User talk:Lightmouse/Archives/2008/September

Dates
Uh, why are you unlinking dates?? &mdash; TAnthonyTalk 17:01, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I hope Lightmouse doesn't mind if I answer with a real example. If you check Talk:manga you'll find a longish example of why dates should not be linked, in general, to lists about "the year in general" or "the date in general." Thus, a date listed somewhere as April 27, 2007 will be autoformatted to become April 27, 2008, that is, as April 27, 2008. If you click on either part, you'll be brought to a long and irrelevant list of events since antiquity that occurred on April 27 or that have occurred in 2008.


 * What's wrong with that, you ask? Fair question. The first event listed for April 27 is "1124 - David I becomes King of Scotland" -- a meaningless factoid if you're reading an article about manga (Japanese cartooning) or anything else except the History of Scotland. Likewise, clicking on the 2008 link will lead to "January 1 - Cyprus, Malta, and Akrotiri and Dhekelia adopt the euro," again a factoid of no relevance to Japanese cartooning. If you look at the manga article, to which I have contributed extensively, you will find dozens upon dozens of these meaningless links. Somewhere in the list of things Wiki is not there's a comment that Wikipedia is not a random collection of facts. Alas... that is exactly what it is when each and every date in each and every reference (there are over 125 references in the manga article) links to lists of events since antiquity of every imaginable occurrence and happening. A cat furball is simplicity itself compared to the mish-mash of irrelevancies that are currently linked to the manga article through uncontrolled (and uncontrollable?) date-linking.


 * I urge you to read the Talk:manga example I cited above; some of these exiguous links are really quite funny when they're this wildly out-of-context. I hope that's clearer -- uncontrolled date-linking is not a virtue but only makes an otherwise carefully referenced article a porcupine of links going every which way, all to no purpose or point.


 * Timothy Perper (talk) 21:06, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the response, I understood why one might want to unlink dates but was unaware of an MOS change ... yeah, I know, the link was in the edit summary LOL ;) &mdash; TAnthonyTalk 16:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not put a prominent invisible note at the top of the ref section, saying NO CITATION TEMPLATES? Tony  (talk)  01:29, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * That's a good idea. There's a long and contentious history here. When I added most of these references, I did not use the template nor any other kind of template. I added a number of notes to the talk page about it, but then the kobolds started in on changing my references to templated ones, thereby introducing a long host of errors. I corrected them over and over again, and yet ever more kobolds arose to take the place of the old ones. It's like sweeping the tide back out to sea with a broom. If I put up that invisible note, then I will once again have to correct something like 100-120 references for probably the third time against a tide of opposition.

I think that the problem of these templates needs to be addressed at the Manual of Style level, with consensus and some clear discussion of what is wrong with the citation and date-linking templates. I have been an editor for professional scholarly journals since the 1980s, and I know how to set up a reference -- and these templates are no good. But I'm tilting at windmills on Wiki about it. Perhaps if some of us cooperated in an effort to get these points across to a broader audience that might help. That is perhaps something we can do together, because I strongly oppose profligate and promiscuous date-linking for the sake of date-linking -- which is what we currently have. So it's over to you guys.

Timothy Perper (talk) 06:16, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I was also surprised that Lightmouse unlinked the dates, until I saw that the Manual of Style has been changed since 24 August 2008. Dates should not be linked purely for the function of autoformatting. I believe the reasons for this change are the ones mentioned above. --EdgeNavidad (talk) 08:59, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

You may also be aware that 'Lightbot' is my bot that has been unlinking 'date fragments' (I use the term 'date fragment' to mean any date elements that are not-autoformattable). It has not unlinked any autoformattable date. I would be grateful if you could support its continued use by adding a comment at Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3. Lightmouse (talk)

Job for Lightbot
... hey ... I think I might have a job for Lightbot if you get your "blank cheque" (smirks) ... no changes to any text so you'll be right on that count. J IM ptalk·cont 19:32, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't explain now but see Template_talk:Infobox_Airport I've really got to sleep. J IM ptalk·cont 19:34, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I can do that. I saw that conversation before. I don't understand it all but if you spoon feed me the details, I will do it when I get the cheque. But if Lightbot is not approved to run automatically for units, it will be too tedious for me to take on. Lightmouse (talk) 19:44, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice about date unlinking, but...
Hello, Lightmouse. I just installed (or tried to) your date unlinking script. After a false start or two, i got it installed (I think), then went to the page I wanted to work on and tried it, finding the "delink all dates to mdy" on the lower left of the page you get when you edit the page. The page = manga.

As far as I can see, nothing happened. There are still a large number of linked dates in the reference list, many of them in the Accessed Date field. See, for example, references 110 and 126 of the manga article.

Now what?

Timothy Perper (talk) 13:25, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * You need to clear your cache before it will work. The instructions on how to clear your cache are at the top of: User:Timothy Perper/monobook.js. Let me know if it work after you have done that. Lightmouse (talk) 13:29, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I already did that -- thanks, but it still didn't work. I use Safari (on a Mac), and the instructions for clearing the cache aren't accurate. It says hit the "reload" button, but Safari 1.3.2 (v312.6), the one I have, does not have a "reload" button. It has a "stop/reload" button, but reloading with that button didn't make the script work. Safari also has a "reload page" button in the View menu, but hitting that doesn't make the script work. So I cleared the cache (a different procedure) and that didn't work either. Any hints? Timothy Perper (talk) 13:57, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Timothy, I also use Safari for the Mac. It's the semicircular arrow button top left. Otherwise, Command–R will do it. Let me know. Tony   (talk)  14:00, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I have many reasons to love the Mac but Tony, you would do great work with AWB and for that you need PC access. At least try running AWB at an internet cafe or on a friend's PC just to see what it can do. Lightmouse (talk) 14:17, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Tony -- I know where the reload button is. But, on the other hand, I've figured out the glitch. The script does not delink dates in the references -- or it hasn't so far -- although it delinks them in the main text. Yes, the text dates have been delinked, leaving all the dates in the refs still linked. Whether that's what you wanted, I don't know, but that's what it's doing. I think this may be an "Oh well... good try" situation. Or maybe you should try it yourself to see if it's my specific browser? I'll leave that up to you. Thanks again... Timothy Perper (talk) 14:15, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, that wasn't clear enough. To see what is happening and what is not, go to the manga page and get the history (at the moment, it'll be the last two changes -- mine and the one right before it). Bring them both up in double columns and compare. The older text has the links -- April 23, 2007 or somesuch -- and the newer text has it without the links -- April 23, 2007. BUT when you look at the reference list, you'll find that the dates have been relinked somehow. I think the only way to see this is to visit the page and look at it, not only the double columns but the reference list itself, e.g., #110 and #126. I hope that's clearer. Timothy Perper (talk) 14:24, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Timothy: the script will not touch access dates within citation templates, sadly. All in good time.MOSNUM is fine with one date format in the refs, and one in the main text (i.e., square-bracket-generated dates). Tony   (talk)  15:06, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Date-removing script
Dear Lightmouse,

Your date-unlinking script looks really useful, and I wanted to try it out. I imported it into my monobook, but I can't figure out how to start it up. Could you give me some instruction please? Thanks! NuclearWarfare  contact me My work 16:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You first have to clear your cache. If you look at the top of User:NuclearWarfare/monobook.js, you will see instructions how to do that. Then go to a page you want to edit e.g. User:Lightmouse/sandbox (I don't know if you have permission to edit that - feel free to try). Click 'edit this page' as normal. Then while in edit mode, you will see some commands in the 'toolbox' at the left of the page below 'What links here'. Press 'delink all dates to dmy' and let me know what happens. Lightmouse (talk) 16:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to trouble you, but I still cannot get it to work, not anywhere, not even on your sandbox article. I must have tried everything, but it always comes up with null changes. Ohconfucius (talk) 14:25, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I see you have wikEd installed. User:Matthewedwards had trouble making the script work, and concluded that the only way to do so is to disable wikEd every time you want to run the script. User:Gary King has no trouble running the script without disabling wikEd. See this discussion in my talk archives. The only other thing I can think of is your addition of the semicolon after the transcusion string; but it almost certainly doesn't affect things. Tony   (talk)  15:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC) PS Remember to clear your cache.  Tony   (talk)  15:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Bingo! Thanks for your advice. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:57, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, which one of the issues was causing the problem? Tony   (talk)  05:05, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Ta
Thanks for the link. If film jump, I will suggest at the comics project that we do to. Whether consensus will be to jump is another matter. I'll keep an eye on the film discussion. Out of curiosity, how hard would it be for your bot to change links in the form 1939 to 1939 (see 1939 in comics)? Hiding T 22:26, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * In technical terms it is *very easy* to change 1939 to 1939 (see 1939 in comics). You can even do it yourself now on a voluntary per-article basis if you install my script. Simply copy:

importScript('User:Lightmouse/monobook.js/script.js');

to User:Hiding/monobook.js and refresh your cache. Then when you are in edit mode, you will find a 'delink year-in-X dates' button and some other handy buttons in your toolbox on the left of the page below 'What links here'. Let me know how you get on. Lightmouse (talk) 22:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think Hiding's suggestion is for more than what the script currently does (replaces the pipe with just an unlinked year alone). It's very doable, but would require a little programming. But more broadly, now that linked unpiped years are largely a thing of the past, I wonder whether the meaning of a blue year has already to some extent, and will further change to an indication of a piped year link. Your suggestion may be unnecessary. Another issue is that there's quite a strong feeling in some quarters that piped year-links are usually to general to satisfy the MoS requirement that they significantly increase the understanding of the reader—at least not swathes of them, such as I see in list tables. Once you link to one "year in" article, you can go straight to any of them. Tony   (talk)  01:17, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the script
That's all :) — Do U(knome)?  yes...or no 23:58, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Updating monobook?
(Re your comment here) I'd be glad to consider updating. What can you tell me about the current version vs. the one I'm using? —Scheinwerfermann (talk) 05:51, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Script update
Hi, i updated my monobook, it took time to find that the "buttons" are now in toolbox ,) --&mdash;  Typ932 T  15:29, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I forgot to mention it. I did have a dummy tab mentioning where the commands have moved to. But people asked me to remove it. I hope that you find the script useful. Feel free to comment or make suggestions for the script at User talk:Lightmouse/wishlist. Lightmouse (talk) 17:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, I would welcome your comments on my latest bot request Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 17:50, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Edits to Battleship
The edits to the Battleship article produced some dates with commas that don't belong, such as 24 May, 2008. I also note that while autoformatting was removed, no effort was made to make the dates consistent. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 05:07, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the feedback. The comma was a defect due to the AWB script code looking for 'May 24, 2008'. The code was updated shortly after that and you will see from my later AWB edits that it did not happen again. You will also see from my later edits that the AWB script code made the dates consistent (although it is desirable to do that at the same time, I don't believe it is mandatory). Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 08:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Removal of auto-formatted dates
Please do not remove auto-formatted dates, as you did with USS Aeolus (ID-3005) in this edit. Such removals are contrary to MOS:NUM where auto-formatted dates, though no longer required nor encouraged, are, nevertheless, a perfectly valid option for an article. There was no discussion on the Talk page nor was there any discussion with me, the primary contributor to this article, regarding this drastic change. Please note that I am assuming no ownership of the article in question. It's just common courtesy for drastic and controversial edits to an article. — Bellhalla (talk) 10:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi, I looked the link you provided for MOS:NUM. It says:
 * ''The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now deprecated
 * Since you raise a general principle about the guideline, perhaps it would be worth discussing it at the talk page of that guideline. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 13:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Wellll I'm on the fence here. It's definitely not a "drastic change", as the dates that were linked have nothing to do with that ship...and if Lightmouse had to contact the primary contributors to discuss this on every article, he'd never get anything done....do we really need those dates linked? Bellhalla, take it to that talk page...you can't fault Lightmouse for trying to carry out the new guidelines...but i don't know if it is that big of a deal... Good luck in solving this...  the_ed 17  15:15, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, there's nothing to solve, since we're pledged not to edit-war. I've left a note at Bellhalla's talk page. I just think it's a pity for the article and its readers. Tony   (talk)  15:22, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

You seem to undertake a lot of contentious and sometimes widespread actions which gain the ire of some editors. Perhaps you'd be better off discussing first. Timeshift (talk) 15:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Since this is a generic issue relating to the guideline and its implementation, it belongs on the talk page of MOS:NUM where more stakeholders can see it. I look forward to joining in the discussion over there. Lightmouse (talk) 15:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Wrong conversions by Lightbot
Moved generic issue to Template_talk:Convert. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 18:59, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Script handling month capitalization
I ran across an article with several uncapitalized months. Here's my diff. I capitalized the months manually. Do you think this might be a useful enhancement to the script? --Elliskev 12:57, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Possibly. I think lower case looks cute. But stick it on User talk:Lightmouse/wishlist since it seems a reasonable request. Lightmouse (talk) 13:11, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Script error?
This edit unlinked dates of the form "12 August 1841" which, as far as I remember, should remain linked. If at all, this should be fixed to "12 August, 1841". Averell (talk) 13:20, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The edit is correct. There should be no comma for 'day month year'. Your memory may be thinking of 'month day, year'. See Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers). I hope that helps. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 13:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Two slash or not two slash
You apparently realized this doesn't work. I think this is due to the way \ are interpreted in strings. A \d seems to be treated as a d, and a \\[ is treated as a \[. Try 1d January 2008 with delink to mdy and the script will produce January 1d 2008 (without a comma for some reason). Gimmetrow 14:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, that frustrates me a little because I use \d elsewhere. It has just been pointed out that the script does not deal with 3 digit years. The rest of my code uses \d{1,4} whereas yours uses [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]. I wanted to make it use \d{1,4} or failing that, I would have to use ([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]|[0-9][0-9][0-9]|[0-9][0-9]|[0-9]) which is a lot less compact. Lightmouse (talk) 14:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, \\d{1,4} would probably work. However, I found that 1- and 2-digit years were usually relevant links, and 3-digit years often were, so I didn't want to delink those automatically. Gimmetrow 14:21, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * OK. Well I might try it and see where the false positives occur. If you look at Tony's recent post on the wishlist you will see that the issue is about a comma. Lightmouse (talk) 14:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Different assumptions conflicting. All my regexes use only 4-digit years by design. Gimmetrow 14:29, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Cite date
Regarding this, I have a function which converts "|date=2008-09-03" into "|date=3 September 2008". Cite episode and I think cite video produce redlinks, but I thought you might want to know. Gimmetrow 05:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I would be delighted to be able to add the code to the script. How can we confirm that this is an acceptable change? Lightmouse (talk) 14:07, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

It would delight me, too. It's dizzying to read two formats for the same date on the same line. Some editors do feel strongly about the use of ISO in their citations, but just how many really do when they see the result of such a change can be judged only by applying the function. I'm willing to give it a go. Tony  (talk)  06:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Could we just convert linked ISO into unlinked ISO? Lightmouse (talk) 20:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Try S Club again. I would suggest this be limited to date= fields, too. Gimmetrow 21:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I just tried S Club again. It made no changes. What are you trying to tell me? Lightmouse (talk) 21:11, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It's doing nothing to iso dates in date= fields. Gimmetrow 21:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Indeed. I was creating the code. After I tested it, I thought we needed more debate. So I disabled it. I quite like ISO, particularly in reference material. Readers have been seeing this for a long time. I think we should just delink it into unlinked ISO. What do you think? Lightmouse (talk) 21:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Your script changes other stuff in the refs, though. You could delink it since it wouldn't change anything - date= would still get linked by the cite template. But if "consistency" is the thing, then it's odd to have some refs with January 1, 2001, and others with 2001-01-01, no? ISO for the date= field was a recent thing. And I see no reason publication dates can't be in one format and accessdates in iso-style. Gimmetrow 21:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * So are you saying I should go ahead and turn ' 2001-01-01 ' into '2001-01-01' ? Lightmouse (talk) 22:05, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

