User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2009 October

French communes
You've added the remaining infoboxes? Awesome, I've been trying to get somebody to do it for yonks. Well done! Can you update WikiProject French communes/Status then? I knew you were working on the French communes, I didn't really look to see what it was you wer edoing, I assumed you were just cleaning up existing infboxes and links. Now that is good news. Himalayan   20:37, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll add an infobox settlement to those tomorrow perhaps as they aren't compatible. Would you support an update of the french communes infobox in a standard layout like the Italian comune box? Himalayan   20:41, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you absolutely positive you've added an infobox to all the others? Good grief your edit count is going to be gigantic... 1,000,000 + edits Himalayan   20:42, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

If you are technically minded, admittedly I am not in regards to computer coding, you may want to converse with User:Fritzpoll. I am pretty sure he could give you some lessons although you do run smackbot so you obviously have some level of knowledge in regards to coding bots and are far more likely to understand them than I would. If we could utilize your sheer power on here into something much quicker than even AWB into a much more effective and efficent bot for some of your bigger tasks and you can get the WP:BAG group behind you I am pretty certain you could achieve some quite astounding tasks on here. The biggest problem in regards to standardisation articles on settlements on here and getting some consistency was that the people running bots are not willing to run them for long periods and consistnetly like yourself. They would typically do one country and then go into hiding. What we need is a bot to run making things consistent through every country on here like you have been doing with AWB so far but to speed up the process and allow you to get things done faster and more efficiently. It is for instance going to take me months adding infoboxes to Romanian communes for instance, with a bot would probably take a few days max... Himalayan  20:57, 30 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I do French reasonably well if there are articles pressing for translation, let me know. I know there are pages/projects etc for articles needing translation and I watch them, but often nobody gives much idea of how important they are. You can check e.g. Battles of Latrun, Trun, Orne, Léon Gard, to see that I have half an idea how to put into the English WP and try to follow the WP style guides (which change underfoot) as I do. I hope you will see from those that I don't just copy paste I reorganise and sort it out to suit an English speaking audience, but another set of eyes always helps.


 * I can do a bit of Latin too, which I did at Symphonia and again followed up cross reffing and deciding that the Latin was better placed at Timpani, before this was only in Latin and I am not saying my translation is brilliant only that at least now it is English not Latin, and is linked to for example the elm tree because that is what it says. I know that links in quotations are kinda frowned upon but sometimes that is all one can do (or make a huge circumlocution to repeat oneself).


 * This does not really belong on Rich's talk page, more really on Himalayan's, but I put it here first for visibility of all three of us. My very best wishes SimonTrew (talk) 07:00, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Nope, definately don't transfer infoboxes from Romanian wiki! Heavens no!! The best thing would be a bot to add infoboxes using the statistics website. As for the old translation project, Jen and I gave it an overhaul, most of the old pages are stale and inactive and should be deleted. Himalayan   11:32, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Broken pages
Thanks for the pointer — the thing is that, while they're too big now, they weren't too big when I created the subpages. People have expanded the templates to the point that they're too large now. I'll fix the problem. Nyttend (talk) 01:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's been around longer than these county template subpages: I've always split several states' lists into multiple subpages, because I encountered the too-many-templates problem when I first started creating these subpages. By the way — I archive my talk page at the end of every third month, so your comments aren't being deleted.  Nyttend (talk) 01:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

pas de legumes reference section
The Pas de légumes article still has a problem with references, and I really cannot see what to do. Are you able to help at all? Thanks Cg2p0B0u8m (talk) 10:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC) Rich Farmbrough, 13:29, 1 October 2009 (UTC).

thank you! Cg2p0B0u8m (talk) 14:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Totally disputed
Why didn't you just redirect Template:Totally-disputed to Template:Disputed? I have done that now. If that was a mistake, please let me know. If you agree, you can add it to SmackBot. Debresser (talk) 10:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * It used to combine both POV and Disputed. Now I redirected it to Disputed only. Averything better than have a Tdeprecated on it. Do you perhaps want to restore the original template? Debresser (talk) 11:37, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I never liked that template, combining two separate ideas in one. However i would be inclined to simply put  if I were to go against consensus and flout TfD. Rich Farmbrough, 11:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC).


 * Agree with your dislike. Wait a second. Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_January_22 decided to delete it. Why don't you just do that? It is anyway not transcluded anywhere. Debresser (talk) 11:58, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok. We wait. How much more can we wait? It has been redirected, Tdeprecated, and in general kicked and beaten from January till now. I say it's time you delete it. Believe me, nobody will shed a tear. And if they do, send them to me. I'll find them some tissue. Debresser (talk) 12:45, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * See Wikipedia_talk:Templates_for_deletion. Debresser (talk) 13:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Category:Pages using deprecated templates
Please see Category:Pages using deprecated templates, to improve the explanatory text I have added as necessary, and to admire the result. Debresser (talk) 10:50, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Debresser (talk) 12:28, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I've replied on Category_talk:Pages_using_deprecated_templates. Debresser (talk) 13:36, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Anyway I added the Empty category template yesterday, and that should help keep prospective deletions at bay. Debresser (talk) 13:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

String manip functions
Totally agree with you there. There are conversations basically saying don't let the editors have too much power, I will find them if you want. So this is a deliberate decision not to let us be able to do that. I have tried by hook or crook to do a regulare expression or a contex-free grammar and it simply will not let you. Hence my struggle at Infobox: Hungarian settlement] etc. Full disclosure: I have been a profesional software engineer since I was twelve years old, I have half a clue how to do this stuff. If you look at [[User:SimonTrew/reverse you will see exactly the problem. That would, without being stopped, reverse any set of letters. In fact it is meant as a test that we can reverse names from Eastern name order. But it DOES NOT WORK because it says template loop detected, which is of course the entire point, to let the template call itself. SimonTrew (talk) 14:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

YYYY-MM-DD numerical date format in footnotes
Hi. FYI, as you have had interest in this in the recent past, there is now an RfC under way on this issue at Mosnum/proposal_on_YYYY-MM-DD_numerical_dates.--Epeefleche (talk) 03:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * FYI, I tried to work some of your thinking in to a re-work of the proposal that appears below the comment of supporter # 21.--Epeefleche (talk) 07:45, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * i dunno if this is any use to you, but User:Mjroots told me the YY etc format was done for date linking. Now, I understand, it is deprecated. still recommends it. So one is  between a rock and a hard place. SimonTrew (talk) 15:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I know what you mean, but no one is going to be castigated for using the wrong date format. More a question of just getting on with it. Rich Farmbrough, 17:22, 1 October 2009 (UTC).
 * I've been so castigated! Rich--is it possible to have your bot change dates to dates where months are spelled our or abbreviated, and to change all dates in an article (it now only changes some, leading to lack of uniformity in formerly uniform format articles).  Tx.--Epeefleche (talk) 22:28, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Articles for merging with no partner
Please don't check this category for a few days. I'm using it for detection of something else. So far it has been empty, BTW. I'll update you when I'm finished. Please let me know ASAP if there are complications and I should not have done this. Debresser (talk) 11:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll do that next time then. Thanks for the advise. I anyway check it on a daily basis. And I don't think there are many other editors who do this. Debresser (talk) 11:39, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Plan aborted and category empty. Debresser (talk) 02:36, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Queue
It says in Help:Job_queue:"During a period of low loads, the job queue might be zero. At Wikimedia, the job queue is, in practice, almost never zero. In off-peak hours, it might be a few hundreds to a thousand. During a busy day, it might be a few million, but it can quickly fluctuate by 10% or more.[1] The job queue length is reported at Special:Statistics."

Yesterday night I checked the job queue every ten seconds for two minutes, and it jumped from 9 to 24 and 243 thousand, back and forth. Would you have an explanation for that? Debresser (talk) 12:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes it's probably broken! Each job is supposed to represent 500 page builds so 242000 means rebuilding every page in WP several times - even touching something like DMCA or Asbox should only invalidate 1 million pages => 2,000 jobs. I have been a little unhappy with the explanation of this statistic for a while. Rich Farmbrough, 13:37, 1 October 2009 (UTC).
 * But then I didn't read it properly. Template changes are 1 per job, HTML cache invalidations are 500 per job. So that level of activity might be reasonable. Rich Farmbrough, 13:40, 1 October 2009 (UTC).
 * I had read it the same way as you. Still, that explains only how there can be that many jobs. Not how they can fluctuate that fast. Debresser (talk) 13:43, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Repeating your experiment I suspect there are three job queues, and you get a random one - it defiantly seems tri-modal. What do you think? Rich Farmbrough, 13:44, 1 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Where/whom to ask? Debresser (talk) 13:48, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Village pump technical. Rich Farmbrough, 21:29, 1 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Thought so. Posted. Debresser (talk) 21:50, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There is an answer there. Debresser (talk) 01:18, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There are new nswers there and a discussion about wjther to remove it at all. Debresser (talk) 13:59, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

{reflist |refs=
I noticed here that SmackBot added to a page that already had. That caused all the references to appear as cite errors. I think I have seen SmackBot make the same edit to other pages.

Maybe SmackBot could be "taught" that equals. 75.69.0.58 (talk) 13:50, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I told it to ignore those pages, but I regenerated the rule-set for October... I think the WP:AWB developers may have fixed it now. Rich Farmbrough, 13:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC).


 * Hi Rich, on 14:03:52 in this edit SmackBot broke the new |refs= thingi again. Sebastian scha. (talk) 14:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm I upgraded AWB to no avail. I'll have to go back to skipping these articles. Rich Farmbrough, 23:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC).

Tdeprecated-inline
Should we deprecate Template:Tdeprecated-inline? Or even nominate it for deletion? It is not in use, and because it has none of the features of Tdeprecated, I don't think it has any use. Debresser (talk) 14:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Does that mean that e.g. the templates in Category:Deprecated citation templates should have been deprecated with Tdeprecated-inline rather than with Tdeprecated as they have been? Debresser (talk) 14:43, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I have added the whole category part of Tdeprecated to Tdeprecated-inline. Do you think that was a good idea? Debresser (talk) 21:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Can't see why not. Rich Farmbrough, 23:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC).


 * Good. Does that answer pertain to the previous question in this section as well? Debresser (talk) 00:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Tdeprecated
With this code, transclusion of a deprecated template onto another template will result in the second template being categorised by DMC, not into Category:Pages using deprecated templates as should be. I checked this. To fix this, the code should be something like:

Where is the same pagename entered by the editor. Will that work? What will happen if the editor didn't use a capital as the first letter of the template name? Debresser (talk) 14:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Use:


 * Rich Farmbrough, 14:43, 1 October 2009 (UTC).

Thanks. I didn't know about that #ucthing, but I see the idea was basically correct. Will you make the edit? Debresser (talk) 14:47, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 21:56, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Access dates
Agree with your at Mosnum/proposal on YYYY-MM-DD numerical dates. When I first started citing web pages (after I started citing books), I checked Template:Cite web/doc, where for accessdate it states "Full date when item was accessed, in the appropriate date format for the article", and I've been under the impression that this is a first-accessed date. However, at Template talk:Cite web, Happy-melon tells me "Accessdates represent the most recent time when the link is known to have worked"; and nobody has shown me where to find a definitive guide one way or the other. Any ideas?

Re your statement "Shame most sites now hide the real creation date of their pages"; I usually do a "view source" and check the hidden code at to or bottom. Here I often find page creation date and author. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Templates merge
I created Tfm, Tfm2, Tfm-inline, Tfmnotice and documentation pages. And tested the whole thing. You are invited to have a look. I shall wait for your "Ok" before adding them to Templates for deletion/Header.

