User talk:Dr pda/archive2

James Planché

Great work on this article, Doc. Well done!--Eva ^bd 21:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Dr pda 05:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

editrefs

I take it this isn't quite done? I get a blank screen. Gimmetrow 03:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't quite done when you tried it; I suspect the blank screen was from trying it on an article with no references. I've added handling for this case, plus a couple of other bug fixes, and created documentation at User talk:Dr pda/editrefs.js. Let me know if it still doesn't work. Dr pda 05:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Nope, still blank, tried on a few articles. Cleared cache/reloaded too. Gimmetrow 12:27, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Strange. Do you get any error messages, eg on the javascript error console in Mozilla, or the yellow triangle in the status bar in IE? It works for me in Mozilla 2.0.0.7 (and even 1.0.7) and IE6 under Windows XP. Maybe there's some conflict with another script you're using. Dr pda 20:38, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the error from editrefs is "dummy has no properties" (Firefox 1.5.0.10). Also, I plan to automate the heraldry portal soon. I'm going to split past selected articles into individual pages, then have code to select one in the selected article slot. I'm thinking it will go for a week. If some article warrants preempting the sequence, it can be hard-coded and left for a month. I'm not sure how to do it yet, but I was going to try to identify which selected articles are flags and COAs, so those can be rotated randomly or daily. Gimmetrow 14:23, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

That error seems to be because it can't find the <div> with id of toolbar, which I use to work out where to insert the textboxes into the page. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that in the source of the page the id is only single-quoted, i.e. id='toolbar' and not id="toolbar". Anyway I've changed the script to insert things before the main edit box rather than after the toolbar (which is physically the same place). Hopefully it will work for you now. Automation of the portal sounds like a good idea. Maybe at some point WP:HV could have an article improvement drive to get some more articles at GA or above. Dr pda 21:08, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey, there, sorry to take so long in getting back to you, been in a Wikifunk. I tested it at Sociological and cultural aspects of Tourette syndrome. It did one weird thing which I didn't save, probably can't replicate, but will try to describe. I was basically linking the dates in the ref formatting.[1] When I hit the preview button when I was done, the final ref was repeated at the top of the article, and the first sentence of the article up to the first ref was missing. In other words, somehow the last ref replaced the first part of the text, although the last ref was also still at the bottom of the article. To fix it, I edited the article in another window, grabbed the missing text, and replaced it. Sorry I can't explain better :-) Keep up the excellent effort ! I see now that I should have saved a copy of that to a sandbox so you could see what it did. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Sandy, thanks for your message. I was able to replicate the problem :) When updating the references the script looks through the text for the old reference, chops it out and adds in the new one, however the starting point for this search was off by one character. Most of the time this wouldn't matter, but if there are two consecutive references the script couldn't find where to put the second one, so it got confused and put it at the start. I think I've fixed this now; you'll need to reload your monobook.js to pick up the changes. Dr pda 20:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Possible change to peer review and bot implications

Dr pda, as you may know, there's a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Content review/workshop about reinvigorating Peer Review. I can point you at details if you are interested, but essentially the current situation is that the group on that page would like to suggest re-engineering the PR page to sort articles by category and only show a link for each article, rather than the whole review. Allen3, who (I gather) does most or all of the PR archiving work, commented that this would not work without a bot; and a bot has been suggested as necessary for other aspects of the change. Here's a mock-up of how the peer review page might look: Wikipedia talk:Content review/workshop/Peer Review mockup.

We're proposing to put a request on WP:BOTREQ to see if someone is interested in working on this idea, but SandyGeorgia pointed out that you, Gimmetrow and Rick Block are three users who have the necessary background and might be interested in doing the work. If you are interested in finding out more about what the bot would do, and possibly implementing it, please drop a note on the workshop talk page. In any case we'd be interested in your opinion about the proposals, because of your knowledge of the system.

I'm posting this note to Gimmetrow and Rick Block, too. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk) 04:00, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Coronation

In answer to your two points at FAR:

• Yes, Rose specifically states "supertunica and mantle".
• If we remove "wearing the anointing gown", it sounds as if she's naked!

