User talk:Lightmouse/Archives/2009/March

Lightbot misfire
- 	Hi Lightmouse, I just wanted to draw your attention to a mistake by Lightbot (this edit). It mistook the company name 'BHP' with brake horsepower, apparently. Cheers, - Gump Stump (talk) 05:43, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for spotting and correcting that. Unfortunately horsepower has a variety of abbreviations (shp, ihp, bhp, hp, etc) and people aren't consistent in how they use capital letters. A conversion run was well overdue and it was designed to look for horsepower when preceded by a numeric value. As you saw, the numeric date and company name was confused with a numeric value and unit name. I had been watching out for false positives like that and spotted most of them. That one slipped through but it is a very useful example of the sort of thing to avoid. Thanks for letting me know. Lightmouse (talk) 11:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

History of Leeds
This edit of yours - the second change - has converted 1500 soldiers into (460 m). Which would make a very effective if somewhat surreal battlefield weapon. All fixed now. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for spotting and correcting that. You are right, it would be weird in battle. Lightmouse (talk) 11:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Little Flower Public School
This Lightbot edit incorrectly changed the school address from 100 Feet Ring Road to 100 ft (30 m) Ring Road and went unnoticed for several months. It has been corrected. Truthanado (talk) 21:13, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I will watch out for things like that, particularly when a capital letter is present. The feedback is very helpful. Lightmouse (talk) 11:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Partial units conversions
I've noticed that your bot sometimes converts only one of two measurements in ranges and similar. . (I've replaced them by "hand-written" conversions until I figure out how to use convert for those.) It also used the "adj=on" form of the templated in the phrase "1 foot of penetration", where "foot" is clearly a noun and needs no hyphen. BTW, converting lenghts given to within one inch to millimetres is usually false precision, you might want to reprogram the bot to convert inches to centimetres instead (e.g. 12 in instead of 12 in). --A. di M. (talk) 12:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Also, for some reason, in this edit it removed the original measurements leaving only the conversions. --A. di M. (talk) 12:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the feedback. You make several points, I will try to make several responses:
 * converting one of two measurements: The code only looks for +. That is why it misses ranges. There are just too many permutations of ranges (and, by, to, dash, etc.) and units for me to make efficient code. I sometimes do ranges by hand.
 * inches to mm. That is not false precision. The use of mm is a convention in many domains and precision is not always identical to unit_size. A '9 mm' bullet is designed to a precision much less than 1 mm. Many specifications have dimensions in mm but precision other than 1 mm.
 * dissatisfaction with 'adj=on'. I agree with you. I have raised this at Template talk:Convert on a few occasions but I didn't get very far. Perhaps a second opinion from you might help. Please can you raise it with them?
 * Lightmouse (talk) 13:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

As for the third point I have no issue about this with the template: "1-foot" with a hyphen looks like the correct form when it is an adjective (e.g. "two 1-foot frobs"), which is what the template outputs when  is supplied. But in the article Lightbot edited, "foot" was a noun, i.e. "in 1 foot of penetration", so the adjectival form shouldn't be used. As for the second point, it can be appropriate to give less precision in the article than the actual precision of the measurement or specification, but not vice versa. Saying that a Ibizan hound can be up to 740 mm tall is ridiculous, as it suggests that people measure dogs to within one millimetre or better, which they probably don't — saying up to 74 cm would be much saner. OTOH there's nothing wrong with referring to a 9 mm bullet as such rather than as a 9.0 mm or 9.00 mm one, even if they are more precise than that. Hence, to stay on the safe side I would not use millimetres as a default conversion for measurements given as an integer number of inches. --A. di M. (talk) 14:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand your points and welcome them.
 * Dogs. It is just too difficult to write the code to distinguish between dogs and cars. I don't mind if you change mm to cm.
 * You could use centimetres if the source value is given as a whole number of inches (likely to be measurements of people, posters, clothes, or other large stuff), and millimetres if there are fractions (likely to be measurements of credit cards, parts of motors, or other small stuff, or very precise measurements of larger stuff). You just have to look for "." or "/" characters in the original value to do that. Just an idea... There will be still cases when doing the converse makes more sense, but wouldn't that be an improvement over just using millimetres for everything? --A. di M. (talk) 17:10, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
 * nouns and adjectives. It is also difficult to write the code to distinguish between nouns and adjectives. Many humans have difficulty too. Frankly, I prefer to see a space in units of measurement. I only add a hyphen if it resolves ambiguity.
 * If the conversion isn't there, the metric reader has nothing to go on. Once a conversion is present, it is easy to adjust to whatever style you like. Trying to help. Lightmouse (talk) 15:09, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Not catching them all
Thanks. It is a known wishlist item. I have moved your question to: User_talk:Lightmouse/wishlist and responded there. Lightmouse (talk) 10:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Frames/s vs fps
The former is non-standard and the latter is industry-standard. Could you please adjust the bot accordingly and revert the relevant edits? Many thanks, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 02:10, 16 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I see that people in the industry use and understand both terms. Lightmouse (talk) 10:05, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

