User talk:BrownHairedGirl

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This talk page was last edited (diff) on 22 October 2021 at 21:21 by Harryzilber (talk • contribs • logs)

Hello BrownHairGirl: I'm HarryZilber. I don't often view my talk page but today noticed that in 2017 you listed User:86.152.210.238 as being my suspected sockpuppet related to an edit of this article: [1] which was posted in 2010.

Reviewing that edit related to Chelsea Footballer John Terry, I very likely couldn't have had a role in posting that edit; for one thing I don't follow British football, but more importantly I don't post significant information to a Wikipedia article unless I tie it to a citation/reference, which is obviously missing from that edit. As well I make a habit of staying logged onto my account. To summarize: I don't believe I had any involvement in the edit. Can you kindly let me know why I was suspected of being the writer?

Link rot

Hi. I think the threshold (for your AWB script) is too low. To my eye, adding a large cleanup tag (which suggests the entire article needs cleanup from link rot) is a "cure" that is worse than the disease. When (for example) just one out of 125 references has a minor issue. Or one of 50 odd refs. Or similar. While a "link rot reduction" goal is laudable, I'm not sure tagging hundreds of articles for cleanup (many of which are otherwise not suffering from material cleanup issues) is necessarily advancing that goal. Guliolopez (talk) 01:27, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi Guliolopez, I had seen you fixing some of the tagged pages, so thanks for your good work. I had seen some of your edit summaries (e.g. [2]), and was thinking about leaving a note for you.

I considered the idea of a threshold, and discarded it for several reasons:

1. Complexity. AWB is relatively crude in its filtering abilities, with extra levels of filtering requiring custom modules which take a lot more programming, with a higher risk of error. So the most reliable way to avoid false positives is to keep it simple, by using my current filter which catches one or more bare URLs: <ref[^>]*?>\s*https?:[^>< \|\[\]]+\s*<\s*/\s*ref
   (I think that produces a small number of false negatives, but I am not worried about that).
2. Defining a threshold. Anything related to the number of refs is a non-starter, because both the ref count and the bare URL count are not available to AWB. They could be determined only by running a complex custom module, which I don't trust myself to do reliably.
   Using only a URL count would be misleading, because that would give the same answer on a page which 3 refs were all bare links as on a page whose 100 refs included 3 bare links.
3. Small numbers are easier to fix. In the cases you mention where there is only one bare URL, I can see how a tag may seem disproportionate. I am unsure about that view generally, because it seems to me that tags exist to identify problems, and that if we apply a proportionality test before tagging, we risk not marking problems.
   So my view for now is the tag is still helpful, because if he problem is small it can be easily cleared and the tag removed.
   Fundamentally, Wikipedia is a work-in-progress, and I for one value deeply the fact that we flag up problems on the face of an article rather than for example hiding them on the talk page. I regard that as an important transparency measure which should be more widely replicated elsewhere, e.g. in newspapers.
4. Tag size. Yes, cleanup tags are all too big and clumsy, but that's an issue for elsewhere. I can only work with the tags as they are.
   However, your message prompted me to do some burrowing, and I see that there is a {{Bare URL inline}}, and I think that it may be possible to incorporate that into my currently methodology. What would you think of that?

I should stress that this is all experimental. AFAIK, there has previously been no systematic tagging of linkrot issues, so that many links had rotted for years. Working on a series of Indian articles, I found that bare URLs were widespread, so I wrote a wee script to allow one-click tagging thereof. But even that seemed laborious against the scale of the problem, so I started experimenting with AWB tagging.

That seemed to work, so I decided to try some mass tagging and see how the community took to it. Some editors like to be able to clear the current month cleanup category, so I am doing an end-of-month run to load up Category:Articles with bare URLs for citations from May 2021, and leave June to be free of mass-tagging.

I have another three thousand or so articles lined up to scan and possibly tag, and on experience so far I guesstimate that will amount to 1,000 to 1,500 more tags. Then I will be done for the month, and I won't restart before the end of next month, all subject to more discussion.

Thanks again for your thoughts. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:20, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

@Guliolopez: I have just tested {{Bare URL inline}} on Kilmichael Ambush. See this edit,[3] where the inline tag replaces the bulky top-of page {{Cleanup bare URLs}}.

What do you think of that? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:33, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi.

RE: "Wikipedia is a work-in-progress". Indeed. That is a given. To the extent that practically every article on the project could be tagged in some way. But that would be disruptive and not really representative of "responsible tagging". Personally I see more issues (than value) in tagging 1000 to 1500 articles with the same broad tag.

RE: "there is a {{Bare URL inline}} (and it works with the AWB script)" . If the goal is to highlight issues (such that follow-on editors or bots can more readily address specific issues), then that would seem a more balanced solution. And sounds good (certainly much better than broad article-level tags) to me.

