User talk:XLinkBot/Archive 7

Revert on Tibor Machan Page of YouTube Links

Thanks for reverting this edit. Please note that these links were on the page originally, and the older version of one of the links is still present. In light of WP:PRESERVE I attempted to update these links and nothing more, thus I invite you to remove the remaining link http : //youtube.com/watch?v=hDq7EAL_V-Y "Human Rights Issues in Germany" Video of Machan lecturing at the University of Heidelberg with all due respect that remains on the Tibor Machan page. I hope I've helped to improve things here. Please let me know if I can be of further help. 75.84.200.25 (talk) 00:22, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I've actually undone the bot. This seems like a good link. Sorry for the inconvenience. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:40, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Questor Tapes

How do I add a youtube link to the above page? Other pages have youtube links, so it is an acceptable site. 174.22.22.40 (talk) 14:31, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

No, it is not an acceptable link because other pages have it, YouTube links may be acceptable if they pass our external link guideline. Please, do take into account, that some YouTube links on other pages actually should not be there. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:03, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Mata Hari

Is there something wrong with the below wikia link? Can it be added to the Mata Hari page? -- http://readordie.wikia.com/wiki/Mata_Hari -- 174.22.22.40 (talk) 14:36, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

See the answer right above this one. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:03, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Apparent false positive

Hi. I'm not sure if this has been reported, but https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Florida_Star_v._B._J._F.&diff=next&oldid=474409718 is a false positive. Maybe the IP had other contributions and was batch-reverted? Not sure. But that particular edit by XLinkBot shouldn't have been made. (Plus, tangentially, justia.com isn't a spam site, ugly as its interface is.) --MZMcBride (talk) 16:53, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like the bot was on LSD, it matched a substring of that URL that wasn't even in a URL.. It did some other odd stuff that day too. User:Beetstra looked into the issues and apparently resolved whatever it was fairly quickly. --Versageek 19:44, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, awesome. Thanks. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:31, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Appreciation

	Appreciation
	Thanks, copy that! Gabriel Bobson 08:26, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Bot having trouble with accents

See this edit; it appears the bot does not like the "é" character, and maybe others. -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 21:37, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I now see from reading above that you already knew about this problem; just consider this a friendly reminder :) -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 21:38, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

need some help on how to insert a picture

this has been taken care of... — Preceding unsigned comment added by GreatGuruMaster (talk • contribs) 21:16, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Greeting, I need some help on how to insert a picture in an existing topic. The picture is related to that topic.

Regards, Great Guru Master — Preceding unsigned comment added by GreatGuruMaster (talk • contribs) 20:44, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Unfair revert to older version

We have reviewed our corporate page that was very old. We made a new version with accurate and up-to-date information. However, you have reverted to the old version on the basis that there were too many external links. This is unfair, as there are only 4 external links and all relevant to our company's resources. Please revert back to the new version we have created. If the issue is the external links, simply remove the link you don't like, but don't remove entirely all the big changes we have taken the time to make on our page to render it as accurate as possible.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.241.158.242 (talk) 00:08, 6 June 2012‎ (UTC)

Are we supposed to guess who you are or what you are talking about? Try looking at your original post to see that you haven't given us any clue as to what article you are referring.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 04:17, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User talk:68.89.40.164

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 User talk:68.89.40.164, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to have no meaningful content or history, and the text is unsalvageably incoherent. If the page you created was a test, please use the sandbox for any other experiments you would like to do. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you have any questions about this.

If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Psychonaut (talk) 18:36, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Lebanese_cuisine edit

Dear Sir, i added a link to a Facebook page related to Lebanese cuisine. www.facebook.com/lebanesefood/ but it go deleted. The page is the official page for lebanese cuisines. How to make sure please if the XlinkBot is working.

Also for citations on Lebanese cuisine article, i added the Lebanese Gastronomic association. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Badeehabla (talk • contribs) 15:56, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Light Art Performance Photography

dear sir, i know my english isn't very best, but what i write is the the truth. maybe you can help me to write exact in english. please have a look to wikipedia germany: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Painting

best regards janleonardo http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/interviews/light_art_performance_photography.do

JanLeonardo (talk) 08:31, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

This bot has a problem, please read

Right, While I was looking at the page "List of World_War II short films", I noticed a dead link in the "1941" section in the entry of "Il Dottor Churkill" (an Italian propaganda cartoon) The link posted was supposed to be the beginning of the cartoon but as you can see by clicking the link that the page shows, (which can be found by clickinghere) It leads to a notice saying "This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimant: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc" While googling up the the name of the video, I found an alternative source for the cartoon, (which can found by clicking here) The version I found is supeior to the one that is linked in the page because firstly, you can actualy watch it and also because you can see the whole cartoon and not just the start of it. Please revert my edits on that page please, I gave you some good points as to why.

From Whata. 109.76.153.221 (talk) 16:34, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

How to get Bot to allow this link to YouTube

• Original tribute song and slide presentation dedicated to the works of Edward Hopper.

I inserted this link in the External Links section of the page on Edward Hopper. It is to a youtube video, which is a slide montage of some of Hopper's work, with original background music composed by me, so there is no copyright violation. The images are all low-resolution copies of Hopper's paintings that are commonly available as general information in various wiki and other websites.

How do I get the bot to leave this link in there? Or am I in violation of some other policy that I'm not aware of? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.20.83.100 (talk) 21:42, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Why can't I post a link to a YouTube video about dementia?

I received another notification that a link I had added to a Wikipedia page about Frontotemporal dementia and related diseases was undone because the link had been identified as Spam. Today's notification is the Fourth notification and threatens to ban me from making contributions to Wikipedia.

The video was produced to help people understand types of dementia that most haven't heard of but are affecting hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. alone. Early diagnosis can have a significant impact on the quality of life and finances of persons with dementia and their families, even though the dementia is terminal. The film was produced by a dementia sufferer and her caregiver for the purpose of educating the general public, patients, caregivers and medical professionals about these frequently-misdiagnosed terminal diseases. The copyright is owned by Planning for Hope, a nonprofit educational organization. I am one of the founding officers of the organization. We freely make the documentary available on YouTube in the hope many people will watch and learn about early signs and symptoms soon enough to make a difference in their lives. Production costs have been completely covered by donations, and we do accept donations to make and distribute DVD copies to medical professionals as we can, and for sufferers and their family members if they would like a DVD copy.

Video title: "Planning for Hope: Living with Frontotemporal Disease" I INCLUDED THE YOUTUBE URL - LONG FORM AND SHORT FORM - IN THIS COMMUNICATION, BUT I COULD NOT SAVE THE PAGE BECAUSE THEY WERE BLOCKED BY YOUR FILTERS. I HOPE THAT YOU WILL ALLOW A LINK TO THIS IMPORTANT - AND FREE - VIDEO ON WIKIPEDIA! NOW I WILL TRY TO SAVE THIS PAGE AGAIN. Copyright Holder: Planning for Hope - a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. EIN: 45-1612049 James Coyle, President, Planning for Hope (this is me)

Even though I've read over the messages from Wikipedia indicating my additions of links to the YouTube video have been undone and I am threatened with banishment as a Wikipedia contributor, I have no idea whether this is the correct way to explain the situation. Will a real person read this, or will my words be automatically processed by computer with some effect? I hope I've found the proper channel for my concerns.

James Coyle IJimC (talk) 16:05, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I know it can be irritating, but the message does explain and links you to the "external links guideline". That would be the best place to query the bot's removal of your link. Click here and explain what has happened. - X201 (talk) 17:58, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Reverting

What did I do wrong for it to be reverted? There are some external links like this already, on Defiance (TV series), and other I know there is one about a cartoon so why can't I post mine? ManikWorld (talk) 20:14, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

On the page where the bot reverted you Magi (manga), only the link to the official site really belongs, the others should probably be removed. Please read our external links guidelines. If you think the link should be added you could suggest it on the article talk page. --Versageek 22:03, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Bug?

I don't see how this is the reversion of adding a bad link.  An optimist on the run! 21:37, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I have reverted the bot. --Versageek 21:54, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I have however re-removed the facebook. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:40, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Why did you delete JimdoTV on the Wiki page Jimdo????????????

You know, I did provide a link as proof. Now you just wasted my time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.218.3.87 (talk) 23:07, 9 July 2012 (UTC) P.S. you seem to have a problem with TV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.218.3.87 (talk) 23:10, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

RE: Bella Swan

Thanks for the message and it was me who inserted the link and I do apologise for it. I thought it would have been a proper lin k to it. (VampireProject23 (talk) 11:49, 12 July 2012 (UTC))#REDIRECT www.wikiapedia.org/w/index.php=user_talk:VampireProject23

Ziya songüle

He wasnt a descendant of saliha sultan a daughter of Mahmud II?

he wasnt nobility?

strange...why than in turkish sources claimed it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.248.168.136 (talk) 16:28, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

My contribution to Juan Gelman page REVERTED

Hi,

I worked at the page dedicated to Juan Gelman, argentinian poet, with a long contribution today (28th July 2012). I am one of his historical translators, and I am the main editor of the unique authorized (directly by the poet himself) website (http://www.juangelman.net).

If you compare the old version of the page (that now is still online) with the one created by me, you might appreciate the huge difference between these two versions.

You can also look at the other versions of Gelman pages in Wikipedia Italia, Deutschland, France, and you will see that all of them accepted my contribution.

Besides, you will see that the website is the most accurated of the existing ones, and the only place where you can find complete bibliography, complete list of literature (prizes, essays etc.) and is therefore used as reference and source by many others.

Best regards,

Laura Branchini Ariel Milanesi Arielllaura (talk) 19:23, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Thank you for tidying up my new page. But I have a couple of questions:

1. I am unclear why References were moved to Further Reading? I had thought I was referencing where I located the material. What exactly constitutes a reference if not the links to sources I supplied?  

2. Also, each time I add a category firstly 'Australian Writers' and then 'Writers', it has been removed. I don't understand why as Patti Miller is an Australian writer as evidenced by the references and links. Could you or someone else answer these questions before I make any more mistakes? Ruequincampoix (talk) 01:05, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Reverted Link to a video highly relevant to the topic

Good Day

I had added an external link "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AH0nESeUA0" to a Youtube Video that contains a documentary film on the life, soazkhwani, and services for soazkhwani of a legend soazkhwan "Syed Aftab Ali Kazmi" - This is highly relevant to the topic "Soaz" and a highly respected name in the genre of soazkhwani.

The link does not in any way violates the copyright since the video it points to is my own creation. However; the idea is not to promote myself but to bring the life of a superb artist and a legend soaz reciter of indian subcontinent.

For your information, Syed Aftab Ali Kazmi was born in 1915 and expired in 1981.

Please note that I had in past, posted another Youtube link on the same page "Soaz" which pointed to a media clip of a recitation by Syed Aftab Ali Kazmi that was accepted and still exists on this page/article "Soaz"

Please exempt this edit of mine even if Youtube is one of the web sites in your blacklisted web sites list.

Regards.

Sozkhwan (talk) 12:37, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I've re-added your link and removed a number of others where the sites were no longer available. Please note that just because a site is relevant to the topic doesn't mean we should link to it. Wikipedia isn't a directory or collection of links. --Versageek 17:00, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Seems...like something wrong or...?

Look at this link. The bot reverted additional info provided by a user. After that, the user reverted the bot's changes. I did not really go into detail on the link. Administrators, can you help me to determine whether the bot or user is right? Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gangnam-gu&diff=505594794&oldid=505594643

Arctic Kangaroo (talk) 16:34, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

The bot is a program and makes decisions based on pattern matching. More often than not, YouTube links added by new & IP users are either copyright violations or don't add value to the article, this is why the bot is programmed to revert them. In this case the video appears to be from an official source, so it isn't a copyright violation. I would probably revert the bot myself, had the IP user not already done so. --Versageek 16:49, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

References Tom of Finland

Wonderful to see your attention to listing references.

BaffledThinker (talk) 19:07, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello

A lot of times i uploaded pictures, but got rejected. I send links on apple/itunes about photos also. These photos are common-use photos, album cover photos and not illegal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cemfuns (talk • contribs) 06:40, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

State Youth Orchestra of Armenia's article

--Abgar Sargsyan (talk) 13:57, 17 August 2012 (UTC) Please take a look at my article, and let me know if everything is OK.--Abgar Sargsyan (talk) 13:57, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Re User Talk:Book Reporter#August 2012

Hello, XLinkBot. You have new messages at Book Reporter's talk page.
Message added 12:22, 24 August 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

link removal

Dear XLinkBot: I left you a talkback message last week, but you haven't responded, so I'll post the message up here as well: Regarding the link of mine that you removed, I have the following to say: The link may appear suspect as it is connected to a platform used by bloggers, but the site itself is not a blog, and the article in question contains no opinions whatsoever. It is instead a site that provides executive summaries (that are unfortunately too long to appear on wikipedia) of books. In other words, the site is strictly about the dissemination of information, and is entirely consistent with wikipedia's philosophy, purposes and guidelines. The site has been approved by the editor Floating Boat, and I believe this was a just decision. I would appreciate if you did the same, and await your response.

Sincerely, Book Reporter--Book Reporter (talk) 15:37, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi XLinkBot, thank you for your message to me regarding my most recent edit. I do apologise, it had occurred to me that so many links would violate the directive against spamming or for Wiki to become a repository for external links.

I wonder if you could foresee any objection to me relisting the performers by name without the external links as the infobox is, for good reason, apparently limited in the number of performer names I can add. There are a collection of 32 or so performers listed with Lesburlesque and I'm fairly certain that they would appreciate their involvement at least being recognised on the page.....or to put it another way, cabaret performers are notoriously vainglorious and they will likely throw something of a strop for not being included. Personally I have no problem with the page remaining as it is (it's simple, factual and direct). Perhaps listing them without asterisks, in such a way that it doesn't make the page look cumbersome (and of course without the external links).

I look forward to hearing back from you

Kind regards

--LGBTQTrustee (talk) 11:12, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The reason I included the link to the YouTube video for "The Greatest American Hero" page was because it contained the supporting source for the data I had provided on the page. If I hadn't, it would have said "Citation needed". It was only meant to show where I got the information from. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luvdalz68 (talk • contribs) 15:56, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

• Hi everyone. It seems the three of yoou are fairly new here. Thanks so much for your contributions, we always need new users and there is always something more that needs improving. XLinkBot is not a person , it is a robot program that performs automated tasks on Wikipedia. As such it is not going to be discussing these issues with you. Wenever you see a user name that ends in "bot" that is indicative of a bot account. XLinkBots job is to automatically remove links that the community has determined are not appropriate for Wikipedia. There is more information anout what it does and why at its user page that may help answer some of your questions. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:21, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Why were all my changes reverted when the Bot only had a problem with the last one?

Recently I made several changes to a web page. I made these changes separately. The last change was to insert an external link which the XLinkBot didn't like. The Bot reverted all my changes when it appears it only needed to revert the last one. I'm confused. Why did it choose to make the most sweeping change, rather than the least sweeping one?

Please see the FAQ mentioned at the top of the page. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:53, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

SERIOUS BUG

Same thing as above happened to United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama, 2012 and Daniel Boman. The candidate's official campaign site is on Facebook (no other exists). The other changes were made seapately at other times. It appears this bot is using ROLLBACK rather than reverting the one edit in question. please fix or on't run it. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 04:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Please see the FAQ mentioned at the top of the page. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:53, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

revert on Super Typhoon Page 1990

You just reverted my edit on Super Typhoon Page in the 1990 Pacific typhoon season. I added a reliable reference so I don't see any point in reverting it; especially since there wasn't anything there to begin with. Therefore, I have reverted it back to the original text. If you have any questions, please visit my talk page. Thanks 72.87.102.31 (talk)

Sorry for that. In the referenced edit, you repaired the page after a previous edit 'broke' it. Therefore the bot detected that you added the links at the bottom, which included a youtube.com link. I see you did the right thing, and reverted the bot. Thanks for the hard work, and again my apologies. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:00, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Bot

I was replacing one external Wiki link with another. Why is it okay to have one external Wiki link there, but not another? 70.196.4.240 (talk) 01:10, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

the bot does not look at the links that are there, it only looks at the new one. Wikia is discouraged (you're right, it is not spam, it is just a link that often fails our inclusion standards). That goes for both the one that was there as for the one you added. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:58, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

td2000 changes

ok abt blog link removal. i cleaned it up & removed redundant words. the current form is correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Haywirethriller (talk • contribs) 11:57, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Happy editing! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:20, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Removed relevant external link

I had added an external link in the article Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound, to a YouTube video called "LIPUS inventor in the news". Half an hour later this bot removed my addition. Seems kind of random. --46.9.42.65 (talk) 20:40, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

You mean here, where you added a YouTube link about the inventor of LIPUS to the article about LIPUS. And to the top of the list. YouTube links do not pass the guideline that often, and if this one would be appropriate somewhere, it may be on the page of the inventor, certainly not here. We are writing an encyclopedia here, not a linkfarm. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:51, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for replying to my post. Would the link be acceptible at the bottom of the list? You say the video is about the inventor. I disagree with that (have you watched the video?). LIPUS is obviously an area that is being explored right now. The topic of the video is not the inventor, but that the inventor was in the news. So in that sense it's about LIPUS and its attention in society. The information in question is just as appropriately presented in video format as in text format, and then YouTube is simply a video host and so shouldn't be deemed as "bad" unless video as information is considered useless in an encyclopedic context. --46.9.42.65 (talk) 16:44, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that this is a typical case where discussing on the talkpage of the page is a good idea, there are likely more knowledgeable editors there. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:56, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

An article about a famous sculptor. Mykola Shmatko

I've added the link, but why do you remove it? http://www.facebook.com/rerter/info#!/nikolai.shmatko

This link is directly related to the well-known sculptor. Please leave it on this page!

