User talk:Σ/Archive/2013/November

WikiCup 2013 October newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our champion, for the second year running, is Cwmhiraeth (submissions). Our final nine were as follows:

1. Cwmhiraeth (submissions)
2. Hawkeye7 (submissions)
3. Sasata (submissions)
4. Sturmvogel_66 (submissions)
5. Casliber (submissions)
6. Adam Cuerden (submissions)
7. Miyagawa (submissions)
8. Piotrus (submissions)
9. Ealdgyth (submissions)

All those who reached the final win prizes, and prizes will also be going to the following participants:

• Casliber (submissions) wins the FA prize, for four featured articles in round 4, worth 400 points.
• Sturmvogel_66 (submissions) wins the GA prize, for 20 good articles in round 3, worth 600 points.
• Another Believer (submissions) wins the FL prize, for four featured lists in round 2, worth 180 points.
• Adam Cuerden (submissions) wins the FP prize, for 23 featured pictures in round 5, worth 805 point.
• Sven Manguard (submissions) wins the FPo prize, for 2 featured portals in round 3, worth 70 points.
• Hawkeye7 (submissions) wins the topic prize, for a 23-article featured topic in round 5, worth 230 points.
• Cwmhiraeth (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 79 did you know articles in round 5, worth 570 points.
• ThaddeusB (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 23 in the news articles in round 4, worth 270 points.
• Ed! (submissions) wins the GAR prize, for 24 good article reviews in round 1, worth 96 points.
• The judges are awarding the Oddball Barnstar to The C of E (submissions), for some curious contributions in earlier rounds.
• Finally, the judges are awarding Cwmhiraeth (submissions) the Geography Barnstar for her work on sea, now a featured article. This top-importance article was the highest-scoring this year; when it was promoted to FA status, Cwmhiraeth could claim 720 points.

Prizes will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

Congratulations to everyone who has been successful in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and a particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition. While it has been an excellent year, errors have opened up the judges' eyes to the need for a third judge, and it is with pleasure that we announce that experienced WikiCup participant Miyagawa will be acting as a judge from now on. We hope you will all join us in welcoming him to the team.

Next year's competition begins on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; it is open to all Wikipedians, new and old. Brainstorming and discussion remains open for how next year's competition will work, and straw polls will be opened by the judges soon. Those interested in friendly competition may also like to keep an eye on the stub contest, being organised by Casliber. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2014 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. J Milburn (talk • email) and The ed17 (talk • email) 00:59, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

AfC

Hi Σ. Are you up to helping out at WP:AfC - we urgently need clueful reviewers. If you have time, you may also wish to offer your services as an instructor at WP:AFC/A. There won't be a stampede of students, but the school is new, and it would be nice to know if teachers are available. Cheers, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:02, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. I'll take a look on a day after I finish my bot. →Σσς. (Sigma) 09:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Defence Forces (Ireland)

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Defence Forces (Ireland). Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Why...

...this bot is flooding my watchlist? Does it have the flag already? José Luiz ^talk 00:37, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

It's actually going through a trial run. →Σσς. (Sigma) 00:48, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, good luck then! José Luiz ^talk 01:00, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Lol, I was actually coming here to ask and state the same thing José said. Good luck Σ in your trial run. —  dainomite   05:41, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Having the same displeasure as OP. Please dont bother others with your trial runs. This shit is old and still annoying, betacommand. Ceoil (talk) 05:52, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

What the fuck? Legoktm (talk) 05:54, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Here, let me play the world's smallest violin for you Ceoil. —  dainomite   15:56, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Apparent malfunction

This seems like a malfunction. The bot seems to have copied the talk not to an archive but onto the same page where it started. Cnilep (talk) 07:33, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I see. Thank you for catching this. I will work on this when my bot finishes its rounds. →Σσς. (Sigma) 07:40, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

The edit summary for Talk:Digital_Audio_Broadcasting/Archive_2 is interesting. →Σσς. (Sigma) 07:55, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Also malfunctioned here, here and here. I like the potential for exponential growth; soon, talk pages will be so large they will consume the internet! (Alright, maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit). Anyway, hopefully these links can help you figure out what it's doing wrong. MrMoustacheMM (talk) 19:12, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I've fixed this. →Σσς. (Sigma) 21:11, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Bot

I see that you have a bot that is archiving talk pages and was woundering, since MiszaBot is broken, if your bot could archive my talkp page for me. Thank you! -(t) Josve05a (c) 10:15, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

See User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo for help. →Σσς. (Sigma) 21:11, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Bot is not flagging as a bot

Edits made by ‎Lowercase sigmabot III are being flagged as minor, but not as a bot. That makes it rather difficult to filter these edits from my watch list. Please fix. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 16:50, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