Cheers. Guliolopez (talk) 02:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Just passing by and noting this conversation as several pages on my watchlist are being hit as well and I was wondering if there was a bot to smack. I'm grunting as I've ReFill didn't work for me though a manual archive lookup did. (I usually use ReFill2 by adding {{Cleanup bare URLs}} and taking the link from the Preview screen without saving). In all events please respond to the person on the talk page of {{Cleanup bare URLs}} who champions its use in all cases. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 12:20, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

@Djm-leighpark: I haven't really tested ReFill2 myself, but I note that it seems to require a skilled driver. Those who just whack save on it can produce ugly results.

I looked at Template talk:Cleanup bare URLs, but https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Cleanup_bare_URLs&action=history shows no posts since Feb, and I am not going to trawl the page loking for whoeover you might have been referring to. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:44, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Apologies,: heaven knows what I was looking at.Djm-leighpark (talk) 14:00, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

@Guliolopez: I am not much persuaded by WP:OVERTAG and WP:RESPTAG. Both are just essays, and while they have some good points, they are in many places far too restrictive for my tastes.

However, I was able to adapt my AWB set up to use {{Bare URL inline}}. This has the advantage of visibly marking each of the bare URLs with [bare url], which editors can search for in the page. That makes cleanup a lot easier, and also resolves your concern about the prominence of the top-of-page tag. I have now tagged about 1800 articles in this way, and hope to do at least as many again before my self-imposed deadline of midnight GMT today.

BTW, this phase of the list-making process has been interesting, because my diff window shows where the inline tags are being applied to each article, which allow me to make a rough tally at a glance. Overall, about 10% of the articles I have scanned needed a bare URL tag, which is lower than I expected. However, the bare URL rate varies significantly by type of article. Landforms are usually free of them, but popular culture topics (football, musicians) have a much higher rate, while an alarmingly high number of articles on Irish town and villages appear to have been spray-painted with bare URLs.

Of course the number may be different on other types of topic or other geographical areas, but that's my take from my scan of this is set of pretty much everything in Ireland+Scotland+Wales+UK politics.

Thanks again for your help in poking me to a better way of doing this.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:49, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

• Well it's working to the extent that I've now resolved the bare URLs in Dorothy Dunnett and Garelet Dod from my watchlist - but I'll be watching my watchlist expecting to see (and fix, if I'm in the mood) a slew of grotty results from Refill2, which some editors use to create ugly and unhelpful "references". Seems a useful project, anyway- good luck. PamD 14:31, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks, PamD. That's kinda how I was hoping this might work: that some editors would pick up on articles in their watchlists, and fix them, while others might see the tags when they visit a page.

  I agree about the poor quality of too many uses of Refil2. It's one of those tools which usually seems to produce results on a spectrum from "needs some polishing" to "compete junk" ... but sadly some editors seem to just blindly save its first suggestion, which can lead to refs mangled into complete garbage. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

• Wouldn't it be nice if there was something to try to deter people from adding bare URLs! Either at the stage of saving the edit, like the "did you really mean not to add an edit summary?" I get, or the red error messages from some sorts of citation errors, or a message on the user talk page like the one for linking to a disambiguation page. People might just get weary of being hit with that message repeatedly, and change their ways? On the other hand, I suppose they might create really rubbish refs as "not a bare URL"s, to suppress the message but still without offering a sensible reference for the poor reader. Ah well. :::That's an interesting analysis of the correlation between bare URLs and subject areas, above. I got worried when the bare URL in Garelet Dod was to a thesis on hill names, and thought it might have been used umpteen times (there are a lot of hill articles), and checked the editor's contributions at that date and time, quite expecting to see a long stream of similar edits, but was relieved to find it was a one-off - an editor responding to "Needs more refs" tags, I think. Thanks for all your work! PamD 17:16, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

"Slapping"

If you know that there is a problem that needs fixing, why do you not fix it? To be true, this slapping of templates is just putting me off from fixing the. The Banner talk 21:39, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I refer the honourable member The Banner to the reply I wrote yesterday[4] to @Sevenseaocean. See above at #Bare URLs tagging comment. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:44, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

With other words: you have no intent to solve the problems and you are only slapping templates. Very demotivating. The Banner talk 22:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

AGF, please The Banner, and don't twist my words into a meaning opposite of what I clearly meant.

