User talk:Commander Keane

Engineering degrees in the USA

I replied to your comments in My Talk.

Catenary Article

You know, there is a Wikipedia articles that are too technical page, if you are interested in passing off the task. Mike Graham Notthe9 19:58, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Line outs

Because that's what my school team used for two years. When I wrote it I thought it gave something of the flavour of a rugby team's thinking, but perhaps "gleefully stupid" is not a bad description. Feel free to remove it. PeteVerdon

Your Question about 2001: A Space Odyssey

Just wanted to let you know that I responded to your question on the talk page for this movie. I hope that it is of some help to you. MarnetteD | Talk 08:38, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Perth's water supply

Hi Commander Keane. I've responded to your comment by adding a paragraph to Perth, Western Australia about Perth's water woes. - Mark 01:26, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Teaching Assistant

Hello. From my experience, the term VL fully matches the description of a TA in this article. At my institution, VLs are not fully qualified. Many are employed at the beginning of their Masters programme, and are not required to hold any teaching experience or qualification. Indeed, I was actually dissauded from obtaining my PGCE by a senior lecturer.

Gaining full time employment in higher education is very difficult, meaning that there are many fully qualified VL's (I would say that the possession of a PhD would 'fully qualify' someone, tho' this is my guess/opinion).

The term, I guess, is preferable to TA as it professionalises the teacher. The label 'assistant' could be problematic when it comes to internal politics, including student discussions ("why are we always taught by an assistant and not a proper lecturer?"). When I was an undergrad, I thought that VL referred to an expert in that field who is there on a temporary basis.

On another political note, VLs make useful scapegoats when things go wrong. They are very much expendable, and there is always a bun fight at the beginning of term to get teaching hours. It easy for institutions to change a VL and officially report that they have had a staff change as a result of feedback, rather than address any problems with full timers.

Hope this helps. I'm unsure about the three other terms that are red linked under 'see also', but their details should be merged into this article, I think? The JPS 15:37, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

But I don't know the location. Somewhere in Perth. Tannin 23:38, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Annoyance

Pretty much. Snowspinner July 6, 2005 01:25 (UTC)

Timeline

Axis labels are always shown to the left and at the bottom of the chart. As a workaround I placed extra labels above the chart with TextData, using absolute positioning. Drawback is that translators will have to reposition these texts again. Erik Zachte 6 July 2005 14:29 (UTC)

TdF

Official site gives Andreas with the accent. Confirmed that it's without the accent? --Penwhale | Blast the Penwhale 9 July 2005 15:52 (UTC)

Rider's jerseys progress chart (2005 Tour de France)

I like this, but wouldn't it be better on the main Tour page? --Oldak Quill 01:05, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Mickael/Michael Rasmussen

I created the article at Mickael Rasmussen, as that is the name given by the Tour de France website and the BBC. Personally, I'd go with which ever one the Danish media use. Average Earthman 12:07, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

The Ashes

See The Ashes in England in 2005 for the Ashes themselves, and Australians in England in 2005 for the tour as a whole (including the Ashes). If you're looking to help, you'll be more than welcome, but bear in mind Sam Vimes' is writing up the first Test at present on User:Sam Vimes/Cricket reports. I'm sure he won't mind if you edit it, but no need to restart it from scratch. All the best, jguk 11:04, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Flags

You cleaned up my attempt of flags in the Template:Signals agency, thank you. Just wondering if there is a wikipedia resource where I can learn more about using flags in wikipedia, or where I can get flag names normalised (eg "Image:Flag of Kazakhstan.png" to conform with "Image:Spain flag large.png") Commander Keane 11:34, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for starting that template; good idea! Regarding the flag templates: I only discovered the template recently; there's a page about it here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Flag Template. — Matt Crypto 12:17, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Template: Stanley Kubrick

Ah, *two* templates!

I'll wait for a month or so and then nominate the old one for deletion again if things look okay, explaining that there is a new one and it's redundant. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 09:15, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

MI8

Does the article MI8 (note its independece from MI-8) need to be merged with Black Chamber? I'm a little uncertain about the dashes. --Commander Keane 04:11, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Ooh, well-spotted. Yes, it looks like they do need to be merged somehow. One suggestions is we keep the US MI(-)8 stuff at Black chamber, merge in the content from MI8 into Black Chamber, split out the stuff about the British MI-8 into a stub for Radio Security Service, and turn MI-8 into a disambiguation or redirect page. Does that sound workable? I'm not sure what the correct hyphenation is though. — Matt Crypto 10:20, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

My user page

Hi. I've darkened the text on my user page in response to your concerns about readability. I really want a low-key user page for the time being, though. - Mark 13:20, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Help desk

At the help desk, specifcally here, in response to the question you gave a welcome message with heaps of information, but missed answering the actual question. I think the welcome message for newbies at the help desk can be overwhelming and unhelpful, maybe we could work on a welcome template specifially for the help desk? --Commander Keane 12:47, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

• That probably would be a good idea, actually. I kinda missed the question, and thought I was answering it. (sheepish look). --Blu Aardvark | ^{(talk) | (contribs)} 12:50, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

NOTOC

Hi. Putting __NOTOC__ on a page forces the page not to have a table of contents, no matter how many headings there are. Similarly, __FORCETOC__ forces there to be a table of contents. Normally TOCs are done automatically, you see. Cheers, JOHN COLLISON (An Liúdramán) 20:29, 1 August 2005 (UTC).

