User talk:Gonzo fan2007

Gonzo fan2007 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Welcome to my talk page! My user name is Gonzo fan2007. Here on Wikipedia, I've been an editor for 18 years and an administrator (Verify) for 16 years. I tend to work in sports-related topics, especially articles in the scope of the Green Bay Packers WikiProject. I am one of the directors over at WP:FLRC, and I review lists submitted for featured status at WP:FLC. Feel free to ask me any questions if you need help, or if you want me to review an article or an action you performed. You can e-mail me, or post to this talk page. Following these simple guidelines will make things easier for the both of us: Use a descriptive subject/headline Use [[wikilinks]] when mentioning users and pages If you are continuing a conversation with me, please edit the relevant section Sign your post with four tildes ~~~~ to leave your name and date

Green Bay Packers

Just out of my own curiosity, as I have no clue whatsoever (literally zero) with regards to Football, in the template that you have written up for the proposed bot, what is |DraftedYear=YEAR |DraftedRound=ROUND |DraftedPick=PICK

More specifically. In the given sites, where would — let us say a hypothetical bot — be able to pick up these values? Also, the information on one of the sites lists out real/full names. Is there a specific place in the article that might be covered? Are the Date of Deaths listed in any of the pages picked up from? Is it entirely possible for any of the listed players to have played for more than 1 team? If so, how would they be categorized as a list? There are various listed positions on the pro-football, which — my hypothetical bot — has no clue about. Would you like the bot to just copy and paste this info? And last but not the least: In the article it self, what does this: DRAFT STATUS/COLLEGE. SEASONS PLAYED/RETIREMENT mean? Where would my hypothetical bot be able to pick up these values.

Let me assure you once again that I do not make Wikipedia bots, this is just out of my curisosity. If someone else proposes to make this bot for you, please ask them to continue. This is more of a learning curve for me to program for Wikipedia. And last but not the least, the only time I actually program is to relax. I have even gone to lengths without actually taking a look at my watchlist. I still have to make heads and tails of the way to communicate with the Wikipedia server. Aly89 (talk) 23:41, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Never thought about using bullet points :) Dumb me. Now, if you were able to look at this page User:Aly89/Sandbox, this is what my *HIGHLY* experimental bot is able to whip up. The only thing that I placed manually in this page is the reference to the DatabaseFootball in the info table (which I would be able to extract given my current coding). Again, if you get an offer of someone making a bot for you from the Bot requests, please do accept it :)... I am just doing this for fun :)

PS: I have no idea who "Alex Urban" is. Just randomly picked his name for fun. Given that you gave me the name of a person who has a considerable history, I would start testing with that person. Aly89 (talk) 02:31, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• Regarding PacMan, I am sure that would have cracked you up. I actually had the function that extracted the link in place and it was working. But in order to temporarily boost the speed while I was doing some tests... I decided to just stop the execution of that code and hot-wire it to www.pac-man.com :) Packers -> PacMan... But forgot to remove it while posting one of these pages up.
• I did try to find a method of getting the correct link without going through the search, but since it took more than 2 minutes, I decided to go forward and implement other methods... I will look into it as soon as I get some time. Will goto bed after this, and do this at Uni tomorrow.
• Regarding, GNB (Green Bay Packers)... I already have a complete routine that actually formats the name of the team and adds the intials of the team as shown. It can easily be tweaked to produce anything similar to the lines. Dropping the initals for the team should do the trick.
• What a coincidence. Given the name of the player you gave me, I just finished coding a complex algorithm that extracts a complete timeline for the history of the player. I do admit, to speed up things, I used the dirtiest of all the hacks :).
• As for the Alex,Urban. Entirely possible in the realm of reality. My only question, if it is a long name like: ABC DEF GHI XYZ... then it should become XYZ, ABC DEF GHI right?
• As for the University thing, a quick search at the database-football reveals, that that site stores the complete name for the Universities and Colleges. I haven't yet written the code to parse that site as of yet, if I do carry forward and write it, I do believe that we can extract the complete names from there
• The only problem I would be facing is that, for newer playes, like Favre, the Packers site has a completely different format of storing information (rather fragmented) as compared to the older players. I only hope we do not need any specific information from that site. But I would need to look into it a little more.

Let me see how far I can refine this code to our needs :)Aly89 (talk) 03:48, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok after spending a good part of the last 2 hours (1.25 hours alone on the that timeline algorithm), here is the progess I have made.

Following is a dump from my bot (better viewable in edit mode) after reading the specific pages of Favre. Most of these things are dynamically picked up from the websites, a few non-existant like Date of Death, are hardcoded to be blank. Some thing like Height and Weight are picked up, but never applied to the template. If you need them, please let me know and I will update the template in the specific way we want them.