--95.134.139.151 (talk) 09:42, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

And I removed it again, please don't add it again. The official sculptor website is there, which links prominently to his other websites, including the Facebook. The Facebook on the Wikipedia page is therefore completely unnecessary (and even if it would not be linked, it may still be unnecessary). We are not writing a linkfarm here, we are writing an encyclopedia. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:57, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Bot is not working properly

A registered candidate's only official campaign site is a Facebook campaign site (not a personal site) which the bot didn't like. It is an acceptable link, so I went to revert the bot's change. The bot had reverted MONTHS of changes, almost 1000 bytes, instead of that one link. This is not how an anti-vandalism bot should work. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 07:53, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

And you can undo it in seconds again. Months of work? You've only been there on a couple of days, not whole days and whole weeks or whole months. However, you are right, some Facebook links are appropriate, and the bot is reacting on that. The solution, as you did, is to revert the bot. The reason for undoing all edits by one editor is explained in the FAQ (in short: Undo-ing only one edit only results more often in breakage of pages than undo-ing all edits by one editor), and whether it undo's one edit or 10 edits by one user, the solution if it is wrong is still the same, undo the bot edit. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:03, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

confused about citations link removed

• waroftherosesthegame.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

I am confused by the removal of a link to the publisher as a reference for the system requirements of a game. I replaced the edit without the link that the bot disliked but I honestly do not see that it is an improvement to remove the link to the source of the information. At the top of the page it says 'Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic'. [[1]] --AeronwenTrewent (talk) 17:23, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I need to have a second look at it. It may be that the link was spammed badly enough that some counter measure was necessary. Nonetheless, such sites can be used in an appropriate way, and this looks like such a case. I have reverted to your first version. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:30, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

It was used to spam, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2012_Archive_Jul_1#War_of_the_Roses_referral_spam_on_Wikipedia. Your link is fine. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:37, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Link removed

i'm sorry, but I don't know, why you deleted my links? There was a Biography of the singer. The singer is albanian of course the biography will be on albanian. where's the problem?

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

Beniskej (talk) 09:01, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Hana Cakuli

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hana_Cakuli this person, is a friend of Fortesa Hoti. Thei sing together in almost every festival. This person doesn't have either other sources than Fortesa? Why ist this page not deleted? I don't understand what's the problem with the links.

The Links: Hana Cakuli ---> http://www.teksteshqip.com/hana-cakuli/biografia

Fortesa Hoti ----> http://www.teksteshqip.com/fortesa-hoti/biografia

The exact Same thing!

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

the Reference to Bam,Iran was made in a youtube video satirizing the third presidential debate of 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.91.198.6 (talk) 15:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi there - on the Monsal Dale, Derbyshire page I added a link to my new photographic website which includes many new images of Monsal Dale. I would have thought that this was relevant? This is the external link directly to the Monsal Dale images page: http://www.peakdistrictphotographs.co.uk/-/galleries/peak-district-landscapes/monsal-dale Many thanks, Mike Cummins — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.155.200.129 (talk) 13:56, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Your automated revert on Cherenkov Telescope Array

Hello, this revert was counterproductive. The youtube video is perfectly legitimate. Also, along with the link, you removed other improvements. I suggest you review your bots mode of operation. -- Theoprakt (talk) 11:54, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	You deserve this barnstar! Tito Dutta (talk) 10:59, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I've added and edited some wrong part on that page existing some external links.

If my editing was wrong, the present page is wrong, too. Cuz, there are still some external links from the same source on that page. External links that I added are not inappropriate. And no copyright infringement. I added Official MV on YouTube. So please check it out. And leave it on that page. ^^ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.185.201.90 (talk) 23:35, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Reverted bot

Just to let you know I revereted this bots reversion at Australia Post - not my area of expertise, but I did not see anything obvious that should have been reverted by this bot. Ottawahitech (talk) 01:04, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	hay can you please read this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devendra_Singh_Khangarot and help me to approve it Rampal choudhary123 (talk) 10:09, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for reverting my attempts to edit Paul Hartal's page. I inadvertantly added some lines when I didn't know what I was doing trying to add an example of his art (painting). Paul Hartal has asked me to assist him in improving his page, but this was my first attempt. How do I add an image of 1) an piece of art, and 2) images of his art-stamps?

Thank you for your assistance. My personal email address is: k.rozek@sbcglobal.net Ken Rozek — Preceding unsigned comment added by Krozek44 (talk • contribs) 20:41, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Jesse Johnson Politican

Hello. I made some additions to the page of Jesse Johnson (Politican). I previewed them and saved them but they do not seem to have been added. Have I not done it correctly? Prowv — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prowv (talk • contribs) 17:15, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

please don't undo my edits. that took me a good half an hour to research. thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.2.223.96 (talk) 12:44, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

A cupcake for you!

Here's a cupcake! Wolf Lambert (talk) 14:54, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Editing Constitutional Convention (Ireland)

Hi I had an edit changed automatically on this article. Yes it is a link to a blog. but the blog relates directly to the event covered in the article. Can I undo the deletion? (Gibbano (talk) 00:03, 27 November 2012 (UTC))gibbano

i just spent several hours entering the awads a film has won with careful references to the most legitimate websites and it was all deleted

why is this happening to me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mayyingmaya (talk • contribs) 23:56, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Yasmin Farooq Stub

I am editing the Yasmin Farooq page for an English class, and I found that all of my contributions were reverted back. Please let me edit this page. I am not trying to ruin it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Navitn07 (talk • contribs) 22:08, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Aeschynomene americana

Closeup of the flower of Aeschynomene americana. This plant is found at the Ovalekar Wadi Butterfly Garden in Thane. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amembal2 (talk • contribs) 03:21, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Aeschynomene americana

Closeup of the flower of Aeschynomene americana. This plant is found at the Ovalekar Wadi Butterfly Garden in Thane.

File:Http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151190097978440&set=a.10150330039283440.355800.523068439&type=1&relevant count=1&ref=nf

Aeschynomene americana

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Amembal2 (talk • contribs) 03:22, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

A great artist in the field of Koto

Miss Fuyuki Enokido is trying to inform the joy of playing Koto not only in Japan but also in all over the world. She was designated as a cultural ambassador by the Japanese Government to spend half a year in Europe to play and instruct the music of Koto. Much over that, she is a composer of the music of Koto. No one but she can compose any authentic Koto music nowadays. So her activity is necessary for Koto. Please understand it. She said that the culture of Koto will be dying without informing the beauty of the Koto music to the world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iorijapan (talk • contribs) 10:19, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Adding link to West Town and Ukrainian Village, Chicago

I am trying to add a link about a neighborhood group, but its keeps getting denied. To verify the importance of this group, there are combined over 1200 neighbors involved who work together to promote community safety and community building. There should be a link on both pages because areas that we cover are referred to neighbors as both areas of Ukrainian Village and West Town. To also verify the impact, here is an NBC story on us--> http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/unit-5-community-neighborhood-watch-social-media-147237945.html Please allow for this link to be added -- > * Ukrainian Village Neighborhood Watch — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevedamien (talk • contribs) 19:46, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

wolff's law

I spotted this video on youtube and believe it is a applied example of wolff's law in martial arts, and also martial arts and strikes are mentioned in the context of the article, I though it would be of use to user to see a example of wolff's law in practice — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.241.112.230 (talk) 03:10, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rssM3MVlBOc — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.241.112.230 (talk) 03:13, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Help with Hinckley and Rugby Building Society entry - please!

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinckley_and_Rugby_Building_Society PhilipBriggs31

Hi I hope you can help.

Firstly, please pardon my ignorance - this is the first time I've added anything to Wikipedia and I'm finding it a bit of a struggle. I am very much attempting to post accurate, factual information.

I've tried using the help section with some success, but I can't find the information that I need in order to complete the job.

Background information I've been asked by a friend/colleague at the Hinckley and Rugby Building Society (the Marketing Manager) to update their profile on Wikipedia. They asked me to do it as I regularly update a number of websites, but I must admit I'm finding this a challenge!

All the text is about the Society and has been supplied by the Society. Admittedly, I've had to write out some of the "Advertising speak" that they included in order to make it factual.

Question 1). All the sources are from the Society's own company records and are a true and accurate record of dates and events. In your help section there doesn't seem to be any equivalent possibility for tagging this kind of source under "References". What should I do?

Question 2). Images. All images on the site have been scanned from photographs that are normally on the wall of the Hinckley and Rugby Building Society head office. The images are owned by the Society and the Society wish them to be posted to Wikipedia. The images have not been taken from any other source than the Hinckley and Rugby Building Society's own resources. Now I see that they have been tagged for deletion.

They have not been improperly used or taken from anywhere else. Is this simple a matter of appropriate tagging?

Your help would be very much appreciated. Perhaps I can then do a better job next time!

Thank you,

Philip Briggs PhilipBriggs31 (talk) 09:11, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Lyn-Z

I reverted unhelpful changes by the bot [2] and three editors [3]. I think that these changes were too complicated for a bot to fix by itself, but it reverted what looked (to me) like a good faith edit to repair part of the vandalism. I cannot see how the bot could have been improved to deal with this sort of situation better, but I may be wrong — Peter Loader (talk) 20:20, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Villa Amalia (Athens)

Bot is malfunctioning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Villa_Amalia_%28Athens%29&diff=529284637&oldid=529284439

I edited out content that has no place in Wikipedia. Solongfish (talk) 14:54, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Villa Amalia (Athens)

Bot is malfunctioning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Villa_Amalia_%28Athens%29&diff=529284637&oldid=529284439

I edited out content that has no place in Wikipedia. Solongfish (talk) 14:56, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Inaccurate content in Napa, CA

1. the last sentence in HISTORY states "Copia" was key... this is aa ad promotion, not historical fact. In Napa on Main Street, a new generation of business owners gradually invested and developed the operation and capital. The two buildings on the opposite street corners of First and Main where rebuilt. This created a critical image for the town, along with the CDE company rebuilding the HATT Building. Copia did to understand this reality and failed.

2. List of Napa Famous People: The list has no one from the town. When I include people who ARE FROM NAPA, they are deleted.

3. I have put up the new passage to explain the social-economic historical process of the town in history. It seems this page is telling the story for promotion, even though the historical notations in certain passages are world history. I find the editors such as you do not have the knowledge and make judgements that do not champion telling the history, but tourism promotion.

MarkWest1 (talk) 19:48, 13 January 2013 (UTC) Mark West

You are apparently trying to use the Napa article to publish ideas for the first time. That is not how Wikipedia works! Wikipedia depends on previously published works, citing them and summarizing them. You must find published works and cite them, not shoot from the hip. The specific guideline I am referring to is WP:No original research. Read it! You'll understand why I keep changing your work. Binksternet (talk) 04:19, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Subject: Patrick Reynolds (Anti-Tobacco Advocate)

Hello, this is Patrick Reynolds, the subject of Wikipedia page, Patrick Reynolds (Anti-Tobacco Advocate).

I just wanted to point out an error and provide a source for a needed citation in this page about me. There are four to-dos in all, listed in order of importance:

I have tried in the past to edit this page as 2patrick2, but other editors undid my changes, thinking what I wrote was not properly verified. I will provide the correct sources this time, but I do not have sufficient knowledge as a Wikipedia editor to make these updates myself. Your help in correcting the four items listed below would be much appreciated.

Listed below are four important changes and the sources for each. Restoring a few of my previous edits would also be welcome, if that is possible. This page, for example, says I "stood up, outraged" -- I was not outraged. Concerned would be a more accurate word, and I do remember it vividly. There is a page about it in the book I co-authored, The Gilded Leaf.

My reverted changes concerning my mother, actress Marianne O'Brien, and my father, Richard J Reynolds, Jr. are well documented in the book I co-authored about the RJ Reynolds family, The Gilded Leaf: Triumph, Tragedy and Tobacco - Three Generations of the RJ Reynolds Family and Fortune (Little Brown, 1986; current publisher is iUniverse.)

1. ERROR: The first sentence in the bio about me says --

"He is the grandson of the tobacco company founder, R. J. Reynolds,[4] and speaks of how he believes his family business has killed millions, including his own father (Richard Joshua Reynolds, Jr.) and brother (Michael Randolph Reynolds).[2] "

It was not my brother Michael Randolph Reynolds who died from smoking in 2004; it was my half-brother, RJ Reynolds III (also known as Richard J Reynolds III). Josh's death from smoking is well-documented in the press at the time, and in two memoirs I wrote, published in two top medical journals. Here are three sources for correcting this error:

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-15/local/me-16089_1_patrick-reynolds Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1994 - Memorial Message: Tobacco Scion R.J. Reynolds III, an Emphysema Victim, Is Eulogized by His Brother, an Anti-Smoking Activist

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/4/1/94.full.pdf+html?sid=4af634c9-b695-4716-a46d-590b98f4ee2e Tobacco Control, British Medical Journals, 1995, Q4: pp. 94 - 99, Death from smoking in the RJ Reynolds family

http://med.stanford.edu/medicalreview/smrp6-13.pdf The Stanford Medical Review, Vol 1, No 1, September, 1999, Rebel With a Cause - The Grandson of RJ Reynolds Chooses to Turn Against the Tobacco Industry

Please make this change and cite at least one of the sources above, as I do not know how to do it. Another error --

2. Under Social Activism, a sentence in the third paragraph needs a citation:

He advised the Greek government on anti-smoking measures[13] in 2009[citation needed], and in 2011 was seeking sponsorship for a world tour.[13]

The citation may be documented by listing the news articles on my visit to Greece in 2009, at --

http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_ell_2_29/04/2009_312621 Kathimerini News, April 29, 2009, Smokers are allies in the new laws [banning smoking] (In Chrome, click on "Translate to English," and read the last paragraph.)

There are links to more news articles on my visit to Greece in 2009 at this url:

http://tobaccofree.org/news/index.html#greece

There is still more info on my visit to Greece in 2009 at www.Tobaccofree.org/intl.pdf

3. I would very much like it to be mentioned that the group I founded, the Foundation for a Smokefree America ( www.Anti-smoking.org ), produced an educational video which has been bought by 10,000 middle and high schools: "The Truth About Tobacco, 2011 Edition". Here are three source urls for that:

http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Tobacco-2011-Edition/dp/B0045W5YVY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361424359&sr=8-1&keywords=the+truth+about+tobacco Amazon.com, The Truth About Tobacco, 2011 Edition

http://www.tobaccofree.org/video/ Web page for educational video The Truth About Tobacco, 2011 Edition

www.tobaccofree.org/vid.pdf Brochure for educational video, The Truth About Tobacco, 2011 Edition

4. Lastly, it would be great to have a more current photo at the page. There are some public domain photos taken in 2009 available for open download at our website url www.Tobaccofree.org/photos/

Thank you for your support in making these changes to the Wikipedia page Patrick Reynolds (Anti-Tobacco Advocate).

Patrick Reynolds 2Patrick2 (talk) 06:31, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

There was an original blog link with factual data about Edith M. Faulstich, her life, her work, her articles, where to find her collection of research materials at Hoover institute. Blog spot is NOT used anymore nor updated as I recopied all of her old information over to a new source and republished the original blog content previously listed and began anew.

1) It is simply an update to an already previously placed external resource on Wikipedia that was previously approved. Logic would dictate Wikipedia would/should approve updated external information sources-as technologies/platforms change over time.

2)The external source is not a promotion or any sort. SHE IS DEAD. And, promotion is defined as paid advertising or advertising for gain. The newly updated external resource is purely pointing to a historical and informational content in context, for the research she performed and with absolutely NO aim to gain anything from the historical content posted.

I rearranged some of the previous content, but it is essentially the same, just a newer better technical content platform: Could you please briefly compare the original and the revised source before simply deleting it please. I affirm that am the original editor or BOTH sources.

a) Updated content source replacing original content on Wikipedia: b) Original external content source on Wikipedia: 98.218.118.111 (talk) 20:02, 4 March 2013 (UTC)AMF

Springfield Park Memorial is a reference site with 15 years of research behind it. It is not spam. It gives information about Wigan Town FC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.96.25.77 (talk) 20:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your message and I apology to you and en.wikipedia.

Dear XLinkBot, Thank you for your messsage to me about editing Myoma Myint Kywe. I saw this sentence at Myoma Myint Kywe's page: "This Burmese biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it". So I help Wikipedia and just add some facts at Myoma Myint Kywe. I know that he has many references at my.wikipedia. For example: I found some books of Myoma Myint Kywe: [[4]], [[5]], [[6]] and [[7]]. For more information about Myoma Myint Kywe, you may ask to my.wikipedia. I respect and know him personally so I add some facts about his biography. I want to help and I love wikipedia. If you think that I am disturbing about Myoma Myint Kywe's page, I humbly apology to you and wikipedia.

I sincerely edit some pages at en.wikipedia and my.wikipedia. If you have some instructions about editing en.wikipedia, just let me know!

Yours sincerely, --Ladybesttruthful (talk) 05:37, 8 March 2013 (UTC) Ladybesttruthful

Calendar Reform Page

I had left an external link to an alternative calendar that was not included in the lists - the Ehoah Globus Kalendar. It is a legitimate calendar that warrants noting in this subject.

65.92.205.173 (talk) 18:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

^{Superscript text} Hello, can I change a name of my article? thanks!

Hello

^{Superscript text} Hello Can I change a name of my article? Thank you! Danicek06 (talk) 10:41, 19 March 2013 (UTC)danicek06

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	thanks தமிழ்க்குரிசில் (talk) 07:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Miyazawa Sae

Hi there, some days ago, this bot reverted an IP edit for Sae Miyazawa because this bot had issues with the external link to this person´s twitter account. The lemma in question refers to a A-level celebrity in Japan and a member of Japan`s best selling pop act of the last decade. So i guess, its relevant. Other celebrities (like Justin Bieber) also have links to their respective accounts in the external link section. The same is true for other members of her group. So, please remove that lemma from your bot`s watch list. Also, while i do understand your points made on reverting any edit, in this case it was removing valuable and referenced information with it, which is very annoying. Rka001 (talk) 09:39, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

If the twitter is of specific importance, it may be included, when it is not, and it is linked (as almost always is the case) from the official homepage of the subject, then the link has no place in the external links list. We are not an internet directory. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:29, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

By the way, the argument is a WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS-type of argument. You should argue why it is pertinent that the link is included. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:35, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

removal of link to public domain stuff ..

Hi I am kinda new to wiki's but I was using superman 1940 radio show to create a fanmade animation and its being placed on youtube as a webseries. Am I not allowed to put this in the wiki? Do I have to make my own page dupblicating all that information? it seems odd that a link like that would be removed..

it was this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_(radio)

I posted my info under listen 

I posted "watch" and the series using the radio dialogue. All this information is relevant to the show and I dont want to have to rewrite it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Urbanlamb (talk • contribs) 22:34, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Townhead Glasgow

Hello,

I was wanting to add details of Townhead's music scene - is it links to sound station and facebook blocked?

