User talk:Jeff G./Archives/2011/June

Robot Wars

It's JeffGBot vs AnomieBOT! JeffGBot doesn't like dead links, while AnomieBOT insists upon their inclusion! Which of these robots shall emerge victorious? I am on the edge of my seat -- There's nothing like a good robot battle! ;) Kafziel^{Complaint Department: Please take a number} 06:19, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

AnomieBOT appears to add info about dead links to articles, whereas JeffGBot does so to articles talk pages. They work together to better inform the readers and editors. They do not undo each other's work. Therefore, they are not warring.   — Jeff G.  ツ 14:37, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

JeffGBot adds info to article talk pages about dead links in the articles, which AnomieBOT put there. If one tries to remove the link, as JeffGBot asks, the link is added back almost immediately by AnomieBOT (as shown above). They are clearly working at cross-purposes. Is there a way to set JeffGBot to ignore links that are connected to an "archive" section of a template? There are bound to be a lot of them. I don't know if that's possible or not—I don't know anything about creating bots—but it would be helpful. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department: Please take a number} 15:11, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

AnomieBOT is merely doing one of the several standard solutions for a dead link, it's not "insisting on its inclusion" or warring with JeffGBot (neither undoing each other nor interfering with each other). I agree that having JeffGBOT ignore deadlinks that have an associated archived version is a very important feature, because it is a critical part of the explanation of the currently-active archive-link. DMacks (talk) 18:30, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

It's all right there in the page history:

1. AnomieBOT put the link in.
2. I removed it at the behest of JeffGBot.
3. AnomieBOT immediately put it back in.

That's the very definition of 'insistence'.

Obviously the bots aren't literally warring - that was a joke. Since they don't edit the same page, they need a go-between. So, instead of being stuck in an endless loop of removing and replacing the link (which would be bad) they are wasting the time of real, live editors (which is even worse). Kafziel ^{Complaint Department: Please take a number} 19:29, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The history appears to have you removing the archiveurl of the deadlink, not removing the deadlink itself? DMacks (talk) 19:42, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah, yes! I see what you mean. My mistake: I did remove the wrong part of the template. Still, the basis of the suggestion remains: This bot is telling me about something another bot did, and it would be helpful if it did not do that. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department: Please take a number} 19:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I will try to get it to ignore deadlinks with working archiveurls; in the meantime, would it make sense to just reply to reports of them with a true statement like "That's ok, the archiveurl works."?   — Jeff G.  ツ 13:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead links

It would be much easier to check and correct dead links if you could indicate exactly where they are in the article. As it is, editors wanting to work on this have to search through a (sometimes lengthy) article in order to locate them. Would it be possible for the bot to link to the actual footnote? RolandR (talk) 17:20, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

You should be able to search the entire wikitext for the URL.   — Jeff G.  ツ 04:01, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but that is a tedious job. Particularly when, as in Talk:1948 Palestinian exodus, you list ten such dead links in a long article. I doubt that anyone would have the time, or the will, to hunt for all of these. Would it be technically difficult to link to the relevant footnote, so that editors could more easily correct these links? RolandR (talk) 08:53, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

If you are not using a browser with a "find" function (usually Ctrl+F), you should switch to a browser that has such a function, or copy the wikitext to a text editor that has such a function. Relevant to that talk page: links like this don't work - I have removed seven instances of "!OpenDocument" from UNISPAL URLs in order to make them work again in this edit due to changes by UNISPAL to their website; http://ipsnewsite.mysite4now.com/ gives socket errors no matter what page you ask for; and http://daccessdds.un.org/ has no DNS no matter what page you ask for.   — Jeff G.  ツ 16:29, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Bot suggestion

Is it possible to get your bot to ignore unavailable external links if an archive url is provided? For example, {{Cite web}} has a parameter "archiveurl" which produces the output:

"Example website". Archived from the original on 1900-01-01. Retrieved 2011-01-01.