POSITION: QB DOD: DOB: October 10, 1969 YEAR-TEAMS: Atlanta Falcons
Green Bay Packers
New York Jets DOB-DAY: 10 PROFOOTBALLURL: http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/F/FavrBr00.htm DOB-MONTH: 10 DRAFTPICK: 33 ALIAS: DRAFTYEAR: 1991 PACKERSURL: http://www.packers.com/history/brett_favre_tribute/bio/ LASTNAME: Favre DRAFTROUND: 2 FIRSTNAME: Brett COLLEGE: Southern Miss POD: WEIGHT: 225 lbs. HEIGHT: 6-2 NAME: Brett Favre YEARS: 1991
1992-2007
2008 POB: Gulfport, MS DOB-YEAR: 1969 FULLNAME: Brett Lorenzo Favre TODAY-MONTH-DAY: September 29 TODAYDATE: September 29, 2008

Major things updated: The bot is now able to spit out "Years" and "Year-Teams" to our compliance. It is able to pick up the correct Packers URL (Stupid fragmented website), it is able to pick up the redirected URL, it is able to spit out the Last Name and First Name (was already being done, just needed to tweak the template on my computer). It is able to correctly format the team name. Although applying it to Categories would take me about 15 minutes to code (with a lot of caffine).

Things left:

• DatabaseFootball parsing
• Minor Tweaks (I know dashes should be changed to mdash;. Will work on it as soon as possible)

It is already able to pick up the teams year wise, the $TEAMS$ would be just a replace of the br with a comma to make it easier in the page itself

Given the complexity of the code that has now been reached (I never planned it to reach this complex :(), a few bugs might creep in here and there, which we should be on the lookout for.

The timeline algorithm make sures (hopefully) that if the person has been absent for a year, to take that into account as well. And it also tries to figure out the years that the person has changed teams, and also lone years (Favre is/was on two different teams for 1 year only per team).

I forsee a few changes in the algorithm to extract the Packers URL, it looks a little different for each player. We will need to get that sorted out

Also, it would be nice if you were able to give me names of lets say, 3-4 more players that might have a nice record for me to work with.

It is also able to pick up the Draft values. Please make sure I understood the values correctly and that they are being applied correctly. If I screwed up in reading something, it might be a problem later on :).

Another possible thing is the Gulfport, MS, which I believe redirects to a page with the fullname of the state. Either I could pick it up from DatabaseFootball, or I could ask the Wikibot to check if there is a redirect in place for the given state. Given I will have to eventually parse DatabaseFootball, that looks like our best bet.

Also I have updated my User:Aly89/Sandbox to reflect the latest page spit out by my bot.

Please let me know regarding anymore changes that need to be made. Also, I don't have much time today to continue with the coding. Hopefully, will pick it up tomorrow.

Aly89 (talk) 16:15, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Good to know about those pre tags :). Hopefully, will come in handy.

Last time I gave you the dump from my bot, but forgot to tell you how it worked :). Here is an explanation of it.

What basically happens is that, I have the template you created downloaded on my PC, and modified. Below is the modified template. As you can see, I have placed special dollar signs within the text. As per my system, all the text between the dollar is taken to be a unique "key". My bot parses the websites, and finds the "values" to those "keys". And after all the parsing is done, all the "keys" that are found, are replaced by their "values". This is mostly the reason why $TEAMS$ wasn't replaced last time. I never wrote the code to assign a value to that key, and hence my bot left it as is.

{{NFL player
|Image=Replace this image male.svg
|DateOfBirth={{birth date|$DOB-YEAR$|$DOB-MONTH$|$DOB-DAY$|mf=y}}
|Birthplace=[[$POB$]], [[United States]]
|DateOfDeath= 
|College=[[$COLLEGE$]]
|Position= [[$POSITION$]]
|DraftedYear=$DRAFTYEAR$
|DraftedRound=$DRAFTROUND$
|DraftedPick=$DRAFTPICK$
|Awards=
|Honors=
|Records=
|years=$YEARS$</br>
|teams=$YEAR-TEAMS$</br>
|Stats=y
|DatabaseFootball=$DATABASEFOOTBALLID$}}
'''$NAME$''' ($DOB$—$DOD$) was a $POSITION$ in the [[National Football League]] who played for the $TEAMS$.
<ref>{{cite web | title = Packers.com - $NAME$ | work = Packers.com | url = $PACKERSURL$ | accessdate = $TODAY-MONTH-DAY$ | accessyear = 2008 }}</ref> 
DRAFT STATUS/COLLEGE.  SEASONS PLAYED/RETIREMENT.
<ref>{{cite web | title = $NAME$ Statistics | work = Pro Football Reference | url = $PROFOOTBALLURL$ | accessdate = $TODAY-MONTH-DAY$ | accessyear = 2008 }}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{quarterback-stub}}
{{runningback-stub}}
{{tightend-stub}}
{{widereceiver-stub}}
{{defensiveback-stub}}
{{defensive-lineman-stub}}
{{linebacker-stub}}
{{offensive-lineman-stub}}
{{Amfoot-kicker-stub}}
{{Amfoot-punter-stub}}