Dyke / Dike

I've just seen that you've split this page into two and created many links which now have to be redirected. The basic reason for these coming together as a single disambig page (instead of two disambig pages with bad links) is that the intention of disambig pages it to point people to the correct page. Part of this, and especially in this case, is that where there are multiple options on spelling for the same word then it is best practice to bring them together rather than requiring users to blick between "see also" links. In this case there are even cases of the same target page having different links from each page rather than the same one! I shall deal with sorting this mess out. --Vamp:Willow 08:27, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree that trying to reduce the number of times "dyke/dike" gets repeated didn't work - changes made. Re other disambigs, feel free! The whole point of WP is to be easy to use and for collective improvement... --Vamp:Willow 10:11, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Ambiguous Rugby

I've seen your comments on my talk page - regarding them, what I've been doing (with a fair degree of inconsistency!) is to use specific links to Rugby League or Rugby Union where it's a) relevant and b) fairly easy to tell either from context or from my own knowledge; if it refers to Campo or Wilkinson, for example, I know that'll be Union. If it refers to the Bradford Bulls it'll be League. If it refers to Jason Robinson it could be either... Where it's not obvious, I can't determine which it is, or the reference is to the game in general, I've generally been using Rugby Football. Feel free to dab them as you like! Tonywalton 12:02, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments so far. I'll just keep plugging on (gainful employment allowing ;-) ). I suppose I'm effectively using Rugby Football as a dab page for "some kind of the sport of rugby"; at least it's clearer that they're talking about the sport, rather than the town, though! Once I've got the links to the Rugby dab page down to something manageable, I may go through the links to Rugby football and refine those again. Tonywalton 12:28, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. Last time I looked there were a lot more entries on the Rugby dab page's "what links here". Looks like someone else has been helping out. As for "Gainful employment", I meant that occasionally my boss likes me to do the job I get paid for, which sadly cuts into the time I have available to edit Wikipedia... Tonywalton 12:58, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

The joys of being a sysop

Sysops get a cunning rollback feature, so they can revert edits really quickly. If you're a sysop, and you go to a user's contributions page, you get a "rollback" link next to each of the user's "top" edits, i.e. each edit that is the most recent one for its page. To sort out a particularly horrendous vandalism spree, you just click on all the rollback links as quickly as you can. :) Of course, you have to establish that the user is consistently vandalising first. To revert a whole load of edits when only a few of them are bad would be rather evil, I think! Hope that helps. -- Oliver P. 10:46, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Director templates

There isn't a policy, as far as I know. I participated in the discussion on several pages, and no policy was ever mentioned. It started with my Spielberg template being nominated for deletion. The template was kept, as there was no consensus to delete. So it was nominated again, this time along with Hitchcock and Kubrick. I was happier with the joined discussion, since there would be some attempt at consistency.

There was no real consensus to delete the three templates. They were deleted anyway, and were removed from the articles before the TFD was marked as closed!

I guess the community has spoken. It is a shame, though, since I think that the templates would have been used by many visitors who are not editors. The categories do not provide the valuable chronological detail (which many film enthusiasts appreciate), and chronological 'list of X films' can be quite hard to find for new users.

I perceive a growing tendency against many templates, and the usual suspects appear to be nominate and vote against several other templates. In this case I think their deletion has made the wiki less functional.

I now vote delete for consistency when directors templates come up, but make it clear that I'm in favour of them in general. The community seems to be against them, but with a small majority. I'm not sure there's much point in us pressing the point. We'll be opposed, and even if the consensus goes in our favour, they'd be deleted anyway, or renominated until they are deleted.

Take a look at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Lynch

Hope this helps. The JPS 15:42, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Keep the templates!! I had no idea why they were deleted and I thought they were very, very helpful! Gsgeorge 16:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

From what I could tell from the very confusing vote in the TFD archives, there was NO consensus to delete, so whoever went ahead and did the deletes (I haven't checked the page history, was it Radiant! ?) should not have done it. I calculated anywhere from 60 to 68% for delete, where consensus should be a minimum of 70-80%. I will support either a Vote for Undelete or a revote at TFD. BlankVerse ∅ 17:19, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm in favor of the director templates. Atlant 17:46, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Turning off sounds in Firefox

In my experience, the upgrading procedure is far from perfect, but it won't hurt to try it and see for yourself how good it is these days. ¦ Reisio 16:48, 2005 August 6 (UTC)