In the date= field of the most-used cite templates, it won't make a difference. Unlinked yyyy-mm-dd fields are checked for and linked if they pass the check. (Though there is a bug in the check in at least one template.) But for various reasons I wouldn't automatically unlink iso-style dates outside the date= field. Gimmetrow 22:31, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmm. You are saying that if we turn 'date= 2001-01-01 ' into 'date=2001-01-01' it will still produce a link for the reader. If that is the case, the edit makes no sense. Like you, I see nothing wrong with more than one format in references. I wish we could code for a solution that everybody would accept. Lightmouse (talk) 22:37, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

See for yourself. But as long as you're making other edits, no reason you can't remove unnecessary brackets. Gimmetrow 22:42, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Dates
Why are you delinking dates? Full dates should always be linked. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:22, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The guidance at Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers) says:
 * ''The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now deprecated.
 * It is taking a while for people to become aware of this. Lightmouse (talk) 13:26, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It certainly is. I have been an editor and an administrator for several years and edit Wikipedia pretty much every day and it's the first I've heard of it. Where was this discussed openly apart from between a few interested parties on the MoS page? It's a huge change and one I certainly don't agree with. It seems this has been rather slipped in by the back door and for such a major change that is the wrong way to go about things. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:35, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Would you be kind enough to raise such questions at wp:mosnum? I am not sure if I can help you with the answers. Lightmouse (talk) 13:37, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've left a note on Necrothesp's talk page, with a link to a new information page on the DA issue. Referral to that page might assist when people come here seeking information about the matter. Tony   (talk)  15:04, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I think you're likely to get a lot of editors concerned about this; you might want to put a large note at the top of your user talk page briefly explaining why and directing editors to WT:MOSNUM. As the author of quite a few biographies I've no problem with the unlinking of dates in articles, although I think a lot of editors will not realise that the reason they were supposed to be linked was because of date preference. Many editors will just that "Wikipedia articles have dates linked" and might wrongly assume it is a newbie mistake to unlink them. Sam Blacketer (talk) 13:44, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I too am an author of many biographies. I'm fully aware of why dates are linked. And I totally disagree with their delinking, particularly the manner in which it seems to have been introduced. It's a big change and it needs discussion by more than a handful of date afficionados. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I mention the guideline page in the edit summary. My talk page is full of explanations. In fact, the word is getting round but it does not matter how many flashing lights, alarm bells and town criers are created, people will still think 'Wikipedia articles have to be linked', as you say. That was what I was told in no uncertain terms a long time ago. You are also correct that some people think it is a newbie error. However, the statistics show that the vast majority of articles stay unlinked. But this sort of debate should really be on the guideline pages because it does not matter much what I think. Lightmouse (talk) 13:53, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I see no mention of the guideline in any of your edit summaries! They merely say "Units/dates/other using AWB", which doesn't tell anyone anything. The "word is getting around" only because we're suddenly having dates delinked in articles we're watching. That's a fait accompli, not a discussion. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, I forgot about that edit summary. I sometimes use another one. Would you be happy if I changed the summary or is the main issue with the policy itself? Lightmouse (talk) 14:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * No, my problem is with the "policy". -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the newer summary is much better. Tony   (talk)  14:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Aviation Infobox
Hi Lightmouse, one of the changes you might have to institute in your bot's program is that the Aviation Project Group has agreed to use a date link to the "in aviation" listings for infoboxes. Can you adjust the run to leave the infobox information as is? FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC).
 * See a stop in bot's function and a talk comment at Template:Avyear. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 18:35, 5 September 2008 (UTC).

Minor script bug
When performing some of the actions, such as "Delink all dates to dmy", this will delink dts templates even if they are already delinked (i.e.  would become  ). Perhaps add a check in there before adding the code again to each dts? Gary King ( talk ) 18:48, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have some code in there to do exactly that. It must be faulty. I will take a look. Can you give me an example article please? Lightmouse (talk) 18:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Try here. Gary King ( talk ) 18:53, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Traced the fault and fixed it. Thank you. Please double check it. Lightmouse (talk) 19:04, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, please can you comment on my bot request at: Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 19:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Your bot is converting knot to kn
Your bot is changing |Ship speed=28 knot to |Ship speed=28 kn. Please stop doing it. It makes the page harder to understand. Knot is meaningful to a wide range of people. Kn is not.--Toddy1 (talk) 10:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The bot no longer does this. Lightmouse (talk) 10:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

It was doing this at 17:43, 5 September 2008. Thanks for stopping it.--Toddy1 (talk) 10:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes. I have just changed the code today after your feedback. Lightmouse (talk) 10:33, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Date autolink removal by Lightbot
Although date autolinking has been deprecated on MOSNUM, it is NOT (at this time) the case that there has been consensus approval for the mass deletion of existing links. You might want to suspend doing so on properly formed date links until there is. (Cf. a couple of proposals regarding this.) Cheers, Askari Mark (Talk) 00:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The linked "proposals" seem to hold little water and to be going around in circles. There are major snags inherent in their development and adoption. On the other hand, what LM and others, including me, are doing is to conduct much-needed date audits. These are no quick and dirty applications of bots, but sensitively managed improvements of a number of aspects WRT dates, with human oversight. They improve the reading experience of our readers. They reinforce the need among WPians to manage dates properly. They promote their consultation of MOSNUM and CONTEXT among a broad range of WPians through edit-summary links. And not least, they perform a valuable service to WPians in enabling conformation and consistency with the MoS. These reasons probably explain why there has been only a miniscule incidence of reversion or complaint, and even little comment, compared with the number of audits. Tony   (talk)  04:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * A proposal is a proposal nonetheless, Tony. Don't be dismissive of other editors' efforts to get their opinions expressed and consensus to be reached.
 * Also, call a spade a spade, for pete's sake! To paraphrase The Princess Bride: you keep using that word, audit. I do not think it means what you think it means. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:54, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot is not removing autolinks. Lightmouse (talk) 08:15, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * A technicality, perhaps. Lightbot is not removing auto-formatted dates, but you, Lightmouse, are auditing removing date links using AWB. See here, here, here, and here, for example. If there are proposals that are being discussed, please respect the process and stop until a final consensus has been reached. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:54, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

You may consider it a technicality to distinguish between the actions of a bot and those of a human, but I can assure you that other people take it very seriously. So it is important to get the owner of the edit correct before investigating. That is all. Anyway, as far as delinking actions of humans is concerned, it seems to me that the only solution is to change the wording at wp:mosnum to forbid it. Can we take this to the talk page of wp:mosnum? Lightmouse (talk) 17:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The point for my comment is due to what looked like your total dismissal of everything Askari Mark had said by making that distinction. — Bellhalla (talk) 00:11, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Tennis articles
Please figure out a way to at least temporarily stop Lightbot from changing tennis-related articles. A discussion is ongoing in the tennis project about date linking. Lightbot should refrain from doing anything until that discussion has ended. Thanks. Tennis expert (talk) 12:08, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Tennis expert, you've already announced that you're in favour of ditching single-year links, of which there is a virtual blue blizzard in tennis-related articles. Are you not also in favour of cleaning out the date autoformatting so that our readers can easily identify the high-value links? If not, perhaps I might link you to a convenient information page on this matter. Please let me know. As far as consensus goes, I think you're clinging to the idea of WikiProject "consensus" (I'm unsure it exists in this case) above the common-sense movement in the WP's highest-level style and format authorities.
 * BTW, I must congratulate the tennis editors on a fine job. My date auditing thus far has revealed a very good part of WP's sports effort. (Just one thing: the Australian dates are usually in the wrong format.) Tony   (talk)  03:10, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

an odd thank you
while I don't always agree with the date de-linking, I understand why you're doing it. It's indirectly the reason I'm here. When you/your bot edit articles such as this one I realise how many articles I'm still watching for no good reason other than I had the tickbox set to auto-watch for a while. So thanks for help cleaning my watchlist. :) TravellingCari  02:05, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks to Travelling. I've left a link to the DA information page on his talk page. Tony   (talk)  02:23, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Request for date delinking
Hi Lightmouse, I see on Tony1's talk page that you are helping with the automatic date delinking. If it is not too much trouble, would you be able to run the script on Battle of the Alamo? I am beginning to prepare this article for FA status, and there are already lots of wikilinked dates to deal with. If this is not the kind of request that is easy to fill, then please just say so and I will do it manually. Thanks! Karanacs (talk) 02:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. --Closedmouth (talk) 02:33, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Victoria Cross
I'm surprised! "-264 characters" - That seems a lot, doesn't it! Well done, and keep up the good work. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 03:12, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know what you mean by -264 characters. Can you provide a link to the edit you are talking about? Thanks for the praise, I appreciate it. Lightmouse (talk) 09:44, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

That should teach me not to assume that other people will know what I'm talking about, (but it probably won't!) I meant, your date edits to the Victoria Cross page reduced the length of the page by 264 characters. (Assuming 8 characters per date, that means 33 dates.) That seemed like a lot of dates to me, and I was surprised. Oh yes: this edit. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 09:56, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah yes. I see now. I am not sure whether the numbers are bytes or characters but it makes not difference to me, I don't notice them anyway. Lightmouse (talk) 10:44, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

(For possible future reference, 1 ASCII character occupies 1 byte. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 14:00, 7 September 2008 (UTC))


 * OOH. That is very useful to know. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 14:04, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

hide bot edits button
I had it on, but since none of the pages I run the script on are on my watchlist, it seems not to matter either way. Tony  (talk)  11:09, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * My comment was actually directed at TravellingCari. He said 'I just wish there was a way for it not to clutter the watchlist'. Lightmouse (talk) 11:14, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Which means he's watchlisting articles he cleanses. Fair enough, but I'm careful not to clutter my WL with more than what is absolutely necessary. SMcCandlish has TWO THOUSAND articles on his ... no wonder he takes extended breaks from MOS and MOSNUM.
 * The tennis person is apparently reverting some of my work, according to The Rambling Man; while it's worth persisting for a little while, since some people come around quickly, when faced with a one-person screech-fest I think the area he "owns" is probably best left for a while. Pity the readers, and the tennis editors who want the improvement. Plenty of stuff for us to get on with, where improvements are appreciated. Tony   (talk)  12:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * That's a really incivil comment, Tony1, and not appreciated. Tennis expert (talk) 08:02, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry if it was griping, but you were undoing improvements to articles that you agree with, which is hard to take when we put so much work into such improvements. You've since attempted to personalise the issue and to focus it entirely on me by starting the RFC on my "behaviour". Even some of your own supporters find that a bit much. Tony   (talk)  08:34, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * What RFC are you talking about? I started no RFC about you or anyone else.  Tennis expert (talk) 08:49, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * OK. I just found the RFC.  Not only did I not start it, I had nothing whatsoever to do with and do not endorse it.  Although I disagree with many things you have done lately, I have never had the intention to escalate our disagreement to that level.  I'm sorry you are going through this now.  Honestly.  Tennis expert (talk) 08:55, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, and I'm sorry to have mixed you up with someone else. Tony   (talk)  09:00, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Re: Lightbot
I don't usually frequent that part of Wikipedia and don't know what I'm doing there now. Also, I realize now that it is a discussion; there is no vote. I don't have anything to add to the discussion so I just withdrew my statement. Gary King ( talk ) 15:18, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * OK. Now I see, I think somebody was a bit rude to you. I understand your withdrawal. Thanks for explaining that. Lightmouse (talk) 15:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi there, regarding this bot edit by lightbot. Is there any reason why links to "years in athletics" should be delinked? Surely this kind of approach would eventually render those articles useless and/or orphaned? Sillyfolkboy (talk) 19:51, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Folkboy, several Wikiprojects now advise against such "hidden" links. A better way, which actually encourages readers to click on them, is to reword the first occurrence so that it doesn't look like a useless year-link, and to remove the rest of the hidden links, which are readily accessible through that first one (which is usually prominently positioned at the top). Tony   (talk)  12:59, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Date link removal script
Would you explain how to run your date removal script? I might run it on one or two articles with careful review of the diffs. I have not run scripts before. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:23, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Paste:

importScript('User:Lightmouse/monobook.js/script.js');

into User:Gerry Ashton/monobook.js. Then clear your cache using the instructions at the top of that page. When you have a page in edit mode, look at the left of the page and you will see the commands in the 'toolbox' below 'What links here'. The commands include 'delink all dates to dmy' and 'delink all dates to mdy'. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 18:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The reload takes so long, I think something is wrong. Is there a restriction on which browsers support this? I'm using Internet Explorer 7 in Windows XP SP3. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I think Wikipedia was just slow. I seem to have it loaded now, although I had to go to your page, select all and copy, and paste in my page. The importScript thing wouldn't work. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:05, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is very slow right now. Do not rule out the importscript thing, it should work when Wikipedia speeds up. You will also have the benefit of it automatically updating in response to my code changes. Lightmouse (talk) 19:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explainaition; I would view automatic updating as a disadvantage, I want to be in control of updates. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * That is fine by me. It is an entirely reasonable option. If you have comments on the code, feel free to use User talk:Lightmouse/wishlist. Lightmouse (talk) 21:45, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Date formats after autoformatting
With the recent deprecation of date autoformatting, "raw" dates are becoming increasingly visible on Wikipedia. Strong views are being expressed, and even some edit-warring here and there. A poll has been initiated to gauge community support to help us develop wording in the Manual of Style that reflects a workable consensus. As you have recently commented on date formats, your input would be helpful in getting this right. Four options have been put forward, summarised as:


 * 1) Use whatever format matches the variety of English used in the article
 * 2) For English-speaking countries, use the format used in the country, for non-English-speaking countries, use the format chosen by the first editor that added a date to the article
 * 3) Use International format, except for U.S.-related articles
 * 4) Use the format used in the country

The poll may be found here, as a table where you may indicate your level of support for each option above. --Pete (talk) 18:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Cillian Murphy dates
Why did you remove all the date links from Cillian Murphy? --Melty girl 19:40, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi, date links are now deprecated. This is for a variety of reasons. The vast majority of readers receive no benefit from them and the sea of blue makes it harder to read the good links. If you want to know more, it is being discussed in lots of places such as the talk page of wp:mosnum. I hope that helps. Lightmouse (talk) 19:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link. I always thought it was weird, but it was policy... and now it's not. Or it's still disputed? Too much to read, but I'll go with it to unlink. --Melty girl 00:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

False positive
Hi, random one, your script isn't delinking 27 July. For example, one I've just done:. Cheers, SeveroTC 19:40, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Great feedback. Pedantically, it isn't a false positive, it is a 'false negative' or a 'miss'. The code avoids '7 July bombing' by looking for '7 July'. I have updated the code and it should work as you expect. Please try again. Thank you. Lightmouse (talk) 19:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Alan Cunningham
Hi, some of the changes you made to Alan Cunningham could do with being reversed. I think dates such as 10 September should all be linked to enable correct formatting based on user preferences. 82.26.16.243 (talk) 19:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The Manual of Style says "The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now deprecated.". Most readers are not registered and can't use preferences, or are registered but have not set them. Removing the unnecessary links makes the good links stand out better. However, if you disagree with the edit, feel free to put the article how you want it. I don't mind. Lightmouse (talk) 22:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It's OK, I'll leave the article alone. However, there seems to be some dispute about the issue of date linking (I've only just come across it) and I find it surprising to say the least. To me, one of Wikipedia's great strengths is the facility to customise settings such as dates. I wish this facility was extended to other areas such as BC/BCE and the like; maybe even to AmE versus BrE. Nevertheless, I acknowledge the reasonable arguments that have been put forward to abandon date linking purely for formatting. Given that the issue is far from being resolved - despite the statement in the MoS - I suggest that further de-linking should be put on hold. Now that I know there's a debate I'll keep an eye on it and maybe contribute to it. Regards, 82.26.16.243 (talk) 18:46, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This is odd. As an IP user, this person sees only the raw formatting. Tony   (talk)  14:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Re: Dates
Oooohhhh.... Nice! Thanks! Dismas |(talk) 03:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Question though... In the filmography in this article, there doesn't seem to be a way to change the ISO date to DMY.  Will this have to be done "manually"?  Dismas |(talk) 04:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Damn you! ;) This is so easy to use, it's addictive!  :)  I have homework that I should be doing! Okay, seriously, this might be outside the scope of the project but do you think that you could put in a link to get rid of the "Replace this image" images from infoboxes? The use of those images has been deprecated. Dismas |(talk) 04:37, 12 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You can add requests to User talk:Lightmouse/wishlist. As you can see, there is 'delink ISO dates' and it is technically very easy for the script to convert them to dmy or mdy. However, it is being held up by problems with citation templates. Somebody else can probably explain it better if you add it to the wishlist. I will probably not want to increase the scope to 'Replace this image' but on my wishlist page, give me a 'before' and 'after' example of a page with what you want. Lightmouse (talk) 08:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Removal of year links
Hi Lightmouse. Can you please modify Lightbot to stop removing links like this: 2000 and 2000 ? Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 09:50, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It currently removes links that are solitary years, or look like solitary years. This is because readers will treat anything that looks like a solitary link in the same way i.e. ignore them. They might even have been put there as a consequence of a previous Wikipedia obsession with linking solitary years. There is a dicussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and there are suggestions of deprecating such links or at least recommending that they are written so that they are not concealed and ignored. Lightmouse (talk) 11:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