In connection with this, I would like to ask you to update Tfd. Nothing major, just capitals and the word "please". But that still would be nice, in order that all templates and docpages look alike. Here is the code.

Debresser (talk) 20:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

And another question. What category should these templates sort into: Category:Templates for deletion, Category:Items to be merged, or Category:Templates to be merged? Debresser (talk) 22:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Items I reckon it's small enough. Rich Farmbrough, 01:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC).
 * It's some 320 pages. Is that small enough? Debresser (talk) 01:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Can Template:Tfd1-merge be deleted? It looks as though it was made to assist in substitution of Tfd. Which is not practised (any more?). Debresser (talk) 00:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Stick a speedy tag on it. Rich Farmbrough, 00:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Ok, I made something up and recommended it for speedy. Did you notice the other 2 requests in this section? Debresser (talk) 01:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

It is late
And I know, the later it gets the harder it is to get answers from you. So if you could just answer my smal question in and the bigger ones over here in this section. Now add to that my idea for a solution in, which I proposed to be tested oin Template_talk:Merge. Debresser (talk) 02:56, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

See you tomorrow night after Sukkoth. Debresser (talk) 14:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

New page in your user space
You probably won't have seen this: User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Talk Archive Index Martin 4 5 1  (talk) 10:05, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 01:31, 4 October 2009 (UTC).

Algerian stub sorting
Did you finish this after? Himalayan   15:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

OK thanks. Don't worry about Romania, this site has the 2002 census details. It is a task for a bot operator like Kotbot to do later.

I do, howveer, have a request with Colombian infoboxes. Can you go through the Category:Municipalities of Colombia subcats and ensure that the map is inserted into the infobox See Florencia, Caquetá. A basic edit like this. You'll find that all you have to do is add the actual image name, the infoboxes already have the caption ready. I think I only did the first one or two provinces manually starting with A.. Himalayan   18:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Kippenburger
Hi Rich, I understand you created the archive on Sir Howard Kippenberger, I'm his biological Grand Nephew and I was wondering first what it was that drove you to make this archive and second where you got the information? It would be a wonderful thing if I could learn more about my illustrious Grand Uncle and I'd like to give you my thanks for doing the work you have done thus far.

Allan Trainer --Radio-commander (talk) 05:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC).

French Commune
It would be great if you could comment here. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 00:05, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Bot question
Quick question. There are certain phrases (such as "passed away") that Wikipedia suggest should not be used (in lieu of, in that case, "died".) I that a fix that a bot could make? Of course it would have to have the intelligence or oversight not to change the phrase if it is within quotes. Thoughts? Many thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 04:21, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Redirects
Please have alook at User_talk:Debresser. So far I only checked 1-3. Debresser (talk) 01:44, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I finished updating everything. Please delete the redrects I listed on my talpage. Debresser (talk) 03:00, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I solved my problem by removing Special:Prefixindex/Template:In-universe/ and replacing it by an ordinary list. That also removed the /doc /sandbox and /testcases. :) Debresser (talk) 04:54, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Not that I wold be unhappy if somebody were to boldly delete the redirects in Special:Prefixindex/Template:In-universe/ and a good deal of the others... Debresser (talk) 06:10, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Romania
Exactly. The person who created most of the Romanian commune articles did so by copying the statistics from crappy Romanian wiki which seems to relish getting things wrong. The current population figures are all false and unreferenced. This is why I began going through them adding infoboxes, references and correct population data. Hopefully Kotbot can do it. Himalayan   10:49, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Any chance you could use Magnus's upload bot or whatever the TUSC account is to upload the district maps of Riga from Latvian wiki? Himalayan   14:26, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

John E. Hamm
... some of the changes recently have left me way behind...however, here is a link that may answer a question you left me. Could you fix some part of this as it relates to Dr. Hamm's article ? Perhaps a template link at the bottom ? United States Ambassador to Chile

John5Russell3Finley (talk) 11:27, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Merge templates and namespace
One of the problems of the three merge templates is that they automatically add the namespace to thename of any article to be merged. This is done in Pagelist. Because of that feature, an editor who adds the namespace himself, ends up with a redlink. See Template_talk:Merge. How could Pagelist be updated so to avoid this. It would be good if would behave like a template:. Debresser (talk) 11:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * FULLFULLPAGENAME is on the other side of the scales of what I am looking for. Debresser (talk) 12:38, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I've checked the other templates from its documentation page, and even had a look at Category:Wikipedia metatemplates, but I found nothing that does what I am looking for. Would you be willing to write up such a template. I had a look at it, but am afraid that that is still above my abilities. Debresser (talk) 13:40, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I think I was looking for, which renders . Debresser (talk) 02:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Now Pagelist could be rewritten from -->{{#if:{{{3|}}}|{{#if:{{{4|}}}|,| and}} {{{delim|}}}{{NAMESPACE}}}}}:{{{3}}}|{{{3}}}{{{edelim|{{{delim|}}}}}}{{#if:{{{3|}}}|{{#if:{{{4|}}}|,|  and}} {{{delim|}}}{{NAMESPACE}}}}}:{{PAGENAME:{{{3}}}}}|{{{3}}}{{{edelim|{{{delim|}}}}}}<!-- . And so forth from 1 to 20. And that would spare the abovementioned editor a redlink. Debresser (talk) 02:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

See Template talk:Pagelist that I tested it and it worked. Debresser (talk) 06:32, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * {{Done}}. I am so proud. Debresser (talk) 17:37, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Date formats
Hi Rich, if you're interested, can you change the formats for other Snow Patrol articles too? No problem if you cant though. Thanks for doing it on Up to Now, I had no idea the comma wasnt required, and I checked WP:DATE to make sure. Suede67 (talk) 12:48, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your help. But what those articles actually need is the british date format, eg - 1 January 2009. I did not know this before and added lots of dates in other format - December 31, 2008. Can AWB do this quickly? I got AWB permission myself and have been trying to figure out how its done. Suede67 (talk) 01:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Respect!!! And I was thinking of doing it all manually sometime. Suede67 (talk) 04:06, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Just noticed that though the other tour articles you took care of, this one still remains, Taking Back the Cities Tour. Can you get to it? Thanks. Suede67 (talk) 19:48, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Suede67 (talk) 20:10, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Tfd
In connection with the new Tfm templates and the update of the old Tfd templates, I would like to ask you to update Tfd. Nothing major, just capitals and the word "please". But that still would be nice, in order that all templates and documentation pages look consistent. Here is the code.

Debresser (talk) 20:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I aksed what category these templates should sort into, and you said "Items, I reckon it's small enough". It's some 320 pages. Is that small enough? I have also asked input on Wikipedia_talk:Templates_for_deletion, but nobody ever writes me anything there. Debresser (talk) 05:01, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes I would say 320 is reasnably small, will fit in 2 pages. Rich Farmbrough, 22:56, 4 October 2009 (UTC).

Date format
I see in the discussion you seem to oppose the motion to eliminate YYYY-MM-DD. Yet, you are using a script that removes them - and even changing to the European style on US-based articles. See this --JimWae (talk) 18:39, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I only supported them in access-dates, and maybe some tables. Even there linking is deprecated.  A little research is swinging my opinion on using numeric dates at all, basically that humans cannot be trusted to enter them correctly.  Rich Farmbrough, 18:56, 4 October 2009 (UTC).

I see now there were other date format problems in that article, but you changed both text and accessdates to DD MMMM YYYY in a US article. Some people have been removing YYYY-MM-DD despite the vote being in progress & opposition being almost 2 to 1. I think doing so is very premature. I do not wish to see all usage of YYYY-MM-DD virtually banned. Btw, it is not established YYYY-MM-DD is ISO. I myself prefer YYYY-MMM-DD (which gives JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, MAY,...) and set my computers to use that, since (especially in Canada) ##/##/YYYY is completely ambiguous - and I do not like to widen fields (and reduce what else can fit on the screen) with needlessly long monthnames in tables & such --JimWae (talk) 19:25, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Deleteme now
A tag has been placed on Deleteme now requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is an article with no content whatsoever, or whose contents consist only of external links, a "See also" section, book references, category tags, template tags, interwiki links, a rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content. You may wish to consider using a Wizard to help you create articles - see the Article Wizard.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding  to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. -- Big  Dom  18:44, 4 October 2009 (UTC) hangon

Italic title?
What, assuming that you know, is the policy on the use of the italic title? I saw it for the first time this evening on The New York Times article, but do not see it on any other newspaper article that I have looked for. In theory, this could be used on any article which is a title, including books, magazines, albums, yet I have never seen it used before. Was its use in error? I am very curious about this, and hope you can clear it up. Cheers! ---  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive' 22:20, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems ripe for misuse. I do not know how one would justify its use for certain kinds of titles but not for others.  I think consistency in titling is something for which we should strive.  ---  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive'  22:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Books prefers an italic title. However, this being a newspaper and not a book, neither WikiProject Media nor WikiProject Journalism offer any guide. Perhaps, in the absence of such guidance, the editor concerned took his example from WP book practice? --Redrose64 (talk) 23:40, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually there is guidance on this. says "Formatting, such as italics or bolding, is technically achievable in page titles, but is used only in special cases. An example of such an exception is to produce italics for taxonomic names of genera and species." and further down that the only currently agreed use is for flora and fauna. Rich Farmbrough, 05:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC).
 * That would indicate that the italics should be removed from The New York Times article. ---  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive' 13:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * NYT was taken care of by another editor. ---  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive' 14:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Funny
Sometimes it's just funny how you come walzing in over everybody's heads. Like in Templates_for_deletion. Thanks for that one BTW. Now perhaps you'll copy that Tfd also? BTW, I have written the Tfd guys to their talkpages, and they are waking up. We'll probably rename it to Templates for discussion, and we'll have both Tfd and Tfm sort there. Category:Items to be merged will be let for anything that doesn't have its own deletion discussion. That seems more of a symmetry to me as well. Debresser (talk) 23:40, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Is this edit ok? Debresser (talk) 00:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the Tfd. I just now noticed that all my template merge template were missing a parameter for the template to be merged with. So I spend some time adding that and updating the documentation pages. Debresser (talk) 02:50, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
Is it intentional that your bot is making edits like this? It capitalised the first letter in the two templates (which appears to have no visual change) and added 1 line of whitespace above the stub templates. Are so minor of edits really necessary? I could understand if these were all being done while dates were added to maintenance templates, but that is not the case here.--Rockfang (talk) 00:37, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * What do you mean "...there are a bunch of categories that need nudging.."? I don't understand.--Rockfang (talk) 01:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Question
Is there any eason it should use substitution in the line "Please consider notifying the author(s) by placing Tfm ~ on their talk page(s)." in Tfm? Debresser (talk) 02:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, since it contains a heading and you would find yourself editing the template otherwise. Rich Farmbrough, 05:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Oops. Debresser (talk) 08:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Took me a good few hours to fix that, and to update the documentation pages. I also reworked a few more Tfd templates (including difficult ones with really messed up documentation pages). I'd like to think I've got everything the way it should be by now. Debresser (talk) 14:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Continuation of discussion you participated in
I got to the root of the problem and suggest a change to the talkback template at Template_talk:Talkback. Debresser (talk) 10:52, 5 October 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅ Debresser (talk) 14:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

re Negro
Hi Rich Farmbrough - I had a quick query about an AWB-assisted edit at Negro (this edit). I'm not sure whether this was your intention, but that edit seems to have changed " 02-24-04 " to "4 zzz24zzz 2" in one of the references. I'm afraid I'm not well up on the current consensus on date formatting, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention anyway. -- &#9735;  Kateshortforbob talk &#9732;  13:50, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your note. Sorted. Rich Farmbrough, 13:56, 5 October 2009 (UTC).