I still don't believe Heads of State attend: the guest list of 1953 doesn't include any. (And yes, I know Salote of Tonga and the Arab sheikhs went, but they were all subordinate monarchs of British Protectorates). DrKiernan 09:21, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Admin?

Hi there, SandyGeorgia recommended you as somebody who might make a good admin. If you would be interested in being nominated, please drop me a note on my talk page. Tim Vickers 04:45, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

New script?

I saw an edit summary that mentioned a new script? a fan of your scripts, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:42, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

You've already seen it, it's the one which I used to do the statistics for FA's, I just hadn't linked it from my user page yet :) I've also just modified it and redone the FA stats by prose size, as well. Dr pda (talk) 01:47, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Great! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:52, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Can you add to the list of the ten longest to show all above 50KB readable prose? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:57, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Ahoy there - sizing up furry critter articles

Dear Dr PDA, Sandy pointed me in your direction as I was keen for a bot to do Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/mammal articles by size much in the same was as I got Betacommand to do Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/bird articles by size and Wikipedia:WikiProject Fungi/fungus articles by size, but Bc is pretty busy.

It would consist of everything in Category:Mammals but excluding Category:Fictional mammals and derivatives. If you had time to set this up I'd be very appreciative :) cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Strike that. Bc has just offered and I can see you're offline for a bit. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Glad you were able to find someone else to do it. I haven't been around much because of holidays, moving house, starting a new job, and lack of internet connection at home!. Dr pda (talk) 23:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

(Belated) Happy New Year! spam

Here's hoping the new year brings you nothing but the best ;) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 18:11, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The design of this almost completely impersonal (yet hopefully uplifting) message was ripped from Riana (talk · contribs). Please feel free to archive it whenever you like.

A recognition of your excellence from the best Korean in the world

(moved to userpage)

Thanks! Dr pda (talk) 23:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Great saves (from Marskell)

• WP:SIGNPOST and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-02-11/Dispatches. Nice work, Doc! :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the heads-up, always nice to be recognised! Dr pda (talk) 23:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

• We've got some issues brewing with COA images. I recall once a discussion of images from [2] but I can't find it. It may have been on commons. Do you recall this, and in any event, what can we do? Gimmetrow 00:50, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Roman Catholic Church

Hi Dr pda, SandyGeorgia directed me to your user page to obtain the readable prose template. After reading the instructions I believe that installation is beyond my technical abilities to do by myself. I am taking the chance that maybe you are possibly willing to install this on the Roman Catholic Church page so other editors and myself can keep an eye on article size which was an issue at a recent FAC failure. Thank you. NancyHeise (talk) 14:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not installed on an article; it's installed on your monobook, which only you can edit. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Article history script

Is it possible to be able to access the script from the edit screen? It would make it easier to be able to access the data directly from the edit screen, rather than having to have it open in a separate one. Harryboyles 14:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I've modified the script so you can now do this. The reason you couldn't before was I had copied and pasted from another script, where it didn't make sense to use it on an edit page. Dr pda (talk) 23:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Hello. The edit references script seems not to recognize refs which contain comments, which is an issue since a bot adds a comment when it auto-generates titles. The edit refs script didn't catch a bunch of references in this version. Gimmetrow 22:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Gimmetrow, the reason for this was the regexp I was using, namely using [^>] to match everything between the <ref> and </ref> tags, since using .* just matches everything to the end of the article. I can't find any clever way to modify the regexp to allow for nested comments, so I've added a hack which converts the closing --> to something else, finds the refs, then restores the closing tag. This appears to work on the article you mentioned. Dr pda (talk) 04:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Page Size

How do I get my page size working? I have tried ctrl-shift-R.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 20:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I do not see a page size link.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 21:53, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Might my preferences be interfering. The clock has caused my peer reveiw link to disappear.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD) 21:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Did you load the script into your monobook and refresh? Did you look in the toolbox, under the search, on the left-hand side of your screen? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Another barnstar

(moved to userpage)

Prose Size script error

When I use the script, I get "There was a problem retrieving the XML data: Forbidden". Can you fix this please? Gary King (talk) 22:42, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Dr pda. You have new messages at Gary King's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

It's working fine here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

many problems with footnotes; javascript to the rescue?