On a related point, I recently noticed an edit on Jesper Blomqvist along these lines. Whilst I have no strong opinion on whether solitary years should be allowed, I am going to revert the change for consistency. An alternative solution would be "2008 season which I would be okay with, but as I'm in the middle of a GA I'd rather wait until there is clarity on the MoS. BeL1EveR (talk) 14:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * As I understand it, your suggestion of 2008 season is exactly what is being suggested at the MOS. In any case, I do not mind reverts. Lightmouse (talk) 14:50, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

re: script-assisted changes to ship speed
Just wondering if you can clarify the reasoning behind edits such as this one on S class ferry. I have no major objection to it, other than the removal of the wiki-linking to Knot (speed), which can be useful for those who are not familiar with the term so that they can have a conversion to measurements they are more familiar with using. Granted, the script change still leaves the km/h equivalent, which is great for people who use the more logical metric system, but it's still pretty meaningless to most residents in the United States and other nationalities that are not using metric. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi,


 * I am tidying up use of the template. The template code '|knot|' is deprecated and now replaced with the symbolic form '|kn|'. This will match all the rest of the template code (which always uses the symbolic form). I would not mind if you added a link. Nor would I mind if you put the template back using: '|kn|' and 'lk=on'. Lightmouse (talk) 15:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Based on your reply, I partially reverted, but corrected the code to use |kn| instead of |knot|. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much. Lightmouse (talk) 15:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse, can you point me to the discussion where "knot" was deprecated within convert? I sure didn't see any discussion other than the one quite a while back when you were—in good faith, of course—replacing "knot" with "kn" at the same time you were replacing "kt" (because of ambiguity over the meaning of "kt"). — Bellhalla (talk) 16:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Also, looking at some of your other contribs, why are you removing use of convert in the first place? — Bellhalla (talk) 16:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the discussion was the one that you saw. Given your unhappiness with seeing 'kn', I have simply removed the template where it uses |knot| in the code. I thought that would be satisfactory to you. Lightmouse (talk) 17:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * On a related topic, this edit surprised me. Ignoring the other uses of the tag (which I agree with adding those) ... it seems inconsistent to remove a "knot" conversion in the infobox while simultaneously adding one for the same type of conversion within the body of the article.  Why not just change the use in the infobox from "knot" to "kn" to keep everything consistent? (or is that the discussion that Bellhalla referenced?  I haven't followed that link as yet). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Here is what happened: That should explain what it did. I agree with you that it looks a bit odd and I have no objection to your suggestion. Lightmouse (talk) 17:27, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The script was designed around the convert template and its updates. That applied to 'feet', 'horsepower', 'knot' etc.
 * Then Bellhalla said that he/she did not like what I was doing. So I rewrote the code to find and replace instances of '|knot|' with the non-template equivalent. I was trying to keep everyone happy.

Date formatting issues
Please be more careful with this script - you're breaking image links when the filename has an oddly phrased date. (see eg here) Shimgray | talk | 17:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for catching that and fixing it. It is a known issue and I am trying to find a method of stopping the script doing it. In the meantime, as you quite rightly say, I will have to make more effort to catch it by eye. Thanks again. Lightmouse (talk) 17:10, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Some date wikilinks are within our policy
Hello, thanks for helping us improve our encyclopedia! I just wanted to let you know that there is a policy, stated at Only_make_links_that_are_relevant_to_the_context, according to which:

"Stand-alone years, months and days of the week should generally not be linked; however, links to articles on a topic in a specific chronological period, such as 1441 in art, 1982 in film, and 18th century in United States history can add significantly to readers' understanding of the current topic."

I interpret the above as saying that we should not link standalone dates to our general almanac (eg 2008), but instead we should link these standalone years to specific almanacs that are connected with our article: for example since the article CERN is about science it helps the reader to provide links to "Year in science" articles (eg 2008, rendered as 2008). It also helps our encyclopedia as this will attract more editors to our science almanac, thus helping improving it.

I notice you use a semi-automated tool and I believe that you may have not thought much before using that tool to make your last CERN edit. As I believe that you probably thought that you were removing links to standalone dates (while in fact you removed links to our science almanac, which I believe are within policy) I undid your edit to maintain what I see as a good-quality article with good-quality year links. However, if you really believe that links to specific almanacs, like the science almanac, in years is not within the policy or if you interpret the policy in a different way please feel free to discuss the issue and help me understand your point of view. NerdyNSK (talk) 19:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Hidden links are discouraged at MOSLINK, for the very good reason that readers are unlikely to follow them, thinking they're just another useless year-link. Several WikiProjects (music is one) specifically advise against it. There may be a case for linking one in the lead, provided the piped wording is explicit and worked into the sentence smoothly (this is usually possible). Readers can access any of the sibling year-in-X articles from just one. Tony   (talk)  10:08, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Alan Cunningham
Hi, some of the changes you made to Alan Cunningham could do with being reversed. I think dates such as 10 September should all be linked to enable correct formatting based on user preferences. 82.26.16.243 (talk) 19:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The Manual of Style says "The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now deprecated.". Most readers are not registered and can't use preferences, or are registered but have not set them. Removing the unnecessary links makes the good links stand out better. However, if you disagree with the edit, feel free to put the article how you want it. I don't mind. Lightmouse (talk) 22:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It's OK, I'll leave the article alone. However, there seems to be some dispute about the issue of date linking (I've only just come across it) and I find it surprising to say the least. To me, one of Wikipedia's great strengths is the facility to customise settings such as dates. I wish this facility was extended to other areas such as BC/BCE and the like; maybe even to AmE versus BrE. Nevertheless, I acknowledge the reasonable arguments that have been put forward to abandon date linking purely for formatting. Given that the issue is far from being resolved - despite the statement in the MoS - I suggest that further de-linking should be put on hold. Now that I know there's a debate I'll keep an eye on it and maybe contribute to it. Regards, 82.26.16.243 (talk) 18:46, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This is odd. As an IP user, this person sees only the raw formatting. Tony   (talk)  14:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Re: Dates
Oooohhhh.... Nice! Thanks! Dismas |(talk) 03:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Question though... In the filmography in this article, there doesn't seem to be a way to change the ISO date to DMY.  Will this have to be done "manually"?  Dismas |(talk) 04:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Damn you! ;) This is so easy to use, it's addictive!  :)  I have homework that I should be doing! Okay, seriously, this might be outside the scope of the project but do you think that you could put in a link to get rid of the "Replace this image" images from infoboxes? The use of those images has been deprecated. Dismas |(talk) 04:37, 12 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You can add requests to User talk:Lightmouse/wishlist. As you can see, there is 'delink ISO dates' and it is technically very easy for the script to convert them to dmy or mdy. However, it is being held up by problems with citation templates. Somebody else can probably explain it better if you add it to the wishlist. I will probably not want to increase the scope to 'Replace this image' but on my wishlist page, give me a 'before' and 'after' example of a page with what you want. Lightmouse (talk) 08:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Removal of year links
Hi Lightmouse. Can you please modify Lightbot to stop removing links like this: 2000 and 2000 ? Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 09:50, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It currently removes links that are solitary years, or look like solitary years. This is because readers will treat anything that looks like a solitary link in the same way i.e. ignore them. They might even have been put there as a consequence of a previous Wikipedia obsession with linking solitary years. There is a dicussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and there are suggestions of deprecating such links or at least recommending that they are written so that they are not concealed and ignored. Lightmouse (talk) 11:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

On a related point, I recently noticed an edit on Jesper Blomqvist along these lines. Whilst I have no strong opinion on whether solitary years should be allowed, I am going to revert the change for consistency. An alternative solution would be "2008 season which I would be okay with, but as I'm in the middle of a GA I'd rather wait until there is clarity on the MoS. BeL1EveR (talk) 14:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * As I understand it, your suggestion of 2008 season is exactly what is being suggested at the MOS. In any case, I do not mind reverts. Lightmouse (talk) 14:50, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

re: script-assisted changes to ship speed
Just wondering if you can clarify the reasoning behind edits such as this one on S class ferry. I have no major objection to it, other than the removal of the wiki-linking to Knot (speed), which can be useful for those who are not familiar with the term so that they can have a conversion to measurements they are more familiar with using. Granted, the script change still leaves the km/h equivalent, which is great for people who use the more logical metric system, but it's still pretty meaningless to most residents in the United States and other nationalities that are not using metric. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi,


 * I am tidying up use of the template. The template code '|knot|' is deprecated and now replaced with the symbolic form '|kn|'. This will match all the rest of the template code (which always uses the symbolic form). I would not mind if you added a link. Nor would I mind if you put the template back using: '|kn|' and 'lk=on'. Lightmouse (talk) 15:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Based on your reply, I partially reverted, but corrected the code to use |kn| instead of |knot|. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much. Lightmouse (talk) 15:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse, can you point me to the discussion where "knot" was deprecated within convert? I sure didn't see any discussion other than the one quite a while back when you were—in good faith, of course—replacing "knot" with "kn" at the same time you were replacing "kt" (because of ambiguity over the meaning of "kt"). — Bellhalla (talk) 16:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Also, looking at some of your other contribs, why are you removing use of convert in the first place? — Bellhalla (talk) 16:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the discussion was the one that you saw. Given your unhappiness with seeing 'kn', I have simply removed the template where it uses |knot| in the code. I thought that would be satisfactory to you. Lightmouse (talk) 17:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * On a related topic, this edit surprised me. Ignoring the other uses of the tag (which I agree with adding those) ... it seems inconsistent to remove a "knot" conversion in the infobox while simultaneously adding one for the same type of conversion within the body of the article.  Why not just change the use in the infobox from "knot" to "kn" to keep everything consistent? (or is that the discussion that Bellhalla referenced?  I haven't followed that link as yet). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Here is what happened: That should explain what it did. I agree with you that it looks a bit odd and I have no objection to your suggestion. Lightmouse (talk) 17:27, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The script was designed around the convert template and its updates. That applied to 'feet', 'horsepower', 'knot' etc.
 * Then Bellhalla said that he/she did not like what I was doing. So I rewrote the code to find and replace instances of '|knot|' with the non-template equivalent. I was trying to keep everyone happy.

Date formatting issues
Please be more careful with this script - you're breaking image links when the filename has an oddly phrased date. (see eg here) Shimgray | talk | 17:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for catching that and fixing it. It is a known issue and I am trying to find a method of stopping the script doing it. In the meantime, as you quite rightly say, I will have to make more effort to catch it by eye. Thanks again. Lightmouse (talk) 17:10, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Some date wikilinks are within our policy
Hello, thanks for helping us improve our encyclopedia! I just wanted to let you know that there is a policy, stated at Only_make_links_that_are_relevant_to_the_context, according to which:

"Stand-alone years, months and days of the week should generally not be linked; however, links to articles on a topic in a specific chronological period, such as 1441 in art, 1982 in film, and 18th century in United States history can add significantly to readers' understanding of the current topic."

I interpret the above as saying that we should not link standalone dates to our general almanac (eg 2008), but instead we should link these standalone years to specific almanacs that are connected with our article: for example since the article CERN is about science it helps the reader to provide links to "Year in science" articles (eg 2008, rendered as 2008). It also helps our encyclopedia as this will attract more editors to our science almanac, thus helping improving it.

I notice you use a semi-automated tool and I believe that you may have not thought much before using that tool to make your last CERN edit. As I believe that you probably thought that you were removing links to standalone dates (while in fact you removed links to our science almanac, which I believe are within policy) I undid your edit to maintain what I see as a good-quality article with good-quality year links. However, if you really believe that links to specific almanacs, like the science almanac, in years is not within the policy or if you interpret the policy in a different way please feel free to discuss the issue and help me understand your point of view. NerdyNSK (talk) 19:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Hidden links are discouraged at MOSLINK, for the very good reason that readers are unlikely to follow them, thinking they're just another useless year-link. Several WikiProjects (music is one) specifically advise against it. There may be a case for linking one in the lead, provided the piped wording is explicit and worked into the sentence smoothly (this is usually possible). Readers can access any of the sibling year-in-X articles from just one. Tony   (talk)  10:08, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Template help, please?
Never mind, I was making a dumb error — it's working fine, now. —Scheinwerfermann (talk) 22:56, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Greetings, Lightmouse.

We're trying to deal with a unit conversion problem in the automobiles project, and I think you may be able to help. As you know, there are templates written specifically for use within the automobiles project. One of these is Template:Auto L, which is for converting the piston displacement of an engine (in litres) to cubic inches. A difficulty arises with engines originally engineered and marketed in inches, but later redesignated in litres. Examples are numerous. Take, for instance, the Chrysler 318. It has a bore of 3.91" and a stroke of 3.31", for an actual piston displacement of 317.9518651254313. In other words, it's definitely a 318. If we convert this to litres, we get 5.21 L. This engine was redesignated 5.2 L, which is mathematically accurate. However, if we start with 5.2 and run it through Template:Auto CID, we get 317.32347, which gets rounded and displayed as 317 in³. That's wrong. Tweaking the conversion factor so one particular engine is converted and rounded correctly means that other engines will be converted and rounded incorrectly; that's no solution. What I'd like to do instead is create a template just like Template:Auto CID, but which spits out the litres followed by the cubic inches. In other words, I want to put in, and have it display 5.2 L (318 in³). I thought I'd guessed how to do this by looking at Template:Auto L and Template:Auto CID, but my effort to create such a template at Template:Auto Lrev have failed. Obviously, I don't know enough about template syntax to make this work. I'm guessing you do; can you please assist? Thanks. —Scheinwerfermann (talk) 22:43, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

List of Zulu War Victoria Cross recipients
Hi there Lightmouse, could you take a look at this diff. Does that assuage your concern. FYI, it wasn't like Churchill, see Siege of Eshowe and Woody (talk) 11:46, 16 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Subsequently amended, see these diffs. Woody (talk) 11:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Keep up the good work. Lightmouse (talk) 19:47, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Small change to Java code
Lightmouse, I made one small change to your code to remove flagicon's from the place of death. Under the section for //remove flagicons from birth and death

I added: ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)(burial ?= ?)\{\{flagicon\|[^\}]+\}\}", "$1");


 * Good call. Thanks. It is very good to have feedback on the AWB script. If you look, you will see that I have collapsed several lines into one:

ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)((?:birth|birth_?place|death|death_?place|burial) ?= ?)\{\{flagicon\|[^\}]+\}\}", "$1");
 * Incidentally, you forgot to sign your contribution. Lightmouse (talk) 17:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks and sorry about that. I also wanted to let you know that I chanegd the code for the unlinking of dates to put the, between month day year (January 1, XXXX vice January 1 XXXX) and to change the date to the US version of January 1 XXXX vice the 1 January XXXX format in your code. Just to clarify if the date is 1 January it will stay that way but if it is January 1 it will stay that way when delinked. Your code changed January 1 to 1 January when it delinked it.--Kumioko (talk) 19:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The AWB script only amends linked dates. The monobook script goes one step further and amends unlinked dates, although that increases the rate of false positives. I have not yet updated the AWB script to match that feature of the monobook script. Have you considered publishing your script so that I can take a look? Lightmouse (talk) 19:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I really didn't do much other than modify what you already did. I will say that I have noticed that I occasionally get a rogue, but usually it works. Where do you want me to put it?--Kumioko (talk) 19:57, 16 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have made most of my advances in coding in little steps or by nicking code from other people. So I am interested to see changes you make, even if small. In any case, I am hoping that together we can come up with code that is more efficient because there are several editors interested in using AWB for delinking. You could use a similar address to mine, i.e. something like User:Kumioko/javascript conversion/dmy, but it is up to you. Lightmouse (talk) 20:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Its out there. I will let you know if I make any other changes.--Kumioko (talk) 20:40, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I will add it to my watchlist, so I will see if you update it. Lightmouse (talk) 20:46, 16 September 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, since were on the topic I have noticed a few dates (more than a few actually) that are displayed as 2008-09-25 and am working on that now. I should have something in a little while.  The other thing I was going to ask is has there been any determination about what date format to use.  I notice that when I edit US articles that there are a wide variety of formats (mot articles don't even have a standard and seeing 2 or three different formats is typical).  I was thinking about writing something that would make a US article standard US format (January 1).  Do you know if anything has been said about this before I start making edits that would otherwise offend the editorial sensibilities of others?--Kumioko (talk) 20:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to the messy tangled web of date links. Most of the ISO date formats (2008-09-25) are due to citation templates. I understand that if you take the links out, the template will still link it but feel free to try. I have kept away from citation templates because the stakeholders are in extensive discussions about how they will delink dates and I don't understand what they are talking about. If the article is clearly about a US topic, then you can make all the dates mdy format unless it is military or some exception like that. It is all described at wp:mosnum. Similarly if it is a British topic, you can make them all dmy. The only question is about whether to make non-English nation (e.g. French) articles match the national (e.g. French) style and there is a big debate about that at the talk page of wp:mosnum. It is relatively easy to write the code to turn linked dates into either mdy or dmy. However, if you want to extend it to amending the format of unlinked dates then the code will incorrectly amend quotes, titles and URLs. You have to catch those by human eye. You may get more advice from User talk:Tony1. I am going offline now. Lightmouse (talk) 21:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

%nbsp;
Currently, the monobook.js/script.js script is removing non-breaking spaces  from units, such as 40 °C --JimWae (talk) 00:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Can you give an example of a page edit? Lightmouse (talk) 08:31, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The one I just did to this page - by using the script, to add metric units --JimWae (talk) 15:32, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I am still not quite following you. Which page? Can you provide a link to it please? Lightmouse (talk) 18:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse he ran it on this (your) talk page. If you look at the history you can see what happened.--Kumioko (talk) 18:32, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. I was rather hoping for an example where JimWae edited a real article. Lightmouse (talk) 18:36, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Diocese of Urgell
Hi, I've seen that you get out that [ [ ] ] (In Catalan we told it claudator, I don't know how to call that in English) from the years in the Diocese of Urgell article and I want to know why. Because in the catalan wikipedia we put it, and I don't know if you don't do it that here. --Vilarrubla (talk) 21:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi,


 * They are called 'square brackets' in English. There has been a change in the last two years to stop linking dates. I am sure this will soon be the same in other Wikipedias. It would be interesting if the catalan wikipedia has the same discussions as the english Wikipedia. If you want to know more, just ask at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Lightmouse (talk) 21:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot, and blank lines before stubs
I've noticed that (whilst making other edits) the Lightbot is collapsing the blank lines before stubs (for example, this edit). This seems to go against the guidance at WP:STUB: "It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it." And was wondering if this is a fault with the bot, or if there is a some other guidance that says "never have two blank lines" or something? -- ratarsed (talk) 11:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your feedback. I have raised the question at: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser. I can't answer it myself. If you watch there, hopefully somebody will provide the answer. Lightmouse (talk) 11:28, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for getting back to me on this -- I will watch for a response there :) -- ratarsed (talk) 13:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Date changes
I thought that wew were temporarily not making any date changes until all arguments had been sorted out.--Kumioko (talk) 02:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Kumioko, I think numerous editors are using the script to audit dates, including the removal of autorformatting. This is an inevitable outcome of the decision made last month. UC_Bill et al. have made a case that their gathering of "statistics" demands that all DA removal stop temporarily; however, they have failed to produce a shred of evidence that their statistics (1) will be an accurate reflection of date formats on WP, and (2) have any bearing whatsoever on the removal of DA, whether in the short, medium or long terms. Tony   (talk)  07:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Stop lying, Tony1. You've been asked to stop using your script to show good faith and allow the situation to cool down, not because it interferes with statistics gathering (though it does that too.)  You've also been screwing up a bunch of articles by altering date formats in image titles, publication titles in references, date ranges, etc.  So the script is obviously flawed and needs fixing before you continue to use it.  You've also been destroying valuable metadata that will be hard to replace.  A better solution would be to wrap delinked dates in some other kind of markup (a div tag or something) that would eliminate the autoformatting and the link while still allowing bots and analysis scripts to efficiently identify dates in articles.  --Sapphic (talk) 01:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a serious personal attack from someone who is flagrantly abusing admin rules in more than one way. I don't want harm to come to you through your actions. My advice is to take a few days off, calm down, and try to see things in a more balanced way. Tony   (talk)  02:29, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Sapphic, calling another editor a liar is not nice. Please withdraw that. Lightmouse (talk) 02:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse, do you have an XML script or module available for AWB yet? I know that you have the script but I can do the date changes a lot faster with AWB (like your bots do) than I can as a page by page script. I can make my own if necessary but I thought I would ask first.--Kumioko (talk) 19:15, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have a few scripts. The following AWB script will delink dates to day month year:
 * User:Lightmouse/javascript conversion/dmy
 * I have not yet created one to delink dates to month day year but I can do that easily. It differs in several other respects from the monobook script but it is a reasonable approximation. Is that what you are looking for? Lightmouse (talk) 20:01, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes thank you.--Kumioko (talk) 20:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * For the benefit of morons like myself, how would one go about utilising that script in AWB? --Closedmouth (talk) 10:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

In AWB, go to the 'Tools' menu and select 'Make module'. Paste the script into the white space. Click the 'enabled' check box at the top left and press the 'make module' button. Click the 'close' button. Then run AWB as normal. Let me know how you get on. Lightmouse (talk) 11:28, 16 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm getting this when it attempts to process the page:


 * Is that the script, or have I broken something in my version of AWB? Never mind, that made no sense. --Closedmouth (talk) 12:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

English
Thanks for telling me about that mistake. I know it, but I don't realise that I put twice thousand, one in numbers and the other one in letters. I think that I still make mistakes in grammar. If I've made more mistakes let me know. Where are you from? Salut (=regards) --Vilarrubla (talk) 13:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I am British. Your english is very good. Salut. Lightmouse (talk) 14:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed; Lightmouse hails from where it was invented. Can't do better than that. Tony   (talk)  14:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Dates
I am curious as to the reasoning behind your bot's de-wikilinking of dates. Under what conditions will it leave a date wikilinked, and under what conditions will it de-link it? I understand that years should only be linked when they are particularly significant to the topic, but surely the bot cannot make subjective decisions of significance based on the context; also, I thought it fairly standard that we wikilink birth and death dates, reign years and the like.

So... are we de-linking all dates and years now? Or is the bot misbehaving? LordAmeth (talk) 17:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * With respect to your first question, Lightbot is not delinking all dates but there are thousands, if not millions, of excessive date links and Lightbot targets these. If you have a particular date link in mind and a reference, I would be happy to look at it and discuss it. People used to link all dates without thinking and the issue has been extensively debated in many places. The general policy is now against date links. I would be happy to go through it with you but you would probably get a quicker and more extensive answer at the talk page of wp:mosnum. Lightmouse (talk) 00:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Dates are now not generally linked for the purpose of autoformatting. Please see MOSNUM and MoS. Tony   (talk)  09:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Yuri Gagarin

 * Additionally, why did this happen? I've seen nothing that says to only link the day and month, and not the year. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 17:54, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

It is the first time I have seen anything like that in tens of thousands of delinkings. It is not part of the design and to be honest, I don't know what happened. I have human-edited that article and removed the links. Lightmouse (talk) 00:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Alexander Hamilton
This edit seems deeply misguided. There is a case, although an obnoxious one, for removing the link to January 11, 1755 or 1757 altogether; there is no case for leaving it on the autoformatted date and removing it from 1757, for they are parallel. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:35, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Lightbot removes links to solitary years. It does not remove links from autoformattable dates. Some people add links to non-autoformatted dates because they think they look nice together and this appears to be one of those cases where people make bizarre combinations of links. You will see that I have removed all of the links now. Feel free to edit the article in any way that you think improves it. Lightmouse (talk) 00:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Mini-flags
Hi, There is a section in wp:flag that says: Flag images, especially flag icons in biographical infoboxes, should not be used to indicate birth or death places... does that seem reasonable? Lightmouse (talk) 17:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * After reading your citation, I understand the reasoning behind it - I'll withdraw the complaint. Thanks for the bot - Take Care... Dinkytown (talk) 19:24, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Removal of undefined undefined
Seriously, dude!?!?!? Why are you removing instances of convert that deal with knots in ship infoboxes (such as here)? I know you prefer the "kn" to the "knot" operator, per past discussions, actions, etc., but is this now your way of getting around the use "knot" by a "subst" of the template? Or is there some other arcane reasoning behind it? I'm at a total loss… — Bellhalla (talk) 19:38, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Also, why are you still changing "knot" to "kn" in uses of convert, like here? There is no call for it. We have had this discussion before (I can dig through Template_talk:Convert archive yet again to find previous discussions, if you wish to be reminded. The use of "knot" in convert—which works and is not deprecated—makes for easier, more intuitive editing (it makes no difference to readers). I have asked you to stop previously. Others have asked you to stop changing it. I will ask again: Will you, Lightmouse, and your bot, Lightbot, please cease all changes of the "knot" operator within Template:Convert? — Bellhalla (talk) 19:45, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

With respect to your first question, I have been trying to work within your unhappiness with seeing a piece of convert template code within edit mode. With respect to your second question, that is because I have not yet written the script to handle all values but it can be done. Feel free to discuss this at the talk page of the template itself. Lightmouse (talk) 00:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, the phrase 'WTF' is not nice. I am sure you don't mean it in a profane way, but it is profane. Please withdraw it. Lightmouse (talk) 02:56, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Struck, but the emotion behind is genuine. (And, trust me, that was a lot more mild than what I originally wrote before I cooled off).
 * I have no idea what you are talking about in reference to the first question. The first diff I linked to above had this in it before your edit:
 * 15 knot
 * and after your edit:
 * 5 knots (28 km/h/17 mph)
 * I will repeat my question: Are you removing instances of convert because you don't like the use of the "knot" parameter within the convert template call? Perhaps you are confusing me with someone else, but I have no problem whatsoever with the template convert being used anywhere. My problem—and this relates to the second comment of mine—is when edits are made—mostly by you, Lightmouse, or your bot, Lightbot—to change the intuitive, non-deprecated, and fully functionl "knot" within a call to convert to the less-intuitive, less-understood abbreviation of "kn" within a call to convert. (Please don't dig up the whole "kn" for "kt" explanation. We've gone over that ad infinitum in the past and has nothing to do with my multiple requests for you to stop changing this code.) Here's the example of what I'm talking about from my second diff above.
 * Before your edit:
 * 13 knot
 * and after your edit:
 * 13 kn
 * See how the first one uses the word knot spelled out? See how the second one uses just kn? That is what I'm talking about. Just stop. Don't do it.
 * Seeing as how your script, bot, or whatever-it-is is making this change already, there's obviously some rule or regular expression or something that is being applied to make that change. Please remove that snippet of code, expression, or whatever-it-is and the problem will go away. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot OOPS
Lightbot incorrectly handled dates in Zil-e-Huma Usman Shaheed. See here. Granted, the dates were incorrectly formatted before but they are worse now. Shame on you Lightbot. You should have better error handling. Truthanado (talk) 00:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * As you say, the article contained an error. I have fixed the error. The phrase 'shame on you' is not very nice. Can you replace your comment with a more civil version and assume good faith please? Lightmouse (talk) 00:12, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The "shame" comment was made in jest. I didn't think a piece of software would take it personally. My apologies. I always assume good faith. It would help, though, if Lightbot were modified to look for and properly these kinds of error conditions. As a Wiki patroller, I see and correct many of these (and similar) wikilink formatting errors. Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 01:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, it was a joke. It did strike me as odd that you would have said something truly negative because my impression of you was as a civil person. I understand you now. Thanks for clarifying that.


 * Seriously, the Lightbot code fixes several common errors and some uncommon ones. In addition to 'fixes' I have coded for a fair amount of 'tolerance' of several types of error or weirdness. As you can imagine, the number of error permutations is near infinite. So I can't hope to address them all. As I become aware of common and important ones, and as my coding skills increase, I tinker with the code. I may stew on them till a solution occurs to me and that is why I have User talk:Lightmouse/wishlist. I am not a programmer, I am just some guy that steals code from other people and hacks it until it works, sort of. That particular defect by a previous editor plus the Lightbot response seems to me to be a rare permutation. Feel free to add it to the wishlist. I am hoping that this issue will go away soon because fewer people are adding date links now. Lightmouse (talk) 01:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Wilhelm Brasse
Recently, this Lightbot seems to be introducing inconsistencies in an article that I created and have been expanding from time to time since about late August 2008. It also is creating "edit conflict" interfering with some updating of the article. Thank you if you can prevent it from doing that by not applying it to the article in a haphazard fashion (f that is the problem). Diffs. --NYScholar (talk) 01:46, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I looked at the edit and it seems fine to me. The only complaint that I would have is that Lightbot didn't do enough, it didn't remove the unnecessary link to 'May' because that feature is currently switched off. Can you explain what you think is wrong with that edit?


 * With respect to the edit conflict, in the space of one and a half hours, you made ten edits. It was chance that Lightbot made a single edit in that period. There are two directions for an edit conflict. If you get there first and Lightbot attempts an edit, Lightbot will detect that and back off. If Lightbot gets there first and you attempt an edit, Lightbot can't prevent that because it does not know about your edit (if I knew of a way of avoiding the few minutes just before you edit, I would do it). Lightmouse (talk) 02:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry; but I see no reason for your deleting those links. It seems to be your own personal preference to delink the dates. On what Wikipedia policy or guideline are you basing your changes to these articles using this bot? --NYScholar (talk) 02:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The use of that bot is creating inconsistencies into an article whose dates were consistently linked (at least that was the intention). I have been making content changes and stylistic and English idiom editing in some articles that your edits to the dates are undoing.  --NYScholar (talk) 02:35, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

NYScholar, thanks for raising these points. As a professional writer (I presume this from your username), you will know how important a smooth reading experience is. This aim is behind WP's increasing change to what might be called "smart linking", in which low-value links are minimised to make it more likely that readers will follow valuable links. This is a move from the scattergun linking that pertained in wikis four or five years ago. If you're referring to the date-autoformatting mechanism, which looks like linking but has a quite different function, please let us know. It's a separate issue. Tony  (talk)  02:39, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The relevent guidelines are at place such as wp:mosnum or wp:overlink and I am sure that many people would like to consider your good work at Wilhelm Brasse in the talk pages of those guidelines. You may also wish to put the article forward for peer review, good article, or featured article and see what the reviewers think of date fragments such as months and years, plus the issue of linking for consistency. My opinion isn't very important and I expect a third party review would have other benefits too. Lightmouse (talk) 02:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply here, Tony; could you point me to a link in current Wikipedia WP:POL or WP:LOP or MOS, where I can see a basis for what you are doing? I think at least for a while it would be good not to perform the bot that changes the dates on these articles relating to William Brasse; also the dates in the source citation templates are linked and the similar formatting of dates is being used for consistency; some of these events are significant enough to appear in the months and years being linked. If I am not doing that properly, please just point me via Wikilinks to the pertinent editing guidelines (doubt if they are "policies") re: formatting of dates in Wikipedia. There is an instruction not to revise dates that have no violation of guidelines or policies in them pertaining to varieties of English and dates in MOS; I am familiar w/ that. --NYScholar (talk) 02:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The bot has been making these changes not just in Wilhelm Brasse, but in other articles therein linked which I have also edited recently or today. --NYScholar (talk) 02:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * There was an "edit conflict" in our postings above; right now I am too busy doing other things to become involved in any "good article" review or "request for comment" on either Wilhelm Brasse or any other Wikipedia article. I'll look at the links you suggest a bit later.  Thanks again for the replies. --NYScholar (talk) 02:55, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * If you want to use your bot on all of these related articles consistently, that might work to the benefit of Wikipedia/readers. If you do it, I'll take a look at the results later.  Thanks again. --NYScholar (talk) 03:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Gerard K. O'Neill
LightBot unwikilinked one of the dates in the references list, but left all the others. Wronkiew (talk) 03:56, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have now removed all the others. Thanks for letting me know. Lightmouse (talk) 09:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot
Greetings,

In articles concerning history, linking to dates makes a lot of sense...Lightbot is currently deleting far too many date links. It is not human and does not know the difference between a necessary and unnecessary link. I suggest stopping the removal of date links.

