User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2009 August

Date templates
A bot is still needed, please, to convert existing "first broadcast", "foundation", "founded", "opened", "released", or similar dates in infoboxes, to use Start date, so that they are emitted as part of the included hCard or hCalendar microformats. Further details on my to-do page. You expressed interest in this last year, but were unable to help, at that time. The task can be sub-divided, if that helps. I'd be very grateful if you could assist. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking at it now. Rich Farmbrough, 21:43, 31 July 2009 (UTC).
 * Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Please note a problem with your recent AWB/date edits, which I fixed on one page. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Rollbacked the rest. Rich Farmbrough, 23:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC). 23:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Great. The subsequent edits seem fine. BTW, please feel free to make use of the to-do list and add comments or strike-through completed templates, as you see fit. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:34, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

NB
I came across this, a work in progress. Occuli (talk) 13:00, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Things that stayed too long
A date of birth in an infobox disagreed with the same fact in the article's lead for over a year, occasionally getting fixed by sharp-eyed IP users but promptly getting reverted as vandalism on each occasion. ClickRick (talk) 13:39, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Why is SmackBot time-warping?
Just curious why SmackBot time-warped and changed some maintenance tags back to the previous month. See this. The article was originally tagged at 0045 UTC on August 1, and SmackBot made its changes at 1238 UTC on August 1, so it's unusual that it set the month to July. Maybe Smackbot is secretly yearning for Professor Brown and his Delorean? Truthanado (talk) 15:39, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Simply put, I forgot to tell it to re-calibrate itself. Many thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 15:42, 1 August 2009 (UTC).

Subsequent Impregnation theory
It has actually been proposed, e.g. by Gordon Gallup who also proposed the semen displacement theory.. It has been called "fertilization by proxy" and can happen in insects. I don't think it has been documented in humans. A section under Sperm competition might be an option. I'm not going to deprod. Fences &amp;  Windows  20:02, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

List of Torchwood characters
Smackbot keeps messing up the above article by changing all the===subheadings to==headings. It's very tiresome to manually revert after there have been intermediate edits.~ZytheTalk to me! 09:44, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm don't know why. But fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 13:04, 2 August 2009 (UTC).

Episode dates
Hey there, I like the current task adding Start date to episode list articles ... can you add a function to do the same to dates currently formatted as mm/dd/yyyy? In List of Dynasty episodes, for example, most of them are incorrectly noted that way (I never got around to changing them) and the bot skipped those. Thanks!&mdash; TAnthonyTalk 16:07, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Your edits involving Samurai Claw
During the last hour, he has created half a dozen articles or more and they have all been speedy deleted. One speedy deleted article uses WP:NOT a game manual. The important thing is there's no reason to prod it as it keeps getting speedy deleted under various titles. BrianY (talk) 20:00, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
Regarding Shortland Street 2000 storyline - this piece was missing in the storylines for the soap and I reinstated by researching the previous writing on Wiki. The problem I have is that the box which normally appears at the top somehow got shunted towards the bottom above the cast list. Only references are those duplicated from similiar pages. user:Tuiland Tuiland 03:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tuiland (talk • contribs) 03:09, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Move of Template:Commons cat
Hi. A couple of us are wondering about your move of the above template, as your one word edit summary of "Readability" doesn't give many clues away for such a widely used template. If would be nice if you could comment at Template talk:Commons category. Arriva436talk/contribs 19:34, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Article entitled "William James Austin"
I am William James Austin. An article about me was recently submitted by the university professor, Dr. Marge Brown. One day after the article was posted, it was deleted, it seems, with a series of warnings in its place. Since I am the subject of the article, I've been asked by Dr. Brown to help.

1) There is no problem with copyright. Much of the information was taken from my website.  That material is simply a list of facts, i.e. my publication and awards credits.  She certainly has my permission to include material from my website.

2) If the fact that poets, writers, and artists know each other constitutes a neutrality problem, then Wikipedia is full of such problems. Artists are known to each other.  Articles for Richard Kostelanetz, John M. Bennett and Cecil Touchon (in whose article I am named), for example, were written by other artists who know them.  This is invevitable.  We are all recognized members of the current avant-garde movement.

So I, in turn, ask for your help. If the problem is one of style, please advise. I admit that none of us is well versed in Wikipedia rules. Please help so that the article can once again see the light of day. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Austinwja (talk • contribs) 20:30, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Could you please explain further...
Smackbot added a Europeanized defaultsort to Samoud Khan. But he is not a European. He is a pashtun. And their naming style is modeled after than used for Arabic speaking people -- in particular, no inherited lastname-surname.

When I see a bot add a Europeanized sort order to an article about someone without a European name I try to figure out how it came to happen. I didn't see a "listas" parameter anywhere. I've been told that all the robots that insert sort orders only do so if there is already an indication that a human left their opinion of the proper sort order.

But I think that some people are running instances of bots that are out of date. (I don't really understand bots. But back when I was a programmer, the first thing my programs did was check to see if they were an authorized version.  It they found that they had been replaced by a new version they gave a polite explanation, and quit.  And I wish all of our bots did that.

Can you help me figure out why this sort order was added?

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 22:03, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks like AWB gen fixes is doing this; I am surprised at this, I would expect it only to to add a defaultsort normally if either
 * all cats have the same sort order explicitly
 * some have the name of the page explicitly


 * Clearly there are other more complex cases where a defaultsort makes sense - if most have the same order, and few or none have implicit sort, and recently it seems that multiword article names are being given a defaultsort too (see below). However I would say it is dangerous to try this with person names.  I will refer to the developers. Rich Farmbrough, 12:33, 26 July 2009 (UTC).
 * P.S. I set the default sort to the article name in this case. Rich Farmbrough, 12:33, 26 July 2009 (UTC).


 * Thanks for looking into this. If the developers give a public response, could you give me a heads-up?  Cheers!  Geo Swan (talk) 12:28, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot defaultsort question
I have noticed a couple of times that SmackBot has added to articles about acids DEFAULTSORT in which the sort key has capitalization that doesn't match the title of the article. Here and here are examples. Is there a specific reason for doing this? It seems unnecessary, but probably harmless. I'm just curious mostly. -- Ed (Edgar181) 11:28, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's an WP:AWB general fix, and means that in categories items will be sorted effectively "case insensitively" - they are still listed with their ordinary name, but, for example "TUC commission" would come before "TUC Executive" rather than after it.  Rich Farmbrough, 12:21, 26 July 2009 (UTC).

P.S.: Richard...
How goes the base page thing?

The Transhumanist 01:23, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

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InsideNorthside - A North Minneapolis Encyclopedia
Hi, I noticed you've edited some articles related to North Minneapolis and I wanted to tell you about a project I'm involved in called InsideNorthside. It's basically a wikipedia for North Minneapolis, built on wikispaces (which is a bit more user-friendly then mediawiki, though not nearly as robust). Anyways, wanted you to know. I'm trying to find some wiki experts to help build an initial user base for the site. Check it out and let me know what you think. http://insidenorthside.org --Ariahfine (talk) 01:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to try RfA again. Would you nominate me?
My last one is at Requests for adminship/The Transhumanist 5

The Transhumanist 03:26, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

How do I get your bot to leave my custom template alone?
Hi – over at Noreen_Connell, I substed and then customized a template because I couldn't find an existing one for the message I wanted leave. Unfortunately, SmackBot here seems to keep wanting to "fix" it by forcing it back to the default template. Hence, I'm in a bit of an edit war with a bot. :) Is there any way I can set up my customized template so that your bot will leave it alone? Thanks, Iamcuriousblue (talk) 04:02, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I imagine it's because you're wrapping it in the  and   comments, which makes bots think that anything in between is a normal refimprove and fair game. Remove those comments and the bot should leave it alone. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes Chris, that is the purpose of those comments. However the template contains a number of categories, some conditionally, which will be pulled to the bottom of the article and made non-conditional - that that had happened is the reason SB was visiting the page in the first place.  These will be the wrong cats anyway if  the wording of the template is changed. Rich Farmbrough, 13:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC).
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 13:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC). Rich Farmbrough, 13:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC).
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 13:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC). Rich Farmbrough, 13:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC).

We're working on something special...
...to award Buaidh for all his hard work.

It's at User:Penubag/Sandbox3.

But it's not done yet. Feel free to help improve it.

I'm hoping that everyone involved with the WP:WPOOK will sign it (please sign without a timestamp).

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 23:02, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Areas for reform
It's cool that you have added another area, but you have to include a concise description of the problem (like the others). If you are working on this as I write I apologise - it looks as if you added the new area several hours ago but I could be misinterpreting the timestamp of your edit. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 16:20, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Slrubenstein  |  Talk 18:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Re: newsletter
I delivered the newsletter by hand using my own mailing list (it's the one I keep up-to-date), and didn't realize that the one I have Julian use was updated independently.

So I've reverted my post, sort of, leaving just a link, and have removed you from my mailing list.

Sorry for the mix up.

By the way, would you like to receive the newsletter as just a link?

The Transhumanist 21:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Defaultsorts on species
G'day Rich,

Please don't capitalise species names in defaultsorts like this. It violates real-world laws of biological nomenclature, and it looks ridiculous. What you are doing here was recommended practice at Categorization a while back, but for no good reason, and has since been removed.

Cheers, Hesperian 00:21, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok, we need a special sort for taxonomy categories, as per the discussions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Capitalising_every_word_in_the_defaultsort and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants#Scientific_names_in_genus_categories, this can be done, I am going to do Category:Abies as a pilot. With respect though how the default sort looks to a trained biologist is irrelevant since it is not written that way in either the article or the category. It is however likely that a number of binomial article are going to pick up these DEFAULTSORT values without corresponding genus specific sort orders, which is another problem I am trying to avoid - and I have brought up elsewhere - when part of a group is in each style (title case vs. sentence case) the sort order will be broken.  Rich Farmbrough, 15:41, 3 August 2009 (UTC).