• can this & this be done? Ling.Nut (talk) 00:59, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you're wanting. Would this be for citation templates which occur in a references section, so that they could be referred to from within notes? Wouldn't that then require you to change the notes as well? In which case couldn't you just use citation plus harvnb? Or if this was for large numbers of articles maybe tweaking the cite X templates would be the way to go, as others have suggested. But in any case I don't really feel up to taking on a big scripting project at the moment. My wiki time is currently quite limited at the moment, and there's a few articles I've been meaning to work on for ages which I want to get back to. Sorry I can't be of more help. Dr pda (talk) 11:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Article history script

Could you please add "delist", "delisted", "delisting", etc to the list of phrases that the article script uses to detect key edits? Harryboyles 08:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Done. Dr pda (talk) 11:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Prosesize feature

Could you have this display the exact byte count rather than divide by 1024. At least for articles up to 10k, this would be helpful for WP:DYK evaluation. Gimmetrow 05:14, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Done, fields will now display in bytes if under 10kB, except for 'Wiki text' where I take the string straight from the search output. I wonder if 10kB is too high a threshold? I'll leave it there for the moment and see what experience suggests. Dr pda (talk) 10:42, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there any way of having an option to display the full character count, or how about just displaying both? Oakwillow (talk) 02:17, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

(I presume this is related to the discussion at WP:SIZE) For most applications the size in kB is sufficiently precise. It would take a bit of work to have an option to show the byte count as well, and I am reluctant to just add it in addition to the kB value as it would clutter up the results (the prose size line already shows size in kB as well as word count). Plus the wiki markup size is coming from the Wikipedia search results at the moment, so is always in kB anyway, and I'd have to modify the script to take the size from somewhere else to have it in bytes. Dr pda (talk) 06:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

It's fine just showing kB (over 10k). I only needed the actual number for the stats, which you have thankfully provided. Oakwillow (talk) 18:07, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

At DYK, new articles must be at least 1500 characters, and old articles expanded about 5x or more (often 4x is sufficient), both based on prose including spaces between words. Since I've seen stubs in the 1500-2000 character range, I suggested 10k for precision with 5x expansions.

Also, do you have any comments on WT:HV#Animals_in_heraldry? Gimmetrow 01:55, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics

I am having trouble figuring out which version of the article was used for User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics. For example, it says 27 November 2007, and you posted it at 02:02 (UTC), so it had to be from before then, but I'm having a lot of trouble with that. For example, for Chess[3] (40 kB) I get about 49 kB, and I get about 52 kB for Charles Darwin[4] (45 kB). Any suggestions? Oakwillow (talk) 02:17, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

The stats were based on the "prose size" result from the script, not the "file size" entry. The script has also changed since then and will produce slightly different values. [5] reads 43k of prose right now. Chess brings up another issue, though: div tags (apparently unclosed) as anchors interfere with the current script. Gimmetrow 02:29, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what they're doing with those <div> tags over at Chess, I might ask on the talk page. Dr pda (talk) 06:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Well there are a hundred more to try. The version before that one for Chess was vandalized down to about 20 kB, the article was completely replaced with another article. In fact I got that version the first time I looked. 43 and 45 are not far apart from each other. I'm using a text editor and not stripping out the [num] references, so that accounts for some difference, but a 7-9 kB difference seemed excessive (200 times 5 characters = 1,000). I wasn't using file size. I don't think I took out the image captions, so that accounts for a few more bytes. I haven't been able to get much cooperation filling out the table at Wikipedia talk:Article size#Table so I have gone off in search of some articles for which I do have the character count, but as you can see I'm not having much confidence in what I'm seeing. What I am doing is sampling five articles each that have 75/70/65/60/55/50/45/40/35/30/25/20/15/10 kB characters. Oakwillow (talk) 03:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