Sincerely Ryoung122 09:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi,


 * Thanks for your suggestion, can you provide an example article so I can see which date links you mean? Lightmouse (talk) 09:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * , as an example. --PaterMcFly (talk) 11:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

-- billinghurst (talk) 11:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * William Holwell
 * Henry Holyoake
 * RD Waddilove

Initial link analysis by Tony: Perhaps I could start with the first diff ("2" above). I note that the years are still linked in the infobox, and thus were double-linked, although strictly speaking that's irrelevant to the point here: whether it's sufficiently helpful to the reader to travel to the year pages to outweigh the dilution of other, possibly more pertinent links nearby in the text of this article (Abbey of St. Gall).

First, may I observe that the whereabouts of the Abbey are unclear from the article (unless you're very familiar with the northeast corner of the Jural Mountains. A link to St. Gallen is provided, which does turn out to have a good map, but just why the general articles on Switzerland and Canton are linked next to it (thus diluting it) is unclear, since St. Gallen already has a link to each. And if "Switzerland" were to be linked at all, it should be to the relevant section Switzerland, which has a helpful map.

However, better still would be to include a map in the article, enabling readers to see the location without having to second-guess which link will deliver this map, and having to interrupt their reading to find it, especially if they're unwise enough to choose "Switzerland" first (I'd have done that, thinking big for a big map). At what point in their reading they'd divert from the "St. Gallen" article to conduct the hunt, or whether they'd bother (most would not, I suspect), is up for grabs.

The first year-link is to 613. This is a fragmentary little half page containing a few ragtag facts. The closest ones are the death of the Queen and two Kings of Austrasia (all in the same year—do I believe this?). But just where exactly the borders of Austrasia were is unclear even from the article on that topic, so we're in the dark as to whether it had anything at all to do with the Abbey. There's no mention of "Austrasia" in the "Abbey of St. Gall" article, sadly. That sent the readers down a rabbit hole, didn't it.

"613" provides other weird and wonderful information, such as "Muhammad begins preaching Islam in public", "Isanapura becomes the capital of the Cambodian kingdom of Chenla", "Aethelfrith of Northumbria defeats the Welsh and their allies at Chester", "Shahrbaraz of Persia captures Damascus", and—seriously, folks—Heraclius, Byzantine Emperor married his own niece, Martina. And where, I ask you, is "Dumnonia", because Bledric ap Custennin died there; and just where Yang Xuangan lived requires another leap into the blue magic carpet of cyberspace. Apparently no one interesting was born at all in 613 (blank section). Down the right side (calendar box), I see that 613 was 1156 in the Thai solar calendar. What a relief.

But let's return to the topic at hand. Ah yes, and there is a mention of the Abbey of St. Gall in 613, with a helpful link back to the article we were reading in the first place. But too late, 613: the original article stole the march on you—we've just come from that statement. This illustrates my suspicion that any information in a year article that is relevant to the reader's understanding of a topic is either already in the original aritlce or should be. It would be a great little research topic for an honours student in whatever to record what links people actually do hit, both when everything in sight is linked, as here, and when the links are rationed to the high-value ones. Common sense tells me which wiki-design is more effective.

613 may be vaguely useful for discretionary browsing, and I'm sure I could make it a lot better for that purpose if I wanted to. But magic blue carpets for discretionary browsing are way down the list of priorities for a serious information source, IMO. And instead of this the article frankly needs cleaning up in the formatting of case and punctuation in its years, which is inconsistent.

Any better bids for the next year-link in that article? Tony  (talk)  14:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Common sense tells me which wiki design is the most effective: linking dates. Because when I read articles I regularly click on dates to find out the historical context of the article, and to see what other things (yes, unrelated things, I am NOT interested in related stuff, I do not have a linear mind and Wikipedia is NOT a linear encyclopedia, it is a hyperlinked encyclopedia where one should be able to visit an unrelated article easily).  Delinking dates injure my reading experience, and it also makes me not wanting to improve any year articles as I know that they will soon all become orphaned and nobody is going to benefit from my work on them so why bother improving them?  Some people remove wikilinks to dates because they want to ensure that high-priority relevant wikilinks are visible, but simply removing the "secondary" wikilinks is not a solution.  A solution would be to keep all links but draw the important ones in a different way, perhaps even just making them bold. NerdyNSK (talk) 22:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * And, to add something, when reading Wikipedia I like its non-linear nature: I can hop from article to article clicking links and finding new stuff. But while people now start removing links they consider irrelevant then Wikipedia will very soon become just a linear encyclopedia, not different than the paper ones, and thus I will become totally uninterested in it.  The nonlinear nature of the wiki is one of the most powerful motivations that makes me wanting to read stuff here and contribute.  Actually another website has got it right: they link every word everywhere but the links have the same behaviour as the "normal text" (that's an oxymoron: there isn't normal text at all since every word is linked, even the titles).  Double clicking on a word presents you a dictionary definition, a thesaurus with synonyms, and an encyclopedia article.  Of course their implementation from a technical perspective could be improved, but in practice I think Wikipedia should try to achieve something similar.  Every word, everywhere, with no single exception, should be a link (but whether it is an XHTML anchor link depends on considerations for compatibility/accessibility etc) which when clicked or doubleclicked it could open the relevant Wikipedia article, the relevant Wiktionary article, the relevant Wikibooks/Wikisource pages, or all of them.  And this should be the default behaviour, not depended on scripts, user preferences, or customisations.  NerdyNSK (talk) 23:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Better bids? The ones stripped from the Saint Gall article weren't even simple year links. Definitely a bad move by Lightbot! Andy Dingley (talk) 14:21, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Some recent edits by Lightbot (e.g. this one) have made changes outside the bot's remit (per it's approval and subsequent clarification). In that edit, it has unlinked years where the link pointed to something other than a standard year article — i.e. links of the form 1910. I don't particularly wish to get into a discussion on the merits of each and every one of the links it has removed: some clearly were superfluous. But two points remain: first and foremost, the bot does not have permission to make these edits; and second, deciding which of these links are appropriate and which are not is beyond the scope of a bot — it needs human intelligence. Please stop Lightbot from making these edits. — ras52 (talk) 15:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I have switched off this function. However, it seems self-evident that a link that looks like a solitary year will be treated like one. Concealing or camouflaging links is just silly. Many of these links actually break dates and must be removed. Others have been placed there as a symptom of the link-all-dates obsession that started with autoformatting. If anyone is interested in helping readers, they should add at least one non-date word so that it won't be ignored. Lightmouse (talk) 15:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I wonder why would we ever want to disguise 1910 in Ireland with the ambiguous 1910 display. This incorrectly distracts the reader into thinking that the link is a more general 1910 (which would be less pertinant to the article) than the 1910 in Ireland would be. Aside from the issue of date linking I have always disagreed with hiding the specific nature of the date/place or thing link like this.--Kumioko (talk) 17:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I personally have no problem with "hidden" year dates, as they keep the article text cleaner: linking the phrase "in 1910" or "was built in 1910" and wikilinking it to "1910 in architecture" or something is stupid: the words "in" or "built" are not related to the link in any way; only the year is. As Wikipedia matures and if in the end year articles get better, people will start linking to the specific year articles (eg "1910 in science") rather than to the general year articles, and readers will be able to assume that year links are towards subject year articles.  But even if they link to general years, that's not a problem.  A motivation for clicking a year is to escape from a boring article and reading something unrelated while still staying within a particular historical period.  If I get bored reading about the second world war, I may want to visit the 1943 wikilink to see what else, except war, was happening in that year. Delinking years denies me this pleasure and is pure evil.  NerdyNSK (talk) 22:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Kumioko is right: "hidden" links are a waste, because readers will think they're the usual useless stand-alone year-link. You can always work the explicit group of words smoothly into one of the sentences: that way, readers are much more likely to follow the link. But just do it once, in a prominent place (usually the lead)—this can be the gateway through which readers access all of the sibling "year in X" articles, without the need to work every such link into their home sentences throughout the article. Smart linking, it's called. Tony   (talk)  03:15, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps because, on occasion, it's evident from the context? But I'm not trying to defend any of the links in particular.  Actually, I agree that many (but probably not all) are inappropriate and should go.  However, my two points remain: first the bot doesn't have permission to do this, and second deciding which links should be removed is beyond the scope of what a bot can reasonably do without human assistance.  — ras52 (talk) 17:25, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Nobody born in 613? There, fixed that for ya! &mdash; <b style="color:black;">BRIAN</b> 0918 &bull; 2008-09-19 20:16Z

The Initial link analysis by Tony: seems misdirected. It attempts to make the point that because some wikilinks do not provide a lot of useful information, then we should not wikilink. The purpose of Wikipedia is to provide information, and wikilinks do just that; they open the door to additional information ... if the reader chooses to use it by clicking on the link. To decide that some links are good while others are not is censorship, which Wikipedia is not. NerdyNSK has the right idea; linking dates can be useful, depends on the reader. And since our main goal is to provide information to our readers, why are we removing links? We should be adding them and letting our readers decide if they want to use them. A good argument could be made that every word in every article should be wikilinked, everything blue. Then, if the reader wants extra information on anything (a word he may not fully understand, the location of a referenced town, what else happened in the year the person was born, etc.), all that information is only a mouse click away. Truthanado (talk) 00:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * "every word in every article should be wikilinked, everything blue"—Ah, I didn't know you were one of the All-the-web crowd that wants every item to be bright blue, like this. There we are. Sorry, but that's not the way WP has evolved, thank god. And I keep saying that anyone is free to type any item into the search box, while having a reasonably smooth read of the text—that is, without more than a controlled amount of bright blue. Tony   (talk)  02:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * ...also that's been addressed more thoroughly at WP:Allwiki, fyi Brando130 (talk) 06:24, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Date link question
Hello again, I am still trying to make an edit that will remove date links from 2008-09-25 type dates. Have you been able to figure this out yet?--Kumioko (talk) 20:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There ought to be a "delink ISO" option in the toolkit. Gimmetrow 03:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't see how this would be possible, how would the script know if 1990-01-02 is 1 February or 2 January? --Closedmouth (talk) 14:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot, stubs, and categories.
The bot is putting stubs below categories making the markup unnecessarily confusing because stub notices are rendered above the categories in articles. Please stop. -- Jeandré, 2008-09-20t10:40z


 * Last time I saw anything about this practice, it was recommended, since this allows the "real" user categories to be displayed before the more technical and less-valuable (for casual users, of course) stub categories. This is, personally, the way I and many others arrange categories and stub templates in articles. Beyond this, I really cannot understand what you mean by "rendered above the categories in articles". Categories aren't rendered in articles at all...they are just links provided at the bottom of article pages. Cats on top or stubs on top, doesn't affect how the article appears, unless a non-monobook skin displays in some bizarre fashion. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 11:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see what you are saying. I disagree that this is confusing, though, considering that categories are rendered in the same location on every single page. As well, considering categories are clearly identified as " [[Category: " and stubs almost always have "stub" in the template name, it seems like this would remove most confusion (and no matter which is placed above the other, the end result will always be virtually identical). — [[User:Huntster|Huntster]] (t • @ • c) 11:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It's part of AWB's general fixes (not to mention the MOS), this is a very odd demand. --Closedmouth (talk) 14:00, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot
Hi. Lightbot is delinking all instances of 1798 where '1798' is any year. Can you please refer me to the approval for this? Sarah777 (talk) 19:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Sarah, At first I did not know what you meant because that looked just like a solitary year. And I think that is the point, anything that looks like a solitary year is going to be treated like one. That is why some projects deprecate them and suggest that at least one non-date word is included. I understand that Wikipedia as a whole is actively considering such a policy and your views on concealed date links will be welcome at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers). Regards Lightmouse (talk) 01:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Sarah, the use of hidden links is generally not recommended, since they look identical to the solitary year-links that are widely disparaged as adding nothing at the expense of a smooth reading experience. Readers are highly unlikely to follow them. Some WikiProjects have either banned them (Music) or are considering doing so (film). If "year in X" pages can add to a reader's understanding of a topic, it's more practical to reword the first one so that it's clearly what it is, and doesn't look like a plain year-link. The first one is usually in the lead, which is a prominent place, and the conduit for the reader to reach all other sibling "year in X" pages. It's more likely they'll be viewed with a single, explicit link, ironically, and the amount of blue-splotch in the text can be minimised at the same time. Tony   (talk)  09:11, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * And, for whatever it’s worth Sarah777, Tony is absolutely spot-on with his above comment. I couldn’t have said it any better. This issue has been debated on WT:MOSNUM for quite some time. Of course, once action actually starts to take place, new editors, have a “WTF” reaction and wonder where all that came from. It would be hard for anyone but a Swiss patent examiner to tortuously wade through all that has transpired on WT:MOSNUM and track the changing consensus and follow the reasoning. But Lightmouse and Tony are correct and are doing the right thing. Greg L (talk) 03:04, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Focus folks. The question I asked was what authority the bot had to delete "Years in Ireland" links. The answer is now clear; none. Sarah777 (talk) 09:03, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Curious format
New one to me. Gimmetrow 03:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It seems that there is an infinite number of ways that autoformatting can be broken. Frankly, I am no longer surprised by broken autoformatting, although I am surprised that the pro-autoformatting crowd don't care enough about autoformatting to fix broken links so that it works. The linking to irrelevant page articles shows that some people do not link to add value or to autoformat, they are just acting like "Monkey see, monkey do". The script would normally delink the solitary months, but that feature is currently switched off. Lightmouse (talk) 15:23, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Re: release date
Thanks for the info. I've also just realized that date links are deprecated, which I support, but I still like to see dates formatted to my preferences. I'll put it back to your edit and I'll see what solution comes up. + m t  19:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, it will be interesting to see. Lightmouse (talk) 19:39, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