Template help

Thank you Commander! You not only centered it but also cleaned the code. Thank you very much! Subramanian ^talk 14:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I apologize, I don´t want it to seem that I didn´t appreciate it. You see, many Hindu tough words put together, like vydyamaya dharma shruti smriti shastras, are somewhat difficult to read. So I think the template gets better if it remains short and not many words are tackled together in the same line. I tryed to keep the cleaning you did, but to make the template as small as it was and also keep the orange border. The problem is I'm rather clumsy, and I dont´know how to do it without putting at least some of the old dirty code back. Subramanian ^talk 15:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

RE: Forcing white space with images

Sir, I saw your note in Galway Bay about "is there an easier way". I don't think that you need to force the stub below the photo; I let it come back up. But if you need to move text below an image to make formatting more aesthetic you can use this:

• <br style="clear:both;">

or

• <br style="clear:left;">

Just copy what you see here (if you copy in edit of this page don't use the "pre" command).

Try experimenting and let me know.

WikiDon 00:55, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Template:Centurybox

The template size is determined by how much text is in the box. On the template page all that variable stuff { {{{cpa}}}00s {{{cpa}}}10s etc } takes up more room than 1900s 1910s, etc does on the 20th century page, so the box expands to fit it all. - Trevor macinnis 16:09, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Big Brother UK

I don't actually know for sure where the house is. I suppose they try and keep it a secret however best they can. FireFox 12:38, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

• The house is at Elstree Studios in Elstree, [[Hert

ordshire]] - everybody knows that surely?! Gary Kirk 20:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Re: Hits of Sunshine

It's a song by Sonic Youth. Check this page for more info. You can start a disambig page if you'd like. Karmafist 16:52, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Re: Nice graph

I used gnuplot, wrapped in a shellscript, on Linux. All I need to do is copy/paste the current dataset into a file and re-run the shellscript. (Gnuplot is available for 'doze, also, BTW.) See the talk page for the image for a version of the script for that graph. I can't guarantee that it's the latest version, though. I really need to update those charts -- maybe this weekend. Thanks for the kind note. -- Kbh3rd 18:31, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks; Chinese Engineers

Hi -- thanks for the link to Disambiguation policy! I'll be careful not to add extra wikilinks in the future. The only real change I wanted to make to that page was to indicate that VistA is still in use, not obsolete as the previous version had implied.

Also, after seeing the question on your user page, I added a bit about engineers on the Talk page for Politics of China. It's not much, but maybe it'll help. --Ambyr 22:29, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Links

Thanks for redo my links, knew there was a way. BTW have done radio work in Melbourne, and Freemantle is my WA base.Kyle Andrew Brown 17:04, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Liquefaction

Sorry if I missed something; I am not an expert on Wiki-linking, but your edit seemed to direct readers away from the liquefaction of gases. This is a very important topic in physics, engineering, and chemistry. For a history please see: [1] as just one example (especially the section [250] Liquefaction of Gases through the Nineteenth Century) . Liquefaction of Helium led to a Nobel Prize for Heike Kamerlingh Onnes - not something to be sneezed at. OK? Pdn 05:15, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I probed a bit in on-line dictionaries and found "liquefaction" better defined and used more. Etymologically, the root "fac" comes from the Latin "facio" - to do, make, cause, act, or perform. Thus it would seem to deal mostly with deliberate transformations from other states to liquid, and in common usage it is gas to liquid. "Liquification" might better apply to the soil process (disaster in many cases) by which the material becomes liquid unintentionally. Mostly guessing. Thanks for leaving the physics usage in place. Pdn 04:30, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Deletion Log

The part in the deletion log about the only contributor being you was not written by me, it is automatically generated by the new version of the software when someone deletes an article that only has one contributor. There is a bug in the software that when someone edits the article, even to nominate it for speedy, right after it is deleted, the page is recreated and has to be deleted again. That is what happened here. I did think at first, before I deleted the page, that you created it, but I found the speedy notice and looked in the history, so I know that you did not. I know its confusing, and I hope that bug gets fixed soon. Academic Challenger 08:25, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposed "American" redirect.