I fix lots of bare URLs and other malformed refs. However, I can do so at a rate of about 30 per hour, whereas I can use AWB to tag them at a rate of about 1000 per hour. The tags help in several ways for other editors to identify the problem, so me spending a few hours tagging is a big contribution to solving the problem. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:48, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think slapping down 1000 templates an hour is solving anything. Contrary, seeing your whole watchlist passing by is very demotivating. I doubt if anyone is now getting enthusiastic about solving those bare links. The Banner talk 00:15, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

@The Banner: I find it disheartening that so many rotting links exist as bare URLs. You, however, express concern solely about the fact that problem being identified and marked. That seems to me to be an ostrich approach.

It is clear that we clearly disagree fundamentally about the utility of the inline cleanup templates. I see only three possible bases for your objection:

1. That you think cleanup tags as a class are not helpful. If that is your view, then open a WP:RFC to propose their abolition. If the cleanup tags are all abolished, then our discussion here will be moot.
2. That unlike other cleanup tags, this particular cleanup tag ({{Bare URL inline}}) does not help in solving the problem of bare URLs. If that is your view, then take the template to WP:TFD. If the template is deleted, then our discussion here will be moot.
3. That there is some manner in which I am applying this cleanup tag incorrectly to each page. I followed the instructions, but I am human so cannot guarantee to have avoided errors. If you think that I have misapplied it, then please take one or more of my edits as an example, and explain how you believe that how that edit should should have been done.

But apart from those three points, I see no reason to continue our exchange. I have no interest in any further rhetorical statements about "slapping" templates, so please stop that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:24, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

No surprise that you prefer to walk away from this discussion. The Banner talk 06:53, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Is it solving the problem, though? I mean, my watchlist is very full now of articles you've tagged from yesterday and today, and I'm not going to go through any of them to fix them. I might look for the extra info if I come across an inline bare URL tag in a section I end up editing, but I'm not gonna go "Oh, here's some work to do, yay!" Though I do appreciate there are people who may well do that. Regardless, though - people keep on adding bare URLs as references, and will continue to do so. Would editors' time be better served by doing something about the cause of the problem, for example? You go to save an edit with a bare url reference, you get a popup warning you it's a bare URL and requesting more data. Or the popup prevents you from saving at all until you've fixed the problem or removed the bare URL. Regards, Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:28, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Ah - I see PamD already proposed the same thing! Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:30, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

@Bastun: I think we agree about the purpose of this cleanup tag. It facilitates action by anyone who wants to fix bare URLs. If editors don't want to fix bare URLs, then they are under no obligation to do so, just as they are not in any way obliged to respond to the requests for expansion on any of the 2,332,720 stub articles. In both cases, WP:NOTCOMPULSORY.

A problem like bare URLs rarely has a single solution. As I see it, a solution to this problem has three elements:

1. Identifying existing bare URLs, to facilitate cleanup. My tagging run is a part of that.
2. Fixing existing bare URLs. I do lots of that, but I wish it was less time-consuming, and wish that the Refill tool was not so often used to generate carp. We need more people to work on the cleanup, and better tools.
3. Slowing or stopping the creation of bare URL refs. There are various possible approaches, including technical measures such as a bare URL equivalent of the bot that posts a note on yout talk if you create a link to a dab page. But the more nagging that the technology does, the more likely that editors will just devise workarounds which confuse the bot, but just make the problems harder to identify, like this addition a short word "miaow") after the bare URL:
   <ref>http://example.com miaow</ref>
   That's the point which PamD picked up on below, and it's the same reason that the mediawiki software never requires an edit summary, and only gives a reminder if you opt in to ask for a reminder. Yes, the software could require a certain number of symbols or words as an edit summary, but without a huge AI effort it couldn't require a meaningful and useful summary. So the effect would be to just trigger a flurry of useless or misleading edit summaries, which be worse than nothing.

Anyway, I am working on tasks 1 & 2: tagging some bare URLs, and fixing some. If you want to work on another angle, then more power to you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:02, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

For some reason I became interested in this discussion, followed it until the end, and was impressed by the Wikipedia:Civility of both editors, each of whom had something worthwhile to say. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 00:12, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Citation template without title?

Thank you for tagging bare-urls. Your method is okay, but there is an alternative that's worth considering. Instead of slapping a {{Bare URL inline}} at the end of the reference, you could enclose the bare-url within {{Cite web|url=}}. It has a few advantages. Considering that the overwhelming majority of articles use the CS1 citation style, most of these bare-urls are going to end up within a {{Cite web}} template anyway. Using the template at this point would help to ensure that the article will consistently use CS1 templates when someone will show up to fill the reference with more detail. Adding {{Cite web}} will produce a visible error tag and also place the article in Category:CS1 errors: bare URL. Unlike {{Bare URL inline}}, which needs to be manually removed, the error tag in {{Cite web}} will be automatically removed when someone adds a |title= parameter with text. The only (less than trivial) downside is that not all articles use CS1 or even citation templates of any kind, which is fine, so one needs to check if this is the case before tagging this way. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:08, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for those ideas, @Finnusertop.

