User talk:Lightmouse

Lightbot

Hi. Lightbot is delinking all instances of 1798 where '1798' is any year. Can you please refer me to the approval for this? Sarah777 (talk) 19:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Sarah, At first I did not know what you meant because that looked just like a solitary year. And I think that is the point, anything that looks like a solitary year is going to be treated like one. That is why some projects deprecate them and suggest that at least one non-date word is included. I understand that Wikipedia as a whole is actively considering such a policy and your views on concealed date links will be welcome at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Concealed_links. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 01:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Sarah, the use of hidden links is generally not recommended, since they look identical to the solitary year-links that are widely disparaged as adding nothing at the expense of a smooth reading experience. Readers are highly unlikely to follow them. Some WikiProjects have either banned them (Music) or are considering doing so (film). If "year in X" pages can add to a reader's understanding of a topic, it's more practical to reword the first one so that it's clearly what it is, and doesn't look like a plain year-link. The first one is usually in the lead, which is a prominent place, and the conduit for the reader to reach all other sibling "year in X" pages. It's more likely they'll be viewed with a single, explicit link, ironically, and the amount of blue-splotch in the text can be minimised at the same time. Tony (talk) 09:11, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• And, for whatever it’s worth Sarah777, Tony is absolutely spot-on with his above comment. I couldn’t have said it any better. This issue has been debated on WT:MOSNUM for quite some time. Of course, once action actually starts to take place, new editors, have a “WTF” reaction and wonder where all that came from. It would be hard for anyone but a Swiss patent examiner to tortuously wade through all that has transpired on WT:MOSNUM and track the changing consensus and follow the reasoning. But Lightmouse and Tony are correct and are doing the right thing. Greg L (talk) 03:04, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Focus folks. The question I asked was what authority the bot had to delete "Years in Ireland" links. The answer is now clear; none. Sarah777 (talk) 09:03, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Better summary labelling your bot's changes

Can I ask that you have better summary labelling of Lightbot's changes that it is making. I would hope that the summary would have a specific link to the reasoning and discussion that took place, rather than the non-specific and non-helpful summation that currently exists. At the moment it looks like a bot acting in isolation, and when you go to Lightbot's user and talk pages, there is nothing enlightening to what is occurring nor why? I would hope that the explanation would specifically link to the relevant part of the WP:MOS or decision-making discussion. Thanks. -- billinghurst (talk) 03:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I have asked this user in the past to make better edit summaries regarding this, and to be fair, the summaries are better than in the past, even if only marginally so. They are still far from ideal, though, because what Lightmouse/Lightbot (please fill in the appropriate entity) is doing is flat out unlinking of dates. A more honest edit summary would say something along the lines of "Automatically unlinking dates per this user's interpretation of MOS:NUM that deprecation of auto-formatted dates is the same as prohibiting them." — Bellhalla (talk) 04:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

While User:Lightmouse may have MOS:UNLINKDATES at the front of mind for that POV, there is also the page Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people which has specific guidance about people. Note the specific wikilink'd dates for the person. If someone is running a bot that trawls through WP, I would think that there should be the provision, if not the demand, for specific and accurate summation. Laissez faire is simply insufficient with a bot. If one doesn't care sufficiently about specifying their justification, then the request will go out for the bot to be suspended when it is the only avenue open. -- billinghurst (talk) 07:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Billinghurst, thank you for posting here. Try as I did, I couldn't find a single date or date fragement on that page that is linked or autoformatted. Can you please point me in the right direction? Concerning your point about the specificity of edit summaries, the "Unlink dates" location is about as specific as you can get surely, given that direct links to further information are provided there. Can you give me an idea of what you had in mind that would be acceptable? Tony (talk) 08:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I think they're referring to the summary "Units/dates/other" which Lightbot employs, rather than the script-assisted "Date audit" one. --Closedmouth (talk) 08:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks CM, yes, I was indeed referring to "U/d/o". Tony, it is not the words that are the issue (THE WHAT), it is the premise (THE WHY). I would think that a summation would include the basic background for why you have a bot running, if you are running a bot to comply with a guideline, then it would be useful to quote the guideline. This can be a direct line to the guideline, or belief and interpretation on your bot's talk page.

If many wikiauthors are all making the same "mistake", then the bot summation also needs to fulfil an educative & preventative function, in addition to a corrective. Similarly, if someone disagrees with what your bot is doing, an explanation of the purpose, allows the background information for people to raise their issue with you, while maintaining good faith. Regards Andrew -- billinghurst (talk) 10:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Billinghurst, my experience is that whenever I change the edit summary in response to a request from one person, there will always be another request for a change by another person. Long edit summaries get more complaints than short ones. Unfortunately, there is not a single place to look for a reasoning and discussion about date links. Even worse, that reasoning and discussion is not succinct enough for a short read and much has already been archived. If you look at the bot user page, you will see that it links to the approval for what it does. If you would like the edit summary to provide a link to wp:mosnum, I can do that. That page, its talk page, and its links all provide connections to the extensive discussions about date links. If you read the discussions and come up with a better page link than that, we could consider that too. Does that seem like a good way forward? Lightmouse (talk) 10:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Tony, lots of ways to skin a cat. a) Summary b) link in Summary to an wl#anchor on the bot talk page. I did see the approval, though when I want to see what and why a bot is doing something, explanation should not be in Geek, it should be in Joe Avge. At a minimum a link to MOSNUM.