I was thinking that we would make "American" redirect to United States, with a note at the top of the United States page that American redirects there, and directing readers to American (disambiguation) for other uses. See NBA, for an example. It would cut the job down to finding those relative few links that should not point to United States -- BDAbramson ^talk 07:13, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

• I think the issue should be raised on the project talk page. With about 5,000 links left to disambiguate, it would save a lot of work. -- BDAbramson ^talk 07:26, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

American/dab style manual

American did not originally serve as a disambiguation page, but as an argument over the use of the word and as a target of vandalism. The introduction, which attempted to describe both the adjective and noun uses in a single sentence, was very difficult to read. Since American is used so variously (it's an adjective, a cheese, a language, a car, a car company, a train, a contract, a person who lives in the western hemisphere, and a person who lives in the U.S., and an airline) and is a loaded term, I thought a disambiguation page delineating these uses would be helpful and diffuse things. When I designed the dab page, I wanted to keep the various points uncategorized except for grammar: both for clarity and to avoid as much as possible the appearance of preference. I am not a fan of the disambiguation page manual of style. I find it too restrictive and overly formulaic. Since a wide variety of titles and names need to be dab pages, it is unlikely that a single style would work for all of them. I once watched an episode of Jeopardy! where one contestant questioned every answer about a geographical place with "Where is such and such?" when "What is such as such?" would have been the correct form in most cases. This question form seemed even more artificial than the normal answer in the form of a question does. I think dab pages need to be designed as freely as possible to solve the particular problem of their article name. Finally, I am generally against restrictions on piping, though this position is softening. -Acjelen 19:37, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the compliment, but I already am a member (an admin even). It's just very early here and I was too lazy to sign in. :) - 131.211.210.12 08:10, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Cricketbio-stub

Is there a particular reason why you've changed and de-bolded the link on {{cricketbio-stub}} but not on {{cricket-stub}}? Personally I think it's more use having the /contribute link there rather than the plain WP one, but either way it would seem better to have consistency. Loganberry (Talk) 12:57, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Categories

I think I've read you right... it's Saturday and there's annoying kids outside screaming...
I've done a considerable amount of work in Category:Film directors and Category:British television programmes: I've never noticed any changed in ordering in individual articles, but then I wasn't looking. Piping them does sort them in within the categories, tho'. I haven't checked the help section, so don't know what it says there. I've just worked from example of other well maintained categories. The JPS 11:17, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Sam Vimes' POV

It calls the effort "heroic". An encyclopedic effort would be to give the facts without embellishment leaping praise on either side. Ambi 17:33, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

? The JPS 18:29, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I think I can explain that one. It wasn't an answer to JPS' question, it was an answer to one Commander Keane put on Ambi's talk page. Sam Vimes 18:37, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I'll stop scratching my head now. The JPS 18:40, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Template:MiniAWFP

Thanks! Just seemed like a good idea at the time! Cheers. -- BDAbramson ^talk 23:17, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Apologies

Sorry for the brief, angered statement made by me here previously. Not only was I out of line but I sent it to the wrong user! Hope it caused no trouble. Unsigned edit by User:68.197.6.64, moved from the top of this page to the bottom by Commander Keane 11:34, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Civil Engineering page: Tertiary qualifications

Greetings, I posted a comment on the Talk:Civil engineering page about the word "tertiary." I am afraid this word has little meaning to me her in the U.S. What does this word mean in this context? What are these qualifications? I suggest they be listed in the article. Looking at old edits of the page, I'm guessing it refers to post-secondary education, which Americans do not refer to as tertiary. Is that correct? Steven McCrary 15:42, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Aberdeenshire

Sorry but my local knowledge is quite limited. And what little I do know is pretty much limited to Glasgow. AlistairMcMillan 13:58, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

F1 portal

Portal:Formula One/Next Grand Prix is simply a preview of the next race which changes after each race and appears in Portal:Formula One. That content could conceivably be copied to 2005 Italian Grand Prix before the race itself occurred, but I don't think that would be very useful. (That article will be created after the race and will include a summary, complete classification, notes, etc.) — Dan | Talk 05:18, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Dabs with links

Thanks for the compliment! Well, unless you were implying that I am a giant stone, which is less complimentary - not that I have anything against stones, you understand. To get the counts, I just went through the list, adding up all the link numbers given. They are probably hopelessly wrong, since they come from a months-old database dump, but it still gives you a sense of progress. I enjoy this project a lot and I really believe that we can at least clear the remaining ~40 dabs. Of course once that happens we have to start all over again (hopefully from a fresh database dump), but I still think we'll have achieved something. Thanks for your interest in the project, and I hope you will continue to help out when you feel like it. Soo 10:51, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Wow, maybe I am becoming myopic, but I never realised there was a place to sign in. I've signed up now, thanks. Soo 12:21, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Commons Pics

Yeah, I have started uploading my images to commons - the last few I did are there. I had uploaded a reasonable amount of pics to wiki before I became aware of commons. Recently I'd asked a few people if there was a faster way to upload but no-one knew, but this weekend I found this: http://tiredbrain.com/wikimedia/commonplace/ so when I get the chance, I will be transferring my images to commons. There are a few that need renamed so it will probably take me a while to sort the whole thing out, but I'll get there eventually.... All the best SeanMack 12:40, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Deputy

Thanks. I commented on Talk:Deputy's page that I don't really know what to do with it either now. --Syrthiss 13:23, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

Portal links

A message at the top of the article is much more noticeable than a small side-image. Also, the portal link image itself is very poor - what's a jigsaw got to do with portals? We're here to help readers, and prominently informing readers of a portal that contains links to key cricket-related content is important, jguk 18:27, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Portal links