Ta — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.132.20.232 (talk) 13:06, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

link to youtube

the youtube page details what we believe and all advertizing is disabled.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Courtonel (talk • contribs) 11:32, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Wax Tailor page

Hello, Updated the video section of the Wax Tailor page and the bot deleted it. All the links included were from the artist's youtube page and it's US label's youtube page, so it does not violate copyright laws.

(98.14.80.70 (talk) 15:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC))

I would suggest a single link to the artist's YouTube channel be included in External Links, rather than linking to each individual video. If the bot reverts you when adding the link, you may revert the bot. --Versageek 16:58, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sao_Paulo_Ska_jazz

Why undo my changes? I am the band producer. The members changed last month. What the problem? You "undo" displays informations that is not true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sao_Paulo_Ska_jazz&oldid=552179566 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gubachu (talk • contribs) 21:36, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianco_da_Siena

Usually I work only on italian Wikipedia as Emlio1953. If there are mistakes, please edit my text. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.66.154.153 (talk) 08:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I am a new user and am expanding the Tamástslikt stub. I did not know linking a museum's blog is against the guidelines. Is there any way to recover my other work except for the external link? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlyssaLR (talk • contribs) 09:09, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Signature does not contain 'b'

The signature of reverts done by this bot does not contain a 'b' indicating that it is a bot Robert McClenon (talk) 02:09, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

XLinkBot is not in the bot-group so that its edits show up in the recent changes - that enables both that editors who follow the recent-changes see the edits of the bot, and react on its edits, as well as spotting real spammers early (see also in User:XLinkBot/FAQ#NOFLAG). To show however that it is a bot, it clearly states 'BOT' in its edit summaries. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:05, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

EarthCam

I recently edited a link on the EarthCam page that another user added incorrectly. The link which was previously on the page was inaccurate and not a true EarthCam page, instead it was a miscellaneous YouTube page with unauthorized EarthCam content. I simply updated the page to reflect the authorized YouTube page which officially displays the content that the other user was trying to publish. Please reconsider your decision and add http://www.youtube.com/earthcam/ Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.51.217.8 (talk) 13:12, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

No, I have removed it altogether. The official website lists all other 'social' websites, they don't need to be replicate in Wikipedia - we are not a linkfarm. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:14, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Videos of experiments and numerical simulations

I tried to add two videos from high level scientific work (no commercial goals) . This was followed by the rejection: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:150.146.145.219&diff=cur)

The first link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtUiJvmj5so added to the page dedicated to sloshing : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slosh_dynamics

And the second link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TXwpR_xMR0 added to the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_shedding

The two contributions were rejected but I don't think they are against the policy. I've seen other youtube videos in the same pages. Thank you for considering the modifications — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.146.145.219 (talk) 18:16, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

We're not a linkfarm, there is no need to link every possible youtube video (or whatever site) on every page related to the subject, it often hardly adds anything that is not already in the article. That there are other (youtube)-links on other pages is not a reason to add more (it may be even a reason to remove the others ..). Please see WP:EL, I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:10, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Google/Google+

Bot seemed to badly confuse Google and Google+ with this edit: [8]. Яehevkor ✉ 11:34, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Hey, that is strange. I guess it's the '+' that gets badly re-coded somewhere. I'll have a look and see if I can solve this. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:15, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

KGeography

the link kgeography.berlios.de present in KGeography is redirected!!!!

KGeography has moved to userbase.kde.org/KGeography, you will be redirected there in 5 seconds. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.153.86.220 (talk) 20:34, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I've done what the bot suggested: undone the edit. Thanks for alerting us! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:16, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

About linking to a rare and instructive educational video on YouTube, taken by me, showing butterflies mud-puddling.

This curious activity of male butterflies are difficult to discribe in words and still images are not suitable either to make people understand this process. Therefore, I believe, a video is the best way to communicate the idea of "mud-puddling". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frank j 1958 (talk • contribs) 17:38, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I guess that you could consider to revert the bot, as it suggests. Indeed one of the (rare) exceptions to the general rule that YouTube video's do not make good external links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:18, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

About Yahya Alavi Fard

i want to use some links but i recieve an error. for exemplle: Lulu site is blocked and ETC. there are a lot of links about Yahya Alavi Fard . please help me and correct links in this article. best regard --Etaxan (talk) 17:34, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

So, we are not a linkfarm - external links do not make the article. The subject's official site is there, which links poems etc. We do not link every single web presence of a subject, the main official one is more than enough. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:17, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Java Decompiler

So that you know, the link http://java.decompiler.free.fr/ is the official site for Java Decompiler, so, I reverted the revert that the bot did... The site has a copyright and a disclaimer, so, it complies to WP:ELOFFICIAL. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.93.133.157 (talk) 22:37, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the understanding, that was indeed the right way to respond to the bot edit. Thank you and happy editing! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:16, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Inequality for All

Hi,

The revision to the Inequality for All page were intentional and have the approval of the film's staff. Please do not delete these revisions.

Thank you, Alex — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abp9106 (talk • contribs) 22:25, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your remark. I am sorry, but the links that XLinkBot reverted do not comply with our policies and guidelines, neither does most of the other information you added. You might want to have a look at our conflict of interest guideline for more information. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:39, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Arms trade treaty

Dear XLinkBot!

I made some corrections to the links under the Arms Trade Treaty page, because the links are not ok ! Please check yourself! The first link say : "Text" as if it will link you to the text of the treaty, but the link goes to some modifications of the text in Chinese and Arabic !!! The 4th link goes to the treaty, for that reason I put it on the top of the links list, and modify the text which says : "Text of the treaty annexed to xxx" (I don't understand what xxx means ?? this is a mistake and has to be corrected ).

A part from that I added one link to the ICRC section about Arms availability, which is a reference and where you can find a lot of documents, statements, etc about the history and content of the treaty, and one link to a movie in Youtube. I understand your reason to remove the movie, but why deleting the other modifications ? Is it ok for you if I do again this change, except the link to the film. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.94.146.19 (talk) 09:41, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

~Thank you for the remark. Yes, the official homepage is already there (which links to most of the other links in the section), those links were hence superfluous (see WP:ELOFFICIAL, and I have removed them all. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:04, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I also added a link to the ICRC special section on the ATT containing other reference documents on the Treaty and its history. It is much better now, thanks!

Tagioku

hi I am adding a page for Tagioku and I am told that it is being considered for deletion, I feel i am writing it from a neutral point of view as I witnessed and was quite impressed with seeing this in operation last month, I researched it and found there was no wiki page so I wanted to add one myself, could you assist me by telling me the problem with the content. Thanks Danny. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dannyr07 (talk • contribs) 20:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Boyfriend discography

Hi, I changed it to an internal links now. Please kindly check my work thanks ^^ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bernadette18 (talk • contribs) 07:50, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Links to Youtube

Your edit here to Svedjebruk was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S7LTbJ-ErQ)

This link is from http://no.wikisource.org/wiki/Svedjebruk. (Svedjebruk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Svedjebruk (talk • contribs) 17:44, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

So, if it is accepted on the Norwegian WikiSource does by no means mean that it is acceptable on the English Wikipedia. I'll have a look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:50, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Corrected links, thanks for your help. Ignacitum (talk) 22:26, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Inappropriate revert at Sydney Airport

• ausbt.com.au: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

This revert by the bot was clearly inappropriate; the external links added were properly formatted links to newspaper articles used as a reference for added text. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 22:37, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, for some reason, one of those newspapers was put on the reference revert list (XLinkBot generally leaves references alone, but this one was apparently reference spammed). I'll have a second look at this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:38, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

WP:REFSPAM campaign, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2011_Archive_Feb_1#AusBT. Are we sure that also this editor is not here to spam this unreliable source to articles to improve their web-presence and optimize their search engine appearances? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:46, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Seeing this edit makes me suspect that this is yet another one of the IPs. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Also noting that User:Djsflynn was one of the original spammers, and all three references added by user:109.7.15.227 were written by David Flynn. Hardly random. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:55, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps re Australian Business Traveller, though its unclear to me what about the site makes it not a reliable source. However, the bot threw out new and relevant content and a Sydney Morning Herald reference with the bath water. That is something that should be left to an editor to do, in my opinion. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 06:50, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The bot reverts whole edits (all other options are more often resulting in breaking of the page, or worse), and asks people to re-consider the situation. This edit does not add any information, and is a "draft version of its 2033 Masterplan" not a bit WP:CRYSTALly, is that really worth mentioning when it is still in a draft status for something that is (as it is draft) maybe going to happen in 2033? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:07, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I have cleaned the crystal ball addition, it is just a bit too far.

It appears that editors have been pushing these papers a lot over the last months (and most of the articles that were added were written by David Flynn). Often supporting 'future statements' (they will start in 6 months, they propose to build in 20 years), and it seems it is still deemed to be an unreliable source. Maybe it is time to .. help convincing them by using the blacklist for this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:51, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Censorship of Legitimate References

You eliminated my reference to Robert Graham's anthology of contemporary anarchist writings from a list of external references, one of which is from 1979, the other from 2009. The Graham book was published in 2012, and has its own listing on Wikipedia. It's a perfectly acceptable reference. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amour de Cosmos (talk • contribs) 04:53, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I hardly think that linking to the wordpress is necessary (you say that '[it] has its own listing on Wikipedia' .. so link to that, not to the external source), but I'll leave that to others. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:43, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Reverting YouTube links?

That made sense back in 2006-2008 but now that YouTube has severely curtailed copyright violations via their Content-ID system it would make sense to remove the automatic YouTube link revert functionality from the bot script. OmniArticleEditor (talk) 12:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Copyright issues are just one of the 'problems' with YouTube. But firstly, although it is curtailed, it is absolutely not gone, there still are copyright violations on YouTube. Moreover, a lot of the YouTube movies are not encyclopedic, we are not a linkfarm anyway (that a YouTube movie exists does not mean that we have to link to it, especially not in the external links), YouTube still needs the bandwidth and still needs software to be installed, and YouTube cán be used directly to make money. The different blacklists do have several specific YouTube links blacklisted, which shows that it is spammed.

I surely agree that YouTube has greatly improved since 5 years ago, a lot of it is still not necessary in the first place. For the rest, the bot can easily be reverted. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:05, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Spammy: Special:Contributions/Sophiegoodman

Plain spam: diff (just there to promote the company, see end of video)

etc. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:21, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

private cover of a song which is featured in the movie ... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:43, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

As you are no doubt aware, spam is a problem across a very large number of domains. The question poses itself: is the ratio of 'good' YouTube links to 'bad' YouTube links disproportionate relative to other online references/resources of a similar size? I've done a cursory review of XLinkBot's talk archives and YouTube is a very commonly discussed resource. It appears that the bot is 'greedy' for YouTube links regardless of their potential value. Other than yourself is there any sort of an oversight committee that reviews revert-bot behavior in any periodic manner? OmniArticleEditor (talk) 13:56, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I have just removed two YouTube videos, which have now actually been removed from YouTube since they were claimed to be copyvio. We have only very few points of WP:ELNEVER, but linking to a copyvio should NEVER be done, and it is good to warn editors against it.

People will always complain, whether YouTube or whatever. I have looked through the reverts of XLinkBot .. and much of it is quite rubbish, unnecessary, spammy, inappropriate, and even some copyvios.. Whether people like it or not, YouTube links fail often WP:ELNO. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:01, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Stefan Bellof

OKAY WHY ARE YOU REMOVING STEFAN BELLOFS CRASH. ITS A VIDEO OF HIM MAKING CONTACT WITH JACKY ICKX THEN JACK SPINS AND BOTH GO OFF AND BELLOF DIES STOP REMOVING THE LINK — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.167.183.53 (talk) 16:40, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm New and my links and corrections keep getting removed

I'm sorry but I don't feel I broke rules by linking to the band referred to in the article I was editing, there was a misspelling and when I noticed I added the bands facebook page , I didn't know the whole thing would get removed,s there a right wayto do it ? ROCKNROLLQUEENL (talk) 01:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, reinsert the text without the facebook as it is inapropriate there. You might want to use a wikilink instead. Question is though, whether the whole thing is notable enough. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:45, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Fleet

I think the link conforms with the Wikipedia policies - I did not place the link for advertising as i am in no way connected to the site and the site is an information site about the town. Other sites which do the same are contained on the External Links section and I was just adding another.

Fuddle96 (talk) 13:15, 11 June 2013 (UTC)Fuddle 96

No, it does not. We are not writing a linkfarm, we are writing an encyclopedia. That link does not tell anything (encyclopedic) that could not be told in the wikipedia page itself (hence, it is superfluous), and it is certainly not thé official site (which, for a town would be a government operated site on one of their servers). I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:07, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the official link was already there, no need for any other 'official' or unofficial links. I have also cleaned out the rest of the linkfarm of indirect (too narrow and too wide) links - see WP:ELNO for more. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:10, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Attempt to Add New URL

I am the director of the Breslov Center of NY, under the aegis of Rabbi Koenig, and wanted to update the name and URL of this organization. But I could not because our website is provided by blogspot.com. Is there a way we can do this, in spite of Wikipedia's rule not to include blogs on such pages?

Thanks

173.52.249.146 (talk) 03:02, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

If it is the official site, then that is one of the exceptions the bot was telling about on your talkpage, and I would suggest to undo the bot's edit if it reverts you. It will not revert you if you undo the bot-edit. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:30, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

please confirm the new text

I am writing on behalf Georgian national post. I confirm that the information that is uploaded is correct and doesn't need any correction.--Sandro Mchedlishvili (talk) 11:37, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Correct maybe, but not according to our policies/guidelines (see WP:EL). I have removed the facebook and youtube again. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:32, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Link to related video deleted - would like it reviewed and reinstated

I posted a link to a video I made covering the 99% Declaration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Percent_Declaration).

I attended their event, and obtained permission from them to use footage from the event. Additionally, I shot my own footage and received permission from all of the interviewees.

Thus, my video is owned by me with all the necessary rights.

Additionally, it's appropriate, because it is one of only a couple of videos showing the event and explaining what happened. The Continental Congress 2.0 was the main event of the 99% Declaration Group, and this video is about that event.

Please review the video and consider reinstating the link.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eliothochberg (talk • contribs) 21:55, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but that video is not suitable per our external links guidelines. We are not writing a linkfarm here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:33, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Kate Wood

{{Help me}} I am trying to change the title name of the page Kate Wood - Kate has changed her name to Kate Magic and this is how she is Known please can you advise how I do this? Also are you allowed to put pictues on Wiki and if so how do you do this? Thanks--Deraw (talk) 08:31, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Either, the article should be moved (see WP:RFPM, though if the new target does not exist, you can do it yourself) or you create the redirect at 'Kate Magic' directing that page to Kate Wood. Have also a look at the Wikipedia:Naming policy, what would be the 'correct' place for the article, and which would be the redirects (don't worry, they can always be swapped if that is decided). Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:42, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Official Containment Breach Wikia

Hello there. I see you keep changing my edit on the SCP: Containment Breach page, as a good bot should. Please note the wikia I am posting has officially been announced by game creator Regalis (seen here).If you could change the link the correct one, it'd be appreciated! --67.158.156.228 (talk) 07:49, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your question. I have looked, and removed both wikis. That it is an official Wiki does not mean that it also needs to be there, the official site is there, that is enough, and the other wiki is (besides being a wiki), an indirect link as well. See WP:ELOFFICIAL and WP:ELNO for more information. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:39, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Is it prohibited to place links to anybody's, particularly Karapet Rubinyan's Facebook or YouTube pages in his/her biography page in Wiki?

I want to place links to YouTube and Facebook pages from Karapet Rubinyan article, but it seems impossible because your invasion.

Karapet Rubinyan (talk) 15:47, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is. Please see WP:ELOFFICIAL, WP:ELNO and WP:NOT#LINKFARM. You might also want to look at our conflict of interest guideline. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:18, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

external links

I need to add 2 external links in a line on the Orangeburg, SC city page but each time I add the line they hilite in red then eventually are removed. Listed below is the statement with the 2 external links I am trying to add...

• Jerry Axson: Songwriter, Singer, Musician and keeper of the website Local Music Scene Orangeburg

Can you help me? I know these are Facebook pages but they are all I have to link to. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shymbeebymbee (talk • contribs) 19:31, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for your question. What you were actually adding was:

*[http://www.lonesomedogmusic.com Jerry Axson]: Songwriter, Singer, Musician and keeper of the website [[Local Music Scene Columbia]]

Not:

* [[Jerry Axson]]: Songwriter, Singer, Musician and keeper of the website [[Local Music Scene Orangeburg]]

Indeed, lonesomedogmusic.com is a redirect site for a facebook.

If you do not use the link to the facebook, but an internal link, all will be fine (also see our external links guideline regarding in-line external links and links to facebook pages).

Regarding the whole line .. if Jerry Axson has only a facebook as its main page, is that person notable enough to be mentioned on Wikipedia? Has the person been mentioned in significant independent sources? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:03, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Transepidermal water loss

• Dear XLinkBot,

a bit heavy handed on the above article? 78.145.254.203 (talk) 18:27, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Dear IP, no, that is not heavy handed. It is not the official link of the subject, it is just an external wiki, which is discouraged per our external links guideline. Actually, I have reverted you again. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:32, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Dear XLinkBot / Dirk Beetstra (talk) Your interpretation of the first two sentences of the guidelines differs from mine.

"Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia (external links), but they should not normally be used in the body of an article. All external links must conform to certain formatting restrictions. Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic"

would you care to explain how the link is anything other than "further research that is accurate and on-topic" ? 78.147.7.215 (talk) 13:17, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

nine days later ...

would you care to explain how the link is anything other than "further research that is accurate and on-topic" ?? 2.98.209.249 (talk) 12:55, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

You've ignored the "some" in that sentence, and, the remaining ".. information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail, or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy." .. it is a Wiki, which, first of all by the nature of a wiki is not a reliable source - see Wikipedia:General disclaimer, and secondly, all of the useful information is suitable, since it is on a wiki, for inclusion on Wikipedia. You might want to read through WP:ELNO and see what it says about external wikis, keeping in mind that a wiki of the size of Wikipedia is not a suitable reference for itself .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• Dear XLinkBot / Dirk Beetstra (talk)

I am not sure i follow you, unless you reject the link because it contains useful information >"and secondly, all of the useful information is suitable, since it is on a wiki, for inclusion on Wikipedia" <that should be on Wikipedia.

