User talk:Updatehelper

GeoCities
Can you 'hold fire' on these changes. I don't think you're achieving the desired result. Cheers. RashersTierney (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Good luck in your efforts! RashersTierney (talk) 10:31, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Hello, . This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at WP:ANI regarding AWB/Geocities.     Thank you. -- Rodhull  andemu  17:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

(talk) 19:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Why don't you simply exclude anything that doesn't begin http://geocities.com? Note geocities.co.jp pages are intact. More importantly, please explain how you are not in gross breach of copyright. --Yumegusa (talk) 00:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

yes, thats what i do, as far as i know i did not change any geocities.co.jp, why do you say that?

copyright: maybe noone can really answer this - but at least, the following examples are mostly generaly accepted and important for the internet as it is right now. examples: archive.org (Alexa top300, linked about 45.000times in en.wikipedia.org), webcitation.org (linked about 12.000times here) and even google-cache which stays only a few weeks(linked here about 100times). it really is a common issues, isnt it? I assume makeing wikipedia links work again is within the interesst of everyone useing the encyclopedia for As soon as some people wants to see their content offline these archives will put it offline. there will only very rarely be some people wanting to see their geocities page offline even they are linked at wikipedia since a very long time --Updatehelper (talk) 08:35, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think your changes are correct. See for example: The new link doesn't work. And GeoCities links never were valid references for physics articles anyway.
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quantum_mechanics&curid=25202&diff=326908557&oldid=326848393

--Pjacobi (talk) 15:32, 20 November 2009 (UTC) agree. but there are only some, which does not work and i will improve that... --Updatehelper (talk) 02:18, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Sturgeon Point Light, Old Mackinac Point Light, and a few other Michigan lighthouse articles
Dear Link updater, Help, please. The link to the Mulgrew drawings went bye bye. If you could revive it, it would be very much appreciated by me, and would be helpful. Thanks in advance. 7&amp;6=thirteen (talk) 18:15, 19 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Text is here http://web.archive.org/web/20070828141318/http://home.rochester.rr.com/mjm/light2.html
 * pictures maybe lost :/ cause i cant find it at google cache now (it stays there for some weeks)

Word of advice.
Try not to look like your an automated process because there are strict policies that deal with this.  Pick both man lol  01:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

thanks for the advice, i am working semi-automated with Autowikibrowser and i am allowed to use this tool --Updatehelper (talk) 02:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Geocities links that already use the Wayback Machine
Please find a better way of changing links to Geocities that use the Wayback Machine, like you did here. If you've already fixed this bug, I apologise. Graham 87 13:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

yes i fixed it and will remove those mistakes, but however thats important... thanks =)  --Updatehelper (talk) 03:02, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