It is possible that what I am seeing is the bot having elements of unexpected behaviour, and that the differentiation is not possible when the actual goal is not evident. The example is that it pulls date wl from [[WP:DATA]] templates, and if one looks at the recommendations for that use it specifically states to wl dates. -- billinghurst (talk) 12:24, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Another link for Lightbot's explanation of why that would be useful is Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context#Dates. In reflection, the guidance material is still less than clear and specific and still somewhat buried in the wp:mosnum#Date autoformatting which is somewhat muddying the discussion. -- billinghurst (talk) 00:34, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot

Greetings,

In articles concerning history, linking to dates makes a lot of sense...Lightbot is currently deleting far too many date links. It is not human and does not know the difference between a necessary and unnecessary link. I suggest stopping the removal of date links.

Sincerely Ryoung122 09:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi,

Thanks for your suggestion, can you provide an example article so I can see which date links you mean? Lightmouse (talk) 09:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

[1], [2] as an example. --PaterMcFly (talk) 11:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• William Holwell
• Henry Holyoake
• RD Waddilove

-- billinghurst (talk) 11:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Initial link analysis by Tony: Perhaps I could start with the first diff ("2" above). I note that the years are still linked in the infobox, and thus were double-linked, although strictly speaking that's irrelevant to the point here: whether it's sufficiently helpful to the reader to travel to the year pages to outweigh the dilution of other, possibly more pertinent links nearby in the text of this article (Abbey of St. Gall).

First, may I observe that the whereabouts of the Abbey are unclear from the article (unless you're very familiar with the northeast corner of the Jural Mountains. A link to St. Gallen is provided, which does turn out to have a good map, but just why the general articles on Switzerland and Canton are linked next to it (thus diluting it) is unclear, since St. Gallen already has a link to each. And if "Switzerland" were to be linked at all, it should be to the relevant section Switzerland#Cantons, which has a helpful map.

However, better still would be to include a map in the article, enabling readers to see the location without having to second-guess which link will deliver this map, and having to interrupt their reading to find it, especially if they're unwise enough to choose "Switzerland" first (I'd have done that, thinking big for a big map). At what point in their reading they'd divert from the "St. Gallen" article to conduct the hunt, or whether they'd bother (most would not, I suspect), is up for grabs.

The first year-link is to 613. This is a fragmentary little half page containing a few ragtag facts. The closest ones are the death of the Queen and two Kings of Austrasia (all in the same year—do I believe this?). But just where exactly the borders of Austrasia were is unclear even from the article on that topic, so we're in the dark as to whether it had anything at all to do with the Abbey. There's no mention of "Austrasia" in the "Abbey of St. Gall" article, sadly. That sent the readers down a rabbit hole, didn't it.

"613" provides other weird and wonderful information, such as "Muhammad begins preaching Islam in public", "Isanapura becomes the capital of the Cambodian kingdom of Chenla", "Aethelfrith of Northumbria defeats the Welsh and their allies at Chester", "Shahrbaraz of Persia captures Damascus", and—seriously, folks—Heraclius, Byzantine Emperor married his own niece, Martina. And where, I ask you, is "Dumnonia", because Bledric ap Custennin died there; and just where Yang Xuangan lived requires another leap into the blue magic carpet of cyberspace. Apparently no one interesting was born at all in 613 (blank section). Down the right side (calendar box), I see that 613 was 1156 in the Thai solar calendar. What a relief.

But let's return to the topic at hand. Ah yes, and there is a mention of the Abbey of St. Gall in 613, with a helpful link back to the article we were reading in the first place. But too late, 613: the original article stole the march on you—we've just come from that statement. This illustrates my suspicion that any information in a year article that is relevant to the reader's understanding of a topic is either already in the original aritlce or should be. It would be a great little research topic for an honours student in whatever to record what links people actually do hit, both when everything in sight is linked, as here, and when the links are rationed to the high-value ones. Common sense tells me which wiki-design is more effective.

613 may be vaguely useful for discretionary browsing, and I'm sure I could make it a lot better for that purpose if I wanted to. But magic blue carpets for discretionary browsing are way down the list of priorities for a serious information source, IMO. And instead of this the article frankly needs cleaning up in the formatting of case and punctuation in its years, which is inconsistent.

