User talk:Rjwilmsi/Archives/2008/October

Removal of date links
On the Les Bartley page, you removed wikilinks to a number of dates (eg. May 15, 2005). Why? --MrBoo (talk, contribs) 22:09, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * See Date and its talk page for the story. Rjwilmsi  22:20, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for the info. --MrBoo (talk, contribs) 23:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

For your excellent efforts in delinking the dates on High Sheriff of Staffordshire many thanks. It was a task I have been putting offOrdyg (talk) 12:42, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Cite web use changes
Re changes made to List of symphonies in E minor (possibly by bot): I know of nothing in the cite web docs at Template:Cite web that expresses a preference for one or the other (I seem to recall if anything that there's a preference in some of the other citation templates' manuals - perhaps cite journal - for using the date rather than month and year parameters in fact. Though ISO is probably preferable when possible.) Schissel | Sound the Note! 09:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You're right that the preference is for using date=, but only when the day and month and year are known. The changes you refer to in List of symphonies in E minor are for entries without the day. I think the information at Template:Cite_web is quite clear: when the full date (i.e. day and month and year) is known use the date= field (preferably in unlinked ISO format) or otherwise, when the day isn't known, use year= and/or month=. Template:Cite journal has an example in the Template:Cite_journal doing just that. That's what I'm implementing. Thanks Rjwilmsi  11:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Kosovo
Please, be careful with edits like this. It's not helpful to replace ambiguous dates with unambiguous wrong dates. If you do not know the meaning of an ambiguous date format, do not make wild guesses, but check your facts. It's not that difficult to click on the bloody links to find out when the articles were published, is it? — Emil J. 11:04, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I object somewhat to the tone of your message. Now, I think ambiguous dates will be wrongly interpreted by many readers due to their ambiguity (as not one of the supported Wikipedia date formats), so in a sense are 'wrong' before my edit. Therefore I think it's better to correct these ambiguous dates and be open about the fact. If the corrected format is right, the article is improved. If not, the clear edit summary will prompt another editor who is knowledgeable about the article to amend the change and improve the article. Thanks Rjwilmsi  11:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * A reader who sees an ambiguous format may well interpret it incorrectly, but he/she will also understand that the format is ambiguous, and therefore be aware of the potential misinterpretation. On the other hand, there is no way one can guess from the ISO format that it may be incorrect due to being mindlessly converted from an ambiguous format. Your mess up in the Kosovo article went unnoticed by six editors and it was buried deep in the edit history, it was pure luck that I spotted it and decided to double-check it. Once again, refrain from such edits. They are detrimental to accuracy of the encyclopedia. It is of course desirable to use an unambiguous date format, but you can only switch to it after you've properly researched what the original date refers to. In contrast, judging from your list of contributions, you didn't bother to spend half a second to check what you were doing. Even short of checking the links as I suggested above, it is a no-brainer to guess that a European topic is much more likely to use European date formats, whereas you seem to be mindlessly converting everything as if it were in the American style. — Emil J. 12:12, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I've reviewed all my edits to do with ambiguous dates (all are in the last two days), there are about 15 of them and I think only the Kosovo edit was wrong to use the US format. I'm sorry for not spotting that error, but I stand by my comment that at least the clear edit summary prompted another editor to review my edit. I'm only using the American style by default as that's what seems to be used in the majority of cases – the Kosovo article being the first one I've found that didn't. Rjwilmsi  13:07, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

See response on wishlist
Thanks for your comment. See: User_talk:Lightmouse/wishlist. I hope you like it. Lightmouse (talk) 14:15, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the style correction concerning dates
When I was working on the Sound Bytes page, I was ignorant of the style guide item of not including "of" (as in, in April of 2004). Thank you for correcting that and making me aware of that particular item. I consider myself an above average writer of English, and this bit of constructive criticism only strengthens my skills.