The old version of the script does indeed give 40kB and 45kB. The difference with Chess probably comes from the bulleted lists, which the script skips. I'm not sure where the difference is with Darwin, as I can't see any non-prose which the script has not highlighted. I've filled out the table at Wikipedia_talk:Article_size#Table for you though. Dr pda (talk) 06:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Like a Rolling Stone ArticleHistory

I used the {{Template:ArticleHistory}} for Like a Rolling Stone, but it won't work. The links don't work, and the result won't show up. I'd appreciate some help. Thanks. Cheers, Kodster ^{(heLLo) (Me did that)} 18:06, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I fixed some of the errors,[6] and left a note for Gimmetrow. I think there's been some recent fiddling for this new GA method. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Never mind; I found the remaining error, and it's all fixed now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:33, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Sandy! Dr pda (talk) 21:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Diff question

Dr pda, you explained this to me once upon a time, but I've lost it. How can I pull up an oldid on a specific article on a specific date and time without having to dig back through the history to find it. I'm looking to get diffs for mainpage articles at 0:01 UTC for the day after they've been on the mainpage. For example, Anne of Great Britain was on the mainpage on June 21, 2005, so I want to get the first diff after 0:00 UTC on June 22 2005. By the way, thanks so much for the FAC review !! Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:07, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Instructions:

1. Go to the article and click on the history tab. The url should look like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anne_of_Great_Britain&action=history
2. Work out the date and time you want in the format: year month date hours minutes seconds, and write it as one 14 digit number, i.e. YYYYMMDDHHMMSS. In the case of 2005 June 22 00:01:01 UTC this number would be 20050622000100
3. Add &offset= followed by your 14 digit number from above to the end of the url in the address bar. For the example given above this now becomes http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anne_of_Great_Britain&action=history&offset=20050622000100
4. Going to this page takes you to the appropriate point in the page history, from which you can get to the desired version.

The other way is to use the articlehistory script, and click on the blue box which says 'Click here to enter a date manually', which does the above automatically, but I seem to remember this doesn't work for you.

Glad to help with the Georgette Heyer FAC; I started reading her a few months ago. Nice to see she got promoted! Dr pda (talk) 10:37, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

ah, just add offset :-) I was trying to do that, but I was also deleting the action parameter. (And, I forgot I could use articlehistory!) Thanks, Doc! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:52, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Person Data

Thanks for pointing out the error on the names I will get that fixed. I cannot easily add the DOB, Death date, place of birth and place of death with AWB. The only way I know to do this is to add the person data and then go back and doa find and replace with the data from the infobox. Even then the DOB and date of death will probably have to be manually input. Again thanks for the catch on the name I'll start fixing that.--Kumioko (talk) 01:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

dbpedia.org

Have you seen this? http://wiki.dbpedia.org/UseCases --Rajah (talk) 04:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

prosize question

Okay, I've added prosize to my account, as per your subpage. Please correct me if I am wrong, but if I want to find out how large an article is, i simply copy and paste the entire article into the subpage's dashed-line box, right? - Hexhand (talk) 15:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

No, that's not how it works :) Your monobook.js is a page where you can put (links to) custom javascript (hence the js), which works with the monobook skin for Wikipedia (the default). You can see what mine looks like at User:Dr pda/monobook.js for example.

To use the prosesize script go to User:Hexhand/monobook.js. Delete the article you already pasted in. Then copy and paste the following line into User:Hexhand/monobook.js and save it:

{{subst:js|User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js}}

Now you need to refresh this page so your browser is not using an old version from its cache. In IE and Firefox this means hold down ctrl and click the reload button in your browser. Instructions for these and other browser are also displayed at the top of the monobook.js page.