A message at the top of the article is much more noticeable than a small side-image. Also, the portal link image itself is very poor - what's a jigsaw got to do with portals? We're here to help readers, and prominently informing readers of a portal that contains links to key cricket-related content is important, jguk 18:32, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links

If I understand your question, you'd just visit the disambiguation page in question and click on "What links here" and count the pages. If it's necessary to generate a number in an automated way, you can work with a library that understands how to parse Wikipedia pages, for instance the pywikipedia library written in Python, see meta:Using the python wikipediabot. But from what I can see at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links, it seems someone has already written a Perl script to generate the numbers. -- Curps 00:32, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

The pywikipedia library could be used to write a program that does what you're asking, but I don't think such a program exists yet. You could write it if you're familiar with script language programming (if you've used Perl before, Python is very easy to pick up).

For the "What links here", if you click on "500" you'll notice that the URL contains "&limit=500". You can manually edit that to 1000 or any other number, and also change or add "&offset=" as well. But if you write a program to do it, you could just get the program to page through it, 500 at a time: &offset=0&limit=500 , &offset=500&limit=500 , &offset=&1000&limit=500 , and so forth.

-- Curps 05:41, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't know why namespace filtering only works for contributions and not other things, but I think it was only added quite recently to contributions, so there may not have been time to add it to other things, or it may have been felt that there wasn't a need. I don't know. You can inquire about it at Village pump (technical). -- Curps 18:33, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Sun (disambiguation)

Dropped you a reply at Talk:Sun (disambiguation). :) --Plastictv 07:30, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Texas Rangers

Hi Keane! What do I think about my bolding at Texas Rangers? Well, basically... that I messed up. I meant to puts italics on it and committed a newbish mistake :( Thanks for pointing it out!

BTW, if the subject interests you, I've made a big expansion of the Texas Ranger Division article and just submitted it to Peer Review. Feel free to review it and make any suggestions and/or edits you consider necessary. *Hugs*! - Shauri Yes babe? 02:31, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

What links here count

At the dab's with links page your mentionaed that you re-counted American, How did you do that? --Commander Keane 04:55, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

• The hard way - went screen by screen, 500 at a time, until I could go no further, then counted 141 remaining links. -- BDAbramson ^talk 04:59, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I've written a script that does the job the easy way (via computer), but it considers articles with a ":" in the title to be non-MAIN namespace. Do you think this is an acceptable error and that I could update the counts at Dab's with links using the script? By the way, it calculates American to be 4606 now. --Commander Keane 05:26, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Knocking out everything with ":" in the title may go too far - just last week I disambiguated over 700 links to "Album" in Image:Foo, Category:Foo, and Portal:Foo pages, and 60 or so links to "American" of the same types. "Album" may have been an anomaly, but each major disambig is likely to have at least a few images and categories. Also, there are a few pages in the Wikipedia namespace where it is important to have the right link. Perhaps we could have a split reporting, e.g. (42 article links/69 total links). -- BDAbramson ^talk 12:26, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Eliminating Page Links

What I meant by those words was that I would specialise in Goal 2 in Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation although I will occasionally sort out disambiguation pages.DaGizza 12:44 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Johnson

See Talk:List of people named Johnson. --Smack (talk) 04:12, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Bottom Dab

Yes, I see that is indeed the policy. Thanks for the info! -- SCZenz 22:41, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Signature

Thanks for catching that. I recently changed it and I guess I forgot the piping. — Laura Scudder | Talk 00:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

"refers to"

Please stop changing disambiguation articles to use "refers to" whilst pointing to the Manual of Style for support. First, the Manual of Style, despite its other faults, does not state any such thing. Second, the Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles explains why "refers to" should be avoided. (It puts encyclopaedia articles on the wrong side of the use-mention distinction. Encyclopaedia articles don't tell us what their titles refer to, they tell us what their titles are.) Uncle G 12:15, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Move vs. Redirect

My only thought was that, if you use a redirect, it will be easier to change in the future. Since Jim Clark is a very common personal name, I would guess there is a reasonably good chance that some other notable Jim Clark will come to our attention at some point, and we may then want to point the unadorned Jim Clark page either to that person, or back to the disambiguation page.

Oh, and while I'm here, thanks for all your work on disambig pages. I know that this cleanup work often doesn't get the recognition it deserves!

--Russ Blau (talk) 17:10, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Link disambiguation

Okay, I admit it! I am addicted to link disambiguation. I am glad to help. It is fascinating to see how many different ways something can be interpreted. Also, I've followed your cleanup efforts on piping with dab links. I'll keep that in mind, too! Has the progress ever made it to 50%?  :-) >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist} 17:35, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I tried to get us to 40% tonight, but alas I failed....39.2%!!!  :-) >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist} 02:22, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing Keyboard. The worst I've done so far was The Wizard of Oz. One link was a template...so there were a ton of blank saves....no credit given :-). Keep plugging away!! >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist} 03:32, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

On being sorely missed

In a way it's good to be missed! Unfortunately real-life commitments have caught up with me and I no longer have hours to expend on the project. Nevertheless I check back regularly and watch its progress with interest. You can be sure that I'll be back in action as soon as I have a few hours to spare. Soo 08:32, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

DPP

Hi, good to hear from you.