{{DEFAULTSORT: $LASTNAME$, $FIRSTNAME$}}
[[Category:$DOB-YEAR$ births]] 
[[Category:Year of death missing]]
$CATEGORY$

<!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]] -->
{{Persondata
|NAME              = $LASTNAME$, $FIRSTNAME$
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES = $ALIAS$
|SHORT DESCRIPTION = [[American football]]
|DATE OF BIRTH     = $DOB$
|PLACE OF BIRTH    = $POB$
|DATE OF DEATH     = $DOD$
|PLACE OF DEATH    = $POD$
}}

Latest page spit out by the bot is now updated at User:Aly89/Sandbox, and here is the diff to see the changes from the previous version [1]

Notable changes:

• The bot now parses the DatabaseFootball and is able to extract the ID of the player from their database.
• The bot is able to parse the "College" name from DatabaseFootball, which store it as a complete name
• Major changes to the timeline algorithm (once again). It got a flue when it came across the Jan Stenerud's profile.
• The bot is now able to list all the teams within the text, by replacing all the BR in the initial team list with a comma, so that it could be included within the article if required to do so.
• The bot is now able to spit out the categories as well. The categories as just produced by appending fixed letters around the team names and then append it at the end of the article.

There was another special instance. On the page of Ahman Green, it says that he has played for the Packers. However, a search on their site reveals no page dedicated to him. Which is rather odd, or am I missing some obvious fact?

A search for Reggie White on the pro-football reveals that there are multiple players with the same name (very much possible). I think the recommended system for skipping a name if any error is encountered should be in place. I will start working on that as well. [2]

Apart from this, what else is now left?

Also, I will start coding for the bot to actually access Wikipedia as well. Correct me if I am wrong, but the Bot Policy dictates that every bot should have its own account right? If so, is there any specific naming convention that has come into existence over the years?

Aly89 (talk) 15:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• Apart from regular caffine, there is no fun in programming. Most of the time, you are snatching your hair off wandering why the heck the computer doesn't understand you the way you want it to. It is worse while programming algorithms, or looking at other people's code (which almost seems like Dark Magic or VOODOO) :)
• I can filter out "University" and "College". Any other key words I should filter?
• You just made things a little easier. I was actually going through the [3], and using the search function on the top, which leads to very strange results. I will re-program the packer's algorithm to go through that page. The search looks a little complex and will take sometime
• As per the error handling, I can do 2 things. 1) If it doesn't find a page, or comes across a weird thing it wasn't expecting, it might goto the next site to fill the information from next page and still continue. 2) It might completely stop the currently player, flag it and continue forward. Or 3) I could do a hybrid, to flag it and still continue.
• I actually read those policies after writing up the reply. Apart from being extremely long (Just like all WP Policies :)), it does say that a bot needs an account. Hence, I will create an account once I get the time.
• Cleaning up code is synonymous to saying, I used the worst methods possible while writing this. I would like to use better techniques once everything works. It also means adding error trapping, and last but not the least, cleaning up bugs that might be so stupid that programmers are too ashamed to share it with their colleges :). And yes, I would need to clean up my code as well :).

Other than that, I guess I will start with the coding for my bot to access Wikipedia. It might take a little time, since this is totally unexplored territory, and my studies are going with full force. Aly89 (talk) 20:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

So wait, do I really need to create an account and get it approved as a bot or not? I am kinda confused. If it is one of those gray areas, then I believe it is better to create on and get it approved (if required) Aly89 (talk) 23:34, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I would kindly ask you to talk a look at User talk:AlyBot. Apparently, one of the administrators was kind enough to block this bot. How shall I proceed? A message was left on the bot's talk page and on my talk page. Aly89 (talk) 02:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I just don't want a fight/argument/dispute to be created over this small bot. I am very well ready to go through the process of bot approval (once my bot is completed to that stage). However, I thought it would be prudent to do so of the editing testing via the Bot's account (so to make sure it didn't screw up anything else). Well thank you for doing that. Also, I didn't know if you notice or not User:AlyBot/Run provides a page where you can enter the number of pages for the bot to edit next time. I hope to make it so that, once you were finished with manually looking over those pages, you could change that page to a fixed number (0-20 ?), and when I would run the bot next time, I would process that many items. As far as markings are concerned, I was thinking of copying over the list of player from the page under your namespace to my bot's namespace and then strikeout the names once they are done, or flag them if there is any conflict in them. Apart from that, I did start coding for Wiki data retrieval and update, and I am glad to say, I was able to download Wiki from Wikipedia :). However, the bot was blocked before I could make an edit from my code. I will pick up the rest of the coding later this week. I have midterms and tests coming up, so the coding would slow down a little.