Now go to the article you want to know the size of. Look at the left-hand column of your screen, where you see the links like What links here, Related changes etc. There should now be one which says Page size. Click this and it will run the prose size script, which should highlight in yellow the readable prose, and display statistics at the top of the article. Hope this is clearer. Dr pda (talk) 16:53, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, did that, found the new addition of page size. However, clicking it has no effect, and I am not sure how I check the size of an article with it. - Hexhand (talk) 19:52, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Clicking it should have an effect! I had another look at the instructions for refreshing the monobook.js page, and the instructions which appear on the page are misleading—specifically ctrl+click reload doesn't work for Firefox! Have a look at Wikipedia:Bypass your cache, and try applying the instructions there to reload User:Hexhand/monobook.js. Then go to your favourite article and try clicking 'Page size' while on that page, to see if it worked. If not, what browser are you using? Do you have javascript enabled? Do you get any error messages (e.g. in Firefox under Tools->Error Console)?. Dr pda (talk) 01:15, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

FA to portal

Hey, doc; I'm not sure if the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Namespace for featured content pages affects anything you do, but you might want to check in; it's a proposal to move some pages (unsure which) of the featured processes to portal pages. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:46, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I had seen this; my scripts should all be unaffected. I've posted a note to that effect at the above discussion. Dr pda (talk) 00:51, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

templatecheck

Having problems getting templatecheck to work on my mac (I've tried with both Firefox & Safari): I've refreshed the cache, & get the "check for template" button, and the popup text entry box when I click on it. Then it looks as though javascript:checkTemplates() is running, but no tick boxes appear. Do you know if other mac users have had problems? Dsp13 (talk) 12:50, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

It's not a mac problem, the wikipedia api interface (which the script uses) has changed since I wrote the script, so that there is now a limit to the number of articles/templates which can be retrieved in one call. I need to update the script, but I haven't got around to it yet. I'll see if I can find time in the next few days to do this. Dr pda (talk) 22:58, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Done, it should be working now. Dr pda (talk) 11:21, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Yup, that works perfectly! Thanks for this: it's a very neat tool. Dsp13 (talk) 11:47, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

2005 FAs

Hey, doc, a question (no urgency). Is it feasible to look at Wikipedia:Featured articles promoted in 2005 and pull out a list of all FAs that haven't had a review (that is, don't have a FAR in articlehistory, see for example, Talk:Shoe polish, which does have one). Or alternately to look at articlehistory for all FAs, and pull a list of featured dates in 2005 with no subsequent review? However is easiest. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:02, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Or, for that matter, might be wiser to short with the shorter list at Wikipedia:Featured articles promoted in 2004. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Done. At User:Dr pda/List of FAs without FAR there's a list of all current FAs promoted before 31 December 2005 which have not yet had a FAR. I took the list of articles from User:Feature Historian rather than the links you gave, because I could sort the table to get the non-demoted FAs in an easy cut-and-pastable form. I worked out whether an FA had already had a FAR by running a python script over a (200GB!) html dump of wikipedia I happen to have on my (work) computer at the moment. This dump dates from the middle of June, but I think I have brought the list up-to-date from the FAR logs. It's possible that there are some mistakes (I found a couple just by checking at random), but there shouldn't be any missing entries. There are about 240 articles on the list. Feel free to move this page to another location if it would be more appropriate. Dr pda (talk) 10:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Beautiful! As always, above and beyond the call of duty :-) I've got a busy afternoon, but I'll eventually ask Marskell if he wants to park it somewhere. One question though; can you have a look at Talk:Rudyard Kipling to figure out why it was missed or if there are other similar misses? Thank you so much ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

The reason for this was that Kipling was removed in the 'Refreshing Brilliant Prose' process, and repromoted a couple of weeks later. Consequently it appeared further down the table at User:Feature Historian, and I missed it in my cut and paste. I've had a closer look and found a few others which were removed in RBP and subsequently repromoted, so I've added them to the list as well. Dr pda (talk) 21:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, I envision using the list in conjuction with Wikipedia:Featured articles with citation problems, so I would probably eventually go through and delete anything from your list which is already accounted for at the citations list. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:29, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