Any better bids for the next year-link in that article? Tony (talk) 14:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• Common sense tells me which wiki design is the most effective: linking dates. Because when I read articles I regularly click on dates to find out the historical context of the article, and to see what other things (yes, unrelated things, I am NOT interested in related stuff, I do not have a linear mind and Wikipedia is NOT a linear encyclopedia, it is a hyperlinked encyclopedia where one should be able to visit an unrelated article easily). Delinking dates injure my reading experience, and it also makes me not wanting to improve any year articles as I know that they will soon all become orphaned and nobody is going to benefit from my work on them so why bother improving them? Some people remove wikilinks to dates because they want to ensure that high-priority relevant wikilinks are visible, but simply removing the "secondary" wikilinks is not a solution. A solution would be to keep all links but draw the important ones in a different way, perhaps even just making them bold. NerdyNSK (talk) 22:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• And, to add something, when reading Wikipedia I like its non-linear nature: I can hop from article to article clicking links and finding new stuff. But while people now start removing links they consider irrelevant then Wikipedia will very soon become just a linear encyclopedia, not different than the paper ones, and thus I will become totally uninterested in it. The nonlinear nature of the wiki is one of the most powerful motivations that makes me wanting to read stuff here and contribute. Actually another website has got it right: they link every word everywhere but the links have the same behaviour as the "normal text" (that's an oxymoron: there isn't normal text at all since every word is linked, even the titles). Double clicking on a word presents you a dictionary definition, a thesaurus with synonyms, and an encyclopedia article. Of course their implementation from a technical perspective could be improved, but in practice I think Wikipedia should try to achieve something similar. Every word, everywhere, with no single exception, should be a link (but whether it is an XHTML anchor link depends on considerations for compatibility/accessibility etc) which when clicked or doubleclicked it could open the relevant Wikipedia article, the relevant Wiktionary article, the relevant Wikibooks/Wikisource pages, or all of them. And this should be the default behaviour, not depended on scripts, user preferences, or customisations. NerdyNSK (talk) 23:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Better bids? The ones stripped from the Saint Gall article weren't even simple year links. Definitely a bad move by Lightbot! Andy Dingley (talk) 14:21, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Some recent edits by Lightbot (e.g. this one) have made changes outside the bot's remit (per it's approval and subsequent clarification). In that edit, it has unlinked years where the link pointed to something other than a standard year article — i.e. links of the form [[1910 in Ireland|1910]]. I don't particularly wish to get into a discussion on the merits of each and every one of the links it has removed: some clearly were superfluous. But two points remain: first and foremost, the bot does not have permission to make these edits; and second, deciding which of these links are appropriate and which are not is beyond the scope of a bot — it needs human intelligence. Please stop Lightbot from making these edits. — ras52 (talk) 15:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I have switched off this function. However, it seems self-evident that a link that looks like a solitary year will be treated like one. Concealing or camouflaging links is just silly. Many of these links actually break dates and must be removed. Others have been placed there as a symptom of the link-all-dates obsession that started with autoformatting. If anyone is interested in helping readers, they should add at least one non-date word so that it won't be ignored. Lightmouse (talk) 15:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I wonder why would we ever want to disguise [[1910 in Ireland]] with the ambiguous [[1910 in Ireland|1910]] display. This incorrectly distracts the reader into thinking that the link is a more general 1910 (which would be less pertinant to the article) than the 1910 in Ireland would be. Aside from the issue of date linking I have always disagreed with hiding the specific nature of the date/place or thing link like this.--Kumioko (talk) 17:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• I personally have no problem with "hidden" year dates, as they keep the article text cleaner: linking the phrase "in 1910" or "was built in 1910" and wikilinking it to "1910 in architecture" or something is stupid: the words "in" or "built" are not related to the link in any way; only the year is. As Wikipedia matures and if in the end year articles get better, people will start linking to the specific year articles (eg "1910 in science") rather than to the general year articles, and readers will be able to assume that year links are towards subject year articles. But even if they link to general years, that's not a problem. A motivation for clicking a year is to escape from a boring article and reading something unrelated while still staying within a particular historical period. If I get bored reading about the second world war, I may want to visit the 1943 wikilink to see what else, except war, was happening in that year. Delinking years denies me this pleasure and is pure evil. NerdyNSK (talk) 22:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Kumioko is right: "hidden" links are a waste, because readers will think they're the usual useless stand-alone year-link. You can always work the explicit group of words smoothly into one of the sentences: that way, readers are much more likely to follow the link. But just do it once, in a prominent place (usually the lead)—this can be the gateway through which readers access all of the sibling "year in X" articles, without the need to work every such link into their home sentences throughout the article. Smart linking, it's called. Tony (talk) 03:15, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps because, on occasion, it's evident from the context? But I'm not trying to defend any of the links in particular. Actually, I agree that many (but probably not all) are inappropriate and should go. However, my two points remain: first the bot doesn't have permission to do this, and second deciding which links should be removed is beyond the scope of what a bot can reasonably do without human assistance. — ras52 (talk) 17:25, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Nobody born in 613? There, fixed that for ya! — BRIAN0918 • 2008-09-19 20:16Z

