User talk:Smith609/Archives/

Graphical timeline question
Hello, I've been playing around with Template:Graphical timeline, trying to create a timline. I was wondering - is it possible to have a timeline that goes from the oldest timeperiod at the top to the most recent at the bottom? I've tried, and it seems to work except that the scale is missing. Is it possible? Thanks, -- Beloved Freak  21:24, 2 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I imagine that using negative values would produce the result you want. If not, can you be a bit more specific about what you are trying to do?  Are you using geological time periods, for instance?  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  23:14, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to get a timeline to put in Timeline of Tanzanian history. At the moment, the dates I'm using are just between 1450 and 2010, although it would probably end up somewhat earlier. Not sure yet how early. These are my experiments. So far, I've been working from the one in Timeline of South African history, but I'd prefer the more recent history to be at the bottom to match the list in the article. As you can see in my sandbox, I managed to switch it over, but without the scale on the side. Hope I'm making sense. I tried going from the instructions at Template:Graphical timeline to start with, but I was getting a bit confused. -- Beloved Freak  14:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Barnstar of absolute brilliance

 * Thanks (-: Glad you find them useful.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  12:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Geological Timeline
Hi, I want to translate it to Hebrew for the He Wikipedia, it is possible? Israel Krul (talk) 14:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Hello, this should be relatively straightforwards. Hopefully I'll be able to look at the code at the weekend and let you know what I will need.  Thanks, Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  12:47, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * ok. Israel Krul (talk) 22:34, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Automating_the_publisher_field
hi smith609, i'd love to know what you think about this idea. cheersSpencerk (talk) 21:02, 25 March 2010 (UTC) resolved

Hi!
Sorry for not calling you for so long. Until the start of Dec 2009 you were looking very busy with working and with WP on cites and other templates, so I didn't want to your load. Then I was ill, and am still not great. How do you like Canada now, and the ROM? What projects are you working now? --Philcha (talk) 12:41, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

vcite web
The citation bot seems to be naively converting "cite web" to "Citation" without checking it is not a "vcite web". This has broken the citations on Major depressive disorder. See this edit. Please stop your bot until it is fixed. Colin°Colin 07:52, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the report. Best to avoid running the bot on pages using this new family of templates until the bot is fixed.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:21, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I didn't run the bot. Who runs it and how do we let them know it is broken for vcite? Colin°Talk 13:49, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Probably the best thing to do is to leave a message at the talk page; the bot edit summaries detail who initiates the bot in each case. Hopefully I'll have the problem fixed in the next day or two.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:37, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * ... and it should now be fixed. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  21:56, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Revert
Hi Smith, I reverted youHere because it looks like all you did was remove signatures. Did I mess up?-- SKATER  Speak. 18:01, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Blast, I forgot that I was using Google Chrome (which swallows anything in an HTML tag). You did the right thing, thank you!  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:34, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

File:SnowballGeography.gif listed for deletion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:SnowballGeography.gif, has been listed at Files for deletion. Please see the to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted.  F ASTILY  (T ALK ) 00:56, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Ernettia
Hello Martin: I created an article on Ernettia but perhaps this is an erroneous spelling of Ernietta. Even though I found references, perhaps those have errors, what is your opinion? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:28, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Graeme, my suspicion would be that Ernettia is the typo; the three references listed in the article are the only ones in Google Scholar (c.f. 104 on Ernietta) and Scopus returns no hits. Ernettia is also listed as a species of Costa Rican plant (Study on growth forms of some species characteristic for the paramo of Costa Rica, 1996), although I suspect that this too may be a typo.  I'd suggest that you merge your new article into Ernietta and note the spelling confusion on that page.


 * Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:35, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Instructions
Hello, I would like to ask you for this: Thanks. For every of these points there are reasons and I can try to elucidate them in the future. --Snek01 (talk) 22:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Do not remove wikilinks.
 * 2) Do not remove taxonomy explanations.
 * 3) Do not merge existing articles species article with their genera.
 * 4) Do not make redirects from specific names to generic names.


 * I thought I had given reasons for doing the opposite of what you suggest, so please do feel free to provide said elucidation when time permits. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  23:03, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, you probably followed guidelines of Wikiproject Palaeontology, that makes articles for fossil genera only, which is contradict with wikiproject animals and other wikiprojects and with guideline Red link, that usually make articles for species. This is very huge inconsistence. A good example: Pilina and its two articles, or Mammoth and its species articles. Wikiproject Palaeontology should somehow define and de facto to limit its own rule, for example, that its only generic articles is applied only for "dinosaurs" and similar ones. --Snek01 (talk) 23:44, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, the rule goes "if there's not enough information to warrant a separate page for each species, don't create a separate page for each species". As palaeontological species are often defined on morphological minutae the differences are often much less noteworthy than in living organisms, hence the inappropriateness of using the same rules as in WP:animals.  Thanks for looking into this, though.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  23:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Where is this guideline written? The idea may be good, but its application, especially on the wikipedia, that anybody can edit is very problematic. Minutae morphological differences are in fossil and in living species. There is never "warrant" for the species existence. And "Don't create separate page." does not mean "Create redirect.". There are enough things that have to be explained, to avoid further misunderstanding. Could you focus on solving this as a project member, please? I can only say, that for example fossil species gastropods are defined in the same way as extant gastropods. I am sure there is more examples like this, so explanation is necessary. Then you will not need to write "As I understand it like this", but EVERYBODY SHOULD UNDERSTAND IT IN THE SAME WAY. --Snek01 (talk) 06:57, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * See MERGE. I have copied these guidelines to WP:PALAEO for future clarity. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:00, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Creeposaurus
Good science and an instructive story! Thanks! --Philcha (talk) 23:24, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Citebot widget?
I'm not seeing the citebot widget in the toolbox even tho I emptied my cache. What would it look like if it was there? Is it only present for certain pages? Joja lozzo  18:01, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I figured out that I'm using the vector skin, not monobook skin. After adding the script to vector.js the widget is showing up but the font size is wrong. Any advice on fixing that? Joja lozzo  18:21, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Refs at Mollusca
Hi, Martin

I'm disappointed that you changed the refs - IMO there's a guideline that if there's an established ref / citation style it should be respected or discuss at the article's Talk. In this case the item that concerned me was the insertion of page numbers in to main text - IMO this is just another distraction for readers, and less useful than e.g. wikilinks. As a result I've have to spent about 2 hours finding and restoring. I admit I was slow on the ball - RL was pulling on me. --Philcha (talk) 07:45, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

In the background perhaps we're both looking for a solution to another issue. At present in Mollusca and others I've wanted to cite chapters and even sections of books, but without duplicated the book details (title, ISBN, publisher, e.g.) - and Visionholder showed me a way to split citations so that the book details appear only once and the cites for chapters, sections, etc. are a list underneather each book - it's easier to show than explain, see User:Philcha/Sandbox/Reference_methods/List-defined_references. It does not depend on List-defined references or template like harvnb or sfn - I'd really avoid sfn, despite some neat things, because I've already found one situation sfn can't handle. --Philcha (talk) 07:45, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Citation twiddling
Your bot changed a ref in Merge Sort. It turned what looks like an under-specified journal article into a news item. It's guessing, and it shouldn't do that. And to what end? Furthermore, do not change Citation to Cite. There are defaults in place, and you should not be dictating other people's style. I'm also trying to report a bug, and I'm being pointed down a lengthy process where I will not go. Glrx (talk) 14:03, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * See Bots/Requests_for_approval/Citation_bot_4 and for more details. And a bug is not important enough for you to be willing to report it, it does seem a little unfair to expect me to fix it.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:39, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see it as unfair at all. It's your bot, and you want to tax me for what it did? Then turn it off and get out of the business. I didn't ask you to write it. I didn't set it up to turn journal articles into news stories. Glrx (talk) 15:03, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Citation bot
Hi! Is there a reason why the citation bot is changing transclusions of cite book to citation? The template doesn't seem to me to be deprecated or anything. Jafeluv (talk) 10:01, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * See User:Citation bot/bugs. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:47, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Malay Archipelago
On Malay Archipelago did you mean ([edit=autoconfirmated] (indefinite) [move=sysop] (indefinite))) ? Tb hotch Ta lk C.  17:21, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I meant to restore the previous protection settings as set by Hesperian. I hope I didn't err? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:42, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Google books cite template?
Hello, I just discovered that "Citation bot" added an ISBN number to a reference on a page I made, Maritime Fur Trade. I hadn't heard of Citation bot before, but it led me to your talk page where I discovered and. They look really useful for editors who would rather focus on content instead of citation details and syntax. I wondered if it would be possible to make a similar template for books available from Google Books. I frequently find information via Google Books and type up "cite book" references, with the url parameter pointing to the Google Books entry. After seeing the Cite jstor template, my first thought was wondering whether a similar thing would work for Google Books--a template where one would merely enter the Google Books id code and a bot would come along and create a full reference. So, I thought I'd just ask--is it possible? Pfly (talk) 08:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for prompting me to look into this. Yes, it looks like this will be possible, as an API exists.  I'll see if I can get this up and running by the weekend.  Template name suggestions welcome – Cite google book?    Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * How about just using ? Then the bot can populate any of the missing info. There's no need to create another set of problems like cite doi. LeadSongDog  come howl!  17:38, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * BTW, wrt crude ways of getting information out of Google Books, see the Google Books greasemonkey script I wrote, or the later version (much better, but also unnecessarily crippled) here by (I think) User:Ash. There are some issues with Google's information not always being reliable (e.g. authors' names being repeated as editors, sometimes even thrice or more, etc.) (Just noticed this thread accidentally.) Shreevatsa (talk) 17:32, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * (PS: Another tool, linked from here, is Reftag, also found as WP:RefToolbar. Just adding all these here so that it is easier to compare how these different tools parse information from Google Books.) Shreevatsa (talk) 15:54, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the best solution is to use the Google Books API to expand citations of the format {cite blah| url = books.google.com/id}, for the use of those who prefer in-pagecode citations, whilst also supporting {cite google book|id} for those who prefer the citation clutter to be hosted on separate pages. This leaves the format to editor choice rather than imposing a single template on everyone, whilst making the functionality available to as many editors as possible.  Citations containing google books urls are being expanded as of r148; the {cite google book} template will take a little more time to implement. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, since I have not been following the workings of your other templates closely: what do you mean by "Citations containing google books urls are being expanded"? Does it mean that if some existing Wikipedia page has a citation template that includes a Google Books URL but not (say) the name of the author, a bot will automatically add it to the page? If so, hope there will be a way of preventing this! (Sometimes, for example, when including a bibliography on an author's page, I may intentionally omit the redundant author name. More importantly, as I have said above, Google's metadata is often severely flawed, and automatically adding this information may lead to much mess.) Do you have examples of the kinds of changes made? Shreevatsa (talk) 17:30, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * See this example edit. The author-mask parameter is useful when the author should be obfuscated, as in bibliographies; it's useful to have their name in the citation for metadata purposes, even if this is not made visible to the reader.  I already have some safeguards in place to catch flaws in the metadata (editors mistaken for authors etc); if uncaught problems arise then I can respond accordingly.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:36, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Great work, thanks for the effort. But why is it removing pg and dq parameters?! Please please stop it immediately! I often take great effort to link to a specific page and highlight a paragraph on the page (this is helpful to the readers who want to follow a reference, and linking to a page is even recommended on some Wikipedia page I can't find now). I'm sure many pages do so intentionally. Please don't remove them, I beg of you. :( Shreevatsa (talk) 17:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

The bot is still destroying links to pages: diff. Can some admin please help stop it for a while until this is discussed and fixed? Shreevatsa (talk) 17:51, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've stopped the bot whilst I modify this. Are there other parameters that add value to the link and thus should be retained?  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:53, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Whew. Thank you very much, and sorry for panicking. As far as my experience goes, pg, dq and q are the only useful parameters (the last of these is useful for books in snippet view). Another idea is to have a list of useless parameters that can be removed. The problem is that it would grow somewhat large, and Google keeps changing their format, but it would avoid removing anything useful. I'm happy as long as pg,dq,q are kept.
 * Great; pg, dq and q (and of course id!) are all now retained, and it is straightforward to add to this list if necessary. Of course, removing such parameters as useragent=firefox and hl=en is still beneficial.  Let me know if any further honing is necessary.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:08, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for this prompt change. (And I have forgotten to mention: these bots are a brilliant idea!) Indeed, it is quite beneficial to remove the junk parameters — the usual ones are hl, ei, ots, sig, source, lr, as_brr, printsec, sa, oi, ct, useragent, client…, plus everything after the '#' (which you should check for, BTW; otherwise it may seem like an extension of the last parameter). Also, when both q and dq are present, they are redundant and it is good to retain only dq. I'd prefer the conservative approach of removing parameters known to be useless, rather than everything not known to be useful, but if we've accounted for all the parameters, then in practice they are the same. Shreevatsa (talk) 18:12, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Another bug: diff. Google's 'id' parameters may contain hyphens, the bot broke the link and declared it a dead link. (BTW — scroll down to the references section — why does appear inside brackets before the link? This is a bug in the citation template, presumably.) Shreevatsa (talk) 18:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Concerning Vetustovermis
Now that Vetustovermis is considered a nectocarididid, should I redraw it as a swimmer?--Mr Fink (talk) 05:09, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. Do you have access to the Supplementary information, which contains further details of the reinterpretation of the animal?  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:04, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Now I do... Thank you!--Mr Fink (talk) 14:28, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

More of Google's messiness
Hi, did you notice the bug I mentioned above where (as in this diff) the bot removes hyphens in parameters and then declares them dead links? Is this fixed?
 * Yes, this was fixed when reported. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  10:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, see the before/after links in this diff. The results are not identical; it appears that Google pays attention to the "vq" parameter as well. Could you add that to your list of parameters to be retained (I think vq > dq > q, meaning that when you have one you can drop the succeeding ones), or better yet, only remove tags with an identified function known to be useless? I know most articles probably haven't chosen their links very carefully, but still, that the bot should "first do no harm" seems like an important principle to me. Shreevatsa (talk) 07:44, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've added this parameter to the "Keep" list and will presently switch the behaviour so that only "useless" parameters are removed, with "unknown" parameters being logged so that I can assess their function. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  10:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Excellent, thank you very much. You and your bots are amazing! Shreevatsa (talk) 14:06, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Sacoglossa
Congratulations for your excellent work in the articles about the nudibranchs. As you have been working on Sacoglossa, I found a strange sentence (not written by you) that needs to be rephrased. I made a suggestion on Talk:Sacoglossa. If you're thinking along the same line as I do about the meaning of this sentence, you can change it in the article. Cheers. JoJan (talk) 09:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the encouragement! I'll try to expand on this information when I next get the opportunity.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:09, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Patent to Journal
I filed a bug report five days ago regarding this edit and it hasn't even been acknowledged. While I do not know how to search for similar edits, I'd assume the same damaging edit would of been done on any patent citation using the same format. The example I've given has since been corrected manually, but what of ones that were not? Juventas (talk) 06:45, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I currently don't have internet access at home but will fix this asap. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:53, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This was fixed in ~r161. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:34, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Stenothecoida (Stenothecoides) IS NOT Stenothecidae (Stenotheca, Mellopegma ...)
Hello Martin! The Stenothecoida with its Stenothecoides and Cambridium and the Stenothecidae with its Stenotheca, Mellopegma, Eurkapegma, Anabarella and Watsonella, are absolutely different groups of the Cambrian organisms which are even not similar against each other. It is simply they have similar names. Stenothecoida (Stenothecoides) are middle Cambrian problematic bivalve organisms. Stenothecidae (Stenotheca, Watsonella, …) have, without doubts, univalved shell.

Parkhaev study (more 15 years!) the Cambrian gastropods SSF (it is his specialization) not on another's articles, pictures and photos, he study real specimens, his assumptions are based on factual material. And among modern specialists on Cambrian mollusks SSF is almost nobody considers it as Monoplacophorans.

Stenothecoides, Stenothecoida photos: Stenotheca, Mellopegma, Anabarella and Watsonella, Stenothecidae photos Be more attentive. :-) Aleksey (Alnagov (talk) 22:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC))
 * (see fig 8) http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1666/0022-3360%282006%2980%5B1087:SSFFTU%5D2.0.CO%3B2
 * (see plate 2, figs 13-15) or http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/cgi/reprint/75/3/171.pdf
 * (see page 293) http://macroevolution.narod.ru/22parkhaev.pdf


 * Hmm, I did wonder, but I found another site synonymizing them so I got lazy... Thanks for catching my error! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:34, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This also happened to me. Always pleased to help! Aleksey (Alnagov (talk) 22:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC))

Greetings from philcha
IIRC you were at one time thinking of a thesis on Nectocaris. You might find Paleontology in the News, by a retired professor of paleo.

I also see you're still working on labour-saving citation techniques. I'd be grateful if you coud look at Wikipedia talk:Citation templates --Philcha (talk) 12:47, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

authorsep
Why is the bot adding a template to cite journal citations, authorsep, which is not documented in the cite journal documentation? Jc3s5h (talk) 00:04, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Jack is referring to this edit. Clearly some bug is at work here. Copying to User:Citation bot/bugs. LeadSongDog come howl!  01:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Sandbox?
No problem, but I just had my Sandbox updated by the Citation bot. Do you really want to get into that? No reply needed, I can live with it either way, but I thought that you'd like to know. TomS TDotO (talk) 18:11, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Does this look right to you?
Hi, one of the pages I watch had this edit by your bot. The url changes don't bother me much, but the final change from 'citation' to 'cite journal' and the addition of 'ref=harv' and the rest seems dubious. Does it seem valid to you? Also, I'm assuming that [Pu173] is meant to identify the editor using your bot. There doesn't seem to be a user by that name. Is there any way to validate the user before allowing them to run the bot? Thanks, Celestra (talk) 19:40, 14 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I hope you will forgive me re-directing you to User:Citation_bot and User:Citation_bot for the answers to your questions. Let me know if you need more information. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:13, 14 July 2010 (UTC)


 * There is nothing to forgive; directing someone to concise answers is not the same as telling them to RTFM. Those sections answered most of my questions and since the edit was server initiated the remaining oddness is clearly not vandalism. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 21:38, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Pu174 from Citation bot 1 making nothing except clogging history
Hi,

I have found edits from Citation bot 1 ([Pu174]Misc citation tidying), which literally makes nothing visible on the page. This is an example. Here, the bot has simply eliminated a carriage return from a citation in the script of the page, but with no apparent influence on the page itself.

I think these edits could be avoided, because they clog the page history, with no utility to the page itself, not even cosmetic. And, cosmetic edits have to applied cautiously, according to wikipedia bot policy. What do you think about that?--GianniG46 (talk) 13:38, 15 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that's odd. I've rolled back the active version to r173 until I work out why the bot's decided to do this.  Thanks for alerting me! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:52, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * in r177. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Kimberella
Hi, Martin. We got Kimberella to GA in 2008 so it's about time for an update. As far as I can see you've done a fine job on new/updated content - and you're an expert, while I'm just an enthusiatic amateur. But I think a serious copyedit is needed, to make the phrasing more suitable for the proverbial bright 14-old year and to removed duplication, of which there's a lot. Would you like me to start the copyedit? --Philcha (talk) 16:49, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea; I've a lot of irons in the fire at the moment but will be happy to look over your edits every now and then. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:08, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Again, a less-than-cosmetic operation of Citation Bot 1 - Pu177
Again I find cosmetic operations on the script of the page, with no effect on the page itself, as in this example. The bot has only modified 3 references, and in all cases has changed the expression "books.google.com/books?" to "books.google.com/?", with no effects, neither on the functionality nor on the visual appearance of the references on the page.

Anyway, the problem is not your bot, it is more general. At this point, most of the page histories I see contain more bot traffic than normal editing, and for me is difficult to discover who has written what. What can be done to overcome this? --GianniG46 (talk) 01:01, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Citation bot on toolbox
Followed your instructions on how to add Citation bot to my toolbox. It created User:Maile66/modern.js Cleared my browser cache. That was yesterday. Even today after having shut down and booted back up, I don't see anything different on my toolbox. Is it necessary to create the .css page also? If so, what text do I enter before I Save the new .css page? I must be missing a step. Please advise. Maile66 (talk) 19:43, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Cite doi
Hi. I used cite doi in Golden jackal (it's reference 15). It's done just what was needed, but now the reference has an Edit link for editing the template generated. I've not seen this before. Should I leave it like this, or is there something more I should do? Thanks for a great tool. --Stfg (talk) 09:41, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

LOVE your template
I LOVE your template:

Template:Horizontal timeline

It is 20 times easier to use then the complex timeline extension.

My problem is, I am trying to add your template to a wikia, and it will not work.

First I got two errors:


 * 


 * Please delete the line increment=. It's preventing the template from working.

I started to use old version of the templates to see if that would work.

I deleted the: %; when the error continued to show up, I then deleted the entire line, with the abs template (which I had created from an earlier version of template:abs).

The expression error then disappeared.

but this line:


 * Please delete the line increment=. It's preventing the template from working.

continues to show up. I am not sure what I am supposed to delete. Any suggestions? It would be great if you could fix this, or tell me how to fix this.

Here is an example of the template not working on the wikia:


 * http://dead-rising.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Test

All the templates are the same name....some are earlier versions.

I was going to message Habbit too, but since you are the creator, you probably know better than anyone thanks in advance! 15:53, 26 July 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Burtthompson (talk • contribs)


 * Hi,
 * I'm afraid I'm not going to have time to look into this until I return from fieldwork in September. Sorry about that!  If you still need help at that point, let me know. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:00, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Cope's Rule
Hi, Martin. In a 2008 edit, I think you cite "Sereno et al, 1998" on the weak correlation between stratigraphic age and cladistic rank. Do you have a more specific reference for this? I'm interested in the details: whether this means that stratigraphic correlation with age in years is poor, or that the age of a fossil is an unreliable clue as to the age at which speciation separated it's ancestor from it's nearest relative, because smaller fossils are easier to find, or etc. I found a Paul C Sereno online, who published three articles in 1998. I wasn't able to find the content online, however. If you have the exact citation, I could narrow my search and avoid looking up or paying for the wrong article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidrei (talk • contribs) 16:46, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Citation bot upgraded to r179
Are you using at least that version? After the bot was revised as so reported by Google, I found the bot still editing Google Books URLs to redirect URLs, and again I edited to the correct URLs. The problem and the fix are reported at and r179 is described at, both as accessed today. But if r179 was already in use, then I'll just live with what's happening and maybe correct its trail in articles I watch. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:00, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The fix I implemented had a bug that's been fixed in r181; sorry about that. Incidentally, is the presence or absence of the   a personal preference, or is there a more fundamental reason to retain it?  I've done some testing and don't see any performance implications for the redirection. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:15, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * For any website, except for redirections that are explicitly temporary, one must assume the possibility that the website owner will speed up site performance and/or cut storage space and/or bandwidth demand that it pays for by deleting old redirects that presumably no one needs any more. Therefore, a link to a URL that is a redirect has a higher risk of becoming a dead link after a while. This is supported by the system by which an explicitly permanent redirect informs a visitor's browser to edit its bookmark accordingly and the editing is automatic. All that is in addition to the Wikipedia policy that internal links should not link to redirects (granted that the links edited by the bot are not those). Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:25, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Toolbox script
A fixed a few problems in your toolbox script. Hope you don't mind. Especially the encoding issue can be problematic. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:20, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you!! I greatly appreciate it. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Can it be enabled on vector please? Rjwilmsi  15:55, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * And I thought it was just me! Yes please! LeadSongDog come howl!  16:25, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * This is on my to-do list, although it may involve a lot of work as I am not sure how easy it is to modify the new vector interface. (i.e. it will be a while before I can do anything!)  Somebody familiar with the interface may find it trivial to adapt the script and would be warmly invited to do so! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:59, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * In the myskin list at the end of the script I just added || skin == "vector" which works fine. Rjwilmsi  14:18, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh! I was thinking of a different script. ✅! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:22, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Skills
Is it true that you have bitchin' template making skills? Abyssal (talk) 02:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I have created a number of complex templates, so know my way around the system reasonably well... did you need help with something? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:22, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Sources_again
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine. LeadSongDog come howl!  05:39, 14 August 2010 (UTC) (Using )

Citation bot editing AWB sandbox
Hello. Is it possible to stop the bot from editing WP:AWB/Sandbox? It recently edited the page. Bot edits to a sandbox can be disruptive. Thanks.  McLerristarr /  Mclay1  09:58, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The bot is exclusion compliant so I've added to prevent further edits. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:13, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks.  McLerristarr /  Mclay1  14:24, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I invoked the bot on the sandbox for testing purposes, so I've removed the bots deny from the sandbox again. AWB sandbox is shared you know. Rjwilmsi  19:13, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Question about Citation bot 1
I haven't come across 'Citation bot 1' before so I have a couple of questions. I know they're fairly elementary but I'd like to understand a bit more about how it works.
 * Is the Bot 'summoned' (maybe there's a more technical term...) or is it automatic? Meaning, does it browse through Wikipedia and just automatically find things to fix or does an editor have to run it on articles?
 * The bot can be summoned but also runs periodically through all articles using citation templates (visiting them once every few months). Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * What do the comments mean at this Article's Edits Difference? Bot Comments Is the Bot's purpose to make citations within individual articles consistent? It's not trying to, in effect, state that the use of 'citation' over 'citeweb'/'citebook'/etc. is it?

Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 17:55, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the bot is just making individual articles internally consistent. It respects editor choice on whether to use "citation" or "cite x". Hope that helps. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your answers, makes sense now, just wanted to make sure. Shearonink (talk) 22:42, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Problem
Your reference tool disappeared from the left panel (I use old wiki markup). Could it be related to your latest corrections? Materialscientist (talk) 23:53, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It certainly could. I've now fixed it, sorry about the inconvenience and thanks for pointing it out!  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:18, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Geologic Chronology
Why did you delete the subject section in the extinction event page? It appeared to fit nicely in the article.... Please reply in the discusion section of 'extinction event' page. Morbas (talk) 04:00, 14 September 2010 (UTC) 98.148.24.98 (talk) 04:52, 14 September 2010 (UTC) Table always does it. All are ICS dates, save one...A deeper pattern exists that shows repetion in sets of three, each set in alternate offset by +/-7Ma. The rest of the article text is supported by the three references shown. I am surprised you did not notice the discussion section where this was presented for almost a month with little comments, except a reference request by a retiring contributor. No time line theory here...98.148.24.98 (talk) 04:52, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Citation bot and ISBN numbers
Please refer to this page Nevada Barr. I ran the citation bot from here Toolserver Yes, it inserted ISBN numbers on the Nevada Barr page. However, the numbers it inserted aren't even close to the ones on amazon.com, neither the 10-digit nor the 13-digit one. As an example, look at the 2010 novel Burn. The Amazon ISBN are 031261456X and 978-0312614560. Can you explain the discrepancy? Maile66 (talk) 21:34, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * For Burn it's picked up the ISBN of the Audio CD version (Amazon). Probably the bot should try to get the hardback, else the paperback. Rjwilmsi  15:11, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Then perhaps the bot needs to be adjusted, since all the other ISBNs it created for that page are other than what they should be. Maile66 (talk) 17:36, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Small question about automatic taxoboxes
Hi Martin,

I have one small question which you may know the answer to. Often, after an article has been switched to the new automatic taxobox, it appears in Category:Taxoboxes with an invalid color, even though it doesn't belong there. For instance, Louisella was there this morning, even though the taxobox appeared correctly. In such cases, a null edit is all that's required to remove the category. I assume it's all to do with the mechanisms of template transclusion. Does it only happen if the automated taxonomy is updated after the article was edited? Is there any way of avoiding it? It's not a big problem at the moment, but if there's a simple (automatic) solution, that would be great. If the automatic taxoboxes ever get rolled out by bots, then this could become an issue, so it's probably worth considering it now. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:25, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for noticing this; I'm not overly familiar with the mechanics of the category system but the most likely explanation is that a user (probably me!) created the automatic taxobox before the back-end templates were in place, so that for a couple of minutes the taxobox didn't have a colour. Presumably the category was assigned during this time and not updated when the back-end templates were created.
 * This will be less of a problem when a bot request is approved, because back-end templates can be created much more quickly (i.e. whilst still previewing the switch to an auto-taxobox, so not causing any categorization). If a bot ever rolls out the automatic taxoboxes, it will always create the back-end templates first, thereby removing the window where the taxobox displays without a colour.
 * In the meantime I'll try to watch out for this in my own edits!
 * Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Intermittent connection error for citation bot
Over the last 24 hours or so I've intermittently had this error running the citation bot: "Getting login details ... done. Connecting to MYSQL database ... !!! * Database server login failed. This is probably a temporary problem with the server and will hopefully be fixed soon. The server returned: "User 'verisimilus' has exceeded the 'max_user_connections' resource (current value: 15)" Error message generated by /res/mysql_connect.php". Rjwilmsi 12:33, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I hope that this is now resolved; I've modified a script that was getting stuck and made a few other tweaks to the code. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:03, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems fine now, thanks. BTW, is RefTool now dead? Rjwilmsi  17:18, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've not had the time to get it up to scratch; it's largely redundant now that citation bot can handle endnote references and doi/pmid expansion is so prevalent. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Widget help & inconsistent citations
I tried to add the widget, but I see that the code is already in my User:Wtmitchell/vector.js. I've cleared my cache and reloaded pages, but I don't see a relevant link in the Toolbox section. Help appreciated.

Separately, I'd appreciate a glance at Talk:Gulf War and corrections there if I got something wrong. Thanks. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:00, 1 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Your fix was the business, thank you. Not clear why the widget isn't displaying (beneath the toolbox section); are you sure that you are using the vector skin?  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  12:48, 5 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I'm using vector. No big deal -- I've got plenty of other things to do. Cheers. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:44, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Small bug in Template:Automatic taxobox
Hi Martin,

Your automatic taxoboxes seem no longer to be italicising the names of species, either in the header of the taxobox or (presumably as a consequence) in the article title. See, for instance, Amanita muscaria or Stauroteuthis syrtensis. Genera appear to be unaffected (cf. Stauroteuthis). --Stemonitis (talk) 16:16, 2 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the heads up &mdash; sorry that I didn't spot it earlier. Now resolved.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  02:10, 5 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks – that looks hunky dory. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:02, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Citation bot in other languages
Hi, Is it possible to use the citation bot on Wikipedias in other languages? I am thinking of the portuguese one in particular. Thanks in advance, GoEThe (talk) 11:39, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * See User talk:Citation bot/Archive 1. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:43, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

citation bot quesries
i installed your bot but dont quite understand how to use it. Kyrgyzstani parliamentary election, 2010 has some bare refs that need to be filled, i entered at the bot page, but it says "no changes required and no edits made" Could you help me out in using it?

thanks. Lihaas (talk) 07:12, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * For that you want REFLINKS, I've done it for you. Rjwilmsi  12:47, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but i dont quite understand. I click on the left hadn "Reference formatting" when ont eh wikipedia articel that needs it and it still says the same message.Lihaas (talk) 00:41, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

User:Smith609/toolbox.js
Hi! I added User:Smith609/toolbox.js to my vector.js page and it seems to have worked, except ... the font is about 2–3 times larger than normal. Can I adjust the font in any way? Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 16:36, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Extinction Event Section
Opinion about original research pasted from Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard

Simple arithmetic and tabulation is not usually considered original research. Make sure that you are not slanting the data in any way to make a point. Expect that scientists will be pernickety about details and presentation. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:14, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Morbas (talk) 22:34, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Smith, are you home. I cannot find where the dispute is posted in Wiki. And, see my home page for the new extinction event section. I will post this in the section just to force the issue. I consider this a stalled process....Morbas (talk) 21:37, 18 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The data you present is slanted to make a point. There is still no consensus on the Talk:Extinction event discussion page to include your paragraph.  Please do not play "edit-wars" to get your own way; rather, establish consensus.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:14, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The data is 417M years. It is you that play "edit-wars" by the first deletion (without due respect) and not looking at the discussion...one posted almost 30 days in advance. I have provide discussion paragraghs that you have not bothered to engage in. I have posted the paragraph in the original research issue section, and one consesus supports having the chart in the section as well, and indicates a fair discussion. Since the issue has not been registered, then your comments for the 'dispute resolver' are what...intimidating tactics, ehh?Morbas (talk) 23:24, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I deleted your template
Nature was an unambiguous misrepresentation of policy. Sorry. Magog the Ogre (talk) 00:39, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

FULLPAGENAMEE
So...explain the extra E to me....I'm not quite understanding yet. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 05:35, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * See m:Help:Magic_words. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  00:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Right, that makes sense. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 06:18, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

New toy
Thanks; I am busy with the WP:TCG and a bit of homework today, but I'll be sure and try it out sometime in the next few days. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 22:12, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Automatic taxoboxes on algae articles
I'm going to remove some of the automatic taxoboxes you added to algae articles. The underlying articles have some issues that need edited, but, in addition, you changed the wikipedia-used higher level taxonomy on the green algae, and, in the coralline red algae, you removed the subfamilies. Also, the taxonomies are said to come from algaebase, but don't agree with algaebase. I will fix them when I get some time. --Kleopatra (talk) 17:35, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, go ahead. Could you clarify whether the problem is with the automatic taxoboxes, or with the taxonomy that they contain?  Cheers, Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The big problem is they were added without consensus or discussion with algae editors. Can you just start a discussion at wikiproject algae, or somewhere else, like on the article talk page, or link to the discussion that was held, before you do the algae boxes? You also didn't use the existing higher level taxonomies for other algae automatic taxoboxes, maybe only one. Can you use the existing taxonomies if you don't discuss with the community first? --Kleopatra (talk) 18:02, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It hadn't been my intention to modify what was displayed; sorry that this has happened. I don't recall doing any more than a couple of algal articles; perhaps you could include a couple of links so that I can understand what has happened? Cheers, Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:10, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

For algae articles, if you make more automatic taxoboxes, can you use the existing taxonomy for each taxon? For example, start at the division and get its taxonomy from the division page and move down, rather than using the taxonomy listed no the genus page.

In addition, you had a bot that created articles on algae that were deleted. Could you undelete some of those into my user space for me to edit and move into article space? I could make lists, and you could post all of the text from the bot into my user space, or into WikiProject Algae user space?

--Kleopatra (talk) 17:32, 4 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking this on: yes, I'd be happy to move things over, a few at a time. And the parent of each taxonomic unit is extracted from the taxobox displayed on the article's page – the genus's taxobox is only used to determine its immediate parent.  Hope that makes sense. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:49, 4 November 2010 (UTC)


 * NB I've moved a couple across; you can see them at Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:WikiProject Algae/Articles/. Once the pages have been updated / corrected / approved, they can just be moved back into article space. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:54, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that works well. I'll do these, then post lists when I get groups I can create all at once (like with same source). See Adamsiella for starters. --Kleopatra (talk) 18:26, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks good; I've made a couple of formatting changes. For future reference it's better to move the pages directly to article space, rather than copying text and deleting the source article. This preserves the article's edit history (and is less work for you and for admins). Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:40, 4 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I see. I'll do that for the future ones.
 * I also need a template that shows the data were originally extracted by a bot, even if I am checking everything as I go. The existing anybot article template was red-linked. --Kleopatra (talk) 19:02, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Where will this template be displayed? Given that the history of the page identifies the bot as the original editor, and the classification is referenced to Algaebase, what do you see the template as accomplishing? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:29, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I suppose that is sufficient. I was still thinking of the edit history from creating the article, rather than the move edit history which includes the bot edits. --Kleopatra (talk) 05:38, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Splendid stuff. Glad that works for you.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  05:52, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

resolved

Template barnstar

 * Bless you. Thanks! (-: Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:09, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Endref
Template:Endref has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Auntof6 (talk) 04:37, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Now moved to User:Smith609/Endref. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  05:13, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

resolved

Template guidance
Hello, I understand you are busy actually creating templates but if you find the time...

I made my first graphic timeline using your Template:Graphical timeline although my usage may not be exactly what it was built for. This timeline is intended for a high traffic, information dense article describing multiple overlapping events and I would appreciate any suggestions for improving it's accuracy, functionality and appearance.

For now it is in my sandbox at User:Veriss1/sandbox for comments but I plan to move it the actual article, 2010 Copiapó mining accident, tomorrow. I look forward to your comments. Cheers, Veriss (talk) 07:49, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi, looks very smart indeed! I'm glad that you found the template useful.  I think that you've done a great job, and I'm afraid I can't really think of any way to improve on what you've done.  Best, Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:10, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to look at the chart to make sure it was satisfactory. Is there a way to suppress the negative signs on the vertical axis if I had the chart show the days from 00 to -90 (zero at the top)? I haven't thought that approach all the way through yet and it may be a bit tricky. My thinking is that may help the reader by making it in chronological order from the top down and would make it visually more compatible with the ToC it is displayed next to. Thanks again, Veriss (talk) 20:24, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * This'd be possible and potentially quite straightforward; if I had more time I could experiment and find a way but I'm afraid I won't be able to help you out there at the moment. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:47, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Additionally, another editor made critical comments about our use of the Template:Graphical timeline on the article's talk page concerning CSS rendering and accessibility complete with an overwhelming illustration of his own. Unhelpfully, he failed to offer suggestions. I don't have the technical expertise to evaluate his criticisms or determine alternative courses and I don't think the active co-editors for that article do either. Hopefully you can contribute some insight. Kind regards, Veriss (talk) 00:46, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Can't really comment here. Perhaps the yukky &lt;timeline&gt; template or an image would be adequate, since the data are unlikely to need modification now?  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:47, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:SCHOLAR bug
Hi Martin! I just found this tool - it's great! However, I tried it on my own papers (e.g. "E - A Brainiac Theorem Prover"), and it seems to break if Google Scholar has a link to a PDF or PS file in the right half of the top line of the record. See below for what happens: Bye, --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:54, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Lithothallus - are you sure?
Can you check out the Lithothallus article you created and verify its accuracy? The reference in the article is not about algae, and the genus is not listed anywhere on the web, or in my limited access to JSTOR, just in the en.wiki article. Maybe I'm missing something, or the spelling is wrong? Thanks. --Kleopatra (talk) 06:01, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


 * OK. --Kleopatra (talk) 06:17, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks
Martin, thank you for your work on these templates! ErikHaugen (talk) 07:06, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Alexander McQueen (brand)
Can you please tell me how to convert the bare urls on Alexander McQueen (brand) without having to through them one by one?Reqluce (talk) 22:48, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox colors
With this edit, it seems the section headings (eg. Species or Binomial name) have a white background again. thanks, ErikHaugen (talk) 21:00, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Mbarbaram
Hi Smith609...I am the grandson of Albie Bennett who was the last speaker of the Mbarbaram people. I would love to know where you got the information from? I have alot more information to contribute to this entry. Would love to get in contact with you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.158.31.18 (talk) 11:11, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm not quite sure what information you are talking about? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  12:43, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Citation bot fails to run on some articles e.g. Ecology, Bird
Recently (last few days) I've noticed that he citation bot fails to run against certain pages, examples are Ecology and Bird. The call appears to time out, though it works fine on the vast majority of pages. Any ideas? Thanks Rjwilmsi  19:18, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

cite doi
Sorry to bother you, but unless I'm mistaken and I've been very unlucky with the DOIs I've been referencing, the cite doi template isn't working properly, because the citation bot is not managing to complete the citation. I've tried a range of journals, both old and recent and checking Special:Contributions/Citation_bot_2 it looks as if only cite pmids are being filled in. (Typical that these things happen when you go away for a few days!). Thanks in advance. SmartSE (talk) 00:21, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox crash
The automatic taxobox has crashed on a number of major articles. I have started adding it back manually, and I posted at AN/I to ask for help. No matter where I post at automatic taxobox discussions it seems to be the wrong place, so maybe others who are doing these automatic taxoboxes are watching your talk page and will see this and figure out how to fix this quickly! --Kleopatra (talk) 08:02, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * They seem to be fully broken right now. ErikHaugen (talk) 08:24, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Martin, this is pretty serious. The taxoboxes aren't just broken, the entire page has issues: the reflist template is broken, etc, etc. On all ~700-odd pages that use it. In the future, would you please try to test a few pages after making changes to these templates and at least be prepared to roll back your changes within a few minutes if you completely break them? Thanks, ErikHaugen (talk) 08:57, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

RefTool
Hello Smith609,

I'm trying to get User:Smith609/RefTool to work for me but no luck. I'm using Modern skin and have purged the cache. I see the Convert refs button but when I try to use it, I just get a blank page at the toolserver. What am I doing wrong? Cheers, ⋙–Berean–Hunter—►  ((⊕)) 23:01, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Range map
Template:Range map has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Mhiji (talk) 01:01, 14 December 2010 (UTC) resolved

Talk page comments
Please don't unnecessarily amend other people's talk page comments, as you did. It means wading through trivial changes to see what the real change is (and I'm still at a loss to work out what your real change was in this case). Most (if not all) of your changes seem to be replacing "-" (hyphen) with "–" (en-dash) - note that since WP:HYPHEN and WP:DASH are part of WP:MOS, they apply to articles, not talk pages, for which WP:TPG is the general rule. Some of these hyphens were in signatures: WP:TPO permits certain talk page edits, including signature amendment "If a signature violates the guidelines for signatures, or is an attempt to fake a signature", which don't apply here. Thanks. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC) resolved

Odontogriphus
Hi, could you have a look at Odontogriphus? I believe there is some issue with your change to the "automatic taxobox". If you look at the references, there are loads of errors, however this is being caused by another template exceeding some expansion limits. If you revert this back to taxobox, the error goes away. WP is very quirky with its limits, which can cause lots of troubles. I also posted a query at WP:VPT. 134.253.26.10 (talk) 17:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you point me to a specific error in the references? I don't notice any. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:06, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It's now been fixed by reverting back to "taxobox" from "automatic taxobox". See the WP:VPT thread.  Thank you! 134.253.26.10 (talk) 17:22, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox problem
Hi, do you know what is the matter with Template:Taxonomy/Possible stem-group mollusca (currently displaying " Taxonomy not available for Template loop detected: Template:Don't edit this line; please create it (or edit manually) ")? This might also be related to the problems with Odontogriphus, which I fixed by removing the automatic taxobox. Ucucha 18:17, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I only now see you've already been pointed to this problem. Note that a similar error appears at Template:Taxonomy/Spiralia. Ucucha 18:21, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * See this resolution for Spiralia. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:59, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Ucucha 19:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Any idea why we have so many taxonomy templates in Category:Template loop warnings? Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 05:51, 9 December 2010 (UTC) resolved

Nomination for deletion of Template:)(
Template:)( has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 05:21, 9 December 2010 (UTC) resolved

Please check when someone points out a problem
This is frustrating to have to recheck when someone has already pointed out the problem. Please correct the problem articles in the category, such as Mammal. A high traffic article with a fixed taxobox to correct, once again, a template problem

Any time you change code in these automatic taxoboxes and someone points out a problem, please just look at the articles. --Kleopatra (talk) 18:08, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It sounds like I've missed something. Which problem are you referring to?  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:12, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem at Mammal, not Mamma, the revision before I removed the automatic taxobox. --Kleopatra (talk) 18:14, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you able to recommend a way that I could spot these errors? The only way that I can see is by checking every page in Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Automatic taxobox after every edit.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:16, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I spot the errors by going to the article page. That's how I've spotted every error. You don't even look at articles after you've edited the templates? I went to Category:Template loop warnings, after the post about the problem, and I clicked on the article links in that page and saw the big red text in the article taxoboxes. --Kleopatra (talk) 18:19, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I look at articles. But I'm sure that you can understand that it is impossible to look at every article on Wikipedia after every edit.  As I'm sure you know, it takes a while for categories to update; I went through the majority of pages in the category this morning and cleared them.  Rather than assume the worst of other editors, why not make a positive contribution and help to fix the errors that you find, instead? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:23, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You make a lot of errors in major articles, and you don't appear to be fixing them in a timely fashion. I don't know how to fix the templates errors. I've pointed this out many times. I've also pointed out problems with templates that have been created and they've been ignored.
 * Why not make the time to check what you do? You make so many edits to the automatic taxobox template, changing multiple articles all over wikipedia, and it's not possible for someone to know what to fix in the multiple edits you've made. Maybe if it was possible to easily correct your mistaskes you would have caught the error in the first place? Why not take some time and make fewer edits and beta test your edits before you go live with them?
 * I'm not being patronizing, by the way, I'm incredibly annoyed.
 * I'll just post and get help through the community boards next time. --Kleopatra (talk) 18:27, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * "why not make a positive contribution and help to fix the errors that you find" – Kleopatra does do this:       and countless others. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 19:12, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry for not checking this before I posted. Thanks, Kleopatra, for all that you're doing, and for reporting bugs.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

resolved

Today's FAs and automatic taxoboxes
I posted a comment at WP:TFA and WP:FA about this problem. --Kleopatra (talk) resolved

