User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2010 December

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SmackBot blanked a page by mistake

SmackBot messed up at Herbert Henry Dow High School -- blanked the page! --Orlady (talk) 16:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks looks like an API/AWB bug that we get about every 200,000 edits, but maybe partly due to something I have just logged as a potential problem. Rich Farmbrough, 16:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC).

Also an AWB blanking at Bridgeton, New Jersey, fyi. 174.109.197.174 (talk) 09:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Need to check on AWB timestamp query which may relate to the first one. Rich Farmbrough, 18:07, 16 November 2010 (UTC).

AWB is timstamping. Also has code to prevent saving empty pages - I've seen that trigger several times. Needs more research. Rich Farmbrough, 10:17, 18 November 2010 (UTC).

Raised on AWB talk. Rich Farmbrough, 01:41, 19 November 2010 (UTC).

Monthly clean up categories

I can't figure out why 73 of the monthly clean up categories for December are showing up at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Since your bot works with the categories, I was wondering you had an idea as to why they're showing up. — ξ^xplicit 19:43, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

It's a bug in the template code. Scanning... scanning... Rich Farmbrough, 19:59, 29 November 2010 (UTC).

Yes fixed it, I believe. Will take awhile for category lag to clear the CSDs down. meanwhile if a few get deleted it's not the end of the world, as Femto Bot will re-create them. Rich Farmbrough, 20:15, 29 November 2010 (UTC).

STOP

This edit and this edit to {{splitsection}} tags added a date as usual but removed a redlinked proposed article title. This resulted in the discussion talkpage link being misidentified as the proposed target page[1][2]. I manually corrected it. — AjaxSmack 02:18, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 02:19, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, bug already fixed see: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Rich_Farmbrough/temp96&diff=prev&oldid=399638581 for example. Rich Farmbrough, 02:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC).

Malfunction

The bot has made this edit twice; breaking the afd-merge-to template. Courcelles 00:40, 29 November 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 00:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 01:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC).

Smackbot making unnecessary edits?

Looking at the 25 most recent SmackBot edits (Goatse.cx to Brighton railway station), there are seven that only consist of removing an empty line from the page. I don't believe that this is what the bot is supposed to do.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Fram (talk) 07:56, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

This is interesting. Yobot and SmackBot probably failed to fix something in the page. It's also interesting that SmackBot removes a blank line added by AWB. DEFAULTSORT must have a blank line above it and SmackBor removes it at the moment. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:37, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I see, Smackbot removes the line at the 15th[10], Yobot adds it the 20th, and Smackbot again removes it this morning... This could go on for quite a while! The same happened at ZootFly. At LGBT rights by country or territory, Smackbot removed one empty line the 27th[11], and another one this morning. Yobot was not involved in this one. At Valerie (The Zutons song) the previous Smackbot edit, from the 27th, was an unneccesary template recapitalization[12]. The same happened at Saint Patrick, with a lot of unneeded template capitalization changes the 27th[13]. Kyrgyzstani parliamentary election, 2010 combines the two problems, edit warring over empty lines with Yobot, and a change from reflist to Reflist at the 27th.

So it looks like we have a kind of pointless edit war with Yobot, and two runs of unwanted botruns, one at the 27th changin template capitalizations without any other changes, and one this morning removing enmpty lines without any other changes. Fram (talk) 08:59, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that Human hair growth appears in Category:Articles with unsourced statements, so Yobot did a run to add dated templates after WP:BOTREQ. Normal AWB behaviour is to have an empty line above DEFAULTSORT per Manual of Style. I guess two actions are needed: simplifying code using more of new AWB features to dated templates and see what's wrong with the page and/or the category. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:15, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I guess is because {{Time fact}} wasn't dated. This edit fixed the problem in this particular case. Now AWB will add date to time fact. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:29, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess that in such cases (when the bot tries to date tags, but doesn't in fact change any), the bot should just skip the page instead of making inconsequential changes only. Error rates of 7 out of 25 are a bit too high of course. 09:42, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this is for Rich to solve it :) Especially, I am interested to see the DEFAULTSORT issue fixed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:32, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Btw:

• TagUpdater: coverts ISO dates rev 7433 and rev 7434.
• Recall, that AWB already fixes |date=november 2010 to |date=November 2010.
  • I hope these help you simplify your code.
• Moreover, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/KarlsenBot 6 can do the dating tags part so you can focus on the fix tags. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:55, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Uh yes.. Because of the idiots and the ANI a whole load of new problems have occurred - bots running of the same list for example, SmackBot's gentle evolution to keep up with changes stopped for a couple months. My requests for tweaks to AWB stopped for a couple of months. The backlist of difficult cases which I had spent several days solid clearing now regrown. This is what is meant by Tampering, and it will take time to fix it all. Rich Farmbrough, 13:54, 29 November 2010 (UTC).
    
    • So, what else we could add in AWB to make things easier? -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:12, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
      • It will just take time to get back to normal. The work I was planning on categorising more changes as minor has been postponed. I'm picking up 2 months worth of new templates that need tagging. That will just happen over the next few days. There are some substed tags. I was caught up with all this back in September, and I will catch up again. Rich Farmbrough, 16:55, 29 November 2010 (UTC).
        

Category:Statements with common sense issues

Femto Bot recreated Category:Statements with common sense issues again. What to do? --Bsherr (talk) 15:14, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I needed to do [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ADating_maintenance_categories_progress_box&action=historysubmit&diff=399540257&oldid=396925731 this. Rich Farmbrough, 16:42, 29 November 2010 (UTC).

Ah. Good. --Bsherr (talk) 18:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Rich, it recreated it again. --Bsherr (talk) 04:18, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Very odd. Lag maybe. still it stayed deleted now for a while. Rich Farmbrough, 22:11, 30 November 2010 (UTC).

The progress box for Category:Articles containing potentially dated statements is showing a negative number for the undated line. Any idea why or how to fix it? --Bsherr (talk) 18:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's because that category is non-standard for dated clean up categories, having nested sub-cats. The correction for sub-categories is therefore an over-correction. It would be fixable , but bearing in mind that category membership is subject to all sorts of lag (i.e. it is inaccurate) it doesn't seem worth a lot of effort. Instead I have applied a "fiddle factor" which is a built in facility. Rich Farmbrough, 19:32, 29 November 2010 (UTC).

That explains it. Are there other cleanup cats that nest? What about converting them? --Bsherr (talk) 20:20, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it's the only one where it is variable. There are other cases where an entire by-month hierarchy is a sister to individual by-month categories. But these are fixed differences and the "factor" parameter can allow for them, if anyone cares enough to apply it. For myself I believe that the infrastructure there is fit for purpose, and no further tweaks are needed at the moment, although there is some scope for making the names more uniform, and ditching the largely redundant "all X" categories. Rich Farmbrough, 20:27, 29 November 2010 (UTC).

Rearranging references again

SmackBot is rearranging references again. [14] [15] I undid these edits once, thinking maybe it was just bad settings yesterday, and the bot made the same broken edits today. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:41, 29 November 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 17:53, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes it's not the settings, it's the version of AWB. I have restarted using the broken version, so that should not happen. That version should be clear in the contribs history/edit summaries. Rich Farmbrough, 20:17, 29 November 2010 (UTC).

Edit to VM article on 09/28

Hi, I had noticed that you changed to Capitalization on Cite on the references on Van Morrison article on Sept 28, 2010. I started using the Capitalization form myself but in the meantime, I have not found any other instances of the capital letter being used. If it shouldn't be this way will you change it back? Thanks so much. Agadant (talk) 15:52, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

It is somewhat disputed, but the consensus seems to be that it doesn't matter, but that I shouldn't change them in either direction. Rich Farmbrough, 06:20, 3 December 2010 (UTC).

Well, like YAH! Don't matter a bit since the preprocessor changes that first letter to a cap unless nocaps is set globally, like for instance on wiktionary, or the 'magic' word ({_{_{"lcase:"}_}_}... iirc) is specified locally. (Hey there Rick! Long time, no...) FrankB 13:14, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Schröder–Bernstein property

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Schröder–Bernstein property requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be a clear copyright infringement. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words.

If the external website belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text — which means allowing other people to modify it — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. If you are not the owner of the external website but have permission from that owner, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. You might want to look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hang on}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion, or "db", tag; if no such tag exists, then the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate and adding a hang-on tag is unnecessary), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lord Chamberlain, the Renowned (talk) 22:32, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Femto Bot error

I've undone this edit by Femto Bot, as it looked like an error. Fram (talk) 10:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The other edits it makes are also quite erratic, e.g. twice editing User:SmackBot when no change to the underlying BRFA is made. Fram (talk) 11:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a problem with the WP site returning a blank page - both for BRFA SB 38 and this page. This same symptom occurred once before. Very hard to test for intermittent problems like this, however I have put some defensive coding in. Rich Farmbrough, 17:42, 8 December 2010 (UTC).

UK IRC community meeting

Just a quick reminder about the IRC meeting at 1800 UTC tonight to bring together the Wikimedia community in the UK to help the growth and success of the UK chapter and community activities. For information see wmuk:Community_IRC_meetings

Many Thanks

Joseph Seddon

User:Seddon

Delivered by WMUKBot (talk) on 17:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Francis Wingfield

Hello! Your submission of Francis Wingfield at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Materialscientist (talk) 11:18, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot copy edit category

Richard, Why is Smackbot removing Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit as it did here? Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 02:48, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Because these categories should never be stand-alone in an article, they should be part of a template. When they are explicit they are usually left behind form a template that someone has "substed". Rich Farmbrough, 05:05, 29 November 2010 (UTC).

dear rick

long ago, you commented on my edit to ace doubles. writing to yo about a huge problem for me with wiki: it appears (see url below) that people are repackaging wiki content and selling it. I personally, am not going to do one darn thing for wiki if this is allowed; that is my personal bottom line - do you have a feeling ? if you agree, "we" - the people who don't like this - need to speak up, or wiki really will die regarsCinnamon colbert (talk) 19:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC) http://www.amazon.com/Zeta-Potential-Lambert-M-Surhone/dp/6131060002/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291143235&sr=1-5

Yes, it is a little dubious, the way they bundle articles chosen automatically. I am leaving a review of the book, this is the best response. Rich Farmbrough, 19:13, 30 November 2010 (UTC).