 * Of course it goes without saying that I welcome feedback for the biologists, which is why I am going very slowly at the moment. Rich Farmbrough, 15:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC).

Abies looks good. I previously did Category:Banksia taxa by scientific name, which is a good example of mixing case. Hesperian 23:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC) I was using banksia as an example, but the Drydana stuff queers the pitch. Inevitable I got sidetracked on fixing up the Fir article and can see a lot of other work that needs doing to get common names indexed. I'll do a couple more categories. Rich Farmbrough, 23:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC).

"and am happy to do them all if there are no objections." There aren't many editors here who would so blithely take on a project involving tens of thousands of articles. Hesperian 23:36, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
Regarding Shortland Street 2000 storyline - this piece was missing in the storylines for the soap and I reinstated by researching the previous writing on Wiki. The problem I have is that the box which normally appears at the top somehow got shunted towards the bottom above the cast list. Only references are those duplicated from similiar pages. user:Tuiland Tuiland 03:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tuiland (talk • contribs) 03:09, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot, month transitions and UTC
Rich, here's an interesting situation. I added a at 19:34 CDT (UTC -5) on 31 July 2009 and labeled it as August because the time was 00:34 UTC 1 August. SmackBot changed it to July. I'm making several assumptions here, including that my math is correct, that timestamps for Wikipedia should generally go by UTC and that SmackBot isn't taking that into account. It's probably not a big deal in this case. ✤ JonHarder talk 17:58, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I see you had a previous message on this same thing and you are aware of it. ✤ JonHarder talk 18:04, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Dating tags
Thank you for your comment on my talk page.

I would be quite happy to look at current problem pages.

Incidently, what I have actually been doing is a bit more than just dating the tags! I have looked at the list of unsourced articles with no date, and then following the rules below:
 * 1) If the article is obviously suitable for a Speedy Delete (none so far!) then I would nominate it as such
 * 2) I try to find 2 (or at least 1) suitable citation (and/or suitable external links), and if found, cite these and then change the tag to Refimprove|date=month year
 * 3) If I cannot find any, and feel that it is suitable for a PROD, I'll insert that
 * 4) If I can't find any, but the article seems suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia, I will change the unreferenced tag to include the date

As you can see from my history, sometimes I do find citations, and often I find that this prods others into finding more (as they obviously appear on their watch list!) - and sometimes I will leave a message on the relevant WikiProject talk page asking for the project's members to help find citations (especially if the article is about a non-English-language subject)

Anyway, once again, yes I'd be happy to look at current problem pages.

Incidently, I did put a request on the 'bot request page, but since you are its owner, I might as well ask you: is it possible for it to change any tags that say "|Date=" to "|date="? Or does it do that, and I've just come across a few before it had changed them?

Regards, --  Phantom Steve  ( Contact Me, My Contribs ) 18:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
'''    please refer to other similar pages and then start editing. Also include those images if you dint possess.'''

DEFAULTSORT on species again
Dude, what gives? You're still capitalising the specific epithet.. Did I misunderstand your response?

The only reason to capitalise every word is enforce case-insensitive sort order, and the suggestion that we would always want to do so is deprecated.

Hesperian 03:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't I even get a reply then? You're just going to keep doing it because you want to?.... Hesperian 04:32, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Roger that. Hesperian 05:08, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

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SmackBot
In this edit of Hard water, SmackBot changes °f to °F. Citing the version before SmackBot's: "** French degrees (°f) (letter to be written in lowercase to avoid confusion with degree Fahrenheit — not always adhered to)". Iceblock (talk) 13:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion for the preloaded SmackBot message
If you like, you might change the first "Leave a message" link on User talk:SmackBot by adding &preloadtitle=SmackBot and reword User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough/SmackBot_Message accordingly. This will preload "SmackBot" into the Subject/headline field. Not a big difference, but it will show up as (→ SmackBot: new section) in the history and in watchlists. Just a suggestion. Iceblock (talk) 14:20, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Cool thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 14:22, 4 August 2009 (UTC).

Apparently pointless listas parameter
Is there some purpose I'm not seeing to your recent edits such as this? Now that wgCategoryPrefixedDefaultSortkey is set to false, Talk:Lady Pank sorts as "Lady Pank" by default anyway. Algebraist 18:50, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah that's interesting. But yes there is. WPBiog articles (talk pages) are all categorised as either "with" or "without" listas parameters. A few months ago there were approximately 400,000 "without" - since these are mainly peoples names most will not be default so they cannot be set easily. However many have been one way or another, and we are now down to about 44,000 "without" - explicitly setting the parameter for those cases where there is no effect enables others to see the wood for the trees - and in this case I am doing a lot of musical groups, some have minor changes from the default. there are also a number of bots User:ListasBot and another setting DEFAULTSORT for the article where it can. Rich Farmbrough, 19:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Thanks, I thought it might be something along those lines. Algebraist 20:22, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Move from impasse
Please have a look at Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents and the background discussion linked there. Perhaps you could give me an idea on how to attain my goal here? Debresser (talk) 18:53, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

John E. Hamm
Hi, You seem to also be interested in this topic. Would you be kind enough to look at this article's John E. Hamm's discussion section and if you agree with me that Bearcat may be being unreasonable could you let me know.

Russ John5Russell3Finley (talk) 19:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

very urgent
Hi this is a cool dude calling for a special attention to nadar (caste)article. the list of notable personalities contains weasel words and names that cant be found not alone in the wiki but also in entire google data base. special deletion and auto deletion of such crap should be maintaintedProtecting (talk) 00:02, 5 August 2009 (UTC)§

Argentine films
Note I am in the middle of working on these, films 1980 -present I have to sort out. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:57, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

PLease stop. this removed our standard sidebar templates which should be there for the lists, move the footer templates if needs be. I am reverting all of your edits on these lists until you bother to reply. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 18:24, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * OK that's fine. Rich Farmbrough, 18:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC).

Please restore Argentinefilms to the top of the lists. If needs be remove the footer templates entirely from the lists anyway but please don't remove the side templates. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 18:27, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (Edit conflict)
 * Done. Hoever the footer navbox has more links and the sidebar really breaks up the flow of the page, see List_of_Argentine_films_of_1956, or is the plan that these two tables will be integrated? Rich Farmbrough, 18:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC).

Sorry to yell at you! My watchlist just lit up like a Christmas tree that's all!!. I appreciate that you are moving the templates with spacing. For those lists if you want to remove the footer templates for Argentina entirely for the lists no probs as the side templates serve the purpose for navigaiton. As for the other articles, continue with your good fixes! Dr. Blofeld       White cat 18:35, 5 August 2009 (UTC).
 * OK, I understand how these things happen. I will return to the lists later. Rich Farmbrough, 18:42, 5 August 2009 (UTC).

Yeah its a tricky one as the sideplates are most useful for navigation on the lists but they do affect the flow of the tables unfortunately.... Eventually though the idea is that the templates are split by letter so it should be sorted eventually... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 18:46, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Just in case you had any doubts about a lot of the short stubs on the films the goal eventually is to have every article looking like La Guerra Gaucha. Unfourtunately there are few too many people working on Argentine cinema so the better articles tend to be the most recent ones... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 21:56, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I accept
The Transhumanist 01:41, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Did you ever figure out...
...why AWB was applying the completely wrong code to some pages? (During your French commune task). I also had my bot do something peculiar on a page, that wasn't possible with the instructions it was given. I've come to the conclusion that it was text meant for another page, but why did it get erroneously placed?... Bug report maybe... Not sure how to duplicate though! –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 21:24, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes sort of, it happened again using Ver 4.9, which I had compiled locally. I assumed it was a failed attempt at threading, and have just (like 5 minutes ago) re-synced my SVN version with the developers. What version are you using? Rich Farmbrough, 21:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC).


 * Hm... I think in the diff above that was using 4.9 rev 5122. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 21:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

A request
Rich, could you have smack bot go through this new article, Stealth technology as a pliable electromagnetic envelope when it has the chance. Ti-30X (talk) 04:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * In case you already read this, another editor says he is taking care of the small corrections that need to be done. So I guess I don't need to request a bot. Thanks anyway.Ti-30X (talk) 05:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, since you are already there - thank you very much. The bot will save us a lot of work. Ti-30X (talk) 05:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Well I can run AWB against it and do some general fixes. Those were just my copyedits. Rich Farmbrough, 05:30, 7 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Rich, whatever you feel like doing is OK by me. However, if you are busy with other stuff, don't worry about it. I agree with the title you chose for the article. I replied on the talk page. It is a much more appropriate title. I say, let's do it and get it over with, so we can move on (I hope you don't mind me saying that). Ti-30X (talk) 14:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
Well Known Person —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.125.156.122 (talk) 14:22, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Tasks
Yep, there is a lot to do certainly. Any chance you can merge the pages like Oriya films of 1969 into a List of Oriya films or at least by decade like Oriya films of the 1960s or something. As it is those pages are inadequate. Unfortunately a lot of Indian editors get over excited with lists like Bollywood films of 1970 and try to emulate them even if they are started devoid of real content All of the year pages for Oriya films should be deleted I think as the list is compiled on List of Oriya films. Dr. Blofeld      White cat 16:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice one, if needs be later they can be split by decade but definately not by year just yet... Thanks. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:13, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