If the original site is offline, the bot sees the dead link and reports it. However, since an archive url is provided there's no need to replace the link. Just a suggestion. Not sure how difficult this would be to code. TDL (talk) 06:16, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Just saw that this has been recently discussed above. TDL (talk) 06:22, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it was, but that section was archived. To reiterate, I will try to fix it.   — Jeff G.  ツ

Bot problems

Your bot just posted some presumably broken links to Talk:0.999..., for example, here. For all I can tell, the bot does not like the links it mentioned because the URL was immediately followed by the "}}" closing the citation template; the links themselves work just fine in the article. Huon (talk) 15:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

It didn't take long to find another example of this bot doing exactly the same thing at Talk:1,1,2-Trichloroethane with this link http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/TR/1,1,2-trichloroethane.html}}. Note the template brackets the bot included. Again, as above, the url itself http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/TR/1,1,2-trichloroethane.html is fine. It appears the bot has been shut down for the moment. Racerx11 (talk) 16:49, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how many false reporting were made, but my concern is that this may result in some good links being mistakenly removed by well intentioned editors. Should all these bot reports be reverted or is something else that can be done quickly to remedy this? Racerx11 (talk) 16:56, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this is a problem; I will look into fixing it. Please feel free to removecomment upon any such false report, mentioning this section in your Edit Summary.   — Jeff G.  ツ 02:18, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

It is still doing it (talk:1926 Lithuanian coup d'état). I removed the false report before. Renata (talk) 15:44, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, the bot's design is to replace removed reports if it still feels there is a problem. Please comment upon the reports, rather than removing them.   — Jeff G.  ツ 03:59, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

A different bot issue

Would it be possible to prevent the bot from making a series of edits like these? One report should be more than enough... --Izno (talk) 17:47, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

This does not seem to be such a problem, as none of the BAG members objected to these three reports during the trial. I will, however, look into fixing it. Please feel free to consolidate such reports, adding summary comments like "the whole site is defunct, as it no longer has DNS" or "the site is being rebuilt, and is expected to be back online Tuesday" (preferably with some sort of reference).   — Jeff G.  ツ 02:46, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll certainly feel free to do so. :) I'm surprised there were no BAG comments. /shrug

The best functionality would probably be one header, one edit, for all the links. Possibly titled "Dead links 1-N". But otherwise, thank you for the useful bot! --Izno (talk) 04:19, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree, please change this. There is a large difference between 3 edits and 24 like on Talk:2005 civil unrest in France. Combining the edits as well as the sections would be ideal. Crunk Cup (talk) 04:10, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I will try.   — Jeff G.  ツ 14:01, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

JeffGBot generating false positives

In regards to this recent edit by JeffGBot, your bot appears to have problems understanding citation templates. While extracting information from an instance of the {{cite book}} template, the bot pulled not just the URL but the URL and part of the template when looking for a linked to web page. The extraneous information added to the end of the URL predictably results in a 404 error that would be avoided by using only the URL itself. --Allen3 ^talk 13:06, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Most of the reports from the bot I see are false positives of this sort. Please fix it, since this has been going on for months and is getting rather annoying. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 08:23, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

You are evidently not seeing the many thousands of edits it has made since it was approved early on 25 May (UTC), less than 20 days ago.   — Jeff G.  ツ 14:35, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Ditto; it reported four on 2005 Liberty Bowl. Mackensen (talk) 13:05, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I will try to fix it.   — Jeff G.  ツ 14:35, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Remove dead links?