What about 88w8388 ?
Dear Lightmouse,

i found the very interesting article List of Marvell Technology Group chipsets, edited by you.

i see no mention to the 88w8388 chipset, responsible for wireless in the OLPC XO, for instance.

is there any reason for that ?

All the best, hilton —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hgfernan (talk • contribs) 16:28, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Feel free to add the information you think it needs. Lightmouse (talk) 10:04, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Volume of Folsom Lake
Please check your script for this edit. -- User:Docu


 * I don't understand. Can you say what it should have done? Lightmouse (talk) 10:03, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * A digit got lost. I noticed it as someone else fixed it later. -- User:Docu


 * No it didn't. There were only 2 digits after the final comma, so it was wrong one way or other prior to the edit. --Phil Holmes (talk) 11:06, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * You are right, though it's obvious that it was missing. After applying the conversion template, this was lost. -- User:Docu

Date linking
Hi Lightmouse, there's a proposal on WP:AE that could be of interest to you. PhilKnight (talk) 08:39, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey
What's up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Teeshep (talk • contribs) 20:25, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The sky. Lightmouse (talk) 10:23, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Date scripts altering URLs
and. What to do about those human bots... — Dispenser 05:37, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't understand. What is your question? Lightmouse (talk) 10:15, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I suppose my question is if you could add something like AWB's hideText since it obvious the human editors do not check the output of the script. — Dispenser 16:40, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah yes. That is a great function. I wish I knew how to make it work in a monobook script. I have already asked other people if they knew how but didn't get any positive answers. If you ever find out, please let me know. Lightmouse (talk) 16:50, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, you may be attributing something to the script that it doesn't do. Please cite the exact phrases within those edits that causes a problem and I will investigate the code in detail. Lightmouse (talk) 16:56, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Look at line 346, at the bottom of the diff, the bot changes an external link: from *January 2009 Interview with AWR to 9, 2009T22_16_34-08_00 January 2009 Interview with AWR Your script breaks the links. Woody (talk) 19:18, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't get my script to break the link. Which button are you pressing? Lightmouse (talk) 10:22, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I need a bot or tool...
Hey there, I recently asked another editor about a bot I need to use. I was pointed in your direction and a mono script you operate. Unfortunately the script makes little sense to me. Could you advise me on what it is exactly I need to add to my monobook and how I use it? Best. :) — R  2  16:15, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Just add:

importScript('User:Lightmouse/monobook.js/script.js');
 * to the bottom of User:Iridescent/monobook.js. Then clear your cache (Ctrl-Shift-r) in Firefox. Select the page you want to change and click on 'Edit this page'. Then if you look below the blue words on the left 'What links here' and 'Special pages', you will see some new blue words 'Delink common terms', 'Add metric units', 'Delink dates to dmy'. One of those options might work for you. If it doesn't, let me know. Lightmouse (talk) 16:55, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Cheers, the dates have been changed now :) — R  2  18:38, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I used a Ruby script to convert the dates, as Lightmouse's script doesn't convert ISO dates in references to MDY. Gary King  ( talk ) 15:42, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

There is a poll going on about autoformatting and linking at: Date formatting and linking poll. If there are sufficient votes for: and then perhaps more people will join us in fixing dates. Lightmouse (talk) 16:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * 'oppose autoformatting'
 * 'link only relevant dates'

RFC on date-autoformatting and the linking of date fragments
These issues have been the subject of an ongoing ArbCom hearing, and a further RFC (after those held in November at MOSNUM) is under way to settle important details.

Which ever way you feel, it’s important that the current RFC capture full community opinion. You may wish to participate. It’s here. Lightmouse (talk) 13:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)