User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2008 June

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undated orphan backlog
Hi, It's not a lot yet, but there are 100+ articles in CAT:ORPHAN with undated orphan tags. As far as I know, SmackBot has always kept pretty current on that. Is the bot running behind?--Aervanath's signature is boring 09:42, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes it did a big catchup. Rich Farmbrough, 21:18 31 May 2008 (GMT).
 * Sweet. I'd hate to go through and date all those myself. :) --Aervanath's signature is boring 09:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Minor SmackBot nit
Minor capitalization changes like this seem like they add unnecessary 'churn' to Recent changes etc.--maybe there's a way to make it less picky about whether the first letter of maintenance tags is capitalized or not? Other than that, you perform a great service with the bot. Shawisland (talk) 07:55, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm using an older version of the software, due to a machine failure. The internallinks should have been picked up. The most receent version should be recovered RSN, and this will happen a lot less. Rich Farmbrough, 10:54 1 June 2008 (GMT).

Notability of Once Nothing band
Right here. http://solidstaterecords.com/artist_bio.php?id=297 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sector311 (talk • contribs) 13:47, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Capital
If all that is "wrong" with a template entry is the first letter is in lower case (as here with unreferenced) please don't "fix" it. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:59, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * See above, pretty much a rare event for various reasons. Rich Farmbrough, 08:45 3 June 2008 (GMT).

Cyrillic accented-i
pretty clever bot, fella, useful stuff!

however, please see this change here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bulgarian_language&diff=216614260&oldid=216480357

Please ask your bot not to revert it to the way it was before (which is did several days ago) - as non-unicode-compatible computers can't read the symbol it substitutes.

Thanx, and keep up the good work! 62.176.111.68 (talk) 12:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot makes a number of changes that are available to all WP:AWB bots - in general these provide a number of non-controversial minor improvements. The issue you raise is related to these, I have left, or will leave, a message about your concerns on the WP:AWB pages. Regards,


 * Thank you :-)62.176.111.68 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 13:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:HAU
Hello yet again. I regretfully inform you that the bot we were using to update the user status at Highly Active Users, SoxBot V, was blocked for its constant updating. With this bot out of operation, a patch is in the works. Until that patch is reviewed and accepted by the developers, some options have been presented to use as workarounds: 1) Qui monobook (not available in Internet Explorer); 2) User:Hersfold/StatusTemplate; 3) Manually updating User:StatusBot/Status/USERNAME; or 4) Not worry about it and wait for the patch to go through, which hopefully won't take long. If you have another method, you can use that, too. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Useight (talk) 22:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Invalid date
If you can, have a look at Drainage in New Orleans, it shouldn't be in the category, but I don't have time to figure out why it is. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 10:23 4 June 2008 (GMT).
 * Hmm looks like cats aren't gettign updated properly either, but... Rich Farmbrough, 10:33 4 June 2008 (GMT).
 * That was a weird bug in unreferencedsection that caused it. I've fixed it now.  Harryboyles  13:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Japanese alias & ARC
I have edited that Japanese alias article, split the 'how-to' stuff into a non-WP article, and put the Alien registration cardinfo into a separate WP article. I have applied for a peer review. If you would like to contribute to either article, please do so. If you need to discuss the article, pleased do it on the article discussion page, and not my talk page. Thanks.--Mak Allen (talk) 02:45, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Ongoing event
Template:Ongoing event has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Yellowdesk (talk) 03:20, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Cats
Thank you for explaining! Now I will know should I ever be the one to create the montly category again. ♦Tangerines♦ · Talk 13:38, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

strange edit
Hi, Rich. Strange edit by the bot. Please check. Other edits appear to be good Alex Bakharev (talk) 11:55, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I was forced to revert to an old version of the software, which re-introduced this bug, but it should be fixed now. Rich Farmbrough, 18:08 6 June 2008 (GMT).

Smackbot error
In the article Yotare Minami-no-wari, Aza-take-no-gō, Ōaza-tobishima-shinden, Tobishima-mura, Ama-gun, Aichi-ken, Smackbot replaced  with   in a revision as of 22:41, 12 March 2008. Another user corrected that on 21:14, 23 May 2008, but Smackbot made the same edit again in a revision as of 11:17, 6 June 2008. I have corrected it and added a date tag, so this particular article shouldn't be affected again. -- Zyxw (talk) 15:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I was forced to revert to an old version of the software, which re-introduced this bug, but it should be fixed now. Rich Farmbrough, 18:08 6 June 2008 (GMT).