There is one more request actually, sorry to slow your film sorting errands down... As you may be aware a number of German politician articles started recently were deleted. However mine remain as I am sloughly ploughing through them manually, its exceedingly tough... I woundered if you could use AWB to remove the German wikipedia reference and replace it with the national party reference and fix layout like this. It doesn't have to be external linked yet but that would initially help to solve the BLP problem that was created. See List of German Christian Democratic Union politicians, so far I've replaced it from the beginning of A to Konrad Birkholz. Could you use AWB to add it to the rest like this, this would solve the initial problem and although they would still all be lacking at least they can be built upon? Over time then the specific page links on the CDU website or other references can be added. It is just to solve the initial problem.... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:18, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes thats's right. If you see how much content is missing from German wikipedia in general you can see why there suddenly seemed a rush to try to start the mass of missing content. I learned the hard way though that it is not a good idea, partly why I've set up a new project to try to encourage morre editors to activcely translate and raise awareness of articles on other wikis. All of the articles started are immediately verifiable and can be expanded fully, it is just soooo much to do... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:25, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Awesome, your awareness of, well everything on here and what needs doing is second to none!! Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The birth date is taken from the German wikipedia. Every politician or major party member who was or is a part of the party is mentioned on the CDU website or regional site. When they come to be filled out it will just be a case then of finding the exact url link.. and filling them out more fully... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Such a shame that WikiProject Germany is very unresponsive on here. All of the articles can be quickly expanded like Andreas Birkmann, sadly 99% of potential editors work on German wikipedia who might show an interest. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 18:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

That will be fine. Thanks. Don't remove the see also list of politicians though, eventually they will be worth visiting... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 19:18, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

take a look
Rich, if you haven't seen it, take a look at the title and then the talk page over at Stealth technology as a pliable electromagnetic envelope. Unbelievable! One user tried to revert your (our) move and ended up with an extended title Ti-30X (talk) 00:16, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Moving Stealth technology as a pliable electromagnetic envelope
I do appreciate your help with that article. Have you read my comment on it's talk page regarding the naming? I hoped you could reply before moving. Materialscientist (talk) 00:29, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Just saw your note regarding the move. I understand moving back as a technical matter (fixing previous move) and that you don't mind which name is chosen. If so, please ignore my previous message. Materialscientist (talk) 00:37, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT on species AGAIN
I'm starting to get very pissed off with you. There is no consensus for what you are doing. There is no guideline that recommends it. There is expressed opposition to it.

You seem to be pretending to engage in discussion whilst actually going on your merry way doing whatever the fuck you want.

Stop capitalising species epithets in defaultsort until you have secured consensus to do so, or I'll be taking formal dispute resolution steps regarding this.

Hesperian 05:36, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Recommended reading: Requests for arbitration/Date delinking:
 * "Editors who collectively or individually make large numbers of similar edits, and who are apprised that those edits are controversial or disputed, are expected to attempt to resolve the dispute through discussion. It is inappropriate to use repetition or volume to present opponents with a fait accompli or to exhaust their ability to contest the change. This applies to many editors making a few edits each, as well as a few editors making many edits."
 * This is, in my view, preciately what you are doing here. Hesperian 05:56, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

italictitle
This edit wasn't needed - the taxobox doesn't have a "name" parameter and therefore the title was already in italics. Smartse (talk) 22:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see you've done it to lots of other articles too....
 * Thanks for helping to change the titles to italics. I've been doing it to any that I find for a few months but it's going to take quite a while longer. For the majority you can just remove "name" from the taxobox from my experience. Smartse (talk) 00:30, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I guess that the easiest way would be to see if the part of the name before the bracketed section like (isopod) is present in the binomial or genus section of the taxobox. Whether you can do that automatically or not I'm not sure. Smartse (talk) 22:05, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot introducing newlines
For some reason, SmackBot inserted a newline into the title of a citation template at [Exabyte], thus breaking the reference. Is this a bug? Shreevatsa (talk) 17:27, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 17:47, 8 August 2009 (UTC).

AWB listas edit
Hi there, I had to amend your AWB edit here, which for some reason removed all of the page's content, and added the WP:WPNZ banner to the talk page (dc Talk is not related to New Zealand). Jamie  S93  be kind to newcomers 20:46, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. Hopefully this bug is in the past. Rich Farmbrough, 22:30, 8 August 2009 (UTC).

Negative index metamaterials
Rich, I thought I had the other editors organized to re-work the introduction together, but now one has put up a merger tag for the stealth section. This was a nice try, but the whole process is really bogged down. What do you think happened? My other question is this - Can I use the material that is not stealth related and unilaterly start another aritcle? (Controlling EM fields, negative refractive index, etc. etc. This is the material that I am most concerned with. This is the material that I worked hardest to understand and write about. Go ahead and reply here, and I will return. Thanks for all your help thus far. Ti-30X (talk) 22:35, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Or should I just propose it to the group that this be a stand alone article. There are other merger tags that have been posted in the other sections. Ti-30X (talk) 22:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Well there needs to be (should be) a merger discussion. It's best not to make a content fork, so if you want to take material to another article, it is best to move it and leave either a summary and a pointer Like Detail or a suitable see-also depending on the content being moved. Going back to your first point, what happened was that the article was a little essay like I suppose, also the information in it is desirable and well sourced (otherwise it would have been either ignored or at least tagged to death with "cite needed" ). I will try an look in on the article later and see what is happening. Rich Farmbrough, 23:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC).


 * Just so you know, the merger tags do invite discussion. It is not just merger now and see ya later. It seems that article is difficult for other editors to work with, so I can accept that. And great, look in when you have time. Ti-30X (talk) 23:31, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Corella (bird)
Corella is a common name for a genus (or sub-genus) and it is not in italics, so I have reverted your edit. There may be a lot of taxa which have a common name which is used as the title of an article, and as far as I am aware, none of these should be in italics. "Corella" in the heading of the taxobox is not in italics, and perhaps a bot or perhaps regex in AWB would be able to automatically detect this. Snowman (talk) 18:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
Smack is moving References to below See Also. Up to now, it has always been above. Is this a change of policy pl? TerriersFan (talk) 23:43, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, in this dif, I don't think Smack should have moved the References section. TerriersFan (talk) 00:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

New template for SmackBot
Template:Allplot

I did some work on it and its talkpage, added it to List of monthly maintenance categories with templates and dated all articles that used it without a date parameter (by checking with the articles' history).

Debresser (talk) 11:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Inappropriate tone you already have, but since it is protected, could you please change it to:

Recentism
Could you change this protected template to

I think that should do the same. It is an article template, according to the docpage. Debresser (talk) 15:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Make progress
Please notice I created Category:Statements with common sense issues and Template:Statements with common sense issues progress. A little overactive of me, perhaps, but not any worse than Category:Articles needing chemical formulas and Template:Articles needing chemical formulas progress. One has to start small, doesn't one? Debresser (talk) 15:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Please note that I renamed Csense to Common sense. Debresser (talk) 15:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Deleted templates
Template:Intro-disambig, Template:Obscure. Debresser (talk) 15:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Also deleted are Template:English source, Template:Improve references (small), and Template:Said (I remember that discussion). Debresser (talk) 21:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Asal
Hi Since Asal to Asal (film), can you please fix all the existing links to Asal. It is an AWB job I think.. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 15:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The move was reverted, so this request is now irrelevant. I guard Rich's time carefully. Debresser (talk) 21:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

List of Nazi Party members/toc
what's the purpose of that page? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
Hello Rich Farmbrough

I did not find any problem at the SmackBot remark.

Best Regards Valueyou (talk) 19:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Could you make a list for me?
Could you make a list of all the articles that contain Infobox journal,Infobox Journal ,Infobox Academic Conference, Infobox Magazine, Academic-journal-stub,journal-stub, humanities-journal-stub, sci-journal-stub, biology-journal-stub, chem-journal-stub, engineering-journal-stub, med-journal-stub, physics-journal-stub, socialscience-journal-stub (and their redirects)

is that something that Perl can do? if yes then mail the list to the email listed on my user page (you have to answer a captcha first). Thanks--Tim1357 (talk) 22:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh im sory it looks like the task i was going to do is already being done. Thanks anyways.

re Music Council of Australia edit
This edit deleted all reference links etc to the MCAs own website. Hardly a balanced POV. Neither is the suggestion to rewrite my own words in my own words. Perhaps I need to invent a new language so as not to use any words that may have been used by others. Yergnaws (talk) 23:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Deprecated template
Somebody tried to deprecate Template:Section rewrite. He did a good job, since it is not in use in any article any more. But when he put the notice of its deprecation, he put in on the template's talkpage. Would you care to do it the right way? Debresser (talk) 23:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
SmackBot is moving the template More footnotes from the top, where it should be, to the references section - it's done it twice recently, eg Finnish Army. Could you please look at this? Regards Buckshot06(prof) 02:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I have noticed that in most articles this template is on top, but quite often it is at the beginning of the references section. Now, I have to consider the possibility that such was SmackBot's doing. I personally agree with the previous editor, that the top of the article is the best place, even for this template that concerns references. Debresser (talk) 02:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is another one that rightfully does belong down there, I think maybe AWB is a little overzealous, I'll check it out. Rich Farmbrough, 03:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC).


