katz, you'll never be convinced, so there's not much point in arguing in circles with you. Tony   (talk)  09:48, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That is just why I created another account to perform this sort of editing work. I should have some better stats in a few weeks. I must have delinked three thousand articles since I started 6 weeks ago, I've had a handful (maybe 5) of complaints or comments. Only TE and Locke have complained about the principle of de-linking dates. ALL the others are technical in nature (me having erroneously converting to mdy instead of dmy, for example), or about a manual change during my script-editing. Now, instead of challenging my delinking, he is complaining about me doing too much delinking of articles grossly overlinked in other ways (eg Billie Jean King, on which I performed this). Ohconfucius (talk) 15:24, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If we're bragging about numbers, I'm yet to receive a complaint from anyone other than Tennis expert specifically regarding the delinking of dates. --Closedmouth (talk) 15:44, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Follow-up on previous warning about delinking dates
I invite you to have a look at this edit warring case. Edits like the one you made to the Apollo 17, Royal League 2004–05, First Sino-Japanese War, Secret Intelligence Service, and Royal Knifefish articles violate the previous warning and are inconsistent with the result of the edit warring case. Also, your use of AWB to make clearly controversial date-delinking edits violates the AWB rules of use. Tennis expert (talk) 08:22, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Lightmouse, please take this one with a grain of salt. I invite you to peruse the message on TE's page from the admin who has dealt with the ANI case brought by Cole: William firmly suggests that TE get to grips with his own edit-warring. There seems to be some double-speak going on.
 * In the meantime, it's nice to see that someone below has given your hard, intelligent work a solid endorsement. Nice. Tony   (talk)  09:18, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to the club. I'm confident this one will fail, just like the ones opened against User:Dabomb87 and me. Dicks don't ever seem to do anything to help themselves! Ohconfucius (talk) 14:33, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Notification
Your edits have been reported here. Tennis expert (talk) 12:18, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Please stop this bot
There really is no rush for this sort of thing; and, as the discussion above should make clear, editing dates does require actual intelligence available to understand what national dialect we are dealing with, and whether you are emending a direct quotation or a book title.

In addition, this frivolous bottery enflames an issue, shortly to go to RfC, on which there is no clear consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:46, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Which edit do you have in mind? Lightmouse (talk) 00:09, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Read your talk-page. This disruptive bot is mutilating book titles and direct quotations; no program short of an AI can avoid doing so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:45, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot 'Stop' and ANI discussion
Your bot is undoing it's own 'Stop' facility. I've restopped it (which I guess will probably be undone by the bot again) but that's extremely poor form and disingeneous in the extreme. Suggest you go to AN/I where discussion is starting about the bot ASAP. Exxolon (talk) 17:43, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The discussion is here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:46, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

When I edit, I get the following message: Lightmouse (talk) 18:10, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * ''You are currently unable to edit pages on Wikipedia. This is because someone using this internet address or shared proxy server was blocked. Your ability to edit pages has been automatically suspended to prevent abuse from the other person. The other user was blocked by Blueboy96 for the following reason (see our blocking policy): Autoblocked because your IP address was recently used by "Lightbot". The reason given for Lightbot's block is: "Malfunctioning bot, undoing its own shutoff capability". This block has been set to expire: 18:08, 24 November 2008.
 * Found an autoblock. Should be fixed now. - Rjd0060 (talk) 18:12, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Wouldn't it be good if there were auto-unblocks that were as good as auto-blocks. Lightmouse (talk) 18:46, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Notification regarding MOS modifications
As a courtesy notice, and because this issue has cropped up at AN, ANI, 3RR/EW repeatedly, any editor that is involved in the process of date-delinking and -linking will be subject to a block by an administrator. There is a draft RFC regarding this issue, and you are encouraged to participate in the discussion. This message applies to all that have been involved with the recent discussions and reports at the noticeboards above, and this message will be repeated on the respective user talk pages. Thanks, <font color="#CC0000">seicer &#x007C; <font color="#669900">talk  &#x007C; <font color="#669900">contribs  00:38, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Um, what policy or guideline are you invoking here, please? This is very strange behaviour, and I believe it needs justification, particularly under the Admin Policy concerning "Communication". Otherwise you are in breach. I'm especially concerned to see the logical basis of this threat. Tony   (talk)  00:51, 24 November 2008 (UTC) PS There may also be a breach of the Admin Policy on "Conflict of interest", but I'm open to being convinced otherwise. Please read the policies carefully and provide the administrative basis underlying this post.  Tony   (talk)  00:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, this came off as being entirely off from what I was wanting to state, so I apologize. I was intending that the whole date-linking/delinking bit has become too heated, after Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive493, WP:AN and four reported cases at WP:AN3 that deal with the same matter. I wish for those involved to take it up at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Thanks :) <font color="#CC0000">seicer &#x007C; <font color="#669900">talk  &#x007C; <font color="#669900">contribs  02:05, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * In case you haven't noticed, we have been participating in the discussion. As an administrator, you must be aware how policies are formed and how consensus works. We have a very small bunch of Spidermen effectively holding WP:MOSNUM (and through it, the whole of WP) to ransom just because of their edit-warring and their complaints against up-to-now sanctioned behaviour. Even while we are talking, I see little legitimate reason why I should stop doing what I have been doing. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

A Request
Hi, do you have a bot that unlinks all those linked dates we used to have to do? Would you mind getting it to have a quick run through an article I'm working on in my sandbox please? I started working on it ages ago, before the policy about linked dates changed. Just the dates though please, it's still a real mess at the moment, with duplicated bits of text all over the place. :) <font color="Black">Ryan <font color="CornflowerBlue">4314    (talk) 00:44, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * As a side note, just seen the bit of the hard time your getting on that ANI. Thought I should let you know; I've found seeing your bots many edits on my watchlist reassuring, and I've always thought that the linked date policy was messy, complicated and ugly looking. <font color="Black">Ryan <font color="CornflowerBlue">4314    (talk) 00:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

✅ You can install the script yourself if you want to: User:Lightmouse/monobook.js/script.js --Closedmouth (talk) 06:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words, Ryan. Thanks for responding, Closedmouth. Lightmouse (talk) 07:45, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for offering up the code Lightmouse, although I think you've already "de-linked" all the articles I work on already ;) And thanks for the de-linking Closedmouth. <font color="Black">Ryan <font color="CornflowerBlue">4314    (talk) 14:34, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I actually wanna get involved in this de-linking debate now. I signed "oppose" to the 3 proposals by Tony here, are there any other important discussions regarding this matter where I could add either my support or opposition? <font color="Black">Ryan <font color="CornflowerBlue">4314   (talk) 14:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. One way is to look at the 'User contributions' of people involved. You will see any discussion as it starts. Incidentally, the script does not just delink dates, it also has an option to add metric units. Lightmouse (talk) 15:56, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Date formats
Thanks for the message of 16 November - the addition to my toolbox is very useful. One query - is it possible to automatically change dates such as "2008-10-21" to the chosen dmy/mdy format? Cheers. --Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 12:43, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The short answer is no. The long answer is that it is technically possible to do the conversions and we tried this for a while. But it was producing false positives because many infoboxes and templates require the ISO format. Lightmouse (talk) 15:48, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, are you aware of the various RFC questions about date linking at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)? Lightmouse (talk) 15:54, 28 November 2008 (UTC)