User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2008 October

embolden title
In this edit to Landmark Center (St. Paul) the bot did some general fixes but failed to embolden the title (which was needed). Other examples include Orono High School and Island Station Power Plant. Thanks for your efforts!--Appraiser (talk) 16:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot bug
In cases where the article title is emboldened by a self-link, your bot has been removing the self-link, thus disemboldening the title rather than emboldening it (e.g. ,.) Spacepotato (talk) 17:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * MM yes I'm asking the AWB devs to look at this bug, and them ore general one above. Rich Farmbrough, 18:01 2 October 2008 (UTC).

Incorrect Lifetime template moves
Smackbot's edit here, which moved the Lifetime template before the categories was reverted here. The Lifetime template Usage guideline states that the Lifetime templateshould be placed after the last category, not before them. Would you please instruct Smackbot to correctly handle this, and to revert any changes that were done in error. Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 01:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Useless smakbot edits
Are edits like this necessary? I thought these were discouraged as per here. 71.210.190.90 (talk) 02:10, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, but hard to avoid altogether, for the reasons in my FaQ as well as the bugs discussed above. Rich Farmbrough, 20:26 3 October 2008 (UTC).

Template:Testafd
Hi Rich. Do you still have a need for Template:Testafd? If not, please list it for deletion. Thanks. -- Suntag  ☼  00:58, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Gone. Rich Farmbrough, 20:25 3 October 2008 (UTC).
 * Thanks. FYI, I found it while adding to Category:Articles for deletion templates. -- Suntag  ☼  13:46, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Dates
It missed some full dates and a number of partial dates. See also WP:AN/I Gimmetrow 12:57, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Other cases being missed: Gimmetrow 13:13, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 15:12 4 October 2008 (UTC).

Ray Parker, Jr. page
First, thank you for your edits. I take it that you are a common user who is familiar with this. I am a new user whose sources of updated information came from interviews shared with the public by Ray Parker, Jr. His original page sadly lacked updates as any musician should receive when new information becomes public so in gathering information about him and attempting to stay within Wikipedia guidelines, I have sources that I placed in however, there are still the warnings. Would you be kind enough to help me do what needs to be done in order for the page not to be deleted and it can stay 'verifiable'? Thank you

Cybdisco--Cybdisco (talk) 13:02, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Smackbot, and blank lines before stubs
I've noticed that (whilst making other edits) Smackbot 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) 09:33, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * 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, and has been discussed in the past . I have left, or will leave, a message about your concerns on the WP:AWB pages.


 * Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 09:49 5 October 2008 (UTC).

Monoicous
Monoicous Bot mis-linking problems have started again. A non-English speaker began interwiki linking the articles incorrectly (again), and the bots are proliferating the same old problem again. --EncycloPetey (talk) 10:42, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Repeated vandalism to Subsidized Housing article
Hi Rich. We need some help with this. User:68.40.143.123) continues to vandalise the Subsidized housing article and essentially it is turning into a revert war which is useless. Other editors and I remove his POV ramblings inserted into the article and he keeps re-inserting it with no discussion. Can we get some protection ? Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 17:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Rich, for your help on this. User:68.40.143.123 is not making coherent contributions to the article. Were he to have done so, there would be no issue. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 18:13, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Rich, right after the protection was lifted, the previous vandaliser (User:68.40.143.123) resumed battering the article with the same edits which were rejected before by many people. Help ? He has been warned and editors tried to converse with him but there is no hope. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 16:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Rich, I did read and add some books and articles by Professor Patrick Minford, as you mentioned. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 01:44, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Merge Templates
Cheers. Need to watch my typing. (Rueful smile) Ka Faraq Gatri (talk) 15:35, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Edmond Dantès
Smackbot changed the correct spelling (Dantès) to an incorrect one (Dantes) of in a DEFAULTSORT tag for Edmond Dantès. Should it do that? --Ccady (talk) 14:32, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Just found the same issue with Gérard de Nerval --Ccady (talk) 14:36, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes it should. Otherwise Dantès, Edmond would be listed before Dantes, Andrew. Rich  Farmbrough 14:43 5  October 2008 (UTC).
 * Isn't that a problem with the Wikipedia sorting on category pages? If Wikipedia does not change that, then I would think that it is more important to spell it right than to sort it right.--Ccady (talk) 22:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * But DEFAULTSORT is ONLY used for sorting, and nothing else. It was invented to work around the problem that Wikipedia sorting isn't correct in many cases, and the bug is hard enough to fix that other issues have taken priority ahead of it. Studerby (talk) 00:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Smackbot: sorting
Looks like Smackbot isn't handling all the issues around apostrophes correctly. A common case is a name "X'Y" (such as O'Reilly), that sorts as "Xy" (e.g. Oreilly). Smackbot is leaving the "Y" capitalized. I can't think of case where the "Y" shouldn't be lower case; in essence, we're simulated case in-sensitive sorting by forcing each word to have a capitalized first letter and an all lower remainder. Studerby (talk) 00:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm planning another pass to deal with Rich Farmbrough, 02:43 6 October 2008 (UTC).