The same group of editors seem to have produced a wide range of Wikipedia-based books (click on one of them on Amazon to see the other titles) - 140 pages about a card game, etc! PamD (talk) 20:48, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

More and more weird: the "product description" for the card game book http://www.amazon.com/Raise-Roof-Card-Lambert-Surhone/dp/6132929452/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291149972&sr=1-5 is exactly the article at Raise the Roof (card game) - so what else is there in the book on the rest of the 140 pages? White space? PamD (talk) 20:52, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not buying one to find out! Rich Farmbrough, 20:57, 30 November 2010 (UTC).

There's about 4 or 5 organisations doing this. Business model: it costs them nothing, they print on demand, Amaozn gives them free marketing. Main problem for us, reputation, volunteer disincentive, and people trying to cite these books via Google books! Rich Farmbrough, 20:54, 30 November 2010 (UTC).

Disable this bot on "lists"

The bot is repeatedly asking for cites and references on the List of Aircraft, which is not right. You shouldn't be putting references on wikipages that are merely lists of other wikipages. Is there any way to turn this darn thing off in that application??? --Raymondwinn (talk) 08:22, 1 December 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 08:32, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 12:31, 1 December 2010 (UTC).

Note that the person who added the tags had an edit summary of "cn; completed tagging of redlinks in the G section of the page; many more sources are needed for many other claims)" Rich Farmbrough, 12:29, 1 December 2010 (UTC).

STOP

Please stop editing my page. They took out everything at the bottom, which is not advertising, just general information.

Thanks.

Cast Management

[X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 16:51, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

On a BOT or AWB note...

Working the Mongol invasion of Europe... I just removed a ton-a-bunch of unref taggings in 1229-1242 and likely one or two more around the 1730-1740 period of the Conejohela War. Just so happens you made this edit about the same time as the person who'd tagged these summation (ALMANAC?) pages (and reminding me of your miserable existence! lol), so what's the skinny. Looks to me like that was an organized effort given his summation, and that a bot or AWB was employed.

Logic in my head says these pages make no sense to have local cites-- they provide links to detailed articles, not wordy explanations. Cites would make maintaining them a whole lot of trouble, vice a quick hit and run edit to update the year's details. Being summaries... I think someone's BOT ought to make sure they all be current untagged... and if necessary untag them as I was and will continue to do. if and when.

Note the balanced reaction and sentiment conveyed oh so diplomatically in my boilerplate following: <g> <x!--{{unreferenced|date=November 2009}} summary page dum dum, see linked pages for cites --->

Nice to see ya again. // FrankB 14:27, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Likewise. Erik9bot did unref tagging/catting. Due to some "resistance" at BRFA it ended up putting them in an Erik9Bot specific cat, which is just crazy... But then it turned out that Erik9 was a banned (blocked?) user... so the bot stopped making it even more crazy. I did a conversion job to "proper" unref tags, but even there there was some resistance so I had a special "invisible" tag for stubs.. a few months later it got merged into the main unnref tag. And now it;s all as it should have been form day 1. <chuckle> Rich Farmbrough, 21:56, 3 December 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot: request for tweaks in articles

Please send the bot to Oliver Hazard Perry‎ and Three hares. Thank you for your help on Barber's pole. Thank you and happy editing. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 19:55, 15 November 2010 (UTC) Stan

happy to help. Rich Farmbrough, 17:38, 16 November 2010 (UTC).

Date to the maintenance tags

Hi, I want to run a bot on huwiki which adds dates to the maintenance tags, like your bot does it here. Can you tell me if it is a pywikipedia script or not? Can you upload it for me? Thanks, --Deni42 (talk) 20:21, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

No it's WP:AWB , the main functionality is now built in. There is a certain page that lists the templates to be dates and it s then part of General Fixes. It may "just work" or you ay need to ask for the functionality to be added for hu:. Rich Farmbrough, 23:35, 23 November 2010 (UTC).

Conclusion - try again

(copied by RF)
OK, let's try and wrap up some recommendations:

1. Don't use AWB on your main account. Use a different one, perhaps specifically for AWB. cf AWB rule 2.
2. Every AWB edit is supposed to be manually reviewed (AWB rule 1). Don't forget that.
3. AWB "stock changes" are permitted by the edit restrictions, including template redirects listed at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Template redirects. But as that page itself notes, and as the edit restrictions emphasise, even those stock changes should not be made on their own, without any substantive changes to the page. AWB has settings to ensure that this doesn't happen, as discussed above - so use them. But in addition, see point 2.

On a related issue, it's not clear to me how redirects get into the AWB list. There is an unsatisfactory discussion here. Anyone? PS It would be good to see Smackbot up and running again, if you can sort out the coding to ensure it behaves in a manner consistent with the editing restriction. Rd232 ^talk 18:41, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

OK. Rich Farmbrough, 09:27, 19 November 2010 (UTC).

Good. Thank you. Rd232 ^talk 11:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Are you planning on unblocking the bot anytime soon? Rich Farmbrough, 21:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC).

BRFA

I currently have a BRFA open at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/KarlsenBot 6 for dating maintenance tags, in which your input has been requested. Is this a task you intend to continue running? Peter Karlsen (talk) 23:32, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes it certainly is. There are about 4 bots approved for the task, and having more available - "do no harm" - and even if two runn at the same time the worst is a few edits of the kind that I am forbidden to make, but which don't really matter.. Rich Farmbrough, 23:35, 23 November 2010 (UTC).

Olena Onufriv

Hi Rich, just letting you know that although you declined a PROD from this page, it's been speedied since, and again blatantly recreated. I've done all the possible WP:BEFORE and found this subject to be a non-notable career starter. and I've put a new CSD on it. If you don't agree, feel free to decline it, but it will still probably have to go to AfD. Cheers, --Kudpung (talk) 10:24, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, its often hard to ref even mainstream artists from these places, and though the refs were poor they did at least show product existed, but I won't loose any sleep over this one, either way.. Rich Farmbrough, 14:23, 24 November 2010 (UTC).

Question about a bot

I have a question about a bot but Im not sure if its possible or if it already exists. Since FEMTO bot seems to have similar logic I thought I would ask you. I have recently stumbled across a few articles in the last few days that fall under WikiProject US but have unanswered comments. The problem as I see it is that its nearly impossible to actively monitor every article in WPUS manually. Here is my idea: Would it be possible to make a bot that would, once a week or so scan through the list of articles and drop a note on the talk page for WPUS with something like "The following articles for this project have unanswered comments older than 10 days". I think 10 days is a reasonable time to give for folks to answer. If they havent anseered it by then they probably won't IMO. Im not sure how many comments that might be but it might actually be necessary to list them in a subpage and then link that to the talk page. Any ideas? Thanks --Kumioko (talk) 22:21, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean on /comments pages? What is an "unanswered comment"? If you can define that then it's do-able. Rich Farmbrough, 22:26, 25 November 2010 (UTC).

That sounds like a great idea, if it can be made to work! As to how: perhaps a talk page with only one user (not adding wikiproject banners); or a section with only one comment in it? Or what about simply copying the most recent comment to a project page, once that comment is 10 days old? Then someone can look at the project page and tell from the comment if it's likely to need a response. With easy links to the full discussion, it would be quick to check that if necessary, and if it needs no further input, it can be removed from the project page. Rd232 ^talk 22:38, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

That is the problem, the more I think about your idea the more I think that its not only the easiest and most feasible RD232, but also probably the most useful (too bad there is no project watchlist). I thought it might be possible but didn't know how to go about it myself and judging by the comment that just got added other projects would be interested as well. Here are a couple of ideas that I had, none of which I admit are particularly reliable:

1. Using the edit summery somehow. (like if it says something like /* Question about a bot */ reply)
2. Looking at the actual talk page and if the comment has a : or * under it. (Indicating it had been replied too)
3. Using the UTC info and If a section had been added in the last ten days and another UTC Date time appeared in the same section but later.

A couple comments in general

1. What to do if the article has more than one comment in the last X # of days. Probably should just list the most recent.
2. Probably should ignore bot edits (but maybe not)
3. How to differentiate between actual comments and just cleanup edits or the additional of templates and banners and the like. --Kumioko (talk) 00:24, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Found something that applies here. I posted an Idea to the VP Idea lab about a watch list for WikiProjects and I got this in reply from User Dispenser so it looks like there is a tool we can use for this but they still don't completely answer the question/problem:

"There are several methods already. Some projects create a list of all pages and simply use Special:RecentChangesLinked to monitor it. User:Tim1357 created a tool for project banners. However, from what I've seen with the former method, their simply not enough users watching them." --Kumioko (talk) 14:05, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 November 2010

• News and notes: Backlog drive; youth and confidence among Wikipedians, brief news

• In the news: Fundraising banners continue to provoke; plagiarism charges against congressional climate change report

• Interview: Interview with Johanna Niesyto and Nathaniel Tkacz from "Critical Point of View"

• WikiProject report: Celebrate WikiProject Holidays

• Features and admins: The best of the week

• Election report: Voting in full swing

• Arbitration report: New case: Longevity; Biophys topic ban likely to stay in place

• Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

Read this Signpost in full · Single-page · Unsubscribe · EdwardsBot (talk) 21:54, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

17th Test Squadron

Hi Regardining the information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17th_Test_Squadron ... our squadron graphic has changed. How do I get a new graphic update on the page? Ronald J. Martwick 17th Test Squadron Space Innovation and Development Center 719-567-6134 ronald.martwick of schriever.af.mil —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.31.3.196 (talk) 17:31, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

replied by email. Rich Farmbrough, 19:22, 30 November 2010 (UTC).

Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left doesn't seem to be working right

Hi,

I noticed that some articles seem to have the wrong number of days left in Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left. It looks like articles that had the BLPPROD template added today are currently showing up as having 1 day left. Since I think you were the one who created that categorization, I wanted to let you know so hopefully you can fix whatever isn't working. Calathan (talk) 22:13, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmph. Yes. I assumed that there would be between 0 and 9.999999999 days left. Looks like I was wrong and 10 gets sorted with 1. Rich Farmbrough, 22:52, 1 December 2010 (UTC).