Also, the link you removed was not purporting to be a source for citation

More generally, i agree with you for most topics with a well developed article, and that are not within such a narrow field of knowledge or experience, but when the topic is by its nature close to research at the outer reaches of expression or knowledge, then the wiki process becomes available to further understanding and hopefully in time feed back to the Wikipedia article, and thus Wikipedia.

or, to put it another way, from the first sentence of Wikipedia:General disclaimer > "individuals and groups working to develop a common resource of human knowledge" the link you removed was a potential link for those individuals and groups.

Please reconsider your actions on the Transepidermal water loss article 78.148.159.132 (talk) 10:31, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

No, I did not reject it because it contains useful information. I reject it because it is a wiki, see WP:ELNO, and because it is suitable for inclusion.

And regarding 'a common resource' - thís is the common resource, not a linkfarm of resources of interest for a subject. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:47, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• Dear XLinkBot / Dirk Beetstra,

So, as you appear to have talked yourself round, are you going to undo your initial actions and reinstate the external link that served the page for five years from May 2008 to May 2013 ?

or,

offer a more coherent explanation for your action ?? 2.99.227.221 (talk) 17:06, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

No, see my previous reply. It is a wiki that does not belong there, the information on it can be included and Wikipedia is the common resource, not the linkfarm of resources. And that it was there for 5 years is of no matter, there are links, and even pages on Wikipedia that are not supposed to be there for a long-long time. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:20, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

• Dear XLinkBot / Dirk Beetstra,

The content cannot be included on Wikipedia due to Wikipedia:NOR

Your apparent lack of understanding the subject has resulted in collaterally damaging beneficial links to what is beyond the scope and reach of Wikipedia. Will isolationism make Wikipedia and better common resource ? 78.147.14.150 (talk) 14:19, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

OR .. interesting, so we can not include OR, so we have to link to it. Quite benificial indeed, linking to OR. Why again did we not link to Wikis in the first place? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:01, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

• Dear XLinkBot / Dirk Beetstra

Sarcasm is unhelpful. I'm going to find somewhere to arbitrate this. 2.96.80.38 (talk) 14:10, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

May I suggest the external link noticeboard? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:11, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

External link

Hello,

I would like to ask that i try to add an external site and my post deleted! The site is Jsfnet Greece, the greek website of Jeux Sans Frontieres programm and is the first site which created about that programm, but is hosted in a free host! the link is http://jsfnet.webs.com i dont know why me edit deleted!

All the best — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jsfnetgreece (talk • contribs) 11:08, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

H! Thanks for your post. Your link was deleted, because it does not comply with our policies and guideline. Please see external links guideline - we are not writing a linkfarm, we are trying to write an encyclopedia. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:13, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Ok thank you for your reply, i just try not to make a linkfarm, but to add a site which are realative with te article and the majority of the information was founded in that! anyway, thank you again for your replY — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jsfnetgreece (talk • contribs) 11:41, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Web Accessibility External Link

An external link I've added to Web Accessibility and WAI-ARIA has been deleted. The link is http://itstiredinhere.com/accessibility. It provides the basics of both implementing accessibility and understanding why following the guidelines are important. It's content that's neither covered in the pages' content or within some of the outdated or inaccessible external links already linked from these pages.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Longmatthewh (talk • contribs)

It is a work in progress with personally written documentation, etc. etc. You will see that it fails quite a bit of WP:ELNO, the important part of it can be incorporated in the Wikipedia article. I saw this added yesterday, and cleaned all of them. We are writing an encyclopedia here, not a linkfarm. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:54, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

False positive

I restored an accidentally-deleted references tag to the Handwara article. Elsewhere in the page, a link in a ref tag existed to fallingrain, which is on the blacklist. This resulted in the reverting of my edit. I've removed the actual link to fallingrain, but the check should probably be fixed to only revert if the link in question was actually added in the edit. --71.199.125.210 (talk) 19:21, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I am aware of this. Repairing a broken page is nearly impossible to detect (there are similar things that would have the same result). Unbreaking such pages does show that you added the external link (it wasn't there in the previous parsed page, it is now). Except for really bad spam, the bot will not re-revert you, and the bot does encourage you to undo if the edit is one of the exceptions to the regular (like this what you encountered, same would go for the occasional good external link to a 'discouraged' site). Likely, you will have triggered a human editor to check up after you. Thanks for looking into the fallingrain-link. They are really, per multiple discussions, NOT a reliable source, and should generally not be used as an external link, nor as a reference. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for the remark! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:44, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

July 2013

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page GoAir has been reverted.
Your edit here to GoAir was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links in references which are discouraged per our reliable sources guideline. The reference(s) you added or changed (http://blog.zagat.com/2013/07/airline-to-hire-only-lightweight-female.html) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. If the external link you inserted or changed was to a blog, forum, free web hosting service, fansite, or similar site (see 'Links to avoid', #11), then please check the information on the external site thoroughly. Note that such sites should probably not be linked to if they contain information that is in violation of the creator's copyright (see Linking to copyrighted works), or they are not written by a recognised, reliable source. Linking to sites that you are involved with is also strongly discouraged (see conflict of interest).
If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 16:18, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
If this is a shared IP address, and you didn't make the edit, please ignore this notice.

• Dear Robot, I know you don't read your talk page often, but I thought I'd let you know the error has been corrected with a better link (guardian.co.uk and wsj.com). Hope this makes you happy! --71.135.170.140 (talk) 16:28, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I think those are indeed better. Blogs make really, really bad references, and that this one blog made it to the list of references that XLinkBot reverts must have been because this one is particularly bad. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

VERY UNHAPPY

Why cant i erase angry grandpa because he never use his own wikipedia and i can use it?!— Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.99.121.231 (talk • contribs)

I don't really have a clue what you are talking about. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

External links

Hi,

I think the External Links section was in compliance because the video posted on you tube of the econ lecture was put there by the orignial owner: the Jerusalem School in Economic Theory . To check this you can go to their website http://www.as.huji.ac.il/schools/econ23 and click on "2012 arrow lectures". You will be redirected to youtube. Please let me know if I am mistaken and otherwise please undo the deletion.

Additionally there were other links which seemed appropriate in that section and were also deleted.

Many thanks. Dmarin (talk) 15:19, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your remark and analysis. First, the bot reverts whole edits, it is impossible to just erase the 'bad' ones, it therefore suggests the editor to reconsider the 'bad' ones over the rest in its message it leaves on your talkpage.

Regarding the YouTube .. hmm .. YouTube links are often questionable, and do not often really add something that is necessary, or what is actually not already told in the document (though there are exceptions). I'll leave it up to the specialists, and you. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:55, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Al Waxman external link

• northernstars.ca: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Hi, I have reverted this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Al_Waxman&curid=1174243&diff=563667911&oldid=563667907 because I feel that the link edits by User talk:99.232.31.245 were constructive. XLinkBot just changed a good link into a broken one.

It would be good if the bot could detect whether a new editor is merely changing an existing link to a site into a new link to the same site and, if so, decide that this is probably a repair of a bad link. Anyway, it is wrong to tell the editor "your addition [my emphasis] of one or more external links to the page...". Is this a fixable bug? Peter Loader (talk) 22:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for your question. It is good to double-check sometimes what XLinkBot is doing (it is the reason it does not have a bot-bit, so it gets noticed), it does make 'mistakes'. However, here we could argue about the 'goodness' of the link. Does that document that is linked to really add anything encyclopedic that actually could not be incorporated itself. The external article does contain some quite nice facts which could be incorporated and the article could be a reference. Though, the domain made it to the revertlist .. maybe there are better sources than this .. the article itself does not cite any sources either, so we have to take all that info at face-value. That it is on the revertlist makes me consider that maybe the whole links should not be there.

It is technically possible to detect that, but it has it's drawbacks as well. I know at least one case where the official homepage 'example.org' was replaced with 'example.org?referral=<referrerID>' .. so that clicking the link would bring money to the person owning the ID (after blacklisting of the domain, the editor came complaining that they could not make money with the link anymore, and started to insert redirects to the same effect). That is very much plain spam of the type that has to be reverted, but with your suggested change that would not be done. Also, it is not that easy to detect, e.g. when multiple links are removed, changed, it would be quite difficult to decide whether a link was changed, or added.

The text that XLinkBot leaves is in it's on-wiki settings, User:XLinkBot/Settings (this is the 'firstrevertremark'; settings get read before every revert, so as soon as you change things there they have effect). Anyways, it is in line with {{uw-spam1}}-{{uw-spam4}}, which also mention it as an added external link, even if the editor just 'changed' a good link into a spam link. Technically, the user removed one link, and added another, it is not that wrong. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:58, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Bangladesh politics

Hi, Probably you don't have clear news of politics in Bangladesh. Two or three lines for a 40 year old political organization is not enough. I may delete external link of our facebook page according to wikepedia's policy but you can't ignore Juboleague's history that i mentioned in my writings.

Do you know who is Nur Hossain ? The Juboleague activist was shot dead writing Gonotronto Mukti Pak, Sairachar Nipat Jak slogan in his back side. You can see that picture anywhere in google.

You didn't even mention Juboleague's General Secretary's name: Md. Harunur Rashid.

My information is just the gist of juboleague's activities since its birth.

People's Empowerment model by Statesman Sheikh Hasina is accepted by UN on 17 Dec, 2012. I also gave that article number reference from UN website.

To edit anything in political articles, you should have clear concept of politics otherwise wikepedia will loose credibility for you type admins ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Onlyanik (talk • contribs) 18:39, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi! Please feel free reverting the bot, leaving out the facebook link (unless it is really the only official page of the political party .. which would make me think ..).

You should know, that you are talking technically to a bot after it reverted you, not to a human editor. Bots, automated accounts, don't know anything about politics, this bot only 'knows' about likely inappropriate link additions.

I should however inform you of Conflict of interest guideline, please be careful with editing subjects on Wikipedia in which you have a real-life interest. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:54, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

External link

I have been warned about creating an external link. What the original reference said was "Bonny, Anne, Encyclopedia Britannica Online. This doesn't direct the reader to the Anne Bonny page on EBO, just to the Wikipedia article on EBO. It seems like if a source is mentioned as a reference, there should be a direct link to the source...the reader shouldn't have to go on their own to search for the reference material. This way, if a reader has a question, there is a link to the page that is mentioned.

I didn't edit this article but I assume that the content has not been taken from EBO, the reference is just provided in case the reader wants more information (as is the Mary Read link). I did not add these sources to the page, I just made the links active so they would be useful rather than just text.

I have done this before without ever receiving a bot alert so I must assume that the bot doesn't like linking to EBO from Wikipedia. If so, I did not know this. I just made a text reference, active. 69.125.134.86 (talk) 13:35, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

The bot is not reverting because of the EBO link, it is reverting because of the weebly link you corrected. These are often inappropriate, but here it seems like it is pertinent, so I just reverted the bot (as it suggested in the message it left on your talkpage). Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:21, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Sebastiano Serafini revert

Hello! It seems your bot mistakenly picked up my external link revision. I corrected a link to Sebastiano Serafini's official Facebook page, which had already been in the article, to its new and correct URL, which you reverted and left me a message about. I have undone this edit, as there is no reason to have the outdated link instead of the new one. Please let me know if you have any further concerns. Feather Jonah II (talk) 23:38, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll have a look. XLinkBot also reverts 'updates' like that, and tells the editor who does the edit that facebook links are, often, inappropriate. The consideration may be, that the facebook link is not supposed to be there anyway. Please see WP:ELOFFICIAL for more info (one official link is fine, but we are not a linkfarm for all official sites of a subject). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:18, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

D. Hamacher

I lead the Australian Aboriginal Astronomy Project and I do not know why you keep insisting on altering or deleting the links on that page. The links are to individuals in the Project at various universities. The link to the blog is not new - it was established nearly two years ago by me for the project as an outreach tool for the public. Stop deleting the link and my updates There is not one person in the world that knows this project better than I.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Duane W. Hamacher (talk • contribs)

Seen your conflict of interest, you may want to discuss this on the talkpage or with an appropriate WikiProject. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Oskar

I'm very sorry but it ist to complecatet for understanding all this roles if English is not Your mothertounge.If You think all may facts acout Oskar Deecke are wrong, pls see the German wiki page. So I dont understand, what and why You have done this. If I'm wrong pls. delete Oskar Deecke completly, because the facts you are able to read now are too less. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sorgenlos (talk • contribs)

Hi! Well, 'see the German Wiki', that is just another unreliable source. The bot however probably reverted because of an external link, not because of the data you added. You may want to review that. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:06, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Question about my link

Hi sir, good afternoon, Im NinioDarkx3 user, my question is why did you delete my link named www.facebook.com/GohanOfficialFanPage from Gohan section (Wikipedia). This link is not for spam sir, we are just only fans are not pretend to be Gohan or take author's copyright. If you can reply, I'll be so thankful, and please check my link out and you will notice is only a FAN PAGE which is a verified facebook account having many fans, so you allow me to leave my link there in Wikipedia. Thanks a lot The link is: http://www.facebook.com/GohanOfficialFanPage

Regards Dakota— Preceding unsigned comment added by NinioDarkx3 (talk • contribs)

Hi! Thanks for your question. Why? Well, first it is a facebook page, which is very often not the most important official site of a subject (see WP:ELOFFICIAL - we do not list ALL online presences of a subject, only the most important one), moreover, this is a fanpage facebook. The page is about the subject, not about the fan page. If it is the official fan page, it will be linked form the subject's official site, which is more than enough. See WP:ELNO for more information about fanpages. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:09, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

RMS Titanic

In the article Passengers of the RMS Titanic in Wikipedia, in the section on the Third Class Passengers, I wanted to add the name of a very important book that was published in 2011 that deals specifically with the Syrian passengers on the Titanic. The statement in this section by Kamal Kobeissi is incorrect as this new book that came out in 2011 does indeed provide almost all the information about the list of Syrian passengers - survivors and victims, their Arab nationalities and the circumstances that drove them to board the ship. Therefore Kobeissi's statement is out-of-date. For this reason the sentence "Even though the list of victims who died on the Titanic denotes who among them was Arab, it is difficult to find enough information on their Arab nationalities and what circumstances drove them to board the doomed ship." with "The recent publication of the book The Dream and Then the Nightmare: The Syrians Who Boarded the Titanic - the story of the Arabic-speaking passengers [ISBN 978-9933-9086-1-4] by Leila Salloum Elias (Damascus/Beirut: Atlas for Publishing and Distribution, 2011) has completely opened a new chapter in the history of the Arabic-speaking passengers on the Titanic." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Umayyad711 (talk • contribs) 03:08, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your explanation. The bot did not disagree with the edit itself, but in that edit you also added an email address to the article. It is extremely unwise to add email addresses to Wikipedia mainspace articles (and probably quite unwise in the rest as well), as that will result in sourcing by spambots, likely resulting in spam onto that email address. Moreover, it is hardly ever useful to add email addresses to mainspace. That is why the bot reverts the whole edit, and suggests you to review it by leaving you a message on your user talkpage.

I see you took the right action as suggested by the bot, re-do the edit but leaving out what 'offended' the bot - the email address. I think all is resolved! Thank you for this information, and happy editing! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:04, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect removal of edits (external links) July 29 2013

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen-style_t%27ai_chi_ch%27uan?veaction=edit

This bot is removing legitimate edits. The edits included removing a dead external link and adding a few very appropriate and related supporting external links as well. There was no reason these should be removed as they only serve the purpose of informing the articles. Please address. Thanks— Preceding unsigned comment added by Molingquan (talk • contribs)

Thanks for your question. I think it is addressed in the message that is left on your talkpage. I'll have a look as well. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:48, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Natalie Hoover

hi, I made a new article today NATALIE HOOVER however I meant for it to be a biography since she's a living person. Is it possible to change it to so? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nathan001984 (talk • contribs) 23:29, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your question. I am sorry, I don't know how to do that, and am not sure where to send you to ask. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:41, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

correction of equipment

unaware that such links could not put, but the correction of equipment is fine because you delete are not associated with the gaa or are recognized by the same--Lucas Sanchez Dalmau (talk) 00:13, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean here .. could you please explain? I see that the page you were editing, I think it is not completely conform what lists should look like, much unreferenced and very not-notable material in there. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:43, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Comparative Advantage

Hi, the boot is removing http://ventaja-comparativa.blogspot.com/, I know that the URL .blogspot is in the list of pages to be removed. This is not a blog, is hosted at blogger but is a tool for calculating Comparative Advantage. If blogger is not allowed what free servers are allowed? Thanks. PD: the tool is in spanish, it's also neccesary to be in english?. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lainz007 (talk • contribs) 02:48, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, sometimes there are other things hosted on blog-sites. However, if you read our external links guideline, specifically WP:ELNO, you will see that it anyway fails Wikipedia's inclusion standards. We are not writing a linkfarm or a internet directory for anything related to a subject. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:31, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

"Varo Venturi" page - references

Hello, thank you for your message!