The Initial link analysis by Tony: seems misdirected. It attempts to make the point that because some wikilinks do not provide a lot of useful information, then we should not wikilink. The purpose of Wikipedia is to provide information, and wikilinks do just that; they open the door to additional information ... if the reader chooses to use it by clicking on the link. To decide that some links are good while others are not is censorship, which Wikipedia is not. NerdyNSK has the right idea; linking dates can be useful, depends on the reader. And since our main goal is to provide information to our readers, why are we removing links? We should be adding them and letting our readers decide if they want to use them. A good argument could be made that every word in every article should be wikilinked, everything blue. Then, if the reader wants extra information on anything (a word he may not fully understand, the location of a referenced town, what else happened in the year the person was born, etc.), all that information is only a mouse click away. Truthanado (talk) 00:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

"every word in every article should be wikilinked, everything blue"—Ah, I didn't know you were one of the All-the-web crowd that wants every item to be bright blue, like this. There we are. Sorry, but that's not the way WP has evolved, thank god. And I keep saying that anyone is free to type any item into the search box, while having a reasonably smooth read of the text—that is, without more than a controlled amount of bright blue. Tony (talk) 02:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

...also that's been addressed more thoroughly at WP:Allwiki, fyi Brando130 (talk) 06:24, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Date link question

Hello again, I am still trying to make an edit that will remove date links from [[2008-09-25]] type dates. Have you been able to figure this out yet?--Kumioko (talk) 20:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

There ought to be a "delink ISO" option in the toolkit. Gimmetrow 03:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how this would be possible, how would the script know if [[1990-01-02]] is 1 February or 2 January? --Closedmouth (talk) 14:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Curious format

[3] New one to me. Gimmetrow 03:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems that there is an infinite number of ways that autoformatting can be broken. Frankly, I am no longer surprised by broken autoformatting, although I am surprised that the pro-autoformatting crowd don't care enough about autoformatting to fix broken links so that it works. The linking to irrelevant page articles shows that some people do not link to add value or to autoformat, they are just acting like "Monkey see, monkey do". The script would normally delink the solitary months, but that feature is currently switched off. Lightmouse (talk) 15:23, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Date linking request (birth and death years)

I can understand that some people don't want articles to become a "sea of blue" by linking to all dates.

But can I make a request, that when birth and death dates are initially given after a person's name at the top of an article -- eg John of Trevisa (1342 - 1402), which your 'bot delinked this morning, that these do stay linked.

It is useful to have some link somewhere on the page that links into the hierarchy of date pages, so that people can click their way through to find out what was happening in particular centuries/decades/years that a subject lived; and of all the links on the page, the birth and death dates would seem especially appropriate for this end.

The John Trevisa article was hardly "overlinked" for dates: these were the only two dates linked in the whole piece.

So, can I make the request that: (i) the 'bot stops delinking birth years and death years after the subject's name. (ii) the 'bot is made to restore linking of birth years and death years that it has previously delinked.

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 06:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I support this request. (I expect that (ii) may not be possible, or at least may require more implementation effort than the author is able to devote to it. Nevertheless, I fully support (i).) — ras52 (talk) 08:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Support. Several editors have expressed this (or similar) comment, that it is useful to see what else was happening in a given year. There are those who say the reader can easily type the date in the search box, to which we must ask ourselves: shouldn't we make it easier for our readers to find information that they are interested in, not harder? Truthanado (talk) 13:42, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Who asked for some voting process? Please read my recent entry on this very page about the difficulty of finding year-pages that do satisfy the MoS requirement that they significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic at hand. I'm interested to know just how the pages on 1342 and 1402 are at all useful to the topic of Trevisa—perhaps you can convince me (I'm open). As for the orphan issue, I'm aftraid that the community has deprecated the linking of solitary years for a long time now. If such pages were in good shape generally, I'd be pleased to join a program to promote them on the project—Main page exposure, FA promotion, etc. But they're not in good shape at all—quite the opposite—and I see little evidence that they're improving. If you want my opinion, back past a certain time, year-pages should be conflated into cohesive, well-written decade pages, given the relative paucity of information on a world scale. Ragtag threadbare fragmented year-pages from the 14th century are a big question mark to a lot of people. Tony (talk) 15:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

To repeat what I've written above: I think it's valuable to have some links on the page to the date hierarchy, because those date pages act as gateways to further links - such as the decade pages, or the century pages; or (perhaps particularly valuable) the "state leaders in year X" pages -- all of which can be very useful, to let people link their way through, if they want to know about the political and historical background at a particular time.

Tony may not like the year pages, but nevertheless at least half a dozen do get featured from the front page every day in the "On this day..." feature; it's not as if they don't appear on that page. As for consensus, long standing consensus has been to be judicious in the choice of date links, and not to link everything (but not to link nothing, either). If this has changed, I'd like to know the well-attended RfC that changed it, because whenever I've looked in at Talk:MOSNUM, I've seen strong debate on the issue.