City of Chester (UK Parliament constituency)
Hey. Just noticed that all the years have been de-linked on the above article. Not sure if this is right given that the dates don't appear anywhere else on the page? If I've misunderstood the role of the Bot, sorry, but it seems like the links have been taken away for no reason. Cheers, doktorb wordsdeeds 08:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply, really useful. I guess what /should/ happen on articles like this, of course, is link to "United Kingdom General Election, 19XX" instead of just the "cold links" to years. As you say people can just type four figures into the search box if they want to find a year. Those links to UK elections can be something for me to do later, methinks...=) Cheers, doktorb wordsdeeds 09:32, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is a live debate about this. Some issues are that people think links should be targetted. Some also think that links should be not be hidden behind a year link because they will be ignored just like a year link (a suggestion is to have at least one non-date word in the link). Lightmouse (talk) 10:07, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Better summary labelling your bot's changes
Can I ask that you have better summary labelling of Lightbot's changes that it is making. I would hope that the summary would have a specific link to the reasoning and discussion that took place, rather than the non-specific and non-helpful summation that currently exists. At the moment it looks like a bot acting in isolation, and when you go to Lightbot's user and talk pages, there is nothing enlightening to what is occurring nor why? I would hope that the explanation would specifically link to the relevant part of the WP:MOS or decision-making discussion. Thanks. -- billinghurst (talk) 03:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have asked this user in the past to make better edit summaries regarding this, and to be fair, the summaries are better than in the past, even if only marginally so. They are still far from ideal, though, because what Lightmouse/Lightbot (please fill in the appropriate entity) is doing is flat out unlinking of dates. A more honest edit summary would say something along the lines of "Automatically unlinking dates per this user's interpretation of MOS:NUM that deprecation of auto-formatted dates is the same as prohibiting them." — Bellhalla (talk) 04:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

While User:Lightmouse may have MOS:UNLINKDATES at the front of mind for that POV, there is also the page Categorization_of_people which has specific guidance about people. Note the specific wikilink'd dates for the person. If someone is running a bot that trawls through WP, I would think that there should be the provision, if not the demand, for specific and accurate summation. Laissez faire is simply insufficient with a bot. If one doesn't care sufficiently about specifying their justification, then the request will go out for the bot to be suspended when it is the only avenue open. -- billinghurst (talk) 07:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Billinghurst, thank you for posting here. Try as I did, I couldn't find a single date or date fragement on that page that is linked or autoformatted. Can you please point me in the right direction? Concerning your point about the specificity of edit summaries, the "Unlink dates" location is about as specific as you can get surely, given that direct links to further information are provided there. Can you give me an idea of what you had in mind that would be acceptable? Tony   (talk)  08:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I think they're referring to the summary "Units/dates/other" which Lightbot employs, rather than the script-assisted "Date audit" one. --Closedmouth (talk) 08:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks CM, yes, I was indeed referring to "U/d/o". Tony, it is not the words that are the issue (THE WHAT), it is the premise (THE WHY).  I would think that a summation would include the basic background for why you have a bot running, if you are running a bot to comply with a guideline, then it would be useful to quote the guideline.  This can be a direct line to the guideline, or belief and interpretation on your bot's talk page.
 * If many wikiauthors are all making the same "mistake", then the bot summation also needs to fulfil an educative & preventative function, in addition to a corrective. Similarly, if someone disagrees with what your bot is doing, an explanation of the purpose, allows the background information for people to raise their issue with you, while maintaining good faith. Regards Andrew -- billinghurst (talk) 10:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Billinghurst, my experience is that whenever I change the edit summary in response to a request from one person, there will always be another request for a change by another person. Long edit summaries get more complaints than short ones. Unfortunately, there is not a single place to look for a reasoning and discussion about date links. Even worse, that reasoning and discussion is not succinct enough for a short read and much has already been archived. If you look at the bot user page, you will see that it links to the approval for what it does. If you would like the edit summary to provide a link to wp:mosnum, I can do that. That page, its talk page, and its links all provide connections to the extensive discussions about date links. If you read the discussions and come up with a better page link than that, we could consider that too. Does that seem like a good way forward? Lightmouse (talk) 10:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Tony, lots of ways to skin a cat. a) Summary b) link in Summary to an wl#anchor on the bot talk page.  I did see the approval, though when I want to see what and why a bot is doing something, explanation should not be in Geek, it should be in Joe Avge.  At a minimum a link to MOSNUM.
 * It is possible that what I am seeing is the bot having elements of unexpected behaviour, and that the differentiation is not possible when the actual goal is not evident. The example is that it pulls date wl from [[WP:DATA]] templates, and if one looks at the recommendations for that use it specifically states to wl dates. -- billinghurst (talk) 12:24, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Another link for Lightbot's explanation of why that would be useful is Only make links that are relevant to the context. In reflection, the guidance material is still less than clear and specific and still somewhat buried in the wp:mosnum which is somewhat muddying the discussion. -- billinghurst (talk) 00:34, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Changing date format in "A Moment Like This"
I just wanted to tell you to be careful changing the date format on articles from American to international. Although Leona Lewis did sing "A Moment Like This," it was first the coronation song for American Idol sung by Kelly Clarkson. Per WP:MOSDATE the article should have consistent dates across it, the article has strong national ties to use the American date format and the article started and evolved using the American date format. Therefore the article should just use the American date format. Aspects (talk) 13:44, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with you that the article should be consistent. That was partly the motivation for the edit. The edit removed inconsistent linked dates and made them consistent. I saw that the inconsistency involved three mdy formats followed by four dmy formats. The 'Show changes' of the edit highlighted several UK elements in the article and so I plumped for dmy. I agree with you now that the mdy format is appropriate. Between us, our contributions have revealed and eliminated anomalies within the links. Thank you for helping. Lightmouse (talk) 15:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Date linking request (birth and death years)
I can understand that some people don't want articles to become a "sea of blue" by linking to all dates.

But can I make a request, that when birth and death dates are initially given after a person's name at the top of an article -- eg John of Trevisa (1342 - 1402), which your 'bot delinked this morning, that these do stay linked.

It is useful to have some link somewhere on the page that links into the hierarchy of date pages, so that people can click their way through to find out what was happening in particular centuries/decades/years that a subject lived; and of all the links on the page, the birth and death dates would seem especially appropriate for this end.

The John Trevisa article was hardly "overlinked" for dates: these were the only two dates linked in the whole piece.

So, can I make the request that: (i) the 'bot stops delinking birth years and death years after the subject's name. (ii) the 'bot is made to restore linking of birth years and death years that it has previously delinked.

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 06:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I support this request. (I expect that (ii) may not be possible, or at least may require more implementation effort than the author is able to devote to it.  Nevertheless, I fully support (i).)  — ras52 (talk) 08:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Support. Several editors have expressed this (or similar) comment, that it is useful to see what else was happening in a given year. There are those who say the reader can easily type the date in the search box, to which we must ask ourselves: shouldn't we make it easier for our readers to find information that they are interested in, not harder? Truthanado (talk) 13:42, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Who asked for some voting process? Please read my recent entry on this very page about the difficulty of finding year-pages that do satisfy the MoS requirement that they significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic at hand. I'm interested to know just how the pages on 1342 and 1402 are at all useful to the topic of Trevisa—perhaps you can convince me (I'm open). As for the orphan issue, I'm aftraid that the community has deprecated the linking of solitary years for a long time now. If such pages were in good shape generally, I'd be pleased to join a program to promote them on the project—Main page exposure, FA promotion, etc. But they're not in good shape at all—quite the opposite—and I see little evidence that they're improving. If you want my opinion, back past a certain time, year-pages should be conflated into cohesive, well-written decade pages, given the relative paucity of information on a world scale. Ragtag threadbare fragmented year-pages from the 14th century are a big question mark to a lot of people. Tony   (talk)  15:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * To repeat what I've written above: I think it's valuable to have some links on the page to the date hierarchy, because those date pages act as gateways to further links - such as the decade pages, or the century pages; or (perhaps particularly valuable) the "state leaders in year X" pages -- all of which can be very useful, to let people link their way through, if they want to know about the political and historical background at a particular time.


 * Tony may not like the year pages, but nevertheless at least half a dozen do get featured from the front page every day in the "On this day..." feature; it's not as if they don't appear on that page. As for consensus, long standing consensus has been to be judicious in the choice of date links, and not to link everything (but not to link nothing, either).  If this has changed, I'd like to know the well-attended RfC that changed it, because whenever I've looked in at Talk:MOSNUM, I've seen strong debate on the issue.


 * In WP we accept and welcome that different people have different interests, and like to use WP in different ways -- and we try to accommodate and make WP useful to them all. The issue isn't that some people don't find the year pages useful - after all, there's a huge amount on WP that most of us may never find personally useful.  Rather, it's clear from all the discussions, we should recognise the many who do find links into the year-page hierarchy sometimes useful, and we should consider how to continue to preserve that usefulness to them.


 * Linking the year-of-birth and year-of-death dates seems to be a very good compromise between linking everything and linking nothing, and IMO a sensibly judged balance. Jheald (talk) 16:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Agree with Jheald. It's an excellent compromise. There seem to be enough editors commenting that some linking of dates is useful to justify keeping the links that are already there. To respond to Tony's question, several editors have already mentioned that it mighte be interesting to our readers to see what else was going on while John Trevisa was alive. Being able to easily link to his birth 1342 and death 1402 years help our readers do just that. As has been pointed out in several other discussions (the main justification to deprecate wikilinked dates), what's really important is what's right for our readers, and giving them the option of getting information they may be interested in is the right thing to do. Truthanado (talk) 00:24, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just as presenting text without low-value links for diversionary browsing is important for our readers. You still haven't demonstrated by either of these articles provides information that will significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and why—if there does happen to be vaguely relevant factoid there—it wouldn't be better within the article. Tony   (talk)  01:42, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think that on this page that the users have to demonstrate that fact on this discussion.
 * I am concerned about what is an overarching guideline/policy-type question is being discussed and a resolution attempted tucked away as a discussion about what a bot is doing. A bot is a technical instrument that implements a procedural aspect, and that alone.  A policy sits overarching and it cannot be demonstrated to me that there is clear agreement on an agreed guideline.  While the guideline [[Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people]] sits at the top of the system, that it too needs to be heeded.  The discussion belongs somewhere open for the broader community where those from projects like WikiProject_Biography can have opportunity for input. --billinghurst (talk) 02:21, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I am concerned that when something becomes a Wiki-trend, it is suddenly enforced with a "Lightbot"--which ensures compliance with a "standard" that is little more than someone's opinion. The whole point of Wikipedia is to be able to link quickly to related material. If dates did not matter, they would not be given in an article. To deny wikilinks to dates is like denying a child knowledge of their parents. Ryoung122 08:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hang on, Ryoung: the removal of date autoformatting and of the linking of date fragments is not "someone's opinion", but clearly in line with the deprecation of the first and the classification of low added-value chronological links as overlinking in WP's style guides. I'm surprised that you're not thanking Lightmouse for his efforts, which are sparing editors the manual labour of updating their articles to current guidelines as well as rendering the articles easier to read and maximising the utility of our high-value links. In fact, optimising this superb feature of wikis is uppermost in the motivation to apply the style guidelines. Tony   (talk)  14:02, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
 * And what makes a link to a year, which may provide historical perspective, less useful than a link to a random word in a random paragraph? Whether a link is useful ought to be an editorial judgment, not something robotically decided and enforced. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Robert, that a year-link provides historical information, whereas horse probably doesn't, is self-evident. What is at issue is whether a year-link—any year link—provides focused information that will improve the reader's understanding of the topic. Please see my entry here for an exposé of why this is highly unlikely. This is an old issue that has been settled over a considerable period. I'm interested to hear your evidence of year articles that do provide such a focused enhancement, as opposed to magic carpets sprinkled through all of our articles to save discretionary browsers the effort of tapping four numbers into the search box. Wikilinking isn't a toy: it's a tool for selectively persuading our readers to hit links that are relevant to their understanding. Tony   (talk)  06:16, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem that I (and perhaps other as well) have with all of the date "audits" and such, Tony, is the fact that even though auto-formatted dates are deprecated, the word deprecated does not mean banned or prohibited. You seem to be amongst the group of editors with zero-tolerance towards date linking, which is not reflected in MOS:NUM. If you want all dates links eliminated (as I think is abundantly clear from many posts of yours I've read) perhaps you should propose a change to MOS:NUM prohibiting or banning linked dates. Then you won't have so many people upset with your actions. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:19, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * And the linking of years has nothing to do with autoformatting. MOSNUM specifies that dates should be linked only when it is important.  Lightbot cannot determine importance; therefore this type of edit should not be automated. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I have inquired on [WT:BAG]] about Lightbot's approval to make this sort of edit -- whether it was properly approved and if so whether it can be reversed. I am not certain of procedure in this area, so if anyone here has more knowledge than I, please clarify. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:03, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Strange behaviour for Calendar era
This edit only partially removes date linking, and does not deal with commas after the day-of-month in the so-called American format. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for letting me know. The code for BC/AD dates is a bit more complicated than for non-BC/AD dates. I have updated the code and it should now avoid that type of date. Lightbot is not designed to fix errors with commas. The monobook script does do it but not for BC/AD dates. It seems that the more you look at dates, the more errors become apparent. Thanks again. Lightmouse (talk) 21:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the statement "Lightbot is not designed to fix errors with commas." A date such as January 1 1900 is a valid date (although it would not be were it not for date autoformatting), and will be rendered in some correct format by the date autoformatting software. When Lightbot is done with it, it should be rendered as some correct format; that should be a design criteria for Lightbot.