As I'm editing little I won't try to stop Sandy (or anybody else) from charging ahead with a new list of potentially problematic FAs. But I would like to participate and don't think we need to rush ahead. A single list of year-over-year promotions and their review status has long been in the back of my head and DrPda's list is an awesome way to start. (My frst FA is included :)

There's no immediate problem, so we should take some time to think about what we want, in full. The original problem list has been very useful, but it was created based on a crude criterion. Sandy, before expanding it, we should discuss what needs to be listed and what the future purpose of FAR will be. I have a lot of thoughts in this regard, including having a date dependent review process. Let's pick a place to talk about it. Marskell (talk) 20:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Right, no hurry on this. Getting ahead of myself, looking forward, and didn't expect Dr pda to respond so promptly. Maybe we can look at it in September? Use talk talk page associated with that page? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:59, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey, doc ! From your list, I removed those that were already listed at Wikipedia:Featured articles with citation problems, and hid them in an HTML comment at the bottom of that page, so that I could maintain both lists in one place. I didn't want to double count articles that were already on the Citations list, hence likely to come up for review eventually anyway. Marskell has suggested at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles with citation problems#Proposed moves that we go ahead and start using this list, but he would like it to also include thru (and including) June 2006; that is, articles featured as of end-June 2006 that haven't been reviewed. Would you be able to generate the first six months of 2006? Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Sandy, I've extended my list through to the end of June 2006. There may be some articles on the list which have had a FAR since the middle of June (which is the date of the database dump I am working from). I have to go out now, so I don't have time to check through the FAR archive for them. Dr pda (talk) 06:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Dr pda; I'll doublecheck before I add them in. I have a good enough memory on which have appeared at FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Hello Dr pda. Is there anyway you can write a program that scans through each FA and counts how many inline citations it has (including the same citation used multiple times)? That way it would be possible to couple the prose size and the citation count together and work out the ref density of each of the FAs. Obviously the ref density wouldn't tell all (web reffed articles will generally have a higher density for the same % of reference coverage, and some articles have all the refs bunched in one section), but it would reveal those FAs which are very thinly cited. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:56, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

That could really open a can of worms, B1, because of the number of editors who are unhappy with any concept of citation density. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The Monkey's idea is both interesting and scary. Marskell (talk) 14:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Deja vu! It is technically possible, and probably doable with minor modifications to some of my existing code. However I respect Sandy's viewpoint, and I'd only make the list with the understanding that This list is not canonical, a policy, a "punishment" for articles, or a proxy for the regular Featured article review; it is meant to aid people in tracking featured articles that may have citation issues, and not more than that. (to quote another page). But as you suggest elsewhere an unofficial list in userspace shouldn't cause problems. I wonder if references per paragraph rather than per kB would be a more useful metric, or at least a more intuitive one. As with all my Wikipedia contributions lately, I'll try and get around to it when I find the time. Dr pda (talk) 03:02, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I've created the list here. Feel free to move it to your userspace if you prefer. Out of interest, the average number of citations per paragraph is 2.07 for FA, 2.06 for GA, 0.87 for A class, 0.51 for B, 0.26 for Start, 0.14 for Stub and 0.15 for Unassessed. Dr pda (talk) 22:26, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

oh, boy ... could be fun :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:10, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou for the production. Interesting. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Doc, I hate to put you through this and cause you extra work, but if you get time, can you sort why Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Half-Life 2/archive2 (seems to be a May 2006 promotion) didn't show up on the list of promoted through June 2006 without FAR? All the best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:40, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