Need protected edit now
Could you please do this edit to a template I am using now? Debresser (talk) 13:56, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

New dated categories
I have two updates for you on my talkpage. Debresser (talk) 15:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

's edits
Why has SmackBot removed division of periods in the big figures in this edit while MOS states that big figures must be divided into period (international system)? Thank you in advance, Srin  ivas  13:52, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I am sorry, I hadn't seen the article. I just saw the edit and asked. Sorry for troubling you. Srin  ivas  16:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete
I have rename Category:Duplicate Articles to Category:Duplicate articles. Would you delete the old one? Debresser (talk) 17:41, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Boy, have we grown soft. Debresser (talk) 18:32, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I always find the message "You are re-creating a deleted category" having a serious cold-shower effect. Debresser (talk) 18:37, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Why does Category:Wikipedia non-empty soft redirected categories list Category:AIDS as having 1 file, while in truth it is empty? Debresser (talk) 21:42, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Same thing with Category:Swaminarayan 10F, but empty and Category:Fictional creatures 1F, but empty.
 * Perhaps some issue with . Getting hung on files. Debresser (talk) 23:26, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

0x001
Is that the way DEFAULTSORT should work: 0*001 instead of 1? See I Royal Bavarian Corps. Debresser (talk) 17:44, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Soft redirects

 * If you look closely at Category:Mine warfare vessels of the Netherlands, you can see that it is part of a series. See the templates that sort there (e.g. Template:Cathead wwii mine warfare vessels of). So I think that soft redirect is wrong. Indeed the target Category:Royal Netherlands Navy mine warfare vessels is empty. Debresser (talk) 22:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I look strictly from the technical side of things. Nothing undecided in this case. The mammal case is harder. Debresser (talk) 22:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC) And I don't know where to ask. Debresser (talk) 23:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Category:Royal Netherlands Navy mine warfare vessels was itself a subcat of Category:Mine warfare vessels of the Netherlands. And it has the unusual name in that the country should be at the end. So I removed the redirect and speedied the cat. Debresser (talk) 23:35, 5 October 2009 (UTC) Not to mention that Category:Mine warfare vessels of the Netherlands had no content of itself. Took me some time to figure that one out. Category:Mine warfare vessels of Canada helped a lot. Debresser (talk) 23:53, 5 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Template:MaTalk = Template:Mammal sorts into Category:Mammal articles needing photos when . However Template:Reqphoto sorts into Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of mammals. Now if you look at Category:Mammal articles needing photos you see that there are more subcategories of the type Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of .... It would make more sense IMHO to make Template:Mammal sort into there as well, since Template:Reqphoto has the broader structure. Debresser (talk) 22:45, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you want me to be bold in connection with these mammals? Debresser (talk) 23:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Is working fine. I also changed Category:Primate articles needing photos to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of primates. The accepted structure is Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of .... Want to delete the empty cats? I have speedied them. Debresser (talk) 00:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Category:Systems Biology ahould be either a hard or a soft redirect, but not both. How did that happen? I removed the hard redirect, as I understand that cats should be only soft redirects. Debresser (talk) 22:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The bot that handles category redirects leaves those cases alone, on the premise that the hard-redirect is not doing any harm as long as the category redirect template is also present. Removing it doesn't do any harm, either, though.  --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:10, 6 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Category:Category-Class Chinese cinema articles is because of the  line in WikiProject China. I don't see an easy solution here. Debresser (talk) 22:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I dropped a note to User_talk:MSGJ. Debresser (talk) 00:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * He replied. From his reply I understand that with a long term view it is better to not change the WikiProject China code. I propose turning the soft redirect into a hard one for the time being. See also Template_talk:WikiProject_China. Debresser (talk) 11:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * A hard redirect doesn't work. Didn't know that. Do you have any other ideas? Debresser (talk) 11:29, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. Didn't know about Related category. Thanks.Debresser (talk) 11:39, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, Category:Wikipedia_non-empty_soft_redirected_categories is down from 24 to 4, of which 3 are because of that file bug. Debresser (talk) 00:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I got rid of them by adding the categories to File:GreenJoe.png and then removing them. That forced a recount. Now only 1 category left. Debresser (talk) 09:21, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

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Thanks
Amazing work, you work fast!! Himalayan  10:20, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Why are you still creating empty articles
I do know your good faith and good work here. I am still suggesting it is not a good idea to create hundreds of thousands of essentially empty articles. I perfectly understand if you disagree but can we take this for consensus before SmackBot makes a million more

I edited, added, a few of the French communes. I know they would probably go not notable. But until people can read them in English I say let them stand. But to create hundreds of thousands of essentially blank articles does no good to a reader or an editor as far as I can see. Perhaps I am confused as to your motive. But it does no good to me. And I am trying my best as I know you are.

Best wishes. SimonTrew (talk) 15:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

You asked me to give you an example, I don't know if this is a good or bad one. Trun, Orne was botted not before I edited it but after SmackBot came in. I have no worries if it is fixing up details. But a non-bot had to write that first, however brief.

It is a French commune. I know you are very busy and I thank you for it. I know the article is brief but it at least has some content not entirely empty, UűI am not sure what more info you want to point you in the right direction (by my lights) I am not sure what you are missing here. Cos I know you are a good editor and said so, but I just think empty articles are unhelpful. Iwill try to find what I mean by an empty article but better savew this now before I lose it. Best wishes SimonTrew (talk) 17:35, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

OK I think I found one that you may see my point. Tura, Hungary Sod's law my partner will add some content to it tonight but it is all in the categories etc etc etc but has nothing to say. SimonTrew (talk) 17:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be great if the bots could take the hard work out of just making the scaffolding, I will totally support you in that. I dunno if it is worse or better to scaffold up and have no bricks behind it. I think that definitely is worthy of discussion, but not sure where best to do it (and we should carry these with us when we do.) Somewhere on the translation space or something I would imagine, but cannot think of an obvious place to put it. I hang out sometimes in WP:CONVERT as in translating articles one must do the conversions, and User:Jimp will say where best to take it. He is a great editor as are you and he will suggest somewhere best to take it, cos it does not belong there as such, but it is to do with conversion. WP:MOSNUM is just a big edit war and I am fed up with it. Jimp tries to make it better not masturbate over style guides.

Please excuse my typos once it is properly dark I can see the keyboard but at dusk the sun is straight in my eyes and I miss the keys sometimes.

My best wishes as always SimonTrew (talk) 17:59, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Category redirects
I see that this template edit adds a link to Category:Wikipedia soft redirected categories; did you notice that we already have Category:Wikipedia category redirects that has (or should have) exactly the same contents? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I say remove Category:Wikipedia category redirects in favor of the more correct name. Debresser (talk) 16:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Please stop
Can you please stop with moving articles as per WP:DASH as your moves are incorrect, and you will need to move them all back.


 * Australia–Singapore relations is correct
 * Australia – Singapore relations is incorrect
 * Australia – New Zealand relations is correct
 * Australia–New Zealand relations is incorrect

Many of the articles which you have moved were at their correct namespaces, and you should be moving them back to conform with the endash policy (pain in the arse it is to understand I know). Any probs, contact me, cheers --Russavia Dialogue 16:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes np. Correct title, not correct namespaces. Rich Farmbrough, 17:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Sorry, yeah correct title. I think there was a recent CfD where the closing admin also did a heap of changes such as above, and I was thinking you may have seen the result of that discussion and acted on that? Anyway, it's all so confusing sometimes. Cheers, --Russavia Dialogue 17:09, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * A whole bunch started out where I was putting them, but have been round the houses. Really this was a preliminary to making sure that the correct redirects were in place. Of course the first one I hit was a Greco-  which takes a hyphen.  There are also a bunch of German– which should be Germany– .Rich Farmbrough, 17:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC).
 * As a quick side note to this discussion, after your move of Afghanistan–Tajikistan relations, the talk page seems to have not been moved with it. I'm a little unsure how to do this myself (or what in general is going on with the whole dash thing), but hopefully you can fix it. Thanks! Otebig (talk) 17:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Gah! Yes I can fix it. (Restoring the status quo ante.) There have been some SQL errors on page moves recently. Ho hum. Rich Farmbrough, 17:45, 6 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Luckily I was able to get the message typed out quickly enough before you managed to do a heap of moves unnecessarily. FYI, here's the CfD I mentioned; all but 4 of the cat moves was in fact incorrect. --Russavia Dialogue 20:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I deduced the alphabetisation of the country pairs had occurred. And I was in a discussion aout category redirects arising from this. But it's hard to pick up the whole story - although I should have known better from year-ranges vs. date ranges, I think another discussion about article renaming gave me the wrong idea. Rich Farmbrough, 20:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC).

Bands
Hi Rich. I started a thread here that I'd like to get some feedback on if you have the time .. thanks. — Ched : ?  20:51, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

A New Smack Bot Feature?
Hey Rich

You may have seen my bot request for User:Brunobot, who was supposed to fix templates that end in breaks. However, i had the idea that I could give the regex find/replace to you so SmackBot could fix the templates while it fixed other problems. That way a bot would only have to visit the page once. Tell me if you are interested. Tim1357 (talk) 23:05, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Whitelines and whitespaces

 * What I had to go through to get the right amount of whitelines. In the end the solution was to add a break in the right place. Just that to find the right place... Debresser (talk) 18:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Did you notice that if I write, there are spaces before but not after the parameters?


 * See?