In WP we accept and welcome that different people have different interests, and like to use WP in different ways -- and we try to accommodate and make WP useful to them all. The issue isn't that some people don't find the year pages useful - after all, there's a huge amount on WP that most of us may never find personally useful. Rather, it's clear from all the discussions, we should recognise the many who do find links into the year-page hierarchy sometimes useful, and we should consider how to continue to preserve that usefulness to them.

Linking the year-of-birth and year-of-death dates seems to be a very good compromise between linking everything and linking nothing, and IMO a sensibly judged balance. Jheald (talk) 16:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Jheald. It's an excellent compromise. There seem to be enough editors commenting that some linking of dates is useful to justify keeping the links that are already there. To respond to Tony's question, several editors have already mentioned that it mighte be interesting to our readers to see what else was going on while John Trevisa was alive. Being able to easily link to his birth 1342 and death 1402 years help our readers do just that. As has been pointed out in several other discussions (the main justification to deprecate wikilinked dates), what's really important is what's right for our readers, and giving them the option of getting information they may be interested in is the right thing to do. Truthanado (talk) 00:24, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Just as presenting text without low-value links for diversionary browsing is important for our readers. You still haven't demonstrated by either of these articles provides information that will significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and why—if there does happen to be vaguely relevant factoid there—it wouldn't be better within the article. Tony (talk) 01:42, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that on this page that the users have to demonstrate that fact on this discussion.

I am concerned about what is an overarching guideline/policy-type question is being discussed and a resolution attempted tucked away as a discussion about what a bot is doing. A bot is a technical instrument that implements a procedural aspect, and that alone. A policy sits overarching and it cannot be demonstrated to me that there is clear agreement on an agreed guideline. While the guideline [[Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people]] sits at the top of the system, that it too needs to be heeded. The discussion belongs somewhere open for the broader community where those from projects like Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography can have opportunity for input. --billinghurst (talk) 02:21, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I am concerned that when something becomes a Wiki-trend, it is suddenly enforced with a "Lightbot"--which ensures compliance with a "standard" that is little more than someone's opinion. The whole point of Wikipedia is to be able to link quickly to related material. If dates did not matter, they would not be given in an article. To deny wikilinks to dates is like denying a child knowledge of their parents.Ryoung122 08:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

• Hang on, Ryoung: the removal of date autoformatting and of the linking of date fragments is not "someone's opinion", but clearly in line with the deprecation of the first and the classification of low added-value chronological links as overlinking in WP's style guides. I'm surprised that you're not thanking Lightmouse for his efforts, which are sparing editors the manual labour of updating their articles to current guidelines as well as rendering the articles easier to read and maximising the utility of our high-value links. In fact, optimising this superb feature of wikis is uppermost in the motivation to apply the style guidelines. Tony (talk) 14:02, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

And what makes a link to a year, which may provide historical perspective, less useful than a link to a random word in a random paragraph? Whether a link is useful ought to be an editorial judgment, not something robotically decided and enforced. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Robert, that a year-link provides historical information, whereas horse probably doesn't, is self-evident. What is at issue is whether a year-link—any year link—provides focused information that will improve the reader's understanding of the topic. Please see my entry here for an exposé of why this is highly unlikely. This is an old issue that has been settled over a considerable period. I'm interested to hear your evidence of year articles that do provide such a focused enhancement, as opposed to magic carpets sprinkled through all of our articles to save discretionary browsers the effort of tapping four numbers into the search box. Wikilinking isn't a toy: it's a tool for selectively persuading our readers to hit links that are relevant to their understanding. Tony (talk) 06:16, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem that I (and perhaps other as well) have with all of the date "audits" and such, Tony, is the fact that even though auto-formatted dates are deprecated, the word deprecated does not mean banned or prohibited. You seem to be amongst the group of editors with zero-tolerance towards date linking, which is not reflected in MOS:NUM. If you want all dates links eliminated (as I think is abundantly clear from many posts of yours I've read) perhaps you should propose a change to MOS:NUM prohibiting or banning linked dates. Then you won't have so many people upset with your actions. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:19, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

And the linking of years has nothing to do with autoformatting. MOSNUM specifies that dates should be linked only when it is important. Lightbot cannot determine importance; therefore this type of edit should not be automated. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I have inquired on [WT:BAG]] about Lightbot's approval to make this sort of edit -- whether it was properly approved and if so whether it can be reversed. I am not certain of procedure in this area, so if anyone here has more knowledge than I, please clarify. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:03, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot, stubs, and categories.