I can see the utility of what you propose, by providing a step in the right direction rather than just a warning. However, I am not going to adopt it because:

AWB user being carried to an evacuation helicopter

1. AWB is quite dumb. It's basically just a pattern-matching tool where the user can set actions based on patterns. It doesn't know things like which citation styles are in use (and i don't see how it could reliably detect them) ... and without that detection, an assumption of CS1 will be a screw up some of the time. Such screwups cause major headaches for everyone and land the AWB operator in a world of pain.
   For example, on Monday I tagged bare URl refs on over 8,000 articles. If there was even a 1% error rate ('cos 1% of those pages used a ref system other than CS1), then 80 articles would have been damaged ... so I would now be busy trying to a) identify and fix the errors; b) respond to a flurry of angry posts on my talk; c) deal with a storm at ANI.
   Been there, got that blood-stained t-shirt. It usually means a whole day of stress. No way.
2. Deliberate error. Your proposal amounts to a providing a step in the right direction, but as you note it will create a CS1 error on every page, by design. Using AWB to deliberately create an error on thousands of pages looks to me like a breach of WP:AWB#Rules which would justifiably cause mobs with pitchforks and blazing torches to descend upon me, and might trigger the loss of my AWB rights before I even had a chance to explain my reasoning. So, once again, no way.

Even if this was formulated as a fully-specced bot job, and was preceded by an RFC endorsing it and then scrutinised by WP:BAG, I still wouldn't do it. Because even with RFC+BAG approval, the bot operator would still get flamed to a crisp on a regular basis.

That said, I do like the idea, and if you propose it as a bot job then I think (from what I have considered so far) that I will be happy to support it subject to having error checks built in. I just don't want to be the person who needs asbestos underwear and an armoured helicopter to airlift me out. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:41, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

I was just brainstorming with the idea. I totally agree with your position though. One thing that occurred to me, and is unrelated to my proposal above, is that you don't seem to tag bare-urls that follow the format: [5]. (Uses the url+title syntax but the title is not defined). I'm pretty sure those count as bare-urls as well. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 07:07, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

And it was useful brainstorming, @Finnusertop! A great idea, just dangerous for anyone who implements it. But I have a notion that if the CS1 setup was modified a little, something close to this might be doable safely: use a special param to indicate that it's a bare URL rescue process, so that it can trigger whatever sort of alternative error-handling doesn't get the editor in trouble. Something like {{cite web |url=http://www.example.com/ |title= |bare-url-rescue=yes}}

Yes, my regex didn't pick up that [http://www.example.com/] format. I was aware of it, but in the time available before the end of the month, I had more articles than I could tag just by selecting the other set, so this time round I didn't bother developing and testing a regex for that format. (It's not complex, but I like to check very thoroughly before charging through a big set of articles.)

If I do another run at the end of June, I will process that format too. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:28, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Stats on bare URLs tagged in May 2021

My tagging of bare URLs ended about 18 hours ago. All the articles I tagged were categorised in Category:Articles with bare URLs for citations from May 2021. No more articles will be added to that category, so its size is a useful measure of how tagging correlates with cleanup (assuming that the tags being removed only when the bare URLs are fixed). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Articles in Category:Articles with bare URLs for citations from May 2021
When	Count
End of tagging run on 1 June 2021	15,900
17:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)	15,043
06:49, 3 June 2021 (UTC)	14,793
18:20, 5 June 2021 (UTC)	14,524
19:29, 8 June 2021 (UTC)	14,321
12:54, 12 June 2021 (UTC)	14,029
17:24, 15 June 2021 (UTC)	13,901
17:58, 19 June 2021 (UTC)	13,698
14:13, 29 June 2021 (UTC)	13,256
10:53, 19 July 2021 (UTC)	12,400
14:50, 27 July 2021 (UTC)	12,073
01:36, 3 August 2021 (UTC)	11,889
01:44, 18 August 2021 (UTC)	11,408
21:09, 29 August 2021 (UTC)	10,832
16:55, 6 September 2021 (UTC)	9,377
13:16, 13 September 2021 (UTC)	9,223
14:12, 24 September 2021 (UTC)	8,985
23:41, 1 October 2021 (UTC)	8,852
13:56, 11 October 2021 (UTC)	8,545
Live total as of 03:45, 16 November 2024 (UTC)	0

Bump, to prevent this from being archived. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:02, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Bump again. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:37, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Bump3. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:45, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Bump4. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:21, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Bump6. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:16, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Bump7. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:14, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Bump8. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:41, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Bump9. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:57, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Runing IABot and adding archives.