 * Perhaps a flaw in Tlx. I shall have a look. Debresser (talk) 18:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I played a little on Template:Tl/sandbox, but to no avail. Do you know what needs to be done? Debresser (talk) 19:40, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The strange thing is that it cuts of the whitespaces only after the parameter, but not before. I know about the non-breaking-space, of course. Is their nothing to be done to solve this elegantly? Debresser (talk) 19:46, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Unlinking template
Is there a template that "unlinks"? Enter " Whatever ", exit "Whatever"? Debresser (talk) 19:55, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * That could be usefull as a safety measure in templates that take unlinked pages only, like, rendering

User_talk:Debresser. Debresser (talk) 22:23, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Although I have noticed that in general the idea here on Wikipedia is: let people break the rules and then fix it on a case to case basis. Not: let's build in a few safety measures, just in case people will break the rules. Debresser (talk) 22:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. The break is a problem, of course. I have updated the documentation pages of Str left, Str right, Str rightc and Trunc. And of Unlink, of course. Debresser (talk) 23:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Perhaps using Trunc instead of Str left will make a difference? Worth a try? Or perhaps it has to do with the rough behaviour of Str right in certain cases, as explained on that template's documentation. Debresser (talk) 23:40, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I know what happens. Try and  and you'll understand. Debresser (talk) 23:51, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I spelled it out in the documentation of Template:Unlink. Even if I understand only the "what" and ot the "why". Debresser (talk) 00:10, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The problem of Unlink is of course that it will chop off any 2 characters at the beginning and end of the string, not just link brackets. I'm working on sth now. I'll keep you posted. Debresser (talk) 00:10, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Why doesn't Template:Unlink/sandbox do the job? It tests whether the leftmost and rightmost characters are brackets, and only then executes the unlink. Or at least, that is what it was supposed to do. Debresser (talk) 00:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * It renders, which should have the desired result. Debresser (talk) 00:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Perhaps that has to do with the warning on mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions, "Warning: Content inside parser tags (such as  ) is hashed before the parser functions are evaluated, resulting in errors:"? Debresser (talk) 00:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

You'd better see what I did with Unlink! Debresser (talk) 01:03, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I just wanted to ask you why that happens. :) Debresser (talk) 01:19, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I mean rendering  ...? Debresser (talk) 01:21, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh. because you changed Unlink. Debresser (talk) 01:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok. Congratulations. That was a nice job. I moved the functionality of removing any given number of characters from the start and end of a string to Chop head and tail. You may want to move it somewhere more appropriate. :)) BTW, that one also might need soe update, along the lines of Unlink. Debresser (talk) 01:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Amalthea has pointed in Template:Chop head and tail/doc to a limitation that is true also for Template:Unlink, and I have added it to the documentation. It might be, actually I'd say it is likely to be, connected with the limitation we already new about. Debresser (talk) 10:30, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

AWB cat removal: good removal, wrong edit summary message
Hi Rich. Just saw that you had, through AWB, removed an cat on the article Base course. In short, I think it was correct to remove the cat, as that article now has an Unref tag, and Erik9bot normally identifies articles with no refs AND no unref tag. However, I don't think the msg left in the comment was correct; that comment was: "(Remove unref category as article appears to have one or more refs. using AWB)"  The article still has no references; so it is correct to remove the Eric9bot cat, but not to say that "the article appears to have one or more refs." You might want to look into this. Cheers. N2e (talk) 20:16, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks Rich for modifying the bot msg. I've seen it leave a msg on another article now and the new msg is more correct. N2e (talk) 12:38, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Mistake
Was this comment really meant for me? Debresser (talk) 23:58, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Cully
Any better? Himalayan   09:18, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. The concerning thing is that we have 2,740 articles about Swiss municipalities, most are similar one liners. Add to that the French communes, Italian comunes, Spanish, German and Austrian municipalities of similar lacking quality compared to the foreign version and it kind of puts you off as the task is such so huge as there must be over 50,000 stubs in this "communal" group! Someday maybe we will be able to click any article in any nav template at random and it will be beyond a stub!! Himalayan  10:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Any chance you could use Magnus's tools to upload these free Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 panorama images of Chexbres here? Just the ones by the same user Styeb. If you could do that I'll upload the ones from German wiki. Himalayan  10:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Talkback
I wasnt sure if you watched for my response or anything, but then i saw that you wanted me to reply here, but alas it was archived Tim1357 (talk) 10:56, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Amritsar population count
Aye, Amritsar population count looks kinda funny after correction, a bug in AWB or a typo perhaps?


 * population_total = 1194,740

Cheers, --Rayshade (talk) 10:52, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks there were three of these, all fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 14:16, 9 October 2009 (UTC).

Removing undefined
You've probably dealt with this thought before, but it's not in your FAQ and I don't have the strength to browse your archive, so here 'tis:

You recently removed unref from Elm Bank. That was good, as there is a single reference to the National Register of Historic Places data base so unref doesn't apply. (And, I should add, it was I who incorrectly left the unref in place after adding the NRIS reference -- I didn't realize it applied only to cases where there are NO references.)

The article is still badly deficient of references, however; the National Register database is never enough information for an article. In the case where there's only one reference in an article, might it be better to swap out unref for refimprove? Sure, that will be wrong in some cases, as one reference can be all that's needed, but I'll bet it's right more than it's wrong.

And BTW, thanks for doing a grunt task. . . . . Jim. . . . Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 16:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC) (I'd prefer to have any reply here, but feel free to use my Talk page as your header suggests you might.)
 * Actually it's the category here I'm removing. Approximately 140,000  articles had this hidden category added by the now banned Erik9Bot against my judgement. About 1% how have a reference, so I am removing them from the category. The rest we will need to decide about. Rich Farmbrough, 17:53, 8 October 2009 (UTC).


 * Ahhh. Sorry for my confusion. I suppose the same issue applies to the category -- Elm Bank may have one reference, but it's still inadequately referenced, but I suspect there are deeper issues here. Thanks, . . . . Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 23:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Request
Please post on my talk Can you explain this edit? I am confused about the DEFAULTSORT and why you think it shouldn't be in an unreferenced category. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Small request
I nominated all templates in Category:Items to be merged with Tfm. There are still 8 templates there, because they are editprotected. And one Template:Mergeto/testcases. Would you please do the editprotected request at Template:Infobox Television episode and 7 null-edits, to give me the satisfaction of seeing that category without templates? Debresser (talk) 00:13, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm, I think it still needs a merge template on it. Tfm doesn't seem to understand "from"  and "to", just "with".?
 * It doesn't. Actually there is no guideline about whther it needs to be used on both tempates or not. Personally, I think that depends. If the templates are more or less equal in scope, perhaps yes. In this specific case, where the receiving template is the dominant one, I think the Tfm on the template that will be merged into the other one is enough. Debresser (talk) 01:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, and thanks a lot. I appreciate that. Debresser (talk) 01:33, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Why isn't anybody cleaning up the talkpages in Category:Items to be merged? I saw one user talkpage with a template to merge it. I don't know why, but that is admin work. And then part of the talkpages is copies of articles, like User:Cerejota/chinese-apartheid. I'm not even talking about the Wikipedia pages, which are a real nightmare. Nobody is ever going to sort them out seriously. Debresser (talk) 01:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Calendar edits
Please stop adding unreferenced to various calendar articles like February 2007 in Canada. Every section clearly has a news source cited at the end of every story. While it seems you were simply changing the edits from one editor to another style using a template, the original edit that declared the article was not sourced was incorrect. Please only make edits that are consistent with accurate information. For example a few years ago this happened with a bot, where a vandal had been making such edits and the bot was substantiating them. In this case, the bot made the error and then it is up to the editors to make the corrections and not simply laboriously changing the errors introduced by the bot. Thanks, Mkdw talk 15:29, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi? How was Shabbes?
And after we've taken care of the niceties, did you notice this edit? Perhaps redirect Template:Soft redirect to Template:Category redirect? Or am I missing something? Debresser (talk) 17:09, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

You are making a puzzling mass edit
You are making another puzzling mass edit. It is not being done consistently; this may be deliberate, I do not know.


 * With article HMS Phaeton you made see your edit 1435 11 Oct 09.
 * With article HMS Imogen you made   see your edit 1426 11 Oct 09.

I do not understand (a) why you do this at all, and (b) why you make default sort different for Phaeton and Imogen. Are you making an error?--Toddy1 (talk) 14:59, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Partially I need to revisit a bunch of articles. Rich Farmbrough, 15:01, 11 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Self-evidently Imogen is correct. Nonetheless the Phaeton edit should cause no problems. Rich Farmbrough, 15:02, 11 October 2009 (UTC).

Help
I don't know how to attain my goal at Template_talk:Album_cover_fur. Can you please help? Debresser (talk) 21:52, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Me no understand. What did you do at Infobox French commune that is related to this question. And what is working? Files with empty other+information ddo not get added to Category:Other information (as far as I know). Debresser (talk) 02:58, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I see. In this case the parameters are all capitals (in all 30 or so related templates), apart from this one. That is Bad.
 * Is there a solution to detect articles that have the parameter but empty? Debresser (talk) 03:16, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I tested that Ifempty in my userspace. It does not do the job, because it adds the category both if the parameter is empty and if it is absent. Unless I got something wrong. I need something that will alert if it is present but empty. Debresser (talk) 22:26, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * It had 11,000 entries when I used  without a pipe. then I added the pipe and made it sort into Category:Other information2. Without the pipe it added all files using the templates with the detection, with the pipe only those with non-empty other_information parameters. Debresser (talk) 23:06, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * That was pretty futile, if you take into consideration that there are 40+ templates in Category:Non-free use rationale templates, most of which are like this one. Which is why I prefer the opposite solution. Debresser (talk) 00:13, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I did not mean to belittle your efforts. But I do think a more basic approach may be needed. Like making parameters all capitals/non-capitals, or making them non-capitalisation sensitive. Debresser (talk) 00:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I can't say I am happy with your edits to Album cover fur and its documentation. They are going the precise opposite direction of my efforts. Debresser (talk) 00:37, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Hardware abstraction
Your edit indicates that the article has a ref or a tag. It has no ref, and the tag is a merge tag. Can you explain your logic for not including unref tag when there is a merge tag? thanks Widefox (talk) 22:20, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Look more closely. I remove the category not the unref tag. Rich Farmbrough, 22:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC).
 * ooops, you are right. I'm still confused though - why removed the unref cat? and for my ignorance, explain the DEFAULTSORT, which both of us have not restored from your original edit. Widefox (talk) 22:46, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * mmm, very interesting. Thanks, Widefox (talk) 23:14, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.49.55.137 (talk) 12:52, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Revisions
Hello,

I'm a newcomer to Wikipedia, but I'm an aspiring editor. I'm in a master's program right now, and I'm tracking revisions on Wikipedia articles and analyzing them for my thesis. I was just looking at your revisions to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and one of them confused me. What exactly is a default sort key? I'd appreciate it if you would explain it to me. Also, do you have any tips on understanding the revisions in Wikipedia? I'm comparing versions and noting the changes in red, but sometimes I can't tell what they mean or find them in the body of the article.

Thank you. Editor Lara (talk) 23:50, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all the advice! It's very helpful. Quick question: do all the words in the default sort key have to be capitalized? I noticed you changed it from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Editor Lara (talk) 19:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot adding redundant Again/Still?
My last message indicated that the bot was adding to pages that did not need it. You responded that you would skip those articles. But SmackBot is still doing it, see here, here and here. Thanks. 75.69.0.58 (talk) 04:10, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I have upgraded AWB on SB's machine, the regression has been fixed. That should sort it now. Rich Farmbrough, 00:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC).

Category:Wikipedia non-empty soft redirected categories
May I understand that all entries in this category should be fixed by a bot, and that I should not have to do anything (now that we took care of the templates that automatically sort wrongly)? Debresser (talk) 15:43, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I can't seem to find the discussion you are referring to there. Also, could you tell me if you want me to fix them in the mean time. Debresser (talk) 15:50, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The problem with Han Dynasty seems to be that Template:Infobox Former Country has a line . Since the user defined 220 AD (and he had to because only 220 would be ambiguous), so that is what the category will say. This of course gives rise to various possibilities like AD, CE. The only solution I see is to do it the other way around. Category:220 disestablishments is ambiguous, so use either 220 AD or CE (I prefer the last, but consensus is that both are acceptable, unless we would make a rule for practical purposes that in categorisation it must be which ever one of them). The easiest way out of this is to allow all, without soft redirects, which is what I am going to do for the mean time. Any other ideas? Debresser (talk) 16:22, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes I fixed the template and the articles that use it. Transcluding content categories is a bad thing anyway. Rich Farmbrough, 20:58, 12 October 2009 (UTC).


 * I see. And how did you solve the problem of the ambiguity in "220"? That unless specified otherwise it is always CE? May I now redirect Category:226 AD disestablishments and other categories like it? Softly, of course. :) Debresser (talk) 23:01, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The template no longer generates these categories. They are in the pages instead. Template generated (content) categories are bad news. (Well some of the same problems apply to WikiProject cats too.) Rich Farmbrough, 23:24, 12 October 2009 (UTC).