The bot is putting stubs below categories [4] making the markup unnecessarily confusing because stub notices are rendered above the categories in articles. Please stop. -- Jeandré, 2008-09-20t10:40z

Last time I saw anything about this practice, it was recommended, since this allows the "real" user categories to be displayed before the more technical and less-valuable (for casual users, of course) stub categories. This is, personally, the way I and many others arrange categories and stub templates in articles. Beyond this, I really cannot understand what you mean by "rendered above the categories in articles". Categories aren't rendered in articles at all...they are just links provided at the bottom of article pages. Cats on top or stubs on top, doesn't affect how the article appears, unless a non-monobook skin displays in some bizarre fashion. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 11:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you are saying. I disagree that this is confusing, though, considering that categories are rendered in the same location on every single page. As well, considering categories are clearly identified as "[[Category:" and stubs almost always have "stub" in the template name, it seems like this would remove most confusion (and no matter which is placed above the other, the end result will always be virtually identical). — Huntster (t • @ • c) 11:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

It's part of AWB's general fixes (not to mention the MOS), this is a very odd demand. --Closedmouth (talk) 14:00, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Re: release date

Thanks for the info. I've also just realized that date links are deprecated, which I support, but I still like to see dates formatted to my preferences. I'll put it back to your edit and I'll see what solution comes up.+mt 19:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, it will be interesting to see. Lightmouse (talk) 19:39, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

City of Chester (UK Parliament constituency)

Hey. Just noticed that all the years have been de-linked on the above article. Not sure if this is right given that the dates don't appear anywhere else on the page? If I've misunderstood the role of the Bot, sorry, but it seems like the links have been taken away for no reason. Cheers, doktorb _words^deeds 08:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, really useful. I guess what /should/ happen on articles like this, of course, is link to "United Kingdom General Election, 19XX" instead of just the "cold links" to years. As you say people can just type four figures into the search box if they want to find a year. Those links to UK elections can be something for me to do later, methinks...=) Cheers, doktorb _words^deeds 09:32, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is a live debate about this. Some issues are that people think links should be targetted. Some also think that links should be not be hidden behind a year link because they will be ignored just like a year link (a suggestion is to have at least one non-date word in the link). Lightmouse (talk) 10:07, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Second request: Please stop removing instances of {{Convert}}

Please stop removing instances of template {{convert}} dealing with ship speeds from infoboxes in ship articles as you did recently here. I have asked you previously to stop (here) but you have continued. Please stop using whatever assistive tools you are using to prevent your further removal of speed conversions unless and until they can be altered to avoid such removals in the future. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand. What is your objection? Lightmouse (talk) 15:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

My objection is that you, through either your Lightmouse account or your Lightbot account, are … wait for it … removing instances of template {{convert}} dealing with ship speeds from infoboxes in ship articles as stated immediately above your post. If you need further clarification of what that sentence means, please see the first example in this post from further up your talk page under the heading Removal of {{convert}}. I believe that my objection is quite explicitly listed in the title of this section, in my comment immediately under that heading and above your comment, and in my earlier post on your talk page. If you are genuinely having trouble understanding the objection, please try to have someone else explain it to you, because I don't think I can make my objection any clearer. — Bellhalla (talk) 03:54, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I understand that you object to the abbreviation 'kn'. I also understand that you don't like it being used even though it is part of the template code invisible to readers. Although I disagree with you, I have tried to work with you by using the full form. I had hoped that you would be happy with that. I don't understand why you object to the full form 'knot' or 'knots'. I think we should take this off my talk page and onto a different page such as wp:mosnum. As you suggest, third party involvement would be a good idea. Lightmouse (talk) 18:27, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

There are two separate issues here. The one you mentioned is the substitution "kn" for "knot" within template calls to {{convert}} (i.e. subbing {{convert|25|kn|km/h}} for {{convert|25|knot|km/h}}) which is a frivolous edit, which makes the corresponding template code visible in edit boxes less intuitive for people who, unlike you, are not intimately familiar with all of the ins and out and "official" abbreviations of {{convert}}. Despite the fact that I and others have objected to your continual substitution of the "kn" abbreviation into {{convert}} even though the other works perfectly fine, that is not what I'm referring to in this post.

To see what I am asking you to stop, please take a look at this diff. Look at line that begins with "|Ship speed=" to see where your edit has substituted the text "15 knots (28 km/h/17 mph)" for the template call {{convert|15|knot}}. You are, in effect, subst'ing the template when you do that. There is no consensus for doing this. That is the point of this post and the now-archived earlier post. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Bellhalla, thanks for raising this issue. I don't mind that it's spilt onto this page, although I do wonder about the extent to which contributors here are interested in engaging with this matter—as you say, it "has nothing to do with MOSNUM". Javier has succinctly raised the concrete points that should be answered before proceeding: can you respond to them? I'd like to be convinced that your complaint isn't a personal one against Lightmouse himself, which you almost, but not quite, seem to be saying above. Lightmouse has a history of improving WP's formatting, appearance and readability, with ingenuity, diligence and sensitivity, and by readily engaging with those who provide critical feedback. I'm unsure why every detail of such improvements needs some gold-plated endorsement by "consensus" (which strictly speaking can always be questioned by naysayers). This is particularly the case when you admit that your stance is driven by a conservative frame that constructs long-standing phenomena as "widely accepted"; poor English is a long-standing phenomenon on WP, but that doesn't mean we should accept it, or be bullied into giving up our push to improve it. Above all, I'm still unclear what your objection is? What damage is being done in substantive terms? Tony (talk) 05:15, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