PS, could be a hyphen/dash issue in the article title ?? I can't tell if that's a hyphen or dash. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Sandy, I've had another look at the code I used. For making this list I used an HTML dump of Wikipedia which I happened to have handy. Unfortunately (for the purposes of this list) it doesn't have the wikitext, so I just searched through the HTML source of all the talk pages for ones with the string "Featured article review". I then compared this list to the list of featured articles, and removed the FAs which had matched my "reviewed" list. Unfortunately the video games wikiproject banner has a "things you can do" section which includes links to open FARs; this caused all the video games articles to appear on list of reviewed articles, with the result that all FA video games were marked as having been reviewed. I've manually checked the dozen or so video games which were FAs as of 30 June 2006; the only others which should have been on the list are Donkey Kong (video game) and Perfect Dark. Dr pda (talk) 03:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much and I'm sorry to cause you the extra work ! I'll add those two manually to my hidden HTML table on the Citations list. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Prosesize

I see you have developed this tool and I wonder, is there a way to have the tool not convert the file size, prose size etc. into kilobytes (e.g. have "33052 B" instead of "32 kB")? Admiral Norton ^(talk) 12:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

It reports bytes up to 10 KB. Is there a reason to have exact bytes for pages larger than that? Gimmetrow 15:09, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for late response; the page got tangled somewhere in my watchlist. The reason is expanding articles over 2 KB for DYKs. If the article is 2500 in size, the page would display 12 KB for proper expansion (5 × 2,500 B = 12,500 B), but it would also display 12 KB for 12,288 bytes, which is not fivefold expansion. It also involves little code, I believe. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 11:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

This has come up at least once before. The main use case for this script (I believe) is people checking that a given article is not too long, for which the byte-level precision is unnecessary. The script already produces a lot of numbers, and I am reluctant to clutter this by adding the byte values in addition to kB. Therefore I have made an alternate version of the script which does everything in bytes only: User:Dr pda/prosesizebytes.js. You should only use one version in your monobook.js. Dr pda (talk) 09:54, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, but I suggested the cutoff with DYK specifically in mind. The script counts prose only. Articles qualify for DYK if they are either new articles over 1500 bytes, or 5x expansions of an existing stub. With the latter, if the original article had much more than 1500 bytes of prose, it's not really a stub, so even a 5x expansion doesn't qualify it for DYK. If someone is going to make an exception for a 2500 byte article expanded to 12300 bytes, there's no reason to fuss that it's "only" 4.9x rather than 5x expansion. Gimmetrow 12:36, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Articlehistory

Hey, doc, are you swamped? Someone unprotected Template:Articlehistory, and then several people fiddled with and broke them just as Gimmetrow was trying to be on vacation. It's nothing urgent, but in case you have time to lend a hand there, it might lighten Gimme's load. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:17, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been away at a conference. Looks like this has been taken care of. Dr pda (talk) 09:54, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

FAR

Hiya Doc. When you get a chance, can you update us at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council? I know you've been working on it slowly. No problem leaving it up a little while longer. Cheers, Marskell (talk) 11:09, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Almost there after work from a few (especially DrKiernan). If you could do one last peek for references it would be good to go. Marskell (talk) 14:28, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I should hopefully have time to give it another run through in the next day or two. Dr pda (talk) 03:02, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Dr pda/articlehistory.js

Whenever I use the script, I get a "There was a problem retrieving the XML data: Internal Server Error". Any thoughts as to why it's doing this? Gary King (talk) 03:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

It's because it was using query.php to retrieve the data, and this was turned off on August 25. I've updated the script to use api.php instead. If you refresh your cache it should work again. Dr pda (talk) 05:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Cheers thanks Gary King (talk) 14:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Philitas of Cos

Thanks for your detailed comments on Philitas of Cos. You've got a sharp eye, noting the issue with the sigmas in the ancient Greek poetry! I responded to your questions at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Philitas of Cos; further comments are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 09:22, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, was just on my way over there to reply. Dr pda (talk) 12:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Doc, I'm going to make an example of you some day :-) If only everyone would carefully detail everything they reviewed, so I wouldn't have to go in and check for what the checkers didn't check. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:47, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

prosesize.js

You may recall at User_talk:Dr_pda/archive2#Page_Size and User_talk:TonyTheTiger/Archive_21#Prose_size that I was not able to get your code to install correctly. I am wondering if you have learned anything about bugs that may be causing this.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 11:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)