 * Which one would that be? Debresser (talk) 09:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

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Delivered by SoxBot (talk) at 05:13, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Colon
All the articles you just created contain one colon too many, which means that they don't subst. 94.212.31.237 (talk) 12:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The only thing I see at Al-Ghaydah al-Khadra' is the subst line. I saw one or two more, IIRC, so I assumed there was a general error, but then I saw some articles that came out right. 94.212.31.237 (talk) 12:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yemen
Thanks for fixing that Asal yesterday. There is one thing. I had anticipated that Anome would be able to add the coordinates to the articles in the sub categories of Category:Cities, towns and villages in Yemen. However he tells me his bot is case sensitive. Could you move all of the pages in lower casing to capitals? So Abu diyan would become Abu Diyan etc. I think it is correct that place names are capitalised anyway, right? Dr. Blofeld      White cat 09:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Article needing changing include Category:Cities, towns and villages in the Hadhramaut Governorate. and Category:Cities, towns and villages in the San‘a’ Governorate. They were only started in lower casing because the lists were generated by a site which has them in lower casing! Dr. Blofeld       White cat 13:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah the thing is don't we have duplicate articles now? Wouldn't it have been best to move the pages? E.g move Abu diyan to Abu Diyan? I meant something like this Dr. Blofeld       White cat 13:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm a little confused at your method.. As long as all of the lower casing articles have redirects rather than double articles in the end OK. Having double articles at present though seems to be a litttle confusing...!. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 15:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I've done Abyan anyway... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 15:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you did now. Thanks for your help. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 16:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

ace double jokes
dear sir - not quite sure what you did - did you just delete the jokes or move them to separate article ? Politely suggest prev version better Cinnamon colbert (talk) 13:51, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 15:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot
Hi. Thanks for the good work. Why is SmackBot removing the day from cite news on South Uist? I think a newspaper citation should have the full date, not just the month. Finavon (talk) 20:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You are, of course, correct. Rich Farmbrough, 20:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC).

empty cat
Hi, do we need Category:OS articles with publication dates needing sources ? If so, what does "OS" mean? John Vandenberg (chat) 11:30, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, no, since the template that used it was redirected, breaking that functionality, so that I had to fix Template:Infobox_OS_version another way.. sigh. Both the cat and the template can go. Rich Farmbrough, 15:54, 12 August 2009 (UTC).

Coord missing
I was suprised to find Category:Articles needing coordinates without any monthly subcategories. Then I noticed that this category is populated by 3 templates. 2 of them are talkpage templates that could add a dated category, but are not in use. Template:Coord missing is very much in use, but doesn't provide a dated category. Do you think that should be changed? Debresser (talk) 00:01, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

BTW, why doesn't SmackBot date Template:Locate me? See e.g. Talk:Dogali. And what about Template:LocateMeLong? Debresser (talk) 00:10, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

And where are those 7 undated articles in Template:Articles needing coordinates progress? I don't see them. If those are the 4 subcategories, 2 Wikipedia pages, and 1 article page, then that is not good. It should not list subcategories or Wikipedia pages. The same goes for all "progress" templates. Debresser (talk) 00:19, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Rich? Debresser (talk) 22:23, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

OK this is something I meant to look in to. Locate me is more or less deprecated. I was dating Co-oord missing, but Alai said it was breaking their bot. IN terms of caluclating the undated numbers then I have built a fiddle factor into the progress vbocx template for that, if there's a better way, let me know. Rich Farmbrough, 22:27, 12 August 2009 (UTC).


 * If I knew what you are talking about, I would be happy to help. Sorry. :) But I do understand the other two things. That you had a good reason not to date Coord missing. Actually, it is a bad reason, but not you are to be blamed. And could you please add Locate me and LocateMeLong? Even though they are indeed almost not used any more, they are still not officially deprecated, and it is just plain sloppy to leave them like this. I do not mean that your are sloppy, but the fact looks sloppy. Unless you'd like to officially deprecate them. I have no problem with that either. Debresser (talk) 22:39, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I did just that: deprecated Locate me and Locate me long. I added the Tdeprecated templated to them, and removed all (three) instances, replacing them by Coord missing. Debresser (talk) 00:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Distance conversions
Hi, I noticed you've been adding miles to km conversions to various French articles. As the km is the unit of measurement in France, wouldn't these be better if they were km to miles conversions? Mjroots (talk) 04:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the original measurement is in  miles, for whatever reason - while converting to km and back to miles will always give the same numbers (the same is not true if you convert from km to miles and back, for example 7 km => 4 miles => 6 km) the meaning is different: about 3 miles means between 4023  and 5633 metres, whereas about 5 km means between  4500 adn 5500m.  If someone were able to source the km versions of these (some articles have them anyway) then I would say don't add the miles. Also a lot use the once (and maybe still) WP deprecated spelling "meter". Rich Farmbrough, 13:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC).
 * "Meter" is the US spelling of metre. Mjroots (talk) 15:06, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I am aware. Should not be used on French articles! However atone point (though I think not now) WP house style was for the "re" ending.  Simlilarly they followed the scientific community using "sulfur" (US) and "aluminium" (international) - these have now i think given way to using localised spellings where "apropriate". Rich Farmbrough, 15:25, 13 August 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot
Hi, You said you knew Roy. who are you and how did you know him? J —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.253.54.130 (talk) 13:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, if you look carefully at the history that was someone else. Rich Farmbrough, 14:21, 14 August 2009 (UTC).

Minor suggestion
In Template:Article issues, perhaps change  to

✅ ? Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

Delete
I think we realy should delete List of monthly maintenance categories lower case. Debresser (talk) 00:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It claims that SmackBot picks up articles from here. It couldn't do that otherwise? I find that hard to believe. Debresser (talk) 00:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I updated it anyway (together with List of empty monthly maintenance categories and List of missing monthly maintenance categories, that both do not work) from List of monthly maintenance categories, which I have seriously updated today. Debresser (talk) 00:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

✅ was more useful before the invalid date category. Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

Fixed
I fixed List of empty monthly maintenance categories, through Template:WMCSBM5 and (mainly) Template:EmptyMonths. But I have a problem.

That there are still blue (non-redlinked) categories in List of empty monthly maintenance categories is normal. Those are categories that exist, but are empty, like e.g. Category:User-created public domain images without user-name from February 2009. But there are also some categories that were empty untill recently, e.g. Category:Articles needing coordinates from July 2009, which I created yesterday. But there are also categories that are far from empty, e.g. Category:Articles with disputed statements from July 2009. It just happens to be that all those are the very same categories that were previously at "since", and were created by us a few month ago. Do you get what is going on here? Debresser (talk) 10:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok. I found the problem. It is not a matter of "since". From a certain point onwards, it just lists all categories. Appearently some overflow. This is indicated also by Category:Pages with too many expensive parser function calls. See Template_limits that 500 is the limit. When I put the first few categories in remark tags, the beginning of the remaining categories worked perfectly. Do you have a solution? Debresser (talk) 10:51, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Only solution is to split the page up I am afraid. Rich Farmbrough, 10:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC).


 * I'll leave that to you. I'm content having fixed Template:EmptyMonths, and - basically - List of empty monthly maintenance categories. Debresser (talk) 11:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I fixed List of missing monthly maintenance categories, (mainly) through Template:DeletedMonths/month. I even added a missing dated category to Point Valid to see if it works. Debresser (talk) 11:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

BTW, note that this page is twice as "expensive" as the previous one, because it uses both PAGESINCATEGORY and #ifexist. Debresser (talk) 12:02, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

No complements for the good work here? Debresser (talk) 22:46, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

Al-Ma`Mar
Saw the new page - just wondering whether the ` symbol is what is normally used for names like this? Any reason not to use the ' ? ninety:one 16:30, 12 August 2009 (UTC) )
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

Barnstar

 * Thank you kindly. Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

Yes I second that, thanks for your help! Yes I noticed unfortunately that the governorate link linked to Egypt not Yemen about 3/4 through. Always something! Obviously it should be linked to Governorates of Yemen not Egypt! Dr. Blofeld       White cat 20:03, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've spotted that most of the articles on Union Councils in Pakistan are also about the village. Could you use AWB to add Category:Cities, towns and villages in Jhelum District to the articles in Category:Union Councils of Jhelum District and any other district. As it stands a lot of articles we already have on settlements are not categorised as such. Actually you could kill two birds with one stone and replace punjab-geo stub with Jhelum-geo-stub etc. That would be useful. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 12:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

There is also gross abuse of File:Coat of arms of Pakistan.svg in many articles on towns. Completely redundant. Do you think you could remove it from all articles except the generic ones. E.g here. ON a lot of places too they have the flag of region which again is redundant on settlement articles. The paramteres are intended to display specific city flags not national ones. Otherwise every settlement article in the United States wuld have the American flag and state flag in big at the top. Annoying, Dr. Blofeld       White cat 15:42, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

If you are busy let me know, I'll see if Ser Amantio can do it. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:51, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, the thing is though on rare occasions there are actually the official flags and coat of arms in the template. Most of the time time though it is the regional ones as you can see by the large number of articles. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 19:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I've made a proposal at Templates for deletion/Log/2009 August 11 to merge the tehsil and union council templates into the Pakistani city template. They are practically identical paramters and it is pointless having seperate templates as a slight modification can be made to the main Pakistani templates to include them. See my proposal to User talk:Jack Merridew. The idea is that if it is a tehsil divsion you add tehsil=yes and it will display a blue bar in the template. All that would need doing is to change the name of the Pakistani city template to Template:Infobox Pakistani location. I know you made some editrs yesterday fixing the city name but please let me know what you think. Personally I don't like the idea of having too many unnecessary templates hanging around when you can simply use the same one. An example see Bagnotar, template looks crap to me. The Infobox Pakistan city template should be used. I would of course require your assistance to replace the tehsil and union council templates with the standard Pakistani city (location) template once the docemtation is added, which shouldn't take a minute.. I'll give you some peace then!! Dr. Blofeld      White cat 13:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Dreadful, I know. Some of the worst geo articles on wikipedia this is why it caught my attention as they desperately need sorting out and cleanup. At least most of the African geo stubs with the exception of Nigeria don't contain lots of bad english and lots of names in capital letters of dubious notability. Bangladesh and Pakistan, followed by India are by far the worst settlement articles on wikipedia. These countries attract a number of ip and new one off editors who barely read english and are not aware of requirements. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 15:19, 14 August 2009 (UTC) Perfect example of the sorts of editors these pages get. This one from Lahore. I swear they teach Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the shcools to type in cap locks. This kind of capital list really bugs me, looks hideously ugly. Dr. Blofeld      White cat 15:25, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Check out this. The state of these articles.... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:26, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Mmm maybe we ought to mention it on the noticeboard as requiring serious attention. We need at least 10 editors to go through Pakistan and Bangladesh articles and just remove all these bad edits. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just a few but it is a high percentage of articles which are just really appalling. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 17:40, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

