User talk:Σ/Archive/2019/August

Search tools

The "search edit summaries for a given string" is quite useful. Would it be possible to create a tool that shows only pages whose titles contain a given string? DS (talk) 19:26, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Nemmind, such a tool already exists. DS (talk) 00:31, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Question

Hi Σ. I was wondering; why does your bot keep archiving the "WP:TENDENTIOUS editing by User:Aykhan Zayedzadeh" section at ANI?[1]-[2] We weren't done yet. I tried restoring it on two occassions, as the case requires admin action, yet for some reason the bot keeps archiving the same section. Best, - LouisAragon (talk) 14:13, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) @LouisAragon: Archiving bots cannot tell if you "weren't done yet", all they can see is a period of inactivity. At WP:ANI, threads are archived if nobody has commented in that thread for at least 72 hours. The most recent edit to the thread concerned was timed at 00:10, 8 July 2019 (UTC) - so it became eligible for archiving at 00:10, 11 July 2019 (UTC), and your two linked archiving edits occurred at 12:01, 12 July 2019 (UTC) and 02:43, 12 July 2019 (UTC) respectively - these work out at almost 108 hours and 98 hours. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:24, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Cutting out short parts of discussion

Hello! I think, the goal of this bot is to maintain the discussions readable by shortening very long threads. However, it seems that this bot ignores the length of the thread. The bot simply deletes (and archives) all text which is older than 3 days.

There are two types of conversation in Wikipedia. The first is a dialog. If I see a warning that somebody set me a message, I answer immediately, in a few minutes. I do not wait for 3 days. The other is when I read an interesting article, look at the talk page and see an interesting message, maybe written many years ago. Why does the bot hiding such messages from me?

Some articles are visited by lots of people every hour. Some other articles are visited very rarely, maybe one person per year. Frequently visited talk pages have questions quickly answered, and they are rapidly become too huge to read; they need frequent archiving. Unpopular articles need a lot of time for questions to be answered; their talk pages stay small for a long time.

For example, I started a new section in Talk:Color vision, but the bot archived it before any person answered. I started the section again, but the bot has archived the talk page consisting ONLY of my message.

Could you improve your bot so that it will take into account the total length of the talk page (archiving only really huge pages), please? Best regards,Ufim (talk) 17:27, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

@Ufim: Archiving bots work on a primary basis of there being no posts for a given time span. They do not (and indeed cannot) judge whether the thread is still awaiting replies. Nor do they shorten very long threads - it is way beyond the capabilities of a bot to judge what should be retained and what removed. If threads are being archived too soon, there are things that can be done - the documentation is at User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo. For instance, the minimum age can be increased; at Talk:Color vision, I find that the {{User:MiszaBot/config}} template has the parameter |algo=old(60d), which means that any thread where the newest post is more than sixty days old will be archived the next time that the bot passes by. To illustrate that, this archiving edit took place 60 days, 8 hours and 46 minutes after the most recent post to that thread, which was itself made less than eight hours after you had posted your question, and so disproves your claim above that "the bot archived it before any person answered".

If you post questions in any Wikipedia discussion page, it is important that you watch the page so that you may find out about replies soon after they are posted. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:57, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

@Redrose64:. Thank you for your response. I was wrong about 3 days and no answer. However, my point is something completely different. Since some articles are popular and others are not, the |algo=old(60d) parameter is not enough. If one or two experts per year visit an article, a post needs months and years for proper discussion. The bot needs to be more flexible, also taking into account the total number of posts per page. Is minthreadstoarchive the right parameter for this issue? Maybe it can be set to 100? Best regards,Ufim (talk) 07:47, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

If you set |minthreadstoarchive=100 then the bot will not archive anything until there are at least 100 threads on the page that are eligible for archiving. That could take several years. A value below 10 is usual for this parameter. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:24, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

OK, let it be 10. (I prefer several years between archivings, but you are the expert.) Should I change minthreadstoarchive to 10 ? Or only the bot's owner can do that? If so, could you set |minthreadstoarchive=10, please?Ufim (talk) 16:58, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

The parameters were set by Jytdog (talk · contribs) in this edit. Ordinarily, you would ask Jytdog why they chose those particular values; but they are unable to answer, hence per H:ARC#Automated archiving you should establish consensus (at Talk:Color vision itself) as to what the values should be amended to. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:02, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

This is a pretty recurring issue. Might be good to put a FAQ on User:Lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo someday... →Σσς. (Sigma) 22:00, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Blacklisted links

Hello. How are talk pages that contain blacklisted links usually archived? I set up auto archiving on Talk:Ronnie O'Sullivan but did not realize the talk page contains numerous links to blacklisted sites. I would just BOLDly remove the links but many of them are interspersed within editors' comments. Hrodvarsson (talk) 05:05, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Long story short, it doesn't. I tried to get the bot onto the abuse filter whitelist at some point, but I don't remember if that worked. →Σσς. (Sigma) 08:06, 8 August 2019 (UTC)