 * That I understood. But that doesn't shed any light on my questions. Debresser (talk) 23:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * More generally, has this subject been discussed somewhere? Whether the format should be 220, or 220 AD or 220 CE, or whatever we like. Debresser (talk) 23:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

The answer is Naming_conventions_(dates_and_numbers). A clear guideline to use numbers for CE and BC for BCE. So I am going to have with what to keep myself busy tomorrow, checking whether this is being maintained throughout. Debresser (talk) 00:02, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I have added an analogous sentence to Naming_conventions_(categories) for categories. Debresser (talk) 00:12, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * BTW, I really think we should not make soft redirects for this type of category. Because they are not alternative names, they are names that are against guidelines. And also because there could be thousands of them, if we were to start with that. So having seven of them is ridiculous, and I nominated them for db-g6. Debresser (talk) 01:55, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Dutch infobox translations
A couple weeks ago SmackBot was busy doing translations like this one which are progress but unfortunately not quite correct. In particular: In addition, to make the geocoordinates work, the following parms need to be added: I started to fix the affected articles by hand, but it's proving to be a slow and tedious process. I request that you send SmackBot on another pass over these articles to resolve these issues. --Stepheng3 (talk) 19:05, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * should translate to  not
 * should translate to  not
 * should translate to  not
 * should translate to  not


 * Thanks for helping. I think the problem with the way images are handled is that the   namespace needs to be translated into English. --Stepheng3 (talk) 19:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I did a spot check, and it looks like the bot run was successful. Thanks! --Stepheng3 (talk) 23:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

bot edits
I've been looking at revision histories, and I noticed some revisions have robot in the edit summary, but they are not marked with a b. Does this mean that the editor is human or a robot (or a combination of the two, LOL). Editor Lara (talk) 19:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Adding reflist, changing unreferenced
In this edit, SmackBot (1) added reflist even though there are no references, and (2) changed unreferenced → refimprove. As far as I can see, both edits are wrong. — Miym (talk) 22:27, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes it should not have changed the tag. I suspect that is a side-effect of putting Reflist there. However putting the Reflist in should be harmless - especially as someone should add some references any day now.  Rich Farmbrough, 22:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC).

Advise
If we have now | Low_resolution= Will | Low_resolution= work?

The obvious goal is to circumvent the hyphen in the future without changing old instances of the template. Debresser (talk) 23:53, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes that is fine. Rich Farmbrough, 00:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Thank you! Debresser (talk) 00:11, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Tfd
I cleaned out all the transclusions of Tfd. Have a look what I found in Template:Jazz/version 1. Now all that is left in transclusions is templates that are currently under discussion, and a bunch of userpages and usertalkpages. Debresser (talk) 02:38, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * What I meant is the date of that Tfd template: December 2004 !

Could you get a bot at removing the Tfd templates from the 600+ userpages and usertalkpages?


 * I did it myself with AWB. I have 5 editprotected pages left. Could you please remove the line  from User_talk:SlimVirgin/Archive_29, User_talk:Dcoetzee/Archive_2007_2_21, User_talk:Sir_Nicholas_de_Mimsy-Porpington/Archive/Archive04, User_talk:Lostintherush/Archive_1, and change   to   on User_talk:Trauma16? Debresser (talk) 19:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Should all be done. Why did it need doing? Rich Farmbrough, 01:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC).


 * I cleaned up over a thousand of old substitutions of templates that were substituted with the Tfd template. These five were the last ones, "needed" to be able to say that the job was done. That the Tfd template was completely out of place there, I needn't tell you. Thank you again for your help. Debresser (talk) 01:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, cool just a tidying exercise then. Not sure even I would have bothered with that. Rich Farmbrough, 01:45, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * The reason is I posted to have Template:Tfd lowered in protection at Requests_for_page_protection. So I needed to know how much it is really being used. That was 53 as of yesterday (after I had noinclude tags on all cases, and still including these five). BTW, the request was declined, but I added a commentary and asked the declining editor to revisit. Debresser (talk) 01:49, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Makes sense,. But I wouldn;t worry about temporarily vandalising some user talk archives if prot was lowered. The trouble with tfd is that it is an unknown quantity. If, for example, someone tfd's unreferenced without noincludes, tfd would be on 140-300,000 pages. Rich Farmbrough, 01:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * The problem with the request at WP:RFPP is that there was no reason given for lowering the protection level. As I have said several times, I am more than happy to lower the protection level if you give a reason. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  01:56, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I take the contrary view - a reason is needed to maintain the level. And the reason I give above seems enough. Rich Farmbrough, 01:59, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Eh. The reason is the low usage, around 50. But your argument is correct (even though Tfd shows only as a small line in such a case). But nobody else but you and me thinks of that. Debresser (talk) 02:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, you are correct that the default level for most all templates should be unprotected. In this particular case, I would be happy to lower the protection level at almost any point in time if someone has a reasonable edit request. Thanks. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 02:04, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

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Simplification
I saw your edit to List of monthly maintenance categories with templates. I am very happy with that. I checked and all cat-date or cat-date1 parameters use "fom", without exeption. May I suggest building that into DatedAI and remove all the "from"'s from Article issues. Something like. If worst would come to worst it would be trivial to make a wordaround. In the mean time I would like to see this as a significant step in the right direction. Debresser (talk) 11:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
i understand (je comprendre) that you are maintaining the éeventing european champ." page ?

if you are please check 1995

because

Lucy Thompson/Welton Romance (IRL)DIDN'T take part the event was won by Mary Elizabeth King (née Thomson)

bonne journée

un utilisateur français de Wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.249.104.8 (talk) 11:37, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

How did you do that???
I.e. what tools did you use to calculate this? I know how to do it in principle, but it is so many edits and copy pasting that it would take hours, so I'm sure you have a smarter way? Can AWB help with this? --Stefan talk 03:50, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 19:38, 11 October 2009 (UTC). Rich Farmbrough, 19:38, 11 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Thanks, that was what I though. --Stefan talk 13:16, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Tibet map
Hi, I greatly need a locator map pin for Tibet. I've got one here. I was wondering if you knew how to enter the correct digits usong goole earth like Template:Location map China Yunnan province. At present the digits are for Yunnan. Any idea how we can get it to work? Himalayan   14:32, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Please at least respond... If you can't do something please say so! Himalayan   17:20, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Template:Location map. All it needs is the correct coordinates inserted into the box to control the pin..I believe you can find them on google earth apparently to north-south-east-west points of the Tibeta Autonomous Region... Himalayan   17:27, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The problem is that the map is a projection, and will have some skew no matter what you set for the coordinate limits. In particular, it will be the worst at the corners.  So, it's a very bad idea to use the corner points to compute the map's limits.  Better would be to use the midpoint of each edge.  The two points that I used were 30.19721°N, 81.03448°W and 27.32734°N, 88.92128°W, which are nearly the exact border intersections according to google maps.  These were the two points for which it was very easy to identify pixel locations. It's important to pick two points which are far enough apart to get some level of accuracy (i.e., reduce subtractive cancellation), but still close to the places where you will be placing pushpins. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  18:28, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah well, revert to yours if you like. Of course if both maps render latitude and longitude as equi-sopaced vertical and horizontal lines, according to the same projection, then picking corners will be perfectly sound.  Otherwise some kind of interpolation will be needed. In which  case, if that is supplied by the template then it does need to know the actual bottom left and top right, for example, not the bottom the left the top and the right.  Also it should allow for precession of the equinoxes, magnetic dip and, where possible cheese dip. Rich Farmbrough, 18:37, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Your choice of coordinates was as good (or bad) as what I had. There is no way to get it completely right, have a look at here for test cases.  You can make it exact for any two points, but it will always be off for other points. As far as I can tell, it's unsolvable, unless you use a different (or smaller) map. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  18:49, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes the projection of the map is off, so until we get a better quality accurate one this is the best we can do at present... We'll see how my Sichuan map goes. If it works out I may require your assistance, both of you for finding out the coordinates for the other province locator maps..  Himalayan   20:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Articles needing cleanup
Are you moving all templates, and thus the whole categories inevitably, or only part? Debresser (talk) 17:10, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * All - all are doen I think, but any holdouts wil become evident after 24 hours. See the two progress boxes on the category page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:16, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * BTW, it is precisely this type of "renaming" categories that I was refering to above that will allow for all dated maintenance categories to have names like the undated ones, which will also simplify Article issues and DatedAI. Debresser (talk) 17:14, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Exactly. This is the last set that make Article issues regular.  Rich Farmbrough, 17:16, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Did you throw out a few? I remember Wikify had diverging names also. Debresser (talk) 17:43, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm last but one then.. until you point out another I've missed. Rich Farmbrough, 17:48, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * [[Image:Smiley.svg|20px]]
 * I'll be more than happy to do so. I've been waiting for this a long time. Debresser (talk) 17:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No other ones. Debresser (talk) 18:18, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Substitution
What is that detection doing? Since when are these templates subst'ed? Oh, I see, you are fishing out the future substitutions into a category of "to be replaced by unsubstituted templates", right? Debresser (talk) 17:50, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's been running on "Citation needed" for a while now. I just found these articles with the stub templates substuted. ....

<small? commenteed out
 * Rich Farmbrough, 17:55, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Incidentally SmackBot has been "un-substing" these templates using the delimiting comments for years. Except when it is ignoring comments. The two outstanding problems are


 * 1) You loose any parameters - not a big deal with most cleanup templates
 * 2) If another AWB gen-fixer comes along all the categories are pulled out and taken to the end.
 * Rich Farmbrough, 18:02, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * I know that problem. Have fixed them myself upon occasion. What I don't understand is what {{#if:{{NAMESPACE||etc}} is doing. Are you adding only article mainspace (and article takspace?) ? Debresser (talk) 18:04, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No it is a kludge.  there is a feature request for templates that refuse to subst...
 * What is supposed to happen is that a substed template should, at that instant, behave exactly like a non-substed one. That markup "breaks" the other markup, when it is subst-ed it is mended and  so you get different behaviour. I spent a long time trying to persuade templates to quine themselves when substed.  I don't believe it is possible with the current software.  Rich Farmbrough, 18:10, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * I saw it. It is just a way to get the template to report substitution. The namespace is not essential here in and of itself. Another question. What is the text "Note, the items at τ are templates that use the syntax to invoke this category" doing on that category page? Why would the templates show up themselves? Debresser (talk) 18:14, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I used up my questions for today? Debresser (talk) 19:04, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * And two for tomorrow. That was referring to an older version of the cliché. Rich Farmbrough, 20:09, 13 October 2009 (UTC).
 * But still... Debresser (talk) 20:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry to take all the fun part, but I fixed the only two pages in Category:Pages with incorrectly substituted templates. Debresser (talk) 13:09, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Something went wrong
Something went wrong on Category:Userspace drafts created via the Article Wizard from October 2009. Debresser (talk) 23:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, universe repaired. Rich Farmbrough, 01:14, 14 October 2009 (UTC).


 * Finding other people's mistakes is my hobby. So thank you for making them so abundantly! :))) Debresser (talk) 01:28, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Template:Userspace draft
Not sure what's happening, but Category:Misplaced userspace drafts now has userspace pages in it! Can you check/fix Userspace draft? (Incidentally userspace draft2 only exists as a helper template because I couldn't get it to work as one template, but it would probably be better merged.) cheers, Rd232 talk 10:34, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅ You mean "existed. Rich merged it already, as you requested. And the problem was one of those superfluous pipes Rich is so famous for. :) Or not extending DMC till the end, which comes down to the same and is the more elegant solution. Debresser (talk) 11:55, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * It was a missing pipe. Rich Farmbrough, 11:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC).