46%? Try 76% at least. With all due respect I have doubts in the running behind the project. From my experience I know of only two or three editors like Mr. Shahib, Brian Lara and another guy who do quality work. The majority of the members appear to be the itinerants who pop in once in a blue moon and make no real edits or quality edits. The rest are IPs and people who barely speak english. Same with the Bangladeshi project. At least you do get some evidence of peopl who speak english badly trying their best to add information but a scary amount of editors like to reel off like 100 local businesses, 200 schools and 300 local businessmen and leaders in capital letters mostly and think this is a good edit. A huge spick and span is needed, Pakistan and Bangladesh are the worst, rural India is also extremely bad. All sorts of stray IPs from villages add their POV "it is a beautiful village, famous" that sort of thing I'm sure you've seen it too. Dr. Blofeld      White cat 19:46, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Real headache material. Why can't all of the articles look like Harappa and have a standard infobox like that. It is far from perfect and needs a major copyedit but at least it looks above bog standard. I'm taking a break from Pakistan.... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 20:42, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm seriously considering nuking the district template too see the nmess it creates on Rahim Yar Khan District. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 20:48, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Email
Rich, ironically I just sent you an email regarding this article. You will see that it was necessary to email you. Please read it as soon as possible. Anyway if you have questions - email me back and leave a note on my talk page that you emailed. Ti-30X (talk) 22:04, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
It's really irritating when your editing of a new article, actually part of an old article being sub-paged, is interrupted by demands before the ink is even dry.P0M (talk) 01:16, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't know the right name. They did a lot of this kind of thing for the article on Race when it got too long. All I meant to indicate was that the "new article" has not changed very much from what was in another article for a long time without any requests for more more citations. P0M (talk) 06:08, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Heisenberg
Rich, Patrick sent this to my talk page by mistake. I am sure this is for you: Ti-30X (talk) 02:32, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I've moved the intimidating-looking math onto a sub-page. I think I have not left readers with any false impressions the way most of the popularizations seem to do. One of the confusing things is that some of the published discussions talk about the physical measurements that one would have to do to make a lab proof of indeterminacy, and they sometimes succeed in making it seem that Heisenberg started with lab data, plugged it into matrices, and then calculated a tiny discrepancy out of all of the interference due to experimental error. But the experimental error would have been so large that I think he probably could not have done it. That may be one of the reasons that he chose to publish his "microscope" experiment even though Bohr warned him not to. I wonder whether there is any strategy for preventing readers from getting led astray on that account. The reliable sources so far seem to be Mehra and Aitchison. Mehra's three volumes are expensive and probably not in many libraries, and Aitchison et al. have the right information but it is very highly concentrated. P0M (talk) 01:35, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Templates for deletion nomination of Template:Birth event age
Template:Birth event age 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. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 02:55, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Smackbots said Weakly additive is‎ uncategorized
Weakly additive‎ was marked as uncategorized, smackbot should have known better,it even added a DEFAULTSORT for the categories. Dmcq (talk) 05:59, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably me trying to out-think the bot - often a mistake. Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

Talkback
--Rockfang (talk) 18:45, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

== Wikipedia Signpost <span style="color:#666; font-variant: small-caps; font-size:80%; font-family:Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman, serif;">: 17 August 2009 ==


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Delivered by SoxBot (talk) at 03:49, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Maintenance tag placement
I noticed SmackBot moves no footnotes into the References section, if it's been placed at the top of an article. I see, despite the documentation, that there's currently no consensus on its correct placement, as with many maintenance tags. This is an ongoing debate that's yet to be settled, so in the meantime I think it's inappropriate for SmackBot to impose any preferred placement. Equazcion (talk) 04:17, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well I have no strong feelings on this one, it's part of AWB general fixes. I am reluctant to turn them off to suppress that, but I will raise the matter with the devs. Rich Farmbrough, 04:47, 18 August 2009 (UTC).
 * I didn't know SmackBot had anything to do with AWB, but if so, thanks, please do. Equazcion (talk) 04:50, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Please stop Smackbot from moving to the references section. In the case of Lviv, this produced results that a human editor would have recognised as mad.--Toddy1 (talk) 05:29, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well indeed. The tag said it had no footnotes and it had quite a number. However both No and More footnotes have said they should go in the references section since they were created in 2006, despite a query in 2007. Nonetheless I will raise the question, as I said above. Rich Farmbrough, 08:16, 18 August 2009 (UTC).

Where did you raise the question. I'd like to add my few cents also. Debresser (talk) 10:38, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * OK well in that case you could raise the question at WP:AWB discussion page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:17, 18 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Thanks. :)) Consider it done. Debresser (talk) 18:39, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Tdeprecated
I just had a look at Template:Disambig-Class td. Doesn't SmackBot date the Tdeprecated template? Debresser (talk) 10:36, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it can't. The dating only happens after the template is orphaned.  even then a "decent interval" I think is allowed. Sounds like a broken process. Rich Farmbrough, 16:27, 18 August 2009 (UTC).
 * I see. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 17:13, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Did you see my 2 questions in 2 sections above? Debresser (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The Girls (album)
I'm not sure what caused the notes section to screw so badly, but you might want to look at the article.--Launchballer (talk) 12:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that.--Launchballer (talk) 19:20, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The e-mail is there in case there are issues there regarding delivery and all the relative mumbo jumbo. Pardon the language used in the e-mail, but I go completely mad with profanity if not online.--Launchballer (talk) 20:32, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Alpha tsentr
Pal, you delete the page about alpha tsentr and marked it as "vandalism", but i'm convinced that that page was a viral page built for viral markting reasons, and is therefore part of a future page about the "product". Just FYI. I know wikipedia is not for viral marketing, but that page has some value imo. I'm not anyhow related with this "thing", i'm just a random web lurker. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.33.230.122 (talk) 19:13, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If that page becomes notable it can be re-created. Rich Farmbrough, 19:35, 18 August 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot
Hi Rich,

I added 2 books to line 151 (I think) for the Theory of Constraints. It disappeared so I pressed undo. Let me know if I needed to do that in another way. Also, I became a member after I made the change so it will not appear as Bob402.

Thanks,

Bob —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bob402 (talk • contribs) 22:17, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 14:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

"Controversial deaths in UK police custody"
Hi Rich,

Was the delete of "Controversial deaths in UK police custody" necessary for "possible copyright infringement"? Could you not simply have removed the controversial element?

Thanks, Patrick Pftward (talk) 23:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 14:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot - Ref fix for 'Going Blind' documentary stub
Thank you for helping to fix the article stub for 'Going Blind' -- could you please tell me what you did so that I do not make the same mistake in future edits?

Sincerely,

Logan.schmid (talk) 14:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC)Logan Schmid
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 14:51, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot
In this edit I saw SmackBot continues removing spaces in headers. Could you please stop doing that. This is definitely not a sanctioned change. I remember we discussed this before, perhaps somewhere on WP:AWB. I will await your reaction on my talkpage. Debresser (talk) 11:57, 17 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I saw it again in another article. And I really would like to receive an answer. This bot is making untold numbers of edits every day, and this is not a sanctioned action.Debresser (talk) 16:10, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * OK this is fairly trivial, probably a line that regularises unbalanced headers like===XXX==.  I'll look for it. Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC).


 * It was in Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_19. Debresser (talk) 16:31, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think it is a general AWB fix, is it? Debresser (talk) 16:33, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it's probably a regex. Rich Farmbrough, 16:41, 19 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Could you please explain what this "regex" thing is. A decent explanation. I have seen the word often, but don't know what it is, or how to use it. Debresser (talk) 16:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

A regex is a regular expression - basically something that matches a string. In its simplest for it will be the string itself.


 * "egg" matches "egg"

this is the sort of thing you use in editors, for finding and search and replace.

When you get "wild cards" you can match other stuff, for example file names often use "*" for anything so grep.* matches all files called grep, whether they are grep.txt, grep.exe, grep.cfg....

However "real" regexes are more powerful For example I can find all headings in a source by matching something like ^==+[^=]+==+\s*\n - this says a line beginning with (^)  2 or more "="  (==+) followed by one or more characters that aren't "=" ([^=]+) followed by 2 or more "="  (==+)  followed by none or some white-space (\s*) followed by a carriage return. This is how most AWB custom functionality works. Rich Farmbrough, 17:17, 19 August 2009 (UTC).


 * And that must be how you write a bot. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 06:49, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I hate dead AfDs
Would you mind commenting on Articles for deletion/CVISION Technologies, Inc.? Please? Thanks! - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 16:26, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Also listed at the computing section. Rich Farmbrough, 16:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC).