Just looked at the logs while typing this comment. You were kind enough to update the pages with their respective tags :). Thank you very much. I am only at 200 edits and obviously haven't made enough progess at Wikipedia :)

And reading more conversations with the other Administrator, please don't lose any reputation or create any specific argument over this bot :). I am a very non-violent person when it comes to arguments over Internet. My personal experience has taught me that. Anyways, thanks once again for your help :) I am truly in-debt for your help :) Aly89 (talk) 03:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh yes, I know those nerves. Thank you for the speed with which you were able to clarify all the confusions :) [was reading through all the conversation regarding this bot]. Anyways, I am off to bed now, long day upahead tomorrow. And just on a side note (regarding which I have a rather nice smirk on my face right) I am a "he" not a "she" :D. I know most people get that confused give the resemblance of my firstname to an alias used for "Alisha" (if I am not mistaken; including my ex-boss's boss :)) Aly89 (talk) 04:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, restarting the indenting. It is getting a little insane :). Things to note:

• I have started parsing the special page you showed me www.packers.com. On my first couple of runs, I have managed to get reliable results.
• I was able to do test edits with the bot Special:Contributions/AlyBot (thanks to your unblock :)) on its namespace. More specifically, User:AlyBot/Run, was updated using code, and User:AlyBot/Sandbox was created using code. I will still have to sit down and implement the complete algorithm to publish pages on your namespace
• I still need to implement more error handling when it comes to parsing the different websites.
• Upon playing with the Wikipedia code a little, if a page doesn't exists, the code generates an error which is quite difficult to trap. I need to sit down and get that thing working properly (It would actually include modification of code of the DotNetWikiBot framework I am using to access Wikipedia). Things are made worse by the fact that I am programming in Microsoft technology while on Linux :).
• I wrote the initial function of the College filter algorithm with the "University and College" keyword. Will need to Tweak that a little. Things I would remove are: "University", "university", "University of" and "university of". Any more suggestions? Aly89 (talk) 21:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The bot is written in C#. It is one of the "rather" newer .NET languages by Microsoft aimed at mass software development. Just like Java, Microsoft have attempted to remove the pain on the perspective from developers by pre-programming most things. Hence, they provide us with rather convenient functions which we can use to our benefit. This is quite good as compared to C or C++, where most of the things need to be written by hand. An example is, in order to download the HTML from a page, in C++, you have to write the entire code to communicate with the server. However, in C#, the same code requires about 2 lines :). This is essentially the reason I prefer my development on this platform where I need to make quick and robust code very effectively. Not to be a sales guy here, but essentially C# has inherited many good things over time from the various languages. But, I still do believe, that if you want to really program softwares, C++ is the way to go. (I know a little bit of C++ with respect to complex algorithms, etc, nothing quite substancially major).

Being on Linux, I am using the Mono framework to program in C#. Essentially, a bunch of linux gurus (mostly the company named Novell) have ported the .NET framework to Linux and named it Mono. Unfortunately, they haven't implemented things quite the same (you can say about 96% resemblence). I am using Mono because I am a rather new user when it comes to Linux and not a pro at the native languages like Perl.

I did plan on releasing the sourcecode of this bot under GPLv3 when I started writing it. I would most likely release the code once the bot is in that stage.

As with most languages, certain pre-programmed code (frameworks), allow quick access to Wikipedia. Hence, I am using the DotNetWikiBot framework for C#, which is aimed at making bot-developer's life easier in terms of Wikipedia. The framework was clearly written in Windows, but can be ported with the help of Mono. Unfortunately, there is one function (as far as I encountered), which doesn't quite behave the same. Hence, I will look into it, and if possible even submit a patch to the original developer to include it for his framework support for Linux (Can't guaruntee, mostly depends on the amount of time I have).

I will keep you updated as I make substaincial changes to the bot, and do some trial runs on the user space of the bot itself. After which, if everything works the way I advertised (:)), we should be ready for the bot approval! Now, I shall go back to writing a 20 page report and completing 4 assignments, and studying for the mid-terms :)! Regards, Aly89 (talk) 03:07, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Hey just out of curiosity, would it be beneficial to leave some kind of message at the Bot Requests page saying that this bot is under development. Do you want me to leave the message also stating that this is my first bot and the probability of me completing this bot? Aly89 (talk) 00:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I just don't want spending useless hours working on it. Aly89 (talk) 00:25, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to go behind your back and do this. I just didn't want someone to spend precious time on it if we decide to carry forward Wikipedia:Bot_requests#A_difficult_request.3F. I hope I did the right thing notifying that this bot is in progress. If I made any mistake, please do tell me so that I might be able to clean things up. Aly89 (talk) 02:09, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

First time when I read your reply, I had no idea what you were talking about :). Then I actually went ahead to read the bot request page. It almost seems as if all the admins over here have most of the pages and their quick Wiki text drilled into their heads :).