@TechBear: The bot is currently operating under an approved trial run by the Bot Approval Group, see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval#Bots in a trial period for the approval. Regards, —  dainomite   16:54, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Could we change things so that trial bot edits are still flagged as bot edits? Jehochman ^Talk 14:20, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

PLEASE flag this bot, it's making a lot of edits and pissing my watch list off. And me too. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:35, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• Disabled - I've turned off the bot. Love the bot. Please get it flagged and then turn it back on. Bots used widely need to be flagged so that they don't load up everybody's watchlist with unnecessary entries. This is a small annoyance for a large number of people. The Bot Approvals Group needs to figure this out. Moreover, the bot's own user page says "Administrators: if this bot is making edits that appear to be unassisted to pages not in the operator's or its own userspace, please block it." I'd rather just turn it off than block such a useful bot. Jehochman ^Talk 17:45, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

It appears that the emergency shut off is not working, so with great sadness, I have blocked the bot. Going out for a strong drink now. I feel like I've lost a friend... Jehochman ^Talk 17:49, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll make sure I don't leave the bot unattended during trials anymore. The block was perfectly justified; don't worry about it. →Σσς. (Sigma) 10:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

bot not obeying requests

Please take a look at the last bot edit at Talk:Mount Everest. There are two issues where the bot is misbehaving:

1. The bot archived only one thread, while the archive request asked for a minimum of two threads to be archived
2. The bot did not select the thread with the oldest last comment. Instead, it selected the thread with the oldest first comment.

—hike395 (talk) 17:43, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

As I noted on the BRFA, I forgot to implement the minthreadstoarchive parameter. I have resolved this one.

This should be fixed. →Σσς. (Sigma) 21:11, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

It would have been fixed if I actually remembered to copy the updated version to the toolserver... sorry about that →Σσς. (Sigma) 10:03, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, the bot is archiving prematurely. This page was set to be archived after 30 days, but the bot has archived discussions where the last post was 14 October. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:26, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, my mistake, not the bot's. One parameter said 30 days, but another said 15. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:29, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, someone should fix that inconsistency. →Σσς. (Sigma) 21:11, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:22, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Archive

Thank you so much for the new archivebot. I really like it. Is there a chance you could arrange for these edits to respect the Watchlist "Don't show bot edits" setting? It would be better to relieve my watchlist of the archive bot edits. Jehochman ^Talk 14:18, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll second that. I appreciate that an archivebot is very useful, for cleaning up the mess left by us clumsy humans; but at the moment it's hard to use my watchlist due to all the archivebot edits... bobrayner (talk) 16:16, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Where did you come from?

Out of the blue, User:Lowercase sigmabot III, hitherto unknown to me, came a long and moved a swath of my Talk page, not to a new archive, but to the bottom of my penultimate existing Talk archive. I guess I used to have Miszabot archiving my stuff, but that seems to have ended back in 2010 and I really hadn't been paying attention since then, not having patrolled new pages for quite some time. Where did this come from? —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:37, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

You didn't update the counter, so the bot didn't know that you had made manual archives. I see that you've fixed that.

The MiszaBots have stopped editing on this wiki, so I decided to write a replacement. →Σσς. (Sigma) 10:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

On taking over for miszabot

Thanks for taking over.

1. It would be helpful if some notice was placed on both User:Miszabot and User:Sigmabot to let people know what's happened. At the moment, both user pages are mute on the subject.
2. Will Sigmabot's configuration remain as fragile as Miszabot's? I'd like to collapse the config parameters onto a single line, rather than spread out, the way it is. When I tried this with Miszabot, it stopped archiving.

--Lexein (talk) 20:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

• Good to hear that the config isn't fragile anymore. --Lexein (talk) 05:37, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

BAGBot: Your bot request Lowercase sigmabot III 2

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Lowercase sigmabot III 2 as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 20:41, 4 November 2013 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

Bot stuff

Sorry about the watchlist spam. I had left the bot running while I was unavailable, something I must say that I had doubts about.

I will implement the shutoff page and do my best to obtain the bot flag for the duration of the final day of the trial and deal with new issues swiftly and without demur. →Σσς. (Sigma) 00:28, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

No problem. I've unblocked the little guy so you can turn him loose again. Jehochman ^Talk 03:26, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. →Σσς. (Sigma) 10:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Overriding MiszaBot I settings?