No I don't have a British accent. It's a joke. Being an Austalian Imperialist I like to annoy Australian nationalists. Some of my ancestors came out to Australia six generations ago. I let slip into the conversation that I'm British. (I'm not, but I like to think there are English Britons, Welsh Britons, Australian Britons, Canadian Britons etc.) The joke is that I don't sound it. They then ask how long I've been here (because I've lost the accent) and I use the punchline - "6 generations".

Shattered Union

Dude, here is the link to my page. If you can get that table on there for me, that would be great! :)

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

Dude, Thanks!

Hey, thanks man. I've tried for 2 days to get it right. Thanks Again!

Mike15 21:29, 5 October 2005 (UTC)Mike

What links here count

• How do you count up the number of articles in a "What links here"? I saw your update of the progress of American at link repair. --Commander Keane 10:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I use solve_disambiguation.py: I just set special_page_limit higher than what I think the link total will be, then run it with the arguments "-main American" -- it tells me how many pages it is going to work on, and that is my link count. How do you do it for the script that generates the count on your user subpage? --Russ Blau (talk) 10:57, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

At the moment, solve_disambiguation.py will only count the total number of links (a) in the Main namespace only, or (b) in all namespaces. I guess one could hack it to be more selective in which namespaces it uses, but I haven't tried that yet. For info on using the various python wikipedia bots, see m:Pywikipedia. --Russ Blau (talk) 16:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

The Water is Wide

Hello! I used inverted commas because I was referring to the phrase, rather than to a novel or song; I didn't use anything for the links, because they each included the bracketed description "novel" or "song". --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:29, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Final Draft

Dude, here is the link to my finish article. Edit it to your liking, and leave me a message saying how you liked it. (Leave the pictures! Thanks!)

Finished Article

Mike15 00:30, 12 October 2005 (UTC)Mike

Admin charts

Please see User:Durin/Admin nominee charts. If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer. --Durin 13:19, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

• You might inquire with User:RobyWayne. Have a look at User:RobyWayne/Sandbox. That page is automatically generated (on request). --Durin 13:56, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Counts and things

Howdy, Commander! I had actually read where you were talking about a tool to do "What links here" counts on a talk page somewhere (can't remember where, right now) and started thinking about how to accomplish that. If you have some more details of what you'd like to see, please let me know. Do you want just a count of all links or broken out by name space...what about redirects? Want those, too?

Would you like for me to run my stats script for you? The data comes directly from Special Contributions, so no magic there ;-).

Thanks for the best wishes on the RfA. If it doesn't happen, that's okay--won't change who I am, but will show me where I need to focus. >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 17:55, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Your page has been created. Let me know what you think!! >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 18:59, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. The charting package in php is choosing its own colours, but I am going to change that to a specific colour for each namespace--trying to find a blend that works well together is somewhat difficult as certain individuals have a lot of edits in one namespace which can be overpowering for the viewer. Any suggestions you have in that regard are welcome. And, as you stated, I am also working on edit summaries. I think I almost have that figured and will probably split that up Durin-style: Edit sumamries over all edits and edit summaries for the last 500-1000 edits. Shows progress for the editor, I think.

Of course SQL access to the data would be awesome, but I doubt that is a possibility :-) unless asksql is enabled, so I have a .php script that scrapes the html and inserts the data into a MySQL table. I then use the table to extrapolate the data. To do nearly 10k edits that Redwolf24 has took about 4 or 5 minutes. The same amount of time loading the Special Contribution pages manually. Of course, the slower Wikipedia is, the slower the script will be. I looked at downloading the latest database dump, but that isn't timely at all! Let me put something together for the disambig maintenance page and see what ya' think. >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 01:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Yup, you're correct. The lovely Kate and her infamous tool are special and get direct access to the db. Too bad db dumps aren't more frequent. >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 02:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Brazil (disambiguation)

I reverted your edit/deletion in this article, I much apreciate your revision and comments in the Talk:Brazil (disambiguation). Thanks, --Mateusc 23:57, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Help on reference desk

Hi

You helped me out earlier on the wikipedia reference desk ~ I had a question with Matlab. I just wanted to say, thanks SO much for your help, you really helped me out. ~ Kristi

I'm glad I could help. If you've got any other questions send them my way, good luck! --Commander Keane 04:13, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I noticed

That your edits go ignored here on Wikipedia (i.e. link repairs and disam. which you have cleaned up after me). I just stop by to say thanks for the awesome work and give you a Barnstar of Diligence for continued high standards in your edits.

