User talk:Rick Block/Archive2013



confused about admin list
List_of_administrators/G-O doesn't list User:Gimmetrow who apparently is an admin? NE Ent 14:23, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That's a filtered list. It only includes admins who have (I think) 30 edits in 2 months from their admin account. See List_of_administrators/Semi-active. Gimmetoo (talk) 14:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. NE Ent 15:22, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured picture contribution
Hi Rick Block.

Not sure if you remember this page, but it hasn't been updated in years and I wasn't sure if you had forgotten about it or just didn't have the time to update it regularly. If you could clarify that would be great, so that if need be I can mark the darned thing as an archive or the like. Thanks.  ceran  thor 02:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It's one of several things I mean to get back to eventually - the intent is that this will be maintained by my bot. Creating the necessary by-year summary lists (like WP:FP2006) turned out to be a massive job.  I completed 2004, 2005, and 2006 through April, but haven't completed these (and apparently haven't worked on them since 2009 - how time flies).  As I recollect, I solicited help at WT:FPC, but no help was forthcoming.  If you'd like, we could move the WP:WBFPC page to my userspace until the by-year summary lists are complete (which, at the current pace, will be never), or mark the page indicating that it is based on contributions through April of 2006.  -- Rick Block (talk) 06:03, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations
Could someone please tweak so that "Schrodinger's cat is alive" is now relisted as "SchroCat" and also lists ther John Le Mesurier FA? Thanks - SchroCat (talk) 14:12, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you need to find your FAs at WP:FA2012 etc and change your username (I've already done the John Le Mesurier one for you at WP:FA2013, then the next time the bot runs it will regenerate WP:WBFAN with your new username. See User talk:Rick Block for Rick's comments to another user after his name change. BencherliteTalk 14:28, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Great - many thanks for that and I've tweaked accordingly already. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 14:40, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Mail
-- &#x2611; Sam uelWantman 08:03, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Tokyo
In the nest of articles about Tokyo, I hope it is clear that my goal is to be a follower, not a leader. --Ansei (talk) 14:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Please review Tokyo (disambiguation). --Ansei (talk) 15:02, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Three cups versus three doors
I had hoped that comparing methodical / systematic / principled approaches to modelling the three cups problem and the three doors problem would bring out a difference between the two problems. In the three doors problem one can *deduce* that the door identities are irrelevant and hence that the three doors problem can be solved by solving the more simple three cups problem. However, a clever person like Marilyn vos Savant - used to solving problems by genial flash of insight rather than by a plodding systematic analysis - did not see any difference at all, and nor do people who think like her. There is no way any of the "regulars" on the Monty Hall talk pages is ever going to change their ways of thinking. Probably better to quit being active there for a few years and hope for some new blood.

I do think the article is much improved now though still needs a lot of polishing and trimming and sourcing. The dull kind of work which converts a rag-bag of contributions of different people into one coherent article. Richard Gill (talk) 08:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Cook's list
Hi, List of international cricket centuries by Alastair Cook was promoted to FL status on February 25. I don't know why List of Wikipedians by featured list nominations and Featured lists promoted in 2013 show this as a former featured list. I made the corrections twice but you you reverted them. Hope you'll have a look into the matter. Regards, Zia Khan 21:17, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks like it was accidentally dropped from WP:FL by this edit. Since it didn't show up in WP:FL or WP:FFL the bot didn't quite know what to think (it's best guess was "former").  I've re-added it.  The bot should fix the lists the next time it runs. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:42, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Active/Semi-active/Inactive administrators on ro.wiki
Hello, Rick! I am an administrator on ro.wiki and I noticed your bot updates the lists at List of administrators. Some users on ro.wiki would be interested in having such a list for ro.wiki admins. Can you configure your bot to update an equivalent list on ro.wiki? Thanks, Razvan Socol (talk) 17:04, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It's a little resource intensive (fetches a contribution list individually for a fairly large number of admins every time it runs), so I'd rather not expand it to other wikis. But I'd be happy to help someone else get it running.  If there's a local ro.wiki botmaster who might be interested let me know.  The source files (not absolutely sure they're the most current versions) are already posted at User:Rick Bot/scripts. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:37, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * We only have 23 admins at ro.wiki, so I don't think it should be any problem for this wiki. If it is a problem, we would be happy to have an update only once every week (or even once a month). We don't have any local bot running automatically (as far as I know), so even if we find a person which is competent enough in Python scripts, I'm not sure he would have a machine available to schedule the job. Razvan Socol (talk) 19:45, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Most of what it does doesn't require being a bot - i.e. it fetches the current list of admins and contrib lists using wget (or curl), and then figures out what the page content should look like for the active, semi-active, and inactive lists using various Unix/Linux commands (mostly awk). Anyone running a Mac or Linux machine with basic familiarity of Unix shell commands (no Python required) could run it on demand and manually post the content (I run it as a scheduled job on a Mac). The getadminactivity script is the only piece that would be needed.  I assume it would need language updates, since it currently expects the pages it fetches to be in English.  Also, the split of active admins into A-F, G-O, P-Z wouldn't be necessary.  I would much rather help someone else get this running than run it myself. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:55, 22 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Another option might be to see if anyone running a toolserver account would be willing to turn it into a toolserver tool. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:10, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Rick Bot
Rick Bot appears to be down, is there a chance of this being fixed soon? Regards, — Moe   Epsilon  10:51, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll look into it. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:59, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Should be better now, but some pretty big changes were required. Please let me know if you notice any issues. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:16, 31 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I still see my name on the lower section of the hopeful admin page even though I've made well over 30 edits in the past couple days even. Maybe the criteria the bot is looking for works differently than I'm expecting? cliffsteinman  --  Discuss  19:26, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The bot only updates the page twice a week (early Sunday and Wednesday mornings, US time). The last update was this past Wednesday Oct 2, at which point you hadn't been very active in the prior 30 days.  It should move you to the upper section tomorrow morning. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:03, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * As expected - see . -- Rick Block (talk) 15:57, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