 * Oh no it wasn't. :) Debresser (talk) 12:03, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AUserspace_draft&action=historysubmit&diff=319789085&oldid=319786987 Rich Farmbrough, 12:05, 14 October 2009 (UTC).


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Userspace_draft&diff=next&oldid=319790801 Debresser (talk) 12:18, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Which also had a mistake, but fixed now. The less elegant solution would have been to remove that pipe of yours. :) Debresser (talk) 12:20, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You were right and I was wrong. Restored your version. Debresser (talk) 12:22, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Well anyway, thanks! Rd232 talk 13:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

FYI
You updated Template:Str_rightc/doc about the 100 characters. Part of the explanations were formulated incorrectly (not by you) and I changed them. A Great Rule is to keep it simple. People trying to be overly precise often end up saying things that are not completely true. Which was the case here. Then I updated Template:Str_right/doc (without the "c") along the same lines, because your changes have affected it in the same way. Debresser (talk) 13:42, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I was concerned that pushing the length up to 100 might break something  if there were pages near a limit.  But it seems fine so far. Roll on proper string functions! Rich Farmbrough, 13:44, 14 October 2009 (UTC).

Reflist on files??
Why is SmackBot adding Reflist to files? See e.g. . Debresser (talk) 07:27, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I was going to ask the same thing! It did the same thing to this file. Bidgee (talk) 08:07, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I was faced with about a thousand pages stuck in the "invalid date" category for two or three weeks.  I gave them reflists.  Rich Farmbrough, 13:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC).


 * I noticed them there. And I noticed them disappearing. Did you consider null-editing them? Debresser (talk) 17:09, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Not by hand. And AWB has got "smarter" - it won't null-edit in bot mode. it's not like I didn't have 500+ Russian localities with their slightly odd infobox, and the bunch of new cats at the same time. When SB has thousands of articles it can't fix progress on improving the algorithm grinds to a halt. Rich Farmbrough, 17:27, 13 October 2009 (UTC).


 * That is really stupid. Have you written them about this? Debresser (talk) 17:46, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Natch. Rich Farmbrough, 18:48, 14 October 2009 (UTC).

Help again
Calling Coord:

At the moment I have °N, °W

This renders a parser error when the calling template doesn't define one or more of these variables.

°N, °W doesn't cause an error, but potentially leaves me with a buntch of zero's that I do not want to see.

°N, °W doesn't do the job, but carries the kernel of a solution in the understanding that I must call a variable only when it is defined. The problem remains though, because of the "|" separator, which causes the template to again expect something. Can it be substituted by a code of &#nnn; format? Debresser (talk) 01:27, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

&# 124; The 6th site I checked had it. Now let's try it out. Debresser (talk) 01:29, 14 October 2009 (UTC) !

°N, °W is not working. The pipes just get copied onto the screen after losing their functionality. Debresser (talk) 01:34, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

°N, °W also didn't work. Debresser (talk) 01:40, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

What is it you did in the beginning of this edit? A mistake, no? Debresser (talk) 01:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

No problem with using numbered parameters, but first I need to get the idea of a separator through to it. :) Debresser (talk) 01:47, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

To get back to this issue. Your solution works, but has the abovementioned minus that it may potentially result in a lot of zeros. Do I understand correctly that we are at the end of our arsenal of tricks and I shall just have to live with this? Debresser (talk) 12:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the zeros are relevant. The user page in question is a very old (3 years) sandbox so that doesn't matter. The actual use of coord tempalte is either degrees, degrees and minutes or degrees minutes and seconds. The presumption (not actually valid in the far north and south)) is that northing and westing are accurate to approximately the same amount

. Therefore if soemthing, like the Grenwich observatory, is at 0 00 00 we should display the zeros - they show we are being accurate. Arguably you could wrap coord thus: {if {lats|lons|} | {coord|1|2|3|E|5|6|7|S} {if {latm|lonm|} | {coord|1|2|E|5|6|S} {if {latd|lond|} | {coord|1|E|5|S} |} } }. Rich Farmbrough, 12:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC).

I moved with this to my sandbox and testcases, and I came to the conclusion that the problem is actually in Coord. If we want to call it a problem. The thing is that it doesn't take undefined parameters. Meaning that something like  will return an error (two actually). Perhaps it will be easy to change that? Debresser (talk) 12:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I have posted this issue at Template_talk:Coord. Debresser (talk) 12:56, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Update
A solution was found ther, and implemented. See User:Debresser/Sandbox on how to call Coord, and see the testcases, that it works marvelous. Debresser (talk) 13:40, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Minor request
After the move of Templates for deletion to Templates for discussion, of which Iwas the instigator, and which I used for another few small improvements on the general chaos after such a thing, would you perhaps null-edit four editprotected pages left in Category:Wikipedia templates for deletion? I'd appreciate it. Debresser (talk) 16:31, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Just Template:Infobox Television episode left. Debresser (talk) 17:05, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Debresser (talk) 17:29, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Sock puppet
After I was approached on my talkpage I answered that all is well. But is that so in fact? Erik9bot 9 is operated by User:Erik9 who is blocked as a sock puppet of the also blocked User:John254. Do you think it is safe to keep an unsupervised bot tagging 140,000+ articles into Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot)? Debresser (talk) 16:57, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The bot is blocked. The category remains, of course. –xenotalk 17:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * But shrinks. Rich Farmbrough, 17:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC).


 * You are replacing it by other tags as needed? Debresser (talk) 17:05, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I removed it form some 1500 articles and replaced it with unref in a bunch more. Need a BRFA now to do the bulk. Rich Farmbrough, 17:09, 14 October 2009 (UTC).
 * See CiterSquad. Rich Farmbrough, 17:09, 14 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Thanks. Had a look. Debresser (talk) 17:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

New template
You won't believe what I found: Template:TVS-cleanup. Debresser (talk) 17:07, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I propose Tfd and the category afterwards speedy. Debresser (talk) 17:09, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll propose it for deletion anyway. thanks for cleaning up the category. Debresser (talk) 17:34, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Forgot
You forgot the all-inclusive category when you made this edit. Or did you? Debresser (talk) 14:13, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it's auto-generated. Rich Farmbrough, 16:36, 14 October 2009 (UTC).


 * How? By what? Debresser (talk) 17:06, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * DMCA sticks "All" in front of the first parameter, after lower-casing it. ''Rich [[User talk:Rich Farmb

rough|Farmbrough]]'', 18:28, 14 October 2009 (UTC).
 * I looked there and missed it. Will look again. Sorry. BTW, do you have a progress template that can monitor whatis the progress of migrating the Wikify categories? I use them to help you clean up the last bits. Debresser (talk) 18:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

So why don't I see an all-inclusve category in the progress templates on Category:Articles needing cleanup? 18:31, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Debresser (talk) 18:47, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

And why isn't there an old Wikify progress template? Debresser (talk) 18:42, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Answer to both: that is the old wikify progress template. Rich Farmbrough, 18:49, 14 October 2009 (UTC).


 * So where is the new one on Template:Articles needing cleanup progress? Debresser (talk) 19:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have looked again at DMCA and DMC and I don;t see any all-inclusive category. Debresser (talk) 19:02, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes you are right. The perils of noon-standardization. And if you look at the code for the "new wikify box", the benefits. Rich Farmbrough, 19:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Thanks for replying, I know you must be busy. But I don't understand a thing of what you are trying to explain to me. Sorry. Debresser (talk) 19:18, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There is no all-inclusive category generated. If there was always one in existence I would have coded to generate it, if there never was one it would be fine too.  "Sometimes" breaks stuff. Now I'm undecided about adding it in - since it's only used by one bot to generate a page of suggestions that is mostly transcluded onto the user talk pages of people who haven't edited for years. And I've given him the coding to do away with the requirement. And it will probably fail with the new category anyway.  But I've added it. the sceond part - look at the coding in the category heading - a few keystrokes got me the new box. Rich Farmbrough, 19:25, 14 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Thank you for explaining. Another time, over a beer (I'll have tea, or wodka), you'll tell me what noon-standarisation is (unless it is one of your famous typos for non-standarisation, which I have begun to suspect). As you noticed probably, I added an all-inclusive category to Template:Articles needing cleanup progress myself. And I could have done the same for wikify, or even make one, just that I was confused because of the missing all-inclusive category. Good you added it. Better do away with all of them at once (at a later or not that much later time). Debresser (talk) 19:34, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Standarisation? :p Rich Farmbrough, 19:38, 14 October 2009 (UTC).

BTW, it is a shame you didn't call it "Pages needing cleanup". Not only because that is the name of the all-inclusive category, but mainly because Cleanup is using DMC (without the "A") and not only articles get added, so "pages" is what it really should have been. Debresser (talk) 19:36, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Another one
Template:Create-list

In use on a few pages. Probably keep it, but modernise it. I'll do that. Debresser (talk) 19:53, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅ Debresser (talk) 21:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Done
You may want to delete all old cleanup categories, progress boxes and whatever else. Debresser (talk) 20:16, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅ Debresser (talk) 21:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Clean --- up
Will you make up your mind if it is "cleanup", "clean-up", or "clean up". BTW, I think your rename to "monthly clean up category" was a mistake in English (even though I am only a continental). Debresser (talk) 21:44, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Urgent question
We now have. Will both and  (without the final pipe) work? Debresser (talk) 22:51, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

If none of them are defined the second one will render as Rich Farmbrough, 22:55, 14 October 2009 (UTC).

I know, which is what I want. But no difference in functionality? Debresser (talk) 22:57, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No other difference. Empty and not empty are a big difference. Rich Farmbrough, 22:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC).

Ongoing dispute from Admin decision
Hello, as you know User:Roux was given a week long block for disruptive conduct. This has not pleased some of Roux's friends who contacted the other user involved User:The Transhumanist and demanded apologies etc from him on Roux's behalf. As things went on one of Roux's friend's- User:Verbal has, seemingly taken to following Transhumanist around the project reverting his edits. Possibly justifiably in some cases yet it seems to be a little odd to me that he only suddenly took an interest in the articles Transhumanist edited after the dispute broke out. Examples of the conduct can be found by viewing first, Transhumanist's contributions and then the history pages of his top recently edited articles. I can't help but feel this is totally against the ethos of Wikipedia- what can be done? Gavin (talk) 00:56, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Code of bots
Are the code of bots feely available? Specificly, is there a place to see the code of SmackBot? Debresser (talk) 01:50, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Some are, including the code for AWB. SmackBot's code isn't, for a number of reasons including that no-one has asked for it. The main part of its task is actually built into AWB which will now date the key maint tags as a general fix. Smackbot's main set of reg-exes are regenerated every time a new template is added.  You can see some of its code for smaller tasks at WP:AWB. As far as I know these have never been used by anyone, the ISBN one is no longer compatible eith current versions of AWB. Rich Farmbrough, 02:00, 15 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Because you told me once the code used in turning headers from == xxx == into ==XXX== is used in 14 places. I am a patient man, and would find them all. Debresser (talk) 02:16, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia/Cascade protected templates
Did you mean to put this at Cascade protected templates? It's currently in article space. (Or Cascade-protected templates, even, if that is more correct.) • Anakin (talk) 02:20, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks.Rich Farmbrough, 02:30, 15 October 2009 (UTC).