I have a small prob with the insertion of the references on the page : "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varo_Venturi". This are a few of the links I was trying to public: " http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff35/eng/archives/?year=2011

http://www.ecufilmfestival.com/?page_id=5927&lang=en

http://www.ecufilmfestival.com/?page_id=81&lang=en

http://www.ecufilmfestival.com/?page_id=85&lang=en

http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff35/eng/director/?id=309

http://menawa.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/day-6-aliens-are-inside-us/

https://flashmentalsimulation.wordpress.com/tag/varo-venturi/ " I took a look on the pages you've indicated to me and also I've tryed to see other people pages but under the refereces I've found only this text :"{{reflist}}".. I don't know excatly what it means and also how to create it. Can you please give me a hand? Also, I would like to ask you how to link the italian version (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varo_Venturi) at the english one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varo_Venturi)? Thank you! 188.217.100.30 (talk) 18:54, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Brainstorming85188.217.100.30 (talk) 18:54, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I am not sure what you are asking. First, the article has some external links, but most are just not suitable per our guidelines. I think here you want to add some references. Those you add in the text, next to the statement that gets verified by the information you pulled from the link (you put the link between a '<ref>' and a '</ref>'-code, and in the references section you put what you see in the other pages, '{{reflist}}'. All the texts between the ref-marks gets then automatically into the references section. :Regarding the link to the Italian page, that will happen automatically by a bot, may take a bit of time to get it populated, you don't have to worry about that at all. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:21, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I just fixed a broken link

Hi Administrators, I tried to fix a link on the page StubMail but the bot reverted it. I believe that my edit is legitimate. Please contact me to let me know whether you agree or not. Yours sincerly, --Vitalij zad (talk) 11:16, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

=

Bot failing with non-standard characters

Please see User talk:Noradcupid - you'll note that the bot is referencing Christian Benítez, which is non-existent; it should, in fact, reference Christian Benítez. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 16:15, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I refer to your point about removing a link to an interview with Paul Maze. I certainly don't think it is irrelevant for an encyclopaedia. I have watched lots of similar clips from links on Youtube. This link was specifically significant because Paul Maze is talking about Winston Churchill. It is the only interview I could find and very rare. Please can you reinstate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.138.55.57 (talk) 16:17, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, a known problem, it seems to forget the character encoding somewhere in the code. I still have to work on this, but you are right, it should be solved .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:31, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Pumpkin

Hi, I'd like to make a few comments and suggestions re pumpkin . You locked it, but it seems rather vandalized. current text:" A pumpkin is a gourd-like squash of the genus Cucurbita and the family Cucurbitaceae (which also includes gourds).[1] It commonly refers to cultivar of any one of the species Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita mixta, Cucurbita maxima, and Cucurbita moschata, and is native to North America. They typically have a thick,... " a gourd- like squash is meaningless as gourd (family) is the hypernym of squash (its genus) a gourd also includes gourds is also meaningless cultivar is inappropriate a pumpkin.. it refers...they is jarring. I will not attempt to suggest the text but please keep in mind: Family: Cucurbitaceae = gourd genera: Cucurbita, Lagenaria. Lagenaria is native to the old world, Cucurbita to Americas genus Cucurbita: squash, pumpkin species: maxima, mixta,muschata = winter squash (commonly identified with pumpkin or squash) species:... pepo = summer squash (commonly called zucchini, marrow, courgette) genus Lagenaria species sicenaria . (its baby fruits are like zucchini), full grown fruits become emty shells and are called bottle-gourds. Bye93.43.218.126 (talk) 10:06, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what you are talking about, I think you want to explain this on e.g. Talk:Pumpkin to get more attention. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:30, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Shahrzad Rafati - Apologies for questionable link

Hello, sorry about including a YouTube link on my recent edit to Shahrzad Rafati's page. It was an oversight as to copyright issues. I have since removed it. Thank you for your understanding. Reignfall (talk) 19:13, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

White-cheek Tern

I note that you have removed my link relating to the White-cheek Tern. As far as I am concerned that's OK, but why have you removed my inclusion that it occurs in Sri Lanka? Its occurrence in Sri Lanka is well established re. any of the recent guides to Sri Lankan birds. By removing "Sri Lanka" the information relating to the distribution of this species is incomplete. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Protospinax (talk • contribs) 03:09, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

South Polar Skua

Protospinax (talk) 03:24, 16 August 2013 (UTC)I note that you have removed my reference entitled "South Polar Skua Catharactasp. or Hybrid Skua?' in Sri Lanka. This paper is an important addition to the literature on Skuas in Sri Lanka and has been cited in several publications, including the OBC's Birding Asia. The paper seeks to correct some inconsistencies in a previous publication. If this reference is rejected, the question of the whether the species occurs in Sri Lanka will be incomplete. You may wish to reconsider your decision.

vijay inder singla

hello

request you to write more about mr.vijay inder singla on your website.

i am sorry to editing number of times.

we want both the emails on the website.

he is a politician

thanks and best regards

admin — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sangrurloksabha (talk • contribs) 07:04, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I own the pictures below

http://oi39.tinypic.com/2qmp5wk.jpg, http://oi44.tinypic.com/xnfayd.jpg

They weren't a photoshop or anything. Just real cars.

75.43.46.154 (talk) 07:43, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

• The only way those aren't photoshops is if you did that in paint. They're very obviously not real. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 09:10, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Link Changing......

I made that link editing so that wiki users can find the books easily...... So make it right please...... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dobd99 (talk • contribs) 16:35, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

7400 series

I noticed that someone made an edit that confused the bot[9][10] -- "Time Propagation Delay (TPD) < 3 ns@3.3 V" is not an email address. Should I replace all the @ characters with "at"? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:04, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Inserting photos into my article

Can I insert photos (proprietary, my own) into my article? If so, how do I go about doing this?

Your help is most appreciated.

Professor/DrBrianARothbart 08:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC) Professor Rothbart — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrianRothbart (talk • contribs)

This talk page is intended solely for communication with the person running XLinkBot - software that handles problems with links in articles. I suggest that you ask your question at the help desk, after looking at Wikipedia:Uploading images. It will help if you are more specific about what exactly you are trying to do. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:23, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

The links you deleted from World Tai Chi and Qigong Day are appropriate links.

The links you deleted from World Tai Chi and Qigong Day are appropriate links. Other editors asked for citations proving that the event was global, so the BBC youtube link to an official BBC News report posted by them is appropriate. The other news link was posted on youtube by that television station and it cited facts requested by other editors.

These were official tv newscasts posted by those tv networks that were linked to and fulfilled requested citations. Those links had already been on the pages "external links" but some editor didn't see them and insisted that facts reported in those external links be cited in the text, so they were linked as citations so that whoever challenged those facts could not miss those facts.

I'm not sure what you want. Editors challenge facts, and then I post a news report youtube clip that proves the fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Billdouglastaichi (talk • contribs) 22:47, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

That they are from an official entities YouTube channel does not make them magically good. It is still youtube, which is discouraged for multiple reasons, and we are not a linkfarm (so we do not link to everything that is related, it has to add). I see you were editing 'breaking news' .. which is also out of scope for Wikipedia. Please have a read through the relevant policies and guidelines, and reconsider. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:24, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Doubt

What is called 4 days and 10 edits ?--johnsib (talk) 04:57, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

See WP:AUTOCONFIRMED. Editors who are around for more than 4 days, and/or who have more than 10 edits are considered on Wikipedia a bit regular, and at least have a bit of a grasp of policies and guidelines - therefore they are ignored by XLinkBot. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:26, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Vandal deletion of key content

(talk) 02:26, 14 September 2013 (UTC) I see my facts as a contributor are being vandalized at Waldseemuller.org. The text for the H.Res 287 America passed by the U.S. Congress is deleted. Whatn is the step for review? (talk) 02:26, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi MarkWest1 -- this is the talkpage for a software-robot that automagically helps fix wikipedia, not an actual human. So, I've moved your question over here, to the talkpage of the article in question. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 07:48, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean anyway, but I think this will be handled elsewhere now. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:29, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Afton Station Packard Museum on Blogspot

I notice you edited Afton Station Packard Museum to remove a blog operated by that venue on Blogspot which is WP:ELOFFICIAL. Unfortunately you are also removing valid information added by the same editor in other edits to the same page, such as a correction to the name of one of the station's owners, by reverting to a year-old version of the article.[11] Not constructive, and likely a violation of WP:BITE. False positive?

I have apologised to the user in question. K7L (talk) 23:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello K7L. Thanks for keeping an eye on the edits of the bot.

No, this is not a false positive. Blogspots are often removed as they are not the main official website. That is also the case here. The blog is a 'second' website after the main website. Moreover, it is prominently linked from the main website. I have therefore removed the blog, per WP:ELOFFICIAL.

Regarding biteyness, I do not believe that reverting an editor and giving an explanation of what the concern is is bitey. I know it is a grey area, but then editing an article shortly after a new editor could be explained by the newby as 'stalking', or repairing a typo by an editor as similar. Aplain revert without warning may be, or blindly slamming a vandalism warning. Also, The bot clearly explains what to do (revert with or without 'offending' link).

Many of the reverts of the bot show to be cases where the removed link is, at best, superfluous (like here), but at the worst plain copyright violations (for blogspot I have seen cases of reposts of copyrighted info). Although there are false positives, it generally turns out that that is just a small fraction (albeit a long time ago, of 30 myspace reverts there was only one I would really not have reverted, and 3 or 4 which one could see as questionable/superfluous links, the rest was plainly against our policies and guidelines.

I hope this explains, and thanks for further explaining things to the anon! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:35, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

The 'bot didn't just pull the one link to the venue's official blog (which appeared alongside, not instead of, the link to the ELOFFICIAL main site) - it removed everything added by the user across multiple edits, reverting to a version of the article which was a year out of date and contained factual errors. That's overkill. Combine this with the fact that this is a registered user with relatively few edits under his belt? A strong WP:BITE is a good way to lose a user entirely. K7L (talk) 15:35, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

The bot explains, in friendly wording and with apologies in case it makes mistakes, what the user should do. How would that be more bitey than telling a user that you, after they performed an edit, removed their external link because it is not appropriate. At some point, we can not repair/revert and subsequently point a user to good faith mistakes anymore, because then everything is becoming a WP:BITE violation. We have many new editors who post absolute rubbish (this is certainly not such an example) in good faith, you say that we stop deleting those things because the editor came here in good faith so we leave their article on their non-notable family member or their somewhat promotional biography because they might be bitten? It is a grey area, K7L, some editors will feel bitten when you don't touch their edits but just leave a 'welcome' message on their talkpage, others have some skin and learn from the remarks left by XLinkBot (there is a case just above here .. very similar to this). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:12, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

The Myth of Sisyphus

Regarding "The Myth of Sisyphus," please consider adding a Popular Culture section. Thank you. Maderawoodworking (talk) 11:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Regarding "The Myth of Sisyphus", please consider adding a Popular Culture page. Thank you. Maderawoodworking (talk) 11:19, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Not sure why you are asking this of a bot. Could you please elaborate? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:26, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

This is another user confused by xLinkBot. It has an officious-tone, so they think it is a human admin. They were trying to add this youtube video to the external links section of the article. * Dead Tree Duo's 2013 release Scaffold features the track Sisyphus outlining Camus' writing. Might be copyvio, but I doubt it -- the youtube username is the same as the band-name in their dotcom domain. Does the band deserve a link to their homepage and youtube page, from wikipedia? Don't know. But websearch suggests they have recorded an album in NYC, have a kickstarter project up to fund the CD-burning process, and have played several gigs in their home town of Austin, including one reported by the local newspaper.[12] Does not smell like spam, in other words; should be left up to the discretion of the other editors that care about the myth-of-sisyphus article content, rather than wiped by xLinkBot. Additionally, this was a brand new username, with four edits. After xLinkBot, no further edits have been forthcoming. Bitey. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:54, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

feature request: preserve attempted cites on talkpage

Greetings, XLinkBot -- can you please automatically shove attempted revisions onto the article's talkpage, when you revert them from the main article? This solves the difficulties mentioned in the XLinkBot FAQ with partial-reverts, but also means that attempts to insert cites are not lost (effectively -- I realize they are in article history but that is not the same level of visibility), if it turns out the editor in question is too busy (cough lazy cough) to go back and dig up reliable sources saying the same thing as the blog-or-whatever they were originally planning on citing. See my talkpage under Sept 2013 for a couple of real-world instances, with explanations. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:25, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

How to have my name Makeba Mooncycle artist info page and all of mentions be linked to that page

Hello,

I apologize I added some information about myself unaware that you can not write information to correct people incorrect information

I have mentions on other pages and I am wondering How can my name be Highlighted on those other pages so there links can go to my page instead of the Wu Tang Affiliate PageMakebamooncycle (talk) 02:02, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Are you having trouble with xLinkBot specifically, in terms of your question? Or is it more of a general how-do-i-do-this difficulty, not related to xLinkBot? If the former, please explain what you are asking -- I do not understand. If your question is not xLinkBot-specific, then try asking over at Wikipedia:Questions -- if nothing there looks like what you need, click the one that says Help Desk, and they'll tell you what to do. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:01, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Julia Krynke

Hi, just letting you know I removed a link to Facebook page you locked. Thanks Niedziewicz (talk) 02:51, 31 August 2013 (UTC)niedziewicz

Not sure what you mean here. Could you please explain? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:27, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

They mean, they were trying to add a citation, which happened to be on facebook, and xLinkBot told them wikipedia was locked/blocked/against any facebook cites. So, naturally, they deleted their 'bad' source, and maybe the entire edit. Thinking that they were potentially in some sort of trouble, they came here to apologize for their screw-up. @Niedziewicz, you did nothing wrong, probably. Read WP:EL if you wish. But remember the most important rule -- if some bot, or some policy, is preventing you from improving wikipedia... then you must ignore that hinderance, and improve wikipedia anyways! Good luck. Ask us here if you have more questions. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:01, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

The page is question. She is an actress, apparently; her article was put up for deletion in August, and Niedziewicz has been adding references to her filmography, and tried to put in a link to her homepage. Nicole Kidman also have a wikipedia article about her, and it includes a link to her homepage. This is a case of xLinkBot being bitey, and hurting the quality of wikipedia, albeit in a small way. Now, in this *particular* case quick googling on duckduckgo.com suggests the actress in question actually has a dotcom homepage, in addition to her facebook page. But not every actress will. Sometimes the facebook page is going to be a relevant cite. In such cases, the bot should not prevent relevant cites, entered by humans; that does not improve wikipedia. Probably if we simplify the interface, it will allow us to simplify the wording of the suggestions, and editors will not be confused, or think they are in trouble, or discard valid cites. Rather than auto-revert, making editors thing they got in trouble, this case just begs for a lightly-worded warning: Please Think Twice Whether The Link To FaceBookDotCom You Are Attempting To Add Is An Encyclopedic Reliable Source And/Or Appropriate Official External Link Thanks Click Here To Continue. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:34, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Dear IP, "I removed a link to Facebook page you locked" .. XLinkBot does not lock anything, and removal does not invoke XLinkBot - that is why I did not understand what they meant, and that is why I asked for clarification. I now see what was going on, and will have a look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:24, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

My understanding is that Niedziewicz first added a link to a facebook page (homepage of actress who is the subject of the BLP in question). Then, xLinkBot removed their edit. Not really understanding what was going on, and thinking they had been blocked/locked by an administrator, they left a letting-you-know-I-am-complying-with-your-wishes message here on this talkpage. They went on to remove *all* cites involving facebook/youtube from the article, methinks. While I agree that xLinkBot does not actually 'lock' facebook.com from being used in cites or external links, it does block such things... and editors can be easily confused, and think that IN ALL CASES therefore facebook.com is never to be permitted, which is simply not the case; pillar number five, and all that. I'm not arguing about what xLinkBot did; I'm pointing out that Niedziewicz *perceived* it as more draconian than it actually is, and suggesting that xLinkBot's behavior be modified, so as not to generate that perception in the first place. Thanks for having a look at the article in question, btw. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:02, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

(cur | prev) 02:41, 31 August 2013‎ Niedziewicz (talk | contribs)‎ . . (11,358 bytes) (-140)‎ . . (Removed external links to Facebook and YouTube) (undo)
(cur | prev) 02:36, 31 August 2013‎ Niedziewicz (talk | contribs)‎ . . (11,498 bytes) (+4,150)‎ . . (Added 13 references to the cast lists of each film - will add more very soon.) (undo)
(cur | prev) 01:28, 31 August 2013‎ XLinkBot (talk | contribs)‎ . . (7,348 bytes) (+52)‎ . . (BOT--Reverting link addition(s) by Niedziewicz to revision 570878669 (https://www.facebook.com/julia.krynke [\bfacebook\.com])) (undo)
(cur | prev) 01:11, 31 August 2013‎ Niedziewicz (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (7,296 bytes) (+178)‎ . . (added photo Of Julia Krynke) (undo)
(cur | prev) 00:27, 31 August 2013‎ Niedziewicz (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (7,118 bytes) (+76)‎ . . (Update of links to Wikipedia articles.) (undo)
(cur | prev) 00:21, 31 August 2013‎ Niedziewicz (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (7,042 bytes) (-306)‎ . . (Minor errors corrected) (undo)

User talk:95.128.190.3

Hi, with regards to the external link you removed from the page FK Shkëndija, although i acknowledge that the external links guideline specifcally suggests to avoid links to social networkings sites, i would like to point out that the page already contained such links, and what i did is edited the same so at least they would lead to accurate official sites of the subject. Bottom line, there should be either full consistency and remove any and all such links, or allow for exceptions. 95.128.190.3 (talk) 09:34, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Exceptions are allowed, and some social networking links might be appropriate. We are however not the yellow pages or a linkfarm that needs all of them. You may however be right that also the other ones need to be removed. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

The inconsistency is in xLinkBot -- it only ever applies to users with IP addresses, or registered accounts with less than four-n-ten. xLinkBot assumes the existing links on the page are fine, and assumes that any registered-with-more-than-minimal-edit-counts editor adding additional such links is fine, but does not assume the same of other editors. There are only two ways to make xLinkBot fair: either make it apply to all editors, including admins since 2002 with 100k edits under their belt, or reduce the perception of xLinkBot's target audience that it is playing favorites, by plainly and clearly making sure they understand that xLinkBot is an automated *warning* with known flaws, rather than an administrative sanction. Both 95.128.190.3 (here) and Niedziewicz (above) perceived the actions of xLinkBot as saying "Thou Shalt Not Add Links To Facebook". Although that is not the intent of xLinkBot, it is perceived as such. We need to work on that mis-perception, by improving how xLinkBot interacts with people. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:09, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Question about expected behavior of XLinkBot

This insertion of an external link was reverted by XLinkBot -- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=KOffice&diff=573248778&oldid=573248351

But a short while later, this ext-link-within-reftags was not reverted -- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=KOffice&diff=573265979&oldid=573248778

So, my article-editing-goal was satisfied. But that brings up a question...

Is this a *bug* in the regex, or the *desired* behavior? i.e. when editing from an IP addr, you get a warning from XLinkBot for blacklisted ext-link insertion, but if you edit a second time with ref-tags it is(?) allowed.