Why is the bot suggesting that dead links be removed? --Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:16, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead links fail Wikipedia:Verifiability.   — Jeff G.  ツ 22:43, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

No they don't - see WP:LINKROT: "WP:Verifiability does not require that all information be supported by a working link, nor does it require the source to be published on-line". Bazonka (talk) 20:55, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it would be better if the bot suggested searching an archive. –anemoneprojectors– 09:34, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

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Erroneous bot message

JeffGBot placed a notice on Talk:51st parallel north warning of a broken link - http://books.google.com/books?id=8yu3pYpzLdUC}}. However, the link does work, but it is actually http://books.google.com/books?id=8yu3pYpzLdUC. I think what has happened is that because the url is the last part of the cite template, the bot has assumed that the template's closing brackets are part of the url. I guess the code looks for |'s but not }}'s. Thanks, Bazonka (talk) 20:44, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Same issue noted here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:A_Figure_in_Hiding#Dead_link VA6DK (talk) 05:15, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

and at Talk:(162173) 1999 JU3 (twice now). —Tamfang (talk) 07:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

JeffGBot and dead links

Howdy. Is there any way that your bot can check to see if the link it is testing is inside a cite template that has an "archiveurl" parameter? If you look here, your bot posted to talk page of an article. In the actual article the link is used in a cite template with an apparently working "archiveurl" parameter. In cases like these, it seems like your bot's message is less useful.--Rockfang (talk) 02:19, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I will look into this further, but a cursory examination shows that the archive for that link is at WebCite, which this bot currently does not understand.   — Jeff G.  ツ 03:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, I suggest that you put a note in the message stating that both The Wayback Machine, and WebCite can both be checked for archived versions of the dead link.--Rockfang (talk) 02:19, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I will look into this also (it appears much more promising than the previous one).   — Jeff G.  ツ 03:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Any progress on this issue? I just reverted the false positive for the second time within a month on a group of articles that all use an archived url (e.g., here). If the "archiveurl" parameter is used in a citation template, have your bot check only that link and ignore the other one. A kludgier fix would be to have a "blacklist" of articles to omit from your bot's search. postdlf (talk) 15:22, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Erronious reports

Please visit Talk:2BASE-TL. These are erroneous dead link reports. Perhaps the bot is being confused by parenthesis around URLs. --Kvng (talk) 03:35, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

The spammy-looking "bare URL surrounded immediately by parentheses" syntax used on that page's article is in violation of WP:LINK#Syntax.   — Jeff G.  ツ 12:50, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

They may be in violation of the LINK syntax, but they weren't dead links. The bot message was therefore inappropriate. Have you fixed it? Bazonka (talk) 16:55, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

DMacks (talk · contribs) resolved the problem with this edit, removing all of the links with incorrect syntax and referring to WP:NOTDIR, and then documented the resolution in this other edit. Note that the list of equipment manufacturers expanded upon the original incorrect syntax in this creation of the article over four years ago.   — Jeff G.  ツ 02:19, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

It also reporting dead links on Talk:1st Airlanding Brigade (United Kingdom) and all the links are working. Jim Sweeney (talk) 16:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Citation templates redux

For the second time this month your bot dumped false positive notices all over Talk:2005 Liberty Bowl because it can't handle the citation template. This is far from helpful and I'd like to know what you plan to do to fix it. Cheers, Mackensen (talk) 11:44, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I have shut down the bot until I have a fix, sorry for any inconvenience.   — Jeff G.  ツ 12:32, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

About your Admin Coaching request

Your submission at Admin Coaching has been moved from the current request list to older requests, as requests where the submitter has not visited the page for at least 6 weeks are moved. You are welcome to update and return your request to the current request list should you wish to, but please note that you are expected to regularly check the page (and to update the "last visited" field of your request) to show your continued interest in the project. If you do update, please carefully re-read the instructions for submission as they may have changed since you last visited! If you no longer require admin coaching, please remove your request. I hope that you continue to enjoy editing Wikipedia! Regards, -- Mlpearc powwow 10:50, 26 June 2011 (UTC-7)

Thanks for the notification, I updated it and put it back.   — Jeff G.  ツ 03:57, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for updating your request. Be sure to change the "Last Visited" section before the six week period is up, or we will go through this all over again, the statement you placed in the section for "Admin" comments does not override the time limit placed on all request. Thank you. Mlpearc powwow 04:42, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I removed what I had added to the "Admin Comments" column.   — Jeff G.  ツ 03:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead links - bot

Evil }} attacked your bot, here Bulwersator (talk) 11:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)