One point is that when you substitute a template, you lose the functionality of "what links here" to keep a global track on the formatting. Have a look at this for 5000 articles using this template (don't know how many use it in total). Meta-data is just that - meta-data. Maybe it should be hidden metadata, but without some way to get a global overview of things, you will never attain consistency. Carcharoth (talk) 07:50, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Changing date format in "A Moment Like This"

I just wanted to tell you to be careful changing the date format on articles from American to international. Although Leona Lewis did sing "A Moment Like This," it was first the coronation song for American Idol sung by Kelly Clarkson. Per WP:MOSDATE the article should have consistent dates across it, the article has strong national ties to use the American date format and the article started and evolved using the American date format. Therefore the article should just use the American date format. Aspects (talk) 13:44, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you that the article should be consistent. That was partly the motivation for the edit. The edit removed inconsistent linked dates and made them consistent. I saw that the inconsistency involved three mdy formats followed by four dmy formats. The 'Show changes' of the edit highlighted several UK elements in the article and so I plumped for dmy. I agree with you now that the mdy format is appropriate. Between us, our contributions have revealed and eliminated anomalies within the links. Thank you for helping. Lightmouse (talk) 15:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Strange behaviour for Calendar era

This edit only partially removes date linking, and does not deal with commas after the day-of-month in the so-called American format. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. The code for BC/AD dates is a bit more complicated than for non-BC/AD dates. I have updated the code and it should now avoid that type of date. Lightbot is not designed to fix errors with commas. The monobook script does do it but not for BC/AD dates. It seems that the more you look at dates, the more errors become apparent. Thanks again. Lightmouse (talk) 21:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the statement "Lightbot is not designed to fix errors with commas." A date such as [[January 1]] [[1900]] is a valid date (although it would not be were it not for date autoformatting), and will be rendered in some correct format by the date autoformatting software. When Lightbot is done with it, it should be rendered as some correct format; that should be a design criteria for Lightbot.

(I use "correct" in the narrow sense of not having an obvious typographic error in the immediate vicinity of the date, and not in the larger context of whether the format is appropriate for the article.) --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:25, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Is there a suite of test cases, containing all the cases that Lightbot has ever had trouble with, that Lightbot is tested on every time any change is made? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:48, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey lightmouse, I think I fixed this problem. If you check my code I added a line that just looks for month and day to catch anything not covered in your code. I also added a line that converts the 1 January XXXX date format to January 1, XXXX. I only use it when I am editing american articles though, anything non US I block it out.--Kumioko (talk) 00:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Kumioko, I will take a look. Gerry, re question about test cases, the answer is: "no, I don't have a set of all pieces of article text that have caused problems in the past". I did not understand your comment about commas at first but your clarification helped me understand you. It seems that autoformatting adds a comma even when no preference is set. I think I had seen somebody mention that before but had forgotten. I foolishly worked on the basis that 'no preference' means 'leave raw text unchanged'. I think the code does indeed do something about missing commas in some circumstances. I will look into this further. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Lightmouse (talk) 18:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I oppose the continued operation of Lightbot until a suite of test cases is developed, and a plan is created to roll back erroneous edits whenever a problem with the bot is discovered. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Dates within image captions

This edit removed a year link for a full date within an image caption --JimWae (talk) 20:10, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

It should not have done that. I will investigate. Thanks for letting me know. Regards. Lightmouse (talk) 21:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Just did it again - to date at start of image caption http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_York_Tribune&curid=360819&diff=240113393&oldid=239854741 --JimWae (talk) 23:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

That is not good, thanks for letting me know about the second time. Thanks for stoppping the bot too. I am going to find out what caused it. Lightmouse (talk) 18:41, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot edit mangled Adlai E. Stevenson I

In at least one case, when there is a date followed by text followed by a year, Lightbot is deleting the entire prose between the years and making the date incorrect. See diff 240022391 for Adlai E. Stevenson, where Lightbot removed a half paragraph of text between one year and another one. I didn't put a stop on Lightbot's talk page because I couldn't find another example quickly — so, hopefully, this is rare. --Closeapple (talk) 22:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

That is not good, thanks for letting me know. The bot has been stopped and I will investigate. Lightmouse (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Bot error

Hi, Lightbot deleted a significant portion of the New Zealand Police article with this edit. I've undone the bot edit and manually delinked the dates. Looks like a one time issue with the 1-1-1 emergency number. XLerate (talk) 01:47, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

That is not good, thanks for letting me know. The bot has been stopped and I will investigate. Lightmouse (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Automated de-linking of years is often harmful to articles

I noted that Lightbot deleted the year links in Manayunk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Linking to years is as useful as any other link: some readers like to get perspective on what else was happening about the same time as an event. Yes, they can look the year up explicitly, but by that logic, there is no need for any links. There is currently disagreement about this point at MOSNUM. In the meantime, I fail to understand why you have undertaken to automate the removal of links that some editors believe are useful. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:29, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi,