Bot error
This edit made no sense whatsoever. Renata (talk) 01:58, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking further, it seems all of its changes today should be reverted. Renata (talk) 02:03, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Eek. I'm not around today but have had time to roll back the bot code to r223, the last working version; and to pause the automated bot account (by way of a temporary block that I'll undo when fixed).  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  08:33, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

resolved

Nectocaris paid off
Hi, Martin. I've just seen Octopus origins, which says Caron and you have found about 90 new specimens and these indicate that Nectocaris is near the base of the cephalopod family tree – and you're credited as the lead author in the article in Nature. Well done! --Philcha (talk) 10:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Not that anyone really believes it... (-:
 * Next target... our old friend Odontogriphus! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:39, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Out of the frying pan into the fire, since Odontogriphus is involved with the Halwaxiid controversy, especially Wiwaxia. --Philcha (talk) 10:22, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Would we also want to include Bowengriphus, too?--Mr Fink (talk) 13:35, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

resolved

Issue with Template:Ma
A report at Talk:Evolutionary history of life has raised an issue concerning how ma appears in the printable version of an article. The problem is that an ugly link to toolserver.org appears after each of the many occurrences of ma. I thought it best to ask about this at WP:VPT which you might want to see. Thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 03:18, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Update: This edit by Gadget850 has resolved the issue. Johnuniq (talk) 07:30, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

resolved

Is this OK?
Is this OK? -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 16:19, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Great! Thank you! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:47, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

resolved

Template:Taxobox/core
Howdy. I suspect this edit recent edit to Template:Taxobox/core isn't working as intended. Firstly Category:Taxoboxes with an invalid color is empty, despite the amusing parameter being passed from Buxus sempervirens for example. Secondly the missing page Template:Test_for_hashrgb(211,211,164) is being transcluded in nearly 120,000 articles – that is to say that after parsing, the Taxobox template results in the text. Definately a brace too many (or few) in there somewhere. Other colours show up also – see the table below. +---+--+--+ +---+--+--+ +---+--+--+
 * trl_namespace | trl_title                               | count(*) |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(211,211,164)           |   118929 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(144,238,144)           |    41350 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(173,216,230)           |     7414 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlightgrey                  |      857 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(173,238,63)            |      471 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashviolet                     |      425 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlightgreen                 |      369 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(211,211,211)           |      333 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(238,130,238)           |      274 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(240,230,140)           |      215 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(243,224,224)           |      163 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashkhaki                      |      125 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(255,200,160)           |       90 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(230,230,250)           |       86 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlightblue                  |       79 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashdarkgrey                   |       45 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(250,240,230)           |       42 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashgreenyellow                |       19 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashpink                       |       14 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashgreen                      |        4 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlimegreen                  |        3 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashtransparent                |        3 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashyellow                     |        3 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlightgray                  |        2 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashrgb(224,_208,_176)         |        2 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashblue                       |        2 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlite_red                   |        2 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashbright_pink                |        2 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashorange                     |        2 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashred                        |        2 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlavender                   |        2 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashwhite                      |        2 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashBright_green               |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashDarkgrey                   |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlightgreen_or_a_lime_yellow |       1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashTan                        |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashViolet                     |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashneon_purple                |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashdarkgray                   |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashpale                       |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashscarlet                    |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashpangit_ka                  |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashviolet_(purple,blue)       |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlight_gray                 |        1 |
 * 10 | Test_for_hashlight_grey                 |        1 |
 * This was the intended behaviour; I only had to catch templates beginning with a hash sign (see Template talk:Taxobox). Given that no more are showing up, I'll assume that I've got all of them, and that the check is now redundant; I'll remove it. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:00, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Ta. Is it of any use for me to list the pages using odd colours for you while I've got the information to hand? – TB (talk) 22:18, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * A list of such pages in mainspace couldn't hurt, if it's easily generated. Thanks! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:26, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Bright_green &rarr; Bacillus_anthracis
 * Darkgrey &rarr; Clostridium_perfringens
 * Tan &rarr; Toxolophosaurus
 * Violet &rarr; Apple_chlorotic_leafspot_virus
 * blue &rarr; Transmissible_gastroenteritis_coronavirus – Passionfruit_woodiness_virus
 * bright_pink &rarr; Giardia – Mycobacterium_vaccae
 * darkgray &rarr; Thermoproteaceae
 * green &rarr; Measles – Mud_turtle – Enterococcus_faecium – Commelina_mosaic_virus
 * lavender &rarr; Vampyrellidae – Retaria
 * light_gray &rarr; Yersinia_pestis
 * light_grey &rarr; Haemophilus_influenzae
 * lightgray &rarr; Dehalococcoides – Corynebacterium_granulosum
 * lightgreen_or_a_lime_yellow &rarr; Buxus_sempervirens
 * limegreen &rarr; Life – Neomura – Organism
 * lite_red &rarr; Mumps_virus – Rubulavirus
 * neon_purple &rarr; Vibrio_cholerae
 * orange &rarr; Candida_dubliniensis – Clostridium_tetani
 * pale &rarr; Balsam_poplar
 * pangit_ka &rarr; Pseudomonas_aeruginosa
 * red &rarr; Lassa_fever – Bordetella_parapertussis
 * rgb(224 – _208 – _176) &rarr; Codonosigidae – Eukaryote
 * scarlet &rarr; Nocardia
 * transparent &rarr; Paramecia – Template:Taxobox/sandbox – Marseillevirus
 * violet_(purple – blue) &rarr; Cucumber_mosaic_virus
 * white &rarr; Clostridium_botulinum – Hammerhead_ribozyme
 * yellow &rarr; Zucchini_yellow_mosaic_virus – Tradescantia_mosaic_virus – Clover_yellow_vein_virus

– TB (talk) 22:31, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * resolved Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  23:41, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Bot transcluding userspace into articlespace
The bot is transcluding, indirectly, User:Taxobot/children/template into article space. There should be no links from article space to user space. Should be an easy fix if you fix the parent template. Gigs (talk) 20:46, 24 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sure that the bot's not doing this... I'll stop it at once if you can point me to an example! I've done a couple of test transclusions manually, which will be resolved as soon as a bot request is passed.  Feel free to hurry that process along if you wish. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:08, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

resolved

Antifeminism
Hi, I was interested in working on the article Antifeminism. However, it's been blocked from editing. The notice says that the block was supposed to expire on September 5, 2010. Do you know if it might be unblocked any time soon? Thanks. --Aronoel (talk) 19:09, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * resolved

Automatic taxobox Broken! again on major articles including FAs
Please correct the current errors in the automatic taxobox. It is not ready to be rolled out. There are over 100 articles in the category of broken taxobox templates right now. There are major articles, such as Bird, a beautiful FA, that has a big red error message in its taxobox.

And don't get angry at me for pointing this out. I'm tired of seeing it, correcting the errors, and pointing them out. I can't correct these now because I don't have my equipment. --Kleopatra (talk) 05:37, 28 January 2011 (UTC) resolved

AN/I
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. It's not really about you, but the taxoboxes. --Kleopatra (talk) 05:59, 28 January 2011 (UTC) resolved

Sponge spicule
Dear Smith609, In April 2010 you were editing the article Sponge spicule, when a letter "S" appeared at the end of the section Sponge spicule. I wondered if you had another sentence to add which was lost during editing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.28.201.43 (talk) 16:57, 11 January 2011 (UTC) resolved

Taxobot
Why is Taxobot duplicating authority information which is already present (e.g. )? This means that in many cases unlinked authorities are replacing linked ones in the taxobox - clearly not an improvement. mgiganteus1 (talk) 05:31, 12 January 2011 (UTC) resolved

Tb

 * And another --- c y m r u . l a s s  (talk me, stalk me) 03:23, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Nomination for deletion of Template:Redundant taxobox
Template:Redundant taxobox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:42, 15 January 2011 (UTC) resolved

Nomination for deletion of Template:Reflist/editprotected
Template:Reflist/editprotected has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. — This, that, and the other (talk) 07:05, 15 January 2011 (UTC) resolved

Form classification
Can you check the references for Form classification? I think you may have meant the two Bengtson refs to be the same, but I'm not sure. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC) ✅ - thanks for the heads up. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Reference McCall (2006)
I'm working on a series of articles about the Ediacarian fauna for the German Wikipedia. For some fossils it's really hard to find appropriate literature. I saw that you used McCalls publication "The Vendian (Ediacaran) in the geological record: Enigmas in geology's prelude to the Cambrian explosion" (Earth-Science Reviews 77: 1-229) as a reference. Do you still have access to this article? Best wishes --Sven Jähnichen (talk) 15:32, 7 February 2011 (UTC) resolved

Period span for Pragian
The following is produced by <tt> </tt>:  (I see " 411.2 million years ago million years ago to 407 ± 2.8 million years ago"). The duplication of "million years ago" doesn't occur for other periods I've tried (even those that have alternatives in the code), nor if you use the alternative <tt> </tt> which produces different wrong output:. I looked at the template code and tried moving a comment, in the vain hope that that might help. Over to you! Peter coxhead (talk) 16:11, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Managed to fix both errors: "praghian" wasn't in ; "pragian" wasn't in. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Glad you got it fixed! Thanks, Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The error checking in  isn't really strong enough; neither of the errors generated an error message (the bug with "Pragian" had been present in Devonian for some time). Something for you to think about some time! The whole set of templates is very good though; I've only just realized how useful they are. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Nomination for deletion of Template:T^32
Template:T^32 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. — This, that, and the other (talk) 07:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC) resolved

He was once a OK scientist
This is by someone we had some heated discussed with. Google also looks interesting. --Philcha (talk) 19:13, 21 January 2011 (UTC) resolved

Template:Long fossil range malfunctioning
Seems Template:Long fossil range has problems and was not rendering right resulting in a mess on including pages. I've removed it pending repairs (or whatever) from: Check it out and revert my changes when fixed. Vsmith (talk) 02:40, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Canadian Shield
 * Cyclomedusa
 * Amoebozoa
 * Archaeplastida
 * Ediacaria
 * Red algae
 * Looks okay at the moment? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  00:06, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

User:Taxobot
Is this page on your watchlist? I've never seen a response to any of the bugs I've posted there. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 20:21, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah! It wasn't. I'll take a look at those over the weekend, if I get the chance! You're free to poke around in the source code and suggest changes if that's easier. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:25, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Heh, I knew there was something fishy about it all...glad you're watching it now-- it seemed out of character for you to just ignore bug reports like that! I'm fairly busy with coursework, so aside from my templating that I do in order to escape coding temporarily, don't expect me to do too much between now and the end of this semester. But thanks for sharing the link-- that'll help for sure. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 22:36, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

resolved

Template:US patent
Hi, I reverted your recent update to that template because it seemed to be going to a whole different website than it was supposed to. I'm not sure how the cite patent template works, so if you could figure this out and re-update it when you have time, thank you! / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:54, 27 November 2010 (UTC) resolved

Merry Christmas
Thanks for all you've done for WP:TOL! Have a blessed and safe Christmas! Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 17:28, 24 December 2010 (UTC) resolved

Merry Christmas and Happy 2011
I see that you'll be off WP over Xmas. Have a good one! --Philcha (talk) 22:56, 24 December 2010 (UTC) resolved

Logic for redirection of cite pmid to cite doi: lack of PMID in the latter
When the bot redirects a cite pmid subpage to the corresponding cite doi subpage, as in Template:Cite pmid/17964350, could the bot also ensure that the PMID is set in the target DOI subpage? In this example I added it myself. Thanks Rjwilmsi  18:06, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅. Sorry it took me so long to get around to this! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  23:19, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Italic title
Hi Smith609, noticed you're doing some updating of the auto taxobox parameters. You've also been removing the italic title code from many pages, is there a reason for this? By removing the code and the 'name' parameter it seems to be causing taxa names to be un-italicized in the article title completely. MMartyniuk (talk) 00:06, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's odd. Can you point me to a case where the article title is not italicized correctly by Template:Automatic taxobox, so that I can look into it?  Thanks, Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  00:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Extinction event stuff
Hi, I've removed a section titled "Physical geologic driver" as mostly WP:OR and the creator (user:Morbas) has objected. He has started an rfc on talk:Extinction event. I noted that you had discussed this back in Sep-Oct, but Morbas deleted part of that w/out archiving. So, would you care to take a look again and perchance help clarify the situation (it'll be a blast:). Vsmith (talk) 15:23, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Vsmith, glad to support you, but got so frustrated with the discussion last time that I don't think I can bear to put the page back on my Watchlist. Drop me a line here whenever you'd like some input.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:39, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks and I understand the frustration bit. Vsmith (talk) 22:19, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Inconsistency
We've got an inconsistency in the formatting for the parameters..."display parent" and display children" have no underscore, yet all the other parameters for the taxobox have an underscore. I think it's probably best we keep the underscore so as not to confuse editors. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 20:58, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Other parameters can now be spaced or underscored. (I find it much quicker to type without the underscore, an awkward little key to reach on my keyboard).  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:32, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Automatic taxobox parameters
Technical question: Can a space be included in the name of a parameter and still have the parameter work? I've never seen this done in any wiki-template before, and so question whether it is technically possible. There are some characters that I know are disallowed in parameter names, and I've always understood that spaces were among them. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:00, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's working at the moment. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  23:05, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Automatic taxobox template and images
Hello Smith609. I'm sure you have the answer to this: How do we add an image into an automatic taxobox? I'd like to add an image to the Sphenothallus article you started, but I'm perplexed by the template. Thanks! Mark Wilson44691 (talk) 01:51, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Mark, the automatic taxobox works in the same way as the old taxobox: just add filename.jpg. The Sphenothallus one looks a bit menacing because its fossil range template is so busy; just add the parameter before (or after) the authority line and you'll do well.  Thanks in advance for the illustration!  Best, Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  02:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * You're very quick, Martin. Thanks!  I hope to take the image tomorrow.  Cheers, Mark Wilson44691 (talk) 02:12, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Taxobot 7
I'm sure you saw it, but you are now approved. Thanks for the thoughtful response, and all the hard work. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 02:53, 3 January 2011 (UTC) resolved

'Vascular tissue' and Horneophyton
In the Horneophyton article, you wrote "There was a thin central strand of vascular tissue, but this was not reinforced with spiral and reticulate thickenings" and "With vascular tissue but ...". On the other hand, based on Crane, Herendeen, & Friis (2004), I've written in the Polysporangiophyte article "[Horneophyton] did not have true vascular tissues". The difference may be based on different usages in the sources, but I wonder if we can agree on a consistent usage in paleobotanical articles? I'd like the articles leading off from Polysporangiophyte to have some consistency. "Vascular tissue" could be used only when there is clear evidence of xylem/tracheids (consistent with the Vascular tissue and Tracheid articles). On this basis, Horneophyton has "conducting tissue" but not vascular tissue; hence the placement in the cladogam in Crane et al. outside tracheophytes. What do you think? Peter coxhead (talk) 20:57, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Boy, it seems like a long time since I wrote that... "Conducting tissue" sounds like a good way to go, but without trawling the literature I couldn't be sure. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  21:02, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Template:Child taxa doc question
Does Taxobot follow the bots options because if it did then Template:Child taxa doc could be moved back to Template:Child taxa/doc. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:02, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What would this move accomplish? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:19, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It would just mean that the actual docs are in the expected location. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, do you need to make a Template:T^14? If you look at the WhatLinksHere, there are quite a few transclusions. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:14, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the spot. ✅. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:19, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Um....
Hi...Any idea why adding the following code to Taxobox caused every single taxobox on Wikipedia to show up in Category:Articles employing both divisio and unranked_divisio? <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 21:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You forgot the pipes - correct code as follows:


 * Without the pipes, the software interprets  as "", not "".
 * Martin  (Smith609 – Talk) 

resolved

Deprecated taxa
Hi, don't forget the deprecated taxon template should be subst'd, otherwise it doesn't work correctly. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 22:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, that explains it. I couldn't see any documentation telling me why it was looking so odd... Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Ichnogenera stubs
You can leave those ichnogenera stubs if you'd like or you can delete 'em. If you delete them, though, expect them to stay gone permanently. We've had ten years for someone to come through and make them but apparently I'm the only one willing to put the work in on this sort of thing. Copy-pasting that basic stub outline would have saved me a lot of time when I started building them up. Creating every article individually is a hugely tedious process, and if I had to go through that ordeal it just wouldn't be worth the bother. I would have loved to have developed them into full articles, but complications arose and I'm done fighting you guys about them. If you leave the articles on valid taxa intact I'll get around to sprucing them up in a couple weeks when I'm not still fuming about the swarms of people trying to delete them. If you're not willing to wait and would prefer to delete them immediately, that's fine, but I'm not gonna revive 'em. Then we can wait another ten years and see then if someone's cared enough to expand Wikipedia's trace fossil coverage. Abyssal (talk) 02:28, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see any need to move them, as far as I can tell you've already redirected the junior syns and such. If you want to, go ahead, but I think it would just be a waste of time. Abyssal (talk) 14:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * To avoid deletion, I suggest you give each stub 1-2 good and relevant citations. For example I created Dead Clade Walking with 1 citation, and it wasn't even inline. Now it has 3 inline citations. [Another article initially had 1 sentence and no citations, but 5 months I gave it citations from 3 sources, added decent text, and got it to DYK.
 * If your concerned about the deletion police (Martin is not one, but I know enough), develop the article in one of your sub-pages until you've added 1-2 inline citations, then move it to an artcile. --Philcha (talk) 13:27, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Endnote.js for Gadget
I love that endnote.js script of yours. Have you ever thought about making a Gadget proposal? --bender235 (talk) 10:55, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Great idea - thanks, and thank you for the feedback. Gadget/proposals. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:03, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * BTW: I could use some help here, explaining people the advantage of having microformat producing citation templates. Your comment is appreciated. --bender235 (talk) 16:35, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Kim's proposal
Please have a look at Template talk:Taxobox, as you're one of the people who it will affect the most. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 22:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC) resolved

Siegenian
Do you happen to remember where you got the dates from for the article Siegenian which you created? I'm assuming that it wasn't from the reference, which seems to be only to support "widely used". (Unfortunately this isn't a journal I can access electronically through my institution.) I'm trying to expand the coverage of early land plants, and all the Chinese sources use "Seigenian". The only other source I can find gives rather different dates. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Can't find a ref, I'm afraid; the referenced source just places it in the middle of the Lower Devonian. I must have got the numbers from somewhere; I wonder whether I equated it with the Pragian?  It's possible that, given the abandoned nature of the stage, there are no up-to-date radiometric dates available; at least, a cursory glance didn't lead me across any. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:15, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think you did equate it with the Pragian, which is reasonable because it can be sourced to the GeoWhen database . But then the statement "the term overlaps with parts of the internationally recognised Pragian and Emsian epochs" is inconsistent. If there isn't a source for this latter statement, it should probably be removed. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Ichnos
Hey, thanks! I'll extend my thanks to you as well for doing such a fine job with all this code! That sort of stuff will look great on your resumé!

I had really hoped to handle each taxobox individually and add things like authority, synonyms, and species, but right now getting them all cleaned up is the priority. And just thought I'd let you know-- the stegosaurian ichnotaxon you invented was rather close. I ended up finding the parent, and you weren't too far off.

Have a great day! <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 15:48, 8 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I'm glad to be done with that...and I don't think I'll be adding synonyms/etc to them. Not soon, anyway. I'll let Abyssal worry about the rest of the cleanup, since he did introduce them in the first place.


 * Looks like the next line of work is going to be deciding what to do about the heirarchy misplacement of "unranked familia". I don't want to be the one to close that RfC, since there was such a big deal over it all. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 01:43, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * One more advantage of the automatic taxobox, not having to worry about such issues... think it's one I'll be staying well clear of, myself! You have my respect for keeping a cool head over the whole thing. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Heh, it would seem several disagree about what a "cool head" is, at least at the ANI. But thanks, anyway, and I definitely don't blame you for staying out of it, lol. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN  (talk • contribs) 16:34, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

New geological period template
With some trepidation (templates are a new-ish area for me), I've created the template Period span1 (not a very imaginative name), which produces simpler output than your Period span, and may thus sometimes be more useful in articles where the details of the time span for a geological period are of less importance. If you have time, you might like to check that I've set up the documentation, etc. correctly. You may or may not wish to add this to the set of templates you list at Period data. Thanks again for all the work you did creating the infrastructure for these templates. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Nice work! I've moved it to the slightly more intuitive period span/brief; I hope you don't mind.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * No, that's a good name, as it promotes the relationship with the fuller template. I've updated the documentation. Thinking about it more, Period span/brief should really not be used to show decimal places, because this level of accuracy without the errors which Period span outputs is misleading (as a former statistician I've sensitive about spurious accuracy!). I've put a note in the documentation about this, but I wonder if the template should be altered to over-ride positive rounding values. Or maybe this is too controlling. What do you think? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably worth keeping in case users ever want to use e.g., where the error margin is smaller than a decimal place. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Sorry
I didn't know that wasn't vandalism. Aallasdfa67usgd60 (talk) 00:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Not to worry! No damage done (-: Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  01:37, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Template:Citation/patent
Please respond over there. resolved

Template talk:Citation
You might be to check this out. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC) resolved

Dates/Periods at Pleistocene/Pliocene boundary
There were some small errors/omissions in Next period, which I 'corrected' using. However, this source puts the Gelasian in the Pliocene, whereas Pleistocene and Pliocene put it in the Pleistocene. This leads to inconsistencies in the ordering I put in and the dates. I'm not a geologist – what is correct?? Peter coxhead (talk) 18:17, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
 * This is the canonical source. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:46, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Strange that the GeoWhen page at is wrong (I've e-mailed the contact given). I've been running (semi)automated checks on the 'period' templates against the data in GeoWhen. With a change for the Gelassian, I can now confirm that all named periods in the GeoWhen timeline agree in dates with the templates, with one exception: the start of the Late Cambrian/Piabian is given as 501 in GeoWhen but 499 in the templates, which for this date agree with the ISChart2009. But I notice that when GeoWhen and the ISChart2009 otherwise differ (e.g. the start of the Holocene) the templates follow GeoWhen. I shan't meddle with dates; it was the ordering of the periods which I was mainly checking. The principal problem was, I think, a duplicated block in Next period, which I've commented out but not removed. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see that the boundaries of the Pleistocene/Pliocene were changed in 2009 . A really good argument for using the templates and not putting actual numbers in articles! Peter coxhead (talk) 08:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Category:Immediate children/preload
May I ask what this is/ what it's used for, why it is in category space as opposed to another namespace, and why it should be exempt from the WP:CSD speedy deletion criteria for empty categories? Thanks. VegaDark (talk) 05:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * As the title suggests, it's a preload used so that non-existent categories display useful information. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That didn't exactly answer my question. The page you link to is a disambiguation page, and none of the 3 links there adequately describe anything that that page could possibly be. What I was hoping for was an example of a series of actions someone would take, and a summary of the results of those actions without that page existing vs. what would happen now that you created it - i.e. what does this page actually do. I'm concerned because it's empty & it's categorized in red-linked categories, which are both no-nos for the category space except for particularly rare cases, and I'm not convinced that this is one of those rare cases. Additionally it's completely obscure what use this page might actually bring to the encyclopedia, and that should be apparent when someone stumbles upon a page like this. VegaDark (talk) 22:58, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems you are ignoring me now that I've seen you have edited plenty since my last message. You haven't explained why it is necessary for non-existent categories to display something other than the default Wikipedia message when someone clicks on a redlink. Perhaps you will be more forthcoming if I bring this to CfD. VegaDark (talk) 04:21, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a tool to help editors who create taxonomy templates, so that they can easily view children of taxa they create before a bot creates a more user-friendly interface. It's employed by Template:Taxonomy key.  Please leave it alone.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  04:35, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * And I've found these categories helpful in maintaining taxonomy templates. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 04:44, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Could this be accomplished with an external tool (or gadget?) It seems unconventional at best to be utilizing a category for this purpose, and I'm uncertain if the way this is being used would fly with the wider community. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now, but I'm not comfortable about retaining a purposely empty category that is purposely categorized in redlinks for any reason. VegaDark (talk) 04:48, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. If you can think of a more elegant way to do it, we'd love to hear it! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  05:20, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

resolved

Citation bot down?
Citation bot appears to be down? Is this expected? Thanks Rjwilmsi  13:10, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hm. You can try replacing the string DOI_bot with citation-bot in the URL to use the last stable version, which is working okay, until I get this fixed.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:04, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

& resolved

Bot not leaving edit summaries
Hi Smith609. I noticed an edit today by User:Citation bot 1 that didn't use an edit summary. I looked at the history and at least over the last 3500 edits, no summaries have been used with the bot edits. There seems to be a problem somewhere. Thanks for your attention.  Jim Miller  See me 13:59, 15 March 2011 (UTC) resolved in r275. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Taxobox's List sub-tempates
Please could you cast your eye over Template talk:Taxobox. Thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:29, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * resolved

Template:Plants graphical timeline
I was trying to remove two disambiguation links out of "Template:Plants graphical timeline". It was not so difficult to find the solutions for Wenlock and Pridoli, but correcting the template proofed a differend story. Summerized were all my attemps disasters, so at the end I did nothing (always stay on the safe side!). Could you, as builder of the template, be so kind to solve this issue? Night of the Big Wind <sub style="color:maroon;">talk  18:53, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * resolved Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:34, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Citation documentation
I just discovered two templates that you created— Citation parameter legend and AuthorMask doc. I recently created and have been implementing Citation Style documentation which would replace those templates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Good luck with that!

- Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:45, 21 January 2012 (UTC) resolved

"Upgrade"
Regarding your several edits like this one, the conversion from one perfectly acceptable template to another cannot be described as an "upgrade". This is (in my opinion) deceitful propaganda designed to promote a system which has serious shortcomings. Please be more honest in your edit summaries and avoid suggesting that your automatic taxoboxes are somehow the successor to the normal taxobox. --Stemonitis (talk) 18:59, 11 February 2012 (UTC) resolved

Potential template: Cite IUCN
First off, thank you very much for the creation of the Cite doi and related templates! Given that I use the same refs between pages quite often, I find it very handy. However, I was wondering if it would be possible to create a new automated template to replace IUCN and it's numerous relatives. I'm not sure how you could pull from the online IUCN Red List database, but having an auto-generated, centralized location for those citations would be nice for numerous species articles. I also asked the question about a "Cite isbn" template, but I'm not sure if you want to go there given the complexity. Anyway, I just figured I'd ask. –  VisionHolder « talk » 07:34, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * And while I'm at it, would it be possible to create a bot that creates redirects for DOI refs that also have PMIDs, etc., and vice versa? I figure that will spare a lot of redundancy and inconsistency.  (Alternatively, you can hold my hand and teach me how to write a bot.  Lol!  Sorry... too much to drink tonight.) –  VisionHolder  « talk » 09:09, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Bot already doing cite doi/pmid redirects that example. Rjwilmsi  10:55, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Hornwort classification
See. There are now two classes and several orders. The class Anthocerotopsida redirects to the division because the two groups are identical in composition with the exception of a single species of Leiosporoceros --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:46, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this link. Is this the best classification to use in articles now?  Sorry that I went ahead with these based on the WP taxonomy; I remembered you mentioning that we should hold back on boxes for the bryophytes but only realized that this extended beyond the mosses after I'd put a few ATs in place.  No damage done though, I don't think!  Best,  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:10, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's by far the best. I've been waiting for some time to update the hornwort classification on Wikispecies, which I finally did this weekend.  I decided to go ahead with updating the hornwort taxonomy on the en Wikipedia as well, and have done so.  When I first began editing the hornwort page (2004-2005) there wasn't a consensus in the scientific community on the classification of hornworts (at most ranks) and the available classifications differed enormously above the rank of genus.  There has now been a series of collaborative papers, as well as sufficient phylogenetic study and nomenclatorial changes published, that a reasonably stable hornwort classification now exists with strong cladistic support.  The mosses are close, but there will be a lot more work involved in cleaning up our existing taxonomy for those (since there are around 10,000 species of moss as compared to <200 hornwort species).  In contrast, the liverwort classification above the rank of family is likely to continue changing catastrophically over the current decade, since one of the orders has turned out to be grossly polyphyletic (with the type-bearing name in one of the smaller clades). --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:32, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * There's also a concern I have (I discussion on the auto-taxobox talk page) about whether a page like Leiosporoceros would benefit from automation of the taxobox, or whether this is a situation where it shouldn't be used. I'd appreciate comments there. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:34, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Template warming
It has come to my attention this change where you added  inside a hidden div with the note This template has to be "warmed up" before it can be used, for some reason. MediaWiki loads the templates the first time they are used, there's no need to "preload" them. What were you trying to achieve? What was the problem? Platonides (talk) 23:24, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't explain why, but if you don't "warm it up", then the template doesn't produce the correct output when it's used later in the template. You win cookies if you can work out what's going on...  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:07, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Optimizing Template:Automatic_Taxobox
The templates I have been optimizing involve just a few subtemplates, and those took me months to streamline. I would expect the optimization of Template:Automatic_Taxobox to span over a full year. The following are some steps:
 * Collect data about current performance (such as stats showing Automatic_Taxobox generates markup which is 121x times larger than {Taxobox}, etc.).
 * Consider major features to delete/omit (When a person re-organizes a garage, they remove "50%" of the stuff as unneeded).
 * Consider transforming Template:Automatic_Taxobox into a markup "wizard" which simply displays the markup needed to copy and run Template:Taxobox, rather than massively re-calculate the data every single time an article is formatted.

The optimization of an enormous, gargantuan set of templates should be feared as an immense, similarly huge, time-consuming effort. I am currently busy re-working the tiny templates, but I will try to offer some more specific suggestions in the coming months. -Wikid77 12:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me...if you find any that can be adjusted independently, please go ahead and suggest them...there's no good reason I can think of to delay the review of a performance adjustment.
 * I've actually been planning on sitting down over the summer and working on this as well, so perhaps I'll work alongside you and we can bounce ideas around. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 15:24, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Rounding parameter for Period end
Period end doesn't have a rounding parameter, unlike Period start. It would be useful in cases where one wants to write something like " ". It looks as simple as adding  in the right place to the template, but I'll leave that to you... Peter coxhead (talk) 12:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The complicated bit is the rounding of the errors in Template:Period start error; this'll involve some more involved coding so I'll have to think about the best way to do it. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:40, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Changes to geological boundaries
Checking the data currently in Period start against this, if the template is to match the dates here, rather than those currently in the GeoWhen database, the following changes to the offically named time spans would be needed (I've put both the start date and the error, although the latter is missing for most changes): The Cambrian would need quite a bit of sorting, because there are more names as well as different dates. I guess the problem is that there may be other 'synonyms' in the template which start at the same date which might also need changing. If you would (a) like the changes made and (b) don't have time to do it yourself, please let me know and I'll have a go. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:47, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Late Mississippian|Serpukhovian = 328.3 +/- 1.6, currently
 * Late Pennsylvanian|Kasimovian = 307.2 +/- 1, currently
 * Gzhelian = 303.4 +/- 0.9, currently
 * Olenekian = 249.5 +/- ?, currently
 * Middle Triassic|Anisian = 245.9 +/- ?, currently
 * Late Triassic|Carnian = 228.7 +/- ?, currently
 * Kimmeridgian = 155.6 +/- ?, currently
 * Hauterivian = 133.9 +/- ?, currently
 * Turonian = 93.6 +/- 0.8, currently
 * Coniacian = 88.6 +/- ?, currently
 * Middle Paleocene|Selandian = 61.1 +/- ?, currently
 * Serravallian = 13.82 +/- ?, currently
 * Holocene = 0.0117 +/- ?, currently

cite doi having problems
They all seem to say "This citation will be automatically completed in the next few minutes. blah blah blah" ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 05:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
 * See Template talk:Cite doi. LeadSongDog come howl!  07:42, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Template:Cite google book
Hi Martin, I just spotted this template after seeing it used in SA-500D. I just wondered if you knew about this app which completes google books references? I just wondered whether it would be possible to add a  field to the template and then get a bot to feed in to the app and make a template? Thanks SmartSE (talk) 23:29, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * This might be workable, although I think that there might have been problems when I tried this in the past ... is page the only thing that might vary between references (not ISBN, for instance?) Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  03:00, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Something odd...
Citation bot 2 edited Template:Cite doi/10.1038.2Fnature09201. It had been correct as:



But after the edit it became:



... which is emphatically wrong... Evercat (talk) 12:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Gosh. It doesn't look like this is a one-off, either.  I've stopped the bot until I can fix it. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Citation bot
I was going to ask for your assistance re user assistance bots. But having read your amazing advice about using an external editor to fix "unescaped entities", I think I may be able to help you. Please go to this page - it will present you with a typical citation bot edit shown as a diff, all ready for you to make further changes and then save the page. The page contains entities: García and variety—surface but they caused me absolutely no problems! I am very pleased with this technique. The only drawback is that if you try and save straight away, you will always get a "loss of session data" message - but another save will do the trick!

Support for cite doi in ProveIt
I just wanted to follow up on your suggestion to add cite doi; I also replied briefly on the ProveIt talk page. This is filed as issue 105. Since you have some JavaScript background, you may be able to do the fix yourself than submit it on the issue page. I wrote instructions at NewCiteType.

Thanks. Superm401 - Talk 23:44, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!
I just want to leave a note of thank you for your work with the automated taxoboxes. They have really helped make Wikipedia more streamlined and consistent! Petter Bøckman (talk) 07:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Cooksonia image
Just to let you know that I added a retouched version of your fantastic Cooksonia pertoni image to Polysporangiophytes to illustrate the Evolution section. I didn't want the possible gametophyte – too POV in the context of the discussion – and I blurred the background a bit to try to make the plant stand out. When you have time you can produce similar nice pictures of other early land plants!! Peter coxhead (talk) 12:14, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Super, thanks! If you're interested, I've just made a version of this directly through the 3d software that I used.  File:Cooksonia_pertoni_without_thallus.png.  In another lifetime, perhaps more plants will follow! (-: Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:30, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Grrr... If I'd known you were doing it, I would have used your new one; the shadows were rather unrealistic on the earlier ones, they're much better on this one. I'll have to look into the software you use; I can only do rather stylized 2d drawings. (Btw, I've been reading the Bryce article; it's very convincing but adds yet more evidence undermining existing classifications...) Peter coxhead (talk) 23:04, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, it was only your revision that brought it to mind - as it happens I've had cause to use the software for a different project so I've learned a few tricks with lighting. Let me know if there's anything that you think needs tweaking with it.
 * The software, by the way, is Blender: it's got a quirky UI that takes a bit of getting used to, but once you learn the ropes it's remarkably powerful and relatively quick to work.
 * Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  01:45, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I downloaded the Mac OS version, but a quick look convinced me that the UI is indeed quirky. Next winter perhaps... Peter coxhead (talk) 11:52, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Creeping switchover before consensus
I am sure that you are aware that there is no strong consensus yet to switch to your automated taxoboxes. In that context, I think it is wrong to manually change taxoboxes one at a time with the sole intention of changing articles from one taxobox system to another. Changes to articles should be substantive, and should not be made to prove a point. It is clear enough from a few test cases that the automated taxoboxes are theoretically capable of reproducing most of the features of the manual system (and adding some new features). There are, however, serious issues with their implementation, not least their bewildering complexity. Please stop adding automatic taxoboxes to articles beyond the agreed test areas; they are not welcome. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:51, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Citation bot and previewing taxoboxes
Martin-- I noticed the taxobox at Maikhanellidae was added before the taxonomy was completed, causing an error to display on the article (which I just now cleared with a null edit). I noticed in the edit summary it says the edit was assisted by a citation bot-- not sure if that has anything to do with it, but if it does, you might want to verify the bot didn't cause that. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 21:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Automatic taxoboxes for early sporangiophytes
I'd be grateful if you wouldn't automate the taxoboxes for early (Silurian/Devonian) plants yet. As per Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants it's far from clear how to classify extinct plants. I'm currently working on articles in this area (a dozen or so to date), and will return to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants for some comments when I'm a bit clearer on the issues. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:35, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
 * At that time, won't it be easier to modify the taxoboxes if they are all using automatic taxoboxes? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 15:40, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
 * As Erik says, this is a strong argument for automating the taxoboxes – but there's no hurry. Automatic taxoboxes also accommodate unranked clades more satisfactorily.
 * I'll follow the discussion over at plants; meanwhile, I don't suppose that there are any disadvantages to using automatic taxoboxes on new fossil plant articles (of which I plan to create several soon)? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  02:43, 25 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I think there are two different problems with taxoboxes for very early plants. The first is deciding on a suitable hierarchy of ranks/clades to be displayed. Changing these is, of course, much easier if the taxoboxes are automated. The second is deciding on the lowest level rank on which the automated taxobox is based. This is where I think there are real problems, since in many cases the only published formal classifications for extinct plants are not in accord with the latest research. Consider Hicklingia. If it is a 'zosterophyll', then there is a formally published hierarchy: Division Lycopodiophyta, Class Zosterophyllopsida, Order Zosterophyllales, Family Zosterophyllaceae, although this level of detail is not really consistent with Kenrick & Crane and more recent publications, which present the 'zosterophylls' as a strongly paraphyletic group. Actually the sources suggest that Hicklingia only has "affinities" with the 'zosterophylls'. The best that can be said is that it may be a basal 'lycophyte' – but 'lycophyte' in the cladistic sense of Kenrick & Crane (1997), Crane et al. (2004) and Cantino et al. (2007), not the rank-based approach of Cronquist et al. (1996). (The taxobox at Lycopodiophyta is a nice example of the problems of current classification. It cites both Cronquist et al. and Cantino & Donoghue as authorities for Lycopodiophyta, but their concepts are quite different; the system of Cantino et al. (2007) is a pure Phylocode system; its Lycopodiophyta is not a Division but a node-based clade.) Nothing lower than 'lycophyte' has any recent support as a group for Hicklingia. So how can its taxobox be automated? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:44, 25 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not aware of any existing taxobox that cannot be exactly replicated by the "automatic" taxobox template. Here's what it would look like for Hicklingia, for example. Don't the same issues apply whichever template is used? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:21, 25 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Maybe I don't properly understand how the automated taxoboxes pick up the hierarchy. Is it possible to display different hierarchies for extinct & extant taxa, even though they pass through the same node at some point? If we use good sources to place Hicklingia in the lycophytes (under whatever formal or informal clade-based name), then in the context of these problematic fossils, it's useful to show the polysporangiophyte - tracheophyte - lycophyte hierarchy; there aren't currently any lower level ranks anyway, and if Hicklingia isn't a lycophyte it is at least a tracheophyte. But an extant genus, like Isoetes, shouldn't have these clade-based names in the taxobox, although it does belong to the lycophytes, whatever rank is given to them, since there's a perfectly good set of ranks and there's a consensus to avoid too many levels in taxoboxes.
 * The other issue is consensus. I could create a hierarchy of clade-based names for use in automated taxoboxes (indeed I have one in my user space), and then attach extinct genera to this hierarchy. But this does return to an issue which User:Kleopatra raised, however tactlessly, namely that whoever edits the hierarchy used in automated taxoboxes may be imposing a classification on other editors for which there is no consensus. If I create a manual taxobox in an article, then I can be held responsible via the article history and others can react accordingly. But (subject to my possible misunderstanding of how automated taxoboxes work) if I edit the hierarchy they use, ranks/clades/whatever may show up in articles where editors would not agree and where there is no consensus. Or have I misunderstood? Peter coxhead (talk) 16:08, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Better documentation is certainly a pressing need at the automatic taxobox.
 * It sounds like what you want to do is display some taxa (e.g. tracheophytes) in extinct taxoboxes, but not extant taxoboxes. In most cases this can be done by using a parameter, display parents, in each individual taxobox.  This controls how many "minor" ranks (e.g. clades) above the subject taxon are displayed. This approach goes some way to addressing the problem of accountability.  If this doesn't suit, then there's a slightly more complicated solution that I can discuss; I won't go into it now as it might take a bit of explaining and isn't as elegant.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:21, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
 * NB. I've tried to clarify Template:Automatic_taxobox. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:28, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, which is useful. Returning to the main issue, the section I've just added to the article on the polysporangiophytes, Polysporangiophyte, may explain why I wouldn't, for example, put Tarella in the formal rank Zosterophyllopsida, as you have, but would prefer to use informal "unranked-" categories. I incline to the view that, for the present at least, extinct and extant plants need different classifications. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:08, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * So are you saying that you would prefer to refer to "Zosterophyllopsida" as "clade Zosterophyllopsida" rather than "Class Zosterophyllopsida"? This is easily done by modifying Template:Taxonomy/Zosterophyllopsida so that  rank reads "clade" instead of "classis".  Or would you prefer a listing as "Clade: Zosterophylls" under "Stem-group: Lycopopodiphyta"? However I do wonder whether this would be following convention, or whether it would be bordering on original research; I'm not sure how the literature currently refers to zosterophylls.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:20, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Very good questions to which I don't know the answer. It's not OR, but as with all taxonomies there is an issue of NPOV. I've said something about this in replying to you at Template_talk:Automatic_taxobox, but the taxonomy of early land plants is currently very confused in the literature. Roughly I think the situation is that sources before Kenrick & Crane's 1997 papers use Banks' three categories of rhyniophytes, zosterophylls and trimerophytes (under various formal names/ranks), but with increasing caveats. Sources post K&C tend to use clade-based names or just informal names based e.g. on Banks' categories or K&C's clades but with even stronger reservations. Then there's Cantino et al.'s full Phylocode system. You can pick one classification as opposed to another, but nothing that I can find has anything like consensus support, so whatever is done raises POV issues. In the body of articles, I've felt that perhaps the best approach at present is to use the informal names which the literature uses, e.g. "zosterophyll" rather than Zosterophyllopsida. Even if there were a consensus on the phylogeny, which there isn't, there's no consensus on ranks. Zosterophylls s.l. will be found under the the names Zosterophyllophyta (either a subdivision or a division), Zosterophyllophytina (subdivision) and Zosterophyllopsida (class), the higher ranks forcing the lycophytes upwards or (worse) falling outside the lycophytes. (I can source every one of these usages.) I'm happy with the the use of Zosterophyllopsida / Lycopodiophyta for now, but it's not a consensus classification.
 * The difficulty is that it's hard to write articles about these plants without some organizing principles and impossible to construct taxoboxes, so we can't just leave it to sort itself out at some point in the future. Sorry to go on about this, but as you can doubtless tell, it bugs me! Peter coxhead (talk) 17:15, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Just to add that I am now converting taxoboxes for early polysporangiophytes to the automatic version, having (I think!) mastered the art of creating 'parallel' taxonomic hierarchies. For these extinct plants, I'm using the taxonomies current among paleobotanists, which are, as noted previously, not consistent with those used by botanists working on extant groups only. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy for early plant automatic taxoboxes
Martin: I've now gone through all the articles I could find on early polysporangiophytes and converted the taxoboxes to automatic ones. I feel I (more-or-less!) understand them now. For your information, since you created articles in this area and also taxonomic hierarchies in the automatic taxobox system, the taxonomy I've used is at User:Peter coxhead/Embryophyte_classification. One issue that I noticed, and which bothered me until I grasped the workaround, is that I have to save changes to a Template:Taxonomy page at least twice and sometimes three times before all the error messages go away and before the page displays as per the edit. Odd... (On a personal note, as a former research supervisor, I'm not sure I should be encouraging a PhD student to spend as much time on Wikipedia as you do!!) Peter coxhead (talk) 16:35, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Talkback
This is for when you have some free time. There's no rush - enjoy your WikiBreak! <font face="Palatino"> — <font color="#194D00">Mr. Stradivarius (<font color="#0F0073">drop me a line ) 08:21, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * p.s. I couldn't link the section properly, so here's the diff instead. All the best. <font face="Palatino"> — <font color="#194D00">Mr. Stradivarius (<font color="#0F0073">drop me a line ) 08:26, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Citation bot error
Forgive me for reporting this here, but I'm really not sure how to report it on Google. Citation bot made this edit. When I click on the DOI, I get the following error: "The DOI you requested -- maghis.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/doi/10.1093/maghis/12.4.34 -- cannot be found in the Handle System." I have no idea how this works, but I reverted the edit and figured I'd notify you about it.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:17, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Taxobot
I do believe I've managed to crash Taxobot again... You're welcome! <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 01:59, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Bot flags
Per Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Requests_for_approval, please make sure all your active/approved bot accounts get flagged with a bot flag. The easiest way is probably by editing Bots/Requests for approval/Approved and setting "needs flag" for the appropriate accounts. Thanks. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:55, 13 March 2011 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ABots%2FRequests_for_approval%2FApproved&action=historysubmit&diff=418985275&oldid=418283818

Non-free files in your user space
Hey there Smith609, thank you for your contributions. I am a bot, alerting you that non-free files are not allowed in user or talk space. I removed some files I found on User:Smith609/Cite/doc. In the future, please refrain from adding fair-use files to your user-space drafts or your talk page.


 * See a log of files removed today here.


 * Shut off the bot here.


 * Report errors here.

Thank you, -- DASHBot (talk) 05:09, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

2011-03 Expanding Earth
Hello. Two years ago, you wrote that "Current evidence completely discredits the concept of an expanding Earth;" Do you know some reliable source saying the same? Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 21:09, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Phoronids
Hi, Martin. I'm afraid your replacing the previous taxobox at Phoronid with a new one doesn't work. The previous one was simple but worked. The current one:
 * Shows a message "Scientific classification [ e ]", in which "[ e ]" links to Template:Taxonomy/Phoronida.
 * Shows another message "Taxonomy not available for fish; please create it". Fish? And what's this about? What are the benefits of the new one? Who's expected to populated it and how much work is required? What's wrong with the old one?

Phoronids are tricky - as I said to Aleksey, "How can such a small phylum cause such confusion?" There are 10-12 species depending on who's counting, and possibly 25 types of distinct larvae, implying that there at least 13 adult species unaccounted for. I'd keep the taxobox for this phylum simple. --Philcha (talk) 12:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Where is this link to "fish"? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems it's been fixed in the last hour - somewhere in the infrastructure, I guess, as Phoronid hasn't been changed since 26 February 2011. Murphy's alive and well. --Philcha (talk) 13:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There's no good lead / taxobox image - the 2 usable pics at Commons are needed lower down (anatomy and actinotroch larva). Do you know of any way of getting one without bureaucracy? --Philcha (talk) 13:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Hello Martin and Philcha! I can draw images of phoronid, its larvaes, anatomy... But only in a week. Aleksey (Alnagov (talk) 15:40, 17 March 2011 (UTC))
 * Hi, Aleksey. There's a good anatomy image at File:Phoronida.gif. File:Phoronid ASlotwinski.jpg is a nice photo of an actinotroch larva, but perhaps a diagram would be better - without labels or lines, so I can add these using Annotated image. That would fill the space in that part of the "Reproduction" paragraph, so I don't think there would be space for an image of the Phoronis ovalis larvae metamorphosing into an adult. --Philcha (talk) 17:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I've just found FIST for finding images you can use within WP's rules, I've put it in my Toolbox. And it got me a nice one for the taxobox of Phoronid, next to the lead - File:Nur03506.jpg --Philcha (talk) 17:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Wikify.png
 Thanks for uploading File:Wikify.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of "file" pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. ww2censor (talk) 17:52, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Feedback on User:Headbomb/ADSABS
I'm writing a letter to the ADS team to see what's our querying limit. Could you check the details on your bot to see if I got them right? Any other feedback is welcome too. (Feel free to edit the page it you want.) Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds good! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  02:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Bug 28212
This bug is causing problems with cite doi; see Template talk:Cite doi. It's not your bot's fault, but perhaps the bot can help find a workaround for it by applying edits like. Ucucha 22:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I've requested a temporary block of the citation bot
Martin, see my thread on WP:ANI and the citation bot's talk page. The new bibcode lookup is causing some quite serious problems and quite a lot of the bot's recent edits require reversion. The block request is no slight on you, I'm sure the bot will be back to its normal excellent service soon, I just want to prevent any more errors in the meantime. Thanks Rjwilmsi  12:12, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about the errors produced by Citation Bot 1, which uses the latest version of the script? I'm not running this bot at the moment, until I've had time to stabilize it.  But please feel free to block if it necessary.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  12:58, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, though at the time of requesting the temporary block I hadn't realised that the user-invoked citation bot and Citation Bot 1 ran different versions. So, as concluded on ANI, there's no need for a block. I believe I've already reverted all of the bad edits by Citation Bot 1. Thanks Rjwilmsi  20:38, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * And thank you for today's round of improvements to the bot. Rjwilmsi  20:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You're welcome: and I really appreciate you cleaning up after the bot, I appreciate that it must be frustrating to do that! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  23:32, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Template:Italic title
I solved my previous problems, but now I have a new one. Template:Italic title does not appear to italicize the title for the article: Guillaume Tell (Grétry). Could the diacritic in the parenthetic expression be a problem? There aren't any similar examples of this problem that I have been able to find. --Robert.Allen (talk) 04:18, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds plausible: you're probably better asking at Template talk:Italic title, where there are likely to be people more familiar with the template than I am! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  04:22, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I saw your name in the History and that you were editing, so I left it here, thinking you might be familiar with it. But good suggestion. I'll move it there. Thanks! --Robert.Allen (talk) 04:47, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Cite google book
Template:Cite google book has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. RL0919 (talk) 12:15, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Health check
Hi, As discussed here does your bot check for malware on the external sites? They say it does, but I am not sure. Anyway, just an idea and if you address it there it will be best. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 14:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Citation bot doesn't do this. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:D15n
Template:D15n has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Magioladitis (talk) 08:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:D18o
Template:D18o has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Magioladitis (talk) 08:34, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Comma before year
Template:Comma before year has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:06, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

'Template:Graphical timeline' - increasing capacity
I'm using Graphical timeline and have followed the instructions to increase the capacity. --Trevj (talk) 11:14, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * My attempt didn't work
 * I now see that I'm not alone, and resort has been previously made to a spreadsheet.
 * What did we do wrong, please? Thanks.