Weekend is here, will keep you informed if I make any major progress with the bot :). Regards, Aly89 (talk) 23:13, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok quick update. My bot is really for alpha testing (the first phase in all software development testing where softwares are designed to be buggy). In some quick pre-pretests, my bot was able to generate the pages offline and dump it into a file. While doing that, [4] it was able to strikeout the names at User:AlyBot/PlayerList, and reset the run count to 0 at User:AlyBot/Run, once it was finished. Please see the history of the pages to make sure that the comment I programmed my bot to leave makes sense and does provide all the information needed as per the Bot Policy. Also, under the current working method, if a page generation is complete without any apparent error, it will go forward and strike the name from the list, and not bother to read it next time. If it does find an error, it will actually bold it, while dumping a file on my PC with the error details for me to investigate. Further analysis of pages like Brett Favre revealed that the name in the first line of the article (the main text), is the actual fullname. I was already capturing that from pro-football-reference, and decided to tweak the template to dump that name into the text. If you do not wish for this to occur, please tell me so, it is a 5 letter change in my current offline template. Also, do you want the fullname to be dumped in the Persondata template under the field Alias (I can format it to LastName, FirstName, if you wish). Also, if I do create new pages under the bot's namespace, how hard is it to get pages deleted (once we no longer need them for the obvious testing reasons). I also found a minor bug in my firstname and lastname extraction, and fixed. While writing this message, I just realized that my algorithm will fail by doing something really stupid. Will go and clean that up, it should take about 2 minutes. When you get this message, leave me a message whether I should go forward to create ~ 3-8 pages as per alpha testing. Once done, I shall leave you a message notifying you to go over the custom created lists. Also while writing the last sentence, I just figured out we need a page on the Bot's User Namespace, to be fully updated, (or partially with timestamps), listing the last pages that it created. Although, the same thing could be retrieved from a history diff, I can do so if you wish. Please tell me how you would like me to program in that respect. What is easier for you? Will go back to testing a little more, and if you do find this message tomorrow, or day after, I shall continue when I hear from you. Wow 2 piffanies in 3 minutes, Guinness World Record? Aly89 (talk) 02:45, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

After some trail runs, I found out that pro-football-reference does not store the data in the same format for older players. More specifically, they actually remove some columns from the table, and rearrange the above information. So, my bot failed to clear those things up. I will have to tweak and rewrite some lines of code to now make it more intelligent. I will also look into whether DatabaseFootball is also consistent with older players or not. Aly89 (talk) 03:18, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, after tweaking many many many things... my bot was able to make a few test edits. More specifically, please see User:AlyBot/PlayerList to see the striked list suggesting which pages have been created. I ran 2 tests. The first test involved setting the User:AlyBot/Run to 1 to produce 1 page. After that run, it seemed reasonable, so I ran 5 more. The exact log can once again be seen here [5]. It is also dumping a log at my local PC (more detailed) which can be used for analysis, if required later. It can be seen creating pages and modifying the list and run count once finished. Please go over the level of detail required in comments for creating a page. Please go over each and every page very thoroughly, and if you have any comments, forward them to me so that I can get working on it.

Things changed since last update

• I rewrote about 3-4 of the algorithms in my bot to compensate for a few things.
• Don't remember which player, but within the top 10, doesn't actually have a Databasefootball page, created a special handler for that
• General bugfixes
• One of the players in top 10 didn't have a few years associated to them at pro-football-reference, so my program kept on crashing. I added a specific handler to handle these situations and just left the Years as Blank in those cases.
• For the Year and Teams parsing to create a timeline, I am only parsing the first tables at pro-football-reference. For parsing all the tables, I would need to add special handlers. If there is some instance where all the years/teams don't show up in the first section of tables, please let me know and I will spend some time doing it.
• Adding the fullname to Alternative Names as LastName, FirstName. If the fullname is actually the name, it is not added.

If a few small changes are required, my bot can now actually update the content of their pages as well. So let us say, we don't like something, we tweak the template, remove the strike from the PlayerList, update the Run count and make my bot run. Instead of failing to see that page already exists, I now have a switch that can be used to instruct for it to actually update the page. So even though, the page exists it could be instructed to edit the page. By default, this option is turned off and it actually checks whether a page exists or not before making a new page, etc. If it is present, it throws an error to make sure that something weird is happening or not.

That is most of it. I will be a lot busy during the upcoming weeks b/c of my mid-terms, so I won't be as responsive as I am (Although I want to be. Coding this bot is a lot of fun, and I haven't been this much interested in any thing for quite some time now). So b/c of my keeness with this bot, I will be busy, but still end up replying and coding this bot (I need to get my priorities straightened out :)). Anyways, apart from that, please let me know of the changes required. You will see many spelling errors. Apparently, my Firefox thinks it is cool to not show the error suggestions! :). Aly89 (talk) 06:51, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Haha, I guess both of us will be busy a lot :). I will fix up the template for the dash issue. I must had missed it the last time around.