The issue of year links has been discussed in many places for quite some time and the style guide was updated in response to those discussions. I am sure that you will soon get a response to your enquiries elsewhere. With respect to approval for the bot, the relevant links are at User:Lightbot. I hope that helps. Lightmouse (talk) 21:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

But the style guide does not anywhere call for mass delinking of dates. The bot is making disruptive edits that are not consensus. Robert A.West (Talk) 21:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I have re-checked the so-called approval process for the expansion of Lightbot's function to include mass de-linking of dates, and I believe that the approval neither reflected consensus nor a proper consideration of the ramifications. Robert A.West (Talk) 22:14, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Are they "disruptive" because you take exception to change per se? Please see it from the perspective of our readers. Tony (talk) 11:14, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't speak for Robert A.West (who called it disruptive), but, Tony, look at the talk page here. Look at the number of comments. (Note also that Lightmouse has his talk page set archive threads after 3 days.) I think the volume of posts is a testament of the disruption caused by Lightmouse and/or Lightbot. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:57, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Bot error

Hello, This edit to EastEnders looks to be an error. Thanks, Stephenb (Talk) 08:15, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

You are right. That is not good. Thanks for letting me know. The bot has been stopped and I am investigating it. Lightmouse (talk) 21:13, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Why the mass delinking of years?

On Onomacritus all dates were delinked. I've read the approval but it is no clearer to me what the bot is aiming to do in cases like this.Dejvid (talk) 21:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to be unlinking all years what do not have the day and month. In the classical period we often (indeed mostly) don't know the exact date. Polybius is not a stub yet every date has been unlinked. And he's a historian. What gives?Dejvid (talk) 21:45, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse, the date de-linking on UK parliamentary constituencies is worse than I highlighted above. The delinking has included "created" dates (the yeat the seat was first formed). This means that users who may want to see what else happened in that year can no longer do so easily. I can understand why the UK electiom years were delinked (as I say above, really they should have been links to the UK election articles), but when the year was explicity linked to a section involving years (rather than events in that year), a mistake has been made. Could you revisit the edits made to ALL UK parliament constituency articles to ensure this edit is undone in some way? doktorb _words^deeds 23:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

By the same token, years should not be delinked in articles on British peerages. Please stop your bot; this was never clearly approved, and is undesirable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:13, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3 does not give your bot permission to unlink all linked years. The approval request is misleading at best, and possibly intentionally so, if that's what your bot was designed to do. Corvus cornix_talk 23:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

In case you weren't aware, there is currently an ANI discussion about your bot and the delinking of years. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Mass_De-linking_of_years_by_Lightbot -Chunky Rice (talk) 23:57, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

And it almost goes without saying that you should probably not restart the bot for this function until this is resolved. -Chunky Rice (talk) 00:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Discussion on year articles and links

Of some relevance to the operation of your bot. Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Year articles and wikilinks to year articles. Carcharoth (talk) 00:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Wishlist

Check the wishlist. I've added a section today. Thanks again for this script! Dismas|^(talk) 08:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Salk vs. Silk

Why did Lightbot do this?--Hans555 (talk) 11:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Lighbot, despite current problems with its operation, does not vandalize articles. Check the history and you'll see that "Silk" was in the article for at least five or six edits before Lightbot's edit. — Bellhalla (talk) 11:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

List of town tramway systems in the United Kingdom

Please can you explain why you have removed the wiki on the year, but left the date alone? Your logic seems inconsistent. I am going to undo your changes in the meantime. Perhaps you can explain your logic, in terms on quoted wikipedia policies on the convention for wiki-ing dates or not. Olana North (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

List of town tramway systems in the United Kingdom

Please can you explain why you have removed the wiki on the year, but left the date alone? Your logic seems inconsistent. I am going to undo your changes in the meantime. Perhaps you can explain your logic, in terms on quoted wikipedia policies on the convention for wiki-ing dates or not. Olana North (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Category name broken by bot

Hi there - this has just reminded me why I always check the edits by this bot (nothing personal, you understand, but I know that it is not infallible). 'Tis a tedious business as >99% of its edits are fine, but just now and again...

This change to Bristol and Exeter Railway disabled a category entry. (It changed Category:Broad gauge (7 feet) railway companies to Category:Broad gauge (7 ft) railway companies.)

Unfortunately it has modified at least 9 pages like this (see here). I have already fixed Great Western Railway, as the highest-profile page, but I was hoping you could use a bot to fix the rest.

For simplicity, in future could you get the bot to ignore category text (and links too, since the GWR page had two links broken also) ?

Cheers -- EdJogg (talk) 13:00, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

For that matter, Lightmouse, why doesn't the script automatically ignore anything aside from regular prose? In other words, ignore categories, images, URLs, links, stub templates (and most others for that matter), and anything else you can think of that really can't have such fixes justified. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 13:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Please add description to Lightbot's page

Please add to the page User:Lightbot a succinct and clear summary of what Lightbot is supposed to do.
(Yes, I see that there are already links on that page to discussion of Lightbot.)
Thanks. -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 13:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)