Take care, Molotov (talk) 04:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages maintenance

You're right. It's slow ;-). I put together a quick script and it takes between 10-12 minutes to run over all of the links listed on Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages maintenance. I came up with a total of 21,604 links...though, I think the first link on the list Greek (disambiguation) should be Greek and that would make the count higher. >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 05:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

What is this dial-up that you speak of?  ;-) I am not sure what the connection speed here is in the hotel, but at home I have a cable modem that does pretty well (and a faster computer) so it may run even quicker there. The script reads the <li>st links on the Disambiguation pages maintenance page and then does a What Links Here on each one of those and totals the number of items in the list. Each <li> with a title and wikilink count as 1. I think it would be useful to separate out Article/Main space counts from User, Talk, etc., but provide both answers (i.e., Total links: 250 with 179 article links) or something similar. I use one laptop on dial-up and one on T1 at work so I'll run this script at 41.2kbps tomorrow and see how long it takes :o). Maybe it will take 30 minutes.

As for doing some growth statistics, probably the best/only way to do it is to schedule the script to run on a daily basis at a certain time (like 06:00 UTC) and accumulate the counts. I would imagine building a table that the script automatically maintains and creating a record per day run. For example, Greek would have an entry for each day run with total count. Then we could produce an area bar chart to track the ups and downs (hopefully, more downs that ups) :-). I am open to any and all suggestions...this is your baby. >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 05:50, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow. That does run slow on dial-up!! It took nearly 45 minutes (I was doing several other things, too), but that is unacceptable for sure. >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 16:40, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Need a Check Up

Dude, I have edited it a good one. Check it out and make any changes. If you can, delete this line on the top page: {{{{{2}}}|1 Infobox CVG/input =void|2={{{3}}}}} if you can hide it, that would be great.

Mike15 23:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)Mike

Oh, wait, I got rid of it. Okay, still look at it but ignore what I said about the line; I fixed it!

Mike15 23:24, 14 October 2005 (UTC)Mike

Bot

Is Commander Keane bot really yours? If so, could you please add a link from that page to your talk page? It sort of looks confusing :-) --HappyCamper 16:15, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmm...well I know there is Wikipedia:Bot requests, but I'm pretty much new to this bot stuff as well. I'd recommend talking to AllyUnion for some direction and pointers - I was referred to him/her as well the other day. I'm trying to write a bot for the reference desk myself, but I haven't got around to it yet. At least you have a bot that is running! :-)

I came across it during RC patrol, when I noticed that there was a bot with a red link. I was sort of worried about it at first - the other day there was a vandal who used the name "Uncle Ed's major work 'bot" and managed to make a few page move vandalisms before being caught (largely because it looked so similar to "Uncle G's major work 'bot" which is legitimate). However, after checking a few of your bot's edits, they seemed okay. To be on the safe side, I decided to leave a message on your talk page just to make sure. --HappyCamper 17:04, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Heh...I had no idea I was known around Wikipedia as the "RD person" :-) -- anyway, there's some information about this on User_talk:Uncle_G#Bot_request_for_the_reference_desk - if you can help out, let me know because it will be a great help with the archival. There are just too many active questions, and based on some recent usage statistics we won't be able to keep up with the volume pretty soon. --HappyCamper 17:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, the beeping is annoying. To get rid of it, edit the file user-config.py and insert a line that says ring_bell = False; that was put it at my request, actually.  :-)

To change [[Polish|Poland]] to [[Poland|Polish]] without using the edit window: Use replace.py: you could do python replace.py -ref:Polish "[[Polish|Poland]]" "[[Poland|Polish]]"; but if you find other variations you want to fix, too, just do python replace.py -ref:Polish without the other arguments, then enter the replacements (of which there can be more than one) in response to the prompts. Doing it the second way will also let you change the bot's edit comment.

• On my question about Poland, from what I understand, if the problem occurs while I'm runnig solve_disambiguation.py then I can't run python replace.py -ref:Polish "[[Polish|Poland]]" as that requires the Windows command prompt. Am I on the right track? If there have been too many questions then tell me and I'll go and annoy AllyUnion. --Commander Keane 10:51, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
  • You can indeed run more than one bot at once; you just need to open up a new instance of the Windows command prompt for each one. However, in most cases I'd probably just quit out of solve_disambiguation, run replace.py, then go back and finish the rest of the disambiguations later. --Russ Blau (talk) 12:59, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

For solve_disambiguation.py, I don't yet know how to change the edit comment. I'll try to look into it at some point. I'm guessing the comment is simply hard-coded into the program, and you could just edit the .py file to change it.