Citation bot UserAgent
I've spoken to the guys who maintain the Astrophysics Data System, and they gave us the clearance to query their database as fast as we wanted. However, they would like us to give them the bots' signature so their severs can recognize them. I gave them mine for Bibcode Bot but it would be a good idea to get those of Citation bot and DOI bot as well. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Citation (from gadget)
...shouldn't edit conflict, overwriting other changes :( Not sure what the best solution would be? Refused to edit automatically, probably. - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 08:31, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Cambrian substrate revolution possible for GA
Hi, Smith609. Long ago, we worked on Cambrian substrate revolution - AFAIK you had the idea, I did some of the development, and I got a DYK for it. Looking again, I think it could easily be improved to a GA. Two questions:
 * Can you update the paleontology? Or give me leads to source I can access?
 * Who nominates - you, me or as a team? --Philcha (talk) 00:12, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Taxonomy/Heterokonta
Template:Taxonomy/Heterokonta has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Taxonomy/Trimerophytina
Template:Taxonomy/Trimerophytina has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Cite gni
Template:Cite gni has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 05:47, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Template query
Hi, not sure if you're around at present, but if so, please see "Technical query" at Template_talk:Speciesbox. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:00, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

URL to activate bot no longer works
The URL used to manually activate the bot no longer works, because the toolserver user account has expired. URL: http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/DOI_bot/ --Srleffler (talk) 02:21, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Right for me too.--Stone (talk) 07:05, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Requesting renewal now. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:54, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! You can see how many of us rely on it. Awickert (talk) 16:16, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey Martin, has anyone mentioned your toolserver acct expired? BTW, thanks for all the cites:-) LeadSongDog come howl!  02:40, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Citation expander
Hi, it seems citation expander won't work because your previous account expired. Anyway to solve this?-- Tærkast (Discuss) 15:13, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Account renewed until Oct 31st. Hopefully I won't miss the reminder messages then!  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:57, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Still the same message.--Stone (talk) 18:13, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

citation bot for isbn
Hi, cant seem to find instruction anywhere to get your bot to expand an isbn. I've added the bot as a widget and it seems to set itself upon the article but no changes are made. Ive been editing Burkitt lymphoma, adding a ref to the immunohistochemistry section. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers. <font color='Indigo'>Matto <font color='DodgerBlue'>paedia <font color='Olive'> Say G'Day! 02:13, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * A limited number of ISBN searches can be executed by the bot per day, which might be the problem. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Cite pmc oddity
Since you're the creator of Cite pmc, I'm bringing this straight to you. I suspect it's a change at the bot level that's needed, but I assume you'll have a better idea than I will on that. :)

A few minutes ago, I tried the following: <ref ></ref>. In the reference list, however, it showed up as a redirect:. – RobinHood70 talk 22:26, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a double-redirect. For now you can fix it by changing the PMID page to point to the accompanying "Cite Doi" template.  You are right that a bot should be able to do this in future.  One day I'll have time to make it do so!  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:22, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I remember noticing that it was. If nobody else has done so, I'll go fix it now. – RobinHood70 talk 21:43, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

omitting a transclusion
Smith609, I'm just about to remove your transcluded Template:Citation parameter legend from the Template:Citation/doc page and will probably earn your cusses in the process. I'd like to explain why. It seems to me that half the benefit of having a common citation template is being lost in the attempt to maintain 4 different sets of documentation - the number of discrepancies and inaccuracies is horrendous. I've cleaned up some of the book section following the style of the periodical section but as long as there are 4 different explanations, errors will return. I've put a highly simplified version at the beginning for newcomers - but think it best to have a unified set of parameters, but mainly leaving the sets of examples alone. If there are mistakes I'm happy to try and correct them. Chris55 (talk) 13:28, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Cenozoic
The timeline in Cenozoic is absurdly stretched out. I do not know how to correct this but I see that you commented on Template talk:Cenozoic graphical timeline, so maybe you do? Dudley Miles (talk) 20:32, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

cite doi subpages eschewed due to vandalism concerns
Hi. I recently began using the cite doi system and your bot. Much of this was at these two articles: The usages were removed by dropping in cite journal and having your bot re-flesh them, which lost a lot of detail, such as links. See: 110.139.190.67 (talk) 05:42, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Egyptian Vultureundefined
 * White-rumped Vultureundefined
 * && and
 * User talk:Shyamal

Things to do
Hey there, Martin Glad to see you again! I'm actually working on a couple projects. The one I'm stuck on could probably use your help-- it's the User:Bob the Wikipedian/Birdbox. It's got a problem with frequent line breaks. If you can help sort it out, that'd be awesome; I've been stuck on that for a few months now and hadn't gotten around to asking anyone for help yet. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 20:37, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * You've fixed the formerly buggy test case! Thanks! And a very interesting solution, I might add. Probably a good idea to include the question marks like that instead of omitting the line. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 21:11, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * { Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  21:46, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Any ideas how to suppress math? If I enter a hyphen in one of those parameters, it gets interpreted as subtraction. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 22:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Well I fixed the range issue.... Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  23:52, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Great. I see there's a new error; I'll have a look at that now. Here is the documentation page, where I've included the sample box that this template's being designed around per Shyalmal's request; my goal is for it to display that correctly at a minimum. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 00:28, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Found out convert is a fairly heavy template, and is even heavier when used on a range. I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but I can't see it being transcluded as a parameter of any templates, so it works for me. Thanks for your assistance! <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 00:40, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

File copyright problem with File:Ausia2.jpg
Thank you for uploading File:Ausia2.jpg. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright and licensing status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can verify that it has an acceptable license status and a verifiable source. Please add this information by editing the image description page. You may refer to the image use policy to learn what files you can or cannot upload on Wikipedia. The page on copyright tags may help you to find the correct tag to use for your file. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem.

Please also check any other files you may have uploaded to make sure they are correctly tagged. Here is [ a list of your uploads].

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:17, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Hey
Could you send me a copy of the PDF about the Kimmeridge ammonite egg sac you used as a reference in Aulacostephanus. My email is saint_abyssal at yahoo. It would really help me alot! Thanks. Abyssal (talk) 23:39, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Check your inbox. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:38, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
 * THANKS <3 Abyssal (talk) 19:33, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:All time 200px
Template:All time 200px has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. — This, that, and the other (talk) 02:50, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Invitation to New Orleans developers' meeting
Sumanah (talk) 21:29, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Does ref tool still work?
When I try to use this Convert Refs button (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Smith609/reftool.js), the button sends me to a blank page:

The blank page is http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Scholar/Refs.php

I just added this button, since the citation bot pages recommended it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:16, 26 August 2011 (UTC)


 * If I recall correctly, I think that it was too buggy so I disabled it. Sorry.  Perhaps you could update this wherever you found the details?  Thanks. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:51, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Citation bot run for WikiProject United States
Greetings. I was wondering if you would be willing to unleash Citation bot against the articles in WikiProject United States? I think most of the articles are good to go but I would like for the bot to take care of any problems it can. I have asked some other bots to do runs through as well. Please let me know if you have any questions or need me to do anything. --Kumioko (talk)
 * If they are in a category, that will be easy. If not, I will need a list of the names of the articles to be scanned.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:31, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Citation bot user activation
Is there a way to look up who activated the bot for a specific edit? This concerns an ANI thread regarding. <span style="font-size:smaller;font-family:'arial bold',sans-serif;border:1px solid Black;"> N419 BH  05:44, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Recently, manually-activated edits contain the given username in the edit summary (if there are enough available characters). Note that it is not impossible to supply a false username.  In previous revisions this function was broken.  What is the edit in question? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:55, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Google books URL cleaner.
What's the regex you use to clean those googlebooks url with Citation Bot? I'd like to implement it in User:CitationCleanerBot. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Feel free to check out the source code; if you can't find it I'll try to dig it out when I've more time. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I could probably decipher that over the course of a few weeks. What I really need to know is what "parts" of the URL I need to throw out. E.g. in, the bot changed
 * h ttp://books.google.com/?&&&&&&&&&#&&
 * to
 * h ttp://books.google.com/books?&&#&&


 * So basically I can throw out &hl, &ei, &sa, &oi, &ct, &resnum, &ved, &source, &ots, &sig, &sqi, and possibly more... It's the "possibly more" that I'm curious about, so I'm wondering if you had a comprehensive list of stuff to keep/throw out. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:10, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually I found your list (in DOItools.php, function google_book_expansion). I'll be able to implement this rather easily. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Great! (-: Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Found "&cad=" which also seems useless. I can't find anything on this one, nor do I see any difference in output. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

BTW, "&ct=" is not safe to remove. Compare

with Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:28, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=HxANIW36CfIC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=%22harmonic+dualism%22+Oettingen&ct=result#PPA23,M1
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=HxANIW36CfIC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=%22harmonic+dualism%22+Oettingen


 * However it seems you can remove it if there's no #PPA... after, though. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It's what comes after the # that counts. cf.:
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=HxANIW36CfIC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=%22harmonic+dualism%22+Oettingen&ct=result#PPA23,M1
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=HxANIW36CfIC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=%22harmonic+dualism%22+Oettingen#PPA23,M1
 * It took me a while to figure this out when implementing citation bot. Are you sure that you're not reinventing the wheel here?  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Hmmmm... I think this was due me clicking the url in the diff window. It changes the # to a %23 if you click the url in the diff, but not if you click it in reading/editing mode. Weird. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for advice
Perhaps you could offer a suggestion at Wikipedia_talk:Ambassadors where your name was brought up? --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 18:49, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Bot blocked
Per this, I blocked the bot for a while - apparently it's malfunctioning. Just thought I'd let you know. m.o.p 23:37, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Citation bot: unused_data
Anwar al-Awlaki was edited by Citation_bot and in this change it inserted a bunch of |unused_data= parameters. What is this unused_data parameter for, and where is it documented? —Anomalocaris (talk) 05:16, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It is data that is within the citation template but not used. Please replace the parameter with the correct one (e.g. accessdate), or delete it.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:02, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Cluebot archiving
- Damian Zaremba (talk • contribs) 01:12, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Citation bot on Romanian wiki
Hi, I used the citation bot on the Romanian language Wikipedia and an administrator told me to ask for approval, otherwise I will be blocked. I did it at ro:Wikipedia:Robot/Cereri de aprobare. Perhaps it is a better idea that you introduce yourself the bot on that wiki. I don't know much about bots and I think you can solve whatever problems may appear or update the bot in the future. Tgeorgescu (talk) 17:48, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'd be delighted for you to use the bot at the Romanian wiki, and wish you luck getting approval from their bureaucrats! I am hoping to press ahead with international language support in the next few months, so do keep in touch.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:34, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Advice for new Wikipedia editors
Hi, Smith609. I've worked for some time on User:Philcha/Essays/Advice for new Wikipedia editors. I'm to approach the subject from the viewpoint of a new editor possibly seeing WP for the first time - in other words I think it must be one easy step at a time, starting from the new editor's starting position. I take WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR seriously, but am trying to make the whole process easier for the new editor. So I: use an informal style; emphasise techniques and tools that help new editors' work to be productive and pleasant; give the basis of the main policies and how to get advice about them; but not overload new editors with loads of details on policies, etc. I hope the essay will be worth publishing in main space, and even get a link for from the main "Welcome". Could you please comment at User talk:Philcha/Essays/Advice for new Wikipedia editors. --Philcha (talk) 21:16, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Devonian Brachiopods
Hey, this is sort of a random question. Do you have any recommendations for getting brachiopods identified? The interpretive canter I work for has a number of specimens labeled as "Three Forks Formation, Cardwell, Montana" that have very well preserved brachipods and occasional bivalves which I think would be useful to WP and good additions to the centers collections. Thanks for any advice. -- Kev min  § 01:28, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My first stop would be to check out a nearby natural history museum: many of these offer fossil identification clinics. Otherwise, if you can arrange access to a university library, I would see what material they have available.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:21, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Im actually the collections manager at the local Natural history museum, but Devonian marine life is a bit beyond my expertise (Eocene upland taxa). I have checked google scholar but not found any relevant papers on the Three Forks formation. -- Kev  min  § 18:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy from the Treatise v. Bouchet & Rocroi
Hello Martin, You may remember I am active in WikiProject Gastropods. In that project we are using Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005 as our standard taxonomy. The B&R taxonomy claims to cover fossil gastropods as well as extant ones, but I think most paleontologists are still using the taxons that are set out in the Treatise instead of those in the B&R paper. Do you have any suggestions for what might be the best way to handle these conflicting systems? For example, I see we currently have two articles, one on Pleurotomarioidea and one on Pleurotomariacea. It does not seem quite right for us to insist that B&R takes preference, but if not, then what? Thanks for any suggestions you might have, Invertzoo (talk) 14:35, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:For loop 6
Template:For loop 6 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:40, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Recent edits
I see you have been adding external links to the Virtual Museum of Canada to a number of Burgess Shale articles. Firstly, you should be aware that external links should be placed after References (WP:GTL). Secondly, you appear to have created a number of short articles with no incoming links; I have tagged a few, but I am sure there are others. "Building the web" is one of Wikipedia's core principles, so please help by linking to these articles from related articles. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:01, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Don't edit this line authority
Template:Don't edit this line authority has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Bulwersator (talk) 09:07, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Question about use of 1x
In, with the explanation "trim", you changed to  in Species list/core. I can't see that it makes any difference (I've tried a version in my user space). What am I missing? Just curious! Peter coxhead (talk) 12:35, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If you use the format, then using {1} will preserve the whitespace; using {1x|1={1} } will trim the whitespace.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:08, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Using taxobot on Basque Wikipedia
Hello Smith609. I have been working with a copy of taxobot on basque wikipedia, but the results are not very good. Could it be possible to use it in the Basque Wikipedia without having to re-upload it to a server? -Theklan (talk) 15:18, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You'd have to spell out exactly what the problem was for me to be able to help. The bot has to be run from a server (or home machine with PHP installed) somewhere.  Let me know what I can do to assist.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:41, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem is that it made this. But, for example, our "refresh" button here points to your bot but, of course, it makes the changes on en:wp and not on eu:wp. Maybe it would be possible to run it on eu:wp so it can refresh all the child taxa we have made, that are more than nowadays on en:wp. -Theklan (talk) 05:28, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Template:Period color/doc
I have updated the dead links in the doc of this template. --Cameta (talk) 16:15, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Using the Citation bot at the Hebrew Wikipedia
Dear Martin,

At the time you kindly agreed to make Citation bot run at the Hebrew Wikipedia as well, if I see to it that it gets an approval. To be on the safe side, I took it to the local Village Pump. Everyone agreed and the discussion is now archived. To fill in a formal request for a bot flag I'd need to know the bot's username and the software it is using. Does it currently work anywhere else than the English Wikipedia? Thanks, ליאור • Lior (talk) 08:47, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

WP Palaeontology in the Signpost
The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Palaeontology for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 19:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Authority of
Template:Authority of has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Bulwersator (talk) 22:58, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

File source problem with File:Charnia.png
Thank you for uploading File:Charnia.png. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, please add a link to the page from which it was taken, together with a brief restatement of the website's terms of use of its content. If the original copyright holder is a party unaffiliated with the website, that author should also be credited. Please add this information by editing the image description page.

If the necessary information is not added within the next days, the image will be deleted. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem.

Please refer to the image use policy to learn what images you can or cannot upload on Wikipedia. Please also check any other files you have uploaded to make sure they are correctly tagged. Here is a [ list of your uploads]. If you have any questions or are in need of assistance please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:57, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Double slash?
Hi Martin, hope you're having a great year so far. I am going through and deleting erroneously created Child taxa templates...are the ones that have two slashes after "Child taxa" errors? I checked a few of them, and the ones I checked were all from July, so I'm inclined to think so. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 20:56, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Almost certainly. In a couple of weeks I hope to have time for a little coding, so I'll start catching up with the backlog of things waiting for me!  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  10:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Great; I'll see if I can figure out how to do a deli-batch on those. That should be a fun project for the day. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN  (talk • contribs) 18:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've added a rule to the MediaWiki:Titleblacklist that ought to cover most of the erroneous titles; you think that'll work? <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 19:45, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Template:Taxonomy/Hyolithellus
could you fix the template loop in this one? thank you. Frietjes (talk) 21:41, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

UOJComm (talk) 23:34, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Bug in toolbox.js
Hi, and thanks for the useful User:Smith609/toolbox.js. It seems to have a bug, in that the links it provides are currently of the form  http://stats.grok.se/en/2012 12 /ArticleName rather than (as would be correct for this month)  http://stats.grok.se/en/2012  01 /ArticleName. Is this fixable? Regards,  Sandstein   18:54, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the pointer. There's now a function to see the last 30 days' history so I've linked to this instead.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's great! While you're at it, a very minor annoyance: In my Firefox browser (in the default Vector skin) the links provided ("Traffic stats", "Edit history stats", "Page watchers") are in a larger font than the other contents of the sidebar. This may be due to different CSS classes that apply to the content produced by your tool (class="pBody" rather than class="body", as far as I can tell...)  Sandstein   20:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Interview?
My apologies for the non-personalized note; I've got several people to contact here. We're looking for administrators who would be willing to be interviewed by students as a part of Wikipedia's WP:United States Education Program. Dr. Jonathan Obar is teaching the course, and it's a study in how Wikipedia is governed and how administrators are selected. If you're not interested, you may either ignore this invitation or remove your name from the list of admins we've contacted. Thanks, <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 20:03, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

refsByName.js
refsByName.js doesn't work on Chrome or Firefox. Do you know what it would take to update it to work with current browsers and the current MediaWiki version? —danhash (talk) 21:24, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Citation bot not working
Hi, Smith609. The Citation Bot seems to have stopped working. When I attempt to use it, I get a message 403 - user account expired. If you could look into this, it would be great. Thanks. --Dianna (talk) 00:47, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * And I as well. Hope you're back soon and can look into the expired Toolserver account. Miss the tool! Geoff  <sup style="color:blue;">Who, me?  22:05, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ditto. <span style="border:2px ridge #aaf;background-color:#fff;padding:1px 8px;font:normal 10px Verdana,sans-serif;"> B.Rossow ·  talk  15:03, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yet another ditto. <font color="#A20846"> Rcsprinter  (yak)  17:05, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Same here! Wingman4l7 (talk) 00:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry about the interruption — My home laptop needs repair so I missed the "account renewal window". All is back running thanks to the kind guys at the Toolserver! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  01:31, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Many thanks for fixing it! Wingman4l7 (talk) 02:11, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems to be having problems again...I've left a note on the bot talk page. Thanks for all your work. ~Adjwilley (talk) 20:42, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Simple citation bot
Hi Smith609. I've been asked to contact you on behalf of the Simple English Wikipedia to ask whether it would be possible to write up a version of Citation bot for our project. I noticed on toolserver that you'd written you accept such request, does that still stand? I realise you're probably busy with real life, and there's no reason for any hurry. I've watchlisted your talk page in anticipation of your response. Thank you, Osiris (talk) 00:47, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview
Dear Smith609, (your name was posted HERE by another admin).

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, were it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:
 * Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
 * Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
 * All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
 * All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
 * The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 17:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview
Dear Smith609, (your name was posted HERE by another admin).

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, were it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:
 * Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
 * Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
 * All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
 * All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
 * The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 17:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Happy Valentine's Day!
Wilhelmina Will (talk) 10:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Template cite PMID
Would it be possible to add a noedit option to the cite pmid template? Decstop (talk) 22:35, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. Please update the documentation!  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:37, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. Thanks.  Decstop (talk) 01:48, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Help in Catalan Wikipedia
We were trying to import your system of taxobox templates to Catalan Wikipedia, but as you can see, we have problems in the article ca:Traquimedusa. Can you see what is wrong? Thanks. 88.19.141.168 (talk) 00:46, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Introduction to the automated taxobox system
Martin, if you're around, please see User_talk:Bob_the_Wikipedian. Thanks. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:40, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:COinS
Template:COinS has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Citation metadata
Template:Citation metadata has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Citation parameter legend
Template:Citation parameter legend has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:45, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Template:Cite conference/citation
I am cleaning out citation templates. Looks like you have created a few that I don't see an immediate purpose for:
 * Template:Cite conference/citation

---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:04, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Toolbox2.js
The web address http://wikidashboard.parc.com/wiki is no longer.