Smackbot and names with ' in them
The bot is changing names like "Queen's College", which is correct, to "Queens College", which is incorrect and will get up the noses of members of that College who are always careful to get it right. It did the same with "Woman's College". I can not see a reason for it and it is wrong. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  21:40, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This is purely for the purposes of sort order. It will still appear under the article title in categories, but will be sorted as if it were titled as shown in DEFAULTSORT . For many articles in many categories it will make no difference but, for example if "Jo's Boys" were sorted by the title it would come before "John Dory".   Rich Farmbrough, 14:38 6 October 2008 (UTC).
 * Exactly, as it should. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  21:09, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot is tagging and breaking redirects
I have noticed that Smackbot has been breaking redirects by tagging them as stubs and orphans. Examples of this behavior are available here, here, and here. The redirects being tagged are of the form  and date from 2004, so this may be a case of Smackbot not recognizing an old redirect syntax. --Allen3 talk 13:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 14:17 7 October 2008 (UTC).

Virgin America
Virgin America Hello, I'd ask that you please not edit a page that is protected, as your recent edit in removing capitalization on the phrase 'Main Cabin' is incorrect formatting. 'Main Cabin' is the official name of the cabin per Virgin America, and therefore is a proper noun and must be capitalized. In my opinion, it is unfair to take advantage of a page protection when most users cannot make corrections to your edits. Regards, NcSchu (Talk ) 13:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comment. It's not "taking advantage" - there are over 1000 admins who can correct me, and you can leave a note here if I make a mistake and I will correct myself. If I was edit-warring on the page it would be "taking advantage". Rich Farmbrough, 15:33 7 October 2008 (UTC).
 * Yea you need to stop abusing your privileges with Virgin America or I am more than ready to alert other administrators to your actions! Consider yourself warned. 45Factoid44 (talk) 15:29, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh for heaven's sake, if it's a problem I'd self-revert, left a talk page note. Rich Farmbrough, 15:33 7 October 2008 (UTC).

P.S. Neither of you asked me to revert my edit, that was what was needed. Since you didn't I almost assumed that it had been done by someone else - I have reverted. Rich Farmbrough, 16:17 7 October 2008 (UTC).
 * Sorry, I was just trying to hint towards it, without yelling at you to revert or something. I just look at 1000 out of the millions of non-admin editors as a very small proportion of the editing population. NcSchu (Talk ) 18:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * OK. Don't tell anyone (:-) but most of those millions of accounts have never edited, and many are thought to be mass created vandals.Rich Farmbrough, 18:44 7 October 2008 (UTC).

AfD nomination of Texline Independent School District
An article that you have been involved in editing, Texline Independent School District, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Articles for deletion/Texline Independent School District. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Whenaxis (talk) 23:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Clarify -> Confusing
Hi, just writing regarding the recent edit SmackBot made to PRINCE2. I added a 'Clarify' tag (inline), to which SmackBot correctly added a pipe and date, but it changed 'Clarify' to 'Confusing' which is not inline, leaving a banner in the middle of a paragraph. I've reverted 'Confusing' to 'Clarify' and left the pipe. Cheers, Millstream3 (talk) 09:58, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, and oh buggerit. Rich Farmbrough, 10:29 8 October 2008 (UTC).
 * The redirect was changed.. sigh. Rich Farmbrough, 10:32 8 October 2008 (UTC).