The first instance that I came across was this guy: Adolph Kliebhan. When search on DatabaseFootball, it only throws out Roger Kliebhan. Who, I am assuming, is a different person. But yes, the player that you did also had the same issue.

Do you want me to do the fix of the hyphen on the pages I have already generated? I guess it won't be a big of a matter either way, throguh a bot or by hand. After you are done with all those, and provide me feedback, I can go forward do a BRFA, and start publishing to your namespace, so it would be easier for you. Apart from that, I forgot to tell you, the A. D. Williams, I changed his name to A.D. Williams (no space), (or was it the other way round, I forget), anyways, b/c his name was stored in that particular way in the pro-football-reference database. So yes, that is what you get with stupid computers.

Looking at the edits you made, a lot of things are still done by hand. Is there anything particular that you have to do for all the players, that I might be able to program my bot to do (15 minutes by hand for 600 people, vs 30 minutes to program, and 0.1 seconds for bot to spit out :)). Sometimes, it might look like a complex thing that computer can't do, but in the end, as a programmer, if it is properly documented, it can be (sometimes) easy to do.

Apart from that, take your time. I am in no rush, and neither this thing has a deadline (I hope not :|). Regards, Aly89 (talk) 18:43, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

B/c bot creating pages in its own userspace is actually allowed, we can go ahead and not file a BRFA if we want. If you want me to file a BRFA, please let me know and I will do so. Also, I might delay on that 10 for a bit, b/c I have too much on my plate this evening. I will create the 10 pages tomorrow. I made some tweaks to the code, to make it a little more efficient. I would like to have some time on my hands to see whether they work the way I want them to. Sorry, I can't produce the pages immediately. I will let you know once I have published the 10 pages. Aly89 (talk) 21:49, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, 10 players done. More specifically, here is the diff of the PlayerList [6]. The bot encoutered an error in the DatabaseFootBall.com for 2 players, and wasn't able to continue, hence it skipped them. I ran a second process with 2 pages. So it parsed a total of 12 pages. The changes in the bot included a new beta update to the framework, after I posted the bugs of the existing framework to the developer incharge [7] and the developer was kind enough to fix it quickly. The framework is now working pretty well without any need for manual changes on my part. You can take a look at the contributions of my bot here Special:Contributions/AlyBot. Take your time, and finish up these pages are required. Also randomly, pick a player or two and make sure that his data/years/teams in the infobox and everywhere else is correct, and my bot is not going particularly insane. I did saw one instance, don't remember the name of the player, when my bot dumped on the console the University of a particular person, who seems to have attended 2 of them separated by a comma. I wasn't aware of this, and if this is a regular thing, I can write a function to split them up within 15 minutes (not big of a challenge), since it would now be a broken link. Also, if you wish (open ended choice), you don't have to remove the names of the player done. My bot is designed to read that page, skip everything in bold and strike. Other than that, everything looks nice. The whole process today was completely automated, I didn't touch the coding after the bot had been run. Obviously, now I will have to, to see what happened in those 2 players. Aly89 (talk) 15:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, no problem. Hope everything goes well at your end. I have been quite busy as well. My midterms as currently going on so, except my activity to decrease as well. This is one of the reasons, I still haven't looked into why those pages errored out. Just get to those pages when everything is comfortable and when you have free time. Aly89 (talk) 01:38, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow! My watchlist alerted me that you granted me Rollback rights. I had no clue what they were, and had to google them :). Awesome! Thanks! I will read on their usage after my midterms end! Thanks :) Aly89 (talk) 01:49, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks like there is a nice delay/drag in the realtime/non-realtime conversation of ours. :) I will sure go ahead and read up. Other than that, midterms look scary. So, just wanted to let you know that I would be a little late in replying to your messages. Other than that, hope your midterms went well. :) Aly89 (talk) 01:58, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Hey, no problem. Things have been kind of hectic on my side as well. Dec/Jan sounds nice. I will make sure to iron out the bugs (hopefully, if I do get the chance). Other than that, see you in the holidays :). Aly89 (talk) 16:27, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Review

Hey there. I was wondering (again) if you could review me. (I should really file a WP:ER soon...) I just would like to see how I'm doing in your opinion. If you want, this time you can ask questions on the page for me to answer (if you want)! Thank you in advance, RyRy (talk) 04:14, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Heh, you probably didn't know when you were on break, but I already had an RfA. ;) -- RyRy (talk) 04:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I saw you add questions at the very top of recent changes, so I noticed rather quickly. :) I'll see how I can answer them. Though, I might have to run soon, so I'll complete them tomorrow or so. Thanks, RyRy (talk) 04:50, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Son Lux