The archiving of Talk:Congestion pricing is configured to use User:MiszaBot I. Why is this bot overriding the rules set up for that bot? For example: [1]. Also.. can you explain what logic your bot uses on the bot page? I couldn't see anything about that. PeterEastern (talk) 03:14, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

MiszaBot is not editing for some reason, so I have created a bot that should function in the exact same way MiszaBot does. The {{User:MiszaBot/config}} template is configured to have MiszaBot archive threads that are older than 90 days, contrary to the displayed 2 years. I've updated it to reflect the config template. →Σσς. (Sigma) 10:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Sandbox reset

Hi. I see that your bot and Hazard-SJ's bot are resetting sandboxes. I think it would be appreciable to have a common reset text so that the currently active bots and future bots can all use the same text (this led to bot wars in the past), and that the community would modify as needed. I suggested using Template:Sandbox reset. Would you agree ? Thanks, Cenarium (talk) 23:36, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

That looks a lot like the template my bot is using now. Did anything change? →Σσς. (Sigma) 21:57, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Archiving question

Hi, sorry to bother you with a question that's probably being asked a million times, but I've looked around and can't find the answer. I recently added archiving to Talk:Suburban Express, but now I see that MiszaBot isn't editing. I read that we ought to use Legobot instead, but I can't find instructions on how to do that. In the course of searching for that I discovered (I think!) that you run Legobot, as well as the new one that's been doing some testing recently (I forget its name). So what I'm wondering: is there a page somewhere that explains how we should set up archiving in MiszaBot's absence, whether with Legobot or some other? Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:04, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

You've done everything right. But, none of the bots are editing because i) MiszaBot is dead ii) Legobot is not supposed to be archiving talk pages iii) lcsb3 is not approved yet. If I can secure another trial, I will archive that one first.

Thanks for your patience! →Σσς. (Sigma) 02:17, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

That's great, and there's no rush. Thank you for taking all this work on board. It's incredibly helpful to have it all automated, but it's a lot of extra effort for the person maintaining it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:37, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Too much archived

Wanted to let you know that the latest archiving was still too much. I have a minimum of 8 sections and a minimum of 21 days set, yet this latest archiving ignored the minimum of 21 days, archiving 4 sections that were less than 21 days old in order to reduce the number of sections to 8. This shouldn't happen.

The idea behind the 8 minimum is to make sure that there are always at least 8 sections present, even if they're months old, and the 21 day minimum is that all hooks hang around for at least 21 days after their most recent post.

Last time you ran the bot on my page, the bot did the right thing; this time, it didn't. Please fix whatever went wrong, revert the archiving, and try again. Thanks! BlueMoonset (talk) 04:06, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Yep. I'm actually working on that right now. Sorry about that. →Σσς. (Sigma) 04:12, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I have just fixed it. →Σσς. (Sigma) 04:20, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I noticed a problem with the archiving from my talk page into my archive last night. Is that the same bug as what BlueMoonset described above? – Quadell ^(talk) 11:46, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Rand Paul

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Rand Paul. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — Legobot (talk) 00:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Jarral

There Is a abuser who is deleting text and Evan refrance books and his comments on sir griffin are insulting,author died hundreds of years ago,and it is backed by many other books which (sitush) deliberately edited from jarral and wiped the entire article,without any refrance,I — Preceding unsigned comment added by Za69 (talk • contribs) 16:43, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

bot=true for action=edit

Could you please use the bot=true for the archive bot? It's cluttering my watchlist, and probably annoying the users it's archiving for by triggering the new messages bar.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 01:10, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Seeing as the bot isn't flagged...that would do nothing. Legoktm (talk) 01:11, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Additionally, these people have consented to being annoyed by my bot. See {{Experimental archiving}}. →Σσς. (Sigma) 01:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Very true. Seeing that I just noticed that... Can we get this bot flagged for the duration of this trial? I don't like this bot showing up on my watchlist.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 01:32, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

That's been requested and tried in the past. See the various threads in User_talk:Σ/Archive/2013/November and the BRFA, a little under the second approval for trial. →Σσς. (Sigma) 01:34, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Are you watching the archiving closely?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Irgun&diff=prev&oldid=583191227 wasn't reverted by you, but I note https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Zeus&diff=prev&oldid=583186974 was. Have you fixed the underlying problem? Does the bot halt on failure?

I'm relieved to see that while the bot has failed a number of times, it self-reverted. Are you seeking the appropriate flags for editing the protected pages you've come across? Josh Parris 10:38, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Good morning.

You pinged me on IRC and left the channel. If you just wanted to say good morning, then good morning to you too.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 12:18, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Bot not archiving my user talk page

NT Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 20:42, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Important Notice: Your 2013 Arbitration Committee Election vote

Greetings. Because you have already cast a vote for the 2013 Arbitration Committee Elections, I regret to inform you that due to a misconfiguration of the SecurePoll we've been forced to strike all votes and reset voting. This notice is to inform you that you will need to vote again if you want to be counted in the poll. The new poll is located at this link. You do not have to perform any additional actions other than voting again. If you have any questions, please direct them at the election commissioners. --For the Election Commissioners, v/r, TParis

Thanks. →Σσς. (Sigma) 08:27, 27 November 2013 (UTC)