Noteiced you've done quite a few runs of IABot on Ireland articles to add archives, e.g. [6] That can increase the amount of cite text around the prose making it harder to edit (I prefer to use Harvard when the cites get this long). Will you be continuing this? (I'm a little tired and I've probably phrased this more bluntly than I intended - Apologies). Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 15:47, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@Djm-leighpark: Yes, I will be continuing this. It's a good protection against WP:Linkrot, which in my view more than offsets downside of the extra bulk. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:56, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

I half agree with you, and half don't. Background bots are generally creating the archives in the background, (though its not possible to tell whether the archives are succesful or not), but it either case I have come across instances where the archives were flawed. I have been called up for running this before and upsetting peoples. Anytway thankyou for your response. I was half thinking of mentioning this at WikiProject ireland, but I'm only half thinking of anything at the moment. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 16:48, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi BrownHairedGirl! While reviewing Category:CS1 errors: redundant parameter, I see that IABot is adding duplicate parameters when you run it - see this edit, this edit, and this edit for example. Could you please help clean up these edits and temporarily stop running IABot until the issue is resolved? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:08, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the headsup, @GoingBatty. That's a bit of a pain, tho mercifully the list at Category:CS1 errors: redundant parameter is fairly short.

I have reported the bug at phab:T291704, and cleaned up those three articles. Hopefully the bot's glitch will be a simple and quick fix.

I will cleanup the others, but I won't stop using the bot. Its error rate is low enough that I will just monitor that category and cleanup any more glitches as I go.

Thanks again. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:37, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! I should have mentioned that I reported it at meta:User talk:InternetArchiveBot#Bot duplicating archive links, and appreciate that you opened the Phabricator bug. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:57, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @GoingBatty. This is a very valuable bot, and usually very well-polished, so I was a bit surprised that it coukd go wrong at all. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:09, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: I have now emptied Category:CS1 errors: redundant parameter, and posted some more examples at phab:T291704. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:27, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

All sorts of things can and do happen with this bot. The bot can save all links automatically, but the community needs to have consensus. The optional user initiated save all links wasn't meant as a back door for saving all of enwiki! If that is what the community wants lets us know the bot can do it more efficiently then running job queues. You added about 65k links in the past day which is considerably more than the bot itself. -- GreenC 02:04, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC: I'm trying to say this as politely as I can, and please excuse me if I haven't succeeded: your last sentence makes no sense to me, which makes me doubt whether I understood the rest. Please can you try again? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:26, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

In the past 2 days, your user-initiated runs of the bot have added about 100k archive links. This is more than any user has done (in such a short period of time) in the history of the bot. It's much more than the bot itself added during normal operations (the bot also runs automatically as the user "InternetArchiveBot" ie. not user initiated). I'm going to ask that you get community consensus for this kind of mass addition. -- GreenC 16:12, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

To put it another way, in the past 48 hours, your user-initiated bot jobs have added so many links, it represents about 1% of all links added by InternetArchiveBot in the 6 years history of its existence on Wikipedia. -- GreenC 16:27, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I blocked your account and canceled the jobs until there is consensus for adding archive links at scale to every URL both alive and dead. If you promise not to do this unless there is consensus I will unblock your account. -- GreenC 16:32, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC: that seems like unnecessarily rapid escalation. Your post confused me, so I asked for clarification, and your next step was to block without warning.

In particular, why did you kill my batch jobs? They don't save all links, so they are a separate issue. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:20, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I can't tell what the batch is doing you'll have to redo it, it was one job not multiple. All you need to say is you won't continue and will be unblocked. -- GreenC 17:32, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC: a batch job cannot save all links, because there is no option on the form to allow it do so. See https://iabot.toolforge.org/index.php?page=runbotqueue

I am seriously annoyed about that because you killed batch 8710, which has been queued for almost two weeks because of IA's outages. Killing that job seems wholly unneccesary to your goals, and smacks of some sort of vindictiveness, because you must surely be aware that in asking me to resubmit, I will have to go the back of a very long queue.

I will come back to the other issue, but first I want to clarify why on earth you did that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:42, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't now the batch job was doing something different. Since it only did 40 articles in two weeks, something was stuck and you'd be better off restarting it anyway. -- GreenC 17:48, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

(ec) @GreenC: if you didn't know, you should have found out. You could have checked, by looking at the web form. You could have asked.

But instead you went ahead and killed the job, delaying that work by at least two weeks.

It was stuck because all batch jobs had been stuck for ages.

If you had some role in creating or maintaining his bot, then you should be aware of the distinction. If you had no such role, then you were reckless to wade in like that.

This is added to your block-without warning, and without request to stop.

When where I am sitting, it seems that you are using your powers arbitrarily: at best without reasonable attempt to check and discuss before using admin tools, and at worst vindictively.