I made a cosmetic change and it all came right. I can only blame category lag - there was a bug the day I implemented it. Rich Farmbrough, 22:58, 1 December 2010 (UTC).

Edit count list

Rich, please take a look here. I don't see the list, only this date stamp: 05:06, 01 December 2010 (UTC) I tried to fix it, but I don't think it's supposed to work that way. -- Brangifer (talk) 23:22, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The actual list sits at User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 3. Guess that got clobbered. Rich Farmbrough, 23:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC).

Sorted, there was an "onlyinclude" around the timestamp. Dropped a note to the botop. Rich Farmbrough, 23:31, 1 December 2010 (UTC).

UK Community Notice - IRC meeting

Dear Wikipedian,

This is the first of what will hopefully be a regular notice to help bring together the UK community so that you can be involved in some amazing things. To kick things off, there will be a UK community IRC meeting at 1800 UTC, December 7, 2010 to discuss the future growth and developement of Wikimedia UK. Without huge community support and involvement, the chapter cannot be successful and to get the most out of it, get involved.

For information on the community IRC meeting please go here

More to come about:

• Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Events
• 1st Annual UK Wiki-conference
• Trustee interest meeting - an event for those community members with even just a fleeting interest in becoming trustees of Wikimedia UK.

Many Thanks

Joseph Seddon

User:Seddon

Delivered by WMUKBot (talk) on 05:37, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot

Where did you get your information from when you previously edited the OFWGKTA discography i.e. Free Sweatshirt, The Sweaty Martian, Wolfpack etc.? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Howl5 (talk • contribs) 14:29, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I didn't. Check the history more carefully. Rich Farmbrough, 18:48, 5 December 2010 (UTC).

Apollo 13

Hi Rich,

There is a section in the above article headed 'Root cause analysis'. Since RCA is a technical term, I changed this to 'Root cause analysis' so that there was a page link available to the 'Root cause analysis' wikipedia page by clicking the section heading. Smackbot has removed the page link and returned the heading to just being plain text. Can you help me understand the benefit of that please? My understanding of wikipedia guidelines is that links to other pages should be used.

Any help is much appreciated.

Best regards, Socheid (talk) 19:09, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The Manual of Style says To avoid accessibility problems, headings should not normally contain links. Exactly what the accessibility issues are I don't know, but I would imagine they are related to screen-readers. Rich Farmbrough, 14:48, 6 December 2010 (UTC).

Cheers Rich,

Socheid (talk) 23:21, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Problem with wikify tagger fixed

rev 7446 discounts persondata from wikify evaluation. This fixes the problem with unnecessary wikify tags in stubs. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:40, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. Rich Farmbrough, 21:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC).

Wikipedia:WikiProject Hawaii/Recent changes/Page2

For the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Hawaii/Recent changes/Page2, nothing on there relates to Hawaii. It's totally about Wikiproject Texas. The most recent activity on there was a move by you. Do you think maybe it needs to be moved to WikiProject Texas? Maile66 (talk) 13:28, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Looks like it was created in error in 2006. No other move history. I deleted it. Rich Farmbrough, 17:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC).

Fram

Yet again Fram succeeds in getting SmackBot blocked. Congratulations. Rich Farmbrough, 21:55, 8 December 2010 (UTC).

Yet again Rich succeeds in getting SmackBot blocked. - there, fixed that for you. Rd232 ^talk 22:29, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Nah, proximate cause. Fram has nothing better to do than stalk my edits. Or rather imagines it is so. There is real work to do here, instead of pissing around trying to prove something irrelevant. Rich Farmbrough, 23:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC).

TagUpdater: Even better

rev 7451: Removes dated even if first digit is zero + removed comma between month and year. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:47, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Cool. Rich Farmbrough, 23:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC).

AN

Clearly this business with the editing restrictions isn't working. See WP:AN. Rd232 ^talk 00:54, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Rich Farmbrough, 01:40, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

ANI notice

An ANI section concerning your actions has been started at WP:ANI#WP:POINT violations through AWB by User:Rich Farmbrough. Fram (talk) 08:07, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

SB tempalte redirect

Rich, am I going nuts, or are you here doing a template redirect which isn't on the AWB standard list? Rd232 ^talk 01:31, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Nope no template redirect, just a little list formatting rule,that I need to yank out. Rich Farmbrough, 04:13, 5 December 2010 (UTC).

OK, thanks, please do. Rd232 ^talk 12:17, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Same thing happened hare and here (checking only SmackBot's 20 most recent edits). Fram (talk) 13:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Um, why are you using AWB on your main account when you have Smackbot? [16] Rd232 ^talk 14:14, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Small one-off jobs are better run manually than waiting for BRFA. See the previous section for a BRFA that's taken a month to get to trial status, which I would probably have been able to code and run same day. Rich Farmbrough, 18:04, 5 December 2010 (UTC).

I didn't (and don't, but if I'm wrong, please correct me) think a BRFA would be needed just by virtue of doing it from a different user account; that doesn't make sense to me. I'm thinking of WP:AWB rule 2. They may be small jobs, but you do so many, they would be better run from an alternate account. Rd232 ^talk 19:35, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Checked the last ten edits of tonight, and again two of them are unnecessary and unwanted bot edits: this and this. Fram (talk) 09:15, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

And again: here. Fram (talk) 08:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

This is a completely different thing, go and look again. Rich Farmbrough, 00:02, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

As Rich has made no response to these concerns and the bot is continuing to make these edits which contravene the editing restriction, I have blocked the bot indefinitely. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• What's the time limit on responding to trolls?
• Did you not know that the bot can be stopped by leaving it a message?

Rich Farmbrough, 00:02, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

I think it's best if you step away from your computer for a while because if you continue like this, calling editors trolls, etc., your account will be blocked fairly rapidly. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:56, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:DUCK applies. In the end Fram's behaviour is that of a passive-aggressive troll, whether he intends to troll becomes irrelevant. Rich Farmbrough, 08:59, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

Have to agree. See eg also [17] (reflist -> Reflist) and [18] same plus see also -> See also plus a redirect replacement ({{Toomanylinks}}) not on the AWB list. Rd232 ^talk 11:45, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually these last couple that you mentioned were valid and are needed. Not only did they do the minor edits that you mentioned he also dated a couple templates which is needed. Just because something isn't on the AWB list of changes doesn't mean it isn't allowed. Also there is nothing wrong with using AWB on your main account. I can't explain or justify why he does some that are trivial removing only blanks but you are picking one or 2 cases out of hundreds or thousands of edits. --Kumioko (talk) 13:41, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Um, you're clearly new to this. See WP:editing restrictions, and look for Rich's entry, and note the footnote there. Also plenty of previous discussion on this talk page. Mixing good changes (dating templates) with bad doesn't make the bad OK, and this is a long-term pattern which Rich keeps promising to fix. Also on AWB "main account" issue, see WP:AWB Rule 2. Rd232 ^talk 13:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually I am very familiar with it and I would stop responding too if I had 2 or 3 editors hounding me and scrutinizing every edit I made. Its also going to make matters wors when every edit you do is criticized and remarked upon. Yes he does some questionable (I don't agree their all bad and many are arguably helpful in various ways) edits (anyone who did 30, 000 edits a month would) and I can't excuse that but I have seen several editors include good edits as bad edits (such as the last couple above) and knowone seems to say anything other than the ones that are stalking him. I am very familiar with the AWB rules and rule to says you should consider it, not that its required. I also want to point out that since smackbot has been stopped there has been a dramatic increase in the number of undated maintenance templates, the number of articles that have those templates is growing and 90% of the good edits that Smackbot used to perform are not happening. So if the wikiprocess has become so unforgiving that a few bad edits aren't allowed then we need to shut down the bot process wikiwide (because there all going to make some). Since the issue of the bad edits is such an issue for you I suggest you start a bot that does the same things as smackbot so that it can be done the way you want to do it. This will also allow the work to be done since Smackbot is blocked indefinately know. I also feel like I should mention that what I have witnessed here has made me not want to start up a bot as I had planned. --Kumioko (talk) 14:02, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It's called WP:CREEP. There have been complaints before, and comments from me complaining about how trivial and petty those complaints were. Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I just think that too much time is being spent overburdening one editor with rules that aren't being enforced to all other users and on edits that are arguable. I also think that constant attention and blocks for what amounts to edits of opinion is rather unnecessary. Especially when it could be argued that any edit being made to AWB is trivial. The whole point of using AWB is to do edits that would otherwise be too tedious and slow to do manually. --Kumioko (talk) 14:24, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Since he is probably the most prolific bot and AWB editor, it is only logical that his edits will be noted by more people and get more scrutiny. But your assertion that it could be asserted that any edit done by AWB is trivial is obviously incorrect. Being tedious and slow to do is not the same as being trivial, and trivial changes are not part of what AWB is for. A random example from the recent changes log: this is not trivial, and (assuming the correct target is selected) is a good use of AWB. Rich Farmbrough replacements of incorrect lfprp links with correct ones in footballer biographies is also a very good, non-trivial use of AWB. Adding or removing whitelines, changing the capitalization of templates, ... is on the other hand an utterly useless and annoying edit, filling up recent changes, watchlists, ... for no gain at all. These are not "edits of opinion" (and edits of opinion should never be done through AWB or a bot anyway), these are edit count fillers. He has promised time and time again that the bot was improved to make such edits impossible (or at least very, very rare), but still they appear very regularly. Enough editors opposed this in previous discussions to get him an edit restriction, and he was lucky the last time not to get a more severe one. Fram (talk) 14:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I only meant that it could be "argued" they were trivial, not that I believed it to be that way. That example is a manual find and replace done by the editor and not a general fix of AWB. The lfprp item you mentioned is interesting as well since it was pointed out above as a bad edit being done by Rich. The matter of opinion thing comes from the lower to upper case switch (some of us prefer them as upper case, you and some others prefer it lower). Although I can understand where some editors don't like it when their watchlists fill up this should never be used as a reason IMO. If articles in my watchlist are getting edited, even if the edits are minor, I am glad. Even minor edits, over time can make a huge improvement to the article. I wished I could remember the article but I recently had an article that was a start class, had about 50 blank lines, the stub tags where above the categories, some minor formatting was out of place, I removed spaces before and after sentences and before puncutation and references. In all I think it was something like 250 characters of "minor" edits that once completed made about a massive improvement. All of which would have been considered a minor edit by your logic and not worth doing. As far as the edit count goes, who cares. If an editor is spending time doing so many edits they are #1 on the list (Rich replaces his name with Placeholder by the way) and has done so many edits that they will soon hit the 1 million edit mark then great they deserve that spot. Even if they do a couple of unneeded edits IMO. For the record I don't "agree" with every edit he has made but in the end, other than a couple that are arguably unnecessary, they don't hurt WP or the articles they are done on so I don't mind it. If he was actually breaking articles (I know smackbot did this a couple times but its rare and the problem has been fixed) or something like that it would be different but thats not the case. --Kumioko (talk) 14:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I thought you cared about editcountitis, since in another recent discussion on this very talk page, you wrote: "Someone has to do it I guess since the bot isn't allowed to run for more than a couple hours at a time. That should help at least a dozen editors keep their edit counts up so a couple of insignificant edits can be saved." As for the scarcity of his bot errors, we will have to agree to disagree about this, I would call this rather frequent. Only yesterday, his Femto Bot removed all contents of this talk page... Fram (talk) 15:12, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Fram please stop being a troll. Rich Farmbrough, 00:02, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