I've put a fuller explanation of the situation at my talkpage, if needed. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 06:55, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your remark! It is not a bug, it is even a feature. XLinkBot has two revertlists, one for regular external links, and one for references. It's main task is however the external links.

What is suitable as an external link is not the same as what is suitable as a reference, some examples:

• IMDB is sometimes nice as an external link, though it is basically an open wiki and should be used with care. It is however not suitable as a reference, because it is an open wiki and the information is not reviewed.
• Youtube videos - generally not suitable as external links (some exceptions), but YouTube-published video's from e.g. BBC would be a good reliable reference.
• Blogspot is hardly ever suitable as an external links, it is random personal gibberish. Even if the blogspot is the official blogspot of an official entity, it is often not listed as it is, per WP:ELOFFICIAL lower on the priority than e.g. the real official site (especially if the latter lists the former already).

XLinkBot mainly focusses on the external links, but it has a feature that can revert references as well, or references only. It is sometimes used to keep Wikipedia clean(er) of WP:REFSPAM, or to notify socking ref-spammers early on that their behaviour is unwanted (and if they persists, the more reason to blacklist some things sometime).

I hope this explains. Nice to see that the remark left by XLinkBot made you actually improve the article in an even better way! Thanks!! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:37, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

(Note I've also submitted a new feature-request below, related to my (later) comments here.) I agree it is a feature. However, like the discussion under the do-not-bite category below, I am inclined to think that the present behavior of XLinkBot is too much biting, for most editors. I have some suggestions that might make it keep the same essential functionality, but avoid the accusations of aggressiveness. First, at the moment you are trying to balance edit-prevention, versus auto-revert. These are not the only choices though. Furthermore, you want to provide user-override: at the moment, repeating the same edit, by the same username, and XLinkBot is happy to ignore it. Additional options: edit-warning-with-immediate-override, auto-revert-but-content-moved-to-article-talkpage, and so on. For an experienced editor of wikipedia, that knows about article-history, and knows about bots, and knows about how to undo, the current behavior of XLinkBot is reasonable, though non-optimal. I'd like to make the behavior optimal (least number of clicks reqd) for experienced editors, and I believe we can also make the user interface less bitey for newbies slash casual editors. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:08, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

To be concrete, here is what happens now: 1 when an enduser submits an external link, 2 they have to enter captcha-crapola, 3 then notice the alert about their talkpage, 4 then visit their talkpage, 5 then figure out what xLinkBot is about by reading the test (and 6 maybe the faq), 7 then figure out whether to override (if they understand they even can!), 8 then visit the article page, then 9 visit the article history, then 10 click undo. Too much! Here is what makes sense to me: 1 enduser submits an external link, 2 they have to enter captcha AND RIGHT THEN AND THERE they get the 3 following options if XLinkBot detected their link was grey-listed or black-listed -- radiobutton with option#1 Override and submit link as-is, option#2 Submit edit as-is but move offending link to a new automagically-created section on the article talkpage, option#3 Do not submit any changes to article but put entire attempted edit in new section on article talkpage. The default radiobtn should be #2, submit edit, but move controversial source to talkpage, methinks. Step 4 is that the enduser can visit the talkpage ("click the Talk tab at the top of the article" should be printed in big friendly letters right in the xlinkbot portion of the captcha-page). Although it is certainly more programming-work to re-implement XLinkBot in this way, and possibly more work to maintain the code long-term, methinks this is the superior approach in terms of no-extra-clicks-by-default, and in terms of not biting the newbies where it can be helped. Since I don't check the talkpage of xlinkbot very often (ever), if you want to discuss this further, or let me help with the php hacking, I ask that you ping me via my talkpage. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:08, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

p.s. It is annoying that the current (dynamic) greylist and blacklist are not public. They should be. They can be subtly linked straight from the captcha-page next to the radiobuttons mentioned above. Furthermore, I suggest making them editable, so that for example, the Renkoo and Sphere official blogs -- which are Notable according to [13] at least though I've never heard of either -- can be 'manually' added as exceptions by regex-savvy wikipedia editors. If you don't want to make the main blacklist/greylist editable as I recommend, then I strongly suggest an editable whitelist, which overrides the blacklist&greylist (one advantage here is editing the whitelist requires no regex know-how... so maybe it is a good idea even with editable black&grey). While I'm asking, I also want the php code behind XLinkBot to be publically editable (tho prolly locked-for-moderation prior to any attempted code-changes actually being committed to the live XLinkBot). *And* I want a pony.  :-) 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:08, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

What are you going on about, 74.192.84.101 - your order of numbers is wrong (if you do 4 you are aware of 7, e.g.). And what about greylists and blacklists not being public. Can you please get your facts straight. (and I want a Ferrari). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:24, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I am listing the steps that a hypothetical person would have to go through, the *first* time they are bitten by xLinkBot. You are incorrect when you say that #4 happens because of #7, certainly in my own case, and methinks in all similar first-time-to-encounter-xLinkBot cases. Please show me where this is incorrect. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

* 1. editor submits external link

* 2. editor fills out captcha (triggered in realtime by external link); after this is done, editor is returned to article, and sees 'your edit was saved' message at the top

* 3. later, usually on another article, and sometimes on a future day, editor notices 'you have messages' alert at the top of some article they are reading

* 4. editor visits their talkpage, and finds out that the message was from xLinkBot

* 5. editor has never heard of xLinkBot, so they try to figure out what is going on

* 6. xLinkBot's default message is confusing (citation: myself, Niedziewicz, 95.whatever, and prolly many more), so some of them end up reading the xLinkBot FAQ-page

* 7. editor may or may not figure out that they can override xLinkBot ... I did, but the other two did not, for instance

* 8. editor that wishes to override xLinkBot can then return to the article where xLinkBot reverted their changes

* 9. editor visits the article-history page, to find their change which xLinkBot reverted

* 10. editor clicks undo, to override xLinkBot

In saying I'm wrong, you seem to be talking about an enduser that has *already* had experience with xLinkBot reverting them, and *already* knows they can override the changes it made. For such editors, that have experienced xLinkBot already, and already know how it works (probably from reading the FAQ), the steps are simplified.

* 1. editor submits external link, assuming from the beginning xLinkBot will be reverting it

* 2. same as above

* 3. (skip)

* 4. (skip)

* 5. (skip)

* 6. (skip)

* 7. (skip)

* 8. (skip)

* 9. same as above

* 10. same as above

Those are the only two possibilities, as far as I can tell, for editors that are subject to the xLinkBot restrictions. Is this wrongheaded? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

p.s. Keep it under 80 and don't scratch it up. [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]

Lac-Mégantic derailment (or was that Lac-Mégantic derailment?)

You dumped the following on User talk:204.101.15.2#July 2013:

"Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page Lac-Mégantic derailment has been reverted. Your edit here to Lac-Mégantic derailment was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRb3JHsiqfA&hd=1) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia..."

There are a couple of issues here:

• Unicode. What the (expletive) is a Lac-Mégantic derailment?
• The video itself. The Adrien Aubert video is pretty much a Zapruder film of the Lac-Mégantic derailment and has been cited by everyone from Radio-Canada (who posted their own broadcast interview of monsieur Aubert to YouTube) to CBS News. The link is therefore not vandalism. See Talk:Lac-Mégantic_derailment#video.

Net damage appears to be that one bit of factual information never did get into the article. The IP appears to still be active... for now, this time. K7L (talk) 16:42, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Typical case of boldly revert the bot, though maybe the cbsnews.com link itself is better (the original source). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:17, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Dirk, you are asserting that you believe 204 *ought* to have boldly reverted the bot. That they did not do so, is evidence that the bot is buggy (or at least that the wording the bot uses is buggy). Why not make the introduction to the bot explicitly say what you suggest this enduser ought to have done? "Welcome to wikipedia. I am an automated bot designed to fight spam. I detected that you placed a link to $domain_name into the text of $article_title. There is every possibility that your link belongs in the article! Please click here if you believe your link should be there, and I will put it right back. However, please be aware that wikipedia policy is not to link to unreliable sources, not to link to copyright violations, not to link to spam, not to link to this, not to do that, et cetera. Apologies for hindering you; I am just a bot, trying to help the humans who enjoy wikipedia to fight spam. Thank you for making wikipedia a better place. If you have any questions, click the 'talk' button and ask my owner. Love & Kisses, xLinkBot." Compare that to what actually gets printed on the editor's talkpage, as pasted in by KL7 above. The text above asserts that the link PROBABLY SHOULDN'T be included in wikipedia, but in fact xLinkBot has no way of knowing any such thing. The text is not only bitey, it is straight up incorrect. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:43, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

(cur | prev) 16:00, 9 July 2013‎ XLinkBot (talk | contribs)‎ . . (23,197 bytes) (-94)‎ . . (BOT--Reverting link addition(s) by 204.101.15.2 to revision 563537068 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRb3JHsiqfA&hd=1 [\byoutube\.com])) (undo)
(cur | prev) 15:58, 9 July 2013‎ 204.101.15.2 (talk)‎ . . (23,291 bytes) (+94)‎ . . (undo)

Here is their list of contributions since then.[34] They have never gone back to the article in question. If I wanted to run a query, to see how many people stopped editing an article after xLinkBot reverted something, how would I begin to go about that? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:43, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

xLinkBot regex lists

...what about greylists and blacklists not being public. ... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:24, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Where is the link to the greylist? Is it updated in realtime, with everything xLinkBot will do? Can I edit that greylist? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Where is the link to the blacklist? Is it updated in realtime, with everything xLinkBot will do? Can I edit that blacklist? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Where is the link to the whitelist? Is it updated in realtime, with everything xLinkBot will do? Can I edit that whitelist? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

These *are* honest questions, although I already know one or two of the answers... for instance, I did find the whitelist, after I got interested in trying to fix xLinkBot to work better. But I cannot edit that, right? And when I looked for a particular URL in the xLinkBot blacklist, which I know is blocked by xLinkBot because it was one I used that xLinkBot actually blocked, I did not find that regex in the list. This is what I'm on about.  :-) HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know, any WP:ADMIN can edit these lists to take what originally was a tool originally created in good faith to remove WP:SPAM links and use it as a blacklist of every marginal free webhost on the planet to ever have in some way infringed WP:RS. That's bad enough, but opening the lists so that anyone could edit them? We'd probably have the entire Internet blacklisted before the day was done. K7L (talk) 01:48, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, KL7 -- I am particular keen on the *whitelist* being editable by anybody. As for the blacklist, maybe a moderated edit functionality would be worthwhile, so that when Random Person tries to blacklist the all of www.*.com, it will have to pass muster by an admin? But part of assuming good faith is assuming that people will not screw up the content of wikipedia articles themselves; I might be inclined to argue that we should put the blacklist into the same category as an article. It can be semi-protected, just like the article on Bill Gates... *if* that turns out to be necessary. Anyhoo, at the moment I'm more interested in getting my hot little hands on the Perl code behind the bot, because I have about 90 changes I'd like to make to the codebase.  :-) Thankfully, wikipedia is not a race. We'll convince Dirk to pay attention to us sooner or later, either by patience, or by escalating this problem to bring in some other folks. (Maybe even Dirk's oft-mentioned Official Wikimedia Foundation Officials! Just like a visit from santa claus!) Anyways, part of the trouble with Dirk's bot is that it *only* impacts a very slim portion of the wikipedia editors: those with new registrations, or those who edit from IP addresses. They tend to simply leave, if the environment is too bitey, rather than complain on the talkpage. But at least ten complaints are documented here so far, and more will show up. If Dirk took my wager, and unleased his bot on 100% of wikipedia editors, it would be tamed right quickly... and the blacklist would prolly be editable by anybody, and on semi-protected status. I think Dirk's bot is a good thing, btw... considerably better than blacklisting the entire state of Qatar... which some over zealous wikipedia admin actually did, a few years ago. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:26, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Bot's edit reverts are way too aggressive!

This bot reverts the entire change if it contains a single offending link. Honestly, I don't know why that was ever approved. Why can't you revert the eliminate the offending link? This is the sort of practice that is making Wikipedia an unwelcoming place for casual contributors like myself. Jbarlow (talk) 07:55, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Have you read the FAQ linked above? The bot, in friendly words, suggests how to adapt your edit if needed, and apologizes for the revert in case it was wrong. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:04, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it's worse. It doesn't just revert the one edit which offended its delicate sensibilities by mentioning "blogspot" or some such atrocity. It reverts all of the immediately previous edits made by the same author. There is nothing friendly about this, it's WP:BITE pure and simple. K7L (talk) 19:06, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• Blogspot sources shouldn't be used, and I'd be highly dubious of any Blogspot source claiming to be the "official" source for anything. That said, it shouldn't roll back edits, unless it finds problems in all of them. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 19:12, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

It rolled back Afton Station Packard Museum by a full year of multiple edits by one contributor, to a version which had one of the owner's names wrong. The blog in question is operated by the proprietor of the museum and updated almost daily. This is just one example of damage done by link-reverting bots. In other cases, there have been article subjects who have no web presence other than some dodgy free host, but bots are preventing links to that token low-budget WP:ELOFFICIAL site. A My Network TV affiliate on low power in Wilmington, North Carolina with MySpace as its only presence was one such example - the station itself is barely there, but as a licensed broadcast originating station meets WP:GNG. MyTV and MySpace are/were both owned by News Corporation, which may explain the odd choice of host. I've also seen link-killing 'bots acting after the Geocities shutdown to remove links to free hosts housing former Geocities content, putting the broken Geocities link back in. (Geocities is widely known as no longer functional, so a widescale reinsertion of these in place of live links is vandalism). If the attitude is "Blogspot is evil, so not only any edit mentioning it is evil but other valid edits by the same user to the same article deserve to burn in Hell" this 'bot should not be running without manual supervision. The net is being cast far too broadly and is biting valid users contributing in good faith. K7L (talk) 19:35, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Assuming good faith, I believe, ought to mean that the burden of proof is on the bot and no extra work should be required on the contributor's part, whether reading FAQs or otherwise. I believe you can meet achieve your objectives without being so aggressive. For example, replace an offending external link with only its text ([[http://example.com|Example.com]] becomes just Example.com), and post a request to the user's talk page. If the bot is going to make changes, it should be making them as narrowly as possible; it is not qualified to assume that the entire edit is problematic. After all, that's what an ordinary user fixing a link problem would do, and no one would complain. Jbarlow (talk) 22:58, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

---

No, the burden of proof is on the editor wanting to add external links. Regarding the biting, I still do not take that. Biting is a grey area, and if one can not revert a questionable edit by an editor and place a remark on their talkpage then we are stuck nowhere in any case - reverting an editor and explaining what happened and why is NOT biting. The bot's remarks that it leaves on the talkpage have been edited to a friendly version, with the help of the Wikimedia Foundation itself.

The problems and advantages of reverting one edit, reverting all edits or trying to parse out only the offending link has been discussed and explained. The problems one creates only reverting one edit, or trying to parse out an edit are way, way worse (regularly resulting in broken pages) than reverting all to the last stable version and explain what the editor can or should do. As I said, many editors do just what the bot suggests.

And here, the edits are maybe quite soft, but on a regular basis the added links are to material which violates copyright, a strong point in WP:COPYRIGHT. That not only goes for YouTube, but we also see that for e.g. blogspot.

Regarding MySpaces, Facebooks, Blogspots, etc. - the use of such links as external links is very, very limited - as is their use in text. Even experienced editors do not understand the limits of WP:NOT and WP:EL, as evidenced above as well, so leaving a, good faith, remark with an explanation is needed.

K7L .. what you suggest is, that if a page is not edited, and one editor does one big edit, repairing a mistake, but inserting a spam part, that we should not revert, but wait for a human editor. Reverting all edits is a deliberate choice, because reverting only the one offending edit is giving more regularly problems than reverting all edits - we have tested it. Also note that the antivandalism bots do exactly the same, they revert all edits by the 'vandal', not re-edit just the vandalised part, or just the edit that the antivandalism bots deemed vandalism. Or are those bots also too bitey?

Jbarlow, regarding your last point - part of the bot's work is fighting real spam. Whether a text reads: 'http://www.myspammycompany.com is the best place to buy viagra' or 'www.myspammycompany is the best place to buy viagra', both are the goal of the spammer. Just disabling 'offending' links either leaves a broken page, an ugly text or, in the worst case, the spam still there (and those 'myspammycompany.com' are sometimes also facebook pages, blogspots, or youtube channels!). A similar problem is true for the choice of reverting one edit or reverting all. There are a wide range of cases that should be cleaned up. En.wikipedia is getting a high influx of external links, I would love to see editors stand up to the challenge, but that (seen the real-spam-backlogs) and the 'rubbish' that stays. I've done the math for MySpace (quite) some time ago, and found on 30 reverts that there was one that I would not have reverted (but, I would not have added the link either, it was grey there). Others were totally improper, unrelated or marginally related or promotional edits.

Note, that both in this case, and the case above of the railway station, we are talking about external links that should not be there. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:55, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

A 'bot account is a privilege, not a right, and the burden of proof is on the operator of any 'bot to demonstrate to the Wikipedia community that its automated edits are not harming the encyclopaedia. It's automated scripts, not users, who are guilty until proven innocent. If a script makes edits which would violate WP:BITE or WP:POINT if made by a human editor, its automated/unattended status is not a "get out of jail free" card. A human user who edited with an attitude of "I don't like Blogspot, so I'm going to replace a valid version of an article with a year-out-of-date version just to put a new user who linked there in his place" would be warned and eventually blocked because this sort of behaviour is a good way to drive away new users. Treating users as guilty until proven innocent carries some risks if Wikipedia expects these people to build an encyclopaedia for free. Bite a new user, they will leave. The definition of 'spam', 'vandal' or 'copyvio' need to be kept narrow enough that we don't have obnoxious 'bots flagging {{pd-user}} images as copyvios (so that more obnoxious 'bots can delete them with no human supervision) and that we don't have valid text automatically reverted to wrong and outdated information. I only caught the robot vandalism to the Packard museum article because it happened to still be on my watchlist from WP:AFC where it appeared a year ago, blind luck. Even so, it looks like any attempt I made at damage control is too little, too late because the user has already left. Nice going. Perhaps the 'bots should be left to write the encyclopaedia themselves if they're so smart? K7L (talk) 16:23, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

• K7L, it is a long-standing consensus that Blogspot cannot be used. You seriously need to calm down and stop overreacting. Obviously in this particular case the revert caused more harm than good - but that's one revert in a thousand. If you have an issue with how vandal bots work, stop whining here, and go to one of the noticeboards. And if it wasn't for bots like this, the encyclopedia would be a MUCH worse place, with a far greater amount of spam, vandalism and BLP violations than are currently present. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 16:34, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Any WP:RS for this "one in a thousand" false positive claim? The net is being drawn far too broadly and is catching too much that isn't vandalism. K7L (talk) 16:56, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Heh, no, on WP:OR for that. Feel free to analyse the reverts yourself for a specific rule (take YouTube, BlogSpot or MySpace) and see in how many cases the added link really was a perfect one. And do take into account in how many cases the data is linking to copyright violations, which is an utter no-no, which likely counters several reverts of 'good' links. I talked earlier about a check of 30 MySpace links for which there was 1 which I personally would not have reverted (but not have added either, it was on the edge between not needed and fine!), a quick check half a year ago of 10 Youtube reverts resulted in 2 links to copyvios (and I have had a case where a blogspot link was a clear copyvio as well .. that happens on more self-published sites). I still believe that the majority of reverts are 1 in a 100 (and for those where it is less, the good reverts generally have a high rate of really problematic links).