August 2010
This is the only warning you will receive regarding your disruptive edits. If you create a malicious redirect again, as you did with hundreds of articles, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. ''This bot has vandalized dozens or hundreds of article citations, changing part of a defunct website address "geocities", to "oocities", rendering the citation links unusable via the Internet Archives. Kindly deactivate this bot immediately!'' HarryZilber (talk) 14:50, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Oocities archived the most geocities pages which are referred by wikipedia.  If it does not have a certain site there is a direct link to the Internet Archives. --Updatehelper (talk) 18:18, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Is this account a bot? If so it does not appear to be approved. Is there any reason for not imposing an indefinite block? JamesBWatson (talk) 15:10, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Many many changes of geocities links to a non-working site called oocities ... please stop. betsythedevine (talk) 16:15, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry for any trouble/confusion. Most of my link updates are working, others are going to work soon. This is better because for geocities all are dead, because geocities is dead. To ensure my work is fine, just review my older edits which follow the same mission, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A_Bit_of_Fry_and_Laurie_episodes This Account is actually also AutoWikiBrowser approved since 2009, which enables me to edit partly automated and fast. Anyways due to this accidentally caused disturbance, i will prefer now to pause my work and to await you to confirm to agree with it and not to go on to undo my changes or to block my account. Thanks in advance Updatehelper --Updatehelper (talk) 18:07, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, digging through a search of everything except mainspace, I see that Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive579 appears to be one of the major discussion points.
 * I'll poke Rodhullandemu, and see if he has any advice. Also, I'd like to mention these things:
 * 1) If it continues, I would suggest that only links within articles (mainspace) should be altered. Because edits like this and like this seem like a bad idea. (Can anyone confirm that suspicion?)
 * Yes, currently working on articles only. --Updatehelper (talk) 18:39, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) I'd really like to see a working oocities links, before any further edits are made. I can't get any of them to work. Links appear to be working again. I'm much relieved.
 * HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:27, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * As said above - if a link does not work the visitor is redirected to arichve.org but oocities has got the most of these geocities pages, which are referred by wikipedia. --Updatehelper (talk) 18:39, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I will now go on charily updateing articles since the whole issue obviously was caused by nothing else than oocities beeing partly unreachable today. --Updatehelper (talk) 19:03, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I do not understand why it is helpful to redirect links away from the Wayback Machine, which is a reliable source and has been online forever, to some here-today-gone-tomorrow novelty like oocities.Before making literally hundreds of disputed edits, would it not be a good idea to seek some consensus on whether they are helpful? I do not know what venue would be a good place to discuss this matter, but I hope some admin will note the problem and help. betsythedevine (talk) 22:13, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Betsysthedevine, noone changes links away from wayback machine. The only thing i do is updateding links which still go to http://geocities.com/ and change them into oocities.com because they got a very high percentage of them. Im working on this process since geocities was closed about 10 month ago, when the topic was already discussed in detail...--Updatehelper (talk) 22:24, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The usefulness (or not) of changing geocities links en masse to point to oocities
Just for example, there was a not-working link to a geocities that now points to a sporadically working oocities page, which says:
 * "Sorry, "http://www.oocities.com/fisher4senate/fisher4NJsenate.html" is not available yet.
 * But the following Archive Link maybe leads you to the site you tryed to visit
 * web.archive.org/web/*/geocities.com/fisher4senate/fisher4NJsenate.html"

Would it not make more sense to cut out the middleman here? Set your bot to change "geocities.com/blablabla" not to "oocities.com/blablabal" but to "web.archive.org/web/*/geocities.com/blablabla"? betsythedevine (talk) 22:37, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Geocities links can be redirected quite easily using Checklinks. Tedious as a human job, but likely possible with a well-thought-out bot. Once they've been changed to point to this mirror, Checklinks is no longer an option. It's worth seriously considering whether this action is going to cause even more work down the road.  Katherine  ( talk ) 22:51, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * If you take http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.geocities.com/fisher4senate/fisher4NJsenate.html it will need a redundant click. you can also pick http://web.archive.org/web/99990613144259/http://www.geocities.com/fisher4senate/fisher4NJsenate.html  to get the newest version but if you dont use this "date-hack" within the URL it will always need a click more. In this case of course the link to archive.org will be the better way right now, like i said earlier today. But those cases are a rare sideeffect and not a harming one. In general its the case that oocities is the primary source for these pages because they got most of them and its still filling the gaps (Archive.org has a lot of every site but not the whole Surface_Web neither everything of geocities). Nonetheless, altought these redirects are  redundant they take less time for the User than going to the original geocities.com link and than copy/paste the url to oocities or waybackmachine (if he even knows of one of them at all). Furthermore i have a good faith that oocities will fill nearly all gaps but also nothing will hinder us much to change them to archive.org links afterwards for those which are available at archive.org but not at oocities, if we or someone else writes a more complex AWB Regex or BOT someday, then it will only complicate it a gramm to take this issue into consideration. But for now iam the only one working on this, 10 Month are gone and still thausands of links point to dead geocities.com URLs. Thats the quest my work is dedicated to. Updatehelper (talk) 23:03, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * You say above that your "quest" was "discussed in detail" about 10 months ago... where? The only discussion I have seen of it is this ANI, where the apparent conclusion was that oocities is very likely breaking copyright law. I continue to think that a direct link to Archive.org will be more useful. betsythedevine (talk) 23:49, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * If you see an issue with copyright then thats a superior issue which applys for archive.org also. As said before i agree with you about the redirects but whereas they dont harm anything besides beeing redundant all the pages which are only at oocities and nowhere else are made available again, which is the main part of the quest iam following. if the redirects are still important to you its not necessary a problem. You are free to help me check every single one and make it perfect. but if thats not what you aim to it makes no sense to complain. What iam trying to say is: if im solveing 95% of a problem and you care about the 5% that could maybe stay until someone finds the time to even solve them also, then i wonder why you dont care more about the 100% which would stay if i stoped the whole process? good night... --Updatehelper (talk) 00:34, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
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