User talk:Σ/Archive/2014/September

WikiCup 2014 August newsletter

The final of the 2014 WikiCup begins in a few short minutes! Our eight finalists are listed below, along with their placement in Round 4:

1. Godot13 (submissions), a WikiCup newcomer, finished top of Pool A and was the round's highest scorer. Godot is a featured picture specialist, claiming large numbers of points due to high-quality scans of historical documents, especially banknotes.
2. Casliber (submissions) is a WikiCup veteran, having been a finalist every year since 2010. In the semi-final, he was Pool B's highest scorer. Cas's points primarily come from articles on the natural sciences.
3. Czar (submissions) was Pool A's runner-up. Czar's points come mostly from content related to independent video games, including both articles and topics.
4. Adam Cuerden (submissions) was Pool B's runner-up. Another featured picture specialist, many of Adam's points come from the restoration of historical media. He has been a WikiCup finalist twice before.
5. Cwmhiraeth (submissions) won the WikiCup in 2012 and 2013, and enters this final as the first wildcard. She focuses on biology-related articles, and has worked on several high-importance articles.
6. 12george1 (submissions) is the second wildcard. George's points come primarily from meteorology-related articles. This year and last year, George was the first person in the competition to score.
7. Sturmvogel 66 (submissions), the third wildcard, was the 2010 champion and a finalist last year. His writes mostly on military history, especially naval history.
8. Bloom6132 (submissions), the fourth and final wildcard, has participated in previous WikiCups, but not reached any finals. Bloom's points are mostly thanks to did you knows, featured lists and good articles related to sport and national symbols.

We say goodbye to this year's semi-finalists. Matty.007 (submissions), ThaddeusB (submissions), WikiRedactor (submissions), Figureskatingfan (submissions), Yellow Evan (submissions), Prism (submissions) and Cloudz679 (submissions) have all performed well to reach this stage of the competition, and we hope they will all be joining us again next year.

There are two upcoming competitions unrelated to the WikiCup which may be of interest to those who receive this newsletter. The Stub Contest will run through September, and revolves around expanding stub articles, especially high-importance or old stubs. In addition, a proposal has been made for a new competition, the GA Cup, which the organisers plan to run next year. This competition is based on the WikiCup and aims to reduce the good article review backlog.

There is now a thread for brainstorming on how next year's WikiCup competition should work. Please come along and share your thoughts- What works? What doesn't work? What needs changing? Signups for next year's competition will be open soon; we will be in touch. If, at this stage of the competition, you are keen to help the with the WikiCup, please do what you can to participate in review processes. Our finalists will find things much easier if the backlogs at good article candidates, featured article candidates, featured picture candidates and the rest are kept at a minimum. As ever, questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! 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 · contribs) The ed17 (talk · contribs) and Miyagawa (talk · contribs) 22:09, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Editor Interaction Analyzer

Does it works?Becouse I could not get any results from it.--Shrike (talk) 04:45, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

According to the logs, I'd guess that you tried this query. After checking with other users, it does appear to work. Perhaps you simply have no pages in common in recent history? →Σσς. (Sigma) 05:38, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Its very strange because I do have articles in common with them for example [1]--Shrike (talk) 06:36, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Maybe its because his edits are old?--Shrike (talk) 06:39, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

When I set the date it did showed me [2] maybe it some kind of bug--Shrike (talk) 06:41, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. It could be. →Σσς. (Sigma) 07:01, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Labs

Hi Σ. (I've also had some discussion with Cyberpower on these issues). Although you and your colleagues have done some excellent work migrating tools from the ToolServer to Labs - and I realise that this migration was not your policy, I feel there is still a lot of room for improvement. In particular, talks at the recent Wikimania in London between admins who rely heavily on some of these tools agree on a couple of points. Being migrated by non-admins, some important aspects may have been missed when (re)developing these scripts (I hate the analogy, but it's a bit like having cars designed by non-drivers).

Presentation - the actual graphic user interfaces have default fonts that are far too small to be useful (Pages Created), and the default list too short (Pages Created). Also with pages created, it was mentioned that perhaps a dropdown menu to select the most often requested search criteria would be extremely helpful

Edit Counter: There are still links around the site that are not pointing to this which is the default counter mostly used. It was also felt that the GUI is not strictly an improvement: for example, why was it needed to split the information across three pages? Most admins preferred the rapid overview by having all the elements on one page.

There is also the question of the remaining tools in the suite created by Scottywong which are most important for admins and users doing research for RfA, AfD, SPI, and NPP, etc.

I fully realise that the work of migrating has been dumped by the Foundation on the volunteer community but while the new scripts and server may well perform better than the ToolServer, there was previously nothing much broken with the actual displays that needed fixing.

Thoughts?