New address is: https://wikidashboard.appspot.com/enwiki/wiki

Bgwhite (talk) 22:41, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Notification
Hi there, Smith609. I believe you might be interested in this discussion: Talk:Motion capture. Cheers, Waldir talk 13:04, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Citation bot down
Apparently the citation bot is not operational, in either mode. Could you please check? I know some other wiki scripts were crippled by the recent update. Regards. Materialscientist (talk) 04:05, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Is it better now? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:01, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Since I posted this, I could use the bot on some articles and not on others (like Tanka people - sort of timeout, the process starts and never ends). This could be caused my multiple reasons, and I will add something if I get a hint. Regards. Materialscientist (talk) 00:37, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This problem is becoming regular, that is, when I try to use the bot in manual mode (via gadgets, "citations" button, to preview te output) on an article like African military systems (1800–1900), the page hangs up to timeout. If I stop the process then the page edit "locks", i.e. have to reload the page for editing it. Materialscientist (talk) 04:56, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

serious problem in template
The cenozoic graphical timeline has a serious problem. The messinian salinity crisis is not clickable. I think it has something to do with nudge-up=-1. 204.191.162.48 (talk) 04:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC) . Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:33, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Porting the taxobox template to the Norwegian WP
If you have time, please see User talk:Peter coxhead where I was asked about porting the taxobox template to the Norwegian WP. You may be able to help better than I can. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:40, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary
'''Wishing User: a very happy birthday on behalf of the Birthday Committee! Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Let's talk <sub style="color:#008000;">about my edits? 22:09, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

pointless edits by citation bot
Check the edit history of Template:Cite pmc/1691546, continuously creating double redirect or simply breaking the redirect in the most recent case. 174.56.57.138 (talk) 03:07, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Citation bot
Greetings, I was just wondering what I would need to do to unleash Citation bot on the articles within WikiProject United States. Is there a special way to do that? --Kumioko (talk) 20:17, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Are they all in a certain category? If so, there's a way to do that – although I think that the public interface is broken at the moment.  Let me know the category name and I'll loose the bot.  If not, I can code something if you give me a plain-text list of the article names. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  21:56, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes but the only categories that list all of the WPUS articles are the Quality/Importance categories. You would need to switch from the talk pages to the actual article and then remove the duplicates. If thats not possible I might be able to think of a better way. BTW you could also remove all the non article stuff like templates and categories unless you see a reason to scan through those as well. --Kumioko (talk) 23:04, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Citation bot
What on earth is going on here? There are edits removing the whole content of pages and leaving nothing but fragments of code, giving the following edit summary: "Touching page to update categories. ** THIS EDIT SHOULD PROBABLY BE REVERTED ** as page content will only be changed if there was an edit conflict." This has happened on several pages which have all been turned into identical gobbledegook. Paul B (talk) 16:25, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Smith609, I previously asked you to disable this task until you obtained approval for it. So, since your bot is malfunctioning AND performing tasks without approval, I have blocked it until you obtain approval for this task or confirm that it has been disabled. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 16:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I thought that this was fixed. I'll investigate.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  22:31, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Citation Bot
Hello Smith609. We are working on the Joint attention article as part of the Wikipedia Canada Education Program. We are hoping that this Bot will be able to edit our citations for us. I have tried to start the Bot and I got the following results:

Activated by LianneAnna Expanding 'Joint attention'; will commit edits. Revision #418 [00:00:00] Processing page 'Joint attention' — edit—history - switch to cite id format is supported. * Looking for bare references... * Tidying reference tags...    - No duplicate references to combine. - No duplicate references to combine. ** No changes required. End of output # # #

I am not sure what these results mean and I cannot find any changes in our references. I am unfamiliar with Bots and I was hoping you would be able to advise me on how to correct any errors I made. LianneAnna (talk) 05:14, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * If you want to get the benefits of citation bot, you need to use citation templates such as citation (or alternatively, cite journalcite book). For example, instead of writing
 * write
 * which will give
 * The next time you run the bot, the citation will be updated to something like
 * which will give
 * The next time you run the bot, the citation will be updated to something like
 * The next time you run the bot, the citation will be updated to something like


 * which will give
 * I hope that helps. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Tweaked above.LeadSongDog come howl!  13:42, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Tweaked above.LeadSongDog come howl!  13:42, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

So if I understand correctly, I need to go in and change the formatting of all of the references in the article and then run the Bot again? Is there any way to avoid doing this manually? LianneAnna (talk) 14:00, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not aware of a method to do it manually. But as explained at WP:CITEVAR, you should seek consensus on the article talk page before changing the citation format. Not everyone is impressed with citation templates. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:05, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Jc3s5h for your suggestions. If you have additonal suggestions for out citations, please leave a comment on my talk page or the Joint attention article talk page. LianneAnna (talk) 18:39, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Note that Jc3s5h's comment mostly apply to articles that already have well-established conventions. Joint attention certainly hasn't been copy-edited to have an established citation style, so you still have freedom of choice on the issue. In this case, there's really no reason to withhold the switch to the template-based approach, which both simplify the long-term maintenance of the article, and guarantees citation consistency. So just make the switch. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:07, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment, if you wish to make any additional comments or give suggestions for out article please do so on the Joint attention talk page. LianneAnna (talk) 20:20, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Upcoming MediaWiki & Wikimedia developers' events
I thought you might want to know about some upcoming MediaWiki & Wikimedia developers' events (such as the Berlin hackathon in June), where you can learn more about MediaWiki customization and development, extending functionality with JavaScript, the future of ResourceLoader and Gadgets, the new Lua templating system, how to best use the web API for bots, and various upcoming features and changes. We'd love to have power users, bot maintainers and writers, and template makers at these events so we can all learn from each other and chat about what needs doing. Best wishes! Sumanah (talk) 13:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You can now register for the Berlin hackathon in June -- hope you can make it! If you need financial subsidy, or help with your visa to visit Germany, just mention it in the registration form, and please register as soon as possible. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 01:18, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
 * If you need financial assistance to attend, please do register by May 1. Hope you can make it! Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 01:12, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Citation bot in other wikis
Hi, I'm trying to implement the citation bot in another wiki. I cannot figure that out from the info provided and I'm not sure what to do with the files gotten via SVN. Can anybody help? Cheers, --Nhslzt (talk) 09:19, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Your Toolserver account has expired
Hello, just letting you know that your Toolserver account has expired, so Citation bot isn't working. Graham 87 03:51, 19 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh man, please log in and sort this out. Without Cite jstor, I may potentially lose what little sanity I have left. —Tom Morris (talk) 09:16, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, please restore this wonderful tool!!!! Thanks!!! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 10:31, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Dropped him a note by email. He's on the case.LeadSongDog come howl!  13:36, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Emailed him yesterday as well, he must have had a tons of emails by now poor guy. <font style="colour:#002147;">Kinkreet <font style="colour:#993333;">~&#9829;moshi moshi&#9829;~ 14:17, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Please don't have retired, please don't have retired, please don't have retired...please re-register your account, please re-register your account, please re-register your account... WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 14:13, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * BTW, undefined isn't working either. StringTheory11 03:15, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry to leave you in the lurch; the account has been renewed and normal service should have resumed now... Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  11:24, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Talkback
LikeLakers2 (talk &#124; Sign my guestbook!) 20:00, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Teşekkürler
Hello, thanks for combining the duplicate references for Faisal bin Abdullah bin Mohammed. Egeymi (talk) 20:56, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Taxobot
Seems to be down again. I assume this is nothing I can resurrect on my own when you have intermittent Internet access like this? <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 15:28, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Until I fix it you can replace "taxobot" with "taxobox_dev" in the URL. Sorry!  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  20:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Rough, but it works. Thanks! Is there an alternate method for updating the child lists? <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 14:43, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The bot should be doing this itself on a daily basis. Alternatively there is a link that can be followed: it displays when no child list exists, you might be able to dig it up, or I can take a look if you need it.  ||||
 * Well, the child list that was including taxonomy/Mosasaur (now at taxonomy/Mosasauridae) never updated on its own, even though the swap was made several days ago. I tried updating User:Taxobot/children/Mosasauroidea, but that didn't seem to correct anything. The "taxobot_dev" managed to fix it when I did that about an hour ago. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 15:41, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * To avoid clutter, you can add a link to your toolbox by including  in your Special:Mypage/vector.css. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  01:32, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That seemed rather random. I'm halfway convinced you misread my last comment. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 02:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I fixed the bot too. (-: Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  02:24, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Disregard my previous comment; what you said suddenly makes sense. Oh, and hooray! <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN  (talk • contribs) 04:14, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Taxobot
Hello Smith609. Hope not to break your wikibreak. I'm Theklan, from the basque Wikipedia. I have been messing around with the automatic taxobox in our wikipedia, taking the templates here and there and copying and localizing them. I've seen that the sister taxons and direct children are updated with a bot made by you. But I think this bot is working only in the en:wp... I think so, not really sure. Could it be possible to make something for the eu:wp? Thanks for all! -Theklan (talk) 23:14, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Please don't use isbn bot on 1896
Please do not use the isbn bot on United States presidential election, 1896 -- it is unnecessary with google books and is distracting to the readers who don't know what it means. It's hard to thin kof anyone who actually needs or uses the isbn when they have the google cite; the guides to history citations (like the Rjensen (talk) 10:32, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Cite conference/citation
Template:Cite conference/citation has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:54, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Bad bot
I've reverted this massive damage done by the bot. What is going on? Pls respond on my talk page. Pumpkin Sky  talk  11:39, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
 * another one. Pumpkin Sky   talk  14:41, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

WP Geology in the Signpost
The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Geology for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 22:46, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Bot to convert bare URLs to valid refs
Hello, there is a bot request at Bot requests/Archive 47 that I was hoping you would take a look at, as it might have some overlap with functions your bot currently does. Thank you. ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  04:59, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

There is something wrong on the international stratigraphic timescale
We can't understand something with your toolserver account. Phanerozoic is not an era. Cenozoic is not an eon. --&#42;Adjkasi* (talk) 14:05, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Cite pmc
Template:Cite pmc has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 15:28, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Template:X5/X5/X5


Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a notice that the page that you created was tagged as a test page and has been or soon may be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. A:-)Brunuś (talk) 14:11, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Template:X5/X4


Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a notice that the page that you created was tagged as a test page and has been or soon may be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. A:-)Brunuś (talk) 14:12, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Template:X5/X3


Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a notice that the page that you created was tagged as a test page and has been or soon may be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. A:-)Brunuś (talk) 14:12, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Citation bot issue
Hi - I don't know much about citation bot, but someone asked me to look into it. All of those bot edits are marked as user activated but with no user name. Is it possible for you to look up who activated the bot? &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 20:25, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
 * On this edit the bot combined references (using &lt;ref name="..." &gt; ) in an article that previously had no named references. Some people are not fond of named references, and in this case it seems the article was established without them.
 * On this page, the bot ran several times while someone else was editing.

Manasbal.jpg
The image is of Mansar Lake, which falls in Jammu. The uploader unknowingly has named it after the name of Manasbal Lake which falls in Kashmir valley, hence has created a confusion. Someone has inserted it into the infobox of Manasbal Lake, which it is not, and this image of Mansar Lake was appeared on home page at (DYK|2008-10-11) indicating the depth of Manasbal Lake. It needs to be renamed and removed from Manasbal Lake.  Mehra j Mir '(Talk) 17:05, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It certainly looks to be the same lake as shown from this position in this photo on Panoramio. (The lat/lon given on Panoramio seem to be off a little, so that the perspective is given as being within the lake, rather than above the switchback shown both on the map and in the photo. LeadSongDog come howl!  19:27, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * This image is used by:

.....how can a single image be used under two different lakes... one has to go. In its both locations are mentioned 1) Lake in Ganderbal district. 2) Lake near Jammu. No mountains near the back side of this image] of Manasbal Lake, where as here in Mansar Lake are. Mansar lake is shorter as compared to Manasbal lake.  Mehra j Mir '(Talk) 00:18, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Jammu (in its caption it mentions Mansar Lake
 * Mansar Lake (infobox)
 * Manasbal Lake (infobox)

Main page appearance: Ediacara biota
This is a note to let the main editors of Ediacara biota know that the article will be appearing as today's featured article on June 13, 2012. You can view the TFA blurb at Today's featured article/June 13, 2012. If you prefer that the article appear as TFA on a different date, or not at all, please ask featured article director or his delegate, or start a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests. If the previous blurb needs tweaking, you might change it—following the instructions at Today's featured article/requests/instructions. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. The blurb as it stands now is below:



The Ediacara biota consisted of enigmatic tubular and frond-shaped, mostly sessile organisms which lived during the Ediacaran Period (c. 635–542 Ma). Trace fossils of these organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms. The Ediacara biota radiated in an event called the Avalon Explosion,, after the Earth had thawed from the Cryogenian period's extensive glaciation, and largely disappeared contemporaneous with the rapid appearance of biodiversity known as the Cambrian explosion. Most currently existing body-plans of animals first appeared only in the fossil record of the Cambrian rather than the Ediacaran. For macroorganisms, the Cambrian biota completely replaced the organisms that populated the Ediacaran fossil record. (more...) UcuchaBot (talk) 23:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Moss fossils
While I have no issue at all with the change of reference here, I am puzzled how the replacement is "more authoritative". You do know who Pat Gensel is, don't you? --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:02, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe my wording was wrong, but a piece of primary research seems better as a reference than an encyclopaedia entry. Perhaps it's useful to retain that source elsewhere? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:28, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Citation expander
Hi, do you think it is possible to use Citation expander on other Wikipedia? I think we are able to translate it, we are able to set different parametrs (maybe not, I dont know if citation templates and/or standards are same on English/Czech Wikipedia), but I am not sure how is it with the bot. I can not run a bot presonally nor customize it to the Czech conditions.--Juandev (talk) 20:37, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Absolutely! Please see the new section [|here].  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  23:04, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

See the new section? What do you mean?--Juandev (talk) 21:04, 29 November 2011 (UTC)


 * OH hear.--Juandev (talk) 21:05, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Template:Cite patent
Hi Smith609. Per these efforts, would you please take a crack at replying to my request here. Thanks. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 23:54, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Category:Citation templates using redundant parameters
Category:Citation templates using redundant parameters, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:37, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Paterinata etc
Please note that even a stub should (a) be written in sentences, and (b) have references. You seem to be producing a set of substubs which fail on both these counts: please tell us your source and create a proper opening sentence. Thanks. Pam D  12:44, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * And something seems to have gone wrong with Plagioeciidae. (I tend to concentrate on sorting stubs which start with "P"). Pam  D  12:53, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Feel free to edit the stubs as you feel appropriate. Best,  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  12:57, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Something's gone wrong at Siphonodentallidae - I've fixed what I can but... over to you. Pam  D  13:53, 30 August 2013 (UTC)


 * And the reference in Fenestrata has a joke year and a broken link! Pam  D  14:16, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Automatic taxobox at the Simple English Wikipedia
Hey there! If you think back, you'll recall the automatic taxobox contained several hyperlinks to toolserv (some of these run bot tasks, I think). Would it be possible to modify the toolserv code to work for multiple subdomains and perhaps get bots launched on that wiki? simple:User:Osiris seems to be the man in charge there, and the community is so small that I'm sure bot approval is relatively quick and simple. Thanks! <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 05:32, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Disregard; the folks there have indicated the automatic taxobox will complicate things more than it will help, since their collection of wildlife is so small. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 00:08, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Citation bot - changed my references. Thanks!
Hi, just wanted to say thanks for combining my references for me. I did not know it was possible to do the a,b,c,d... thing within a single reference like that. Genius! :)Electprogeny (talk) 05:32, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar
"The Special Barnstar" is in lieu of 3-4 other Barnstars all of which I could have given you separately. By a convoluted route I'm now working on jumping spiders - it's a long story. --Philcha (talk) 10:30, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

{. It's been fun - things would have been lonely without someone like-minded and enthusiastic to buoy me along! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  13:38, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:AuthorMask doc
Template:AuthorMask doc has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 19:00, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Full sentences -- Wikipedia articles
You appear to be writing a number of stubs that are not in full sentences, just phrases without sufficient context for a general reader to understand; it would take you less work to write a complete sentence while creating an article, than it would take another person to gather up all your sources and rewrite your articls as full sentences. As encyclopedia articles, they should certainly be written in full sentence, not phrases without context. See Quadratapora and other recent contributions. --(AfadsBad (talk) 14:15, 9 September 2013 (UTC))
 * The beauty of Wikipedia is that as an encyclopaedia written by volunteer editors, anyone can edit any article in any way that they wish. As such, people who enjoy copyediting are able to copyedit articles that need it; whereas editors that enjoy adding information but do not have time to craft polished prose can add information without worrying whether their contribution is of publishable quality. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  09:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no beauty in publishing something that is unreadable, and it is a little difficult to understand how an educated adult could purposefully opt for not writing a simple sentence. It would not have taken more time. A sentence is something one copyedits. You have plenty of articles that are simple sentences, usable, expandable, copyeditable. Without consulting three journals, I could not write a readable sentence on the one article. It has no meaning. It is not an article. You say you are pursuing a PhD, surely a simple sentence is within your ability.
 * If a move changes the taxon, obviously it requires a taxobox edit. --(AfadsBad (talk) 12:50, 11 September 2013 (UTC))
 * The example article given had one notable error: the article title was overlooked in the initial sentence. I remedied that, but if there's a system generating these article stubs, it should be amended. LeadSongDog come howl!  13:47, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Please preview articles
I know I don't do it all of the time, but it helps with issues like this where you have a failed automatic taxobox. --(AfadsBad (talk) 16:46, 9 September 2013 (UTC))
 * Is it possible to preview a move (which is what broke the taxobox)? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  09:23, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Sort of; if you simulate a cut&paste move, that should show up any problems with the new page name. Assuming that the proposed target doesn't exist yet, make a link to it (which will be a redlink) somewhere that doesn't matter, like a sandbox page. Then edit the existing article, copy the whole thing to your clipboard, edit that redlink and paste in the clipboard contents. Then click ; but don't save it. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Explain spelling Cystophorata or Cystoporata
Can you please correct the article title or source? This article, as written, has no data, the title does not match the single source, and please create a sentence in English, or delete the article. Thank you. --(AfadsBad (talk) 06:39, 16 September 2013 (UTC)) resolved

Speedy deletion nomination of Cystophorata


A tag has been placed on Cystophorata, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to have no meaningful content or history, and the text is unsalvageably incoherent. If the page you created was a test, please use the sandbox for any other experiments you would like to do.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.

This article is being copied by Wikipedia mirrors. Meanwhile, the article is useless. The spelling does not match the source. The content isn't even English-language prose. I see you are an administrator, and I suggest you just delete it yourself.

It would only take another 10 seconds to have used the correct spelling, if there is one, and to have written a grammatical sentence in English. You claim to be working towards a PhD on your user page; please use English language sentences and correct spelling, if there is one, to prevent the copying of material like this to other cites. Thank you. --(AfadsBad (talk) 19:19, 28 September 2013 (UTC))
 * To have the article deleted is nonsense. I tidied the article up somewhat, and moved it to the correct spelling.  Now all that needs to be done, aside from adding more about each genera, is to correct the automatic taxobox.


 * What's nonsense is to have created it in the first place and allowed this improperly spelled article to be copied by wikipedia mirrors. The source is of limited value in saying anything about an extinct bryozoan species, also. And, it would have taken this editor another 10 seconds to make a correct article and not require another half dozen editors to spend significantly more time making it into an actual accurate article. That's what's nonsense. --(AfadsBad (talk) 21:06, 28 September 2013 (UTC))


 * Can you just move the template to Cystoporata? --(AfadsBad (talk) 21:10, 28 September 2013 (UTC))

resolved

Nomination for deletion of Template:Remove first word
Template:Remove first word has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">pablo 17:53, 31 August 2012 (UTC) resolved

Need your help
Hello: I have reverted User:Wikid77's edits to three of the Taxobox templates, Template:T^8, Template:T^16 and Template:Speciesbox. Can you please review the edits and advise how to proceed? — Ganeshk  ( talk ) 18:57, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I faced the same limits when developing the template, and optimized the templates as best I could at the time. I'm sure that it's possible to improve performance further, but would advise testing edits thoroughly in sandboxes first.  Hopefully the new WikiMedia back-end will avoid these problems, when it's released.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:11, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks Martin. — Ganeshk  ( talk ) 02:24, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

resolved

Nomination for deletion of Template:Confusing section
Template:Confusing section has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. ❤ Yutsi Talk/  Contributions  ( 偉特 ) 15:04, 27 September 2012 (UTC) resolved

Replaceable fair use File:Drepanophycus.gif
Thanks for uploading File:Drepanophycus.gif. I noticed the description page specifies that this media item is being used under a claim of fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails the first non-free content criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed media item could be found or created that provides substantially the same information or which could be adequately covered with text alone. If you believe this media item is not replaceable, please:


 * 1) Go to the file description page and edit it to add, without deleting the original replaceable fair use template.
 * 2) On the file discussion page, write the reason why this media item is not replaceable at all.

Alternatively, you can also choose to replace this non-free media item by finding freely licensed media of the same subject, requesting that the copyright holder release this (or similar) media under a free license, or by creating new media yourself (for example, by taking your own photograph of the subject).

If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified how these media fully satisfy our non-free content criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on [ this link]. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, non-free media which could be replaced by freely licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if uploaded before 13 July 2006), per the non-free content policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:23, 8 October 2012 (UTC) resolved

Nomination for deletion of Template:Wict
Template:Wict has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thanks. --Ahora (talk) 04:04, 10 December 2012 (UTC) resolved

Concerning Species Template For Cotyledion
I wanted to change the species template for Cotyledion to reflect that it's a stem-group Ectoproct, and not a stem-group Entoproct. However, the edits I have made either screw up the template, or don't show up. Could I get your help with this?--Mr Fink (talk) 19:10, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Whoops, an embarassing mistake. Thanks for spotting it.  ✅ Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  10:00, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Did You Hear?
The Walt Disney Company recently bribed collaborated with the Danish government to purchase the rights to the nektaspid trilobite Buenaspis in order to change the genus name to Buenavistahomeentertainmentaspis.--Mr Fink (talk) 02:00, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Is this message two months early? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  07:41, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Nomination for deletion of Template:Creatures of the slime
Template:Creatures of the slime has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.  <font size="2" color="seagreen">cyclopia  speak! 18:40, 19 August 2013 (UTC) resolved

August 2013
Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=569870581 your edit] to Sipuncula may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 ""s. If you have, don't worry, just [ edit the page] again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=User:A930913/BBpreload&editintro=User:A930913/BBeditintro&minor=&title=User_talk:A930913&preloadtitle=BracketBot%20-%20&section=new my operator's talk page].
 * List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 15:01, 23 August 2013 (UTC) resolved
 * * Archaeogolfingia and Cambrosipunculus from the Cambrian Chengjiang biota in China.  These fossils appear to belong to the crown

Citation bot isn't editing cite jstor
See Vincent Price (educator), cite jstor isn't working. Ryan Vesey Review me!  02:28, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Smith609, if you've got time I'd really appreciate you looking in to this. I found cite jstor really useful! Thanks Gareth Jones (talk) 21:34, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It isn't working for me either, the refs at Rodrigues Solitaire aren't being filled... FunkMonk (talk) 16:22, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

New Page Patrol survey
resolved

MSU Interview
resolved Dear Smith609,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:
 * Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
 * Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
 * All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
 * All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
 * The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 07:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Young June Sah --Yjune.sah (talk) 20:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Fixes for Taxobox/taxonomy expansion-depth exceeded
I have submitted edit-requests to reduce the template nesting depth in Template:Taxobox/taxonomy and Template:Taxobox/taxonomy/3, to avoid the red message " Page exceeded the expansion depth " appearing at top during edit-preview of bio/species articles. See discussion:
 * Template_talk:Taxobox

The plan is to bypass sub "/1" (Template:Taxobox/taxonomy/1) and sub "/2" (Template:Taxobox/taxonomy/2), to lower the total expansion depth when running Template:Taxobox/taxonomy/3 to show the upper taxon rows. Join the discussion if you have time. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:26, 1 September 2012 (UTC) resolved

Bot not working
DOI Bot seems to have stopped working since this morning. At the very least, the following link leads to timeout: http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/DOI_bot/doibot.php?doi=10.1002%2Fana.410060309. <span style="font-family: 'Candara', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; text-shadow: #AAAAFF 0.2em 0.2em 0.1em; class: texhtml"><font style="color:#3300CC">kashmiri 15:46, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, seems that toolserver.org is down altogether. <span style="font-family: 'Candara', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; text-shadow: #AAAAFF 0.2em 0.2em 0.1em; class: texhtml"><font style="color:#3300CC">kashmiri 15:48, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

resolved

Taxobot seems down
Please come over to Template talk:Automatic taxobox/Archive 8 and let us know what's going on. Thanks. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  20:17, 6 October 2012 (UTC) resolved

Bot misbehaviour
See User_talk:Citation_bot. Urhixidur (talk) 14:55, 18 October 2012 (UTC) resolved

Redirection of a template to its sandbox
I thought this redirection of one of your templates to its sandbox was odd, just wanted to see if you were aware and approved of it. We probably shouldn't be running live with sandbox templates over long periods of time, if at all. – Wbm1058 (talk) 23:56, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree - Probably an artefact - best to copy the sandbox to 'real' space. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  09:17, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Deletion of Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth article?
Another editor has unilaterally deleted the entire content of an article which you created, with the comment, "lets see who squeals." I've restored it, but I figured you might want to know what's going on. NCdave (talk) 14:37, 23 March 2013 (UTC) resolved

Citationbot
Hi, you're listed as contact for this bot, which is currently blocked. This is causing a huge amount of extra work and I would greatly appreciate it if you could have a look at this (and hopefully fix the problem... :-) Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 10:10, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Glad to see it is fixed. (The "f" problem, that is.) Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 15:05, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Link of, Rank of, Get rank, Don't edit this line rank, Taxon variant rank, etc etc
Hello,

I just randomly happened across Don't edit this line plain link text, and it was confusing to say the least. If you could some day expand their documentation with a link to a page that explains them as a whole, I'm sure future editors would appreciate it.