AWB Rule 4 is "Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits." The community has imposed editing restrictions essentially to require Rich to respect this rule, and it is becoming increasingly tiresome that Rich is seemingly unable to cut out the unwanted edits (or parts of edits) from his Smackbot code and AWB use. His enormously prolific contributions are much valued, I just don't understand why it continues to be an issue so long after it was agreed what should happen. There have been some ambiguities and misunderstandings in discussing the precise applicability of restrictions, but those have been handled, and we're left with no obvious reason for the failure to fix a basically straightforward problem. Rd232 ^talk 21:02, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

As far as I understand many Smackbot's settings are like that in order to add and fix some difficult dated tags cases. I have a suggestion that probably will reduce the problem: Smackbot can first run in the list of undated tags only with built-in general fixes and then rerun to the remaining list with its customised settings. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:21, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I suppose that's not impossible, though I would have thought it possible to fix rather than work around like that. And it surely doesn't cover reflist->Reflist, does it? Rd232 ^talk 22:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

AWB now fixes some incorrect capitalisisation on dated tags like november -> November and Date= -> date=. I don't know if these help SmackBot to stop using generic capitalisation of templates in order to catch errors. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:10, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem is twofold. First its tampering on an epic scale. For example correcting the redirects to Reflist includes {{REFLIST}} - and that rule is case insensitive to include all the other redirects regardless of leading case. Screwing around with the rules makes things break. It consumes my time for no real purpose.

Secondly you want me to invest a significant amount of my time fine tuning stuff that only Fram complains about. And the incentive is "we will let you continue to work for free." I am quite happy to continue making evolutionary changes, but I just spent today wondering why SmackBot was failing to write pages - assuming it was due to serve load or an API bug. I was going to edit one of the XML files and test a minor "improvement" but nothing has happened. Becasue MSG was trigger happy over some pernicious complaint. <meh>

Rich Farmbrough, 00:11, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

• The only way of avoiding making any inconsequential edits would be to bundle in a very large number of scripted functions, be very specific with the list of articles to be edited, and to pre-parse the list. Doing all of these can take a very significant extra time and effort, and lead to people complaining about inaccurate or inadequate edit summaries, so it's a no-win. It seems that the end is to keep one or two editors happy. FWIW, I actually happen to bundle a lot, but I still occasionally find articles on the list which are null edits except for inconsequential ones. I often see Fram editing articles on my watchlist with AWB, and I'm surprised that Fram doesn't seem to realise that this is "a cost of doing business". ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:02, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I only hope that they don't scare Rich off or they may turn their attention to us.:-) --Kumioko (talk) 02:10, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Draw attention to the way I use AWB?? Although I try not to do any inconsequential edits, they might find something else to complain about! Thankfully, I am small fry, doing only about 3–500 articles a day max. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I hit 2700 today alone and more than a thousand a day fro the last couple weeks. If they wanna comb through that all the power too them. They might find a few. --Kumioko (talk) 02:56, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I usually go through twenty or thirty edits only. Patterns of problems often become quite easily visible this way. I have no inclination to go through all edits to list every exceptional problem. Apart from that: if I make errors or problematic edits when using AWB (which isn't all that often anywayà, feel free to contact me about it. Fram (talk) 08:15, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

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Thanks

Thanks for getting back to me. Sorry about the e-mail issues. I wanted to know if you would "follow" a new Dermatology and Dermatopathology forum proposal I am working on. Also, perhaps you could vote as to which questions you consider on/off topic? In general, I have enjoyed collaborating with you on Wikipedia, and would love to have you following this project as well. Thoughts? ---My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 22:19, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, as I said I am not a dermatologist, or even medically qualified, so there is probably little I can do right away (although I am interested in question and answer from a human machine interface point of view). The main query I would have - which stops me from rating the questions - is whether "Proposed Q&A site for expert dermatologist[S] and dermatopathologists " is for expert-expert, public-expert, non-expert-expert or a combination. Also what constitutes an expert dermatologist? Rich Farmbrough, 07:39, 16 November 2010 (UTC).

AN/ANI discussion

I've attempted to restart the AN discussion to focus on the long-term substantive issue. I urge you to be as helpful as you can there in explaining the concrete and practical difficulties you face in respecting the editing restrictions, and in coming up with solutions if you can.

On the Fram/Geoswan thing - I can't do any better than quote Fifelfoo in that thread: "You appear to be particularly combative at the moment Rich, considered taking a cup of tea?" You appear to have lost perspective on Fram and his actions for the moment, and I urge you to be mature enough to recognise that and act accordingly until this passes (compare being mature enough not to drive when drunk). Rd232 ^talk 13:16, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

ANI: Ok that's perhaps useful.

On the Geo Swan, I would say rather that I have just found perspective on that. I was aware that there was a fairly long running issue, but I had not seen Geo Swan's talk page for some time, nor indeed Fram's, let alone Fram threatening an Arb who advised him to disengage. Rich Farmbrough, 19:00, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

Please provide a diff of me "threatening an arb". Fram (talk) 07:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• I think the above post, being highly confrontational, was not helpful in the least. I suggest Fram stay off this talk page for a while, and allow the temperature to drop a few degrees. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:30, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Ohconfucius, with "the above post", do you mean mine or Rich Farmbrough's? Fram (talk) 08:38, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• Actually, I meant both. You're both trying to provoke each other, so I reckon you guys ought to stay in your own corners for now. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:45, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

When an admin makes serious claims about me, I am not going to let that just pass without any evidence. I don't think my reply to him was in any way "provoking" him, it was a short, clear question directly relevant to the previous post, without any additional comments or provocational content. I have ignored his direct personal attacks as long as they were clearly just his opinion (e.g. the multiple instances of him calling me a troll), but when he makes factual claims about me, he should back them up, and asking for this should not be discouraged. Fram (talk) 09:08, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• I reiterate my suggestion that you stay off this page. As there's already an AN/ANI in progress, that's where the action should be. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:24, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

"You are free to start an RfC, but be aware that your own behaviour may come under scrutiny as well" Rich Farmbrough, 20:10, 10 December 2010 (UTC).

Apart from the fact that that hardly is a threat, just fair warning (people starting an RfC are often as much the focus of attention as the intended target of the user RfC is), I would really prefer if you would provide a diff, so that I and everyone else can see where I said thia, in reply to whom, in what context, etcetera... It is still not clear to me where this comes from, and which arb I supposedly directed this statement to (I can't remember saying anything like this about any member of arbcom, and I can't remember any ArbCom member about to start an RfC on me either). Fram (talk) 20:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

There was nothing wrong with Fram's remark, and no good can come of pursuing it further. Rich, please strike your accusation, and Fram, just let it go. Rd232 ^talk 20:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:All articles with unsourced statements

Category:All articles with unsourced statements, which you created, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Magioladitis (talk) 13:15, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

BAGBot: Your bot request Mirror Bot

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Mirror Bot as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 16:19, 12 December 2010 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

CSD template

There are several templates up for CSD at CSD, such as Template:ISO 3166 code Saint Kitts And Nevis

Are you fine with the deletion? I'm happy to do it, but wanted to make sure.--SPhilbrickT 20:58, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

No, deletion is a bad idea. {{ISO 3166 code|Saint Kitts And Nevis}} => KN. This means we can get the code from a country field. More: we can do this:

• {{ISO 3166 name|{{ISO 3166 code|Saint Kitts And Nevis}}}} => Saint Kitts and Nevis

This mean we can to some extent canonicalize place names up to level 2. Rich Farmbrough, 21:09, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

I reverted all the CSDs (other than the one you reverted), and urged the nominator to contact you to try to convince you that they are not needed.--SPhilbrickT 21:30, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks. There is one where two words are run together that could probably go - I'll try to find it.. Rich Farmbrough, 21:33, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

Just a bad typeface made me think that. Rich Farmbrough, 21:34, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

(edit conflict)These templates can work as proposed, but they currently aren't doing that very much. You created several thousand ISO 3166 templates in May, but they are only used in four articles at present. Is there a plan to use these on a wider basis? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:36, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes there are two places in particular where they could be used usefully: Infobox settlement and Infobox road or whatever it is called. Unfortunately while I might normally summon the energy to implement them I do not have the energy to cope with NIH syndrome which seems rampant in some of those places. Please however feel free to use or constructively abuse them as and where required. Rich Farmbrough, 20:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC).

fyi

In case you did not notice. The BLP issues refer to the Guantanamo detainees. Please do not re-add the information. IQinn (talk) 00:40, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I reverted you. You should not -re-revert without cause. Rich Farmbrough, 18:16, 12 December 2010 (UTC).

Libertarianism

Hi, your automated AWB tool made edit to the fully-protected article Libertarianism without any discussion, removing a large swath of sourced content and tagging the edit as "minor". This is a highly contentious article; administrators should not be making unilateral major changes. I recommend you revert yourself. If your AWB tool is failing to recognize full protection, please refrain from using it. Thanks. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:47, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your note, no content was removed. The duplicated (and long) footnote number 5 was de-duplicated. Rich Farmbrough, 16:50, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

Ah, I see that now. Thanks. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:05, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Cosmetic changes contrary to editing restrictions

Thread retitled from "Unattended bot edits from your main account (errors in userspace javascript)".