Joe (talk) 18:44, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

"Gen fixes" using AWB
Hi. I noticed you recently did a gen fix on December to Dismember (2006), adding a "format=PDF" part to one of the refs. There was no need for that as the format for that ref was already in the ref before the "accessdate". Regards, D.M.N. (talk) 07:37, 13 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi, i noticed you added link brackets to the page Coal. A couple of them accidentally already had a surplus spare bracket on the end, and your general fix added another redundant square bracket to the start. I have now fixed it up, but you can take a look so that the automated fix doesn't do that again. Cheers --Sumthingweird (talk) 09:17, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Similarly on. A template there contained the erroneous parameter "format=.PDF"; your edit added the correct parameter "format=PDF" (without removing the erroneous one). However, it seems to me that the Wiki software denotes a reference to a PDF file with the correct icon anyway, so such an edit as the only edit seems unnecessary. Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:01, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * PDF format: I'll make sure I allow format=.PDF and format=PDF in addition to format=PDF.
 * Coal external links: Hmm, five brackets removed correctly and two added incorrectly. My fixes won't add second brackets to external links. What's happened is that two links were too long to be caught by the fix that caught five above (there's a performance problem with making the fixes catch longer links...). Then AWB general fixes completed the brackets as though it was a regular wikilink, due to an AWB bug I've reported and been working on. I will see if I can increase the allowed link length without hurting the performance so that the above would all have been correctly fixed. Thanks Rjwilmsi  11:34, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Re square brackets
I refer to your edit of Clan Brodie. This is the second time a bot has "corrected" in the article the use of square brackets. I understand the purposse of these bots and think that they are important. However, how can i protect a page from future bot square bracket edits, as the use of square brackets is infact needed in the article. this is an example of the text befor edit: and this after your bot edit: is there a way to make the bot accept the square brackets as valide? yours, Czar Brodie (talk) 21:20, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
 * "The lands of Brodie [Map] are between..."
 * "The lands of Brodie Map are between..."
 * I don't think using square brackets in that way is correct. For links to maps there are various templates to provide a generic link to a list of available sources - one is coord I used myself for Reigate Castle. For images, they should be uploaded to the wikimedia commons under a 'fair use' license then referenced in the article. Thanks Rjwilmsi  22:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

YAY! Thanks for the offer
Where OH-Project could be substituted with "WikiProject Ohio". There would also be cases like: There could also be forms of padding ie
 * 1)  to
 * 2)  to
 * 3)  to
 * 4)  to
 * 1)  to
 * 1)  to
 * 2)  to
 * 1)  in any arrangement.

Thank you! §hep  •   ¡Talk to me!  23:15, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
 * In AWB choose Tools – Make Module and paste the code below into the box (remove whatever is in the box first). Adjust the edit summary below if you don't like it or replace the line with Summary ="";. Then tick enable and press make module. There shouldn't be any errors, but I don't have AWB on my PC here so can't test the module but believe it's all correct. However, I have tested the regexes and they work on your examples. Two caveats are:
 * not adding class= per your second example, as null value entered
 * assumes class value is a single word
 * I am assuming that what you're doing is useful, not controversial and meets all WP guidelines etc. (I've had a problem helping another editor in the past...). Thanks Rjwilmsi  11:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

//


 * Me, trouble? Never. hehe No worries here boss.  Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day/evening to help me out.  §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  18:05, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Lang template
Hi, when you use AWB to implement the lang and "lang-xx" templates, please make sure the text inside the template is actually in the language in question, rather than the English translation of the foreign term. Otherwise, silliness like this results. Thanks! —Angr 07:34, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * My apologies, I hadn't spotted that. IMHO it's not correct to use Foreign language: English translation, as what follows Foreign language: shouldn't be English, so I've adjusted the Trinity article slightly. Thanks Rjwilmsi  07:42, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, rewording is good. —Angr 08:01, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Heya, I've noticed you've been contributing to articles similar to mine, i.e. related to activist/anarchist people. My article on Bruno Masse is threatened of deletion, could you please vote to keep it? You can vote [| here]. In solidarity! Lkeryl (talk) 18:26, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Died but not born
You made a change to the Michael Gerzon article thus: gen fixes: format date of birth/death, using AWB

This changed "d." to "died" but left "b." unchanged. I have neither reverted your change nor completed it as I assume you will want to try your robot again. HairyWombat (talk) 16:38, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know, I didn't spot the error at the time. I've now corrected the article. The problem was that the date of birth used an abbreviated month (Dec) rather than the full one (December), which I've now corrected too. I'll have a look at catching abbreviated months in my script. Thanks Rjwilmsi  17:34, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

More about died
You changed the title of R.T. Kendall's DPhil thesis to read "died", not "d.". I do not think that this is an appropriate use of house style: the author has chosen to write "d." in the title, so I would leave the title that way. It is a direct quotation. If necessary you could write, "d[ied]", but that is not necessary. "d." [sic] would be even more ridiculous.--Oxonian2006 (talk) 13:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * My apologies – I hadn't seen that it was in a title. Thanks Rjwilmsi  17:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)