By killing that job, you have now done significant damage to my workflow. The explanation of how that works is lengthy, but if you want I will spell it out for you.

In the meantime, to demonstrate your good faith, please unblock my access to the bot while we discuss. I will refrain from checking the "Add archives to all non-dead references" while we discuss this, but I want to continue to be able to use the bot as part of bare URL cleanup as I follow around behind the batches I submit to citation bot. Let's see where the discussion gets to before blocks are applied. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:05, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

It was an assumption the job was doing this and your right I knew about the limits for job queues but forgot. Multiple people warned this is stretching consensus and you continued doing so at a very high rate it was a preventive action not done in bad faith. I will unblock your account and am monitoring the statistics, however this is not something you can negotiate with me individually it will require consensus for adding this many links this rapidly, if so there are better methods, the bot can do this automatically. -- GreenC 18:38, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC: thank you for the unblock. I now urge you to take however much of your time is needed to investigate how you can un-kill my batch job, to undo the damage which you have caused to my workflow.

As to the rest:

1. There was no need to make an assumption. You could have checked, and you could have asked. You should have done both before killing the job, especially if that killing turns out to be as irrevocable as you suggest.
2. Your block was not preventive. It might have been preventive if you had asked me to stop and I had failed to do so, but you made no such request. Instead, you decided to shoot without warning. That is very very poor conduct, and I hoped for a fulsome apology rather than continued excuses.
3. On top of that misuse of your blocking powers, I am very troubled by your unilateral insistence that my almost-complete addition of archive links to a set of about 4,000 articles (there are about 600 left to do) is something wildly controversial which requires prior consensus. There has been only one objection to it (see above), and even that was equivocal and partially-withdrawn. Since my actions seem generally uncontroversial, it seems to me that if you find something problematic about what I am doing, then the onus is on you to start seek a consensus to stop it. Instead of seeking that consensus, you have chosen unilaterally to treat this as some sort of disruption by me. That's a very poor approach to collaborative working, especially when you misuse admin tools to enforce your view. (And yes, I do mean "misuse": your block-without-request-or-warning was a misuse, and your killing of a queued-for-two-weeks job without checking its significance was also a misuse).
4. The final straw for me is that you outright refuse to discus this. In effect, you have unilaterally invented a rule, and are using a big stick to enforce it while refusing substantive discussion. That is bullying conduct, and not at all how an admin should conduct themselves.
5. In view of all that, and in particular of your refusal to discuss, I withdraw my pledge to refrain while we discuss this. That pledge was predicated on the assumption you would act collaboratively and engage in discussion, which you have refused to do. So I may resume use of the "save all links" option, but I will desist if you start a discussion somewhere (and notify me about it), or if other editors ask me to stop.
6. Given your conduct so far, I ask you to recuse yourself from any further admin involvement in this issue. You made a number of serious errors, and you do not appear to be acting impartially. You have a clear conflict of interest here since you userpage says that you are paid by Internet Archive, so instead of unilateral actions you should be exercising great restraint in using admin power in this area. If there really is a problem here, please let some other admin deal with it: there are plenty of other competent admins who do not have a COI and who are willing and able to discuss issues before blocking and before taking apparently-irrevocable actions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:22, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Seems peremptory. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:51, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Extremely peremptory, unless there is a conversation elsewhere. Oculi (talk) 19:54, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@Oculi, Deepfriedokra, Djm-leighpark, and GoingBatty: could you clarify in definitive terms if you want BrownHairedGirl to stop until there has been a conversation somewhere? Oculi's comment looks certain. There have also been previous discussions where mass adding of links was controversial and no consensus for it was established. -- GreenC 21:05, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC: From my perspective, I do not. I think you need to obtain consensus and be less oligarchical. I think you need the discussion first and then the command to stop, if there is consensus for her to do so. She has spent years doing a lot of great work. I think you should have a consensus before stopping her from doing it. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 21:12, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC: so you blocked without warning because there was no consensus in some unspecified previous discussion? Sheesh.
Enough. I have already asked you clearly to leave this to other admins, and now you have found my limit. So get off my talk page.
If you want to take this to AN or ANI, then feel free to do so ... but please be in no doubt that if you do choose to escalate this, then I will escalate your misuse of tools in an area where you have a clear COI. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:15, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