I thought you weren't going to do stuff like this anymore? [19] –xeno^talk 21:36, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Who says its an unattended bot edit? Look at my contribs to see the .js I didn't avoid and reverted. Some joker is doing something stupid in the .js - and making life very difficult through weird categorisation, possibly the expicit {cleanup} in the js, but possibly not. Rich Farmbrough, 21:39, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

If it was attended, you wouldn't have saved it... And also [20] ? –xeno^talk 21:41, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Tosh, and you know it. Humans make as many or more errors than machines. Rich Farmbrough, 21:41, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

If it was unattended I wouldn't have been there to revert myself. <Extensive facepalming> Rich Farmbrough, 21:42, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

So either you're still doing unattended edits or you're simply clicking save without looking at what you're doing. And you've seemingly taken up on your main account what you can't do on SmackBot because of the block? –xeno^talk 21:48, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Uh no. A couple of mis-clicks are quite reasonable. And I have always done most of the non-main space stuff manually. There are a zillion bots dating tags on articles - I've done maybe a couple hundred articles today just as preliminary testing. Rich Farmbrough, 21:58, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

Weren't the unnecessary capitalization changes removed from AWB? –xeno^talk 22:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Define unnecessary. Rich Farmbrough, 22:02, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

Changes that are not necessary. –xeno^talk 22:13, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

In that case yes. Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

So why are you still making unnecessary capitalization changes? –xeno^talk 22:18, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

AWB is replacing the template redirects that were incorrectly named accroding to the guidleines with the correctly named target templates. This is necessary. Rich Farmbrough, 22:36, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

But as far as I know, AWB's stock changes do not change {{reflist}} to {{Reflist}}, yet in these edits you do? AWB's stock changes also retain first-letter capitalization during redirect bypass. –xeno^talk 22:37, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Retaining first letter capitalisation has been shown to be a nonsense with the IMDB situation. As far as Reflist is concerned it stands on a line (and usually a section) of its own and therefore does not fall in to the same category as the cite templates, moreover there are specific problems around the case-sensitivity of some of the redirects that make this a little problematic. Even more important, but less relevant, it is a crying shame to deliberately leave a page in an appalling state for no good reason. Rich Farmbrough, 22:45, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

You may be appalled by lcfirst templates, but you've yet to demonstrate that the community-at-large shares your concerns. Please do refer to the editing restrictions listed under your name at WP:RESTRICT and adhere to them by not making unnecessary cosmetic changes absent those built into AWB or those with demonstrable consensus. –xeno^talk 22:48, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

So why are you dropping by to express these concerns? Were you disturbed to encounter a capital R? Or just lacking other things to do that peruse my contribs? Rich Farmbrough, 22:54, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

Not that it's entirely relevant, but I noticed an edit on my watchlist and was dismayed to see that you have returned to old habits despite clear restrictions prohibiting them. –xeno^talk 23:01, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Or to be more accurate you immediately jumped to conclusions that were both wrong and unjustified. An old habit of yours. And then searched for other reasons to be "in the right" if not actually right. A habit of many. Rich Farmbrough, 23:05, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

I'm unwatching your page again now. Thanks for your time, –xeno^talk 23:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Why would you edit someone else's sandbox?

Hello Rich, I see that you're an administrator and that you make a lot of bot-assisted "general fixes", but I must ask: why did you decide to edit two of my sandbox pages like this and this? These are my personal pages, clearly marked with the "Userspace Draft" template. SteveStrummer (talk) 03:32, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The reason I edited them is that the {{Userspace draft}} template needs to be dated. If you go to preferences and turn it on you will see that "Userspace drafts" are in a hierarchy of dated categories. Category:Userspace drafts from December 2010 in this case. Other changes are things that are likely to be improvements if/when the page goes live. Incidentally revisiting I have commented out the content categories and interwikis which should only be restores as and when the page goes back to article space. Rich Farmbrough, 03:40, 17 December 2010 (UTC).

OK I see, thank you. I'll date any future draft templates I make. But please do consider adding that instruction to the related bots' edit summaries, and certainly to the Template:Userspace draft page. (I see someone back in June inquired about the possibility of a bot adding dates to draft templates but there was no response.) SteveStrummer (talk) 05:24, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The documentation is not protected, but I have updated it anyway. And thanks for the note, I have replied on the talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 05:53, 17 December 2010 (UTC).

Up-to-date list to bypass redirects to banners?

Where to do I find it? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:30, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Hhm time for a new one. Rich Farmbrough, 12:49, 9 November 2010 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 17 -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:12, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Any list? -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:48, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the list. Great job on that BTW. I did notice a couple things that I wanted to mention though.

1. There are a few projects that are missing redirects as well as some projects missing (such as trains, LGBT studies, MILHIST and Biography)
2. There are a few projects that you are changing to redirects (I dont think we should be changing to redirects except maybe for MILHIST, Biography and the like since they dont have to same nameing convention)
3. I recommend setting them as minor edits. Personally I would rather just make the change and be done but I think that a lot of folks are going to kick up afuss if we do these relatively minro edits without doing something more significant at the same time.
4. I think we should setup a collaboration somewhere (maybe where its at now, not sure) so that we can all work on getting the whole list of projects with redirects. Its a huge undertaking and theres no reason why we shouldn't all share in the pain of building the list. --Kumioko (talk) 14:43, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Rich. In addition to there being no mention of WPBiography and WPMILHIST in the lists here are some of the things I noticed on the list that I think should be changed: I changed these (and some others) to point to the correct project page rather than a redirect

1. {{\s*(WikiProject[ _]+Wikipedia[ _]+Saves[ _]+Public[ _]+Art|WikiProject[ _]+WSPA|) *([\|}\n])
2. {{WikiProject Wikipedia Saves Public Art$2

1. {{\s*(WikiProject[ _]+WikiProject[ _]+University[ _]+of[ _]+Arkansas|UARK) *([\|}\n])
2. {{WikiProject WikiProject University of Arkansas$2

1. {{\s*(WikiProject[ _]+DC|WikiProject[ _]+District[ _]+Of[ _]+Columbia|WikiProject[ _]+District[ _]+of[ _]+Columbia|WikiProject[ _]+Washington,[ _]+D\.C\.|WPDC|WikiProject[ _]+Washington[ _]+DC|WikiProject[ _]+DC) *([\|}\n])
2. {{WikiProject District of ColumbiaC$2

I added to the list I have and I recommend adding them to you

1. {{\s*(WikiProject[ _]+LGBT[ _]+studies|LGBTProject|LGBT Wikiproject|LGBTProject|WP LGBT|WPLGBT|WikiProject LGBT|WikiProject LGBT Studies) *([\|}\n])
2. {{WikiProject LGBT studies$2

1. {{\s*(WikiProject[ _]+Trains|TrainsWikiProject|RAIL|RR|Rail|TRAINS|TWP|Trains|WikiProject Train|WikiProject trains|Wikiproject Trains|Wikiproject trains) *([\|}\n])
2. {{WikiProject Trains$2

1. {{\s*(WikiProject[ _]+Dogs|DOGS|WPDOGS|Wikiproject Dogs|DOG) *([\|}\n])
2. {{WikiProject Dogs$2--Kumioko (talk) 01:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Talk page banners

I was going to give you a list of the changes I made but I noticed you were pinned down by friendly fire so I created a page under my user name (User:Kumioko/Talkpage) for the WikiProject Banner cleanup talk page edits. Im not sure if you derived the list manually or mined it somehow but as I make changes to my list I will update this page as well. I have also been adding comments about when I changed it and basically what I did (but I didnt for the first couple days). Please feel free to use or modify this list so that we can all benefit from enhancements we all find and make. If you dont have time or whataver just drop a note on my talk page about the change you want me to make andn Ill do it as soon as I can. My XML skills are minimal so I usually just append to the bottom and then resort when I pull it into AWB rather than trying to find where it fits alphabetically. Here are a few of the things that I have been modifying as I find them:

1. Adding missing projects
2. Adding additional redirects
3. Changing the destinations to the actual project names (some were using redirects)

I actually perform a couple hundred other edits (like deleting empty unused fields (not things like priority or class but empty taskforces and the like), fixing parameters that say things like +, -, _, etc instead of =, adding listas if missing, changing listas title to listas key) but I cut those out for the sake of not mising things up. If you think I should inlcude these as well please let me know. --Kumioko (talk) 04:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes that would be best as a separate chunk I think. I have to decide how often to generate the XML for talk pages, it takes probably 45 minutes, and will pick up all current redirects (barring the bugs you know about) provided the current list of targets is up to date. This would slow down the main rule generation too much, so I probably need to start soemthing to make it run daily or weekly, again a minor problem since I am running on 750M of memory for some strange reason. Rich Farmbrough, 04:27, 17 November 2010 (UTC).

750 huh, I woulda thought you had more power than that..lol. Im not sure what the process is for generating the xml but is it possible to fix any of the things I mentioned automatically or would you have to go in and manually change them every time? How do you determine which WikiProjects to pull in? Is it based on most linked to or a category or something? In addition to the ones I mentioned above I also noticed a few of he WikiProjects on your list dont have any redirects at all so I disabled them in my list. --Kumioko (talk) 04:36, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes but if you want to line them up nicely...

{{ WikiProject_________Bacon|
{{WikiProject Eggs
{{ WikiProject Black pudding

becomes

{{WikiProject Bacon|
{{WikiProject Eggs
{{WikiProject Black pudding

Although perhaps removing the trailing space tampering would be good in those cases. In fact I can produce a smarter XML now, with a little effort. Rich Farmbrough, 08:53, 18 November 2010 (UTC).

I have been manually culling through the list and I updated some more of the logic for the WikiProject Banner cleanup here with notes. I thought the notes might help you to refine the code. A summery of some of the changes:

1. More projects added
2. Some projects disabled that didn't have any redirects
3. disabled some that dont appear to be valid.
4. Added some other talk related templates.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. --Kumioko (talk) 18:30, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks I'll have a look. Rich Farmbrough, 21:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC).