Flags and the like
No idea I'm afraid. I can imagine a lot of those are used in a huge number of articles. Have you detected a fault with one of them? P.S I'll be back on the Pakistan cleanup job in a day or two.. India is as bad check out this. Why would they think the local social worker or kiosk owner is notable?. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 20:20, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice work on the Jacques Dreze article
Thanks for the nice edits. (I shall have to learn about the AWB browser!) Best regards, Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 14:18, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Bulbophyllum abbreviatum
An article that you have been involved in editing, Bulbophyllum abbreviatum, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Articles for deletion/. Thank you.Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:44, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice work. Check my user page. Seeing those Pakistan, Indian and Bangladesh articles over the last weee or too and just the general poor quality of articles we should have fine articles on by now on really important subjects has made it time to change my priorities on here. I do hope the new intertranswiki project will find a way to generate new content much more efficiently than I ever could, that's all. If there was something in place which created new articles by the day using a good number of sources and making them a decent start I wouldn't have created new articles and would have concentrated on expanding. That was why I proposed that geobot thing also remember? Besides which I'm fed up of people moaning about them! So expanding/referencing articles like Ma-ubin will be on the cards for the future. I will still create new content when I come across notable articles missing but I won't me doing any mass creation anymore. Any stubs I do create will be fleshed out a little. There still remain the Argentine film problem. I had been going through the articles removing the redirects and replacing them with rather poor starter articles. I've reached 1981 I believe. Do you think we should nuke the redirects and remaining articles I haven't touched? Dr. Blofeld       White cat 13:27, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Can you correct the redirects then? See List of Argentine films of 1983 for instance. Click a film lower down e,g Espérame mucho and it will link to the wrong page. Could you ensure the remaining articles actually redirects to the actual list page then. The reason for the redirects was because most of the lists contain summary info on the films until an editor can write an article. I believe the remaining ones are from 1981 to about 2000 I think. Hardly any films in the 90s. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 13:36, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Seconding Dr. B.'s "nice work" comment - many thanks for helping to flesh it out. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 14:29, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that, man you work quickly! The idea was that the tables are filled in and they provide info on the director/cast/genre and anything notable, then the article can be started once more info becomes available. You might however want to shut off the links in the 1981-1989 list of blue links which don't have an article. I did reactivate them the other day as I intended starting them but you can revert my edits. Oh no actually don't revert as such as I also sorted out the boldness linked titles into normal italics. Dr. Blofeld      White cat 14:48, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

OK. Back on Pakistan related stuff. The amendments of the existing city box have been attended to see this. The gap at the top will be sorted shortly. I think we should now rid of the tehsil and union council templates currently up for TFD and replace them with these. However I would move the infoboxes to Pakistani location rather than city. If this is too problematic let me know but basically I want to rid of all the nasty tehsil/uc templates and replace them at least with something a little more standard. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 14:59, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, actually are there any double redirects now to Template:Infobox Pakistani location. Did you redirect something else to Pakistani city? If you don't want to edit them at the moment I can revert the template move until you are ready. Just let me know what you are thinking.... Dr. Blofeld       White cat 15:02, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot - Orphan tag
Why would SmackBot remove this tag? Article has 7 incoming links, but 5 are from User: and User talk: pages. 58.8.212.181 (talk) 03:18, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * hm that's slightly odd. The critical numebr is 2/3 non lists, let me check with the devs. Rich Farmbrough, 04:21, 23 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Thanks. There were definitely only 2 "valid" links when I originally tagged it. Just wanted to be sure I hadn't missed something and that putting the tag back in again was the right thing to do. 58.8.212.181 (talk) 07:28, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup
Let the fun and games commence. I wonder how long it will take me to remove all those lists from the Pakistani articles... Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Wasn't aware it needed fixing! It is actually one of the few settlement templates I actually don't mind! I quite like the pea soup color scheme... It makes the articles look unique.. Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Any idea how long it will be before the confirmation thing goes away for "new" users. I keep adding infoboxes to articles like Răcăşdia and have to type in the annoying silly words because I have added an external reference. P.S. I will have lost my rollback and automatic New Page Patrol rights. Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Normally 4 days, but your are now WP:CONFIRMED (and got your other stuff back, too). Amalthea  19:44, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Awesome, I couldn't move my old account as Vibber said it would conk out the system for several hour apparently! Hopefully now I will avoid wiki drama and get on with improving/cleaning up wikipedia which is my intention... Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Rich, I've spotted a big category Category:Cities, towns and villages in Armenia. Any chance you could use AWB to sort them by province e.g split them into new categories like Category:Cities, towns and villages in Armavir Province. See Category:Armavir (province), the settlements can be found in that category, same for the others. See this for what needs doing.. Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Funny thing is that I've often thought the same. However, there is supposed to be a "consensus" that all sub divisions should have a capitalised name Province or District rather than district etc. I believe the only exception on here is India (how ironic that is given their love of capitals) who insist they have it in lower casing. The reason why the category is not just e.g Yerevan. Yerevan is city and a province. If you categorize it as "in Yerevan" with no province on the end it confuses the reader into thinking it is in the city. E.g there should be Category:Yerevan for articles within the city and Category:Yerevan Province for artiles outside the metropolitan area in the surrounding province. I've done enough work on geo categories on here to know what is generally acceptable. You do have a point though about the capitalisation..

I don't have any objections to which way you want to do it. As long as we don't have double cats in the end!! Regards Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Groan. For some reason Mr. Suarez has wrongly added the native name in with the main header to is make the pin maps on double lines. See this. Grrr the native name is supposed to appear where is says native name.... Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure there is something on WP:English on it. That is why we have seperate paramters for native name. For instance Beijing and Yangon don't have the lettering on the maps.. Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice one. Thanks. I'll see if Carlos Suarez can make some provincial nav templates.. Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Aruba
Yeah - that was back in my salad days. There was a site called fallingrain.com that I was using for a lot of things...turned out that it wasn't as reliable as I'd been led to believe, unfortunately. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 21:08, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Falling rain bums again eh? Then again my 1988 Hutchinson Encyclopedia claimed Bulkur was a village! Himalayan Explorer 09:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll bear that in mind if I ever return to it, thanks. Actually, I have used GNIS to stub communities in Virginia counties, only to be told by locals that "I've never heard of that town, where did you find it?" Awesome. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 21:17, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Smackbot & Template reference list
Template:Template reference list already includes "==References==". Smackbot should not be inserting both as was done here. --Pascal666 00:21, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes I could never understand why it included that. I just revert to doing it the old way. Rich Farmbrough, 00:36, 24 August 2009 (UTC).

Preview date changes
Please preview the consequences of your date changes before saving to make sure that you do not change file names and thus remove images from articles as you did recently at Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden and  Prince Carl Philip, Duke of Värmland. Thanks. Law Lord (talk) 03:56, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * thanks for that. Rich Farmbrough, 04:26, 24 August 2009 (UTC).
 * My pleasure. Have a great day! :-) Law Lord (talk) 05:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Kenneth Rush
Hey! Thanks for fixing up my article, Kenneth Rush. Bejinhan Talk   11:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Re:Talk pages at hi
Hi Rich, Thanks for your comments. I would initiate a discussion at Hindi wiki community portal and get approval from most of the active members. Please let me know what else information is required. It is indeed the same template you quoted. Thanks I would soon get back to you. Gunjan (talk) 05:48, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Rich, I have discussed the need for this bot at hindi wiki community portal and it has been acknowledged by all the active users. Can you please let me know how to proceed further. Thanks Gunjan (talk) 08:28, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks Rich, Smack bot has done splendid job. One of our editor has given some comments on Smackbot's discussion page at hindi wiki. Please have a look it would be useful to be implemented via Smack bot. Thanks again for the good work. Best regards Gunjan (talk) 04:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

TfD:Expand language template family
I noted your username in the template's edit history, and invite you to participate in this TfD discussion. Regards Skäpperöd (talk) 14:39, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Rich Farmbrough, 17:24, 24 August 2009 (UTC).

TopoFlight
There is a SmackBot posting at the top of the article saying that it doens't link to other articles, that too few link to it, and that it may need to be wikified. I believe I have corrected for these issues and was wondering if there was anything else that needed to be done to the article before that notice will be removed. Maurice J (talk) 15:18, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:25, 24 August 2009 (UTC).

Canadian singles
The last few just need to be re-categorized by which chart they hit #1 on, then Category:Number-one singles in Canada can remain as the parent. Were you unsure on the last few in that category? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 00:30, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Date delinking and redirects
Your should ignore redirects, such as Junes, when delinking dates. — RockMFR 02:44, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point. I will skip them but they are best on the whitelist pages anyway.  Rich Farmbrough, 03:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot approved
I've approved SmackBot for task XVI. See the request page for more details. Cheers - Kingpin13 (talk) 06:27, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 06:45, 25 August 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot & Subpages
Please see these two edits: &. Subpages are not orphans and shouldn't be tagged as such. Especially since it causes the main page (Mexican general election, 2006 in this case) to also transclude the template.

It looks like someone also objected to the DEFAULTSORT (see their comment when they removed it). I'm guessing for the transclusion reason also. In that case, the DEFAULTSORT could be embedded in.

Can you please fix the bot to handle such pages? Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:03, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Advise sought from an experienced editor
Hi Rich,

I was looking at unsourced articles (i.e. those with the tag with no date) when I came across Accuphase‎.

I am amazed that there are no citations for this article, which was created at 22:47, 27 November 2004. I have left a message on the talk page talk:Accuphase asking "A query about sources of information about Accuphase", quoting the hits I found on Google News Search, Google Book Search and Google Web search - all of which are basically advertising hits, reviews of equipment, copies of the Wikipedia article, etc - but nothing that seems reliable, or proving the notability of the company. I just want to emphasise that I have looked for reliable sources (although I only looked at the first 500-600 hits on Google Web Search, I felt that if I hadn't found it by then, the chances were remote that I'd find any past that point).

Now, my question is - if no one can add relevant (i.e. reliable, independent) citations showing notability in a reasonable amount of time, is it considered bad wiki etiquette to put this article up for an AfD? (With such an established article, I'm assuming that a PROD would be quickly contested!).

I know that I am doing it the right way - starting a discussion on the talk page. But how long is a reasonable time to wait for someone to prove that this company is notable from Wikipedia's criteria?

I don't want to put anybody's nose out of joint, but I feel that just because this article has existed for almost 5 years does not mean that we ignore the criteria!

Any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated!

Could you please leave me a talkback if you respond to this missive? Thanks --  Phantom Steve  ( Contact Me, My Contribs ) 23:15, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your quick response! I couldn't find a suitable WikiProject (Electronics seems more about the components themselves). I'll look again though. Thanks once again for the advice. --  Phantom Steve  ( Contact Me, My Contribs ) 00:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot replacement of {inline} tags
Not a bug/error, but a question. I had thought SmackBot changed to  ; but today I found an article where it changed it to  rather than morefootnotes. Has the behavior changed recently or has this pretty much been the operation for a while and I just had not noticed it before? Thanks for your work! and for SmackBot. N2e (talk) 04:48, 26 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Has a list of templates, it occasionally (when I tell it too, adn if I don't forget at least around the 1st of the month) goes off and finds all the redirects to those on the list. Therefore there are three states (probably more):


 * a->b and SB knows about it
 * a->b but SB thinks b->a
 * a->b but SB thinks a->c


 * Really the only problems come from the third scenario, when someone decides to point a off somewhere else (including itself). IF there are new redirects added I pick them up in the end. At the moment ther are.. um about 300 templates and about another 1000 redirect I think. Rich Farmbrough, 05:05, 26 August 2009 (UTC).