(I use "correct" in the narrow sense of not having an obvious typographic error in the immediate vicinity of the date, and not in the larger context of whether the format is appropriate for the article.) --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:25, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Is there a suite of test cases, containing all the cases that Lightbot has ever had trouble with, that Lightbot is tested on every time any change is made? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:48, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey lightmouse, I think I fixed this problem. If you check my code I added a line that just looks for month and day to catch anything not covered in your code. I also added a line that converts the 1 January XXXX date format to January 1, XXXX. I only use it when I am editing american articles though, anything non US I block it out.--Kumioko (talk) 00:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks Kumioko, I will take a look. Gerry, re question about test cases, the answer is: "no, I don't have a set of all pieces of article text that have caused problems in the past". I did not understand your comment about commas at first but your clarification helped me understand you. It seems that autoformatting adds a comma even when no preference is set. I think I had seen somebody mention that before but had forgotten. I foolishly worked on the basis that 'no preference' means 'leave raw text unchanged'. I think the code does indeed do something about missing commas in some circumstances. I will look into this further. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Lightmouse (talk) 18:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I oppose the continued operation of Lightbot until a suite of test cases is developed, and a plan is created to roll back erroneous edits whenever a problem with the bot is discovered. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Dates within image captions
This edit removed a year link for a full date within an image caption --JimWae (talk) 20:10, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It should not have done that. I will investigate. Thanks for letting me know. Regards. Lightmouse (talk) 21:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Just did it again - to date at start of image caption http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_York_Tribune&curid=360819&diff=240113393&oldid=239854741 --JimWae (talk) 23:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * That is not good, thanks for letting me know about the second time. Thanks for stoppping the bot too. I am going to find out what caused it. Lightmouse (talk) 18:41, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot edit mangled Adlai E. Stevenson I
In at least one case, when there is a date followed by text followed by a year, Lightbot is deleting the entire prose between the years and making the date incorrect. See diff 240022391 for Adlai E. Stevenson, where Lightbot removed a half paragraph of text between one year and another one. I didn't put a stop on Lightbot's talk page because I couldn't find another example quickly &mdash; so, hopefully, this is rare. --Closeapple (talk) 22:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * That is not good, thanks for letting me know. The bot has been stopped and I will investigate. Lightmouse (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Discussion on year articles and links
Of some relevance to the operation of your bot. Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Carcharoth (talk) 00:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Salk vs. Silk
Why did Lightbot do this?--Hans555 (talk) 11:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Lightbot, despite current problems with its operation, does not vandalize articles. Check the history and you'll see that "Silk" was in the article for at least five or six edits before Lightbot's edit. — Bellhalla (talk) 11:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Second request: Please stop removing instances of Convert
Please stop removing instances of template convert dealing with ship speeds from infoboxes in ship articles as you did recently here. I have asked you previously to stop (here) but you have continued. Please stop using whatever assistive tools you are using to prevent your further removal of speed conversions unless and until they can be altered to avoid such removals in the future. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't understand. What is your objection? Lightmouse (talk) 15:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * My objection is that you, through either your Lightmouse account or your Lightbot account, are … wait for it … removing instances of template convert dealing with ship speeds from infoboxes in ship articles as stated immediately above your post. If you need further clarification of what that sentence means, please see the first example in this post from further up your talk page under the heading Removal of undefined undefined. I believe that my objection is quite explicitly listed in the title of this section, in my comment immediately under that heading and above your comment, and in my earlier post on your talk page. If you are genuinely having trouble understanding the objection, please try to have someone else explain it to you, because I don't think I can make my objection any clearer. — Bellhalla (talk) 03:54, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I understand that you object to the abbreviation 'kn'. I also understand that you don't like it being used even though it is part of the template code invisible to readers. Although I disagree with you, I have tried to work with you by using the full form. I had hoped that you would be happy with that. I don't understand why you object to the full form 'knot' or 'knots'. I think we should take this off my talk page and onto a different page such as wp:mosnum. As you suggest, third party involvement would be a good idea. Lightmouse (talk) 18:27, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * There are two separate issues here. The one you mentioned is the substitution "kn" for "knot" within template calls to convert (i.e. subbing for ) which is a frivolous edit, which makes the corresponding template code visible in edit boxes less intuitive for people who, unlike you, are not intimately familiar with all of the ins and out and "official" abbreviations of convert. Despite the fact that I and others have objected to your continual substitution of the "kn" abbreviation into convert even though the other works perfectly fine, that is not what I'm referring to in this post.
 * To see what I am asking you to stop, please take a look at this diff. Look at line that begins with "|Ship speed=" to see where your edit has substituted the text "15 knots (28 km/h/17 mph)" for the template call . You are, in effect, subst'ing the template when you do that. There is no consensus for doing this. That is the point of this post and the now-archived earlier post. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Bellhalla, thanks for raising this issue. I don't mind that it's spilt onto this page, although I do wonder about the extent to which contributors here are interested in engaging with this matter—as you say, it "has nothing to do with MOSNUM". Javier has succinctly raised the concrete points that should be answered before proceeding: can you respond to them? I'd like to be convinced that your complaint isn't a personal one against Lightmouse himself, which you almost, but not quite, seem to be saying above. Lightmouse has a history of improving WP's formatting, appearance and readability, with ingenuity, diligence and sensitivity, and by readily engaging with those who provide critical feedback. I'm unsure why every detail of such improvements needs some gold-plated endorsement by "consensus" (which strictly speaking can always be questioned by naysayers). This is particularly the case when you admit that your stance is driven by a conservative frame that constructs long-standing phenomena as "widely accepted"; poor English is a long-standing phenomenon on WP, but that doesn't mean we should accept it, or be bullied into giving up our push to improve it. Above all, I'm still unclear what your objection is? What damage is being done in substantive terms? Tony   (talk)  05:15, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Tony, I don't feel that I need to defend the consensus that has naturally evolved around the use of convert. My look at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:convert shows that over 100,000 articles (20 pages of "next 5,000" before I stopped) use convert. That's a pretty wide consensus. Further, of those more than 100,000 articles, 4,353 distinct articles use convert for conversion of knots, as of this writing. In the face of numbers such as these, I think, rather, the questions should be asked of Lightmouse instead.
 * So, Lightmouse, how is this change benefiting Wikipedia? What does subst'ing convert for knots improve? Jimp has crafted an amazing template that provides accurate results at an appropriate level of precision. Isn't the reliability of a very closely watched template better for accuracy than a subst'd version? There's also the possibility for subtle, undetected vandalism as brought up by LeadSongDog at the related discussion at WT:MOSNUM, and the issue raised by Carcharoth below. I look forward to hearing your answers. Also, please don't repeat your erroneous contention that the changes are at my request, as you have hinted in previous answers. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:42, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * One point is that when you substitute a template, you lose the functionality of "what links here" to keep a global track on the formatting. Have a look at this for 5000 articles using this template (don't know how many use it in total). Meta-data is just that - meta-data. Maybe it should be hidden metadata, but without some way to get a global overview of things, you will never attain consistency. Carcharoth (talk) 07:50, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Automated de-linking of years is often harmful to articles
I noted that Lightbot deleted the year links in Manayunk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Linking to years is as useful as any other link: some readers like to get perspective on what else was happening about the same time as an event. Yes, they can look the year up explicitly, but by that logic, there is no need for any links. There is currently disagreement about this point at MOSNUM. In the meantime, I fail to understand why you have undertaken to automate the removal of links that some editors believe are useful. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:29, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi,
 * The issue of year links has been discussed in many places for quite some time and the style guide was updated in response to those discussions. I am sure that you will soon get a response to your enquiries elsewhere. With respect to approval for the bot, the relevant links are at User:Lightbot. I hope that helps. Lightmouse (talk) 21:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * But the style guide does not anywhere call for mass delinking of dates. The bot is making disruptive edits that are not consensus.  Robert A.West (Talk) 21:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have re-checked the so-called approval process for the expansion of Lightbot's function to include mass de-linking of dates, and I believe that the approval neither reflected consensus nor a proper consideration of the ramifications. Robert A.West (Talk) 22:14, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Are they "disruptive" because you take exception to change per se? Please see it from the perspective of our readers. Tony   (talk)  11:14, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't speak for Robert A.West (who called it disruptive), but, Tony, look at the talk page here. Look at the number of comments. (Note also that Lightmouse has his talk page set archive threads after 3 days.) I think the volume of posts is a testament of the disruption caused by Lightmouse and/or Lightbot. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:57, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There tends to be a small, vocal clique who object to change of any sort. I'd like to think that you're not one of them, Bellhalla, and that you're willing to engage in debate on an issue that has largely been resolved (that the community wants to minimise low-value linking, and that date fragments are that). I'd be pleased to talk further on the matter, whether here or at my talk page or at MOSNUM talk, since I want to convince you that this is worth supporting. Tony   (talk)  14:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Bot error
Hi, Lightbot deleted a significant portion of the New Zealand Police article with this edit. I've undone the bot edit and manually delinked the dates. Looks like a one time issue with the 1-1-1 emergency number. XLerate (talk) 01:47, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * That is not good, thanks for letting me know. The bot has been stopped and I will investigate. Lightmouse (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Fixed now. Thanks, I appreciate it. Lightmouse (talk) 19:11, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Bot error
Hello, This edit to EastEnders looks to be an error. Thanks, Stephenb (Talk) 08:15, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You are right. That is not good. Thanks for letting me know. The bot has been stopped and I am investigating it. Lightmouse (talk) 21:13, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Fixed now. Thanks again. I appreciate it. Lightmouse (talk) 19:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Wishlist
Check the wishlist. I've added a section today. Thanks again for this script! Dismas |(talk) 08:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You are welcome. Rest assured, I read all the wishlist items and I will respond there if I have an idea of what to do. Lightmouse (talk) 19:45, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

List of town tramway systems in the United Kingdom
Please can you explain why you have removed the wiki on the year, but left the date alone? Your logic seems inconsistent. I am going to undo your changes in the meantime. Perhaps you can explain your logic, in terms on quoted wikipedia policies on the convention for wiki-ing dates or not. Olana North (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, there is a simple explanation. The dates in that article are not compliant with guidance on autoformatting. The piping of the dates actually breaks autoformatting and the links should be fixed or removed. The script identifies year links that are not used for autoformatting and delinks them. So that is what happened. The code fixes many date errors in articles but there is an infinite number of wrong ways to link dates and that article contains yet another wrong way of linking dates. If you want to know more about this and how to fix the date errors in the article, feel free to ask the people at wt:mosnum. I hope that helps. Lightmouse (talk) 19:02, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Category name broken by bot
Hi there - this has just reminded me why I always check the edits by this bot (nothing personal, you understand, but I know that it is not infallible). 'Tis a tedious business as >99% of its edits are fine, but just now and again...

This change to Bristol and Exeter Railway disabled a category entry. (It changed Category:Broad gauge (7 feet) railway companies to Category:Broad gauge (7 ft) railway companies.)

Unfortunately it has modified at least 9 pages like this (see here). I have already fixed Great Western Railway, as the highest-profile page, but I was hoping you could use a bot to fix the rest.

For simplicity, in future could you get the bot to ignore category text (and links too, since the GWR page had two links broken also) ?

Cheers -- EdJogg (talk) 13:00, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * For that matter, Lightmouse, why doesn't the script automatically ignore anything aside from regular prose? In other words, ignore categories, images, URLs, links, stub templates (and most others for that matter), and anything else you can think of that really can't have such fixes justified. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 13:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting the '7 feet' issue. I have gone over the other ones too. I have switched off the code that turns '(7 feet)' into '(7 ft)'. I would *love* to be able to ignore categories, quotes, urls etc. This is a problem that afflicts all scripts. It is not lack of will, it is lack of ability. But I have not stopped searching. There is progress, I have found a method of avoiding images and I am hoping to find a way to extend that to other things. Lightmouse (talk) 18:48, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for restoring the categories, and good luck with the bot enhancements -- I don't envy you the task. In the meantime I'll keep monitoring the bot changes when it crosses my watchlist.
 * EdJogg (talk) 00:07, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Please add description to Lightbot's page
Please add to the page User:Lightbot a succinct and clear summary of what Lightbot is supposed to do. (Yes, I see that there are already links on that page to discussion of Lightbot.) Thanks. -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 13:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It sounds like you found the information that you needed. I would be happy to help but did that one click really cause an additional burden? Lightmouse (talk) 18:33, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm unable to think of any good reason not to add this info to User:Lightbot.
 * My request is both polite and helpful to the Wikipedia project: Please add to the page User:Lightbot a succinct and clear summary of what Lightbot is supposed to do.
 * Glad to hear that you will be happy to help. Thanks. -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 22:21, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse script
Hi,

Is it possible to code the monobook script to remove "the" from dates? I don't know how often this occurs, but I have just come across "on the 6th of September, 2007" - the script recognised this but left it as "on the 6 September 2007", instead of "on 6 September 2007".

If it doesn't occur too often, don't worry about it, just a passing mention.

Best wishes, –MDCollins (talk) 22:50, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Nice idea but it is a bit of a big task to merge into the rest of the code. Finding the text and making the changes is easy but avoiding errors would be difficult. It might be something that could be done as a separate button. Feel free to add it to User talk:Lightmouse/wishlist and I might see if something occurs to me later. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 18:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Alfred Kreymborg
Not sure that Lightbot's changes, here, were appropriate. Could you comment? &mdash;  X   S   G   00:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The bot removes solitary year links. That article contained links that were concealed and designed to look like solitary year links. A link that looks like a solitary year will be treated like one i.e. ignored. That is why some projects (e.g. the music project, possibly the film project, and even mosnum has discussed it) are recommending that links are not concealed as common date fragments. Instead, other methods should be used e.g. at least one non-date word should appear in the link. In the meantime, the bot code has been updated and it no longer delinks these but please feel free to join the debate about how to get better click-through rates at wt:mosnum. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 18:31, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Major Booth
A recent edit by Lightbot on the above article has had a strange effect on the first paragraph, which I have reverted. You may wish to look at it to prevent a recurrence and for monitoring reasons. Britmax (talk)


 * Great feedback. Thanks for fixing it and letting me know. I have fixed the problem. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 18:16, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:ANI
Please see Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents. Corvus cornix talk  20:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Changing date format within quotations
Another problem with the script being run is that it reformats dates within quotations. For example on Anne Brontë the quote of her grave stone inscription was changed from May 28th, 1849 to 28 May 1849. The script should not be changing the format of any quotes in articles, these should remain in the exact format of the source from which the quote is taken. Keith D (talk) 23:02, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi,
 * The editor responsible for that edit is User:Epbr123, not me. If you bring the issue to the attention of that user, I would be happy to advise him/her what to do. Lightmouse (talk) 08:47, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Why the mass delinking of years?
On Onomacritus all dates were delinked. I've read the approval but it is no clearer to me what the bot is aiming to do in cases like this.Dejvid (talk) 21:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to be unlinking all years what do not have the day and month. In the classical period we often (indeed mostly) don't know the exact date. Polybius is not a stub yet every date has been unlinked. And he's a historian. What gives?Dejvid (talk) 21:45, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse, the date de-linking on UK parliamentary constituencies is worse than I highlighted above. The delinking has included "created" dates (the yeat the seat was first formed). This means that users who may want to see what else happened in that year can no longer do so easily. I can understand why the UK electiom years were delinked (as I say above, really they should have been links to the UK election articles), but when the year was explicity linked to a section involving years (rather than events in that year), a mistake has been made. Could you revisit the edits made to ALL UK parliament constituency articles to ensure this edit is undone in some way? doktorb wordsdeeds 23:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * By the same token, years should not be delinked in articles on British peerages. Please stop your bot; this was never clearly approved, and is undesirable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:13, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3 does not give your bot permission to unlink all linked years. The approval request is misleading at best, and possibly intentionally so, if that's what your bot was designed to do. Corvus cornix talk  23:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

In case you weren't aware, there is currently an ANI discussion about your bot and the delinking of years. Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents -Chunky Rice (talk) 23:57, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * And it almost goes without saying that you should probably not restart the bot for this function until this is resolved. -Chunky Rice (talk) 00:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * As I understand it, if MoS guidance is wrong, the place to debate it is wt:mosnum rather than ANI. Lightmouse (talk) 10:16, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The issuse is not with the MoS, but rather your actions. Please stop trying to deflect a discussion about your actions to the MoS.  -Chunky Rice (talk) 17:02, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents
Moved to: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers). Regards Lightmouse (talk) 16:21, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Sunday Times Golden Globe Race -- Friday link
Hi, I see you deleted all the date links in this article. Fair enough, given the new rules (and most of the links were junk). However, you unlinked the word "Friday" under "The start". There is a giant note embedded in the article text, and another in the talk page, explaining why this instance of Friday should be linked, so please leave it, or else explain in the talk page why you think the rationale for linking it is invalid. Cheers, — Johan the Ghost seance 23:52, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I find it hard to believe that anyone will click on a link to a day of a week. If Wikipedia had statistics on click-through rates, it would be very useful. However, I don't mind you adding it back and I appreciate you letting me know. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 09:35, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've taken this up on Johan's talk page. Tony   (talk)  16:00, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

British Rail
Please can you explain the reason for this. The date was in accordance with the Manual of Style, so I cannot see any reason for your bot to change it. Along with others, I find your bot to be doing things that it should not, and unless you can demonstrate that your bot is operating in compliance with the MOS, then I intend to report it. Olana North (talk) 08:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have added my grave concerns to the growing list here . Hopefully, commonsense will prevail and you will get a temporary block. Olana North (talk) 08:41, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

You are debating the Manual of Style and it says: Discussion of the meaning of those words is best undertaken at wt:mosnum. That way, you won't just get my opinion. Lightmouse (talk) 09:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * ''Dates (years, months, day and month, full dates) should not be linked, unless there is a particular reason to do so
 * ''The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now deprecated.
 * No, we are debating when a bot should be permitted to enforce the Manual of Style. The obvious rule here is that bots should only act when there is clear consensus that a rule should be applied universally, without exception; that is not the case here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:29, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Anderson, please point to the consensus for applying date links and/or date autoformatting in the first place. Tony   (talk)  16:25, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I wrote an essay summarizing the discussion that lead to date autoformatting. The linking of dates for the purpose of giving people additional information about what happened in that year or that day of the year was already commonplace back then (2003). --Gerry Ashton (talk) 16:46, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Might have been commonplace, but where was the "consensus"? Tony   (talk)  02:49, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Element order of dates
Please explain how the bot determines, when it removes linking from dates and changes the order of the day, month, and year elements, how it decides whether the finished order should be month day year or day month year. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 15:54, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

The bot doesn't. Lightmouse (talk) 16:02, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Gerry, Lightmouse (the person) is very precise in his parsing of questions, so let me try to ask for the information you are seeking. How do you, Lightmouse, the person—whether through the account User:Lightmouse or the account User:Lightbot, determine when you remove linking from dates, and change the order of the day, month, and year elements, and how you decide whether the finished order should be month day year or day month year? — Bellhalla (talk) 21:09, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Misbehaving bot
Hi, Lightbot has been messing around with dates here. --Candlewicke (Talk) 04:50, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Good feedback. I have updated the code and I am correcting pages where it occured. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 07:41, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

With respect, I gave you the same "feedback" two weeks ago. How many more articles has the bot damaged since then? Sarah777 (talk) 13:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The earliest comment that I can find is ten days ago. You asked for the retention of concealed links on a matter of principle. Candlewicke reports an incorrect addition of 'xx'. In response your complaint, I believe that I told you that Lightbot has been updated and will not remove concealed links - they will continue to remain invisible to the reader. I have not gone back into the archive to check what I said, please feel free to do so yourself.