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Template:Cu-sect listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Cu-sect. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Cu-sect redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Kumioko (talk) 05:47, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Bob Hilliard

Sorry, Rich, I have probably come to the wrong place for this one, but as you are part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography, maybe you can help me. I have been trying to find an online reliable source(s) to confirm and enhance the death details for Mr. Hilliard for months and months, without success. I asked on the article's talk page, and got some information (after a lengthy time period) but it still did not seem to get me anywhere. I am hoping to find something to better conclude his article, before I suffer the same fate as him ! Feel free to redirect me, if you are busy, or think somewhere else is more equipped for such a plea, from this miserable little pleader. Cheers,

Derek R Bullamore (talk) 20:43, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

OK I had a good trawl, most sources were WP copies - including one un-attributed, so I fired them a friendly note...

• Allmusic has the year 1971, however that seems to be possibly user generated.
• Findagrave drew a blank.
• Other possibilities include the way-back machine or similar to find a history of the dead link. It seemed to hiccup when I tried http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.itsnet.com/doc-rock/1970.html . (Note 1970 in the url.)
• http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C272 - this gives the date but seems to be a copy of the article - which extensively cites it!
• You can try at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography, where there are probably more expert people at this, I know also User:Fences and Windows is good at finding cites.

Sorry I can't help more. Rich Farmbrough, 22:00, 15 December 2010 (UTC).

Many thanks for your fine efforts - much appreciated. I thought my Google search engine parameters (or whatever they are called) were faulty or aged - rather like me. I did find this, [21] which I often use, although Wikipedia seems to be divided over whether it is a reliable source or not. For death information, I think it is much more reliable, in that sense, than most whom are deemed reliable, if you follow me. Anyway, onwards and upwards - I do appreciate the time you have spent on this. Thanks, - Derek R Bullamore (talk) 22:21, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh yes http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=11861 IBDB has the death date, but I have no idea whether IDBD is a RS. Rich Farmbrough, 22:53, 15 December 2010 (UTC).

IDBD seems like an RS http://www.ibdb.com/policies.php. Rich Farmbrough, 22:28, 15 December 2010 (UTC).

Insight from the generalist

Hi there Rich, I know that you identify as a generalist, an inveterate "fixer" and copy editor as you say, so I thought I'd seek your input on this-- I've put together what should be a significant step in bringing the PepsiCo article up from its present rating of Start-/C-class status (ratings differed from one wikiproject to the next) towards an eventual goal of it meeting good article standards. This has been a complex subject matter to tackle, but I thought it to be worthwhile in the interest of building the encyclopedia (and making for one fewer low-graded Top-Importance article). If you have an inclination, might you be able to weigh in on this discussion: Talk:PepsiCo#Thoughts_on_revision? Happy holidays, Jeff Bedford (talk) 15:40, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Appreciate your suggestions! I've replied on the article talk page; though with no explicit expectations -- if you feel so inclined, I'd be happy to hear what you think. However I realize that time is limited for all of us (well, most of us), so if you'd prefer for others to follow up that works as well. Cheers, Jeff Bedford (talk) 18:21, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Sladen's concerns

Rich: Altering {{reflist}}→{{Reflist}} is a "cosmetic change to wikicode". Could I remind you that per Wikipedia:Editing restrictions#Rich Farmbrough you are indefinitely restricted from doing this. Please comply. —Sladen (talk) 22:59, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Sancho arrives. Rich Farmbrough, 23:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

Thank you for confirming that you have read this notification. Please could you confirm that you have (again) removed the erroneous (semi-)automated ruleset that caused the alteration, and that you do not intend to (knowingly) reinstate it. —Sladen (talk) 23:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I shall take a leaf out of Xeno's book an unwatch this page too. Rich Farmbrough, 23:08, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

I don't think anyone will object—if it helps you to operate more effectively within Wikipedia:Editing restrictions#Rich Farmbrough. It would be useful if you could confirm that you have fixed, removed, or otherwise permanently corrected the misbehaving ruleset (I do not wish to see others block your account again when it can instead be avoided). —Sladen (talk) 23:23, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Talk page template redirect cleanup

I am done verifying the talk page templates and I converted it from individual find and replaces to a C module. There are pluses and minues to doing this but I think its an improvement. For me it seems to work about twice the previous speed but it may be different for you. I added the code that I think you would be interested in here. A couple notes:

1. It seems to be a bit faster
2. It allows things to be processed in a certain order. This may not apply to your needs but it provides a better method for me to change the WikiProject redirects first and then perform other tasks in succession such as moving templates (like Talk header, DYK, Image needed, etc) out of the Wikiprojectbannershell), moving the BLP=yes from the bottom of the WPBS to the top, move templates above or below WPBS as appropriate, etc.
3. I included projects that have no redirects, had been deleted or merged into other projects. They are commented out so you can delete that section if you want. I did this in case they come back or become an issue later.
4. I included a section with redirect fixes for some other types of templates that appear on talk pages as well.
5. I am still trying to figure out how to make the diacratics fix in regex so the dozen that have them will still have to be done manually as well as the WikiProject Wierd Al Yankovic but that one is hardly worth the words to mention.
6. One downside; this method doesn't automatically detect upper and lower case which means I have to program it in. Not a hard thing but it will take some time. This means that the coding doesn't always recognize lower case for all the projects. I will continue to refine the logic and put out an update in the next couple days that should fix most of the common ones as well as reduce some of the code.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. --Kumioko (talk) 17:13, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

That is really good. The main problem with S & R is that you have to choose whether it comes before or after GFs and sometimes you want some bits before and some bits after (or even before and after). Rich Farmbrough, 17:58, 13 December 2010 (UTC).

Blocking

Blocked 48 hours for blatant violation of Wikipedia:Bot_policy#Mass_article_creation. [22]. Honestly, do you think policy doesn't apply to you just because it's inconvenient for you? Rd232 ^talk 13:45, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Sadly, Rich stated as much above. This has become quite tiresome. —David Levy 17:24, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Not that it will matter in the slightest because it seems like the blocks will continue until Rich is either blocked indefinately or leaves but I think that blocking Rich over a 300 article run because he didn't go through BRFA is ridiculous. I just went through about 100 of them and as far as I can see that one article you found is the only one that was created in error. Which makes me wonder how many you went through before you found one. My guess is quite a few. Are we really advocating a zero defect mentality for article creation these days? Or just in Rich's case? No need to answer I already know the answer. --Kumioko (talk) 01:28, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The policy is not merely about preventing errors. If you disagree with the policy, propose changing it. Rd232 ^talk 12:12, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

• This is rather unwelcomed vigilantism. You all have better thinks to do than to harass Rich endlessly. I just hope you guys dont succeed in driving Rich from the project. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:03, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

• • That is certainly not the intention, and you deserve a rather large WP:TROUT for suggesting it is. The policy is there, and it's there for a reason, and breaching it knowingly when there are still unresolved issues about the long-term problems with AWB use is particularly unnecessary. Rich knows I think he is a valuable contributor. Rd232 ^talk 08:48, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
    • • You have a rather funny way of showing it... I suppose you are administering this block as if he was a recalcitrant child, and it's 'for his own good'? ;-)
    • Oh ... is this a punitive or a protective block? Tony (talk) 13:28, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
      • Both. Rich has done this before, and may do so again soon, so it's protective as normally construed. But in addition, punishment is not vengeance; it's supposed to deter future breaches, so therefore has a longer-term protection element. Rd232 ^talk 13:34, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
        • You can justify it however you want but it is completely unnecessary to require one specific user to get a BRFA for 300 articles. I am quite certain I could look around and find a rule amongst the thousands of contradictory rules here in WP to justify just about anything. Oh here I know, How about this one; WP:IAR. --Kumioko (talk) 13:41, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
          • (EC)Do you have evidence that he will do it again? Had the bot still been running fine but clearly the unauthorised bot had already done the work. The block is not protective and is rather extensive for something which could be seen as minor. Bidgee (talk) 13:45, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
            • Just so that its clear to all. RF didn't use a bot to do this, he used AWB. I think that is Rd's concern is that RF did not do it as abot through the BRFA process. My point is that it shouldn't be necesary for a mere 300 articles. In my opinion a one shot run of a relatively small # of articles is not bot worthy. IF this was going to be a repetetive task or had a large volume of say more than a thousand I would say a bot would be needed. I also know that the bot rules is very subjective. --Kumioko (talk) 15:39, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
              • The language of the relevant policy is, with good reason, "automated or semi-automated". The latter includes AWB. Rd232 ^talk 00:23, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
                • I have commented elsewhere this is to misunderstand AWB. The tool does not determine the level of automation. Rich Farmbrough, 00:42, 19 December 2010 (UTC).
                  
                  • Sure it does - that's the whole point. Rd232 ^talk 00:46, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion I believe conflates a number of dimensions:

1. "Automation" - this is a continuum from, if you will, typing, through pop-up suggestions, java-script search and replace, browser based spell checking, manual edits where the whole change (or most) is automated but the commit is manual, batch processes, continuous processes to automatic on-wiki processes (cat counters etc.).
2. "Simplicity" simple edits are not necessarily candidates for automation, nor are they necessarily automated.
3. "Speed" the assumption is that fast editing is automated, slow editing is manual. Personally I prefer not to wait between manual edits, automted edits can happen while I'm doing something else (like sleeping).
4. "Volume" not all automated tasks are high volume - notably daily updates, this is typical of FemtoBot - one of its tasks started at about 1 page per month. Similarly I manually tagged several thousand maps GFDL (because there was no AWB in those days) and did many thousands of AWB assisted album clean-ups (I forget which part I couldn't automate at the time).
5. "Application" You can make automated edits with Firefox and manual edits with AWB - and it can be a sensible choice of application.

For these reasons the apparently attractive idea that you have a main account, and an AWB account (and a bot account) doesn't really fly. Yes I have User:Megaphone Duck - I'm not sure if it has AWB approval - but that was just to put a thumb in a dike, while I tried (and failed) to write the encyclopedia. Rich Farmbrough, 01:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC).