Best wishes, &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   17:32, 17 November 2012 (UTC) resolved

Article Feedback deployment
Hey Smith609; I'm dropping you this note because you've used the article feedback tool in the last month or so. On Thursday and Friday the tool will be down for a major deployment; it should be up by Saturday, failing anything going wrong, and by Monday if something does :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 13 March 2013 (UTC) resolved

Redirect for Opabinid
I just redirect Opabinid because there is a page called Opabinia. User:98.177.220.111 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.177.220.111 (talk) 16:00, 17 March 2013 (UTC) resolved

Files missing description details
Dear uploader: The media files you uploaded as: are missing a description and/or other details on their image description pages. If possible, please add this information. This will help other editors make better use of the images, and they will be more informative to readers.
 * File:Ref++Stage1.png
 * File:Ref++Stage2.png

If the information is not provided, the images may eventually be proposed for deletion, a situation which is not desirable, and which can easily be avoided.

If you have any questions, please see Help:Image page. Thank you. Theo's Little Bot (error?) 01:31, 14 April 2013 (UTC) resolved

Link of, Rank of, Get rank, Don't edit this line rank, Taxon variant rank, etc etc
Hello,

I just randomly happened across Don't edit this line plain link text, and it was confusing to say the least. If you could some day expand their documentation with a link to a page that explains them as a whole, I'm sure future editors would appreciate it.

Best wishes, &mdash; Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   17:32, 17 November 2012 (UTC) resolved

Article Feedback deployment
Hey Smith609; I'm dropping you this note because you've used the article feedback tool in the last month or so. On Thursday and Friday the tool will be down for a major deployment; it should be up by Saturday, failing anything going wrong, and by Monday if something does :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 13 March 2013 (UTC) resolved

Redirect for Opabinid
I just redirect Opabinid because there is a page called Opabinia. User:98.177.220.111 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.177.220.111 (talk) 16:00, 17 March 2013 (UTC) resolved

Files missing description details
Dear uploader: The media files you uploaded as: are missing a description and/or other details on their image description pages. If possible, please add this information. This will help other editors make better use of the images, and they will be more informative to readers.
 * File:Ref++Stage1.png
 * File:Ref++Stage2.png

If the information is not provided, the images may eventually be proposed for deletion, a situation which is not desirable, and which can easily be avoided.

If you have any questions, please see Help:Image page. Thank you. Theo's Little Bot (error?) 01:31, 14 April 2013 (UTC) resolved

Acritarchs
[] - where is about acritarchs in Javaux, E.; Marshall, C.; Bekker, A. (2010). "Organic-walled microfossils in 3.2-billion-year-old shallow-marine siliciclastic deposits". Nature 463 (7283): 934–938 ? I agree that description of microfossils by Javaux et al. suggests of acritarch but it is only our interpretation. --Piotr967 (talk) 11:52, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Your doi's were wrong
A bunch of the doi's that you added to Acutichiton had invisible characters in them. I fixed them. Not sure if they are from copying and pasting or what. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:20, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you for your bot's recent helpful edits to the new article I've created, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate. We'd love for you to join WP:WikiProject Freedom of speech if you're interested in the subject matter. :) Have a great day! &mdash; Cirt (talk) 17:01, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Pubmed citations and article type
Hi,

I'm a relatively new editor, so I am still not entirely clear on how to use citationbot. Despite this, I am hoping you might be able to help me. I started a discussion over at WT:MED, because I think it would be helpful to have a view of which PMID'd references in a given list are not tagged with article types consistent with WP:MEDRS e.g. review, meta-analysis, practice guideline, et al. Is there some way citationbot could do this, or is there another bot or tool that could be easily modified to do the same? As per the discussion at WT:MED, this may be best as a user-side tool rather than a modification to existing templates.

Looking forward to hearing your perspectives and suggestions.

-- UseTheCommandLine (talk) 18:39, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Citation Bot Removed Citations and Text
Hi Smith609,

I thought you might like to know about this, as I was advised you created the bot, and it seems to be acting up. See. NinaGreen (talk) 02:40, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It looks that this closing brace was the culprit. Running the bot after the fix didn't change anything in the article. It seems like that typo is something the bot ought to be able to catch. LeadSongDog come howl!  03:24, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Mureropodia
Hi Smith609, you change the text of the Mureropodia image. Since English is not my mother tongue I don't know if its actually right. The image is a graphic design from a photograph, not a retouched picture of the fossil, but I don't know if I expressed it correctly before. Thanks for your work, --PePeEfe (talk) 08:13, 16 February 2014 (UTC) resolved

Lobopodia
Thanks for tidying after the merge. Heds (talk) 22:45, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Citation expander clashing with Lua editing scripts
Hi there. I see that you're the author of the JavaScript side of the Citation expander gadget. It seems that this script is clashing with the scripts used for editing Lua modules, but I have no clue when it comes to JavaScript, so I'm not sure where exactly the error comes from. In any case, you should probably take a look at Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_109, where we have been talking about it. Best regards — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 15:42, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Precious
A year ago, you were the 152nd recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, - you are an awesome Wikipedian! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Porting DOI bot to Labs
Hi, I've made the first step toward porting the doi bot or "citation bot" to Labs: https://github.com/wrought/citation-bot and http://tools.wmflabs.org/doi-bot/ but the repo available here: http://code.google.com/p/citation-bot/source/browse/ doesn't have the credential information and mysql database connection information, potentially among other components--is there another repo with templates for these? Or perhaps you can send me a flat file, either with data scrubbed, or I can scrub it. Also, if there is any other information or insight you can provide, that would be helpful, many thanks! -- Mattsenate (talk) 12:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Citation bot isn't ending (again, sorry)
Sorry to ask you in your wikiholiday, but I'm running the incredibly useful Citation bot against Molecular diagnostics, and the bot has not ended in the last 30 minutes.

It's still on:


 * Citation bot is running...
 * Wait a moment whilst the bot runs. You'll be returned to Wikipedia when it's done.
 * Wait a moment whilst the bot runs. You'll be returned to Wikipedia when it's done.

I pressed "show changes", which made no obvious difference: and the DOI citations have not changed either.

It looks like this issue has popped up in the past, but the only solution seems to be to ask you.

(Also: I had to install the JS widget to get the citations button on the edit page. I assume that's expected behaviour, but I'm mentioning it just in case it's not.)

Thanks, Ian McDonald (talk) 14:34, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Update: I've realised that I was failing to use the format correctly. Sorry. I've left this here in the hope that it's a useful bug report about the widget/Citations button hanging instead of failing gracefully. Thanks for writing it. It's brilliant. Ian McDonald (talk) 20:37, 28 September 2013 (UTC) resolved

Citation bot versions
Hi Martin, I'm puzzled. The bot's recent edit notes indicate it is still using versions 442 and 458. These are much older than the one on google code. Perhaps somewhere you might document the current deployed version? LeadSongDog come howl!  04:58, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm working on a new version, which exists in Google Code, but is not yet ready for deployment. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  10:48, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, but should we still be seeing edits by 442 if 458 is deployed? A simple statement "The current deployed version number is nnn" on the userpage would seem helpful and easy. LeadSongDog come howl!  18:46, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It depends whether one is using the 'stable' or 'beta' version. I don't imagine that I will be very good at keeping the version numbers up to date, but if you want to, you are welcome to; you can see the revision number of the 'stable' version at http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/DOI_bot/doibot.php and the 'beta' version at http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/citation-bot/doibot.php. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  09:45, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Alalcomenaeus
Since you're the major contributor to this article, thought you might like to know about this.--v/r - TP 13:41, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  09:08, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Burlingia
resolved Thanks for editing the box of Burlingia. Your way is both more condensed in the code and in the text. I do not understand automated boxes. Does the code you use also work in ordinary taxoboxes? In which case I'll start using them (assuming this is not contested). I also have a remark concerning the automated taxobox. It lacks the family-level (Burlingiidae). Could you please include it. Thank you very much, -Dwergenpaartje (talk) 17:48, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to add code to cite doi
I thought you might be interested in this proposal to add code to cite doi, a template that you and CitationBot know well. You might be able to think of some unintended consequences of the proposed change. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:50, 28 November 2013 (UTC) resolved

pmid → PMID
pmid redirects to Cite pmid, which is not intuitive since there is also PMID. Could you please change this redirect? --bender235 (talk) 16:15, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Whatlinkshere indicates that there are about 400 transcluding articles for pmid, many of them drug stubs. They seem largely to be nearly naked, of the form   These should be converted to proper, populated cite journal instances of the same form as other citations in those articles.LeadSongDog  come howl!  16:37, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

resolved

Status of Citation Bot rewrite?
How's the Citation Bot rewrite coming along? Is there anything I can do to help? I'll be happy to do some debugging or testing. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:58, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The current project is to get the bot tranferred to the WMF server before the toolserver is disabled (tomorrow...) (!) Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:19, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
 * --<font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:15px;"> Daniel Mietchen (talk) 22:35, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

resolved

Have I just messed up a test case?
While stub-sorting I found Orstenotubulus, stub-sorted it, did some general cleanup, and noticed that the two refs were identical. Found a format of ref I'd never seen before, ref doi, looked into it, found that a bot was converting them to use, converted those two and combined them.

Then noticed that the bot owner's name was the same as the editor who'd created the article, yourself. So perhaps you'd just set it up as a test case to experiment with the bot? Sorry if I've spoiled your test case. Pam D  12:08, 5 February 2014 (UTC) resolved

Question
G'day, what happens if I remove from within an article? I have created an article and would like to insert a wikilink to it in place of the visible anchor Template. Cheers YSSYguy (talk) 01:39, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Not sure, sorry! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  18:30, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

resolved

Approval for Citation bot to create sub-templates (doi, pmid, etc)
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Can you please point to the bot approval request which covers User:Citation bot's creation of citation sub-templates (for example Template:Cite doi/10.5665.2Fsleep.1378)? I've read over the ones listed at User:Citation bot and only see requests to adjust formatting of citations, but not mass creation of templates. If you haven't requested such, please stop your bot immediately. -- Netoholic @ 07:42, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Bot owners' noticeboard --Netoholic @ 19:02, 11 June 2014 (UTC) resolved

Citation bot bugs
Any chance you could address some of the outstanding citation bot bugs, at least by disabling the code snippets in question? Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:39, 17 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Smith609. I have tried using pmid and doi bots today with both reporting that the bot is blocked, leaving the solution only by tedious filling out of cite journal. I have used both previously as recently as yesterday with success and appreciation that these bots continue to work, so I hope a repair is soon in order. Thanks. --Zefr (talk) 22:46, 1 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm still seeing these problems, too. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:06, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

resolved

Translating citation bot to basque
Hello Smith609! I've seing the system you use with citation bot, creating PMID and doi citations. I've made something similar (is to say, a bot that copies the citations into eu:wp) but it will be better to have the citation bot itself translated into basque, so I don't have to make use of replace.py every time I make the bot crawl the en:wp category. Would it be possible to translate it? -Theklan (talk) 19:17, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the interest; please see User:DOI_bot. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  11:56, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Trilobite image showing soft tissue
Hi, you uploaded a wonderfull photo that has now been renamed to. This is the only known trilobite species with caudal cerci. There is a slight chance you may still have or would be in the position to make an image of the pygidial area of this specimen where these caudal cerci can be seen. It would really be helpful if you could upload such an image. Kind regards, -Dwergenpaartje (talk) 12:52, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Bot translation into Swedish
We are currently engaging researchers to write on Wikipedia within our university, please see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SLU. As for now, about 30-60 researchers are active to some degree and one of their main interest is to add relevant references to the articles. This is easy on enwp thanks to your great bot, but we would very much appreciate to also have it on svwp. We are especially interested in the templates where you can enter ISBN and PMID/DOI. I can do the translation of templates and parameters. Is there anything else that you need? A bot permission can be applied for at https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Robotans%C3%B6kan, but we can prepare the application for you if you wish. --Olle Terenius (SLU) (talk) 14:54, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

citations gadget
Hi Martin, I played a bit with MediaWiki:Gadget-citations.js and it seems to very useful gadget. I would like to copy it to hewiki and to improve it to work also in VisualEditor :) By viewing the code I saw it sends a post request to http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/citation-bot/text.php with the editform, and I have some questions regarding it: Thanks, Eran (talk) 18:28, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * What parameters does it expect from the editform? (the visualeditor doesn't have "editform", but I can create a dummy one with the required fields)
 * It seems that the php script uses the previous location (the location of edit of the article which I navigated from) to send the user back to editing. I want to find a "workaround" for it, so I can get there from other location (visual editor editing).
 * Is there a json or xml interface for ajaax reqests to text.php/citation-bot? for example a JSONP wrapper for expand.php -> expand_text. A JS script that calls a function "calllback" with expanded text e.g something like:
 * Or alternatively, is text.php open-source? (and if yes, where is the code?) Never mind, I found it on toolserver

Laurel wreath
Hear, hear! just saved a lot of my precious time while writing deep belief network! Q VVERTYVS (hm?) 14:46, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Citation Bot error
Howdy, thanks for your work on Citation Bot. I wanted to alert you to a bit of a mishap with today's featured article. Citation bot corrected the citations in this edit, but three of them it duplicated editor-first or editor1-first. I fixed them in three edits here, but thought I would let you know. Thanks again and have a happy holiday season! --TeaDrinker (talk) 02:18, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Again, thanks for your excellent work on Citation Bot. Today we seemed to have a mishap on "Diffuse interstellar band" ‎ (at revision 592873738 by Fconaway).  The bot INTRODUCED AN ERROR by replacing the primary author's name with the secondary author's name.  Please review this, as I'm not sure why or how this happened.Fconaway (talk) 23:52, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Something like this happened again today on Type Ia supernova.Fconaway (talk) 21:42, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
 * This is a known bug (or set of bugs) that has been reported in multiple varieties on the Citation bot talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:43, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Compliment
You recently fixed two issues I reported about Citation bot. I just wanted to let you know I appreciate that. Debresser (talk) 16:38, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * You're welcome (-: Thanks for the note – hopefully more fixes are soon to follow!  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  19:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I wanted to tack on to this by thanking you for promptly responding to my bug report. Really appreciate it! If you need help testing the new version let me know. I am actually a Software QA Engineer by trade so I have some experience testing. :-) --Zackmann08 (talk) 22:07, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Precious again
<div style="margin: auto; max-width: 60em; box-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba( 192, 192, 192, 0.75 ); border-radius: 1em; border: 1px solid #a7d7f9; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0.5em 1em 1em; color: black;" class="ui-helper-clearfix"> <div style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; background-color: #ddd; border: 5px solid #ddd; box-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba(0,0,0,0.75); border-radius: 0.5em;"> palaeontology and evolution

Thank you for sharing your studies of palaeontology and evolution, for example Ediacara biota, to (quoting you) "improve content and accessibility, and reliability", and thank you for promoting "useful tools", - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:32, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Two years ago, you were the 152nd recipient of my Pumpkin Sky Prize, repeated in br'erly style, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:44, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Uh oh - toolbox.js
When I click on Edit history stats, or page watchers under the Statistics toolbox in the right margin, I get the following - 403: User account expired The page you requested is hosted by the Toolserver user wiki_researcher, whose account has expired. Toolserver user accounts are automatically expired if the user is inactive for over six months. To prevent stale pages remaining accessible, we automatically block requests to expired content. See: ??? <font style="text-shadow:#F8F8FF 0.1em 0.1em 0.4em,#F2CEF2 -0.4em -0.4em 0.6em,#90EE90 0.8em 0.8em 0.6em;color:#E6FFFF">Atsme &#9775;  Consult  01:53, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, the toolserver itself is expired, now. Do you have an updated link, or any suggestions of how to find one?  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  10:08, 30 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Hey, Martin - you might want to read the following responses I got at the Village Pump: under the section: Is_there_a_fix_for_the_expired_Toolserver_user_wiki_researcher?

Palaeoscolecid
The taxonomy section is messed up. There is a missing template somewhere. I'm not familiar with it to know what is missing. Could you take a look? Bgwhite (talk) 18:44, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I was fixing this page's refs, and I thought I might have messed it up, so I took a stab at it just now. In any event, I have added some seriously kludgy formatting to it to make it look halfway reasonable. Someone who understands the taxonomy and the templates being used may want to clean it up further. For one thing, some taxonomic names are italicized, and some are not. I don't know if there is a valid reason for that. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Valdiviathyris quenstedti automated taxobox
Thank you for initiating an article on the genus Valdiviathyris, which was at that moment considered monotypic. You did so using an automated taxobox, a template I haven't mastered. Recently an article has been published that describes Valdiviathyris bicornis Holmer, Popov & Bassett, 2013, from the Silurian of Gotland. I believe that best practice is that extant species have their own entry while fossil species are dealt with in the entry of the genus they belong to. My request to you is if you could create a Valdiviathyris quenstedti page that may consist only of the automated taxobox, and drop me a line, so I can add content. Thank you in advance, regards, Dwergenpaartje (talk) 12:18, 26 September 2014 (UTC).

Difficulty with Citations button (and bug?)
I'm trying to improve my use of citations rather than letting other people come along later and expand them. I have the button, it loads the bot page and comes back to my edit, but doesn't expend bibcodes (cite journal|bibcode=...). I've tested on old versions that I know were successfully expanded, but nothing. I ran from the standalone doibot page and that worked (but committed edits even though I said not to and it said it wouldn't), so I'm lost as to what I'm doing wrong. Lithopsian (talk) 14:12, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Images by Friedrich Oltmanns on Commons
Hello! These drawings will soon be deleted since the author died only in 1945 and his works will be released to public domain on January, 1st. They may be automatically restored then. Mithril (talk) 20:25, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Have these images now been restored? 11:01, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

update toolbox.js to new stats system?
Hi. Your toolbox.js has become so much a part of my Wiki life that I'd forgotten that it wasn't actually part of Wikimedia. <g> Since stats.grok.se has been down for a while now, perhaps the link in toolbox.js could be updated to use the new "official" stats tool? Cheers. Le Deluge (talk) 19:35, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I've checked, it works if you just replace the stats.grok.se URL with  - and whilst you're at it, the heading needs to be   rather than  . Looks like Wikidashboard has gone for good though. Le Deluge (talk) 19:55, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Glad that you find the script useful. I've made the suggested changes. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  10:56, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

RevisionSlider & WikEdDiff interaction
Hi! You are receiving this message as it looks like you have a copy of the WikEdDiff user script in your user space on this wiki.

When using the RevisionSlider and WikEdDiff together WikEdDiff will not function correctly when the RevisionSlider is used to load a new diff. This can be fixed by adding a simple hook listener to your copy.

During a deployment slot today the RevisionSlider extension will be turned on as a beta feature on all wikis.

For the first week the RevisionSlider will be deployed with a 'hack' that will mean WikEdDiff will continue to work, but on the 21st and 22nd of September this 'hack' will be removed.

You can find the relevant phabricator ticket here which contains the code that you will need to add to your copy of the script (in most cases). Please also use this ticket for further questions & discussion.

Addshore (talk) 09:20, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Sinotectirostrum
Dear Smith609, I notice that you moved Camarotoechia Hall & Clarke, 1893 to Sinotectirostrum Sartenaer, 1961, based on Cherkesova (2007). However, I think you misinterpret the situation. Cherkesova reassigns two taxa, "radiata" and "omaliusi", that Nalivkin had placed in Camarotoechia, to Sinotectirostrum as a new combination for a species and a subspecies respectively. Neither of these taxa can be the type of Camarotoechia, which I presume is Atrypa congretata Conrad, 1841. This means Camarotoechia and Sinotectirostrum henceforth are recognised genera of their own. I'll leave this to you, regards, Dwergenpaartje (talk) 17:01, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for spotting the error. I'll reinstate Camarotoechia.  In case I've missed the nuance of what you've said, it would be great if you could make any relevant changes.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  09:42, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

request
Could you upload the newest citation bot source from GitHub to the developement version for testing please

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Taxobot children
Do you have any opinion on Miscellany for deletion/Taxobot children. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 23:11, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Graphical timeline
How much work would be involved in making a version of this template that produces horizontal, rather than vertical, timelines? Thanks, — swpb T 20:02, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I vaguely remember creating such a template. Does Horizontal_timeline do the trick? Perhaps Fossil range calls a similar template?  You might want to include a link to this discussion at Template talk:Graphical timeline and update the template documentation, if you get an answer to your question.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  16:03, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Your edit to Template:Taxonomy/Eumetazoa/?
Hi, taxon? doesn't work now (it hasn't since made changes to the system to allow hardcoding of ancestors to reduce expansion depth) – it causes an expansion depth error. So we currently use the 'standard' format with the ? in the link text. All uses of taxon? in taxonomy templates have been removed.

At present, same_as in a taxonomy template must be accompanied by parent. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:50, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * What a shame that breaking changes are being introduced, particularly if they make the job of editors more difficult. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:28, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem lies with the ridiculously deep taxonomic hierarchies, particularly for dinosaurs and for birds treated as avian dinosaurs. It just is not possible to process them with the current expansion depth limit of 40 (effectively 20 for templates since they count as 2 when inside a transcluded template). Picking up the parent by following up a same_as link adds to the depth and causes the system to break even sooner. The automated taxobox system would work really well if it used the Linnean ranks and a few extra clades. But look at Template:Taxonomy/Pteranodon – it can only be made to work properly by using a skip template (the ... line). Look at Template:Taxonomy/Tyrannosaurus – it works because some ranks are hard-coded (the downward arrows). I've spent about 3 days re-writing the colour determining subsystem just to save 2-3 expansion depths, which is essential to keep the system working.
 * There is a better solution – introduce "majorparent" to taxonomy templates to skip levels – but it needs someone with time to do all the work involved. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:54, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi, just thought I'd let you know that I'm working on what is by far the best solution to expansion depth limit problems, namely rewriting the parts of the code that traverse the taxonomic hierarchy in Lua. It avoids completely the need to have multiple templates with nesting (like the  family for example). You just write loops! The expansion depth drops dramatically, and hierarchies of 100+ levels should be no problem.

So far I've created Lua versions of the traversals needed to find the taxobox colour and to generate the table shown on the "Taxonomy/TAXON" pages. The final step is the traversal needed for the taxoboxes themselves, but it looks straightforward, although it's necessary to work slowly in view of the number of pages that would be affected by any error.