About my post from years ago
Hello Rick. About my post from years ago: |List of Mergers and Dissolutions of Municipalities of Japan: Re-Verification, what I was trying to say if there were any info related with some mergers and dissolutions of certain municipalities of Japan between April 1999 and April 2005. And however, I couldn't even find anything specific related with those. Hope this helps. If not, feel free to message me back. jlog3000 (talk) 16:05, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi - Are you asking if there's info related to mergers and dissolutions that occurred between 1999 and 2005? The sources I was using for the updates I was doing were the Japanese Wikipedia and http://www.fuzita.org/link/linkse/prefecturee.html.  I don't know if they have information for the time period you're asking about. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:02, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see. And yes. Anyways, I'll go try out your suggestion to figure it out myself. Because as far as I know, 1999 was the beginning of the Great Heisei Merger Consolidation Era, if I remember correctly. But about you using the Japanese Wikipedia, did you use a translation machine or something? jlog3000 (talk) 20:06, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes - Google translate is good enough to get a general idea. Nearly all villages/towns/cities have their own home page as well, frequently with an English version. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:14, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * True. Oh, I did found this link http://kokudo.or.jp/marge/index.html However, there wasn't an English version of that page, otherwise it would be more simple. Oh, I even tried Google-translation, but still it shows the results in its original Japanese version. Any other ideas or advice? jlog3000 (talk) 15:56, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The query results from the link you found (Japanese Geographic Data Center) are done in a way that Google translate doesn't seem able to understand. The result page is actually text, so one possibility is copy and paste the result page into a separate Google translate window.  You lose the formatting doing it this way, but the results seem to be fairly comprehensible. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:36, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

List of administrators
I was just looking at WP:LA and tested having the list of active administrators on one page again and there was no transclusion problem like in the past because there is so little admins considered active. It would probably be safe to merge the A-F, G-O, P-Z pages into one again and have one solitary list. In fact, listing all the active administrators on the main WP:LA page might be beneficial with it being so small right now. If it ever grows back to the size it once was, we could split it back up again. Regards, — Moe   Epsilon  14:44, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's probably more likely the use of user3 vs. admin or a change to the transclusion limits in the mediawiki software than the number of admins, but as long as it fits on one page it's a reasonable idea to remerge. Before doing this I might figure out exactly how many fit on one page to make sure it's comfortably more (>50%?) than the current number. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I ran a few test edits without saving and it appears user3 can transclude over 2,500 times without maxing out, which is well over the total number of current number of administrators, including semi-active and inactive. Maybe all of it on one page now is a possibility. (Addendum) It appears the limit is 3,336 with user3. One idea I had was a table with admins with user3 in one column and their status (active, semi-active, inactive) in the other column and it be sortable. Regards, — Moe   Epsilon  16:34, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Rick Bot appears to be down again by the way, hopefully this can be resolved soon. Regards, — Moe   Epsilon  12:27, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It doesn't stay logged in like it used to. Something has clearly changed (in either pywikipediabot or the mediawiki software) but I don't know what.  The temporary fix is to run it manually after the login expires.  I'm looking for a more permanent solution. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:15, 4 November 2013 (UTC)