I don't suppose any ill intent in RD232's part. Those who jump up and down pointing, and singing "Ooh he broke a rule! Ooh he broke a rule!" receive a slightly less charitable view. However the net result is less articles get fixed, including the articles/disambiguation pages in question. I actually laughed when I tried to edit Ofcom a few seconds ago - it's not really my loss that there's a misplaced capital. Also the discussions I am involved with will lack the benefit of my counsel, which would doubtless be ignored anyway. For example BOTPOL now covers human edits, assisted or not. Effectively BAG now runs Wikipedia - which I'm sure is not the intention - however it is fairly harmless, exchanging one set of absentee landlords for another. Rich Farmbrough, 18:32, 18 December 2010 (UTC).

It's not such much a rule broken, it's on-going, it's low-level, and it's wide-spread. Other editors do their damnest to draw such situations to your attention, in order that you can focus more on the useful edits (such as fixing capitalisation on Ofcom) and less on well-intended but high-speed collateral damage—per your note here I have made one capitalisation change[23] at Ofcom#Administrative leadership, I hope it was the one you had in mind. When you get notified of an issue and choose to archive it twelve hours later without responding affirmatively, I suspect that other editors feel that there are few options available to politely get the point across. Consensual social awareness is far preferred, but if you want to work to the Wikipedia rule-book you need to accept when others hold you to it. Remember: in this situation, if you had not been undertaking bot-style assisted edits from your main account you could not have been blocked for their effects, and would have been free to make the type of manual edit you have highlighted here. It is you that has chosen to conflate manual and semi-assisted AWB edits on a single non-bot account, and this block is the fall-out. —Sladen (talk) 23:29, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

If anyone wants to take semi-automated mass article creation discussions away from BAG, propose it (like where?). For now, that's where it is, and the task clearly falls within the ambit of the policy. I note your complaints that BRFA has been backlogged, but I see no reason why the task was so urgent it couldn't wait a month, a year, or even a decade. Wikipedia is a work in progress, and BLP issues aside, very little is actually flashing-lights-urgent; there's just a lot of stuff that needs doing. Rd232 ^talk 00:23, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

So what your saying is that performing "bot style" edits requires that there be zero errors resulting and a BRFA? Because as far as I can see Rich was blocked for making 1 error in a 300 articles run and a couple editors are holding the bot type edit rule over his head. How do you define bot style? The rules indicate loosely that the number could be as low as 20 and Rich got blocked for 300 so I guess its somewhere in between. The reason I ask is to prevent myself from getting blocked as well since I have maintained a 1000 edit a day average for the last month. And I have enough edits in the hopper to keep that steam for the next month or so. Although I have been careful the law of averages dictates that there are at least a few in there that were incorrect. I need to clarify this before I end up on the block list for the same reasons as Rich. Your comments also define by the way you define them that BAG should be granting the access for use of AWB. I think this needs to be clarified as a major change to existing policy and practice. --Kumioko (talk) 00:28, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps this will make it crystal-clear enough for you: I'd have blocked for it if there'd been zero errors. It's unapproved semi-automated mass article creation, end of. PS What? No. AWB use != mass article creation via AWB. Rd232 ^talk 00:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the error wasn't relevant to RD232's action. And I am familiar with the "edits in the hopper" scenario. Rich Farmbrough, 00:40, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

Actually it's not that I was talking about, it's WP:MEATBOT. Basically if "we" decide that edits are "botlike" they fall within our purview. Certainly I don't forsee it being abused, but that doesn't make it good policy. At some point the community needs to take a responsible grown-up attitude to editing, weigh actions or groups of actions on their merits, not the race of the agent or agents performing them. And I would hope that this would be by bulldozing the bot ghetto, rather than sending productive people who believe WP:NOT a bureaucracy to be subject to the same rules. Rich Farmbrough, 00:40, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

Well if you want to discuss MEATBOT further, maybe with a wider audience via RFC or whatever, fine. But the root of the point of having a bot policy is not some kind of racism against bots... it's managing the power that (automated) bots have, and high-speed semi-automated editing raises a lot of the same issues. Rd232 ^talk 00:46, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok so then you need to clarify "creating". Depending on how this is defined I have "created" a couple thousand in the form of Category's that were missing, redirects, DAB pages and mostly talk pages. Almost all through AWB. It seems that you are only targeting Article space pages but you need to clarify because I don't want to be blindsided by an ambiguous rule when the attention gets turned to me. --Kumioko (talk) 00:53, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The policy currently only covers "articles". Dab pages are probably fine, redirects I'm less sure of, but the place to clarify that would be on the policy talk page. Rd232 ^talk 01:03, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, this is somewhat reasonable though, since it is the visible face of Wikipedia. Nonetheless the pages in question were arguably DAB's rather than articles. Rich Farmbrough, 00:59, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

Lists are not dab pages, if that's what you meant. Rd232 ^talk 01:05, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I was discussing it on the BOTPOL talk page. Unfortunately that particular avenue of pleasure is currently denied to me. Rich Farmbrough, 01:00, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

Patience. I'm sure you can use your offline time in constructive ways. Rd232 ^talk 01:03, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

After reading the discussion on BOTPOL it seems a 48 hour block is also a good way of diminishing Rich's credibility in your favor and allowing the discussion to cool for a couple days to reduce the amount of comments. But that's just my perception of the situation. I do find it rather odd and suspicious timing though. --Kumioko (talk) 01:23, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Have you heard of WP:AGF? Are you suggesting that clear policy violations should be ignored because (a) the contributor is otherwise very valuable (b) they might have something to add to a current policy discussion? PS Noting your specific failure of AGF is particularly egregious since not far above I suggested Rich could, if he wanted, seek a wider audience for the policy discussion, eg via RFC. Rd232 ^talk 08:58, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Question about some code I wrote

This is going to sound like a strange question but here goes. I wrote some code to replace various WikiProject redirects to the actual template: see here. My question is in regards to dealing with casing. I know that using regex I can put [Xx] to look for upper and lower case of letter X (X being whatever letter). Is there a way that you know of to make this so all of the whole group is case insensitive rather than having to designate each one individually? Thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 01:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Does this help [24]? In particular, adding "RegexOptions.IgnoreCase" as a third arg. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 01:44, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Thats awesome thanks I'll test that out right now. --Kumioko (talk) 01:48, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

That worked great and I have updated the code. Thanks again for the help. --Kumioko (talk) 03:00, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I have just had to do the reverse with all my redirect stuff, because REFLIST => Reflist was picking up reflist and causing the imminent death of the universe. Rich Farmbrough, 07:04, 18 December 2010 (UTC).

Most of the problem people were having with yours was that you were doing it as a standalone edit and you were removing blank spaces. In the case of reflist I would have just protected it in reflist format temporarily and then unprotected it at the end of the edit group but thats just one way to do it. Although at this point I think it woudln't matter what edit you performed, theyll find a problem with it. --Kumioko (talk) 13:44, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I looked at my calendar, and was not surprised to note that it was 'criticise Rich Farmbrough week' this week. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:16, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Notes

1. Illumnos concatenated/portmanteau
2. Activities and Recreation Center

Rich Farmbrough, 20:49, 18 December 2010 (UTC).

(Done)

Fram

Can someone look at this rather strange reversion. The edit summary suggests that a real example is somehow wrong. I don't know what Fram's problem is exactly, but there clearly is one. Rich Farmbrough, 05:29, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

I think what Fram is saying is that it is incorrect to say that a page like Wikipedia get lots of hits, so it won't take very long to "pay-off". Because what actually matters is the number of hits (or rather clicks) that particular link you are changing gets, rather than the page as a whole. Anyway, I'll point him towards your talk page for you. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 07:05, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

OK nevermind I'll go to the page itself presently. More important is the blanket revert, instead of just the bit he takes issue with. Rich Farmbrough, 14:43, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

Auto link foreign language translations of articles

Could you implement my idea?

http://m.jguk.org/2010/11/wikipedia-auto-link-article.html

Now3d (talk) 20:18, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

It is actually rather rare for these not to be linked in a complete graph. There are many robots roaming the interwikis and adding the (usually) appropriate links. The hope is, though, that technical improvements will allow a single link from each language version to a central repository of links, this will save millions of edits per year.

Simple Wikipedia has been around for a long time, and is a very Good Thing.

Rich Farmbrough.

13 December 2010 10:34

AN discussion concerning SmackBot

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Your comments would be very welcome there.  Sandstein  12:42, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

AN/I

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. The thread is Curious actions of User:Megaphone Duck. Doc talk 23:26, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I just hope you don't work for Cyberdyne. Bots gone wild... ;> Doc talk 23:55, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Note: this was a bug where the correct change was displayed but a blank page was written. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:32, 12 November 2015 (UTC).

bump post on my talk page

Rich farmbrough was that you, if so sorry mate but i thought that was a new user being unconstructive--Lerdthenerd (talk) 09:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Blocked

I've blocked this account (bot?) for blanking pages. Nakon 21:51, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

December 2010

This is your only warning. If you remove or blank page contents or templates from Wikipedia again, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. —Farix (t | c) 22:39, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

ANI Notice

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Curious actions of User:Megaphone Duck. Thank you. —Farix (t | c) 22:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:Megaphone Duck by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 00:31, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

A page you edited

Dear Editor,

You recently added a few flags to the HyperOffice page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperoffice. I had consulted with you way back on 23rd April 2009 even before I set up the page. I had referenced a number of entries in the same domain (online collaboration) before setting up the page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebEx, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box.net, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoho, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Desktop, and had it vetted by a number of editors and users before it went live. The article is exactly the same in tone as these other articles. Please reconsider your edits in light of the above. wikiliscious (talk) 13:29, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 21:58, 23 December 2010 (UTC).

SmackBot unblock

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Rich Farmbrough/Archive (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

---

Request reason:

Build 586 should address outstanding concerns

Decline reason:

The bot operator is currently blocked for violations of bot policy. Once they are unblocked, they should request unblock of this bot by explaining what the concerns were and how exactly they were addressed.  Sandstein  13:59, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

---

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

Rich Farmbrough/Archive (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

---

Request reason:

Concerns were

1. That between 8:11 on the 8th of Decmeber and 11:00 on the same day "The bot was continuing to make these edits" Actually it wasn't, hadn't edited for several hours. So that concern is dealt with.
2. And "As Rich has made no response to these concerns" which was proabably because I was alseep, I have addressed that by waking up.
3. Moreover I have rebuilt the rulebase to avoid capitalising templates which are not dated. I have moved a number of other edit rules to minor status. I have disabled some stunningly useful code, which was causing drama. Total number of rules changed c. 1800.
4. there is no 4. Rich Farmbrough, 06:04, 20 December 2010 (UTC).
   