However, if you or anybody else has added a concealed link to a full date, Lightbot will continue to remove them. That is a good thing. If you still believe that is wrong, perhaps we should move the discussion to wt:mosnum where you can get third party opinions rather than just mine. I hope that helps. Lightmouse (talk) 13:57, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Lightmouse_again
Please refrain from continuing to unlink dates with AWB (or other scripts/automated software) prior to engaging the community in discussion regarding this matter. A large part of the reason why the bot was stopped was because the community has found this type of unilateral unlinking to be controversial. Using AWB as a substitute for your bot to perform these kinds of edits is not appropriate, and should be ceased until you are willing to discuss this matter, either here on your talk page or at Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents. Thanks, <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 22:31, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Whatever you decide to do, regarding your bot and delinking dates and whatever, it would be most helpful and appreciated if you would communicate with the other editors who have expressed concern about this issue. Right now, I think that your lack of communication is causing this to be a bigger deal than it probably should be. -Chunky Rice (talk) 23:21, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

You are debating the Manual of Style and it says: Discussion of the meaning of those words is best undertaken at wt:mosnum. That way, you won't just get my opinion. Lightmouse (talk) 09:36, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * ''Dates (years, months, day and month, full dates) should not be linked, unless there is a particular reason to do so
 * ''The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now deprecated.


 * The concern is your method of enforcing the MOS, and not the MOS itself; therefore the ANI thread is valid. Again, I will ask you to refrain from continuing to engage in this method of enforcing the MOS until the concerns of multiple editors have been addressed.  Continuing to do so prior to reaching a conclusion regarding this matter is disruptive and you must stop for the time being.  I am not passing a judgment on your use of bots/scripts to perform date unlinking but I am stating that it is highly inappropriate to continue to do so prior to resolving the concerns over how you are going about it.  It is disruptive, and if you continue to do so you run the risk of having your account temporarily blocked to prevent further disruptive editing while the discussion is ongoing.  Thank you, <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 15:32, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I do stop editing when some issues are raised and I did stop for a while in this case. However, it looks like the ANI discussion is being used for MoS talk. Wikipedia would grind to a halt if any editor can stop another editor on the basis that discussions are continuing. So I have decided to continue doing the same as other editors in acting in accordance with the MoS. I can't see a current question from you at the MoS. What would happen if we had this discussion at the MoS instead of on my talk page? Lightmouse (talk) 15:43, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds entirely reasonable to me. Tony   (talk)  15:57, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind if you want to start up a thread at MoS regarding the issue, but ultimately the method of enforcement is not within the remit of MoS (or its talk page) to determine. Some editors are discussing the possibility of an RFC to get a broad spectrum of community input on the matter, which, in my opinion, is the superior method. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 16:07, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

In agreement with User:Shereth, I have brought this discussion here because the section and the related ANI thread have a lot of MoS related issues. Any thoughts? Lightmouse (talk) 16:20, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * My objections (noted at the ANI discussion) have nothing to do with the MOS issues noted above, but rather the seemingly arbitrary, inflexible approach that Lightmouse (here used to mean the person controlling User:Lightmouse and User:Lightbot) has used in enforcing his/her interpretations of those guidelines. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:31, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * "Arbitrary"—can you explain why the use of a human-supervised automation to spare editors the manual labour of complying with MoS is this?
 * "Inflexible"—Lightmouse has shown admirable flexibility in updating the bot/script in response to critical feedback. He is polite and sensitive in his operation of the bot. What is inflexible about this? I'm surprised you're not thanking him for his careful work in improving WP.
 * "Enforcing" sounds like a spin-word for "implementing", for that is, in effect, what Lightmouse has been doing. It's hard to see a sizeable lattitude for "interpretations of those guidelines": they're quite clear, and LM is doing us a favour. Tony   (talk)  17:36, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That's the heart of the problem, Tony. You see no latitude for interpretation of a guideline that in no way says all dates must be unlinked. Should many dates be unlinked? Probably. Can a bot or super incredibly fast (as Gerry Ashton noted at the ANI discussion, Lightmouse made 8 edits during the minute 22:25, 25 September 2008, for example) "human-supervised automation" make the determination of whether there's a "particular reason" for the date? No, that's a task left to editors who work on individual articles.
 * Nor does the guideline in no way say that all instances of "14:35 p.m." must be corrected, but I haven't heard you objecting to editors who do make those corrections. Tony   (talk)  10:09, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Further, as I read the MOS, what I see says that auto-formatted dates are "deprecated", which, to my knowledge, does not mean banned or prohibited. If you genuinely believe that there is consensus for banning all date links, be bold and rewrite MOSNUM so that it says that. And should that occur, you still need to remember that the MOS is still only a guideline not an iron-clad proscription. — Bellhalla (talk) 18:13, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Please point me towards any consensus that all dates should be unlinked. As far as I can tell there is not one.  Right now, the current consensus is that dates should not be linked unless there is a good reason to do so.  This is the kind of distinction that can only be made by a human being, not a bot.  -Chunky Rice (talk) 17:38, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * "Human-supervised automation"? The number of edits would seem to preclude individual examination of each article. So the supervision seems to consist of compiling a list of articles with certain keywords in the title and turning AWB loose on them, with Lightmouse deciding what date format is appropriate for every article with the keywords present in the title. Also, a question about whether the bot can prevent the alteration of dates within quotations has gone unanswered, which I take to mean, "no, it can't". Many people don't put much value on removing date links, so if we discount that benefit, what is the ratio of beneficial to erroneous edits? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:46, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * What Lightmouse is doing is correct, appropriate, and desperately needed. The MOSNUM policy stating that dates should not be linked was thoroughly debated for a long time and is the result of a properly-arrived-at consensus. Links should be strictly limited to topics that are topical and germane to the article. Links to rambling lists of mindless trivia are virtually never topical and germane and just clutter up articles with excess blue that anesthetizes the mind. There are simply far too many of these links in far too many articles for any human to possibly hunt them all down and correct them; automated tools are the only way. Jimbo himself posted the most important rule of all on Wikipedia: Ignore all rules: “If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.” Well, in this case, Lightmouse  has followed all the rules  in his effort to improve Wikipedia. He just shouldn’t have to put up with any more flack from people who flat disagree with MOSNUM, just love their links to trivia, and want to drag this out with even more debate; such views have been discredited and Wikipedia is now well on the road to improvement. Greg L (talk) 18:01, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't disagree with MOSNUM. At least I don't think I do.  I agree that most date links are not useful.  I do not agree that date links are never useful or allowed.  And as far as I can tell MOSNUM doesn't say that either.  Do you think it says that?  -Chunky Rice (talk) 18:06, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You state that links should be strictly limited to topics that are topical and germane to the article. Does Lightbot (or any bot), or Lightmouse (or any user) making semi-automated edits at the rate of 4-5 per minute, have the ability to determine whether or not the links being removed are topical and germane to the article?  I think not.  Ultimately that is the problem; it is not that people are disagreeing with MOSNUM but that they are disagreeing with this method of enforcement thereof. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 18:16, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The suggestion that each and every date link should be individually scrutinised before deciding whether to unlink it would make sense if each and every date had been individually scrutinised to decide whether to link it in the first place. But of course they weren't - they were done unthinkingly en masse because that was what the MoS recommended at the time. It's entirely reasonable for Lightmouse and other editors - including myself - to unlink dates routinely. In those very few cases where there's an identifiable benefit to linking a date, it's a simple matter to re-link it. Date linking is deprecated (though permitted) by the Manual of Style. To complain that someone is changing articles to fit the MoS is simply refusing to accept that there has been a change of policy, and this persecution of LM over it is shameful. Colonies Chris (talk) 18:27, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Using your own reasoning, Colonies Chris, why should we allow a bot continue to change articles that, by your own admission, are using a permitted style under the MOS? — Bellhalla (talk) 19:32, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Because date linking is deprecated. That means there's a presumption against it. Anyone who thinks a date should be linked needs to make a case for linking it. The default position is 'unlinked'. Colonies Chris (talk) 21:21, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * But you yourself admitted that linked dates are permissible under the current MOS guidelines. I'm not meaning to be contentious, but I don't understand the inconsistency in your reasoning. — Bellhalla (talk) 21:44, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There is no inconsistency. Linking dates is permissible, but it's deprecated. In almost all cases it's a bad idea, I'm not saying that no-one should be allowed to link dates, I'm saying that linking a date is only rarely a good thing to do. The onus is one those who wish to link a particular date to put forward a case for departing from the general MoS guideline, not on unlinkers to justify bringing articles in line with the MoS. Colonies Chris (talk) 00:43, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just so you know, deprecated ≠ banned. If the outright banning of all linked dates was the intention, then MOSNUM needs to be updated to be explicitly reflect that intent. Until then, as a somewhat ambiguously worded guideline, it is open to different interpretations. If, as you state, "Linking dates is permissible", then the onus should be on the editor going against the de facto consensus in each article. — Bellhalla (talk) 05:02, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The key point here is the mistaken idea that there is a a 'consensus' to link dates. It never worked that way. Dates were linked en masse because the MoS said so, not because the editors of each article talked together and made a careful reasoned decision on whether or not to link. As far as I'm concerned, if on any given article there is a consensus among the editors to put back linking (it only takes a single mouse click to revert) then I'm not going to object. But the point is that linking was never something that editors decided to use. Most editors don't care either way - I've unlinked hundreds of articles and in all but a handful of cases there has been no reaction whatever, pro or anti.Colonies Chris (talk) 11:00, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * A consensus does not have to be explicitly agreed upon. If an editor makes a change to an article and other editors are tacit as to the change, that is a de facto consensus. (Look at your date unlinking activity: articles in which there was no response are an example of a de facto consensus to not link dates.) When a mass removal of all dates—without consensus, I might add—takes place (the reason this discussion was started), there is no way a bot or an editor spending less than ten seconds on an article can tell whether the dates were linked en masse, as you say, or carefully with specific reasons. That's the problem. If a person hasn't worked on an article, they just don't know. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:04, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * But, rather than taking the bull-in-a-china-shop-style approach favored by Lightmouse and others, why doesn't someone with a bot start a campaign to post messages (in the form of a template, perhaps?) on article talk pages. You know, something explaining that there is a new policy (not everyone is an MOS wonk) and outlining the many valid reasons for not linking dates. That way a discussion of interested editors could be held on each article's page. Then after a specified, reasonable amount of time (like, maybe two weeks?), editors can look to see if there are any objections, and if none, unlink the dates then via script or whatever. I bet you'd find many interested editors who, once educated, might even help to do the job. Two weeks, or whatever is deemed a reasonable amount of time, is not that long to wait, because, after all, there is no deadline. The whole situation would be certainly be a lot less adversarial, that's for sure. — Bellhalla (talk) 05:02, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Response to Bellhalla: Firstly, your suggestion that dates should ony be unlinked after a careful scrutiny of the article (and, presumably, its talk page, and its archives) to determine whether the linking was intended. You're right that a bot can't tell that - but in almost all cases, neither can a human editor. How many articles have any discussion whatever on that subject? Almost universally, an editor such as myself (yes, I am a former date-linker) came along and linked all the dates for autoformatting, and no-one commented on it. Secondly, the suggestion that a bot should place a note on each article's talk page. Then what? After two weeks, a human editor comes back to the article, looks through the talk page to see if there are any objections, and if not, fixes the dates? There are around two million articles to be brought into line with the MoS - this is not remotely practical. And thirdly, in response to your point that "there is no deadline", I would disagree. The present situation sees all manner of time-related terms (weekdays, month names, centuries, decades, years) being routinely linked by editors who think that's the right thing to do because that's what they see elsewhere - the root cause of all this bad practice is the confused design and confusing syntax of the autoformatting mechanism. As you rightly point out, most people don't read the MoS - they edit by example. And what they see is leading them to make things worse all the time. The longer we leave it, the longer it will take. I seriously doubt whether it could be done by manual means alone - the situation is getting worse faster than any manual editing process could catch up. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:53, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I simply cannot condone a scorched earth policy that is clearly against current consensus simply because other people might come in and clean up behind the bot. And I'm not sure what's so shameful about that. -Chunky Rice (talk) 18:38, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, maybe I'm missing something, but as long as the bot keeps running (and people run scripts without actually paying attention to them), won't a deliberately relinked date get indiscrimiately delinked again? -Chunky Rice (talk) 18:49, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Desperately needed? Tony, where's the fire? We have more blue than we should have, but very rarely are isolated years a large part of that; very few articles have a large part of their text as years, linked or unlinked. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:52, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I think there is a middle ground between the two alternatives described by Colonies Chris. At the one extreme is "every date link should be individually scrutinised". At the other extreme is running a bot on a list of articles that contain some keywords that give a hint about the appropriate date format, such as "British" or "United Kingdom", without any individual attention to what is in the article. The middle ground is for a person to look at the article, get a sense of what the article is really about, what the appropriate date format is, whether there are any quotes, and whether there are a ton of indiscriminate date links. Once those factors are evaluated, a script can be run to do what is right for that article, or if the article does not lend itself to a semi-automated fix, it can be skipped. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:32, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

"Deprecate"—"to express disapproval of"; orig. 17th century, from the Latin "pray against (evil)". That modern dictionary definition concurs with the consensus at MOSNUM, and the results of the preceding debate. It also concurs with the generally approving attitude to the removal of date autoformatting. Arguing the toss over how fast WP should be ridded of DA is not a good use of our time. If human-supervised automaticity is used, well and good. I don't agree with Colonies Chris that DA is "permissable", by the way, unless he means "only until removed". I think his explanation that the presumption is on an editor to justify DA in an article is probably a stretch: disapproval is disapproval. Tony  (talk)  10:09, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Tony, but I do have access to a dictionary. Unfortunately, you explanations and rationales sounds a lot like wikilegalese. If the intent of the MOS is truly to remove all linked dates, then please make a proposal to explicitly spell that out; otherwise, it is open to interpretation. — Bellhalla (talk) 20:18, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I can only second this proposal ("Please refrain from continuing to unlink dates with AWB"). Please repair David Strauss. —Guy Peters Talk • Contributions • Edit counter 10:21, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

RfC now open on linking dates of birth and death
Further to comments above on whether dates of birth and death at the top of a bio should or should not be linked, an RfC is now open at WT:MOSNUM Jheald (talk) 11:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Helicopter
Hi, I undid your edits to Helicopter, which were just removing links to dates and years. Linking dates and years is recommended, and I couldn't see a good reason why to remove the links. I'll watch your talk page if you want to chat about this. Petemyers (talk) 16:38, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi,


 * Where are they recommended? The guidance at wp:mosnum says:
 * ''Dates (years, months, day and month, full dates) should not be linked, unless there is a particular reason to do so.[
 * Regards Lightmouse (talk) 16:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, they are recommended here: http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial_(Wikipedia_links) I'll reinstate your edit.

I find it a funny policy personally, it makes sense to me to link all dates, but if that's the guideline that's the guideline... I'll revert your edits back. Petemyers (talk) 16:50, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Lightmouse (talk) 16:59, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've responded on Pete's talk page with links to more information about DA and its removal. Tony   (talk)  09:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)