DabMachine

F.A.Q - Frankly answered questions

Q: Can I see your code?
A: Sure, I'm not prudish. Go to User:DabMachine/Code. Beware though, it's not a pretty sight.

Q: You messed up this disambiguation of yours
A: Uh! Oh! I am really sorry. You know, I am planning to apply some interesting techniques like Latent semantic indexing to prevent the most obvious blunders my users can make. I will learn from my errors, I promise.

Why are you doing this?

See Wikipedia:Redirects#Don't fix redirects that aren't broken. What purpose are you hoping to accomplish here? --TreyHarris 04:35, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I was planning to fix disambiguations, not redirects. See Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links. Did I fix some redirect accidentally? If so, please point it out to me, so that I can find out why this happened. -- Ravn 09:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

My apologies, I saw a link that used to be a plain redirect, not a disambiguation, and I hadn't realized it had changed. I then inferred that your other links were the same since I just looked at diffs and didn't actually follow the links. Sorry about that. By the way, I wonder about the cases where you redirect Nissan to Nissan Diesel, which doesn't exist. Why not redirect to Nissan Motors? --TreyHarris 17:08, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

That one case was an accident, thanks for pointing it out to me - I fixed it. Usually, I fix the disambiguation page first, removing dead and irrelevant links. -- Ravn 17:32, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

• thank you for fixing a link on my page, but I think it'd be more polite to just let me the user know next time. having someone touch your personal page seems a bit violating.

--Shuki 21:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I will try to filter out user pages in the future. -- Ravn 15:48, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Gah!

Please be more careful with these. On Thomas John Ley, you disambiguated Kings Cross to King's Cross, London, when it was actually referring to Kings Cross, New South Wales. Ambi 09:45, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Disambig issues

In this edit, you actually introduced an ambiguity, as total is not a disambig, but sum is. You can reply here if you have comments. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:44, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Oleg. Thanks for your comment. Total was moved to Total (disambiguation) shortly after my edit. When I was disambiguating, it still was the dab article. I think that the move isn't justified, and should be reverted. I will try to initiate this.. -- Ravn 21:51, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Done - See Talk:Total, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Total&action=history. -- Ravn 22:00, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:06, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Your page

Hi! I found your Ajax disambiguation helpful on my FORscene page. However, I notice that your own page doesn't have Java disambiguated. I would fix it, but have left it in case this is a joke. Stephen B Streater 22:32, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. No it's not a joke. I missed that one. -- Ravn 10:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for fixing the link on my userbox! I appreciate it! --Holocron 14:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

misinformation

The dabmachine has been changing all references to "fang" in spider articles to "canine tooth." My dictionary defines "canine tooth" as one of a set of four teeth with other teeth between and on the other side of them. It cannot apply to spider fangs. I don't know how to fix this problem. I presume that snake fangs have also been mis-explained as though they were dog teeth. P0M 17:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, you are right. I made a mistake there. I will try and see if there is a better page to disambiguate to, or revert my edits. -- Ravn 17:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted my snake-related edits. I am not sure about the Wolpertinger. I think it can be assumed that it's got real canines. -- Ravn

2001

I was doing 2001: A Space Odyssey disambigs. Your bot records the change in the history of the page so that the article still appears on the list of articles that link to the disambiguation page. When your bot does a disambiguation, it makes it impossible to distinguish between what you have disambiguated and what still needs to be disambiguated. Can you please go back and fix this? Maybe you don't have to be quite so specific in your description of your edit. I'm not gong to waste any more time trying to disambiguate things you have made to permanently appear on the "what links here page" until the problem is resolved. (See Moonbus as an example). Thanks THB 09:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

This is a problem the Wikipedia had during repair works. I filed a bug report, and it seems to be fixed now. It was not related to my bot, and does not occur anymore. Unfortunately, the pages disambiguated during that time still reflect the bug until the next (null-)edit. -- Ravn 09:54, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Just wondering.. what's wrong with a specific description? I can abbreviate it, if it helps. -- Ravn 09:58, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

oil not (just) petroleum

American Strategic bombing during World War II targeted oil not (just) petroleum but its derivatives. Also see Synthetic oil. Philip Baird Shearer 13:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. This link is definitely better suited for many disambiguations. -- Ravn 14:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to invite you to help edit Oil (liquid). -- Ravn 19:56, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Vegetable oil is a bad choice