 * Thanks Rich, but I'm still confused. What should SmackBot replace the  tag with?  I was thinking it was , but recently I've seen SmackBot replacing inline with  .  Is there a link you meant to send me to so I could learn more about it?  I could not quite parse an answer from your reply.  Thanks much.  N2e (talk) 17:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for you speedy answer on my talk page. I understand now.  Is there a place I can look to see what automatic tag changes SmackBot will do now?  Thanks.  N2e (talk) 17:54, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Infobox Pakistani city
Right, this edit has prompted me to renominate the template for deletion. Himalayan   10:57, 26 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm and what was so wrong with that edit? I added back the template after you agreed to keep it (added back and updated with the correct info may I add) and then you renominate it. Pahari Sahib  12:59, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

When using AWB, please use the right edit summaries.
You have a big swath of edits here that have nothing to do with unlinking June. Makes finding errors such as this harder then it should be.
 * Well most of them have - in that they unlink June. If you find errors where it should remain linked please add them to the whitelist page per the edit summary. Rich Farmbrough, 18:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Incidentally I will be avoiding redirects, but the whitelists are intended to be a general resource so that knowledge about the task isn't trapped in my infrastructure. Rich Farmbrough, 18:33, 26 August 2009 (UTC).

Spaces removed in Avionyx article
Hi,

I noticed that for the Avionyx article, you removed some blank spaces that I had before the "History" section. The reason I had those lines was for the title "History" to be placed below the Table of Contents (TOC). This was the only way I could find to place the "History" section below the TOC. Now that you removed the spaces, the title is at the same level with the TOC and the article looks a little weird. I was wondering if there is a way to place the "History" section above the TOC without having to insert those blank lines?

Esanchi 08/27/2009:

Rich,

Thank you very much for the modifications done to the article. That is just the result I wanted to acheive. However, my knowledge about wikipedia are very limited, this is the first time a write something on the wiki. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Esanchi (talk • contribs) 15:28, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

--Esanchi (talk) 21:51, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Tempate move?
You moved Infobox Mountain to Infobox mountain. I think standardizing case is great if that was the reason. I'm not questioning the move I'm just curios. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  22:30, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Request of assistance
AutoWikiBrowser says Infobox Protected area is transcluded on 3180 pages in the main space. Shouldn't it be protected? Also as Infobox mountain was move shouldn't this be moved to Infobox protected area. I know I could do the move myself but I'm not that bold. Thanks. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  22:46, 26 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  01:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup
Good work, though a couple of editors have reverted your changes at WP:OR (there's now some discussion that, of course, isn't being addressed with nearly the same speed as the reverts). You should check out PROJPOL. I noticed that you edited Administrator_policy - you might want to leave the redirect as is, and try a subpage of the policy, like WP:ADMIN/proposals or whatever. But really, it's way more effective to just revise the page directly. Also, if the big block removals don't go through, consider shortening and clarifying things. <i style="position:absolute;z-index:-1;bottom:0;width:2.2em;height:8px;background:#eee;"> </i> M   03:28, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Help Undo Move
Please help!

how to undo a move, some one had moved Jhelum Tehsil to Jhelum (city), but these should have different articles like all other cities and tehsils of Pakistan which have saperate articles. Template:Tehsils of Punjab (Pakistan) --<b style="color:teal;">Talha</b><sup style="color:teal;">Discuss  <b style="color:teal;">&#169;</b> 11:28, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Also i have moved Jhelum to Jhelum (disambiguation) as it is a disambiguation page. now i request you to please delete Jhelum page so that Jhelum (city) page can be moved to Jhelum as all the other cities of Pakistan are without this (city), you can see this here: Template:Pakistani cities. Regards --<b style="color:teal;">Talha</b><sup style="color:teal;">Discuss  <b style="color:teal;">&#169;</b> 11:55, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Can you move the article back to the correct location i.e. Jhelum Tehsil, if you look at all the districts and tehsils of Pakistan they are all in title case, hence we have Attock District rather than Attock district, during the colonial era this was known as Jhelum Tahsīl, the spelling has changed somewhat but it still needs to be in title case. This was an erroneous move by one editor - you have moved it to an incorrect location. Pahari Sahib  12:57, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually I moved it back to where it came from hidden under a redirect. Rich Farmbrough, 12:59, 27 August 2009 (UTC). 12:59, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah okay, you must have been doing that while I was posting on your page then ;-) Pahari Sahib  13:02, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * One more thing, can you move the talk page back too. Thanks. Pahari Sahib  13:05, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * 34 edits to sort that out. Rich Farmbrough, 13:10, 27 August 2009 (UTC).


 * Thanks for solving this problem. The way you work on wikipedia, you are the real Burnstar. thanks again. --<b style="color:teal;">Talha</b><sup style="color:teal;">Discuss  <b style="color:teal;">&#169;</b> 13:12, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Really? - thanks :-) Pahari Sahib  13:13, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * YOu are very welcome/. Rich Farmbrough, 13:14, 27 August 2009 (UTC).


 * Dear this is the actual talk page:Talk:Jhelum (city) instead of Talk:Jhelum, so please fix this problem. Thanks. --<b style="color:teal;">Talha</b><sup style="color:teal;">Discuss  <b style="color:teal;">&#169;</b> 13:36, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Portuguese Royalty styles
During your cleanup of a considerable number of royalty-related articles (good work by the way!), one small mishap occurred. This edit replaced the redirect Template:Infobox Portuguese Royalty with Template:Infobox royalty as intended, but also Template:Infobox Portuguese Royalty styles with the non-existing Template:Infobox royalty styles. I've reverted this particular edit, but not yet shoveled my way through all the Portuguese monarchs to see, if anything similar occurred elsewhere. Just wanted to tell you in case it's a symptom of a problem with the script you use to carry out the edits. Regards, Favonian (talk) 13:18, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * TY. Rich Farmbrough, 13:19, 27 August 2009 (UTC).

British Columbia
Hi. I was wondering if you could use AWB to switch maps as here. Basically its just to remove the old maps and replace them with a higher quality one... (no rush...., Pakistan permitting...)  Himalayan   15:32, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

thanks from hindi wikipedia
Dear Rich jee, I would like to give you thanks on behalf of all members and administrator of hindi wikipedia for your contribution. Please continue the good work. Thank you.--Munita Prasad (talk) 15:58, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Death date template
Just noticed this edit where you among other things standardize the date format to "date first". One small thing, which your script overlooked is the " date of death = February 3, 1014 " resulting in a date format inconsistency. I've corrected this particular article, but there are probably others, considering how popular this template and its siblings are. Favonian (talk) 22:23, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you, was a bug, so I'm getting them now, need to do another pass to pick up any stragglers though. Rich Farmbrough, 23:05, 27 August 2009 (UTC).

New dated template
Template:Cleanup-university could do with some simplification along the lines of DMCA, and you will want to add it to SmackBot's list. Debresser (talk) 08:59, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Infoboxes
If you have a chance, could you have a look at Infobox Pakistani location, Infobox Tehsil Pakistan, Union councils of Pakistan. I converted them to use infobox settlement and the next step is to have a bot do the substitution, which will do all the necessary parameter conversion and replace these with the settlement infobox (as per the TFD). Thanks! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 19:14, 28 August 2009 (UTC)


 * My only question on the tehsil one is why is tehsil_map assigned to image_skyline? Rich Farmbrough, 22:30, 28 August 2009 (UTC).


 * Thanks for the feedback. I didn't see that there were slots for two maps in infobox settlement, I moved the second map to image_map1 and move the tehsil_map to image_map. Let me know if you see any other problems. The only potential difficulty with substituting the templates is that it will allow for more freedom, since there will be more visible parameters.  An alternative could be to merge the three into one template which uses the infobox settlement as its backend.  I really don't care either way. For example, infobox Pakistan settlement or something, which would already have a few things filled in. Thanks again. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  22:41, 28 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Do you have any thoughts on merging these to infobox Pakistani jurisdiction? This would match infobox Indian jurisdiction in terms of convention, but would still use the infobox settlement backend.  It seems as though either we match the convention used on the Indian articles, if that means creating a new merged jurisdiction template, or removing infobox Indian jurisdiction.  I can just imagine the crys of why does India get its own and Pakistan doesn't.  I have asked Dr. Blofeld/Himalayan for input as well. This is the only reason why I am currently hesitating to have a bot finish the substitution process. I personally wouldn't be opposed to it so long as it used the infobox settlement backend, with the same parameter names so that it could be easily substituted at a future date. If you have any thoughts on this it would be great if you could let me know in the latest thread on my talk page. Thanks. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  15:24, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think creating a Pakistani jurisdiction is necessary, otherwise I wouldn't have placed the city one of for deletion after some effort to merge them. Standard is the way to go. P.S. are you still speaking to me, you haven't replied since I made a remark about you having a well deserved kip! Himalayan   16:21, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Himalayan – yes, thank you, I'm just a bit busy running the script. On the Pakistani ones, watch out for malformed numbers, especially in the population and area sections. I had to convert a few of those (e.g., population = 35.000 or area = 95,00).  It would be great if RF could make a second pass to clean these up, and other dangling logic, if it's possible.  Otherwise, I could write a short script to do it instead. Thanks again. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  19:24, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting regex to catch the #ifs... ... Rich Farmbrough, 19:53, 29 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Thanks, that's pretty close to what I have been using in my script, which I went ahead and ran on the 1000 or so pages. Here's mine:  . There may be bugs in it as well, but it worked for this latest task. I may have missed one or two, but I believe I got almost all of them. Thanks for doing to initial substitution. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  23:22, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * AWB crashed and I swapped to the equivalent of s/{{#/{{subst:#/ which worked beautifully. Rich Farmbrough, 23:57, 29 August 2009 (UTC).