Changing City, State to City, State
In the vast majority of cases, such as in articles like this, only the city is relevant to the article. The state is included only in order to fully qualify the city name; the state is irrelevant to the context of the article and ought not be linked separately. So, changing City, State to City, State only complicates the markup in source and creates over-linking. —Centrx→talk &bull; 21:16, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Unhelpful smackbot edit
This edit doesn't seem helpful enough to warrant cluttering the article history with it. Is there some threshold below which smackbot realizes it could make an edit, but chooses not to do so? (sdsds - talk) 03:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

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Add split templates to your "Date the maintenance tags"
Can you add the four split templates (Split Split-apart Splitsection Splitsections) to the list of templates to which you add the date? -- Alan Liefting ( talk ) - 10:14, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

archival
I left a message here but it was archived before you replied to it. I just want to make sure you don't loose track of it (in case you were thinking of replying to it -- if not please let me know). The message is now located at User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2008May. Cheers, Waldir talk 13:32, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I tried to reword it a bit and add that to the article, feel free to fix any detail I might have got wrong. Cheers, Waldir talk 23:09, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Tags on Samrat Hem Chandra Vikramaditya
Hi ! On the above page Tag on neutrality and POV has been put again. Page has only well researched and verifiable information, with all the citations and references. Still, some editors raise issues and create controversies. The administrators or editors are doing nothing to preserve the quality of the page. An action from your side is anticipated. Please respond!

--Sudhirbhargava (talk) 11:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC) Samrat Hem Chandra Vikramaditya

Category:All articles with unsourced statements
Do you have any idea what changed to make this jump from 40,000+ articles to 110,000+ articles? I can't figure out where they came from.-- Birgitte SB  16:32, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No it's nor obvious. I looked at a small sample, maybe examining a few more will show a new template has the cat? Rich Farmbrough, 20:10 9 June 2008 (GMT).
 * I looked through a bunch and only found fact and Citations missing which is what it always had been.-- Birgitte SB  20:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Also related changes is usseless without a namespace filter. I went through about a thouseand text searching for "Template" but I guess going through more like that is probably the best bet.-- Birgitte  SB  20:25, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Nevermind I simply made mistake the last time I updated the list of totals. It wasn't 40,000 range anytime recently. Sorry.-- Birgitte  SB  21:39, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot
Hi, could you check SmackBot's behavior in connection with the template Tracklist? It appears to remove the extra line breaks between individual tracks (note that the diff could take a little to load), which are there to keep the overall template maintainable, much like those between groups in navboxes. – Cyrus XIII (talk) 20:39, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot makes a number of changes that are available to all WP:AWB bots - in general these provide a number of non-controversial minor improvements. The issue you raise is related to these, I have left, or will leave, a message about your concerns on the WP:AWB pages. Regards,

SmackBot
I believe that Army1987's last change was for headers, so I am surprised that SmackBot followed with a clean up date. You might reply on the talk page for Time in physics if you wish. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There was a cleanup template: SB dated it... I don't see the suprise? Unless that SB has been a little slower than usual... Rich Farmbrough, 08:03 11 June 2008 (GMT).

Smackbot changing date in AFD templates?
It appears from this diff that the Smackbot is changing the date format on the AFD templates, now I've not noticed this before, and as the "wrong version" was generated by subst'ing the relevant template, I wasn't sure if this was in error, or if the syntax has changed recently and you're tidying up... -- Ratarsed (talk) 07:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * This is a bug, that may be fixed in more recent versions of SB. It is low impact, because the subst is generaly sdoen bfore SB comes along, but I will attempt to fix ASAP. Rich Farmbrough, 08:05 11 June 2008 (GMT).

SmackBot
Smackbot went through Fire captain twice in rapid succession, leaving a mangled mergeto tag behind.   I'm hand-fixing what it did, just bringing this up as a bug report. Thanks! Jclemens (talk) 21:17, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. There's a limit to the amount of stuff in the cleanup tag it can deal with. Rich Farmbrough, 22:18 11 June 2008 (GMT).
 * I have now fixed the fixed version... Rich Farmbrough, 22:22 11 June 2008 (GMT).

RfD
I forgot to notify you at the time, but (in an effort to help out another user) I nominated Scientific Mathod, a redirect that you created, at Redirects for discussion/Log/2008 June 11‎. You may want to comment there. Deor (talk) 02:06, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Signpost updated for June 9, 2008.
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SmackBot vs. Persondata/Lifetime
Hello! I'd like to ask again that SmackBot be corrected so that when it finds the sequence:

It stop swapping their position, as happened in this case.