A number of your disambiguations would be more appropriate to Essential oil than Vegetable oil. For example, rose and clary. -- WormRunner 17:49, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. You're right. I considered essential oils as being a special case of vegetable oils (oils originating from plants). But given the current definition of vegetable oil, this is wrong indeed. -- Ravn 19:04, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to invite you to help edit Oil (liquid). -- Ravn 19:56, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

All Physicians are doctors but not all doctors are Physicians

I think your diambiguation programme may be a little overenthusiastic, doctor is a non-medical term used by the general public which covers both Physicians and Surgeons. As such the bot's edit to Talk:List of terms associated with diabetes would seem to be a backward step. Ianmc 00:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I (probably mis-)understood that surgeon is a specialization of physician (in the US American sense). So whenever it seemed clear to me that the doctor is not a veterinary or dentist, I considered that to be a valid disambiguation. -- Ravn 10:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

When you say 'considered that to be a valid disambiguation' does that mean you have changed your mind now? Before I wrote the above I checked a couple of dictionary definitions of physician, including a US one. The definition did seem to generally exclude surgeons. I don't know how much the diambiguation adds, most people world-wide will probably not need the term explaining. Ianmc 22:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I have changed my mind insofar that I am unsure now. I have to check more sources. In wiktionary,

• wikt:doctor = (physician | doctorate | veterinarian), where physician "Usually refers to a general practitioner, as others are referred to by their specialties."
• wikt:physician = a medical doctor trained only in human medicine
• wikt:surgeon = a doctor who performs operations on people or animals.

I definitely agree that the diambiguation to physician can be a bit misleading, as the article does not cover (or link to) the specialists. I would currently see this as a weakness of the article. Would you completely disagree that surgeons are specialized physicians? The article "Surgery" states: Surgeons are now considered to be specialised physicians, the profession of surgeon and that of physician have different historical roots and surgeons have now even subspecialised as have physicians. -- Ravn 10:55, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I suspect the root of this is a difference in the useage of the term physician between the US and UK. Generally in the UK the term 'doctor' is used by the general public to cover all specialities and 'physician' is not really used outside the healthcare system. This is going to be the limit of my involvement in the doctor/physician debate, but it might be worth putting a link to this discussion onto the Doctor disambiguation talk page or the relevant Wiktionary entry talk pages to see if anyone wants to take it further. Nice talking to you Ianmc 00:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Overenthusiastic is an understatement. There are many Ph.D's who are not physicians. Context is everything and i noticed it since it did make that mistake. David D. (Talk) 23:10, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry if I made a mistake. I've usually disambiguated academical doctors to Doctorate, or where no context was available (people being only referred to as Dr. X) to Doctor (title). -- Ravn 10:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Provost of Paris

A small glitch in your good work on disambiguating "provost", in references to the Provost of Paris: you disambiguated it to Provost (religion)), whereas it was a civil post, described in Provost (civil). I have corrected it in the entry for Simon Morhier, and I think there may have been another one too, but I can't remember whch. Hope that's OK, and keep up the good work! BrownHairedGirl 10:23, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks :) And thank you for the correction. The Provost of Paris appeared in IIRC three edits - I will try to find them and check. Thanks for fixing what you've found. -- Ravn 19:41, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

You must be bold

Hi, I am also interested in automating tedious tasks, which includes doing some research first.. see Incrementalism and Revolutionism.. Regards Gregorydavid 09:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Gregory - thanks for your interest. I'm not actually considering these tasks to be tedious, but try to make them diverting. :)

Was your comment meant to criticize (as in "Man, you must be bold! Do some research first!") or to encourage (You must be bolder! Oh, and I'd like to help.")?

I consider my approach to be incrementalist - work with what there is available in terms of disambiguation possibilities, encourageing discussions with people who discover that "their" links have been disambiguated (and who may have an opinion on it). -- Ravn 13:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

KidsDinoco

What is KidsDinoco?

Hello Myselfalso.

You probably wanted to ask user Plonk420 about this. -- Ravn 14:01, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
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