Accept reason:

My reasoning can be found in Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Smackbot_and_Rich_Farmbrough. I recommend that SmackBot doesn't go right way to make hundreds of edits since the discussion is still active and maybe its code needs reviewing. Unblock enables SmckBot to do a small number of edits to demonstrate it new build, do test runs for it spending bot requests and perform other tasks if any. I suggest Rich to use the latest version of AWB, simplify SmackBot's code by removing parts now done by main AWB and/or using custom modules. I also suggest that a "How it works" is written so other editors can make suggestions to improve performance. I also suggest Rich to get in contact with Anomie so we don't have double-runs and find a solution for the cryptic template redirects (wfy, cn, etc.) which I also think have to be bypassed (and AWB bypasses them too). -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:39, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

• Could we have a link to the discussion? That explanation does so little to help me understand the background that I am filled with pain and undying agony. Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

• Agreed, there is very little specific information here, the block log mentions an editing restriction, but does not explain what that restriction actually is. The unblock request is also lacking in specific detail, so reviewers who are not active at WP:BAG, which I would guess are the majority of unblock reviewers, have no way to judge either the block or the unblock request. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:04, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I have raised the matter at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Smackbot and Rich Farmbrough.  Sandstein  12:44, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I did some action to move us forward. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:57, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Are these the relevant editing restrictions? - David Biddulph (talk) 14:38, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

• As this request and the wider issues are actively being discussed at the link given by Sandstein, it may be appropriate to procedurally decline this unblock request for now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:45, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

We all love wider issues... This all started with the, perhaps foolish, capitalisation of Cite templates. It is ludicrous to me that 3 months later anyone takes the slightest interest in a few effectively null edits. We should be moving forward, not backwards. Rich Farmbrough, 00:51, 22 December 2010 (UTC).

Rich, I'll say the same thing to you as I say at any unblock request or ANI posting: please make a case for yourself, and help us to understand the history, in as few words as possible, but with the most clarification possible, using diffs, paraphrases, etc. We can't decide until we know the whole history. Magog the Ogre (talk) 00:56, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, Rich, I see you mentioned something about re-writing this in perl. I strongly encourage you to do so, if we could get this into a "proper" programming language, it would make life so much easier :) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 12:54, 22 December 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 01:51, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Tagger updated

As of rev 7500:

• FixSyntax: Catches more unbalanced brackets
• Tagger: When no cats from existing page by API call but genfixes adds people categories, don't tag uncat

The latter fixes the problem of double-runs in many biography pages. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:18, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi

Hello, sir, I'm a new user and I don't know how to start... anything. Could you help? SpaceDiver221 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC).

OK. Thanks! SpaceDiver221 (talk) 20:21, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

STOP

The edit summaries are not appropriate or intelligable Active Banana (^bananaphone 01:21, 23 December 2010 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:SmackBot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 01:24, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Various

Can you please edit User:SmackBot#Tasks_and_authorisations and make clear(er) which tasks are one-off, inactive, still active? I am losing track.

I asked MSGJ to unblock SmackBot. The blocking reason isn't valid anymore. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:08, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes I need to do some more work on that. Rich Farmbrough, 19:14, 21 December 2010 (UTC).

AWB error

The dating of the Use DMY template goes wrong in your AWB edits, returning Use dmy dates from {{subst:currentmonthname}} {{subst:currentyear}}, e.g. here, here and here. Fram (talk) 12:55, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

This was fixed already in rev 7462. Version 5.2.0.0 (rev 7471) doesn't have this bug. We re now in rev 7487. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:14, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm on 7487. Rich Farmbrough, 16:53, 22 December 2010 (UTC).

Audio theatre an article to audio dramas

Please if you have time and you know anything to it (I have seen that you have made edits in the article area which owns relations on it --- e.g. you have made the article: The Lord of the Rings (1955 radio series)) , please look on the article Audio theatre, somebody placed a erase discussion on it. after we have had a merge discussion. It would be interesting what you would say to the merge and the delete discussion. And possibly it could help to contact other people that they should help also. )-: Merry Xmas --Soenke Rahn (talk) 14:31, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Unapproved automated/semi-automated creation of pages

As I've told you time and again there are reasons we have processes in place to approve these kinds of task, rather than immediately creating hundreds of pages using an untested method. For example, scroll down this page which you created a couple of seconds ago, and you should notice a rather obvious problem with it. I suggest you go through your creations and review them properly, and in future you review them (and get them peer reviewed) before you start putting them into the main space. I hate to be blunt, but what will it take for you to actually start following bot policy - which the majority of the time is good practice and makes sense? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 07:25, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

1. It's not untested.
2. No page is created fully fledged.
3. There will be a significant amount of work tidying these pages. Flaws in categorisation are a key reason, and are much more visible on-wiki than off. I have already made many fixes to categorization of other pages as a result of this work.
4. As far as Bot Policy goes gaining BRFA for a piddly little 300 page manual task would be a waste of time, even in an ideal world. Furthermore BRFA was backlogged until about a week ago, with tasks taking a month or more to get a response. Now we have a flood, which is good, but a regular, rapid, responsive system would be more useful. Rich Farmbrough, 08:07, 17 December 2010 (UTC).
   

1) Well evidently it's not tested well enough is it? It's needs to be peer-reviewed, rather than only tested by yourself. 2) Not an excuse for making mistakes which are easily avoidable. 3) That work should be done before they are created in the mainspace. Adding the image files (and templates, which I don't really think should be in those lists) could have been easily avoided by filtering the lists to articles only. 4) Bot policy isn't just about BRfA, I think it would be a great idea for you to create these pages in your userspace, allow them to be fixed and then move them to the mainspace. That it's slow isn't an excuse to ignore it. What makes you more special than the other users waiting in the queue?

• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 49 uh waiting? it's not a queue it's a lottery. Rich Farmbrough, 21:41, 17 December 2010 (UTC).
  

And please don't tell me that was a manual task when it so plainly wasn't. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 08:44, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I think "peer review" would be a little over the top. However it all seems academic now. Rich Farmbrough, 17:13, 17 December 2010 (UTC).

Speedy deletion nomination of Portal:Stamford

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

Thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and the page that you created has been or soon will be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hang on}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion, or "db", tag; if no such tag exists, then the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate and adding a hang-on tag is unnecessary), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 18:27, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

happy holidays
from mono
wishing you a joyful new year

MonoALT (talk) 22:47, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, what an amazing photograph.

Actions of 5/6 May 1945

A process argument has opened on this page, to which you have contributed. Your comments are requested. The discussion is here (duplicated to all editors of this page) Xyl 54 (talk) 01:23, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah well I am in article creation purdah right now. It seems a simple case of "redundancy is good" rather than "forks are bad" though. Rich Farmbrough, 19:42, 18 December 2010 (UTC).

defaultsort

You seem to try to fix DEFAULTSORT invalid entries but... you don't. Check [25] and many others where the comma was missing. :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:56, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

• Why is a comma needed, even in cases like this? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:46, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Comma separates surname from name. I don't know the rule for Korean, Chinese names by heart. -- 01:51, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Tx. Chinese convention is to put the family name first and the given name after, without commas. The example I gave is typical, as are Mao Zedong and Liu Xiaobo, to give other examples. I think it is also the case with names from Japan (and many other Asian countries), Hungary. Is it not redundant to use commas in these cases? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:20, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Per WP:SUR Mao Zedong is sorted as Mao, Zedong. I think the reason is to separate Name 2nd name Surname from Name Surname 2nd Surname. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:38, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes the purpose of the exercise was to look at some 29,000 people articles with no comma in the DEFAULTSORT. Unfortunately I became so paranoid about he editing restriction that that got rather left by the wayside. I'm not sure that the comma is actually a good idea, I fear much hinges on the human name sorting decisions being made based on the paper, or at leas human targeted, methods of keying sorts. Rich Farmbrough, 18:33, 21 December 2010 (UTC).

BAGBot: Your bot request SmackBot 38

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 38 as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 13:44, 21 December 2010 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

bot edits not tagged as such

Noticed this edit not tagged as a bot edit. Thought you'd want to know. --Muhandes (talk) 07:54, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, we'll see how build 601 fares. Rich Farmbrough, 08:06, 23 December 2010 (UTC).

Fixed, good catch. Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 23 December 2010 (UTC).

Bzuk (talk) 16:03, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

Dear Rich Farmbrough, Best wishes to you and your family this holiday season, whether you are celebrating Christmas or a different holiday. It's a special time of the year for almost everyone, and there's always a reason to spread the holiday spirit! ;) Love, --Meaghan [talk] ≈ 15:22, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Re: WNSC move

Thanks much! Am off to do the templates, etc. We hope (talk) 22:31, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Diacratics in talk page banner templates

Not sure if you knew or if there is anything that can be done about it but I have noticed in almost every case when the WikiProject Banner template contains punctuation or diactratics it breaks. Two example are WikiProject Pokemon and WikiProject Children's literature. In both cases and others like them your script stopped after it got to Pok and Children. --Kumioko (talk) 17:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes I did know, but not about those examples. Couple of others I either fixed up or the non-alpha redirect was orphaned. Rich Farmbrough, 17:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC).

For the diacratic examples like the é in Pokémon is the \ for regex the right identifyer in regex or is there something else I need to do to identify those? --Kumioko (talk) 16:40, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I also wanted to mention that I found a few redirects that look like this: Template:WikiProject:Rowing. I think we should do a sweep and find these rogues and wipe them away. In every case I have found so far there were no articles that linked to them. --Kumioko (talk) 18:54, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes I agree. I have done a couple like that. Rich Farmbrough, 19:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC).

Needs a smarter regex is all. Rich Farmbrough, 19:06, 23 November 2010 (UTC).

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:All articles to be expanded

Category:All articles to be expanded, which you created, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Magioladitis (talk) 12:40, 13 December 2010 (UTC)