British dates

 * Incidentally these are not British dates, they are used by extensively in the UK and less extensively in the US (my estimates 85%-95% and 30-40% respectively).

Hi,

I don't think changing dates to British format (day, then month) automatically is a good idea, since it affects even pages that should go the other way, as was recently done in Project for the New American Century. Maybe the bot can somehow sense which way the dates go on a page it's editing, and stick with that one? Korny O&#39;Near (talk) 16:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's definitely broken. It is correctly removing the wikilinks, but it shouldn't be changing the order. e.g.:
 * May 30, 2007 → 30 May 2007
 * should be
 * May 30, 2007 → May 30, 2007
 * Also, this seems like dup work that at least one other bot is doing (but doing correctly). &mdash;Danorton (talk) 19:45, 6 October 2008 (UTC)


 * FYI, I just now fixed the damage to Project for the New American Century from the bot and manually did what the bot should have done. &mdash;Danorton (talk) 20:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Well that article did contain four international dates, calling it damage is going a bit strong. Rich Farmbrough, 22:51 6 October 2008 (UTC).


 * I fixed what I trust is the last 2 date errors that were related to the bot's edits in that article. Considering the amount of edits it has taken to make correct what the bot did, the term "damage" seems to be a valid use of the word. Don't be so defensive, Rich. Bots should help. When they don't, people have a right to complain. Truthanado (talk) 00:10, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


 * There's a revert button. Rich Farmbrough, 09:51 7 October 2008 (UTC).


 * For the record, there were over 100 dates in that article that were jumbled by the bot. Saying "there's a revert button" is like saying "just press delete" in response to spam. Such errors are disruptive and most article readers aren't editors. &mdash;Danorton (talk) 00:26, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


 * No it's not. One click on the revert button would have undone all those changes to dates whether there were 100 or 1000 of them. Rich Farmbrough, 08:49 9 October 2008 (UTC).
 * Nonetheless sorry to have put you to trouble, and your suggestion in the original post is appreciated. Rich Farmbrough, 08:57 9 October 2008 (UTC).

Dab pages
Just noticing that Smackbot has created a number of redirects over the last couple of days, in the format "XXXX (disambiguation)", which redirects to "XXXX". I was wondering if there's a particular project or initiative that this is in support of? Taking an interest only because dab clean up is a primary focus for me. Thanks! Mlaffs (talk) 02:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Totally-disputed-section in Math equations
SmackBot was stopped a few days ago with the complaint that it had inserted Totally-disputed-section templates into Math equations. The bot has since been restarted, but I don't see any evidence that this problem was addressed. &mdash;Danorton (talk) 18:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It is probably best to direct follow up on this incident to Dicklyon (talk). &mdash;Danorton (talk) 18:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks for the response, Rich. Is it fixed now?  I also reported it for vandalism, for the heck of it. Dicklyon (talk) 20:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's fixed as I said on your talk page. Ptolemy's theorem was the only page affected by this somewhat obscure bug out of hundreds of thousands of edits where it was present. Note that AIV is for ongoing problems.  Rich Farmbrough, 21:49 10 October 2008 (UTC).

tags to lower-case  tags. Both works, but pretty much all documentation here at Wikipedia and at Meta shows that tag in upper-case. And the redirect insert buttons in the edit window also inserts it as all upper-case. So it is unnecessary and confusing to change it to lower-case, and it breaches tradition.

Those two things are of course only minor issues, really mostly just a matter of opinion. But I suggest you change your bot's behaviour.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:51, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) Probably the best thing to do with these is move CAT:, WP: into a subcategory, membership to be transcluded by R from shortcut. This can be done automatically or manually.
 * 2) I turned off sentence casing yesterday - putting REDIRECT instead, but found that most of the items were "redirect" - as you say it does not matter greatly, but I prefer as much WP-ease (template names, style on talk pages/documentation etc.) to be sentence case and full words as it creates a conducive environment for reducing the amount of work fixing article MoS problems. I may tweak this to only change lower-case to sentence case.


 * Thanks for your note. Rich Farmbrough, 12:01 23 October 2008 (UTC).