Dirk, no one is disputing that the bot does legitimate and necessary work. Perhaps I started this discussion on the wrong foot, since I started it while I was still annoyed since my work was reverted. I certainly recognize that bot writers play an important part in the Wikipedia ecosystem and without your efforts Wikipedia would be overrun by vandals and trolls. I appreciate that.

But that said, this discussion is about whether or not the bot's methods are too aggressive. You have asserted that reverting all suspect commits is the only option that will work and the only option you will consider. You are trying to make that non-negotiable. People are telling you that this method is harmful, and there is reason for reverting to be non-negotiable. So it is.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but you're trying to tell both K7L and that your bot does not bite. Let's consider this: I submitted a substantial improvement to an article, adding a few hundred new words with multiple references, probably about half an hour of work. Among those references, one was a link to a related company's Facebook page because that company has no meaningful online presence other than Facebook. If a human editor reverted my entire edit on account of that link, would we call that acceptable? Of course not. A human would remove the offending link and explain why. (In the end, I did remove the Facebook link and I don't disagree with the bot for flagging it. Again, my concern is that reverting edits is too aggressive.) Biting may be a grey area, sure, but telling me that I was not bitten is not going to make me change my mind. By an admittedly over-strong analogy, the abuser does not get to tell the abused what abuse is, and attempting to do so only compounds the abuse.

K7L's example is far more serious. A human editor reverting a year's worth of revisions for a petty reason could be considered a form of vandalism. Honestly, is there some reason why you can't set a few restrictions on the bot to prevent such cases? Perhaps it should notify you before taking some action that looks "extreme" like reverting more than a certain number of edits/words/etc. Is there some reason these brakes can't be put in place and fine tuned? Surely you are not claiming that the bot is perfect and has no room for improvement based on community feedback.

As you point out the issue at hand is spam. Comparing are two examples, in one case we have my "innocent" example where omitting the external link does not harm the article; your "guilty example" contains the link in text as well. It wouldn't be too hard to teach the bot to distinguish between those cases. Reverting an edit can always be a fall-back option if the bot cannot determine a safe way to remove an edit, or if an edit does nothing other than add a new external link.

But looking at the spam issue more broadly, if the problem is spam, why not handle it the same way email spam is handled? Bayesian spam filtering dramatically improved the accuracy of spam detectors especially due to Paul Graham's article on the subject. Consider implementing some proven spam classification methods in combination with regular expressions. These methods also develop a "spam certainty level", so at a certain threshold the bot could revert, if less confident, seek human input.

Part of the problem is Wikipedia's interface itself. It ought to check for some of these issues on submission; and it ought to have a better way of dynamically notifying users of issues. Unfortunately, it does not. Jbarlow (talk) 02:47, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

This bot does essential work for the encyclopedia, as can be seen by studying its contributions. Wikipedia is the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and is a top-ranking website. Those facts lead to the obvious outcome that there are hundreds of spam attempts per day, and the fast response provided by the bot is what saves Wikipedia from having ten external links packed into every sentence. Many spammers are reverted by human editors, but it is the bot that makes their work manageable. It is always possible to find a case that was handled poorly—but that's true of everything at Wikipedia. It would be great if someone would solve all problems here, but in the meantime we have to rely on less-than-perfect tools. Johnuniq (talk) 03:14, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

The fact that we cannot solve all problems does not mean we should stop improving. Jbarlow (talk) 20:15, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Jbarlow, we've been trying that, and the bot has numerous checks and numerous limits. Moreover, it is trying to be as friendly and explanatory in the beginning as possible (as I said, with help of the WMF itself!). We do realise we are in the grey area of biting, but there are two choices at the two outer ends - leaving a lot of rubbish (not doing anything, which would not bite at all), or invoking the spam blacklist more actively (the utter biting, you're not even allowed to save the edit). We have to be here somewhere inbetween. The edit-filter would be an option if it was not so 'heavy' on the servers (we tried to replace XLinkBot with an edit filter, took down saving of the pages ..). Otherwise we have to be optimal between

Bayesian spam filtering is partially a trick, but that does not take away cases like youtube spam (not the just bad youtube links - youtube IS used to spam as well), and it does not take away linking to plain copyvios on YouTube.

Question: If I would have come after you, removed the link and cleaned that sentence appropriately, and came to your talkpage with a similar explanation as XLinkBot, what would you have thought?

I would not have minded. In fact, the talkpage explanation would be overkill – if the edit summary explained it I'd be happy. I don't mind the copy edit bots and others, either. Jbarlow (talk) 20:15, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

That being said, there is a part in the reverts that is at the moment limited by what the server can give (in a way, as you say, a problem with the interface). It is something that is bugging me, and where I should try and work on. It would take away a part of these reverts (what I have in mind might take away the revert on the railway station - not sure about the other one .. problem is that part of the real spam is very similar to the facebook edit here .. where to put the limit. On the other hand, it might also revert things (real spam) then that it does not revert now). Now only if I had time to actually work on this .. (I have a more pressing bot-issue at the moment). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:46, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay, allow me to try and sum up.

01. the primary purpose of bot is to fight spam

02. the secondary purpose is to provide a warning/hint to new editors

03. editors with a username and 10 edits are presumed innocent by bot

04. counterargument: even experienced editors do not fully grok WP:NOT , WP:EL , WP:COPYRIGHT

05. because fighting spam is main goal, the entire edit is reverted (see faq for why)

06. because other antispam-bots were coded that way, all 'recent' edits by the IP are reverted

07. in at least one known case, this caused a year of innocent work to be lost

08. although the bot-author believes such cases are 0.1% rarities, no actual statistics exist

09. in at least one known case, an editor left (maybe for good) after the bot reverted them

10. even if this happenstance is very rare indeed, it is still a Bad Thing

11. in at least N known cases (all the comments here), editors were annoyed enough to speak up

12. do we have statistics on how many editors were reverted, how many overrode, how many re-edited, how many spoke up?

13. do we have statistics on how many never looked at their talkpage, never re-submitted, read faq, but never spoke up?

14. the printed messages are intended to be new-editor-friendly (not bitey)

15. the printed messages are Officially Approved By Some Nameless Official At Wikimedia Foundation

16. the printed messages direct now-confused new-editors to the bot FAQ; it is complex

17. the printed messages do not offer one-click override, but require many steps

18. override is actually quite easy to describe -- just resubmit the exact same change

19. figuring out you *can* override, and then doing so, requires quite a bit of time/effort/knowledge

20. some of the required knowledge is likely to be above and beyond new-editor-capability-level

21. the normal reaction of a bot-reverted new-editor-user is worry/guilt

22. the printed messages of the bot, on first glance, sound like a serious violation

23. the messages are *reasonably* friendly, but they are not quite friendly enough

24. making an edit, which is then 'caught' and then 'fixed' and then 'reported' seems serious

25. the second reaction of a bot-reverted user (myself,Jbarlow,etc) is indignation

26. our second thought is, why did the bot revert *all* my work, not just the bad link?

27. the faq explains the answer... but real new-editor-types will likely never get that far

28. the printed messages of the bot do *not* explain that answer (too complex)

29. for operation, the bot relies upon several greylists, which are regex domain-names / URLs

30. if an external link, a reference, or body-text matches the pattern, the bot activates

31. the contents of the greylist are pretty sweeping: most blogs, user-edited-sites, etc

32. the assumption is that e.g. blogspot should never be an official URL for anything

33. known counterexamples: TV station w/ just myspace, Linux project w/ just blogs.kde.org

34. likely counterexamples: sphere.wordpress.com ('official'), www.blogspot.com/about-us (self-referential)

35. assume good faith policy means that plaintext & intrawiki edits will not activate the bot

36. user-has-burden-of-proof-when-adding-external-links policy means captcha required

37. u-h-b-o-p-w-a-e-l policy also means bot activates && checks new links against greylist

38. ideally, we want users not to have to undergo any extra work, extra clicks, reading faqs, et cetera

39. however, we already make them enter captcha, so some extra work is not unheard of

40. that said, preventing spam-links also unavoidably prevents citation-links, due to overhead-burden

41. balancing act -- we demand proof of good intentions from bad spammers, and assume good intentions from everybody else

42. bot cannot distinguish spammers from otherwise, nor fathom intentions... practical limitations

43. suggestion was made to use bayesian techniques to adjust aggressiveness of the bot

44. counterargument was that youtube spam was exempt from bayesian (counter-counterarg: youtube now[?] has auto-closed-captioning)

45. assertion: not "too hard" to train bot to detect spam in text, not just in URLs (counter: it is Turing-complete!)

46. fundamentally, the problem is that super-spammers are in an arms race, their underpaid Nigerians versus Dirk's non-AI bot

47. wikipedia's true strength is not bots, but our massive populace of concerned human editors

48. (suggestion: maybe xlinkbot should push please-verify-I-did-the-right-thing request to talkpage of randomized editor, 1 out of 100 events say?)

49. (could test false-pos as well as false-neg percentages, by utilizing wikipedia's many many editors... but would they be annoyed by 'spam from antispam bot'?)

50. (maybe instead of randomized editor's talkpage, explicitly make a sign-up-to-help-train-the-heroic-antispam-bot campaign)

51. if we want to keep our editors happy, we need good speedy effective bots ... but we also need those bots non-bitey

52. edit contains 'viagra' and is 1st edit from the IP and is at 3am in geolocated timezone? be aggressive

53. edit contains tons of statistically-english-text with many intrawiki links and a couple cites in reftags? back off

54. IP has made a bunch of edits before, without getting flagged by humans or bots? back off further

55. cookie-tracking reveals statistically-normal pattern of *reading* wikipedia, not just pure edits? back way off

56. implementing these fancy-pants features will take time, however -- not enough bot-masters to go around

57. meanwhile, how do we keep the bitey-ness level *and* the spammy-ness level both as low as can be reasonably expected

58. human admin can revert a questionable edit, the place remark on person's talkpage, or on article talkpage... sure

59. can bot do the same? no, because bot is not human, no sense of context, no humor, cannot tell Bad edit from Good Faith one

60. bot must be more cautious, because it is casting a blanket worldwide dragnet, hunting those eeeevviiilll spammers

61. note that, because of captcha, bot is up against *super* spammers, with nigerian spam-mules and/or OCR anti-captcha

62. thus, sometimes spammers will outwit the bot -- we need to keep the bot aggressive as we can, or it will lose the War On Spam

63. that said, if we win the War On Spam, but deter all the new editors with too-bitey environment, wikipedia will die

64. balance, balance, balance -- it is all about protecting wikipedia by protecting new editors *and* by killing off new spam

65. the bot must make automated edits that are an overall win for wikipedia as a *whole* ... content + cites + newEditors + antispam

66. bots must obey WP:POINT just like humans, but harder for bots (no strong AI) ... and the emphasis is reversed

67. If you feel that it is too easy to add misinformation to Wikipedia... do not create an elaborate hoax with hopes of getting publicity for it

68. If you feel that it is too easy to add link-spam to Wikipedia... do not create a bot that adds link-spam (just to prove your point)

69. If you feel that it is too easy to add link-spam to Wikipedia... *maybe* create a bot that *slightly* hinders adding *some* links to Wikipedia

70. the pros and cons of partial-revert / single-revert / all-revert mechanisms have been fully discussed (see faq)

71. however, definition of "last stable version" for all-revert mechanism is buggy -- sometimes bot reverts a year of edits (Bad Thing)

72. the pros and cons of one-click-override / add-xlinkbot-functionality-to-captcha-page / bayesian-smarts are *being* discussed

73. bot is currently only performing anti-helpful actions , plus semi-helpful printed suggestions

74. bot needs to offer one-click versions of the most common helpful actions (less work for editor means less bitey)

75. furthermore, by implementing the bot to helpfully offer the most-useful-actions with just one click, less faqs/confusion/etc

76. in the particular case of adding links, wikipedia already requires human-captcha ... why not add xlinkbot functionality there, also?

77. there were *some* tests done with filter-immediately-on-edit functionality ... toll of this approach was too heavy on the servers

78. what are the details here? edit-filter in php, or c, or what? exact regex library? async ajax callback, or blocking server-side code?

according to [35] it is perl + pcre ... which explains the too-heavy-edit-filter-load

also, that link mentions that rules are forced to lowercase, but user-submitted links are not, so comparison is case-insensitive (and thus prolly slower)

better to copy the submitted text over to a temp-string, force-lowercase $tmp, and then perform the few-thousand regex matching ops as case-sensitive

79. how does current after-the-fact-revert implementation of xlinkbot avoid 'too-heavy' server loads? batch scan? lazy eval? 'offline' processing?

80. the first rule of xlinkbot should be the hippocratic oath -- first do no harm

81. however, because of the nature of xlinkbot's task, default behavior is to revert all recent edits... which is definitely harm

82. like captcha, methinks this is a case where adding an additional sentence-scan plus maybe a click, will help xlinkbot do *less* harm, more good

83. suggestion was made that somebody could analyze xlinkbot reverts related to e.g. youtube to check whether 97+% accuracy still holds

84. steps to do this? can we run a SQL query on xlinkbot revert-history, where t.url like '%youtu%' , or is manual digging reqd?

85. possibility was granted that 97+% accuracy was not *really* guaranteed... but spectre of Linking To Copyvio Materials , dmca , lawyers , govt takedown ...

86. hint was, reading between lines, wikimedia foundation wants certain types of link-spam taken down auto-speedy, avoiding potential future regulatory clampdown

87. finally, suggestion was made that if this argument grows much further, to take it to the generic-bot noticeboards

88. dirk has some ideas for an improved bot, related to partial-revert, and maybe bayesian/similar tricks, but difficult code, and time is short.

89. clearly this is a complex issue... I was planning on ~20 bulletpoints... but now they are numerically identified

90. if you have complaints about some particular statement, you can now easily say which: strongly agree #XX, strongly against #YY, etc. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 10:55, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

This obnoxious bot just reverted a link to Uncyclopedia from the article about Uncyclopedia. Perhaps its creators should read WP:ELOFFICIAL? K7L (talk) 04:10, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I am ignoring the tl;dr comment. No, K7L, you should read WP:ELOFFICIAL, the intro of WP:EL and WP:NOT, I have reverted your edit, those links do Not belong in the article. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:19, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

You've missed the point... this bot is reverting any link to Uncyclopedia from an article about Uncyclopedia. That prohibits a link to any official site for the article's topic. That is inconsistent with policy... much as Wikitravel is allowed to link to wikitravel.org even though the site is otherwise useless to us (outdated copy of same content that's in Wikivoyage and fails WP:RS utterly as a user-editable wiki). K7L (talk) 04:26, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

No, I am not missing the point. An official blogspot is appropriate on that one in over 4 million pages, and then blogspot is hardly ever thé official page, in by far, far more cases, another link is the official site. And then that link should added by a new editor or IP to be reverted. And of those cases where a subject only has a blogspot, how many are notable enoughto be here anyway, and that page is put up for self promotion. And then there are the plethora of cases that do not get reverted because of other reasons in the protection mechanism. It is quite rare that that happens, and only a part of those editors feel bitten - XLinkBotdoes get praise as well for reverts from new editors sometimes. I think that less editors walk away afteran XLinkBot revert than after an edit-filter block or warning, or a blacklist block. And I don't believe that XLinkBot haunts more editors away than other vandalism-fighting bots, or even maintenance bots, or editors tagging new pages fir maintenance. WMF should have the statistics, they looked into that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:45, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

The 'bot edit to Uncyclopedia is analogous to removing a link to http://blogspot.com from an article entitled Blogspot. Your subsequent edits to the article violate WP:POINT and WP:NPOV as the article indicates a fork (computing) has taken place; the article is (or was) carefully WP:NEUTRAL by not favouring either version over the other. Your undoing the compromise (link to both versions of a fork) was manual and deliberate.

That's an entirely different problem from the Afton Station or MyNetworkTV Wilmington question (where the article's subject operates a site on some marginal free host). K7L (talk) 05:02, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that edit is deliberate indeed. We are writing an encyclopedia, and the article thoroughly explains the situation regarding moving to Wikia, and the existence of forks etc. We are not writing a linkfarm that then needs to link to all those forks and even redirects which lead to the same place. Often, one (thé) official site is enough, there are just some rare cases where linking to other official sites is needed.