Why did you delete that page? What do you mean the band isn't important? They sound pretty good to me. I'm listening to them right now and it's difficult to find information on them. If I should find it anywhere shouldn't it be on Wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.37.145.35 (talk) 23:24, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Hello! I deleted Son Lux because it didn't assert notability per the WP:MUSIC policy. There needs to be third-party reliable sources that are verifiable that assert that the band is in fact notable. I am sure they are a very good band, but just being good doesn't mean that Wikipedia should have a page on them. Cheers, « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 00:35, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. I wasn't aware of this policy of Wikipedia's. Thank you for not flaming me and telling me to RTFM :) I was used to finding info on almost anything on Wikipedia. I'm just amazed that it chooses to reject information even when it's available (and posted). Son Lux really seems to be more then "my friend's band". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.37.145.35 (talk) 19:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem! Sometimes people here forget that there is another human behind the IP address or the user name :/ Yeah, that is a big debate with Wikipedia, whether or not we should have a page if there is info on the subject. But the thing is, if we didn't have these policies then sadly there would be a lot of hoaxes, fake articles, and articles on just about anything. Since we strive to be accurate, we kinda have to have outside sources to prove to us that the information is indeed true. Hope this helps! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 01:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

AlyBot block

Fine, if you want to unblock. But I have heard from at least one member of the BAG (which I note you're not a member of) in person that they would really prefer that bots make no edits at all pending approval. In the future, if you're going to give people somewhat contradictory advice about our bot policy, could you at least include a suggestion that if you're preparing a bot for approval, take some measures to let the BAG know? As it is over at WP:UAA the bots pick up "Bot" usernames all the time, and the policy is that unless it is a naturally arising suffix (i.e., a last name like "Cabot") they should be blocked immediately.

Now, that said, I don't usually block on sight ... often it's a clearly non-bot user completely unaware of this aspect of the username policy, and just leaving them a concern note is enough to prompt them to change their usernames. Or it's a bot from another-language wiki where there's no bot policy, equally unaware of the BAG's existence.

So, given an example of what was clearly intended to be a bot account, with no indication that this had been set up in a way consistent with policy, and every indication that it was intended to be going live, what else was I supposed to do? A block can always be lifted, as you did, a poorly-conceived unapproved bot can do a lot of damage and I didn't want to be the one having to explain at AN/I that "well, I felt I should have just assumed good faith, so I let it go".

And speaking of AGF, you could have exercised it too, writing a friendly note instead of acting as if you thought I was some of the trigger-happy admins that, yes, we have had at UAA (Yes, I know. I was once one). I only did this after careful review of what I could see, not just on the name basis alone. Daniel Case (talk) 03:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, after rereading the bot policy, he was in accord with it. I may have misunderstood or misrecollected my conversation. But that came in the greater context of the lack of communication between the bot people and us at UAA. The UAA bot flags all new "-bot" accounts and doesn't, in its comments, explain this. I'd love it, too, if it could check against RBA automatically (I think it checks against the user database and doesn't flag a bot that's been granted bot user status. But that's all). Obviously we need that aspect of bot policy noted in the comments HBC NameWatcherBot leaves ... right now, it actually suggests "block on sight". Daniel Case (talk) 03:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

FLCon

Thanks for entering. You can now start choosing your topics and lists. However, you will not be able to submit contest related FLCs until October 10 at 20:00 GMT. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 03:36, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Peer Review

Hi, saw your name at the volunteers list at Peer Review. Would you mind peer reviewing Major League Baseball? Thanks. --LAAFan^sign _review 21:52, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Problem with protection templates

Or, more specifically, with Twinkle. Lately I've been correcting protection templates which had expiration dates even though their associated protections (semi-protections, to be precise) were indefinite. The latest three were yours: CD-i games from The Legend of Zelda series, Linkebeek, and Xbox 360 System Software. Perhaps it would be more prudent to do the protections manually? Waltham, The Duke of 02:44, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Replied. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 04:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Protection

Man, we so own WP:RFP. >:D Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :)} 05:37, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Haha, sounds good! Take it easy. Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :)} 05:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Here, have a protstar!

File:Protstar.png		The Protection Barnstar
		For being extremely active at WP:RFP, you get this. Nothing else, I'm afraid. :( Master of Puppets Call me MoP! :) 00:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Markup help

As seen here, there is a scroll bar in your contents box. How can one do that?— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 10:36, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Came here through the power of WatchList. I believe Gonzo won't be available for a period of time due to Real Life emergency. However, taking a look at the page, this seems to be the reason why there is a scrollbar.