Curious
Hi Rich. I was curious about this edit, and if that was the intended result. Perhaps I'm missing something (always a possibility), but it looks like the edit had the effect of blanking a large portion of the page. — Ched : ?  06:27, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Just a delayed edit - very delayed - that didn't seem tot get an edit conflict message. Rich Farmbrough, 15:39, 29 August 2009 (UTC).

Barnstar for amigo Rich

 * Many thanks! Rich Farmbrough, 20:45, 29 August 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot
Since you sort User:SmackBot/References Log in Category:Pages with missing references list, perhaps you could sort it under "!", just like the other 4 pages that are permanently there. It's completely trivial, but will look nicer. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 22:02, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That was very considerate of you. Is there anything you can do about User:Philaweb/Gadget-refToolbar.js, or are these pages offlimits for admins too? Debresser (talk) 23:36, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm dunno did look briefly, will again. The "correct" solution is, I realised, to move those pages to Category:Pages relating to pages with missing references list, which would be a parent of Pages with missing references list, then run the process on the parent category, recursively. But.. .. also ...   Rich Farmbrough, 00:02, 30 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Defnite ! I have a small suggestion for you to make SmackBot even more effective in dealing with articles on Category:Pages with missing references list. Teach him to change any occurances of  and   to  . It happens once in a while and no other bot does this (not even AnomieBOT). Debresser (talk) 00:18, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course the reason it was end-sorted was so that it would be the last entry processed. Foolishly I had been alphasorting, so it was right at the back but not the last. But back to tau now, which is where templates are supposed to go anyway.
 * I will look at &lt;/ref... but &lt;ref/> is arguably valid mark-up, equivalent to nothing. But maybe I could make some reasonably safe assumotions. Rich Farmbrough, 00:52, 30 August 2009 (UTC).
 * In my experience  is always a mistake for , so that is all assumption you need. If you want to be on the safe side, restrict it to when you are fixing articles from Category:Pages with missing references list, as opposed to making it a general SmackBot fix.
 * Now what is the problem with sorting under "!"? That it writes the log a few minutes earlier than finishing the articles? Not a big deal, is it? Debresser (talk) 06:05, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * There is no guarantee that it ever finishes the run, of course. Added to which having it as the very first page written to means there is more chance of it being written before the bot goes onto automatic, which may "never" happen. Furthermore the standard sort for templates is "τ" - although I can see a dozen problems with doing this they mostly apply as much to "!" . Rich Farmbrough, 06:09, 30 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Ok, but I'll change the other ones back to "!", because that is what we use in other error categories, and that is the way MediaWiki will sort any other templates etc. that will show up. Debresser (talk) 06:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * As you wish, and if you are sure. Rich Farmbrough, 06:14, 30 August 2009 (UTC).
 * I was involved in making it so. Debresser (talk) 06:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

What I didn't know was that you changed MediaWiki:Cite error group refs without references today... Now what should we do? Did you change the other ones sorting to "!" as well, or just that one? Debresser (talk) 06:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * And the reason we didn't add user here, or elsewhere, was that 1. we are not looking for extra work 2. users don't usually look favorably on other editors making such trivial edits on their userpages. Better wait until they put them in mainspace (if at all). So if you'd care to undo those last 2 edits there (the page is protected)... Debresser (talk) 06:24, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Now SmackBot started "fixing" the category pages. Which is a mess... Better undo something here. Debresser (talk) 06:37, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * BTW, no problem it should stay on "tau", but in any case you don't need the DEFAULTSORT parameter for that, because Media Wiki sorts that by itself. Adding it explicitely to the page will only make it hard to change that sorting symbol, if the need would ever arise, instead of doing it on MediaWiki. I've been there before. Debresser (talk) 10:06, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes so I saw. But there were "unexplained mysteries" at the time, relating partly to the mediawiki message, but mainly to database lag - nothign seemed to want to cahnge sort order so I was trying everything. Rich Farmbrough, 11:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC).
 * So we agreed upon "tau", but in MediaWiki and not on the pages. If I got you wrong, use my talkpage. Debresser (talk) 12:18, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Please change that in MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references as well, which is still at "!". And please remove userpages from the detection in MediaWiki:Cite error group refs without references, as before. Debresser (talk) 12:25, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Whatever you're doing with the changing of {{# stuff...
It's not working. See here where the change you did made the explanatory footnotes disappear. I tried a format tweak to make the "notes" section have quote marks, but that didn't do it either. Ealdgyth - Talk 22:07, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 00:02, 30 August 2009 (UTC).

MediaWiki:Cite error group refs without references
User and talk pages were deliberately excluded from displaying the error and from inclusion in the maintenance category. There are editors monitoring the maintenance category and the consensus was to not monitor and fix problems in those namespaces. Sorting was worked out by those editors doing the cleanup. Please discuss at Help talk:Cite errors.

On a related note, you left a comment at Help talk:Cite errors that I did not understand. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 02:47, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Accidental creation of duplicate audio file page. One updated. Merger needed to remove accidental duplication
Hi Rich. I have inadvertently created a duplicate page for an audio file. I see from Help:Merging, that "Merging is a normal editing action, something any editor can do, and as such does not need to be proposed and processed", especially if such a merger would be uncontroversial, in which case no proposal is necessary, and one can be bold and simply do the job. In the current case, such a merger would indeed be uncontroversial, as the duplication was entirely accidental and unintended. Since it is a normal editing function, and since it is my error, I was of a mind to fix it myself. However, since merging the files requires the pagename, the very first problem I've encountered is the question of the name of the page. While I've successfully named and linked pages within other articles, I can't seem to find the name of my two files. Any ideas on this? I'm assuming that it's 'common knowledge' to more experienced editors.

How I came across yourself was courtesy of a referencing edit from your smackbot. I didn't bother completing the reference for the second, duplicate page, for two reasons. Firstly, I was of a mind to merge it with the original page. Secondly, the red inked error message helped me to see which page was which.

Since your smackbot edit, I've updated the duplicate page to be the correct one. This includes improved references, and downsizing the audio clip so that it is within the 10% copyright limit. However, the above problem remains. That is, I can't identify the pagenames in order to complete the mergers. Can you help please? Conversely, if you or someone else would care to do the merger, please be my guest. It's easy to spot the updated, more correct one. It has a smaller clip for starters (3m 57s). And my apologies for the error. I was doing okay up until this point. By the way, I was originally simply trying to create an audio clip to go alongside the relevant text in Last Goon Show of All. So even my original file page was unintended. But at least the clip was available until I figured out how to get it into the article. However, a duplicate page is too much, and I'd like to clean it up and be more careful in future (like use the sandbox more often) Wotnow (talk) 03:47, 30 August 2009 (UTC)Wotnow

Update. Minimised clip uploaded. Source file page updated using template. Still the problem of the duplicate page
Hi again Rich. Thanks for replying so promptly. I see your point, and that of Drat's. I have now managed to reduce the audio clip to minimum requirements, and uploaded that to Last Goon Show of All. I've also utilised the audio file template from the All Along The Watchtower example cited on the Music_samples page. There remains now the issue of the duplicate audio file page, and the merging of it with the updated one. Your thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wotnow (talk • contribs) 07:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Final update re duplicate file page. Issue resolved
With the feedback and kind cooperation of yourself (and the initial feedback from Drat), the problem regarding the Last Goon show of All clip appears resolved. I commend you both. Wotnow (talk) 09:40, 30 August 2009 (UTC)Wotnow

Smackbot and {current related}
In this edit, SmackBot replaced a template with, causing some nonsensical text. I'm not sure if SmackBot was reprogrammed to do this on purpose after this change to, but anyway I have since undone the change (I believe there is still a use for separate from , but at the very least there is not consensus either way). Just thought I should let you know so you can make any changes to SmackBot accordingly, if necessary. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 04:00, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That is exactly what happened. SB picks up changes to redirects intermittently. Rich Farmbrough, 04:07, 30 August 2009 (UTC).

SmackBot on Hindi Wiki
Hi Rich, SmackBot is of great help on hindi wiki. I am not able to see it for last few hours. Has the task complete. I have one request can we schedule SmackBot such that it is invoked periodically (say every Wednesday night). Thanks Gunjan (talk) 15:45, 30 August 2009 (UTC) ✅Rich Farmbrough, 20:07, 1 September 2009 (UTC).

Austrian templates
Eeesh, I just discovered this. The templates are written in German!!! Should they be written in english and maybe coverted to standard? Himalayan  15:52, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

HI. What are you doing at present? Could you use AWB to restore the following template to all of the articles linked within it. You see I did split them all by district but it seems the people working on them are happier with the merged template. As it is closed to default I don't see a problem. Could you replace all of the District templates with this again?

Like this. I'd do it manually but it would take me probably an hour. Perhaps we should rename the template as it is a pretty long name, perhaps it could be shortened and then added under a difference smaller name?

Template:Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War Himalayan  20:26, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Let me know what you think. Himalayan   20:33, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

That's cool. Yeah with Austria they still have that tiny map alongside the coat of arms with a huge locator dot. I understand France, Germany and Austrian municipalities were started by copying templates from the other wikipedia, Now though there is no reason why they need seperate templates.... Italy too. Anyway if you could take care of the Palestinian templates and restore the merged one and delete the district ones I created that would be a kudos to you as I think they say... Himalayan  20:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC) ✅Rich Farmbrough, 20:07, 1 September 2009 (UTC).