When converting traversals to Lua is finished, we should be able to restore the proper behaviour of same_as and some of the other bits of the system that were disabled as part of fudges to reduce expansion depth, and we won't need hardcoded or /skip templates purely to reduce the number of levels.

Ultimately I think that most of the automated taxonomy system can be moved to Lua, leaving only the raw data stored in the taxonomy templates, since this format is much easier for most editors to set up and modify.

If you're interested, Module:Autotaxobox/sandbox will have the latest version. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:25, 9 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi, Template:Taxonomy/Eumetazoa/? and similar templates are now fixed and don't need the redundant parent. See WP:Automated taxobox system/notes for some notes for "old hands" on recent changes. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:35, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Deletion of some of the T^ templates
Please see Templates for discussion/Log/2016 December 17. Now that I have coded all the traversals of the taxonomic hierarchies encoded in taxobox templates in Lua at Module:Autotaxobox, these templates aren't used and I've nominated them for deletion. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:30, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Great, congratulations on coding this all in Lua, and good luck with the implementation! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:19, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * As ever, the real thanks belong to you (and some of the other early editors, like ) for creating and developing the automated taxobox system in the first place. I'm still full of admiration for how you managed to get it to work in the template language. It's a great asset to Wikipedia, and I'm only too pleased to be able to keep it running. Coding in Lua is so, so much easier.
 * I'm currently cleaning up the taxonomy templates, after which I want to look at restoring some of the functionality (like Taxon?) which was either deliberately or inadvertently rendered inoperable while editors were struggling to cope with the kind of taxonomic hierarchy shown at Template:Taxonomy/Pteranodon, which I doubt was envisaged back in 2010. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:36, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * As per my comment above, see WP:Automated taxobox system/notes for the way that the previous functionality of is now provided. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:38, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Some Help
How do you edit the information for the speciesboxes/automatic taxoboxes?--Mr Fink (talk) 23:48, 8 February 2017 (UTC)


 * the best place to ask questions about the autotaxobox system now is at Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system. Please explain there exactly what you mean. If you mean "how do you edit taxonomy templates?", see Introduction to taxonomy templates. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Cite doi/subpage
Template:Cite doi/subpage has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:44, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Stub sorting
Hello ,

I noticed you marked an article as a stub using the stub template. Did you know that there are thousands of stub types that you can use to clarify what type of stub the article is? Properly categorizing stubs is important to the Wikipedia community because it helps various WikiProjects to identify articles that need expansion.

If you have questions about stub sorting, don't hesitate to ask! There is a wealth of stub information on the stub sorting WikiProject, and hundreds of stub sorters. Thanks! -- I dream of horses If you reply here, please ping me by adding to your message (talk to me) (My edits) @  06:56, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

User:Citation bot
Since you were active the last few days, please see WP:VPT. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 05:00, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Ta, replied there. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  09:24, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Hey Martin, if you could just add me as a maintainer here: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NovaServiceGroup&action=managemembers&projectname=tools&servicegroupname=tools.citations, I can make sure the code is kept up to date. Kaldari (talk) 20:36, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Great, thank you! You're now on the membership list.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  07:39, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
 * there is a new github pull request.  It fixes a missing semicolon.  There is one more waiting too.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:59, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
 * he did it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:49, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Something's not working right at Template:Ma
Hi there, I pinged you about a month ago about that template. Are you still maintaining it, or should I go to WP:VPT and ask for help there? Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   02:46, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Won't have the chance to look into it for a little while I'm afraid... Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  17:51, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The tool is not running https://tools.wmflabs.org/admin/oge/status   AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:07, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * No sweat. Creating something once doesn't obligate you to maintain it forever. I'll ask for help at WP:VPT some time. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   18:26, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Let me know if you need me to log in to anything / share source code. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  08:12, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Citation bot
The citation bot has been slow and hardly working for a few days. At least when doing a manual request.--BabbaQ (talk) 14:16, 12 December 2018 (UTC) resolved

Nomination for deletion of Template:Latin row
Template:Latin row has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 14:13, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, I geuss they resolved that. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:59, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Template infobox rockunit
Hi, there's a discussion about the field labelled "period" in this infobox as some editors are assuming that it means "period" in the strict sense and others that it just requires whatever the relevant chronstrat term is. This of course only changes the colour. A suggestion is that we change the name of the label to "interval" and add a comment in the documentation. Your thoughts (and help) would be appreciated. Mikenorton (talk) 21:45, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Citation bot
Hi, can a Citation bot be launched in Serbian Wikipedia and other related projects in Serbian? If it can, what do you need to do to enable the bot? Best regards! Ранко Николић (talk) 21:12, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It's certainly possible, but it would involve a fair bit of work. You'd have to fork the Github repository and make the necessary translations.  I'm afraid that I can't offer to do this all myself (I barely have time to support maintenance of the en bot) but would be willing to help out if you were able to find someone to do the bulk of the work. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  06:17, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I can certainly help with translation, but I'm afraid I wouldn't know do the rest of the work. Ранко Николић (talk) 04:25, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I can help. In which file(s) are places translations? I saw now this. I will help. Zoranzoki21 (talk) 00:29, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Unused template
As you know, I converted traversals of the taxonomy hierarchy encoded in taxonomy templates to Lua some time ago, to deal with expansion depth limits. At the time, I found converting just this part of the automated taxobox system a complex task, so I left many of the 'non-traversal' templates alone. I'm slowly converting those that are not also used by the manual taxobox system to Lua, so some templates are becoming unused.

Taxonomy links/cell, which you created, has now been replaced by a Lua function in Module:Autotaxobox, so I've nominated it for deletion. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Ranks in taxonomy templates
I made a mess of fixing Template:Taxonomy/Trochozoa, but it's correct now. Perhaps the entry in Anglicise rank should put a space between the rank and the "?". The point I'd like to make is that the automated taxobox system is now much tighter as regards things like acceptable rank names; any ranks not in Anglicise rank will flag an error. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:58, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Taxonomy links
Template:Taxonomy links has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 13:22, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Timescale tool
Hi, on you are listed as the maintainer of the wmflabs timescale tool. The tool hasn't worked for a while, and the template Ma for example had to remove links to it because of that. Is there any chance to make it operable again? Or, if you are not involved anymore, do you know whom best to contact in this matter? Thanks, AxelBoldt (talk) 13:16, 15 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the pointer! I've restarted the webservice and updated the tool for php7.2 compatability.  You should now be able to restore the links.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:49, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Citation bot at WP:AN
I started a thread at the administrator's noticeboard to try to find a way forward with this, and would welcome your participation there.  Uninvited Company 17:33, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the pointer. Is there any specific input that you are hoping I can provide? Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  14:06, 4 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I believe the only remaining sticking point is that they would like you, as the operator of record, to weigh in personally on the discussion and note that you're taking responsibility for the bot's edits, and will be following up on any feedback you receive (whether you follow up yourself directly or others who are assisting you follow up on your behalf). It is my view that you have made this clear elsewhere ::shrug::.  I don't believe anything more should be necessary.  Those individuals who take issue with the bot's operation have not provided much in the way of sample diffs illustrating any problem.  Uninvited Company 20:31, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I have added a note to this effect.  Do let me know if I can contribute further to the discussion.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  08:33, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

AdsAbs
Can you increase the number of searches we are allowed. We run out now days. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:53, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Fixing of Template:Speciesbox in dtywiki
Hi, I am facing problems with dty:Template:Speciesbox and dty:Template:Taxobox in dtywiki and have no knowledge of template editing. Can you help in fixing the Template:Speciesbox and Taxonomy related templates?--Nirajan pant (talk) 16:35, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
 * For your information, Speciesbox is part of a large system that generates automated taxoboxes, involving Lua modules as well as templates. See WP:Automated taxobox system. Moving this between wikis is a major task and will definitely require someone with both template editing and Lua coding knowledge – does dtywiki even support Lua? The manual Taxobox template is a bit easier to move, but is still part of a set of templates many of which will need to be changed (e.g. Anglicise rank won't be right). Peter coxhead (talk) 06:50, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the information. I have no information about the Lua support in dtywiki. What do you suggest in this case? Nirajan pant (talk) 04:19, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
 * sorry, I can't really help. You need to contact admins and other knowledgeable people in dtywiki. Porting the automated taxobox system will require editors who know about Lua modules, templates and how the dtywiki is set up. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:36, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.--— xaosflux  Talk 18:51, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The section is Administrators'_noticeboard. — xaosflux  Talk 18:51, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

WMF work on Citation bot
Hi. The Anti-Harassment team at Wikimedia Foundation has been asked to help out with the Citation bot by adding an authentication step before the bot can be triggered. Letting you know so that you are not caught by surprise when you see some commits by members of our team. Thank you! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 04:58, 14 June 2019 (UTC)


 * That would be absolutely wonderful! &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:45, 14 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Great, many thanks for your support. I'll try to keep an eye out in case any action is required from me. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  09:56, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks ! It would be helpful if you can add (Github profile) as a maintainer to the citation bot repository on Github. It will definitely speed up our process. We promise to be careful. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Sure thing – added as a collaborator – let me know if other permissions would be useful! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  11:23, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Annotated image/Arthropod cuticle
Template:Annotated image/Arthropod cuticle has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 17:02, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Annotated image/Walcott view
Template:Annotated image/Walcott view has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 17:08, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

User:Marianne Zimmerman

 * Cross-posted here, at User talk:Marianne Zimmerman, at Bots/Noticeboard, and at User talk:Citation bot

This account has made tens of thousands of edits by proxy using the Citation bot. It is still ongoing while I'm writing this. The account itself has made only 11 edits so far.

It is obvious that this 'Marianne Zimmerman' account is a bot, since it is working around the clock, 24/7. The account is not labeled as such, and has not been authorized by the Bot Approvals Group. In itself not a big deal, because the account has been making only positive edits and has not caused disruption. Still, it is technically violating policy, and I'm wondering why a bot would use another bot to make bot edits. That seems rather silly. I hope the author of the 'Marianne bot' can come forward so that we can work things out. Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 12:04, 14 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi Smith609, I mentioned you at the ANI thread on this, but there isn't really anything for you to do there. Please take a look at User_talk:Citation_bot if you have a moment. Thank you, —  xaosflux  Talk 13:17, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Citation bot concurrency
Hello, I need your help. On, I was told that configuration similar to wikitech:Help:Toolforge/Web/Lighttpd may help increase the capacity of the tool. Based on the default configuration there and other tools like /data/project/glamtools/.lighttpd.conf, maybe you could try: fastcgi.server += ( ".php" =>       ((                "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",                "socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php.socket.citations",                "max-procs" => 4,                "bin-environment" => ( "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "3", "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "500" ),               "bin-copy-environment" => ( "PATH", "SHELL", "USER" ),               "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable",                "allow-x-send-file" => "enable"         )) )

I'm not sure what to do if translation-server is actually the bottleneck, though. Nemo 17:18, 6 August 2019 (UTC)


 * I've added this code to the .lighttpd.conf file for `citation-bot`.
 * Would the same approach work on the translation-server? That's also an account that I maintain. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:53, 7 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks! For translation-server it would be great to increase capacity but I'm even less sure how or what kind of limits are being hit (Agent?): in JSWebService I don't see configuration options other than , where I see you currently have  . Maybe some command line options can be passed here but it doesn't sound ideal. Nemo 17:32, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Please manually do the git update. error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge: .lighttpd.conf Please move or remove them before you merge. Aborting Updating a0ed19bb..072e52e9

I assume you just delete the file, then immediately do the git update. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:13, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
 * can you login to tool server and delete that file so git can replace it with exact same file? https://tools.wmflabs.org/citations/gitpull.php AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:45, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Done and new code pulled. Kaldari (talk) 14:37, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Removal of "format=PDF"
Could you please explain me why Citation bot is removing format from URLs linking to PDF files? SLBedit (talk) 00:33, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Smith—you can ignore this discussion, it was also on discussed on Bot page along with the relevant policies and style guides. If more discussion is needed we will discuss it there.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:49, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Could you link to the discussion you mentioned? SLBedit (talk) 00:59, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * there have been several archived ones. Please create a new one if you so desire.  It’s not a feature that I am attached too. Smith can go months without logging in.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:31, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I now see that "(PDF)" (as well as the icon) is displayed even when "format=PDF" is removed. For the record: User talk:Citation bot/Archive 13. SLBedit (talk) 02:02, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at ANI concerning Citation bot
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is AManWithNoPlan and Citation bot. . <b style="color: teal; font-family: Tahoma">HJ Mitchell</b> &#124; <span style="color: navy; font-family: Times New Roman" title="(Talk page)">Penny for your thoughts? 10:09, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Guidance desired
Category:Articles with inconsistent citation formats explains its purpose via  which I include, in part, here: User:Citation bot helps editors to keep citations in a consistent format within a given article. If a mix of and  templates are used, the bot will convert all citations to the dominant type (as they differ in details of punctuation). It will preserve the original formatting, in case it was intentional. However, in most cases, the editor did not realize that the added citation did not match the format in the article. Therefore, the bot adds a hidden comment and a category (via a template to avoid confusing AWB) to any template that it changes. Human editors should check these comments and see whether the citations they are found in should genuinely have different punctuation to other citations on the page. They should then amend the  parameter accordingly, removing.

I had been cleaning up this maintenance category based on the explanation above. —¿philoserf? (talk) 22:27, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Observations of what I encountered
 * the category directly applied, may have been an early form of the bot
 * two forms of the bot applied postscript
 * incorrectly ‘fixed’ edits of the bot’s postscript
 * the  applied by some editor to a CS1 in an article with only or predominantly CS1
 * the  applied by some editor to a CS2 in an article with only or predominantly CS1, or another variation, bare ref, etc.
 * the  applied by some editor to the article as a maintenance tag
 * Issues
 * it appears from my incomplete testing that the bot no longer applies a CS style fix or adds the postscript
 * the inconsistency in reference style within articles is much more common and covers many more variations
 * these common inconsistencies exceed and outlast whatever original intent the category and template were intended to communicate
 * Questions
 * How then should we improve the category/tag?
 * Where should the conversation take place?


 * Thanks for the message. Consensus on action to take would probably be best sought at Template talk:Citation / Template talk:Cite journal.  Once consensus has been reached, you can request that the bot take whatever action is necessary at User talk:Citation bot.  Hope that helps.  Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  09:18, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Can this bot help with several issues that have arisen from the implemantation of the module:CS1 on the Macedonian Wikipedia
Hi,Smith609 I have some massive edits that need to be done on the Macedonian Wikipedia, concerning now obsolete and redundant text in citations. Can this bot do this changes:


 * remove all variants of this text from citations |deadurl=no, |dead-url=no, |deadurl=yes, |dead-url=yes, |ref=harv and
 * replace everywhere |authors= to |author=

If this is possible it will be a huge help of not doing the changes by hand. Thank you Инокентиј (talk) 19:10, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * You're probably better using WP:AWB for such changes. &#32; {t · c · p · b} 19:14, 9 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you Headbomb for the advice will try to study it and see if I can manage using it. Инокентиј (talk) 19:31, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Citation bot and proxied URLs
Hi! I just tagged you at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T240124 but I see you haven't been active on Phabricator recently so I wanted to make sure you saw my ping :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 08:55, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Starter kit for smaller wikis
Hello, and greetings! As part of a Starter kit project for smaller wikis, there is a work-in-progress guide around Bots & Tools here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Starter_kit/Bots_and_Tools. I'm reaching out with a few questions, as there is a mention of the Citation bot on this page in the list of useful bots section: Additionally, if you have a suggestion for any other bots or tools currently on the list which should not be there and those that are not there and should be there, I would love to know about them—looking forward to your input! Srishti (talk) 07:45, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Is it okay to have the bot listed in that section? Are there any concerns?
 * Would you be okay with folks from smaller wikis reaching out to you for help, and would you be willing to list your preferred method of contact under "Bot owner contact"?
 * Is there anything like a note or reminder related to the bot that you would like to add in the "description" column?
 * Efforts to make a port of the bot easier have been made. It is open source. The best point of contact is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Citation_bot AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:32, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Citation bot has been indefinitely blocked
Your bot,, has been indefinitely blocked by due to the following reason: Disruptive editing still removing links after request to stop. They allege that the consensus at Village pump (proposals)/Archive 167 was ignored by the Citation bot maintainers. Just notifiying you.&thinsp;&mdash; Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)&thinsp; 22:07, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * state of affairs. The discussion concluded the identifiers should link if free (like pmc).  that is being interpretted to mean that converting URLs to IDs is wrong.  Several people in favor of the discussion strongly disagree with that conclusion. Most of the links removed violate copyright. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:29, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Allegedly violate. Nemo 22:35, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * True, i just speak from the perspective of the bot being blocked for adding them. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:50, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:12, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

... and eight --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:55, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Horizontal timeline
Template:Horizontal timeline has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Izno (talk) 16:21, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Info related to CitationBot
Hey there! I'm an admin at SqWiki and I mostly deal with technical help regarding citations. I stumbled upon your bot after it being added to Small Wikis starter kit. Can you help me by giving some information as to what the bot actually does so I decide if it would be beneficial to ask for incorporating it on SqWiki? Another question on the same subject asked with easier terms: How does this bot differs from IABot and how do they cooperate together? (If they do.) I'm assuming you are okay with expanding your bot's functionalities outside of EnWiki since it was in that list, no? :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:24, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I've not heard of IAbot, I'm afraid. A summary of Citation Bot's activity is available at User:Citation_bot. It would be great to facilitate its use on other Wikis: I won't be able to help with this but if you leave a message on the bot's talk page you may get support there. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  07:50, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Scale row
Template:Scale row has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. --Trialpears (talk) 15:37, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Timeline row
Template:Timeline row has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 13:22, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Note row
Template:Note row has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 13:24, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Horizontal scale
Template:Horizontal scale has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 08:39, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Notice
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Citation bot again. Thank you. Lev!vich 16:38, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

October 2020
Hello, I'm Firestar464. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, Nematophyta, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Firestar464 (talk) 11:01, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Funniest warning I've seen in a while. Smith609, since you are undoubtedly wondering what the heck this is about, it's for an edit you made in 2007, shortly after you started editing. Nothing like templating a regular (let alone an admin) for something done well over a decade ago. Meters (talk) 08:47, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Using your 3D reconstruction in my video
Hi there! I just wanted to let you know I will be prominently using your excellent reconstruction of Scathascolex in a video that is going to be out soon on my YouTube channel. I will of course give due credit as stipulated. Phrenotopian (talk) 11:10, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Minor fixes to userscripts
Hey Smith609, it looks like you've got some user scripts in use by others that have bare javascript global wg-style variables. These are T72470 deprecated, and while I don't think there's a timeline for their removal, it's been that way for a while. It's usually a straightforward fix, all uses need to use, such as converting   to. There's some more info at ResourceLoader/Migration guide (users). I can take care of cleaning them up for you if you like, or give you a full list if you want to handle it, just let me know! ~ Amory <small style="color:#555"> (u • t • c) 12:33, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Took care of 'em for ya. ~ Amory <small style="color:#555"> (u • t • c) 13:43, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

translation-server adoption
Notification for a request to adopt the translation-server on Toolforge per adoption procedure. -- Green  C  14:17, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Added as maintainer. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  07:47, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Str crop
Template:Str crop has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. User:GKFXtalk 14:40, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:13, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled
A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Don't edit this line dagger
Template:Don't edit this line dagger has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Q28 (talk) 05:16, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Listing of Template:Subspeciesbox/example at templates for discussion
Template:Subspeciesbox/example has been listed at templates for discussion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Q28 (talk) 09:37, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Include timeline/Horizontal
Template:Include timeline/Horizontal has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 10:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Include timeline/horizontal instructions
Template:Include timeline/horizontal instructions has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 10:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Include timeline/horizontal template
Template:Include timeline/horizontal template has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 10:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Include timeline/vertical instructions
Template:Include timeline/vertical instructions has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 10:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Include timeline/vertical template
Template:Include timeline/vertical template has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 10:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Citation bot
Hi! Greetings from Uzbek Wikipedia! Could you adapt Citation bot to Uzbek Wikipedia? Iʼm ready to help you with translations! :)

Translations: cite web → web manbasi
 * title → sarlavha
 * first → ism
 * last → familiya
 * date → sana
 * publisher → nashriyot
 * website → vebsayt
 * work → ish
 * year → yil
 * editor → muharrir
 * editor-link → muharrir-havola
 * month → oy
 * pages → sahifalar
 * language → til
 * access-date, accessdate → kirish sanasi
 * archive-url, archiveurl → arxiv-url
 * archive-date, archivedate → arxiv-sana
 * location → joylashuv
 * quote → iqtibos

Malikxan talk 11:50, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Citation Bot on SqWiki
Hello! I'm a crat from SqWiki. I read the instructions related to i18n in regard to Citation Bot and would like to have it operate on our wiki. Given my crat privileges we can easily deal with the privileges part and I can create a user page for the bot. But I was wondering what templates are you referring to when you mention A translation of each of the template names and parameters used. Is it CS1 templates? - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:14, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * That is correct, and all the parameters. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:02, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * @AManWithNoPlan, we currently use them in the English version. Am I to assume all it remains to be done is to just set up a user page for the bot and Smith can help further? - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I would think that a new toolforge account would need setup, and it would need to have edit keys. Some changes to the source code might be needed also, since en.wiki... is assumed.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:11, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh, yes. But I was talking from our side. :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:16, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Spriggina flounensi 8.png


The file File:Spriggina flounensi 8.png has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "Superseded by File:Spriggina floundensi.png"

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. --<span style="font-family: monospace, monospace; color:#69C;">Minorax &laquo;&brvbar;talk&brvbar;&raquo; 04:29, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

New administrator activity requirement
22:53, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Ways to improve Communications Chemistry
Hello, Smith609,

Thank you for creating Communications Chemistry.

I have tagged the page as having some issues to fix, as a part of our page curation process and note that:

"references independent of the subject are required"

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, leave a comment here and begin it with. Remember to sign your reply with. For broader editing help, please visit the Teahouse.

Delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.

Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:28, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

File:Dinomischus.png listed for discussion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Dinomischus.png, has been listed at Files for discussion. Please see the to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:46, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Always precious
Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:25, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

User:Smith609/Citation/doc
Hello, I'm clearing out CAT:DUPARG, and noticed that User:Smith609/Citation/doc is in there, and a cleanup script tells me that the duplicate template field is "month" in cite book. Happy to fix this, but wasn't sure which are the correct fields: should it be month=origmonth, or month=month? Thanks, Storchy (talk) 05:26, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
 * This page probably shouldn't be included in the category page: it's documentation, not a template. Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  15:50, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

"Template:Testcases" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Template:Testcases and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 June 16 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Primefac (talk) 05:42, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Template:Permil


Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a notice that the page you created, Template:Permil, was tagged as a test page under section G2 of the criteria for speedy deletion and has been or soon may be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other test edits you may want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 16:45, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

BOT WINNER    BARNSTAR
HAVE A TREMENDOUS DAY

Proposed deletion of Parnips


The article Parnips has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "Unsourced stub"

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 18:25, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Permil
Template:Permil has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 21:07, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Several Citation bot accounts
Hi, you're the listed operator for four bot accounts ( through 4) which don't appear to need the flag any longer given the work that the primary does these days. Would you mind leaving a note at BN that you'd like them to have their flag removed? Izno (talk) 08:59, 20 January 2023 (UTC)