Reflist
I just now noticeed you ended a run of references fixing with SmackBot, so I walked in to fix the remaining articles. I found two or three articles where SmackBot had added Reflist, even though there was a section, SmackBot subsequently added just that section back (diff). If I had not decided to look at the history of the article, this deletion could have been potentially missed. I realize this is a hard thing to address, but is there anything that can be done? &mdash;Umofomia (talk) 14:07, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Not a great deal that isn't already done. If you look at the history be suspicious of large changes in size. The edit buy the anon will show on watchlists (SmackBot's in general won't) and recent changes. And there are bits that will revert page blanking or (I think) removals of large amounts of content. There is also a system that blocks IPs from removing more than a certain amount of text. Rich Farmbrough, 14:28, 15 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Probably not. If you are lucky, the vandalism was so extensive that even SmackBot's fixes couldn't hide it. I see that often. It is just something that we have to be alert for. BTW, it is not as though the page cried out "vandalism" before the edit of SmackBot. If I would have come in, I would have done the same thing as the bot. Only those who know the article, or those with a very suspicious mind, would guess there was something wrong. Debresser (talk) 14:37, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhpas deleting reflist or references should be something the antivandalism bots specifically check for? I've lost track of who actually runs them these days though.  Naively, it would seem like there are few legitimate reasons for these to be removed without comment.  David Underdown (talk) 14:47, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I was looking at edit filters to catch that. There are legitimate reasons but { {reflist going is a little suspicious. Also thinking about the ratio of text removed as well as the sheer size. Trouble is edit filters are a bit of a resource drain. Rich Farmbrough, 14:53, 15 October 2009 (UTC).

Notification
As of the last 24 hours Templates for deletion has moved to Templates for discussion. Debresser (talk) 04:34, 15 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Stupid bureaucrats! See Ani. Debresser (talk) 00:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Template:R to list entry
Hey Rich, you are the last one to edit Template:R to list entry, so I'm writing to ask why it doesn't have a inside the ? Note that the category does not display on redirects such as. -- ToET 07:32, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The template was also in the category, top sorted supposedly, although this is more subtle than the authors expected. If you go to "my preferences" you set it to display hidden categories.  Not sure why this is hidden though, sure it is not a content category, but redirects are, arguably, not content pages. Rich Farmbrough, 13:11, 15 October 2009 (UTC).
 * As far as I am aware, none of the other redirect templates hide their categories -- the closest examples would be R to section and R to anchor with sample uses and .  I'd boldly take care of it myself were the page not protected, and I'm happy to bring it up in a different forum if you don't care to do it. -- ToET 14:32, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see that you had already made the change when you wrote the comment above. Thank you.  -- ToET 23:41, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot - R to other namespace
Just fyi here things didn't go quite right. 66.57.4.150 (talk) 17:30, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm well XQBOT should have propagated the ":". But it's all fixed up now. Rich Farmbrough, 18:54, 15 October 2009 (UTC).

Re: Cascading protection
Oh, cool. I'll probably keep the user page up just as an extra precaution, but it's good to have a central page for this. Hers <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold  (t/a/c) 23:08, 15 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Rich, I too got your message. I have responded over at Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items.
 * --David Göthberg (talk) 04:54, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Subst code
Would it be easier to add the code to mbox and insert a parameter, rather than duplicating code all over the namespace? OrangeDog (talk • edits) 17:09, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes much easier, but it wouldn't work. Assuming you are talking of the "incorrectly substituted template" cliché? The whole point of that is it only comes into effect when it is substituted rather than transcluded. Rich Farmbrough, 17:21, 16 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Hmm... I shall trust your infinitely greater experience. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 18:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot (Lifetime)
A minor point. I was a bit confused by the Expand lifetime template: consider using subst;l instead.. It should actually be subst:l as in 1901. --Big_iron (talk) 11:11, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you, of course it should - typo. Fixed. And there was me thinking no one was reading the edit summaries. Rich Farmbrough, 13:02, 17 October 2009 (UTC).

DEFAULTSORT capitalisation
Hi. Do the first letters of sort key terms always need to be capitalised? I'm asking in order to make sense of your edit here. Cheers. --Dominic Hardstaff (talk) 13:53, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes pretty much. The only de facto exception is for sorting scientific names of organisms into their families. I am working on a page to explain this in mind-numbing detail. Rich Farmbrough, 13:57, 16 October 2009 (UTC).
 * If they need to be capitalized, this should really be taken care of in the mediawiki software, instead of by adding a template to every wikipage. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:44, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, see bug 164 for example. It's not a template though, and it isn't always needed, only on about half the pages, and it is already there on a third of them, and is needed for other reasons on many of the rest. For example most names sort "Lastname, Firstname", many titles sort "Hobbit, The", accents and diacritics are removed,  Roman numerals and ordinals are converted to Arabic (John XXX => John 30) and so forth. I am working on a page to explain this in mind-numbing detail. Rich Farmbrough, 14:58, 16 October 2009 (UTC).
 * You're making hundreds of edits that are achieving nothing.  :-( • Anakin (talk) 16:30, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I, too, can't see any purpose in applying a new scheme to the DEFAULTSORT tag in thousands of articles; it won't make any visible difference in the sorting for any of the articles that I've looked at. Also, this discussion could have been entirely avoided if the obvious place for guidance in this matter, WP:SORTKEY, would provide a reasoning. As far as I can see, there isn't. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:34, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There was, it was removed. And it's not a new scheme in the sense that around a million articles use it. I am working on a page to explain this in mind-numbing detail. Rich Farmbrough, 12:58, 17 October 2009 (UTC).
 * 1) Do you have an example where this scheme changed the sort order in a category? 2) While the mind-numbing details will be welcome, the most likely place editors will consult is still WP:SORTKEY; with no guidance there, how do you envisage future adherence to this scheme, or prevent well-meaning editors reverting to a more intuitive scheme? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete
Feel free to delete List of monthly maintenance categories. Debresser (talk) 17:14, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I do. But I also think it is historically interesting. Rich Farmbrough, 02:53, 18 October 2009 (UTC).

Congratulations
Congratulations on the simplification of Article issues and DatedAI! Debresser (talk) 17:53, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Rich Farmbrough, 02:11, 18 October 2009 (UTC).

Bots
How do you make a bot automatic because I want to create a bot to help wikipedia. Thanks! RuneScape  Adventure  Sign! 19:18, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 02:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC).
 * ✅ Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 02:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC).

Dates
Why are you changing the dates on all the royalty articles? What's wrong with the American format? --Bookworm857158367 (talk) 01:54, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * A large percentage of them were a heady mixture of date formats, linked and/or unlinked. DMY seemed the best way to go since it was the preponderance, was used in territories in question. The main purpose of the exercise was initially to clean-up the 60 odd redirects to the infobox, but the dates were obviously in need of some work too. Rich Farmbrough, 02:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC).

Wikify
Some ignorant admin has made an edit to Template:Wikify that you will probably want to undo. Debresser (talk) 05:47, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Smackbot moved See also section in between footnotes and references
Here, SmackBot moved the See also section in between the Footnotes and the References, which is something I think you will probably agree is not right (irrespective of what the MOS has to say about it). You may want to tweak your bot code a wee bit. Hesperian 11:18, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Card Games
Thanks for your cleaning and general fixes on all card games. Please, do go on ! Krenakarore (talk) 18:14, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Port Askaig
Thanks for picking up the dodgy-looking 'rumour' about Port Askaig whisky. It didn't come from me and I share your scepticism. I'll watch it to see if anyone produces a source, but if they don't I'll edit it out. Dhmellor (talk) 08:23, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
hey bre —Preceding unsigned comment added by Musicmaker2013 (talk • contribs) 16:47, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Request
I have been a bit busy these last days, and have not taken care of Category:Pages with missing references list. Could you please let SB do a run first?

And might I ask you to consider adding a comment to Template_talk:Citation. Debresser (talk) 21:03, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

RfD nomination of Unrefsect
I have nominated for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:17, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

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Redirects
Is it necessary to run all over the encyclopedia removing 1 character from hundreds of pages and cluttering histories and recent changes lists? Among other things you've modified [ someone's 3½-year-old monobook.js], old [ user talk page comments], [ this change] which doesn't fit with the edit summary at all, and other templates and such that haven't been modified in years. "Deprecated" doesn't mean "doesn't work". • Anakin (talk) 06:01, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot - incorrect use of em-dashes
See this edit, where SmackBot changed the correct "xn--bcher-kva" to the incorrect "xn—bcher-kva". The bot should leave the sequence "xn--" alone, since this is the prefix for the ASCII equivalents of non-ASCII domain labels, and is highly unlikely to be used in any other context. --Zundark (talk) 10:33, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
hey wats up? explain? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Musicmaker2013 (talk • contribs) 18:07, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Regex Help
Hey Rich, I was wondering if you could help me with some Regex. I want to:

put tag dead link header at the beginning of each section that contains the template: dead link. I know there is some sort of lookforward buisness that needs to happen, I just don't understand well enough to write it. Tim1357 (talk) 21:41, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes I can wrangle reg-exes but there is stuff that could be done better than the way I do it.  Here is the sort of thing I would write - the look-forward would be more efficient to write.

(\n==+[^\n=]+==+ *\n)((?:[^=\n][^\n]*\n)*)([^=\n][^\n]{{[ _]*[Dd]ead[ _]+link[ _]*[\|}\n])

replace with

$1\n$2$3

Singleline of course. Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 20 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Wow thank you. Now I need someone with a bot account to implement it. Maybe it is worthy of becoming a General Fix on AWB so SmackBot can do them. What do you think? Tim1357 (talk) 00:28, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I could add it to SB's normal run if there is consensus. Rich Farmbrough, 00:30, 21 October 2009 (UTC).

Need your opinion on some photographs
Hi. Can you provide you opinion on this matter? Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 01:55, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot
Just notifying you of a bad edit. Dismas |(talk) 08:10, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Maps in infoboxes
Hi. Can you offer your thought on the template talk page of having a pointless map in a navigation templates such as Template:Postalhistorybycountry. It bloats an already oversized navigation templates and really has no purpose. If people are so dumb that they don't know where Asia is they can look... Dang it. Himalayan   10:31, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Template:cite IETF
Could you have a look over cite IETF and see if I've missed anything obvious? I'd like to have a few more people look it over before it really starts getting used in articles. It went together pretty fast but I had been planning to create a proper citation template for these documents for quite awhile. --Tothwolf (talk) 15:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot and cite album-notes
Please see this edit to "All My Loving". SmackBot changed "|pages=pp. 32-33" to "|pages=32-33". I know that is the proper thing to do for most of the templates in the "cite" family, but unfortunately, "cite album-notes" has a non-standard page parameter handling: it does not support "page=" and it does not include the "p." or "pp." prefix: editors must use "pages=" and supply the appropriate prefix manually.

I have considered changing "cite album-notes" to conform (see talk page), but I stopped when I realized that there were 1500+ references to it and changing the way the template works would break a great many of those. I knew one solution to that was to have a bot fix the existing uses, but I am not a bot writer and I did not know that SmackBot was already configured to fix the "pages=" parameter. (Does it do "page=", too?) That may mean that many of the calls to the "cite album-notes" templates are broken now (no prefix in parameter) and thus changing the template would actually do more good than harm.