• (edit conflicts) I hate, really hate, making a definitive call. Ultimately a majority of URLs with link rot or get usurped so archives are really needed for almost everything. And overlong {{cite}} make the prose a nightmare, and ultimately painfully to handle in raw editing, but possibly OK in viusal editor (which I don't use). I was going to suggest a pause pending discussion, but am swayed by Deepfriedokra. I think the root cause issue wider regarding longer cites mixed in prose. There may be an issue the archives need to be checked. An option might be if BHG was only to work on articles below a certain size or articles with e.g. Havard referencing while a consensus is formed, or maybe stable articles, but that may be easier said than done. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 21:23, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks, @ Djm-leighpark, for that thoughtful reply.
    your second and third sentences describe the issues much as I see them: something like this is ultimately needed for most cite links, but it does make the wikicode harder to read. In my experience, that difficulty is mostly overcome by a good syntax highlighter, but I accept that other may have different experiences.
    Your suggestions don't really work for me: e.g. a) Harvard-style refs are used on only a v small minority of articles, so that you effectively mean stopping work; b) Harvard refs don't work well for articles with a lot of newspaper sources, esp when they are clustered by date (see e.g. 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election, where I archived all the refs manually: authorname/year indexing is unusable because a cluster of journalist each wrote several articles per week over several weeks); c) a size limit for articles would mean that in general, the article with the most links to rot would be the ones left out, which seems to be to be undesirable.
    Ultimately, I think we need a radically different way of handling refs, which doesn't leave them jumbled up in prose, and preferably has them as some sort of sub-property of the page. But that's a wider issue. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:52, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
    • PS @Djm-leighpark: what do you think of the style of referencing I have implemented in in Emma Rogan, where all the refs are in the references section? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:06, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

I actually went through phase of using that style, it has a rightful name I cannot remember, ... or may it doesn't. I particularly was using it when there was a couple of cases a people submitting a swampload of AfD/PRODs circa 50+ at a time over a period of maybe 2/3/4 days. About 1/3+ were rescued, 2/3 were redirects/merges. It cures the I've never mentally recovered. It has an advantage of an option of grouping references by function. From memory at that time I believe the visual editor did not cope well from it. It also needed {tl|rp}} to take multiple location from the same source which is a little ugly in the prose. Ultimately (after much resistance) I switched to Havard due to the neater reference in the prose and the ability to list the sources visibility in a suitable order (e.g. alphbetically). If anyone looks at my Havard referencing they'd probably note I keep an order of cite XXX|(author...)|date=|Title making it easier to pick out the associated {{sfn}}. This may not make much sense. Djm-leighpark (talk) 22:29, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

@Djm-leighpark, it's probably 'cos it's late and I am tired, but I am not sure that I understand what you describe about your use of Harvard refs. Can you give an example of a page where you implemented it? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:39, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Take a look at Robert Coey#Sources ... it actually not the best example. Dublin Broadstone railway station#Sources is one you've recently touched but again not a great example ... Me brains a tad dead. ... But the key is to keep the order the same in the {{cite}} as is needed by the {{sfn}} (excluding first names .... ) 23:45, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC: My concern was that the bot was making mistakes and adding redundant parameters, causing articles to be included in Category:CS1 errors: redundant parameter. BrownHairedGirl said she would continue using the bot and cleaning up the errors, which is good enough for me. I use several tools that require a bit of clean up as well.

@BrownHairedGirl: Looks like your edits to Déirdre de Búrca, Dessie Larkin, Francis Beamish still need to be cleaned up. I cleaned up the others that were unrelated to your edits. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 04:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Workaround for the IAbot bug

As a workaround until the IAbot bug phab:T291704 is fixed, I have written a wee script to add dashes to cite parameters: User:BrownHairedGirl/CiteParamDashes.js.

Using the script before invoking IAbot will avoid the parameter duplication caused by this bug. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:21, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Ring saga

I have ring-around-the-color. 😏 --Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:34, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

I fear that it may not be the one ring. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:44, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2021

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October 2021 at Women in Red

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Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Administrator changes

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Alvestrand • Black Falcon • Deathphoenix • Dppowell • Mark Arsten • JGHowes (deceased)

Oversighter changes

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Interface administrator changes

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Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain high-risk templates.
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Technical news

• DiscussionTools has superseded Enterprisey's reply-link script. Editors may switch using the "Discussion tools" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features.

Arbitration

• A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
• Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
• The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

• Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Help with page cleanup?

Hello User:BrownHairedGirl Thanks so much for your recent edits to the Vonage page to help clean up the article. As a COI editor, I have recently posted to the Vonage Talk page, asking editors for help in updating the Business Services section. Is this something you would be willing to help with? See my suggested edit below, with citation. Many thanks!

Business services The Vonage Communications Platform provides unified communications, contact center and Communications APIs. The platform is programmable, allowing the integration of voice, video, chat, messaging and verification into existing applications and workflows. Vonage’s cloud communications services allow business customers to connect with various business applications and customer relationship management (CRM) tools through middleware technology.[60][61] For business customers that rely on high quantities of voice, video and data communications in their day-to-day operations, Vonage provides quality of service over its own private Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network and via a Software Defined Area Network (SD-WAN) product, Vonage SmartWAN.[62][63][64][65]

Citation - https://www.nojitter.com/cloud-communications/surf%E2%80%99s-vonage-ceo-wants-ride-platform-wave

SStankevich (talk) 17:47, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @SStankevich

Sorry, but no. My edits were all technical changes, to cleanup WP:Bare URLs, which has been my almost sole focus since May. That's a huge task, and I don't have time to get into the details of articles. In any case, that topic doesn't interest me.

Thank you for the friendly tone of your request, and for your overt disclosure of your COI, but I do have to say that I am not at all comfortable with a COI editor pro-actively soliciting individual editors to make edits on their behalf. My discomfort is heightened by the blatantly promotional tone of the paragraph which you want to add: it reads like a direct quote from an advertisement rather a neutral, encyclopedic description.

I am sure that you mean well, but having briefly reviewed talk:Vonage, I am not in any way persuaded that you have really been able to adopt a neutral POV on this topic.

So I want to respectfully suggest that your recuse yourself from editing topics related to Vonage. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:19, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

See also my comment[7] on the edit request at Talk:Vonage#Business_Services_section. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:30, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:MPs elected in UK election/constituency

Template:MPs elected in UK election/constituency has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 19:27, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Category:Serbian pop-folk singers has been nominated for merging

Category:Serbian pop-folk singers has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Rathfelder (talk) 10:06, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Category:Red Western actors has been nominated for deletion

Category:Red Western actors has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. No Great Shaker (talk) 10:03, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

List of Disney theatrical animated feature films

I came across the article while fixing citation errors. I've had to revert a couple of your edits, as I'm unsure what they were meant to achieve. It looks like your Reflinks edit went very wrong, it added group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="" " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " to several references. Thanks ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 15:15, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @ActivelyDisinterested

Thanks for the fix, and the message. That was a real screw-up.

A little context on what I am doing here: a mass cleanup of WP:Bare URLs, which I have been doing since early July. This has several steps;

1. Use a variety of tools to create list of articles with bare URLs.
2. Feed those articles to Citation bot, via User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles_with_bare_links. Since early July, I have fed the bot about 350,000 such pages.
3. Follow behind the bot, cleaning up as many as I can manage of the articles where the bot's edit appears not to have fixed the bare URLs, or (if I have time and energy) where the bot has not made any fixes. (In this case, the bot edit was almost 2 weeks ago[8]). That followup uses the following tools:
   • a) Reflinks. I use Reflinks a lot (hundreds of times per day), to fill WP:Bare URLs. In about half the cases it fails to load the URL, so makes no changes, but where it does make changes it is extremely accurate, so much so that after tens of thousands of uses I now check its changes only some of the time.
   • b) Refill 2. Much more comprehensive than Reflinks, but with a much higher error rate, so its output needs a lot of checking. I often don't use it, because on pages with a lot of refs the error-checking takes too much time.
   • c) two scripts to tag pages with remaining bare URLs: User:BrownHairedGirl/linkrot.js for pages with lots of remaining bare URLs, and User:BrownHairedGirl/BareURLinline.js for pages with few remaining bare URLs.
   • d) possibly some unassisted edits, tho those are rare
   • e) Sometimes I use InternetArchiveBot (aka IABot) to cleanup a page with a lot of dead links. If so, I use another script to avoid a bug in IABot: User:BrownHairedGirl/CiteParamDashes.js.

In this case, Reflinks went mad at a |group= parameter.[9]. I have never seen it do anything like that before, but I will watch out for that in future. Unfortunately, it is unmaintained, so no chance of a fix.

I hope that clarifies what I was doing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks useful to know. I've been trying to work at the general cite errors, I have been for awhile as an IP. So I understand the desire to deal with bare URLs. The article uses a slightly unusual method for showing notes, at least I've note seen the exact method before. It could be Reflinks caught up on that. I've corrected quite a few errors caused by reFill2, not everyone is as careful using it as you. ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 15:53, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Brian Graham (footballer)

Hi BrownHairedGirl. Sorry I've just had to revert you again. The Brian Graham (footballer) article this time, same issue. ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 23:17, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @ActivelyDisinterested. Now fixed.[10] --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:29, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

BHGbot 9 — removing redundant Template:Cleanup bare URLs

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 9.

This bot has now completed its trial. Scrutiny of the trial would be welcome. Please leave any comments at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 9#Discussion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:59, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom)/meta/abbrev

Template:Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom)/meta/abbrev has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:38, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:OperasInCentury

Template:OperasInCentury has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Izno (talk) 21:14, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:GaelicGamesInCentury

Template:GaelicGamesInCentury has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Izno (talk) 21:15, 22 October 2021 (UTC)