 * 1: Oh, using a subcategory for the cross namespace shortcuts is a splendid idea! But note that the "WP:" prefix is an alias (abbreviation) for the "Wikipedia:" namespace, it is not a pseudo-namespaces that ends up in main space like the CAT: and MOS: prefixes. So they work differently. And a template (like for instance R from shortcut) can not automatically detect if a shortcut is a cross namespace shortcut, and it can not even detect if the page name starts with "CAT:" or "MOS:". So it can not automatically categorise accordingly. That has to be done by humans or a bot that adds the subcategory or a special template (or a parameter to a template) that in turn adds the subcategory.
 * 2: Yeah, just a matter of opinion. And I don't have that much of an opinion on the matter.
 * --David Göthberg (talk) 12:29, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


 * WP: YEs I remembered that after I posted.. "template cannot.. detect" I can't keep up with which parser functions are implemented, but that sounds like a challenge! (To our template  gurus - I hasten to add.) Rich Farmbrough, 12:34 23 October 2008 (UTC).

SmackBot

 * Can you review my edit on Angel Locsin. Thanks! Backmeupof2 (talk) 05:46, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Moving Template:Infobox German Location
I noticed you moved the Infobox German Location to Infobox German location. Now, I'm not terribly well versed in these things, but it seems to me the pages Template:Infobox_German_Location/doc and Template:Infobox German Location/Instructions also need to be moved. Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:53, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks done. Rich Farmbrough, 11:58 24 October 2008 (UTC).

SmackBot
You've made an error in this edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Publication&diff=247515709&oldid=247502345

You've changed the mergeto target to be the Talk page, and changed the discussion page to be a Talk:Talk: page.

I left a msg at the bot page first, sorry. Nurg (talk) 03:13, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

PS. I have fixed the error, but I think you need to check the bot's operation in cases like that. Nurg (talk) 03:25, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. It's absolutely right to stop the bot when this sort of stuff happens. I can restart any time, but fixing errors can be tedious. Rich Farmbrough, 03:48 25 October 2008 (UTC).
 * Fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 03:57 25 October 2008 (UTC).

Redirects
I've just come across Shin Min-a (actress) (disambiguation), and was wondering why SmackBot would create such a pointless redirect. I wasn't sure what the rationale was or whether this is part of a series of newly created redirects, so I wanted to check before I listed it at RfD. Regards. PC78 (talk) 13:25, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I've deleted it since the target isn't a dab page. Rich Farmbrough, 16:29 25 October 2008 (UTC).
 * Cheers! PC78 (talk) 16:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup templates
Thanks for your mentioning on my talk page, 23 Oct. 2008, that clean-up templates are, most often, best not substituted. On a rare occasion I might use the template result and edit it, where it doesn't quite fit. May I asked what occasioned your comment? --Bejnar (talk) 22:15, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot removing a stub tag
Not sure what happened here. Was this stub tag meant to have been removed? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:23, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Template:Irrel
Wow. That's way back. :) I closed it as delete, got browbeaten by a few users and decided to relist it instead. It ended up being deleted the second go round. --WoohookittyWoohoo! 11:56, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Angel Locsin
Can you help me to put this image "Angel-Locsin.jpg" on Angel Locsin?, Thank you!. Traders 21 (talk) 08:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Your bot
that your bot made, I think I've found a glitch in it. If I put in instead of the date, it makes a second parameter, which doesn't quite work as Template:Fact only has one parameter.--Stereotyper (talk) 18:12, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * So 3 tides make just Name (71.10.88.69 (talk)), 4 makes name and date (71.10.88.69 (talk) 03:50, 24 October 2008 (UTC)), and 5 make name date and time (03:50, 24 October 2008 (UTC))? Correct?

Cleanup templates
Thanks re note. I keep being nagged by bots to use "subst", but I didn't understand where it is/isn't recommended (hence the accident with Norman Cota). Gordonofcartoon (talk) 14:12, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wilcox_(Canadian_musician)

Dear Richard - you seem to have edited out historic, accurate, and previously posted information - including my album credits! Kosenrufu (talk) 18:50, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I think not. Rich Farmbrough, 21:58 30 October 2008 (UTC).