I am very interested to know what you think should be done. My guess is that it may be less work to fix "cite album-notes" than to change SmackBot to handle an exception, and the former brings us closer to the ideal state. &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 13:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes this is a slight oddity. I created Page numbers to deal with this, it can be inserted as a wrapper in whatever cite templates might find it beneficial. Rich Farmbrough, 14:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC).


 * What about changing "cite album-notes"? If I change it, will SmackBot eventually fix some or all of the entries? Do you think it has removed the prefixes already? Is there an easy way to check other than manually going through the "what links here" results?


 * Sorry about all the questions, but for some reason this little problem is gnawing at me and I'd like to fix it. &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 15:01, 21 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I need your help or advice again. I saw you changed Cite album-notes. At that time, I was working on a sandbox page and test cases. My version added a "page=" parameter as well as using Page numbers for the "pages=" parameter. I updated the template after you did, and it seems to work when used from articles. It also produces the expected results when used from the Expand templates page. However, the examples on the doc page and the test cases on the testcases page don't work properly: when "pages=2-3" is specified, the doc page and test cases show "p." and not "pp." I can't figure out why; I've purged the pages, refreshed my browser cache, etc. Why would the template work when used from an article, but not from a doc page or testcases page? The troublesome pages are evidently falling through to the Page numbers template or they would not have a leading "p." Do you see anything wrong on either page? &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 17:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Update: I found the issue. The problem is not related to the doc page or testcases page. If I use a plain dash ("pages=2-7") or if I use an HTML entity ("pags=2–7"), the cite album-notes template works properly. If I key an n-dash character ("pages=2–7"), the template doesn't work as expected. I added a test to the Page numbers page that shows that using the n-dash entity works but using the character doesn't. I was loathe to change the template... &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 18:18, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, good detective work. Rich Farmbrough, 18:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Should be OK now. Rich Farmbrough, 19:18, 21 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Great! Thanks. &mdash; John Cardinal (talk) 19:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Elisabeth of Valois
Hello!


 * 1) The accent is not present in the title of the article, therefore it shouldn't be present in the infobox. It should be somewhere in the lead sentence, but the infobox should be consistent with the title of the article.
 * 2) You haven't really corrected anything; you just changed it from 3 October 3 1568 to 3 3 October 1598.
 * 3) Corrected. Surtsicna (talk) 17:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Soft redirects
Here you have another template that automatically adds a category. Your edit to Template:Infobox Former Country was undone, claiming that it left articles without categories. Debresser (talk) 17:51, 21 October 2009 (UTC)


 * What's the trouble here? I saw it is used on 1773 articles. Likely most of them have 1 or 2 categories (for established and disestablished). How many did you fix? Debresser (talk) 11:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC) Debresser (talk) 11:40, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you'd like to do this through discussion? Like at Template_talk:Infobox_Former_Country. Debresser (talk) 11:47, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Breaking templates
SmackBot keeps adding a date parameter to Template:BASEPAGENAME, which breaks it. Specifically, see these edits: -Rrius (talk) 22:11, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * OK that won't break it in future. But fixing the code is a little more tricky. Rich Farmbrough, 22:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC).

Template:BASEPAGENAME
Hi - I noticed this and I think I understand the point of the template (to prevent broken magic word usage)... however I was just wondering if it was used anywhere and noticed that people might end up getting there by using when following an example link like BASEPAGENAME - as it is used in. I am just wondering if you think either of the following would be useful: 1) a soft redirect from the template you've created to the WP:Magic words page and/or 2) protection of the page to prevent the kids from messing around. Clearly this isn't a big problem, and it may not even require a solution - just trying to preempt any issues that may come up. Thanks. 7 23:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot at Hindi Wiki
Hi Rich,

Its been a while that SmackBot has operated on the Hindi Wiki. Can you please invoke the Smackbot again. Thanks Gunjan (talk) 12:16, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Russian map captions
HI. Can you use AWB to add a caption to the infoboxes like this for the federal sub categories of Category:Cities and towns in Russia. I've done Adygea, but probably best done with AWB. How are you, I haven't heard from you in ages. Himalayan   09:50, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Category suppression on maintenance templates
Hi Rich. The current method of suppressing categories on some of our maintenance templates by specifying a blank category seems rather unintuitive and also conflicts with the method used on some other templates, which require no. I wonder if you might comment on a discussion on my talk page. Thanks &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:47, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

All category
Another all-inclusive category here. Count your blessings. Debresser (talk) 14:21, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Sundays
Hi, Rich! Something the matter with SmackBot? Also, might you be Roman Catholic like me? Its last entry was on Saturday for the Catholic Church (as you already know, of couese)! Please have your robot to not place date maintenance tags on Paul McCartney's discography page, if you could. Thanks! Best, --Discographer (talk) 00:28, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I doubt that Roman-Catholic part. But he is definitely getting married. Nothing like Rich to be off for that long. :) Debresser (talk) 01:20, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

It is getting a lot of net-work time outs which don't help. But the original idea was to run at least once a month! Things have changed a bit since then. Rich Farmbrough, 15:52, 27 October 2009 (UTC).

Template talk:Infobox musical artist debate
I've tentatively mentioned your name as a possible 'closing admin' for the debate here. Hope that's OK! We want to find someone neutral to end what has been a difficult discussion and I saw that you'd done some work on this box. Reg. -- Klein zach  02:32, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Your bot
You bot is giving different pages from the same website the same name:. This is the second time it has done this. Can you ask it to stop? Thanks, Mitsube (talk) 22:28, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have logged a bug for this I will check back and see if a fix is available. Otherwise I will work-around, please stop the bot if it happens again.  Rich Farmbrough, 15:14, 27 October 2009 (UTC).

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Little Richard Article
Thank you for your recent "date maintenance tags and general fixes" on the Little Richard article. I have been doing a lot of recent on the subject and have been working to make the article more informative and accurate. At the same time, it needs to be encyclopedic, so please feel free to relay feedback / input asI go along. I am fairly new to Wiki and can use the support that you can offer.--Smoovedogg (talk) 06:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I recently inserted a Ray Charles quote in the influence section with I think the appropriate citation info (please correct if I'm wrong) I pulled the quote out a day or so ago, as one editor wanted one the Bo Diddley quote in there or the Ray Charles one but not both (I think it looks okay with both, as they validate each other especially coming from those two music giants)) The quote farm that had been in there was edited out long ago.  Your feedback is appreciated.  Also, do you think it should be Penniman (the artists formal last name) or Little Richard mentioned through the article when referring to him, or sometimes one or the other?  I am uncertain.--Smoovedogg (talk) 06:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Everything alright? You've been, well strangely quiet for you the last few days.... Himalayan   10:35, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

2009 flu pandemic
You added a globalize tag to a section of this article before. I moved it and that started a whole debate as I felt the entire article needs to be globalized, not just a section. Could you comment here Talk:2009_flu_pandemic as you've expressed an opinion on this before.--Crossmr (talk) 15:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

The Statesman's Yearbook
SmackBot moved a cleanup tag to the references section of this article. I moved it back. I am fairly sure these should be at the top? Thanks. Maidonian (talk) 13:01, 27 October 2009 (UTC)


 * We once had a discussion about this here. Is it still a general AWB fix? Debresser (talk) 10:00, 28 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The tag needs to be visible to the reader on first opening the page so that they know immediately the sources are not clear. If it is lower down it might not be seen. Maidonian (talk) 10:25, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Request
Could you please do another run of SB on Category:Pages with missing references list? Debresser (talk) 22:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Question
About User:Rich Farmbrough/temp52 (Citation templates : following character frequency).

When it says that the following characteris an "A", does that mean without spaces and without enters?

Can you make lists of these articles also? Debresser (talk) 11:49, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

What is the difference between 	 => 5 and => 7409 ? The latter I would guess to be the enter, and the first a tab. Debresser (talk) 11:50, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, 7409 would be a single whitespace character. --Tothwolf (talk) 12:05, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been following the discussion on the meta template talk page, so I'll jump in here ;)


 * Rich, do you have anything to say about the other questions here? Debresser (talk) 23:39, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The figures ignore one newline, but do not ignore spaces. And the first is indeed a tab. Rich Farmbrough, 20:50, 27 October 2009 (UTC).


 * I see. And can you also make lists? Debresser (talk) 21:41, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
 * To some extent, it is fro a database dump so inherently outdated. However it would be easy enough to run on all the transclusions. Rich Farmbrough, 22:32, 28 October 2009 (UTC).

Discussion at Template_talk:Citation is at a dead point. Can you shake it up? Or do you have a better idea? Debresser (talk) 22:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Homelessness in the United States article et al. and anon editor
Hello Rich. Might I ask you to look into this matter also? Ben (User:SchuminWeb and User talk:SchuminWeb) has kindly looked at it too. Confer Homelessness in the United States article, etc. and User_talk:76.126.50.198. It's situationally unmanageable as it stands and a huge unnecessary diversion from real work to do in WP. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 03:00, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Settlement
I see you edited this so thought you might go to the article Kisber and put the photo in proper place in the box. Regret I can't as I inserted some text and saved it before trying to fix the photo location which I did not save. thanx. Handicapper (talk) 14:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

SmackBot and Otheruses4
I noticed that User:SmackBot standardizes Otheruses4 templates to upper-case already, do you think it would make sense to convert them to About templates while we're at it now that the template was moved? It was moved because about is easier to remember than otheruses4 with its arbitrary number. Cheers, — sligocki (talk) 18:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * SmackBot has a small list of templates it does that for, easy enough to add About. Rich Farmbrough, 22:30, 28 October 2009 (UTC).

Template:Infobox Hungarian settlement
Hi Rich,

It appears the problem with ksh_code has not been resolved fully, and we are with our horses midstream.

I see from many stub articles that they are using ksh_code to define the KSH code whereas ksh_code_2008 is the correct name for the fields. I also see that they link to the KSH page in the population_footnotes field.

I remember there was some discussion of changing the field name and add another that describes the date of the data. I am reasonably happy to do this, however, it has not been done and so the articles using ksh_code instead of ksh_code_2008 are not automatically generating a reference to the data, which was the intention.

I suggest you and I collaborate to fix this:


 * SmackBot could run over the articles using and replace any instances of ksh_code_2008 with ksh_code. It should also remove the population footnotes (perhaps if they match a suitable regex) but retain the year, renaming it. e.g. for Csólyospálos it should change   to be.

This need only be a one-off run for SmackBot. It's a pity that in the confusion/arguments of before, it seems that a decision was taken to use a field that did not exist in preference to one that did. But I think all that can be done now is to repair having left it in the air, and I hope you can maybe use SmackBot to help automate that repair. If so, I will change the template at an appropriate time to the new names. I think it would be unwise to introduce the new fields as a synonym, but I imagine that only the few articles (i.e. mine and a few others' articles with real content) would actually be broken by this change, and more (i.e. the 250-odd articles that are almost empty except for scaffolding) would be fixed by it. I should appreciate your views. Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 20:42, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I will modify the template as best I can to generate a more specific reference title. The KSH code field does now link to the correct KSH page, but the name of the reference is generic, as I could not work out how to stuff things using kinda "late binding" into the reference, but have been told how to do this now. But even if not, at worse the KSH code field does link there.

Monthly categories
When I saw that Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template has 77 pages, I decided it is time to create November's categories. Done. Debresser (talk) 18:27, 31 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Then I null-edited a little, and now it is 46 pages.


 * Which reminds me. Could you please do me a favor and null-edit the three pages in Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates. One of them has been there for over a week now. Debresser (talk) 19:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)