<div style="height: 225px; width: 260px; overflow: auto;">__TOC__</div>

It seems as though the TOC is restricted to a specific height and width, and the overflow being set to auto. Neat trick! Hope this solves your question. Aly89 (talk) 15:47, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

That is indeed the correct reason why there is a scrollbar. See here for an overview and demo. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 18:30, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: Thanks

Re your message: No problem. Glad to see you back and that all is relatively well. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 04:42, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Pat Nixon

Sorry, I wasn't aware it was the featured article.  :) Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 22:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Pz10.com

Can you look at Pz10.com and give an outside opinion on it? Speedy delete, PROD, AfD, leave it alone opinion. I know what I would normally do, but I got into a discussion with the editor and probably best to have an outside opinion. Thanks. =) -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 08:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. You're right that an AfD is the better long term route. All posted. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 05:29, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help with that. =) -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 22:16, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame

Hi, just thought I'd let you know that according to the cleanup listing, the article currently has a broken citation template on it. Because the page is a Featured List, it would be great if it could be resolved quickly. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 15:09, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay great. That clean up listing is really handy and should help us find some bad FLs in the future (although unfortunately, not all of them are tagged), perhaps a link to it should be added at FLRC? Slightly more than 2% having issues isn't good, considering that these pages are meant to represent the absolute best of wikipedia, so I've informed every wikiproject and a bunch of users. Hopefully all of the articles will be fixed soon enough. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 17:26, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Protection of List of Mario series characters

I don't mean to be criticizing your decision to protect that page, I just wanted to point out, that page seems to attract vandalism pretty steadily (at least, during the brief time I have been active on Wikipedia) and the two or so instances of vandalism over the last day or so is not really any more vandalism than there usually is, so I don't know if a 5-day block will make much difference—as far as i can tell, the vandalism at that article doesn't ebb and flow like vandalism at more current-events-related pages, but is just something that's unavoidable because of the nature of the article, and will probably be back as soon as the block is up.

That being said, however, it will be nice anyway to have a couple days without having to worry about all the inane stuff that usually happens in that article! —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 04:50, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense; thanks for your explanation! The few articles on video games that I watch seem to attract all kinds of immature vandalism, but I agree with you that it's probably not a good idea to start with long-term protection if it hasn't been protected before. Thanks, —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 05:03, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Markup, which I hope you know something about,

Is there any markup you know of to insert a space between two words? Yes, I know about spaces, but as to a template I'm working on, specifically, the {{if:Value A|If true|IF false}} Quite simply, I have no if false, and it displays a tiny warning sign since there is no value for if false, and a regular space won't work, so I was wondering if there was a way one could code a space in. Any other punctuation won't work due to the nature of the template.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 05:28, 16 October 2008 (UTC) I also posted this message on Gogo's page.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 06:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

FLC

Hello, the FLCon is currently running and unfortunately part of the problem with it is that most of our current regular reviewers are entrants. I would hate for people to lose in the contest solely because of a lack of reviewers, so could you please take a look at some of the following FLCs if you have time?

• List of Honorary Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford
• List of acquisitions by Hewlett-Packard
• List of universities in Nova Scotia
• List of Governors of Arizona
• List of St. Louis Rams head coaches
• List of Vancouver SkyTrain stations
• List of Soul Eater chapters

Thanks for your time, Scorpion⁰⁴²² 14:19, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Anyway, something I've been wanting to do but have never gotten around to do it, is form a sort of "FL sweeps" because a lot of the FLs promoted in 2005 and 2006 are below present standards. We gave gotten most of the really bad ones, but there still a lot out there that could use a review and/or removal. So what do you think? -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 03:53, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Nope, that was going to be my question for you. I have a hard enough time getting reviews at FLC and unfortunately, we're going lose one of our best reviewers in a few days. I'll pitch in where I can and try to make sure we always have a few FLRCs at a time, but I admit I'm not the world's greatest reviewer. I guess the easiest way is to try to recruit reviewers who could go through lists one list at a time and try to give reviews. Part of the reason I wanted two FLRC delegates is because I was hoping one of you could nominate lists and do reviews and the other could do closures, but that hasn't really happened. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 04:05, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, great. I'll see what that other FL director guy thinks too. And I just realized that List of popes was delisted, does that mean I'll be going to hell? Also, if you could give your opinion on this or this, it would be appreciated. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 04:20, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

In that case, we should form a gang called "The Devil's Pals" (or "The Christ Punchers") and make it our duty to delist every FL under "Religion, mysticism and mythology". I don't particularily like the formatting of List of Archbishops of Canterbury, so that could be our first target. List of popes (graphical) also has a lot of the issues that the List of popes had, so it could be a target too. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 04:41, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Jill Perryman

Hi Gonzo fan2007. I have restored the above article which you deleted in June. The lady is quite notable in Australia, and I think that the article now addresses that issue. I hope this is OK. Regards. Moondyne 07:05, 28 October 2008 (UTC)