Lifetime is expected to go below Persondata, not above it. -- alexgieg (talk) 17:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Smackbot changed census data
Keosauqua, IA got changed from 1,066 people, 467 households, and 270 familes to 5,2 and 2, in the demographics area. Bug? -- Vaevictus (talk) 00:11, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No an anon IP. Rich Farmbrough, 00:53 18 June 2008 (GMT).

Homelessness article
Hi Rich. As usual, the Homelessness article is getting creamed with vandalism especially from anonymous editors. It is a real chore to keep up with it. Any help ? Bests. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 22:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot
This bot removes paragraph tags from text that's marked off with blockquote  tags. It should not do this. If a blockquote contains more than one paragraph, removing the paragraph tags will concatinate these paragraphs, even if they are separated in the source by line feeds. For instance, this bot's recent change to Lucky duckies had this effect, but I've seen this bot cause the same problem on other pages as well. -Moorlock (talk) 02:16, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot
Silly null edit You might want to make SmackBot stop doing things like this; it seems pointless. Let me know if there's something I'm missing here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:33, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes. "Date=" won't work "date=" will. Rich Farmbrough, 14:35 22 June 2008 (GMT).
 * There you have it It might be a good idea to edit the template, then, no? Thanks for your response. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:02, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well there are thousands of templates with tens of thousands of arguments, a;beit SB only deals with a few hundred. Should they all be edited? And SmackBot also corrects DATE, dAte, Dat, fate, dare etc. etc., fixes things like June2008, and a host of other typos, some of which are not amenable to template solutions. Rich Farmbrough, 23:37 22 June 2008 (GMT).

Smackbot stub tag and uncategorized tag behaviour
In this diff of Snake dentition, SmackBot removed the stub template from an article. Why did it do this? Is there some critical size of page beyond which it will remove stub tags? Also, in this diff of Democratic Center Party, SmackBot changed uncategorized to uncategorizedstub when the article was already in a stub category (but not a normal category). Why did it do this? Is this correct? Rhebus (talk) 12:07, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes there is some point, it is an AWB general fix of the platform SB uses. Uncategorized stubs are stubs that are not in categories, apart from stub categories, so yes this is correct. Rich Farmbrough, 21:30 24 June 2008 (GMT).

Date error
. Might indicate a more general problem of using templates within templates. Does your bot just look for the next }} and put the date in front of it? --- RockMFR 18:39, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Um not exactly. It knows which parameters are allowed for a given template. But there are various sophisications, some of which have been lost until I recover a certain machine. Rich Farmbrough, 22:10 25 June 2008 (GMT).

to
Hello there. Unless there's a nuance I'm missing, this edit, where the already-dated becomes , seems a bit on the redundant side. --McGeddon (talk) 23:10, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You are right, an normally this wouldn't happen (See FAQ). SB is trying to fix  and failing. The canonicalisation of the templates is not easy to separate from the attempt, however, and SB has a high success rate with Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template. Rich Farmbrough, 08:35 26 June 2008 (GMT).

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SmackBot
Hello! It's the 3rd time (I think) I report this bug. As you can see in this diff, SmackBot takes Lifetime and places it above Persondata. This SHOULD NOT happen. "Lifetime" (and its redirects) are shorthands for "DEFAULTSORT" followed by two categories. Thus, it should always go below "Persondata".

Can you please fix SmackBot to avoid this behavior? Or if not, at least explain why not? -- alexgieg (talk) 14:22, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a problem not as far as the system is concerned, but because it disrupts the easy understanding of the end-page contents for those editing. "Lifetime" being placed right before the categories, as part of them, makes it intuitive. It being way above, separated from them by who knows which unrelated content, makes things harder to understand and follow. Not to mention that SmackBot, in moving it up (or Persondata down, I don't know), also separates the Persondata template from the comment preceding it. See these two examples:


 * A. Before SmackBot:

Angus Macnab


 * B. After SmackBot:

Angus Macnab


 * Which one is easier to follow when editing? IMHO, it's clearly A. -- alexgieg (talk) 15:28, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks! -- alexgieg (talk) 16:58, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

General SmackBot praise: Great general-purpose utility. Thanks for the contribution! E robson ( T alk ) 03:35, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Date sorting of the split tags
Can you get SmackBot onto date sorting of the split tags? Cheers. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 03:58, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

stub template removed from A Few Good Men
SmackBot erroneously removed from A Few Good Men. Perhaps it is not smart enough to be able to tell that an article about a play and its film adaptation could be a stub in one case but not the other. 67.100.127.220 (talk) 03:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC).