User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2012 March

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Unwanted DNB redirects

Even if you can manage to create decent articles from the DNB, we do not need "… (DNB00)" redirects. Please stop creating them. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 13:32, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Well since it's you asking. Rich Farmbrough, 13:47, 27 February 2012 (UTC).

Could you please check this?

Hi Rich Farmbrough. As an experienced admin, I kindly ask you to check these edits of user MarshallBagramyan. ([1], [2], [3]) That clearly seems like edit war to me. While the source insists that this incident has happened and was the main reason behind these clashes, MarshallBagramyan clearly wants to erase this fact. Could you please help me in this, as I am very reluctant to engage any edit war against him. Regards, --Verman1 (talk) 07:52, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Forum shopping. You already reported this at WP:ANI --Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:46, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually I think it was User:MarshallBagramyan who did that. Rich Farmbrough, 14:38, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

I'll let him off then. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:44, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I have had a brief look, and certainly there is a slow motion edit war going on, involving a number of editors. I suspect I can guess their nationalities by their edits. I don't see an urgent need for action, so I'm going to think about this a little more. Rich Farmbrough, 15:12, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

There is some mediation going on at [4] not sure if this could be wrapped up with that, or if it would sabotage the process. Rich Farmbrough, 21:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Hi Rich. As you have some previous experience about the topic, could you please check this out and leave some comment about what you are thinking about? Some admins are trying to ban me for the things that I have not done. --Verman1 (talk) 06:32, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Please

Please see the updated Request for help section. Debresser (talk) 17:29, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I sent you an email

Thanks, --Beth Wellington (talk) 22:22, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Can you stop with the cosmetic changes please?

Can you stop with the cosmetic changes please? I find it annoying to have worse-than-pointless edits like this one constantly coming up on my watchlist. Hesperian 03:14, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

You may want to comment

... on Category_talk:User-created_public_domain_images#Keep_local_files. I noticed you made this edit. --MGA73 (talk) 11:03, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Can you also fix Template:PD-user? --MGA73 (talk) 18:52, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I had a look at {{PD-author}} which is a bit of a problem one - 11,000 images, most of which, it appears, are either PD-ueser or PD-old (or PD-maybe). Rich Farmbrough, 19:09, 29 February 2012 (UTC).

{{PD-author}} does not sort the images in dated categories so it is not a big problem at the moment. {{PD-user}} put the files in the same category as {{PD-self}} so to make it work as planned {{PD-user}} should also be fixed. But it looks complex. --MGA73 (talk) 20:23, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I already did it. Let me know if there are problems. Rich Farmbrough, 20:26, 29 February 2012 (UTC).

Helpful Pixie bot mistakes and minor problems

1. Here, HPbot changes Mar2012 in May 2012. Two small issues: Mar is a typo for March, not for May, and HP bot should perhaps never place future tags, since these are usually incorrect.
2. Something seems to have gone wrong here, although it didn't cause any problems.
3. I understand that a bot can't catch every eventuality, but I thought that this one was covered by it: missing "date=" before months. This doesn't really produce the optimal result. Fram (talk) 14:25, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

1 Hm, the Mar thing is interesting. Back in the AWB days there was a complete suite of comprehensive regexes that verged on AI in its effect, but I replaced (most of) them with Hamming distance code in the Perl version. A few weeks back I changed this to Levenshtein distance which is much more sophisticated, but compute intensive. Obviously neither are as good as I would like.

Actually this was much simpler, the code to split months from years was after the code that expands month names. So  Fixed from build p625. (625 is 5*5*5*5.) Rich Farmbrough, 15:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC).

a.) Again the AWB version had code to fix future and too-far-in-the past dates, this could be re-introduced.

HPB does limit dates, but it is fairly relaxed about it. I have made it a little more assertive about future dates. (p626) Rich Farmbrough, 15:58, 1 March 2012 (UTC).

2. This is interesting. The code and the mediawiki software should catch edit conflicts, here is AnomieBOT making the same edit (AnmoieBOT tunes it's time delay to match HPB, maximising the chance of edit conflicts).

3. This is a known issue, and slightly tricky. Adding "date=" is fine if parameter is meant to perform that function, and guessing by "if it looks like a date" is a good filter. I have never felt happy, though, since there have been cases where a default parameter is legitimate. Perhaps I will implement this for current month only.

Rich Farmbrough, 14:39, 1 March 2012 (UTC).

Thanks. Fram (talk) 14:52, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, this looks a lot better. Fram (talk) 15:19, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

{{Clear right}}

Can you please fix the syntax after this edit, thanks.

Removing the CSS float is what was needed. Changing <div> to <br> is incorrect (and unnecessary) because it breaks the HTML nesting rules for %block; contexts. More importantly, your edit now leaves a dangling </div> closing tag that just shouldn't be there. Also <br/> is a bogosity anyway, as that's XHTML and if we're embedding anything in MediaWiki wikitext, it's a HTML parsing model, not an XHTML one.

Thanks Andy Dingley (talk) 20:05, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I checked a bunch of articles, but none of them actually needed the {{Clear right}}. (But I believe we are supposed to be XHTML compliant.) I am not sure if the un-named parameter belongs there. Rich Farmbrough, 20:14, 1 March 2012 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Cleanup category population

Hi, please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Cleanup category population. Can you explain there why you made [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ATrivia& diff=469030301 this edit]? Thanks, Goodvac (talk) 23:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done Rich Farmbrough, 12:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Arthur Hall (stationer)

I have added enough to document his publishing activities. But note that the identification with the DNB author is tenuous: see s:Author_talk:Arthur Hall. Common name. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Much like his cousin, Albert. Rich Farmbrough, 15:34, 2 March 2012 (UTC).

Problem with images: Working in English, not working in French

Hello Rich,

I created the Alhaji Alieu Ebrima Cham Joof article and added these images: [5] and [6]. They are showing up in the English article but when I tried to use them in the corresponding French article [7] they do not work, even though I've given permission (atleast I thought). Do you know how to solve this problem? Thanks. Tamsier (talk) 16:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you will need to upload them to the French Wikipedia as well. Since they are fair-use they can't go on Commons. This is exactly the sort of situation where my proposed "uncommons" project would be useful. Rich Farmbrough, 20:03, 3 March 2012 (UTC).

I see. Thanks very much for that Rich.

Tamsier (talk) 04:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

request of help regarding PIT

Dear Rich, regarding an article about Pumpable ice technology. In order to understand your remarks deeply, please, show 2-3 examples. When I prepared this draft, my main target was to support Wiki requirements including the writing content from a neutral point of view. Of course, I've not got the experience to work with Wiki articles. That is why, please, show 1,2,3 external links that are not appropriated up to your point of view or Wiki standards. Thanks Swallow2011 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:08, 3 March 2012 (UTC).

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 20:04, 3 March 2012 (UTC).

Tags (UK constituency articles)

Hey

Helpful Pixie Box has gone on a tagging binge - Rayment build 626 or something like that (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=South_Down_(UK_Parliament_constituency)&curid=865888&diff=480337792&oldid=465261465). Could you explain what this is, please, because I have almost every United Kingdom parliamentary constituency on my watchlist so I currently have either a lot of work to do or a lot of stuff to ignore.

Thanks! doktorb _words^deeds 16:05, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, consensus (which I don't fully support) is that Rayment is not a wholly RS, and therefore {{Better source}} has been inserted into the main {{Rayment}} template (which can be over-ridden when the template is used for external links, for example, instead of as a citation). This means that all occurrences needed dating. Generally I can spot this sort of thing coming (with template tags) and start dating the templates in advance, sometimes years, so that it's not a big bang when it becomes official, this one, however took me by surprise. Rich Farmbrough, 16:11, 5 March 2012 (UTC).

Hmmph, I can't think of a better source! What shall I do? doktorb _words^deeds 16:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

If you look at the Template talk:Rayment you will see many sources discussed, not just Burke's and Debretts, and the MP lists, but many I am not familiar with. As to what you should do, that's up to you! Rich Farmbrough, 17:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC).

Hehe, cheers Rich. I have a watchlist page full of constituency articles now, I think that what I should do is just leave it be :P doktorb _words^deeds 17:27, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Some errors in your latest edits

In your latest edits, you are carefully making some minimal change so as not to violate the letter of your editing restriction. You are at the same time making errors though, duplicating the "Use British English" template[8][9][10][11][12]... Furthermore, you have now made a few hundred edits (basically to replace a redirected template to the target of the redirect name, not really very useful) with the rather non-informational edit summary "General fixes using", which seems to be the result of some tampering with a tool like AWB. Please provide more informational and less incomplete edit summaries, and be more careful when adding templates. Fram (talk) 10:12, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

There may be 9 edits which duplicate the template, easily fixed. If I wasn't looking over my shoulder all the time that would certainly not have happened. As to to the rest, .. Rich Farmbrough, 10:27, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Perhaps better if you only edit while you are able to watch the screen? It can't be good for your back to edit while looking over your shoulder all the time. Any reason why you don't use better edit summaries? Usually, one would expect that something would follow "using"... Fram (talk) 11:42, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

George M. Cochran

Hey, Rich, I'm back. Hope you're well. How does one remove the [1] before the first external link...Thanks! --Beth Wellington (talk) 00:54, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Just take the description (which will become clickable) into the []. As long as there is a space between the url and the description it will work. Rich Farmbrough, 10:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC).

Nomination for deletion of Template:Category TOC exists

Template:Category TOC exists has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:20, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Why don't people talk instead of nominating? Rich Farmbrough, 13:23, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Yeah, sorry about that. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:10, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

NP. Rich Farmbrough, 15:17, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Ref web

Is {{Ref web}} going anywhere? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:15, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmm.. something I really should get back to. Rich Farmbrough, 22:01, 18 February 2012 (UTC).

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Template:Rescue

Terrible restore. You should know better. You do know better. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

What's the point in hiding history? Rich Farmbrough, 02:03, 17 February 2012 (UTC).

What does that even mean? After over 6,000 deletions, you're now opposed to the practice?

And what history? {{rescue}} wasn't {{qif}} or some other template with technical or historical value. It was exactly what you'd expect it to have been, with just as many edits. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:02, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Well I have always been opposed to hiding history, except where there are legal, moral or ethical concerns. The point is that I merely restored historical versions under the new text. I also corrected the new code so that it functioned properly. Both unexceptional actions.

I'm not sure why people are so angry about this, it in no way represents a victory, phyrric or otherwise for ARS. As far as I know the three people involved, Ironholds, Tothwolf and myself have never vouchsafed an opinion on ARS vs deletionists. I believe Ironholds was the closing admin?

As I remarked this is simply a piece of functionality the MediaWiki software should support, and anyone can utilise it, I would encourage them to do so, if they find it useful, until and unless it becomes native.

Rich Farmbrough, 12:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC).

{{rescue}} is a political tool. That's why your restoration was more than just a restoration.

Re-reading some of my comments here, they sound a bit harsher than I intended. I'm mostly just annoyed to see the template alive again (and back at TFD). :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 16:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

No worries. Rich Farmbrough, 16:54, 17 February 2012 (UTC).

TMZ...

...has often proven to be at least as or more reliable than the so-called "reliable" sources. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:38, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure. Mostly they are cited for stuff we really don't want to get wrong (and possibly shouldn't be including anyway) like divorce settlements and stalking court orders. Rich Farmbrough, 21:57, 18 February 2012 (UTC).

The encyclopedic value of their content is a whole separate issue from their reliability. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:29, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

J'agree Rich Farmbrough, 22:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC).

MediaCityUK conundrum

Hi Rich. Might you have a look at this and advise or act on it accordingly? User_talk:J3Mrs#MediaCityUK. Thanks and bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 21:32, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Looks like you have settled. I'd not worry too much about this particular case, there are some deep issues here which are better solved at guidance level (there may be something on the first point) rather than on a single article. Any of the references support that some programming was moved which is good, and of course the gold standard is verifiable not referenced.

1. What is the optimum number of references for a given fact?
2. How can we preserve unused but potentially useful references?

But as far as that paragraph goes I'd like to see, "Research and Religion and Ethics departments" changed to be less ambiguous.

Rich Farmbrough, 09:24, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Thanks, Rich. It (and User:J3Mrs) just felt iron-fisted and unreasonable, something I am unaccustomed to. I made a case for the set of references I put in -- which J3Mrs rejected. I think it might be a larger problem with this editor. Anyway, let it go for now. Best Wishes. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 16:06, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Outline of Perl

Here's a new outline.

You could help us Perl newbies by adding anything you think would be helpful. The Transhumanist 19:21, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mackemfixer

Thanks! -- Luk ^talk 10:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Welcome. Rich Farmbrough, 13:32, 14 February 2012 (UTC).

Stable version template

I just wanted to let you know that I tweaked the stable version template a little; I made it collapsible, and added a link to the template documentation.

Thanks, Falconus^{p t c} 14:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah, sounds good. Rich Farmbrough, 14:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC).

http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/pscbk/til_wikipedias_highest_editorial_honor_is_the/

This editor is a Master Editor II and is entitled to display this Rhodium Editor Star.

I created that discussion today in TIL. Currently, it's 3 on the TIL page. Go tell everybody in the discussion you're the most BA MFer on Wikipedia :)

Thanks. I love rhodium, so crunchy. Rich Farmbrough, 20:55, 16 February 2012 (UTC).

The Redditors forgot SmackBot though..

Take a look The first two questions are the only ones that matter. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I guess in a month I get bufonite... Rich Farmbrough, 23:25, 16 February 2012 (UTC).
23:25, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Larry Jordan

HELLO. I see you helped edit the article I wrote about Larry N. Jordan that is undergoing some tweaking. I am wondering if you could also help me create a footnote? Near the end of the article I have cited a story that ran on Mr. Jordan in two Texas newspapers but I did not know how to create a link to a footnote so I merely made the actual newspaper names a link to the story. If you could modify this I'd appreciate it very much. Thanks, Lisa BrownLisaBrown2012 (talk) 21:34, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

HELLO AGAIN. I noticed in re-reading Larry N. Jordan's Wikipedia page that someone removed the reference to Billboard magazine. But this is a MAJOR citation that should be included, especially since it appeared in the magazine recently when they did an interview with Mr. Jordan and it helps justify his accomplishment in writing a major new book on this iconic star Jim Reeves:

(The link is: http://www.billboard.com/column/the-615/jim-reeves-life-disturbed-author-of-biography-1005837352.story#/column/the-615/jim-reeves-life-disturbed-author-of-biography-1005837352.story )

There is also a quote from the article I'd like to include, as follows: According to Billboard:

"Though the author is a Reeves fan, he didn't put the singer on a pedestal... The book is a balanced account of Reeves' life and career, his marriage to Mary...and his penchant for the opposite sex that might not have meshed with his 'Gentleman Jim' persona. However, Jordan spends a lot of time discussing what made Reeves fans all over the world: the music."

I'm a newbie and I have got in over my head in trying to do a good deed by posting to Wikipedia on a guy I think has some impressive accomplishments and yet I still don't quite understand the technical aspects here. If you could help again I'd sure thank you! -- Lisa BrownLisaBrown2012 (talk) 01:55, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Hm there should be enough eyes on this, but I'll take a look. Rich Farmbrough, 10:58, 12 March 2012 (UTC).
 Done

BOT problem

Hi, just a minor problem with BOT in this edit where the BOT dates an already dated {{Rp}} template, as well as 2 undated ones. Keith D (talk) 01:24, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, how very curious. Rich Farmbrough, 01:26, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Resolved, thanks again Rich Farmbrough, 12:08, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Template blanking

Hi Farmbrough, your bot Femto Bot (talk · contribs) blanked {{wikification progress}} with this edit. Was this a mistake? I'm notifying you just in case; for now i have restored the template as it is used by WP:WWF. Cheers, benzband (talk) 16:06, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! This is very odd, it null edits those pages several times a day, but has never deleted one before (it wiped three). I suspect it may be related to WMF server problems, I will but in a check to ensrue that it doesn't happen again. Rich Farmbrough, 17:47, 9 March 2012 (UTC).

Thanks. benzband (talk) 18:10, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Request for comment: Template:more plot

Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 February 21#Template:More plot is closed as keep. However, these issues are still discussed in Template talk:More plot. Please join in discussion for more consensus. --George Ho (talk) 01:48, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Please don't use the same incorrect edit summary over and over again. You made 48 edits with "Fix refs and/or minor fixes Depov a little", but apart from the first one none of them did "depov" anything. Fram (talk) 10:10, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorted. Rich Farmbrough, 10:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC).

Deleting an article out of process

When an AfD concludes as "merge", you shouldn't simply delete the page and move another page over it. Please restore the history of Statesman (276 deleted edits, stertching back to 2003) and respect the result of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Statesman and the general deletion rules. This was clearly an incorrect "G6" deletion. Fram (talk) 10:16, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The content is on the talk page. Please don't be an ass. Rich Farmbrough, 10:44, 13 March 2012 (UTC).

There was no reason at all to delete these 276 edits, there is such a thing as a history merge which could easily have been performed here. There is also suich a thing as DRV if you disagree with an AfD. Any reason why you can't just follow our normal processes? Fram (talk) 10:50, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Since you don't seem inclined to do this, I have asked another admin to restore this at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive233#Restoration of page history requested. Fram (talk) 12:58, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Waste of time.. Rich Farmbrough, 00:47, 14 March 2012 (UTC).

Helpful Pixie Bot errors

Your code to change "Reference" to "References" should only work when it is the only word in the section header, not in cases like this and this. I corrected them both, no idea if there are any others where the same happened. Fram (talk) 15:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll check. Rich Farmbrough, 15:35, 13 March 2012 (UTC).

Allright. I have meanwhile also corrected [13] and [14]. Fram (talk) 15:37, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done Rich Farmbrough, 00:47, 14 March 2012 (UTC).

Doesn't seem to be completely corrected, notice e.g. [15] and [16] (both corrected now). Fram (talk) 08:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

That was useful, the AI is supposed to review my instructions periodically, and I told it to stop doing header fixes at all, so I've improved the obedience function a little. Rich Farmbrough, 13:08, 14 March 2012 (UTC).

Helpful Pixie Bot error

Hi Rich. Helpful Pixie Bot broke a number of URLs on an article I watchlist in this edit. I reverted and have temporarily indefinitely blocked the bot. Feel free to unblock without asking me whenever you get that bug fixed. Best, NW (Talk) 18:46, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 18:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC).

Disambiguation template doesn't need dating

Re this edit, the {{Disambiguation}} template doesn't need dating, as far as I know. Cheers! -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:53, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Quite right. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 15:06, 14 March 2012 (UTC).

Dated template "disambiguation" - see [17]. Hipocrite (talk) 18:39, 14 March 2012 (UTC) Edit - I see someone said this. Ignore. Hipocrite (talk) 18:39, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

AFD Alan Forsyth

would like you to take a look at the discussion. We have posting of misinformation which is then used to support what seems to be an overriding BIAS against those who seek elected public office couched in "notability" terms Yaloe (talk) 03:25, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 11:14, 29 February 2012 (UTC).

Calfix

The sources for this page have been verified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnlowenstein (talk • contribs) 23:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Helpful Pixie Bot & ISBN

Why is the Helpfull Pixie Bot having a problem with "isbn= 2-06-008-099-0". That is exactly the ISBN as stated on the book cover. Could it give trouble because this is a French' ISBN? Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:02, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe the publisher made an error, that is not unknown - ISBN 2-06-008-099-0 is invalid (click it and get confirmation from special:boooksources). Rich Farmbrough, 20:42, 17 March 2012 (UTC).

Hmmm, maybe a blob of ink too much. After comparison with the guides from 1985 and 1993 I have tried 006 instead of 008 and that gave the right book. Nice Now I have to find al articles with the wrong ISBN and correct them.... Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:56, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

BTW: "{{Please check ISBN|reason=Check digit (0) deos not correspond to calculated 1.}}" should be corrected too Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:01, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes... actually I'm going to change that message, because the risk is that people will simply change the check-digit. However sometimes they have done a manual 10->13 conversion by simply sticking a 798 at the front... Rich Farmbrough, 21:05, 17 March 2012 (UTC).

Yes, that agrees with the number I just found at paper-back swap. I had forgotten the thrill of the ISBN chase. Rich Farmbrough, 21:05, 17 March 2012 (UTC).

perl table construction script

I don't have a clue where to start.

I'd like the table to list subjects down the left, with columns for traffic on the right. One traffic column for the corresponding outline, category, and portal for comparison purposes.

And totals at the bottom of each column.

If you whip something up, I'm sure I could help refine it.

I look forward to any perl code you can throw at me. The Transhumanist 02:29, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

P.S.: Happy New Year!

OK so here's the (untested) basics in pseudo-perl. (There's two approaches, storing everything then making the table,or making the table line by line. Both have advantages, the latter is simpler.)

let us suppose we have a config file with the subject, outline, cats and portals listed thus:

Stamford,Outline of Stamford, Category:Stamford, Wikipedia:WikiProject Stamford

(We could just have the word "Stamford" - if we could be sure that all three entities follow the naming convention.)

print_headers...

while (<>){
    chomp;
    if (/^([^,]*),([^,]*),([^,]*),([^,]*)$/){ # Note: this could be also done with the split function, in a different way
       $name=$1;
       $outline=$2
       $cat=$3;
       $project=$4;
   }
   else{
       print "$_ does not match pattern; skipping.\n";
   }
   $outline_count=count($outline);
   $cat_count=count($outline);
   $project_count=count($project);
   print "\|$name\|\|$outline_count\|\|$cat_count\|\|$project_count\n\|-\n"; # make a line of the table....
   # keep track of the totals....
   $outline_total+=$outline_count;
   ...
}

print_footers....

sub count{
    # in some circumstances there would be error checking code here - what if the page doesn't exist,or the server is down?
    $url=shift;
    get the page...
    $count= find the number..
    return $count
}

Rich Farmbrough, 11:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC).

I'll see if I can figure out how it works. Thank you! The Transhumanist 21:24, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Spamming?

Hi Rich. Do you know what this is all about? He keeps putting invitations on my talk page and I keep deleting them, and he keeps putting them back. A bot? I never heard of this editor: User talk:Walter55024. Please have a look. The message he keeps leaving on my talk page is:

Would you like to join my disscion at:User Talk:Worm That Turned/Adopt/Walter55024?--Walter55024 (talk) 22:37, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks and Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 23:53, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I've seen this fairly new editor around. WTT is mentoring him, but I rather think this is going to be a long process. Definitely means well, and presumably is excited about the technology - but just doesn't "get it" yet. Rich Farmbrough, 09:42, 29 February 2012 (UTC).

Thanks, Rich, for having a look. It seemed a bit odd. Another admin has blocked the editor now, indefinitely, until such a time as he can be appropriately productive on Wikipedia. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 15:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Category:Copro Records albums

Category:Copro Records albums, which you created, has been nominated for discussion. 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. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:29, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Which Helpful Pixie Bot task is this?

HPB is "Delink USA (overlinking) and replace with US (MoS)" (e.g. here). I couldn't find the approval for this task. Can you indicate where this was approved? Fram (talk) 07:52, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

E.g. edits like this one are unnecessary and don't do any other approved tasks at the same time. Fram (talk) 07:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

How curious. I shall put a stop to it immediately. Rich Farmbrough, 10:48, 15 March 2012 (UTC).

Thanks. Fram (talk) 11:03, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

But then again... [18]. Oh, and totally unimportant, but there is a typo in some HPB edit summaries, e.g. [19] (paramter instead of parameter). Fram (talk) 07:56, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

List of Billboard Hot 100 top 10 singles in 1998

So I know you have everything up to 1999 up, are you gonna be able to do 1998? Arjoccolenty (talk)

Some mistake? This is data I do not have at my fingertips. Rich Farmbrough, 12:57, 14 March 2012 (UTC).

Please stop the ISBNs for a while

You have been asked by some people on this page to stop with changing the ISBNs (hyphenation) through Helpful Pixie Bot while discussion about it is ongoing. On the other hand, the task to do this has been approved, but that was some years ago.

Now I notice that Helpful Pixie Bot is not only adding and changing hyphenation (e.g. here), but is also removing hyphenation[20][21][22][23]...). Perhaps it would be better if you stopped with this task until it has become more clear whether there still is consensus for this. The tagging of incorrect ISBNs[24] is separate from this and seems undoubtedly useful, so no problem there. Fram (talk) 09:13, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

You're a programmer?

Rich Farmbrough, I dropped by your page the other day on a completly different matter. I noticed that you're a programmer. I assume you work with the wikidatabase. I'm looking for two things:

1. a list of all 9000+ items contained within Category:WikiProject Canadian music articles
2. a report listing articles (from the above category) that is missing Category:Musical groups by year of establishment (for music groups only).

Maybe you can point me in the right direction if you can't help? Thanks very much. Argolin (talk) 15:08, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Download WP:AWB, use the list comparer (tools on the menu bar) to create the list of members of both categories. Hit compare.. well yoll have to futz a bit to get non-groups out of the list. Rich Farmbrough, 16:06, 19 February 2012 (UTC).

omg! The AWB is more than a simple edit tool? Thank-you very much. I'll look into signing up for it. How about item #1? I use my list of these articles to look for the intersect/nonintersect of other categories. Most recently, I took the articles from Category:Albums by artist, removed the albums, and compared it to my list. There are many, many album articles not linked to any project other than WP:Albums. Argolin (talk) 17:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

here is a list. Rich Farmbrough, 22:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC).

Thanks Rich Farmbrough I've signed up for access. It's something I've always meant to check out, but never got around to. It sounds like a great tool that will do a lot of what I'm looking for. For the other request that I pressed of you, please don't spend any more time on it. Unless you're done, I'll see what the AWB does first. I'm sure there must be a request a feature section in AWB. Thanks again Argolin (talk) 00:54, 20 February 2012 (UTC).

I was looking for a .csv or tab delimited dump of all items in Category:WikiProject Canadian music articles not recent changes: I've done most of them! In fact, I need the sandbox dump to be able to run live anytime I choose. I'm sure you know the "articles" in the cat name refers to all main namespace class articles. That's what I want all 9,076 of them as at 20 February 2012.

Yes the cat name is misleading, it contains (the talk pages of) more than just articles. There's currently 8191 articles listed here. What we need really is an ontological assessment of articles. Rich Farmbrough, 11:11, 20 February 2012 (UTC).

There are 9,081 items here Category:WikiProject Canadian music articles. You've removed all the non-article classes (and the "talk"). The problem is that I'm now unwilling to manually compile my database of Canadian music items by copying each page grouping 200 items (from the above cat). I always knew it was somewhat silly to do it that way but also knew that I would seek help. In the last month the project went from ~7k to 9k (mostly of music album articles). The project will baloon again after I add the song articles. Can you tweak your page to include all classes and have it point to the talk page? Thanks Argolin (talk) 07:10, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Please ignore the above request. I can get it myself with AWB! I'm already woking on a 600+ list of music group biographies without a year of establishment. I posted my question at the AWB help: it was answered pdq! I figured I have bothered you enough. You gave me that one final push to sign up for AWB (which I'm diggin'). Thanks again. Argolin (talk) 10:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Excellent. Tools make people more productive! Rich Farmbrough, 12:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC).

AFD/PROD notices

Hi Rich. Awhile back you got either an AFD or PROD notification, and it was during one of the template testing project's experiments. If you could go here and leave us some feedback about what you think about the new versions of the templates we tested, that would be very useful. We're specifically looking for info about whether the messages were more effective at communicating how people should participate in deletion processes as the author of the article. (You can also email me at swallingwikimedia.org if you want.) Thanks! Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again for the comments Rich, it's uber helpful. If you want, I can keep you updated on any new developments... Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Foxconn redux

Hi Rich. Foxconn is still dicey after semi-protection expired. User:76.188.129.97 got back in there. Best. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 00:43, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I re-jigged the section a little, since that sentence was a mess, and consolidated the facts into one detailed sentence. Shame there aren't better sources. Rich Farmbrough, 03:49, 26 February 2012 (UTC).

Thanks, Rich. It seems better off with your clear edits. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 05:38, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Personal view

The current build of the bot is placing templates on articles to say they have one source - obvious and no inline citations - obvious. It could be said that the bot goads people into action - but I jyst find it a bit depressing to think of those BLPs that we added a ref to, to now have these templates. IMO Victuallers (talk) 12:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

... er... no it's not? Rich Farmbrough, 12:49, 19 February 2012 (UTC).

Template:Sister project link listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Sister project link. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Sister project link redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). MGA73 (talk) 15:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Rayment

Thanks for removing the an(s) this edit, but why add the date parameter to the templates? As it will just change every time the template is called, I had considered doing it but decided that it just meant more execution every time the template is called. Was it done to shut up some sort of error report?

If so it will not work too well because doesn't the date parameter includes a day? I think the code that would be needed should look like this. But of course the real way to fix it is to pass in a parameter to the {{Rayment}} with the Magic variables subst so it is set once in the article eg: |editdate={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}} which will set "editdate=March 2012" -- PBS (talk) 08:38, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes the date parameter needs to be set in the articles {{Rayment|date=February 2012}}. Helpful Pixie Bot will take care of this. I am not keen on having clean-up tags wrapped in other templates, but it is a fairly common requirement, and this is a simple template. Rich Farmbrough, 11:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC).

{{Rayment-hc}} has been converted in a similar way to {{Rayment}} including your date alterations. There are about two times a many article inclusions to this template than {{Rayment}} (6,000+ instead of just under 3,000) -- PBS (talk) 12:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Re-Acess Article

Hello,

Your bot tagged an ariticle I was working on for various things. I have worked this past few days to correct those thing and was hoping you could check and see if I have cleared up any of the issues. If I have not, could you provide guidance on what my next steps should be? Thank you very much. Trieka Ayer (talk) 13:14, 5 March 2012 (UTC) Link to page: Dropa stones Trieka Ayer (talk) 13:16, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 12:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC).
Rich Farmbrough, 12:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Category:Bongo Beat Records

Hey Rich Farmbrough. Would you mind if I call you Rich? The Category:Bongo Beat Records albums you created has been flagged for speedy deletion. By chance, I was working on The Diodes. The article claims that the band was signed to Bongo Beat Records. I haven't done much work to prove this. However, for some reason Bongo Beat Records is familiar for which now I can't recall. They were a legit record label as evidenced by one naming form Bongo Beat acoustic series. I've done a cursory search on wiki for others to add to this empty category with no results. There are many, many deletionists out there! Argolin (talk) 02:49, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, there is a problem in my eyes, record label categories are deleted if there is no article about the label, albums are dleeted becasue they are not on notable labels, artists are deleted because they do not have notable albums. People seem to forget that merge exists. Rich Farmbrough, 02:54, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

I found four members, with little difficulty. Rich Farmbrough, 12:09, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Thanks one for the inclusionists! Argolin (talk) 06:31, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Lancelot "Capability" Brown

isbn help please. Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 01:58, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

We have the capability... Rich Farmbrough, 12:58, 14 March 2012 (UTC).

Talk page spam

OK, but Lttljvd is the original one I wanted to talk to but I thought that he had left so I sort of went crazy. I'm sorry. It won't happen again. Arjoccolenty (talk) 13:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

You left the message on his user page User:Lttljvd (which was empty and I have deleted so it's empty again), instead of his talk page -User talk:Lttljvd ... Rich Farmbrough, 13:36, 14 March 2012 (UTC).

ISBN hyphenation

Hi, Rich. I ask you to at least temporarily stop using HPB for ISBN hyphenation, as there is no consensus that it's needed. You may join discussion at Wikipedia talk:ISBN. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 08:55, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I did stop for several days for the record. Rich Farmbrough, 23:20, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

Helpful Pixie Bot dropped year

Hiya. Helpful Pixie Bot may be a bit confused, and dropping the year from date params: ''|date=March 15, 2012}}'' to ''|date=March }}'' For example[25] Thanks ;) Eclipsed   (talk)   (COI Declaration)   23:03, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

The same happened [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aga_Bai_Arrecha!&diff=482135826&oldid=482133689 here in the mainspace. Fram (talk) 08:02, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

It's cool, fixed in a later build. All errors will be sorted by the bot or the other bot. Rich Farmbrough, 13:24, 16 March 2012 (UTC).

Note to self. There may be more problems hidden by the other bot. Rich Farmbrough, 23:20, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

Saving bot resources?

We recently updated two template doc pages that were unclear as to syntax usage. If the date option is added to the usage docs, it may save bot resources. Template:Missing information non-contentious/doc and Template:Missing information/doc.--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:47, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Canoe. I have found historically that the level and variety of mistakes people make when they are trying to date templates costs more effort than leaving them blank, when I ran the bot in batch mode. Now it runs continuously, an uncorrectable mis-dated tag might cost more bot resource than before, and the number of items per day is no issue at all. Rich Farmbrough, 19:50, 16 March 2012 (UTC).

Proposed deletion of Angela Wright

The article Angela Wright has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

This individual is only noteworthy for the award, whose article already mentions her. It is a one-sentence article with multiple issues and pretty obviously falls under WP:1E

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Sleddog116 (talk) 04:58, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Multiple issues template usage suggestion

I have started a discussion about making the Multiple issues template the new cleanup template here. Since you have edited this template several times in the past I thought you might have some insight into this idea. --Kumioko (talk) 20:33, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Wiktionary pipe

Template:Wiktionary pipe has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:18, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

A couple questions...

In the annotation Perl script you wrote...

What does $page do?

I tried opening a file into $page, and it didn't work:

open $page, "Outline.txt" or die $!;
while ($page =~ /\n\*\s*\[\[([^\])]*\]\]\s*\*/s ){
   $bulleted = $1;
   $entry =   get ($bulleted);
   $entry =~ s/.*?'''.*?'''//;
   $entry =~ s/([^\.]*.[^\.]*.).*/$1/;
   $page =~ s/(\n\*\s*\[\[$bulleted\]\]\s*)\*/$1 $entry/;
}

I used the following script to test the behavior of $page:

open $page, "Outline.txt" or die $!;
while ($page){
   chomp;
   print "$_\n"
}

It just produced blank space.

I tried the above script without the "open" line, providing "Outline.txt" as a command line argument, and it still didn't work.

I use regex all the time, but file handling in perl has me stumped.

The Transhumanist 01:25, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's not how I would open a file - if I wrote that it was very strange.

open FILE, "Outline.txt" or die $!;

will open the file.

Then you need to read from it. Something like:

@array=<FILE>;
$page=join "\n", @array;
close FILE;

^perlmonks

The you are good to go. Rich Farmbrough, 02:10, 19 March 2012 (UTC).

Or just

while (<FILE>) {$page.=$_}

TMTOWTDI. Rich Farmbrough, 02:17, 19 March 2012 (UTC).

Is it normal for beginner Perl students' heads to spin? (Mine is spinning).  :)

You provided the following script fragment in a previous thread:

while ($page =~ /\n\*\s*\[\[([^\])]*\]\]\s*\*/s ){
   $bulleted = $1;
   $entry =   get ($bulleted);
   $entry =~ s/.*?'''.*?'''//;
   $entry =~ s/([^\.]*.[^\.]*.).*/$1/;
   $page =~ s/(\n\*\s*\[\[$bulleted\]\]\s*)\*/$1 $entry/;
}

There is definitely something missing, because the script does not work when run, even when I replace the guts with

while ($page){
   chomp;
   print "$_\n";
}

I don't understand "$page". It's not defined in the script, and I don't know how to define it from the examples you just provided.

It doesn't appear that this fragment can be dropped into the new script you provided above.

What is missing? The Transhumanist 03:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes $page is the contents of the page. How you get the contents of the page is another matter. Remember data types in perl are somewhat flexible - $page does not need to be defined unless you

 use strict;

which you probably should. So in the example I gave (gluing it together)

open FILE, "Outline.txt" or die $!;
while (<FILE>) {$page.=$_}
close FILE;

while ($page =~ /\n\*\s*\[\[([^\])]*\]\]\s*\*/s ){
   $bulleted = $1;
   $entry =   get ($bulleted);
   $entry =~ s/.*?'''.*?'''//;
   $entry =~ s/([^\.]*.[^\.]*.).*/$1/;
   $page =~ s/(\n\*\s*\[\[$bulleted\]\]\s*)\*/$1 $entry/;
}

# Now do something with the text we have created.
open FILE, "Annotated.txt" or die $!;
print FILE $page;
close FILE;

the text was loaded from a file. There would need to be a subroutine to get the Wikipage $bulleted.

Rich Farmbrough, 03:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC).

I swapped out the guts to test the file handling portion...

open FILE, "Outline.txt" or die $!;
while (<FILE>) {$page.=$_}
close FILE;

while ($page){
   chomp;
   print "$_\n";
}

...and it didn't work.

What did I do wrong? The Transhumanist 03:54, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

P.S.: is there supposed to be a "." after "$page"?   -TT

Yes ".=" appends so it's the same as "$page = $page . $_;"

The critical difference is that the while loop in my code has a match in it. While that match is true it loops.

Assuming there is some text in your "Outline.txt" file, your code will stay in the while loop forever, printing whatever is in the $_ variable; If $page evaluates to false, (which probably means an empty file) then it will just finish.

open FILE, "Outline.txt" or die $!;
while (<FILE>) {$page.=$_}
close FILE;

print $page;

would be all that was needed. Rich Farmbrough, 04:04, 19 March 2012 (UTC).

Gabi Ashkenazi article

Hello Rich. An anonymous editor from Antwerp, Belgium keeps putting in erroneous and un-cited information about the name of the brother of Gabi Ashkenazi. His brother's name, as per the citation given, is Avi not Natan who's a military leader. I'm on the verge of a 3RR. Help? The anonymous editor(s) are User:91.176.220.231 and User:91.176.56.106. Help? Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 00:41, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll keep an eye on it. The Hebrew article agrees (luckily Aleph is one of the Hebrew letters I know). Rich Farmbrough, 02:27, 19 March 2012 (UTC).

Very good. Thanks, Rich. I guess Georg Cantor helped aleph along for many. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 02:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Rich. User:84.198.183.148 is back changing it from Avi to Natan. Another Antwerp, Belgium IP and anonymous editor. Help? --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 04:34, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Left an HTML comment, fingers crossed. Rich Farmbrough, 12:36, 23 March 2012 (UTC).

ISBN hyphens

Hi. This bot just added hyphens to some ISBNs in Smith Act trials of communist party leaders. I'm preparing the article for WP:FA, and uniformity in citations is critical. So I need to have them all with hyphens, or all without hyphens. My preference is without (which is the way the article was before). I tried to "undo" the change, but intervening changes made that impossible. NOTE: I'm not cranky, and I love bots & appreciate the work the bot-creators do; but in this case the article became, from a FA/MOS/uniformity viewpoint, worse. I'll go ahead an manually undo; but I thought I'd give you all a heads-up since other editors will probably object to these sorts of changes. --Noleander (talk) 19:59, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks for letting me know. Rich Farmbrough, 01:56, 20 March 2012 (UTC).

Gabi Ashkenazi revisited

Hello Rich. User:84.198.183.148 is back changing it from Avi to Natan in the Gabi Ashkenazi article after my prior query to you. Another Antwerp, Belgium IP and anonymous editor. Help? --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 12:46, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Rich, for helping. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 17:02, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Nantucket Sleighride (album)

Hi Rich. User:Areyoureadyeddy keeps insisting on putting the full name in the Nantucket Sleighride (album) for West/Palmer, inconsistent with the way the other songs' composers are listed. It's a revert back and forth issue too by now. Any thoughts? Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 22:42, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

You should drop him a nice note, remember many new users don't know how to use the history, and probably think a revert is their edit not "taking". I would mention that the full names are given in the next section. Rich Farmbrough, 22:46, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

Hi Rich. Thanks. That user is not new (first edit in 2007). Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 23:03, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

True, but with less than 100 edits, never used a talk page... Rich Farmbrough, 23:13, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

Yes I see. However, as far as full names go, not quite so. The editor keeps inserting "Sue Palmer" which isn't subsequently listed by first name as minor others are not either. Sue Palmer was apparently a co-composer of one or two two songs, not necessarily a credited performer on the album session. The only other name that isn't listed subsequently who's not a member of the band was "Collins" which is Felix Pappalardi's wife, Gail Collins Pappalardi. Think the user User:Areyoureadyeddy is Sue Palmer or agents thereof? ;) --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 23:34, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah I thought it was just West. No I don't think they are that Sue Palmer, (not Sue Palmeror we could just put a piped link) and of course there is a point here. Surname only is fine if the disambiguation is clear, but there are many composers called Palmer, and of course we don't want to either clutter the listing with "full names for all!" or have it inconstant. So let's add a short note. Rich Farmbrough, 23:38, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

Palmer also has writing credits on Why Dontcha and Live 'n' Kickin' for The Doctor. Rich Farmbrough, 23:52, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

Right. Very Good. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 00:14, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	For creating Helpful Pixie Bot. Wikipedia depends on bots, including Helpful Pixie Bot, to keep a presentable appearance. Good work! ChromaNebula (talk) 18:06, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Ooh thanks! Rich Farmbrough, 18:07, 16 March 2012 (UTC).

The Signpost: 19 March 2012

• News and notes: Chapters Council proposals take form as research applications invited for Wikipedia Academy and HighBeam accounts

• Discussion report: Article Rescue Squadron in need of rescue yet again

• WikiProject report: Lessons from another Wikipedia: Czech WikiProject Protected Areas

• Featured content: Featured content on the upswing!

• Arbitration report: Race and intelligence 'review' opened, Article titles at voting

• Technology report: Bugmeister to leave at end of May, but developers keen to "chart" a path ahead

• Read this Signpost in full
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• EdwardsBot (talk) 14:21, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Possible Merges, Internet addiction disorder

Hello, Rich Farmbrough. You have new messages at Talk:Internet addiction disorder.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Possible Merges, proposed by User :Rich Farmbrough Balypu (talk) 14:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Teahouse

Hi! Rich Farmbrough, thanks for visiting the Teahouse! As an experienced editor, your knowledge is very valuable to new editors. Teahouse Hosts help new editors at the Teahouse and beyond. If you'd like to get involved in assisting new editors at the Teahouse, please learn more here Sarah (talk) 01:39, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Ping

Hello. You have a new message at User talk:Steven (WMF)'s talk page.

Linguistic misunderstanding

I noticed your comment on the Invasions of the Rio de la Plata. You might be amused to know that I have just found out that Pretensión is the Spanish word for "Claim" so the heading that became a debate about a Point of View, "British pretentions", was almost certainly a linguistic misunderstanding and intended to be "British Claims". I would have found this out earlier but Google Translate needs the acute accent above the ó. :-) PS: thank you for sorting out the "sockpuppet". 86.4.27.128 but now: Argcontrib (talk) 12:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. That's pretty much the older meaning in English, just as a "pretender" to the throne was someone who claimed it, not someone who was playing make-believe. You're welcome. Rich Farmbrough, 13:30, 14 February 2012 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 47

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. CBM at 01:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
2. CBM at 01:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 01:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by CBM at 01:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 01:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 02:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

template:Scroll box

Hi Rich, quick question about scroll_box. Currently when scroll_box starts it defaults to the top row of the target page. Is there a way to scroll to the bottom row as the default? I was going to use scroll_box for a talk page. And I want to go to the newer threads first. Those are on the bottom of the talkpage. Thanks! – Lionel ^(talk) 12:14, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I poked around in some CSS docs and haven't found a solution yet. I think, though, that even if there is one it would not be without problems, as people will tend to add new sections after the scroll box. Also if it's anywhere other than your user:talk folk will probably object. I suspect you could use JavaScript to go to the last section on a talk page, or indeed on all talk pages. Rich Farmbrough, 14:14, 28 February 2012 (UTC).

WP:Bad links

Hi Rich, here's a blast from the past: WP:Bad links and its subpages, some of which are long lists, seem to be obsolete. I came across them when checking "what links here" from what is now a disambiguation page. Can they be nominated for deletion at MfD? I thought I'd ask you first as you seem to have been an active user of these pages several years ago. – Fayenatic L (talk) 19:25, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the sup-pages could be speedied, and the main page redirected to the appropriate database report page. Rich Farmbrough, 20:49, 9 March 2012 (UTC).

Cheers, I've deleted the sub-pages. I couldn't find a matching database report so I redirected the project page to Wikipedia:Database reports. It's the subpages that needed to go, to remove the unnecessary incoming links. Maybe the project page should be kept for historical interest anyway. – Fayenatic L (talk) 21:19, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Just redirect to Wikipedia:Database_reports since there is no one-one mapping. Rich Farmbrough, 21:23, 9 March 2012 (UTC).

Diff?

I know that you mentioned you added a different wording to {{cleanup}} in the last deletion debate and it was was "sadly reverted". Could you tell me which one?Curb Chain (talk) 06:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

This one. Rich Farmbrough, 13:44, 21 February 2012 (UTC).

Thanks for village pump license comment

Hello--I should have thanked you a while ago for your response, but I've been mostly off Wikipedia. I'm still wondering about it, but I'll probably go with the GFDL and CC-BY-SA. (Mostly I was wondering if including the "BY" part would create too much of a practical barrier for others to import my material into Wikimedia project. I suppose as long as I'm the one it's coming from, if I don't object, it's not a big deal.) Anyway, thanks! (I may not see any response as I'm falling off Wikipedia again .. right .. about .. now CRETOG8(t/c) 23:30, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Welcome. Rich Farmbrough, 12:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

Statesman

Hi, Rich. I am a little puzzled by Statesman. The outcome of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Statesman was merge to Politician. It appears to me, as an uninvolved observer, that you just deleted the article without merging anything. And, since it is now deleted, no one other than an administrator will be able to merge anything in the future. In addition to this, what do you suggest should be done about the 1000+ other articles that contain links to Statesman? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:13, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

There was, as I remarked ion the talk page, no content both relevant to and worthy of merging to politician. I have copied the content to the talk page, in case you (or anyone else) think otherwise. Rich Farmbrough, 14:22, 11 March 2012 (UTC).

Gahame (surname)

Hi Rich Its my first time on wikipedia, thanks for the editing on my page. Have you any more ideas/edits that would improve the page.

The name "Gaham" no "e" on the end is actually in the bible, "Gahame" may be a variant of this? could I edit in "Gaham" as a similar name? Also "Gahan" was a surname used by my "forefathers" so could I mention "Gahan" as a similar surname.

Hope you can help me further with this.

Regards

Robert Gahame — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert gahame (talk • contribs) 13:43, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

The relationship between the surnames is worth mentioning if it is documented. For example I can cite books showing that Farmbrough, Farnbrough, Farmborough, Fambro and the rest (many many variations) are used in branches of the same family. Certainly they should go in the "see also" section - if articles or disambiguation pages exist. As for the biblical name Gaham, I would recommend that you either cite a source that makes the link, or put it in the "See also" section. Rich Farmbrough, 14:44, 11 March 2012 (UTC).

Whitespace around section titles

Hi, could you please modify the bot to not change whitespace around section titles when correcting them, like here or here. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:46, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll think about it. Rich Farmbrough, 11:03, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

Which BRFA covers this task? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:43, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Only on Wikipedia ... Rich Farmbrough, 11:46, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 1 and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Archive_2#SmackBot_task_approval_III. Rich Farmbrough, 11:56, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

The changing of the whitespace though is not covered by the BRFA, and is not supported by any other policies or general fixes either (see WP:MOSHEAD and WP:MOS intro: "Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a substantial reason."). Fram (talk) 12:02, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Busy today Fram? Rich Farmbrough, 12:04, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

Ok, thanks. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:11, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done build 631. Rich Farmbrough, 12:40, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

Cool, thanks. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:32, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Please stop the Pixie bot from changing "Reference" to "References"

I'm having to undo these changes on all the pages on my Watch list. Many articles/subjects are so small that they only have one main Reference, and will likely never have more than that one. Please remove this function from the Pixiebot's changes. Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 05:02, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The change is appropriate; using "References", like "External links" is forward-looking. I'm sure it's written up somewhere as correct practise. You should not be undoing these automated fixes. Alarbus (talk) 05:13, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Notes and References says: With the exception of "Bibliography", the heading should be plural even if it lists only a single item. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:16, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Changing the display of article's name?

Rich Farmbrough, would you mind if I call you Rich (you didn't really answer last time). This is somewhat a bizarro thing. I've found {{DISPLAYTITLE:''iTunes Originals – Barenaked Ladies''}} does what it says. When I try to use that syntax for DE9: Transitions it's a no go. I'm trying to put a "|" into the title per the opening line of the article (and before my edits). Maybe I'm stretching the wiki naming rules? Argolin (talk) 06:12, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not possible. See WP:DISPLAYTITLE. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:23, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

My that was quick! Thank you. It seemed odd to me that wikipedia was making an excption for Apple and not for others. The exception is for more than them. Argolin (talk) 06:35, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

However there is {{Wrong title}} which some people use where a title can't be fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 09:30, 13 March 2012 (UTC).

Your opinion is requested

Subject - Pumpable ice technology.

Dear Rich Farmbrough. I am sorry for my questions. In the present of your time, please, support/give me your recommendations about the following:

1.Dated clean-up tags in. The first, thank you for your fast answer. 2nd, I am sure, the text can be improved. Unfortunately, my knowledge in Wiki, really, is negligible. that is why, sorry for my request, please, remove Dated clean-up tags. If you can too, please, suggest the attractive article (by structure and subject closed to PIT) for improving. Thank you for your cooperation.

2.The user 70.52.128.71, changed text. I know that his redaction is not right. I checked his activities and he only pushes advertising of one company (Sunwell) that is in contradiction with one of main principles of Wiki – neutral point of view. In addition, his changes do not introduce a real history. What can I do? Thank you in advance.

I wish you the efficient activities in Wiki. BR Swallow2011 (talk). —Preceding undated comment added 18:32, 16 March 2012 (UTC).

Doubling of date-fields

This edit seems confusing. There already was a date value passed to the {{Deletable image-caption}} template (via positional parameter 1=). I tried uncommenting this item and the added named parameter date= appears to be ignored in preference to the positional one anyway. DMacks (talk) 18:01, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

It is a slightly vexed point, since the PHP time function is capable of working out the month year from a well formatted positional parameter. However in cases where it is not well formed I didn't want Helpful Pixie Bot to futz with parameter 1. The category-code/bot combination is designed to fail-safe. Assuming this problem occurs when the template is added then current month will be added. If the parameter 1 is valid then the bot will not be called to the page, and the date= parameter will not be added, unless the bot calls by chance, but in that case the parameter 1 is used anyway. Rich Farmbrough, 20:31, 17 March 2012 (UTC).

Sounds sensible enough. Sure *looks* weird in effect, but doesn't look harmful. DMacks (talk) 08:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Weird edit

What exactly what this edit supposed to achieve? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:36, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

It's hypehnating the ISBN. Rich Farmbrough, 22:06, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

Bot adding the word "template"

Your Helpful Pixie Bot is changing  {{Cite ...}}  to  {{Template:Cite ...}}  in various articles. For example: [26].

Is this intentional? It seems very strange to me. I am not aware of any new Wikipedia rule that requires (or even permits) the inclusion of the actual word Template: to be included when invoking a template in an article.

If this actually is the policy, does it apply to all templates? There are thousands -- probably millions -- of articles that include  {{Infobox ...}}  templates. Should all of these say  {{Template:Infobox ...}}  instead?

If that is a new policy, then your bot is not being consistent. For example, in the edit I cited above, your bot did not replace  {{By whom}}  with  {{Template:By whom}}. — Lawrence King ^(talk) 18:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I came here with another example [27]. There cannot be a good reason for this. SpinningSpark 20:16, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Also not sure why changing <references/> to {{reflist}} is such a good idea. It is an invisible edit and could potentially annoy editors who are used to doing it that way. SpinningSpark 20:41, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

It is important to minimise mark-up. One of the main reasons given for not editing is the complexity of mark-up. This is an easy simplification. Rich Farmbrough, 03:00, 23 March 2012 (UTC).

If anything it is inclined to remove spurious "Templates". Rich Farmbrough, 22:06, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

(I.E. it's not just probably a bug, but against the philosophy the bot expresses.) Rich Farmbrough, 22:08, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

 Fixed. The pixie was thinking about replacing the template name, but since it is a redirect with possibilities stuck the old name back, with an unnecessary (but mostly harmless) prefix. Rich Farmbrough, 03:00, 23 March 2012 (UTC).

I have been back and cleaned up a small bunch of articles. I'll do a full scan at the next dump. Rich Farmbrough, 19:09, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 47

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 01:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 01:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 01:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 01:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 01:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 47

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. CBM at 16:46, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
2. CBM at 16:46, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 14:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by CBM at 16:46, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 16:46, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 16:49, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion

Hey Rich. I noticed up in #Please stop the Pixie bot from changing "Reference" to "References" that your bot often changes ==Reference== --> ==References==, ==External link== --> ==External links==, etc. in headings. I thought it might be worth suggesting that you also change ==Source== --> ==Sources==, as that's one I come across every now and then and fix manually. You're always busy doing different things, so no rush, but I thought it might be something you're interested in. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 06:14, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it used to do a lot of stuff like that - a lot of header capitalisation corrections many of which are now standard AWB, but these had grown organically on the base task and I had to stop because someone objected it wasn't covered by BRFA. However "Source" can be correct if we are talking about a river or a story, so that one might be a problem. Rich Farmbrough, 09:25, 21 March 2012 (UTC).

(Bear this in mind) Rich Farmbrough, 19:32, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Nomination for deletion of Template:Capitalization

Template:Capitalization has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Stfg (talk) 20:30, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Pagestats doesn't appear to work anymore

It looks like they changed the output at http://stats.grok.se...

I tried running this script again (last time was in September), to get a new total for outline traffic, and it doesn't seem to work right. Just returns zeros now.

use LWP::Simple;

$month = "02";
$year = "2012";
$lang="en";

while (<>){
    s/ /_/g;
    print "$_";
    $page=get ("http://stats.grok.se/$lang/$year$month/$_" );
    $page =~ /has been viewed (\d+) times in/;
    $total+=$1;
    print " $total\n ";
}

print "\nTotal: $total";

On the command line I specified a file that is a list with bare unbracketed article names, one article name per line.

perl Pagestats Outlinelist.txt

Does the script work for you?

I look forward to your reply. The Transhumanist 00:53, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I found the problem. Solved by removing " times in" from the script.

The new total is 586,206. The Transhumanist 01:33, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! Rich Farmbrough, 01:34, 23 March 2012 (UTC).

Template:Otherplaces2 listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Otherplaces2. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Otherplaces2 redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Magioladitis (talk) 20:16, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Template:Infobox CollegeFootballPlayer listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Infobox CollegeFootballPlayer. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Infobox CollegeFootballPlayer redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Magioladitis (talk) 20:56, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Template:Adult bio listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Adult bio. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Adult bio redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Magioladitis (talk) 21:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Subsrt:Null?

Did a macro or something go awry tonight? —C.Fred (talk) 01:30, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes indeedy. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 01:32, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 47

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Headbomb at 21:10, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:10, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 14:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Headbomb at 21:10, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Headbomb at 21:10, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 22:56, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 15:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 15:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 15:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 15:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 15:13, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit restriction violation?

Hello - I'm curious to know what this is about? Thanks. Socrates2008 (Talk) 08:27, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh CBM has a few bees in his bonnet, one is about never re-ordering references to be in numerically increasing order, in case the "original author" meant to have them out of order: since this is WIkipedia references are added by many authors and moving a paragraph can change the numbering across the article, so his arguments make little if any sense. Empirically this has been a fix done by WP:AWB for many years, and while there have been a handful of queries, only CBM objects. CBM cites a rule to support him, namely WP:CITEVAR which was introduced to put a stop to the "reference wars" - everyone but CBM agrees that this is not applicable since it is not changing the reference style. <meh>

In terms of the "edit restriction", a few years ago I was mobbed on AN/I which was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, and an admin unilaterally imposed an edit restriction. I worked with the admin since it kept everyone happy. Now that admin has more or less left, leaving most people uninterested in these puerile games. Attempts have been made to resurrect the dramah from time to time, including inciting other users, and messages at noticeboards and so forth, but they are generally unsuccessful. Rich Farmbrough, 13:40, 23 March 2012 (UTC).

Rich is right. It is a style requirement inasmuch as any article going through FAC has to have its references renumbered. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 11:21, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

FAC has many of their own requirements that exceed the actual requirements of policy and guidelines, which is fine because FAC is an optional process and if you want to be in their club you have to play by their rules. If an editor has started an article with intentionally out-of-order references, this is perfectly acceptable under the actual MOS, because any consistent style is acceptable. In the past several days Rich has been running a bot-like job on his main account, without BRFA approval, solely to rearrange references. As for the edit restriction, it is documented at WP:RESTRICT. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:48, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Nonetheless if your (frankly absurd) position that this constitutes a referencing style held any water, we would be censuring people every time they introduced an OOO by moving a ref. Rich Farmbrough, 17:59, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Kwamikagami at 21:14, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Hersfold at 21:09, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
3. Rich Farmbrough at 21:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
4. Rich Farmbrough at 21:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
5. Headbomb at 21:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
6. Kwamikagami at 21:29, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
7. Headbomb at 21:32, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
8. Kwamikagami at 21:46, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
9. Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 21:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 21:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

Template: . *

Edits by:

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 23:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 22:35, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by [[User:|User:]] at 23:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 00:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 01:15, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

smallcaps

Please don't change SC to smallcaps SC is widely used on wikisource if you go around changing {{SC}} to {{smallcaps}} it will only be time before some muppet puts {{SC}} up for deletion, this will make cut and pasts from wikisource more difficult and time consuming. -- PBS (talk) 15:32, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

<sigh> The surfeit of muppets should not influence that. I agree that TfD is out of hand - and sock-muppets and meat-muppets abound. There isn't, though, much trouble keeping shortcuts or compatibility redirects.

Footnotes

Rich Farmbrough, 16:04, 19 March 2012 (UTC).

A truly "helpful" bot...

You know, a truly helpful pixie bot would bother to tag the 20 other pages that needed an expand list, and not just insert a date on expand list tags already placed. :) -- Hooperswim (talk) 16:56, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Ideally it would expand the list... But getting agreement to that would take a team of UN negotiators the age of the universe. Rich Farmbrough, 16:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Sorry, if I come off snarky. I do understand the purpose for dating the tags. Then again, that the tag gets updated 20 minutes after placement, when the tag has been needed on the page for over a year.... -- Hooperswim (talk) 17:36, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

12 more pages to tag to go (for this group, at least). Time for a break and change o' venue (i.e. I'll let the bot rest for a bit ;). -- Hooperswim (talk) 17:38, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Seriously if you can define it (and maybe show consensus) you can probably get a bot or AWBer to do it for you via Wikipedia:Bot requests or WP:AWB/REQ Rich Farmbrough, 18:28, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Now done tagging all the pages. (And a request for the tagging was on the talk page since last year: I guess that's not the place to make the request). -- Hooperswim (talk) 20:02, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Headbomb at 23:50, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
2. CBM at 23:49, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
3. Headbomb at 23:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
4. CBM at 23:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 23:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 22:35, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by CBM at 23:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 23:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 00:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 20:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Rich Farmbrough at 20:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
3. Headbomb at 20:38, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 20:38, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 20:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Headbomb at 20:38, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Headbomb at 20:38, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 21:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

None of my business, and I'm hardly one to talk, but as stultifyingly frustrating as bureaucracy can be, I don't see much benefit in baiting people in the approval process. (Okay, I'll butt out now!) — kwami (talk) 21:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you're probably right. However years of attrition, CBM reverting edits and destroying major fixes, in order to preserve obscure redirects that he regards as some kind of shibboleth, where we have a programme running that minimises edits by rolling minor fixes into major ones, accepting that things will take sometimes years to accomplish, which could be done in minutes or hours, but CBM renders impossible for some crazy idea that "rules must be obeyed" regardless of the cost to the project. Is it any wonder that we loose contributors? Rich Farmbrough, 21:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Request for help

I have a few Ambox and Fix related issues that I'd appreciate help with, if you have time, and if you have no reason to not want to interfere, of course.

• There is still a problem with template loops, see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Article_message_boxes#Template_loop.
• Should there be a temporary category added to {{Fix}} to locate all templates that use the substcheck parameter, or are there other ways to do this? That is, simply said, how to locate those template that use the substcheck parameter?
• Also, I'd be happy if you'd have an opinion whether it is a good suggestion to replace the substitution check of {{Fix}} by that one of {{Ambox}}, or at least, which basically comes down to the same, remove Category:Templates needing substitution checking, which I think is not practical. Debresser (talk) 21:14, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I commented on the template loops. The rest I'll have to look at. I did have an alternative method for subst:checking, but it was pretty much obviated by AMALTHEA's self-substituting tricks. Rich Farmbrough, 00:10, 11 December 2011 (UTC).

Thanks, I'll look at it right away. I have just had a long look at the way substitution checking works on Ambox and Fix, and am proud to say that I understand precisely how they work. Debresser (talk) 00:17, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood my before-last question, and have added a sentence to it, to make my intent more clear. Debresser (talk) 04:05, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Rich, I found the reason for the template loop, and I know what needs to be done to solve it, but don't know how to do that. I wrote there on the Ambox talkpage linked above. Can you have a look at it? Debresser (talk) 19:07, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Rich, the second and third question are now quite urgent... Debresser (talk) 14:53, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

You took care of the second today, thank you. The third is on Template_talk:Fix#Progress.Debresser (talk) 00:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool - things to do

Hey guys! A couple of highly important things to do over the next few weeks:

• We've opened a Request for Comment on several of the most important aspects of the tool, including who should be able to hide inappropriate comments. It will remain open until 20 January; I encourage everyone with an interest to take part :).
• A second round of feedback categorisation will take place in a few weeks, so we can properly evaluate which design works the best and keeps all the junk out :P. All volunteers are welcome and desired; there may be foundation swag in it for you!

Regards, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

PixieBot cn tags

It appears that your bot is adding a citation needed tag at the end of every sentence that is not already specifically referenced. See [28] Is that your intent? Or is this a manual process with bot assistance?--Hjal (talk) 17:43, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Phew, nearly gave me myocardial infarction there. {{Cn}} is {{Citation needed}} - just less readable. Rich Farmbrough, 17:45, 14 February 2012 (UTC).

The Signpost: 13 February 2012

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 03:55, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Risale-i Nur article

Hello Rich, I saw you added some tags that says the language of the article is like a magazine article. I changed it a bit and removed the tag. I hope it worked out. If you want, you can check and see and give an idea in tha talk page of the article or to me.rinduzahid^(talk) 17:07, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Good stuff, I don't think I added the tags though. Rich Farmbrough, 18:29, 23 February 2012 (UTC).

Celebrity Rehab

Hi. Regarding your having removed the TMZ citation from the article, and replaced the statement that Michaele Salahi lacked an addition with the somewhat more euphemistic statement that she "did not meet the criteria", I took a closer look at the UPI source from which that latter, amended statement came from, and it also supports the statement that she lacked an addiction. It did indeed relate the statement from the network source that she did not meet the production's criteria, but only because it described what those criteria were beforehand:

The treatment program that 'Celebrity Rehab' documents is intended for individuals with serious substance abuse and addiction issues. Prior to the taping of the current season, producers were advised that Michaele Salahi met the criteria to be treated in this setting," VH1 said in a statement Tuesday. "However, professional assessments spanning from that time to the present, found that she did not meet such criteria.

Thus, there was no reason to remove that original point. Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 02:53, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Make the changes you think appropriate. I will just point out that the press release is either carefully worded or sloppily worded. It says "met the criteria to be treated in this setting" - this leaves open the possibility that either she had "serious substance abuse and addiction issues" but not ones that could be "treated in this setting" of that she had "substance abuse and addiction issues" of a less "serious" nature - as well as the possibility that she had no such issues. Rich Farmbrough, 03:02, 27 February 2012 (UTC).

The Signpost: 27 February 2012

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 02:02, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 5 March 2012

• News and notes: Chapter-selected Board seats, an invite to the Teahouse, patrol becomes triage, and this week in history

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 16:46, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks...

.. for the barnstar! I just wiki-gnome away, usually leaving the Dramahs to other folk, though seem to have got involved in a couple just lately. PamD 17:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Re: Lost editors

I replied on my talk page. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:18, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

The Tea Leaf - Issue One - Recent news from the Teahouse

Hi! Welcome to the first edition of The Tea Leaf, the official newsletter of the Teahouse!

Spring has sprung! Stop by the Teahouse for a cup of tea under the cherry blossoms.

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Re: Thomas Weston (Merchant Adventurers entrepreneur)

Thank you for your information regarding this new article I am creating. I presently have two books on the subject and more to come, but so far I have not made any connection with the two Merchant Adventurers that are in Wikipedia. I will have to continue to research to be certain but it clearly states that he started this particular Merchant Adventurers so I do not think they are connected. We will see and I study further. Anyway, thank you. Mugginsx (talk) 17:01, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Most interesting. Rich Farmbrough, 11:47, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

What is going on?

The Helpful Pixie Bot is not so helpful at the moment. It is changing all heads "External link" to "External links", even when there is only ONE (1) external link. Stop this bot and let it check the number of external links first. I will revert the whole lot that showed up at my watchlist... Night of the Big Wind _talk 11:26, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I can understand that. On Wikipedia "External links" is always supposed to be plural, just as is "References". This is simply a stylistic standard. See Wikipedia:Standard_appendices#External_links for the appropriate guidance. Rich Farmbrough, 11:50, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

Yep, but when I use "External links" for just one link, there is always someone passing by and changing it into "External link". Night of the Big Wind _talk 12:52, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Either point them to the guidance, or don't worry about it. There is nothing so trivial on Wikipedia, from invisible spaces, to capitalisation that someone won't fight to the Wiki-death about. (See the great eight year yoghurt spelling debate.) And there are even people who have no opinion but will oppose a change for the sake of it - and others who do nothing but hang around noticeboards calling for blocks. It's a strange place. Rich Farmbrough, 13:02, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

Yes, I have seen the big "dash"-battle. Ridiculous. I plain ignore the whole thing. If it is not right, a bot will fix it. But most annoying in it, is that is is mighty unfriendly for the users of Wikipedia, because it hampers search efforts. Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:15, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Interesting - en-dashes and em-dashes in article titles? Or in text? For the former there should be redirects, the latter should be covered by search-engine smarts? Rich Farmbrough, 13:25, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

Night of the Big Wind, I do a lot of editing of MOS:APPENDIX stuff. I just want to confirm Rich's stance that it should be plural as per the link given already. I make many "External link" to "External links" fixes myself. In my experience, these changes are rarely contested so I dispute that. As for the reason why it should be plural even if there's only one link, it's because it works better in an environment where editors change links more often than editors who care about heading formats change the headings. Grammatically the plural is acceptable too. It shouldn't be thought of as introducing a list of links but the name of a section that shall contain any links. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:31, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

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• EdwardsBot (talk) 12:28, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Category:Empty categories

Category:Empty categories, which you created, has been nominated for discussion. 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. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 17:44, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

As a show of good faith, I have asked the Albums Project to consider recommending use of your album category templates and including it into its documentation at WT:ALBUMS. The "empty categories" category should really be expanded to broader topics to be useful, don't you think? As is, it just seems like something for you. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 18:37, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

That's cool. There are many categories that are set up by template, the dated maintenance ones I go further and have them nominate themselves for speedy deletion. A good candidate might be stuff like "year in" where the very early cats are likely to have only one member, and could become empty, on the other hand they should mostly be nominated for up-merging to decade or century cats. Might be worth a look, anyway. Rich Farmbrough, 19:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC).

Viewing outlines with or without annotations

The next improvement I'd like to tackle is to provide some way to toggle an outline's annotations off/on (all at the same time) while viewing the outline in Wikipedia!!!

For example...

The user is browsing Wikipedia and has just arrived at an outline page. It's fully annotated, but he wants to look at the page uncluttered by the annotations.

How could we make it so that all he has to do is press a hot key to make (all of) the annotations disappear?

And then reappear by pressing a different hot key.

What are the possible approaches to implementing this?

Sincerely, The Transhumanist 23:54, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm well, the two that spring to mind are using the collapse functionality - navboxes can be set to collapse if there is more than one of them, so presumably this can be brought under control using the same technology (I assume CSS), or java-script. The Javascript code would need to be installed as default, whereas css an be soemwhat standalone, I think, although the preference is for having it all centrally stored. Rich Farmbrough, 02:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC).

It sounds like a javascript might be the best approach. Though it would be nice to have the functionality built-in on the browser level (via add-on). Do you know any add-on programmers? The Transhumanist 23:14, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't that I know of. And I have to disagree, add-ins are great but not for something you wan to be standard WP functionality. However the two tasks become very similar if you use Scriptish. Rich Farmbrough, 12:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC).

BTW, I'm stuck on the thread preceding this one (extract/insert annotations). I posted a bunch of new questions up there for you (I mention them here just in case you missed them). The Transhumanist 23:14, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Helpful Pixie Bot editing markup comments

At Outward postcode list, User:Helpful Pixie Bot recently added a maintenance template date ("Dated {{Afd-merge to}}. (Build J/)"). But the template was commented-out and so not part of the operative wikitext. While harmless in this case, you might want to consider whether editing <!-- --> markup comments could produce unintended results elsewhere, in which case comments should probably be excluded from bot parsing. — Richardguk (talk) 07:54, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is an issue which has exercised my mind. Currently the benefit from doing a full parse is slight to none, although I do use hacky "strip markers" to some extent. In the particular case of commented out templates (and much other content) I believe that dating them is appropriate as well as harmless. Rich Farmbrough, 13:07, 17 March 2012 (UTC).

Wraps infobox

You might find {{Wraps infobox}} useful. It currently adds a category; we could make that switchable. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:06, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Apropos of what? Rich Farmbrough, 21:24, 17 March 2012 (UTC).

Adding hyphens to ISBNs

Hi Rich, I see two significant problems with adding the hyphens to ISBNs at this time:

• It makes it more difficult to search for the ISBNs on the Wikipedia, either with the Wikipedia search engine or other web search engines, e.g. Google or Yahoo
• When the ISBNs wrap at the hyphens, it makes them more difficult to read and more difficult to select and copy

I think we should focus on solving these two problems before converting all ISBNs on the Wikipedia to the hyphenated forms. I made a couple of suggestions for how we might be able to solve these problems at Wikipedia talk:ISBN, but you did not respond to these ideas, so I wonder whether you believe they are of no importance. I had some discussion with User:Michael Bednarek about how we might try to implement a workaround, so that hyphens could be added without creating the above two drawbacks. We agreed that the best approach would be to get the Wikisoftware modified so that the hyphenated ISBN is formatted as nowrap text in the page source code, and the unhyphenated ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 are automatically added as hidden text, which then serve as targets of search engines. I saved our discussion here. If you have a moment, would you please take a look at it. With your expertise and help, maybe we could get these problems solved and then proceed with making the encyclopedia consistent with the original ISBN hyphenation standard (which, as I know you are aware, has not been generally adopted on the web). --Robert.Allen (talk) 19:26, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

ISBN's don't wrap at the hyphens that I can see (I did some testing on that). I did read your comments on the possibility of changing the Wikimedia software, the way to resolve these would be to raise a request at Bugzilla. Requests at Bugzilla have mixed fortunes, but this might be successful, since it self-contained and previous requests to tweak the behaviour have worked. I also have been working on some possible pro-tem fixes the search issue, but I do wonder whether this is not actually a problem for the search engine operators. Please bear in mind that Google seems to de-rank Wikipedia for ISBN searches regardless, and promotes book-specific sites. Rich Farmbrough, 19:45, 19 March 2012 (UTC).

The wrapping may be browser dependent. I just checked, and I definitely still see it in my browser. I use Safari on and Apple Mac. --Robert.Allen (talk) 19:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I would not be surprised if what you are saying about Google deranking Wikipedia vs book sellers is correct, as this would make sense from their point of view. But the searches do still turn up the pages, for instance, when one uses Google advanced search to search only the Wikipedia. (Example searches are part of the discussion Michael and I had.) If we did this, we could add such a search to the page Special:Booksources, e.g., "Find articles which cite this ISBN at Wikipedia." I think we need to work up a detailed proposal that a programmer can use to easily create the code, showing the algorithms needed to calculate and interconvert the ISBNs and also examples of what the final page code should look like. This is where I am hoping you can really help us out. --Robert.Allen (talk) 19:59, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I created an example of how I think it might work [29]. If you have interest in working on this, could we continue our discussion there and work together on a draft proposal at User:Robert.Allen/Draft? --Robert.Allen (talk) 20:22, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your helpful comments. In case you did not see it, I am trying to write the proposal at User:Robert.Allen/Draft. I would appreciate if you would look it over to check for errors or misunderstandings on my part, and would appreciate any suggestions. Feel free to make changes that you think would improve it. Thanks, --Robert.Allen (talk) 07:59, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Rich, I tried to modify the proposal to include the alternative hyphenated ISBN as a hidden target. This is definitely an improvement. Thanks for the suggestion. --Robert.Allen (talk) 02:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

• Re: regarding your latest comment about code, I'm not sure what you mean by this. Another possible problem I noticed, WP:ISBN allows for editors to add formats such as: ISBN 978-1413304541. Perhaps we need to specify the number of hyphens (or spaces) to expect in the ISBN-10 and ISBN-13. Should we then recommend that these nonstandard formats be automatically converted to the unhyphenated form until a bot can add the proper hyphenation? --Robert.Allen (talk) 09:21, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I think it best to keep it simple. The software should assume that the version on the page is correctly hyphenated, since the harm from doing so is minimal (adding a spurious search hyphenation for a relatively short period of time). Rich Farmbrough, 10:53, 21 March 2012 (UTC).
    
    • Is the draft to the point yet where we can post a notice linking to it in an appropriate forum, like: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) or WP:BUGZILLA/bugzilla? (Or should we post the entire draft?) If so, which forum? (Also, as an aside, I'm unsure what you mean about adding code, since I'm not very code savvy. From my point of view, the only code that seems like it would be tricky is calculating the remainder. But you mention some parsing code, whatever that is. I'm guessing maybe it is the code that determines the extent of ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 and distinguishes it from the following text.) --Robert.Allen (talk) 10:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
      • I should think that is a good idea (VP(T)). The php module I referred to does the bit of finding that it is an ISBN and wrapping it in tags - it would have to do the rest we want too. The only thing I would be cautious about right now is the wrap, since I am pretty sure the current class is already no-wrap anyway, at least my attempts to break an ISBN at the dash, on a line break have failed. Rich Farmbrough, 02:04, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
        

I think it may be browser dependent. On the page Samson and Delilah (opera). I'm not seeing wrapping in Firefox, but I do see it in Safari. Here's the source code from Firefox:

• <a href="/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number">ISBN</a> <a href="/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-19-518954-4" title="Special:BookSources/978-0-19-518954-4">978-0-19-518954-4</a><span class="printonly">

Here it is from Safari:

• <a href="/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number">ISBN</a> <a href="/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-19-518954-4" title="Special:BookSources/978-0-19-518954-4">978-0-19-518954-4</a><span class="printonly">

It looks identical to me, but behaves differently in the two browsers. --Robert.Allen (talk) 09:21, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Update: the example ISBN above uses Template:Cite book, so the source code is a bit different than when the template is not used, but that actually makes no difference to Safari and Firefox. The only way I have found to get Safari to act like Firefox is for example to put ISBN 978-0-19-518954-4 into {{Nowrap|ISBN 978-0-19-518954-4}} giving ISBN 978-0-19-518954-4, which wraps the code with <span class="nowrap">...</span>. However, the question also arises whether templates will hinder the Wikisoftware solution we are proposing, since this template seems to create the page source code for the ISBN link differently from how the Wikisoftware formats it. I put some ideas here --Robert.Allen (talk) 17:20, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, we could do the whole thing with templates, but it's better to let the wikimagic prevail, since it (should be) more efficient. So we should just note that Safari allows the ISBN to break, maybe this is a thing Safari is written to do, or maybe it's a bug or dis-feature - and suggest that no-wrap be added to the css. I guess the devs will be fairly pro putting more stuff in css to deal with Safari, there deos not seem to be any concern for bloating the css and java (or the html come to that) - indeed this proposal is an html expander in a small way. Rich Farmbrough, 23:05, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Yes, adding nowrap is not a big deal and shouldn't have any deleterious effect. I know you are very busy, but I left more discussion on the template problem for you here. I think maybe that initially we should just ignore the problem, and you are correct, we should focus on Wikimagic exclusively. --Robert.Allen (talk) 10:06, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:ANI discussion about ISBNs and Helpful Pixie Bot

I've started a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive743#Bot continues task despite objections and without apparent consensus to support it. Fram (talk) 09:53, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. A mostly helpful bot. In that talk, User:Diannaa pointed out a helpful fix (and my reply)

• Diff of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
• Diff of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Here the bot changed an invalid 11 digit ISBN to drop the dashes, leaving a still invalid ISBN. Diannaa found the right one: ISBN 86-84433-00-9 and noted that there are about 3000 instances of the wrong ones in various Balkan village articles. I suggested that the bot could be tweaked to know about this ISBN and actively fix them up. This could become a feature that could be re-used to fix other similarly widely propagated bad ISBNs. Alarbus (talk) 02:47, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Excellent, I spent some time looking for that ISBN, I believe the work is in a number of volumes. Last time we went after invalid ISBNs in a big way we made quite a project of it, there was a birding book that had been mis-ISBNed on many many pages. I'll fix up these today. Rich Farmbrough, 09:31, 21 March 2012 (UTC).

Sounds like lots could happen here. The bot should be able to collect a log of bad ISBNs that could be sorted for priority. Diannaa's a librarian, so I expect she's pretty good at finding these things. fyi, I read that draft proposal, and think it too much. Does anyone really know Google parses our pages? This should be run by Andy to see if there's a proper microformat for this; off hand I'd say it quite likely. 53 seconds later: http://microformats.org/wiki/isbn — Andy's name is on that page. Alarbus (talk) 20:42, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is my concern with the whole micro-formats initiative, it seems to be about 5 or 6 people, and a solution in search of a problem. Rich Farmbrough, 02:08, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

It's obvious that few people see a problem with this, and most people find it a good thing, so I'll close the ANI discussion and let you continue with this. At least (trying to give a positive twist to an unnecessary ANI section) now you have a more recent discussion showing support for this task. Fram (talk) 07:40, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Rich. Thanks for fixing all those busted ISBNs in the Balkan articles. A Good Thing. -- Dianna (talk) 23:54, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Garbo photo links

Hello there,

How on earth to you find these things, like the correct formatting of isbn numbers (where hypens go)? What brings you to them? Do you have a special role in WP? Do you respond to some kind of alert system? What does pixiebot mean when your name is Rich? Please let me know--I'm fascinated! Thanks for taking the time,--Classicfilmbuff (talk) 21:45, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Well the database behind the site is periodically "dumped" into xml files, which can be downloaded. These can be scanned to find particular errors without having to hit every page on Wikipedia. Helpful Pixie Bot is a an automated system for doing a number of small tasks, (almost) all such systems are meant to be run on "bot accounts" rather than "human accounts" - see WP:BOTS for more information.

I don't know about a special role (though I am an admin), I simply prefer (like most Wikipedians) to fix something rather than leave it broken, and happen to have skills (like most bot-masters) to fix some things across the encyclopaedia.

Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 22 March 2012 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 47

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. CBM at 11:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
2. CBM at 11:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 03:22, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by CBM at 11:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 11:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:51, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 47

Template: . *

Edits by:

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:10, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by [[User:|User:]] at 23:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 00:01, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 00:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 15:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Rich Farmbrough at 19:03, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
3. Rich Farmbrough at 19:07, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
4. Headbomb at 21:02, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
5. Rich Farmbrough at 22:35, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
6. Headbomb at 23:50, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
7. CBM at 23:49, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
8. Headbomb at 23:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
9. CBM at 23:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
10. Rich Farmbrough at 01:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
11. CBM at 01:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
12. Headbomb at 01:28, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
13. Headbomb at 01:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
14. CBM at 01:33, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
15. Headbomb at 01:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 01:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 01:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Headbomb at 01:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Headbomb at 01:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 03:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 49

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Femto Bot at 03:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at .
Last edit by anyone was by Femto Bot at 03:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 03:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 03:05, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Helpful Pixie Bot error

Most of this edit is fine, but the bot proceeded to "fix" something in an HTML comment. Just a heads up. - Denimadept (talk) 04:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

OK thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 04:11, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. Kwamikagami at 05:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 01:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 04:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kwamikagami at 05:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kwamikagami at 05:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 05:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Fifteenth Lok Sabha summary

Template:Fifteenth Lok Sabha summary has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Chandan Guha (talk) 13:07, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

Template: . *

Edits by:

1. CBM at 19:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
2. CBM at 19:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
3. CBM at 19:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 01:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 04:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by CBM at 19:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 19:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 20:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Editing restrictions and Pixie Bot

Hello RF, in looking through some things for the current BRFA, I noticed that Pixie Bot appears to be conducting cosmetic changes alongside its approved tasks. While this is permitted under WP:COSMETICBOT, it is not under your editing restriction regarding such changes. BAG does not explicitly approve such actions, only the task for which the bot is specifically programmed. Some examples I noted include:

• [30] [31] [32] - whitespace changes at the end of a newline, not part of AWB's default genfixes
• [33] [34] [35] - capitalizing the first letter of a transcluded template, where the transclusion itself was not changed
• [36] - Modifying text within a comment (actually a sub-case of the above bullet)

These edits, and others like them, of which there are many, violate your editing restrictions as they do not affect the appearance of the article. Would you mind taking Pixie Bot offline temporarily until it can be reconfigured to avoid such actions, or request that BAG specifically permit these changes to be executed? Thank you. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Forgot to mention, I noticed this when I saw these sorts of changes occurring with your main account's edits (example) - could you avoid making these changes manually as well? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Looks like CBM is getting his way? I really think experienced editor should not enable CBM's games.

However, even if we accept the "edit restriction" (which was unilaterally imposed with no consensus bye User:RD232) the changes listed above have all been accepted by the person who wrote it, and therefore should be considered legitimate.

A healthy dose of common sense is what is needed here. I am currently busy with some significant tasks, we can leave the trivia to get fixed by scripts and bots or we can have a massive bust up about it. I prefer to leave it to the computers to take care of and focus on the more complex matters.

Rich Farmbrough, 22:28, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

I'm asking you this of my own volition - no other editor put me up to this, and you violating your community-placed editing restrictions is a serious concern in any event. I am doing this out of good faith and ask that you would respect that.

I don't follow what you're saying in the second paragraph - the changes have been accepted? By who? Did BAG or the community give you clearance to make those cosmetic changes, as stipulated by your restriction?

I agree that common sense should hold sway here, which is why I'm asking you here first rather than making a big stink of the issue. However, the will of the community should also hold sway, and that will is that you should not be executing these changes under any account. Now again, would you please disable PixieBot and your current tasks temporarily until you can either set them to not make such changes, or attain approval to do so? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:00, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes sure, but did you read the BRFA, and CBM'scomments and think "hmm what's going on here, I'll check a few edits" or did you read the description and spontaneously go and check some edits? That is what "For the record" and "I'd just like to note" mean. They are equivalent of "Hey guys - look what this cad and bounder is doing? You gonna stand by and let that happen? Sic him!" Wording them as "For the record" and "As a matter of note" is why this type of behaviour is known as passive-agressive. It doesn't wash with me and it shouldn't with you either.

So on, briefly, to your points. This is not a community-placed editing restriction. It was placed by one admin in the middle of a discussion in which I had both supporters and detractors, and where even those who said they had a problem did not by any means endorse the ER. The editor in question simply declared "I'm going to sever this Gordian knot" (perhaps he would not have done so if he had known the line This Gordian knot is quickly scissorable!// Go, make everybody miserable!). There was no consensus, and discussion such as it was, was ongoing.

Of course I believe you are doing this in good faith, why wouldn't you be? It doesn't mean that the information you have been given is correct, though.

In terms of the actual changes, it has been accepted since day 1 by person that "imposed" the "ER" that it is perfectly fine to replace the template name if the bot is dating it. A lot of details were hammered out (rather pointlessly) between him and me, with the occasional pointed intervention of the haters.

Just as a measure of the absurdity of the whole scenario, part of the "ER" is that the bot is allowed to make the template replacements done by AWB - why is this absurd? Because the template replacements done by AWB are from a list that I created from the template replacements SmackBot (as it was then) made.

So the bottom line is, firstly no harm is being done, secondly a lot of good is being done, thirdly pandering directly or indirectly to those who believe rules are more important than the project is a bad thing - it only encourages them.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 00:16, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

(Restoring your old talk page as I post this, it's rather confusing to be confronted with a wall of red links when I expect to be able to pull up a conversation I'm involved in)

I'm going to ignore most of what you've said as you're attempting to deflect the problem away from your actions and towards other people. I will instead focus on a few points I see as particularly problematic.

This is a community restriction. It was discussed at AN, and I don't see that there was any particular opposition to it; a number of editors suggested some changes to the restriction as worded, but later comments clarified those concerns. There was a consensus to apply that restriction to you.

Technically this is a community restriction, and therefore I'm not sure Rd232 (even as the person closing the discussion) really has standing to grant such an exemption given the way the restriction is worded, but if he said that changes of the form {{templatename|[...]}} → {{Templatename|[...]}} were acceptable, then I'll back off on that point. I'll leave Rd232 a note so he can chime in here if he's able; in the meantime, a link to those discussions would be very helpful. However, that doesn't address the other two points I raised, that of your bots and scripts changing whitespace and text within comments. These changes are NOT done by AWB by default, and thus violate your restriction.

I don't see that a lot of good is being done here. These changes clutter the diffs your bots leave behind, and are not supported by consensus nor BAG approval. You are under a restriction to not make these changes, and if you are unwilling to abide by that restriction I do intend to enforce it. Please stop these changes now, or I will issue a block. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Fine. I will update the page when a new version is created. Rich Farmbrough, 01:32, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Thank you, I appreciate that. Again, though, if you could disable the bot in the meantime...? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:34, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

You haven't replied and User:Helpful Pixie Bot is still running, so I've blocked it until you can make assurances that it will not continue to violate your editing restrictions. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 02:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

<Shakes head> I kinda rely on people to be rational, especially administrators. Foolish of me I suppose. Thansk for screwing things up. Build 640 has been rushed to production. Rich Farmbrough, 03:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

And this build won't make any edits that are purely cosmetic? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 03:23, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

No build of HPB has ever done that except once as a result of an edit conflict that was affected by a bug, that would also never have happened if people weren't morons. Rich Farmbrough, 03:28, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Sorry, I meant won't make any changes that are cosmetic? Such as the issues I noted above? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 03:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

It addresses the trailing space issue, which is currently polluting approximately 22 million lines on en:Wikipedia, bloating the code base by over .1 %, causing wasted power and time on every page edit, adding megabytes to every copy of every data-base dump, slowing every analysis and scan. That seems wuite enough damage. Rich Farmbrough, 03:38, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Then I will unblock your bot, although I am sorely tempted to block you for being so astonishingly uncivil about this. I've made a very strong effort to remain reasonable, yet at every turn you've been rude, sarcastic, and/or uncooperative. That is NOT how bot operators are supposed to respond to concerns about their bots, and certainly not how an administrator should be responding to good-faith concerns about their own conduct. The only reason I've held my temper this long is because I hoped - thankfully not in vain - that this could be dealt with here rather than ANI or RFAR. Please clean up your conduct soon, or this may end up there anyway. Good day, sir. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 03:50, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

"I'm going to ignore most of what you said" that is the rude and uncivil part. I understand that you fell for CBM's games, and that you probably either don't want to admit it or don't believe it yourself, but telling it like it is is not uncivil. Blocking the bot while I was coding is uncivil. Making judgements on things you are not familiar with, without taking the time to understand them is uncivil. making threats is uncivil. But I let that stuff wash over me. Wehn you then turn around and call me uncivil, it's getting a little rich. Rich Farmbrough, 05:05, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

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Edits by:

1. Kwamikagami at 04:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Kwamikagami at 04:48, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 22:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kwamikagami at 04:48, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kwamikagami at 04:48, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 04:59, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. DePiep at 09:26, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Kwamikagami at 09:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 07:26, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kwamikagami at 09:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kwamikagami at 09:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedians in red-linked categories

Category:Wikipedians in red-linked categories, which you created, has been nominated for discussion. 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. SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:44, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

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Edits by:

1. Kwamikagami at 19:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 15:40, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kwamikagami at 19:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kwamikagami at 19:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 20:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. Kwamikagami at 05:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 22:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kwamikagami at 05:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kwamikagami at 05:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 05:42, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. WilliamThweatt at 05:59, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 22:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by WilliamThweatt at 05:59, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by WilliamThweatt at 05:59, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 06:37, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. Kwamikagami at 06:51, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 22:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kwamikagami at 06:51, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kwamikagami at 06:51, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 07:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. Calliopejen1 at 14:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 03:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Calliopejen1 at 14:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Calliopejen1 at 14:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 14:25, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. DePiep at 18:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
2. DePiep at 18:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 15:40, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by DePiep at 18:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by DePiep at 18:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 18:38, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. DePiep at 22:53, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
2. DePiep at 22:53, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 21:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by DePiep at 22:53, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by DePiep at 22:53, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 23:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Another one for your collection

Today, trying to execute a regular tool - Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 2097152 bytes) in /home/tparis/public_html/pcount/counter.php on line 223 --Gilderien Talk|Contribs 21:32, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Nice... Rich Farmbrough, 23:34, 13 March 2012 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 49

Template: Approved for trial (30 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. *

Edits by:

1. Hellknowz at 16:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Hellknowz at 16:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 15:37, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Hellknowz at 16:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 16:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 17:02, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 15:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Rich Farmbrough at 19:03, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
3. Rich Farmbrough at 19:07, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
4. Headbomb at 21:02, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
5. Rich Farmbrough at 22:35, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
6. Headbomb at 23:50, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
7. CBM at 23:49, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
8. Headbomb at 23:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
9. CBM at 23:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
10. Rich Farmbrough at 01:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
11. CBM at 01:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
12. Headbomb at 01:28, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
13. Rich Farmbrough at 04:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
14. Headbomb at 01:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
15. CBM at 01:33, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
16. Headbomb at 01:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
17. Rich Farmbrough at 04:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
18. Kwamikagami at 05:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
19. CBM at 19:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
20. CBM at 19:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
21. Rich Farmbrough at 20:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
22. Kwamikagami at 21:14, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
23. CBM at 19:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
24. Rich Farmbrough at 20:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
25. Headbomb at 20:38, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
26. Hersfold at 21:09, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
27. Rich Farmbrough at 21:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
28. Rich Farmbrough at 21:16, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
29. Headbomb at 21:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
30. Kwamikagami at 21:29, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
31. Headbomb at 21:32, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
32. Kwamikagami at 21:46, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
33. Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
34. Rich Farmbrough at 22:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
35. Kwamikagami at 04:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
36. Kwamikagami at 04:48, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
37. Kwamikagami at 05:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
38. WilliamThweatt at 05:59, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
39. Kwamikagami at 06:51, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
40. Rich Farmbrough at 07:26, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
41. DePiep at 09:26, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
42. Kwamikagami at 09:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
43. Rich Farmbrough at 15:40, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
44. DePiep at 18:20, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
45. DePiep at 18:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
46. Kwamikagami at 19:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
47. DePiep at 20:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
48. Kwamikagami at 20:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
49. DePiep at 22:53, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
50. Rich Farmbrough at 21:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
51. DePiep at 22:53, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
52. DePiep at 08:42, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 21:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by DePiep at 08:42, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by DePiep at 08:42, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 09:13, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

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Edits by:

1. CBM at 15:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
2. CBM at 15:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 21:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by CBM at 15:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 15:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 16:11, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 16:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
2. DePiep at 16:22, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
3. CBM at 16:24, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
4. Hellknowz at 16:28, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Hellknowz at 16:28, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 16:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Hellknowz at 16:28, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by CBM at 16:28, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 17:02, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 49

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Edits by:

1. Hellknowz at 18:03, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Hellknowz at 18:03, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 17:51, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Hellknowz at 18:03, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 18:03, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 18:53, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Ghirlandajo

Please do not make statements attacking people or groups of people. Wikipedia has a strict policy against personal attacks. Attack pages and images are not tolerated by Wikipedia and are speedily deleted. Users who continue to create or repost such pages and images in violation of our biographies of living persons policy will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. Thank you.

If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:36, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Bot error!!

See [37]. Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:13, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I've started a discussion about this at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 49. Fram (talk) 06:58, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Helpful Pixie Bot breaking citation templates

Hi. Could you please tweak Helpful Pixie Bot so that the insertion of {{Please check ISBN}} into citation templates does not cause them to break? See this diff and the result. Thanks. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:06, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes I'll find a solution to this. Part of the problem is the cite templates doing unnecessary cooking to the ISBN's. Rich Farmbrough, 15:32, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

OK, thanks. A simple solution might just be for the bot to place {{Please check ISBN}} outside and just after the citation template. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:53, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Mhm, that's more complex than it appears, though. It looks like introducing a space resolves the issue, which is great except when the ISBN is in running text, followed by punctuation. Rich Farmbrough, 16:00, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Example:

1. Introduction to Administrative Law (3rd ed.), London: Taylor & Francis, 2003, ISBN 978-6610165360 (ebk.) {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help).
2. The book is ... ISBN 978-6610165360 .

Rich Farmbrough, 16:00, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Ah, glad you've found a possible solution. (By the way, I've checked the above ISBN and it seems to be correct, though I note that the Library of Congress ISBN converter cannot resolve it. Looks like it may be an error on the publisher's part.) — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I removed the tag on that article, since OCLC lists the ISBN, I am guessing that the 6 range may have been started. I'll check the hyphenation rules fro an update soon. Rich Farmbrough, 20:09, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

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Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 21:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Kwamikagami at 01:22, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
3. Kwamikagami at 01:31, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Hellknowz at 16:28, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 21:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kwamikagami at 01:31, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kwamikagami at 01:31, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 01:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 50

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Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 01:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Never edited by BAG.
Last edit by me at 01:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 01:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 01:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 01:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

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Edits by:

1. Hellknowz at 10:03, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Kwamikagami at 08:09, 29 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Hellknowz at 10:03, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 21:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kwamikagami at 08:09, 29 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kwamikagami at 08:09, 29 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 09:02, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

ISBN dashes

This edit by Helpful Pixie Bot added dashes to what looks like an isbn but is actually a file name. Can you prevent this occurrence? Chris857 (talk) 14:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes. There will be some head-scratching involved though. Thanks for letting me know. Rich Farmbrough, 16:13, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

FITNR. Rich Farmbrough, 00:11, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

The Signpost: 26 March 2012

• News and notes: Controversial content saga continues, while the Foundation tries to engage editors with merchandising and restructuring

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Rock Music

• Featured content: Malfunctioning sharks, toothcombs and a famous mother: featured content for the week

• Arbitration report: Race and intelligence review at evidence, article titles closed

• Recent research: Predicting admin elections; studying flagged revision debates; classifying editor interactions; and collecting the Wikipedia literature

• Education report: Universities unite for GLAM; and High Schools get their due.

• Technology report: A busy week: Git switchover, mobile site upgraded, and still time for three security releases

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
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• EdwardsBot (talk) 00:51, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 50

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Edits by:

1. Headbomb at 04:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 04:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 01:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Headbomb at 04:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Headbomb at 04:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 05:14, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. Headbomb at 14:53, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 14:53, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 12:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Headbomb at 14:53, 28 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Headbomb at 14:53, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 15:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. DePiep at 20:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Kwamikagami at 20:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Headbomb at 21:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 15:40, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Kwamikagami at 20:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Kwamikagami at 20:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 21:12, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

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Edits by:

1. Kwamikagami at 09:16, 29 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Hellknowz at 09:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC).
3. Kwamikagami at 19:28, 29 March 2012 (UTC).
4. DePiep at 10:39, 31 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Hellknowz at 09:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 21:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by DePiep at 10:39, 31 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by DePiep at 10:39, 31 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:05, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 47

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Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 01:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
2. CBM at 01:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
3. Rich Farmbrough at 03:22, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
4. CBM at 11:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
5. Rich Farmbrough at 14:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
6. CBM at 16:46, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
7. CBM at 01:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
8. Rich Farmbrough at 03:22, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
9. CBM at 11:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
10. Rich Farmbrough at 14:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
11. CBM at 16:46, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
12. Headbomb at 21:10, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
13. Rich Farmbrough at 23:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
14. Rcsprinter123 at 11:09, 31 March 2012 (UTC).
15. Hellknowz at 11:16, 31 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Hellknowz at 11:16, 31 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 23:33, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Hellknowz at 11:16, 31 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rcsprinter123 at 11:16, 31 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:57, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48

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Edits by:

1. Rcsprinter123 at 11:10, 31 March 2012 (UTC).
2. Hellknowz at 11:16, 31 March 2012 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Hellknowz at 11:16, 31 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 21:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Hellknowz at 11:16, 31 March 2012 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rcsprinter123 at 11:16, 31 March 2012 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 11:57, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject category

About this template. It currently categorizes the category into category:x-importance articles, into category:project articles by importance and into category:project articles by quality and importance

For example: see Category:B-Class Education in India articles of Top-importance

Ideally I do not see why it needs to be a subcategory of anything except Category:Education in India articles by quality and importance (x-articles by quality and importance), Category:B-Class Education in India articles(y-class x articles) and Category:Top-importance Education in India articles(z-importance x-articles). I see that the template is used at a lot of places, and hence I'm a little wary about editing it. Maybe you should check how the other projects categorise and fix it accordingly. Thanks and regards.--Siddhartha Ghai (talk) 00:56, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

That's exactly what I did. If you want to change the way it works in "Education in India" categories then you could simply susbt: the template and tweak it. Or change the template, I have no strong opinion on the article assessment sub-category structure (in fact part of me says the whole wiki-project assesment edifice is just to keep certain people out of trouble, at which is it failing ). Good luck whichever route you take. Rich Farmbrough, 01:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

User script listing cleanup project

I'm leaving this message for known script authors, recent contributors to Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts, and those who've shown interest in user scripts.

This scripts listing page is in dire need of cleanup. To facilitate this, I've created a new draft listing at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts cleanup. You're invited to list scripts you know to be currently working and relevant. Eventually this draft page can replace the current scripts listing.

If you'd like to comment or collaborate on this proposal, see the discussion I started here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts#Scripts listing cleanup project. Thanks! Equazcion ^(talk) 04:32, 25 Mar 2012 (UTC)

Cool. Rich Farmbrough, 04:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Data extraction & insertion

Let's say I have the wikicode file "Outline of Stamford" saved on my computer, and I want a program that goes through the outline, finds the first bulleted entry lacking an annotation, pulls the article from Wikipedia for the subject in the entry, extracts the first two sentences of the lead paragraph, then inserts those two sentences as the annotation for that entry, then repeats for the next missing entry, until the all the entries have annotations.

This would be very helpful, as it would save tons of manual cutting and pasting.

How would you go about doing that with perl?

The Transhumanist 22:05, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what "un-annotated" means but at a guess you could use something like:

while ($page =~ /\n\*\s*\[\[([^\])]*\]\]\s*\*/s ){
   $bulleted = $1;
   $entry =   get ($bulleted);
   $entry =~ s/.*?'''.*?'''//;
   $entry =~ s/([^\.]*.[^\.]*.).*/$1/;
   $page =~ s/(\n\*\s*\[\[$bulleted\]\]\s*)\*/$1 $entry/;
}

here the handwaving is in the assumption that the Wikipeida articles are well-formed, and not exceptional. Rich Farmbrough, 22:27, 4 January 2012 (UTC).

You would need to get the source of the article. You need a module for that, which comes with examples. MediaWiki::API I think is the name. Rich Farmbrough, 23:33, 4 January 2012 (UTC).

Entries in outlines look like this:

• Architecture – art and science of designing buildings.
• Crafts – activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill.
• Drawing – visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. As a verb, it is the act of making marks on a surface so as to create an image, form or shape. As a noun, it is the image produced, or the visual art form itself.
• Film – also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The process of filmmaking has developed into an art form and industry.
• Painting – the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface (support base) with a brush or other objects. The term describes both the act and the result of the action.
• Photography
• Sculpture –

Concerning list entries, an annotation is a dashed comment.

The entries "Photography" and "Sculpture" above lack annotations. Would the program you wrote above home in on those and add an annotation for each?   The Transhumanist 03:41, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

It would pick up the first, fail on the second for two reasons: it would count the endash as an annotation, and there's no following list item. Rich Farmbrough, 11:13, 5 January 2012 (UTC).

I'm stuck!

(I had to return the programming books to the library).

I don't know what to do to be able to use the while loop you provided above on an outline.

That is, how do you make it read the outline file into the $page variable?

Also, what did you mean by "handwaving"?

Once the annotations are inserted, how do I save the outline back to disk?

When this script becomes fully operational, I expect it will do more than 50% of the work on outlines. Because inserting annotations by hand is tedious as hell, and all of the outlines have entries that need annotations. We're talking tens of thousands of annotation insertions. I can't stress how helpful this tool will be.

How fast do you think it could insert 100 annotations? [

I look forward to your reply. The Transhumanist 23:49, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

• The while loop will run while something is in the $page that consists of a newline followed by a bulleted link with nothing after it on the line.

• So this is done .. wait didn't we do this? Depending on where the file is, by the reading it from disk as we discussed, or by loading it form Wikipedia.

• "Handwaving" means the bit of the argument that is glossed over. Often it is a good idea to simply not worry about some problems until they can be actually met with (like developing the internal combustion engine, without worrying too much about people getting lost in strange towns), but sometimes this can be disastrous (like setting out across the desert without planning your water consumption).

• Once the text is completed you can save with

open FILE, ">:", "somefilename.txt" or die;

print FILE $page;

close FILE;

Rich Farmbrough, 00:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

Thank you very much

Thank you very much by your unselfish cooperation in Article "Biodiversity of New Caledonia". Muchas gracias por tu colaboración desinteresada en el articulo "Biodiversidad de Nueva Caledonia". 85.251.99.49 (talk) 23:10, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

You are most welcome. Rich Farmbrough, 23:52, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

"Retracted paper"?

Hi. I see that your edit summary here states "tag retracted paper". May I ask what you mean by a "retracted paper"? I suspect that it is not the meaning used by the publishing houses. Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:25, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes it is a paper where there is a published retraction. If you follow the pub-med link and select "publication type" at the bottom it will say "retracted publication". There were 138 pages which cited retracted publications by PMID as of 7th March 2012, three have had the cites removed, 134 have been tagged and one (retraction) has been left alone for now. Full details on Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 23:50, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

You seem to be playing around with your talk page text. Anyway, the reference that you edited doesn't have a PubMed link. Axl ¤ [Talk] 01:06, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes it does, search the author, you will see the pmid link in the references. Rich Farmbrough, 03:12, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

ISBN proposal

Hi Rich, I just wanted to let you know that I went ahead and submitted a proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Proposal to improve Wikipedia's ISBN Magic. Thanks for all your help with this. --Robert.Allen (talk) 19:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! Rich Farmbrough, 21:10, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

More Expand language thoughts....

Hi Rich! Thanks for all your help with the bot! I've been thinking more about all the expand language templates, and it might make sense to combine them all into one master template with an article parameter and a language parameter, rather than having ~100 separate templates that need to be individually maintained. Would you be able/willing (I'm confident you are able to do this!) to code a bot to convert {{Expand French|articletitle}} to {{Translate|French|article=articletitle}} for all articles currently tagged? (First I would need to get permission to repurpose {{Translate}}, which is currently a redirect.) Hopefully, this would be a one-time task. I had always wanted to keep the template super simple for users, and now instead of having to specify the articletitle parameter (which they can now just ignore), they'd just have to specify the language parameter. Any thoughts about this? The only thing that is currently inconsistent in any significant way across the templates is the use of different topic categories for different languages, but I think this could be easily managed using a switch parameter in the master template. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:55, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is a Good Idea. Rich Farmbrough, 09:51, 29 March 2012 (UTC).

I think I've figured out the necessary template code here. What do you think? Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:57, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah it would save a lot of edits every time the template needs to be revised at least... But it would require several thousand edits to fix of course.. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:03, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

A bot could just convert all the existing uses - that would be pretty simple. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:19, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, trivial even. I'll try to look at the template, but, as usual, problems are occurring with those who see noticeboards as a forum for vengeance. This does rather dampen my enthusiasm. Rich Farmbrough, 19:51, 30 March 2012 (UTC).

Violating editing restriction

Per Wikipedia:Editing restrictions, "Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from mass creating pages in any namespace, unless prior community approval for the specific mass creation task is documented." You have however created hundreds of categories in a short time, many of them of very limited or debatable use, e.g. dozens of categories for test templates like Category:Immediate children/Test-44 and Category:Immediate children/Test-16.

Much worse is your creation of all missing "Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of ..." categories. These are often years old, only contain one editor or IP address (who may have gone on to completely different people), and are based on sometimes flimsy or dubious evidence. You have e.g. created Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Ghirlandajo, based on a tag from 2007, and where the discussion at Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Ghirlandajo concluded that there wasn't enough evidence at all to link the two. However, thanks to your creation now, five years after the fact, this has been "officialized" for no good reason at all. I'll start a discussion at AN again to see how to deal with this umpteenth violation of your editing restrictions, which were imposed to avoid these kind of problems... Fram (talk) 07:24, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Discussion is at WP:AN#Mindless creation of "suspected sockpuppet" categories from years old, with resulting problems. Fram (talk) 07:33, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

In that case the tag needs to be removed and the cat deleted. Rich Farmbrough, 09:58, 30 March 2012 (UTC).

Ultimate Spider-Woman:

Ultimate Comics Enemy, Ultimate Mystery, Ultimate Comics Doom -ComicVine.--Shawnee Smith (talk) 10:06, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think the IP that added the tags (not Helpful Pixe Bot) was asking for issue numbers. Comicvine is an open wiki, and, as such, not a reliable source. Rich Farmbrough, 10:12, 30 March 2012 (UTC).

• I'm sorry I just wanted to add a little bit of information, but the Ultimate Spider Woman my favorite character, only please do not remove information!--Shawnee Smith (talk) 10:18, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

  I hope it won't be removed (if its correct!) - I certainly won't remove it. There is a lot of information on Wikipedia which would benefit from references, we don't necessarily remove it, unless there's a deeper problem. Keep up the good work! Rich Farmbrough, 10:22, 30 March 2012 (UTC).
  

• Well, sorry for the question, to be honest I would like to ask how you can replace a picture of Spider-Woman in a frame and a picture of Ultimate Spider-Woman, well that without inscriptions was just in the photo without the signatures.--Shawnee Smith (talk) 10:36, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Maybe Talk:Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) is the place to ask that? (Since I haven't a clue about that article.) Rich Farmbrough, 10:49, 30 March 2012 (UTC).
    

• Clearly thank you!--90.155.142.140 (talk) 10:51, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

  My pleasure. Rich Farmbrough, 23:57, 30 March 2012 (UTC).
  

Help us develop better software!

Thanks to all of you for commenting on the NOINDEX RfC :). It's always great to be able to field questions like these to the community; it's genuinely the highlight of my work! The NOINDEX idea sprung from our New Page Triage discussion; we're developing a new patrolling interface for new articles, and we want your input like never before :). So if you haven't already seen it, please go there, take a look at the screenshots and mockups and ideas, and add any comments or suggestions you might have to the talkpage. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Of course I would love to, but some maroon.... Rich Farmbrough, 23:56, 30 March 2012 (UTC).