Regarding removing blogspot.com from Blogspot being the same as removing uncyclopedia.wikia.com from uncyclopedia being the same, I did not say that it was not. But that type of reverts is quite rare. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:01, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

As you have now succeeded in disrupting Wikipedia to make a WP:POINT by provoking an incident, I've responded on the incident thread, Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard#Uncyclopedia. Hopefully the issues will be addressed there. K7L (talk) 16:00, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

That is a strong accusation, K7L. You're calling out the actions of the bot, and my interpretations, do not respond to my statistics and call the bot overly bitey, I have now escalated the situation, as I suggested earlier. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:19, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

First, K7L, yeah we both a few concerns here, but this absolutely does not call for writing the 95 theses. I'm content to see that Dirk agreed there's some room for improvement. and I'll leave it there. Jbarlow (talk) 20:15, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

jbarlow, the 90 numbered items were put here by me, not by KL7, who was just making a comment, indented from my list. (I've added some newlines to visually separate them.) Dirk has decided to ignore my list, sigh. You also apparently think it was overly dramatic. But what I was actually trying to do is separate the wheat from the chaff. Dirk is defending the bot, *exactly* the way it is now. But it clearly has problems. If he were to set the bot free on all editors, regardless of how many days they have been registered, I predict there would be immediate backlash bordering on violence. Adding external links to facebook is not a crime (or blogspot or youtube or whatever), but xLinkBot makes the recipient of an xLinkBot revert *believe* that to be the case. I'm not positive whether this is because *Dirk* believes that to be the case, or because xLinkBot is badly implemented. Personally, I think the biggest bugs in xLinkBot are #3, #6, #9, #16, #21, #23, #31, #56, #63, #74, and #78... if the bot cannot be optimized to work well without being bitey, then we need to stop using perl and regex, and switch to something faster. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:23, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Dirk, you claim that the controversial edits xLinkBot is making are 'quite rare'. But are you basing that claim on your study of 30 samples, or on analysis of the past few thousand xLinkBot actions? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:23, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• Congratulations IP, you've replied to a discussion that ended 10 days ago for no reason other than to stir up more problems. And you've posted a complete and utter bunch of waffle that makes no sense, and looks like hysterical ranting. Again. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 22:45, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Nice to meet you, too. I seem to remember you... ah, yes, you were the one who deleted my Martin Luther posting, which took an hour, with "uh what" as your only comment. Considerably more bitey than xLinkBot, nicely proving Dirk's theory that xLinkBot is not very bitey compared to human editors. In any case, thanks for leaving it up, the second time around -- just like xLinkBot would. However, if the bot is still active, and still implemented in the way Dirk continues to insist is perfect, then it is laughable of you to say that I am stirring up trouble. The trouble was already stirred up when the bot was approved by Official Wikimedia Personnel Who Shall Remain Nameless. The bot is bitey. This seems quite obvious to myself, KL7, and jbarlow. You claim I am making no sense... and to that, I can only say, read the 90 items in the list. Or just read the ones that really irk me, see numbered list above. There are brutally simple points, easy to understand. You may not *agree* with all of them; that is not the point of the list. *I* do not agree with most of them, because most of the points are made by Dirk, jbarlow, or KL7, rephrased into bullet-points by myself, to try and speed the discussion process towards consensus... fail!  :-) The discussion will be over when consensus has been achieved, about whether the bot is properly implemented. Whether it takes a few more days, or a few more years, is quite relevant to the success of wikipedia. We are already suffering a crisis in terms of how many admins and editors we have. User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Adminship_table_of_yearly_counts Please try and pay attention to pillar number four, and to assume good faith. I'm here to make wikipedia better, and I expect the same is true of you... but your tone is pretty unconvincing in the paragraph I'm replying to. Do you have specific questions about why I think the bot bites? I'm happy to explain. Do you have specific questions about what I think we ought to do that would improve the bot? Ask away. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:53, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Reverted Corrections in Dom (musician)

Hello, I'm a representative of an artist who's wiki page has been reverted to display incorrect information. I was hoping this could be corrected. Please help me. Thank you. (previous unsigned comment posted by Dommusicinc circa 2013-10-08 ... click View History button at the top to see the details ... for some reason SineBot is failing to auto-correct these mistakes ... maybe because this is a bot's talkpage?)

Hello DomMusicInc, I have posted some help for you over here -- Talk:Dom_(musician)#Link_to_facebook_page_and_the_xLinkBot. This includes an explanation of xLinkBot, facebook, WP:COI, and how to work with the system. Congratulations on overriding xLinkBot successfully, and continuing to make edits. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:44, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Reverting of a constructive edit: Spyro (series)

Yeah, I don't come here much except when I need to know something, but I found some obvious vandalism on the Spyro (series) article. Pretty bluntly, the external link to the Spyro wiki was replaced with a link to a dragon-themed sex toy manufacturer. I corrected this, only to find it reverted by this bot. While hilarious, that's probably not a good thing. (previous unsigned edit made at 05:21, 4 October 2013‎ by 162.72.251.67 making their *first* constructive edit of wikipedia, after a couple false starts involving the insertion of unsourced claims into the bulimia article -- congratulations 162.)

Hello 162, thanks for fixing that vandalism in wikipedia. We appreciate it; sorry xLinkBot got in your way. Here is the [36] which has the edit-attempt. The sex-toy website (labelled as "Spyro Wiki" according to the infobox) contains this text according to duckduckgo -- "Confirm your age. BORING LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This website contains naughty things and is intended solely for viewing by an adult audience. By continuing to view any material contained within this website, you are enthusiastically stating and acknowledging that..." Our hero 162 noticed this vandalism, bothered to perform a websearch, and found that the number one hit was here -- spyro.wikia.com/wiki/Insomniac_Games -- which is the actual albeit unofficial Spyro Wiki. Here is xLinkBot, robotically and annoyingly putting the sex-toy-spamlink right back in.[37] That was seven hours after 162 fixed the vandalism in the first place; after another 20 hours of wikipedia linking to the sex-toy website, 162 noticed the bot had screwed up, went back to the article in question to override the bot.[38] Then, going above and beyond the call, they came here to report the bug in the bot. Which was over a week ago, and no response. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:59, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

(cur | prev) 11:32, 6 October 2013‎ 151.230.249.126 (talk)‎ . . (50,126 bytes) (+30)‎ . . (undo)
(cur | prev) 05:18, 4 October 2013‎ 162.72.251.67 (talk)‎ . . (50,096 bytes) (+14)‎ . . (Fixed the link to the Spyro Wiki (which a bot helpfully changed after the last time I fixed it)) (undo)
(cur | prev) 21:51, 3 October 2013‎ 217.39.37.222 (talk)‎ . . (50,082 bytes) (-17)‎ . . (→‎Skylanders) (undo)
(cur | prev) 21:50, 3 October 2013‎ 217.39.37.222 (talk)‎ . . (50,099 bytes) (-7)‎ . . (→‎The Legend of Spyro series) (undo)
(cur | prev) 21:49, 3 October 2013‎ 217.39.37.222 (talk)‎ . . (50,106 bytes) (-30)‎ . . (→‎The Legend of Spyro series) (undo)
(cur | prev) 09:43, 3 October 2013‎ XLinkBot (talk | contribs)‎ . . (50,136 bytes) (-14)‎ . . (BOT--Reverting link addition(s) by 162.72.251.67 to revision 575505764 (http://spyro.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page [\bwikia\.com\b])) (undo)
(cur | prev) 02:34, 3 October 2013‎ 162.72.251.67 (talk)‎ . . (50,150 bytes) (+14)‎ . . (Yeah, I really don't think someone linked to a sex toy site by mistake) (undo)

Currently, the infobox on the article has been changed yet again, this to point at http://lair.spyrothedragon.com/splash -- which is a link that does *not* appear in the top ten hits for spyro sony insomnia but rather seems to be the 'official' site of a variant called "The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night" ... and apparently some wikipedia editors believe them, despite the fact that duckduckgo suggests the real 'official' site should actually be spyro-yearofthedragon.com ... or maybe spyro1.com ... or perhaps just insomniacgames.com ... of course, none of the above seem to be sex-toy-related websites, but many of them seem to violate WP:COI and prolly WP:NPOV, so I'm tempted to say that 162's choice of the wikia website was likely the most useful unique resource that deserved to be in the infobox. Not being familiar with the subject of the article, I'll leave that up to the editors there who care. Maybe somebody with WP:COI experience wants to lend a hand? See also next paragraph.... 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:59, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

The page-history does *not* seem to make any sense... here is the edit where 162 changed the URL from the bad-dragon sex-toy site to the unofficial wikia site[39] to override xLinkBot, which was 5am on the 4th, and here is the very 'next' edit[40] at 11am on the 6th, where somehow the infobox link was *already* changed, and not by the 151-whatever editor, from what I can tell. Where did the missing edit-history for that 48-hour period go? How did the link get changed from the unofficial wikia to one of the alleged official commercial sites? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:59, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Here was the sex-toy-related vandalism, which happened in mid-September several weeks ago: [41] This was the sole edit by the 95-dot-whatever IP editor. Note that no bot caught the spam-insertion in September, and that 95-whatever is not to be found on these spamlists.[42][43] The only other hit for that URL in a typical wikipedia search is over here[44] where somebody was trying to used a forum-post from the bad-dragon website as anecdotal evidence to justify something sex-related. Can somebody run a check, to see why no existing bot figured out that 95 was inserting a spam-link, please? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:59, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Handled elsewhere, not xLinkBot-related

Hi, my problem is that every time i add a picture on my page it gives a notice of speedy deletion. how can i prevent it.--Pratham 06:00, 26 October 2013 (UTC)Prathamprakash29 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prathamprakash29 (talk • contribs)

Hello Pramtham, welcome to wikipedia. I have responded on your talkpage. xLinkBot did not nominate your uploaded image for deletion. Also, you do not need to apply for adminship to contest the deletion. I will explain further elsewhere. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 20:41, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Suggested improvement to user notifications

Instead of saying this;

"The external link(s) you added or changed (https://www.example.com/example.html) is/are on my list of links to remove..."

The user notification should say this;

"The external link(s) you added or changed (www.example.com/example.html) is/are on my list of links to remove..."

There is no point in giving the spammer a free link, even if it's only on a user talk page. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:22, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Counter to that, the anti-spam team uses these to find editors who have been warned for adding this link. Otherwise they are more difficult to find (if there are 10 different user_talk pages showing up in a linksearch and no mainspace_pages .. it may be a good case to blacklist the stuff). The spammer may have a free link, but 'nofollow' does not count it (so it does not help your SEO ranking, and talkpages are also 'noindex'), and editors are unlikely to find the link and follow it and buy the stuff the spammer is selling. I don't think a spammer will have a lot of gain of having the link on his spam talkpage, especially not when it is embedded in an spam-warning. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:51, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Link my email to Bronx_Community_Board_8

I was trying to link my email to a page labelled Bronx Community Board No. 8. That is this organizations page. I have been making edits for several years. How can I link my user name to that page forever!

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bronxcb8 (talk • contribs) 18:46, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

[updated] Hi bronxcb8, I've responded to your question over here -- Talk:Bronx_Community_Board_8#what_is_the_status_of_the_facebook_page_of_Bronx_Community_Board_No._8. Unfortunately, you probably cannot link your username/email/facebook to that page *literally* forever... wikipedia will outlast us, after all. But it *might* be appropriate to have your link included in the article, see my discussion. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 11:12, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

[old message please ignore] Are you having trouble with xLinkBot specifically, in terms of your question? Or is it more of a general how-do-i-do-this difficulty, not related to xLinkBot? If the former, please explain what you are asking -- I do not understand. If your question is not xLinkBot-specific, then try asking over at Wikipedia:Questions -- if nothing there looks like what you need, click the one that says Help Desk, and they'll tell you what to do. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:01, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Later update -- brand new username, first time edit, immediately reverted by xLinkBot, user has never returned that I know of... they claim to have been editing several years, presumably as an unspecified IP?

    18:46, 17 September 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+218)‎ . . User talk:XLinkBot ‎
    17:39, 17 September 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+167)‎ . . Bronx Community Board 8 ‎

Note that they also fixed a typo, while adding the 'unofficial' facebook page of the community board in question. Per the assertions above, it sounds like the 'unofficial' page is probably more official than the 'official' page, which wikipedia already lists. This person was appending the facebook homepage of the board, not overwriting the official one, btw. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:42, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

The page still contained address-information, which absolutely does not belong on Wikipedia (neither does an e-mail address belong in mainspace).

Funny thing is, the editor did not edit again you say, well, they did, this was their return, they were here earlier in a different way, and XLinkBot here clearly was not bitey on its earlier occasion, as the editor returned :-D (nor did it manage to convey its message :-( ). You may want to put this into your statistics regarding how bitey XLinkBot is .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:58, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The statistician has duly noted this in the logbook. However, the definition of bitey is not specifically related to driven-away-forever. If something increases wikiStress, it is bitey, because wikiStress is cumulative. I suggest that our local bronx-community-board-eight friend was still bitten (in the sense of experienced increased wikiStress for a time). When they came back, the same thing bit them again.

  As for your content-assertions, that the address-info does not belong, I assume you mean the physical-address-info, not the facebook URL? Or maybe you did mean the facebook-URL. And... ummm... speaking of folks meaning the facebook-URL... from what I can grok, User:bronxcb8 was intending to refer to the facebook-URL, when they spoke of their "email" being in the page forever.  ;-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:22, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Association of Youth Organizations Nepal

On the page "Association of Youth Organizations Nepal" in the section "Member organisations", I fixed the broken link

HRELIC Nepal (National committee of Human Rights Education Club)

XLinkBot reverted my fix. Thus, the page now has the broken link again.

XLinkBot apparently doesn't like the fixed link (http://hrelicnepal.blogspot.com) because it's a "blogspot". In this case, XLinkBot is wrong. Sometimes, organizations do not have a true website; instead, they use a blog page as their "website".

Please reinstate my fix. It works. XLinkBot's reversion does NOT work--it favors a broken link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.113.34.74 (talk) 10:26, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the blogspot, it does indeed happen that organisations do have as their only main webpage a blogspot. It is a possible false positive, though an infrequent one (in most cases, it is not the main website). You could, as the bot suggested, have reverted the edit.

However, I have removed the broken link, and the other links. Lists like that should not be linking externally in that way, per our 'What Wikipedia is not' policy. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:10, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Also not a case of bitey-ness, the editor agrees with WP:NOTYELLOW, as do I. Left a message on the article-talkpage about using dmoz.org for storing the links, if somebody with special interest in Nepalese youth organizations shows up. The main official AYON site also sometimes has a member-directory, but they get database-errors and are not in archive-sites at present, so that's another fallback. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Procedure to add a personality profile into wikipedia

Hello Sir/Madam,

I am Aravind V From Kerala state of India. I wish to add a profile of my uncle ( A famous Doctor and chief medical superintendent of Vadakkara district hospital,calicut district,kerala state,India) named Dr.Peeyush M Namputhiripad to wikipedia page. please tel me how to create about a profile about him. Awaiting your reply --Kannan2121 (talk) 08:57, 20 November 2013 (UTC) ARAVIND

The best way is to go through Wikipedia:Articles for creation, and let an independent editor evaluate what you posted. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:01, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

What is the gender of xLinkBot? I've also wondered that.  :-)   I'll go see if I can assist Aravind. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:52, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

p.s. Not a case of WP:BITE, their message from xLinkBot was sent to them in 2010, they just clicked on it because it was at the top of their talkpage. Maybe xLinkBot messages should expire after 6 months, and auto-remove themselves? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, IP talkpages should be archived (if there are possibly relevant discussions or warnings; blanked if there is nothing of 'interest', deleted if they only contain rubbish). There is guidance for that somewhere... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:58, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Josh3580 left a message on your talk page in "December 2013". This is your last warning; the next time you harm Wikipedia, as you did at ASCII art with this edit, you may be blocked from editing without furthe...

HELLO Wikipedia and Josh3580,

Please advice me how can I edit and add links to ASCII books, ASCII Museum and ASCII in real-time writings. It is not a spamm, I am just trying to add information to the ASCII page as an ASCII artist. Thank you.

RozitaFogelman (talk) 07:16, 15 December 2013 (UTC) Rozita Fogelman rozita.fogelman@gmail.com

Thank you for your remark. I would start with reading the external links guideline and take it to heart - do these links really belong here, should you be adding them yourself or should you discuss on the talkpage? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:30, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Please, also read this guideline - Wikipedia is not here to promote your work! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:32, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 8 December

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Drayen dorff page, your edit caused a missing references list (help | help with group references). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:20, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Pff .. that is the least of the issues with the article. It is prodded at the moment, I would have speedied it without question as promotional and not notable. Still considering the same. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:38, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Suggest that xLinkBot be programmed to parse these talkpage messages, and detect any it gets from ReferenceBot, and then post an erroneous reference to the ReferenceBot talkpage... if and when ReferenceBot ever begins policing the talkpage posts it receives, an infinitely-exponential loop of boht-messaging will result! Wait.. wait that's bad. Isn't there a way for bohts to detect when another boht has made an edit, and *not* give them trouble? SineBot should not be reminding xLinkBot to use the tildes, and xLinkBot should not be hassling ReferenceBot, nor vice versa. Sooner or later, you'll have an unintended consequence. There was actually a bot-war when wikiData started replacing interwiki links... some bot was written to remove the old links, but an existing boht detected it as vandalism and re-inserted... after which the wikidata bot trawled the page again, and re-deleted, then re-re-insertion, then re-re-deletion... admins ended up blocking when they noticed the CPUs were pegged, or something like that. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:18, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

XLinkBot will never hassle bots - bots are 'trusted' and are way over the edit limit :-) --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:34, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Links to Official Hearst News Station Channels on YouTube

Hi - I added links to the *official* YouTube channels for several Hearst television news stations. I have reviewed the linking guidelines and do not see how this is a problem. I am going to revert your edit.

"Please stop adding inappropriate external links to Wikipedia, as you did to WXII-TV. It is considered spamming and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or promotion. Because Wikipedia uses nofollow tags, additions of links to Wikipedia will not alter search engine rankings. If you continue spamming, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tslizzle (talk • contribs) 17:17, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

They are all unnecessary per WP:ELOFFICIAL - the data is all linked from the already linked official website. We are not writing a linkfarm regarding these stations, if the official site is there, then youtubes, blogspots, myspaces, facebooks, twitters, &c. are not needed as well (mostly because, if they are official, they are often already (prominently) linked from the main official site, which makes the linkfarming superfluous, and if they are not linked from there, one has a) to question whether they find it interesting to maintain, and/or, whether they are officially maintained by the same organisation). I have removed all the additions again. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:08, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Ruth Paine link

What was unreliable about an external link?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpaine.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.39.147.59 (talk) 05:21, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that XLinkBot removed links because of this link - I can however see that it does not belong there. To get more info regarding this link, maybe you should ask User:Gamaliel? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:09, 16 December 2013 (UTC)