--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:21, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi. These concerns are legitimate and I promise I will investigate them soon. For the pages created tool, what do you have in mind for the most often requested search criteria? I could do a bit of research on the server's logs for this, but concrete info from the people who often use it would serve as a useful guide.

As for the rest of the Scottytools, I'll try to put them up on my labs account. Let me know if there's anything else. →Σσς. (Sigma) 10:11, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for replying. There seems to be some confusion with the edit counters. Some areas link to the one with all the information on one page (like the old one), and the other links go to the one whose information is split across three pages. Most people using the edit counter for work rather than vanity like to see the info on one page as it used to be.

Pages Created: the default list too short and the font size is too small - this is used frequently by admins responding to requests for 'Autopatrolled'. Preferably list at least 100 pages as per the original tool. . Also with pages created, it was mentioned that perhaps a dropdown menu to select the most often requested search criteria would be extremely helpful, such as for exam[ple: all pages; draft pages; exclude dab and redirect pages, exclude user sub pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:29, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

User talk:Andrzejbanas

Can you please help to put most of threads into his/her archive? Thanks. 183.171.170.252 (talk) 07:38, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Unless he/she opt-in to ask bot archive his/her talk page, bot does not archive. So Σ has nothing to do in this case, because he/she did not asked for archiving. — Revi_complaint? 10:03, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Report deletion

Hi, I see you removed my earlier report on the WP:3RR report forum. Why did you remove it if it had no reply? I specifically had a report of a user constantley removing sections from his talk page without replying even if they're important, and yet my report was deleted even though no one took action? Why? - Theironminer (talk) 19:45, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Theironminer: Assuming that you mean this thread, the bot does not take into account whether replies had been posted or not: it was archived because more than 48 hours had elapsed since the last comment there. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:50, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Wait a sec, did you call me a talk page stalker??? - Theironminer (talk) 05:33, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker): (talk page stalker) means user commenting (redrose64) is commenting for you instead of who you asked to (Σ). See also: WP:TPS — Revi_complaint? 09:58, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Lowercase sigmabot III ignoring minthreadsleft

In this edit Lowercase sigmabot III archived two threads from Talk:Main Page. They were the only two threads on there, so the bot ended up blanking the page. The archive configuration template on that page has 'minthreadsleft=2', so they should have been left where they were. Is there a configuration problem, or a bug in the bot? Modest Genius ^talk 12:06, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) The bot did leave two threads behind: one is "Main Page error reports", the other is "General discussion". I don't think that the bot cares that these are level 1 instead of level 2. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:19, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting interpretation, although the second of those had no content. Neither of them are discussion threads, and I don't remember Miszabot ever doing this (or it ever happening before). You make a good point that the bot might have interpreted them as threads, if it only looked at headings, but surely if it's archiving at one level it should be counting threads at the same level (and below). Is there a way to tell sigmabot which level to look at in the configuration? Modest Genius ^talk 13:16, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

It did it again, which leaves the page blank. Modest Genius ^talk 10:06, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) OK. I am testing the hypothesis that the level 1 sections are being counted. I have changed the config to call for 4 sections left on the page ( |minthreadsleft=4 ). If those sections are being counted that should leave 2 actual discussion sections.

To answer your specific question: No, there is no way to tell the bot what level of sections to archive (i.e. to consider as the "top level"). — Makyen (talk) 07:22, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:2014 Israel–Gaza conflict

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. 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) 00:04, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Lowercase sigmabot III archive failure

The bot encountered some error while archiving my talk page. this is the edit. The edit summary was "Archive failure: ceterach.exceptions.EditError: 'mustposttoken': ApiError('Maximum number of retries reached (12)',)" Since I don't know what caused the error hence I'm posting it here. Thanks--Skr15081997 (talk) 08:49, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Archiving problem

Hi, just to let you know that the bot hasn't archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force since 10 September, though some threads were older than 30 days (recently changed to 20 in case you take a look). Best, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 16:49, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

It appears the bot is functioning properly.

Note: The page was archived about half an hour after you posted the above note.

The change to 20 days was made an hour prior to you posting. lowercase sigmabot III (lcSB3) runs on a schedule which is normally at most once every 24 hours. It takes time, sometimes hours, for the run to complete, but it only starts once every 24. Or at least that was the way it was set up the last time I checked. Thus, we should only consider problems if there were threads older than 30 days.

In looking through the page as it was prior to you making your OneClickArchiver edits, I only saw one thread which was older than 30 days. It had not been archived because the date-stamp in the thread was malformed due to using   for every space in the date-stamp. Most (all?) of the automated tools we have would not recognize the date-stamp, including lcSB3. Thus, that thread would never be automatically archived. This appears to be an issue with User:Rich Farmbrough's signature. — Makyen (talk) 01:18, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Strangely it has had no trouble with my talk page. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:49, 25 September 2014 (UTC).

OTOH perhaps it has. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:54, 25 September 2014 (UTC).