Have fun! --Russ Blau (talk) 23:32, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

• • Yesterday I uploaded a patch that lets you add a line (or lines) like the following to your user-config.py file:
    

disambiguation_comment['wikipedia']['en'] = "Robot-assisted disambiguation ([[WP:DPL|you can help!]]): %s"
where %s stands for the title of the disambig page. --Russ Blau (talk) 12:59, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

• special_page_limit goes in your user-config.py file. -main American is a command line argument (along with the other options listed on m:solve_disambiguation.py). You need to open a Windows command prompt (Start | Run, then type cmd in the dialog box); then at the command prompt type python solve_disambiguation.py -main American or whatever you want to do. (In order for this to work, you need to have both your Python directory and your Pywikipedia directory in your Windows PATH.) --Russ Blau (talk) 11:23, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Congo

Funny you should mention that. I just finished running the script to clear out the old references to Template:Region. If you want to do it yourself sometime, it's simple:
python touch.py -ref:Template:Region
--Russ Blau (talk) 10:33, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages maintenance

You might be interested in User:RussBot/Disambig maintenance bot test; I am trying out a bot script that would periodically count up the links to all the dab pages listed on the maintenance page, and sort the list according to the counts. When/if I get it debugged and approved, I would change it to output the results directly to Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages maintenance rather than the user page. --Russ Blau (talk) 13:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

My RfA

Thanks, Commander, for your support of my RfA! I promise to do a good job using the keys to the janitor's closet. >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 01:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi!

Hi there! I'm really pissed man, and hope you can help me. There's pretty offensive stuff that a classmate added to one article, it has been deleted twice but he continues creating it. I know that Wikipedia is not responsible, but I really want to know if there is a way to block this article from being created again and again. The article is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moises_Kababie, and it is linked to articles as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Leal. It is pretty offensive, and it is just invented, actually if you read it you will notice it is pretty non-sense. Hope you can help me! My mail is mocho.knabbis@gmail.com, my name is Moises Kababie. Thanks and I hope to be helped.

Aylesbury Methodist Church

Well if ever you find yourself in the area I can recommend a visit - it's a nice church. -- Francs2000 17:42, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

greating from Spain

Hi! I am a doctor (cardiologist) from Spain. I wrote the extremly short acticle about my village (Cudillero). It´s nice to know someone did actually read it! and even took the time to improve it. I´ll try to make it longer someday...But in the mean time you can visit us on the web if you wish to. Silvia

A nice little article, I have put a stub notice on it and maybe some of your countrymen will expand it. Perhaps you would consider getting an account on Wikipedia, so other editor can leave messages on your talk page, maybe about Cudillero. Good luck! --Commander Keane 23:59, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Image:Flag of Scotland.svg

You're right - the name isn't right, I've now changed it to Flag of Scotland.svg and redone all the edits I had already made. Thanks/wangi 15:21, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that, wangi 20:34, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

pywikipedia questions

I have some questions about the pywikipedia bot which I have been using, you seem to be something of an oracle when it comes to these matters.

1. When using touch.py you need to use an underscore instead of space. Is this a bug or needed (so you can put in extra arguments)?. For example:
   • python touch.py -ref:Template:Scotland subdivisions doesn't work, but
   • python touch.py -ref:Template:Scotland_subdivisions does.
2. When running solve_disambiguation.py, there is a delay while I wait for the program to save my edit to the server. Is there a way for the next entry to be popped up while I'm waiting for the last edit to be sent, I'm on dial-up and it gets quite frustrating waiting.
3. Back with touch.py. The program waits about 50 seconds (eg: "Sleeping for 55.5 seconds") between edits. Is this time reasonable? I understand that you can't bomb the server with edits, but almost a minute is slower than manual operation. Cheers for the help, --Commander Keane 16:01, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

1. Python would be reading the parameter, "-ref:Template:Scotland subdivisions" as two parameters passed into the parser. You will need to quote it like: python2.3 touch.py -ref:"Template:Scotland subdivisions"
2. There is, but that would have involve changing the code. The way to properly do this would be to thread the code such that it went to save your edit while you got the next page. Unfortunately, I and many others, don't particularly like writing threading code because it's difficult and is a bother to maintain.
3. The time restriction is set higher for unapproved bots supposely. The throttle exists for people to not be able to circumvent that and that the bots don't create a Denial-of-service attack. I'm sorry, I can not help you in this situation, send an email to the mailing list: wikibots-l@wikimedia.org

I hope that helps. --AllyUnion (talk) 21:45, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

• Assuming that you do so in accordance with the bot guidelines, you can adjust the throttle timing by using python touch.py -putthrottle:12 <other arguments>; 12 seems to be a reasonable number although you could go a little higher or lower depending on your connection delays. --Russ Blau (talk) 16:01, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

hi

hi there,

I recently noticed that there is already an article on "hassan" which is quite different from what the discussion page says. Actually Hassan is an indian city. So please help me disambiguating the articles and help me in creating a new article for Hassan.

bye

Hello! Hassan (disambiguation) already exists. It looks like someone has overwirtten Hassan with info about a person rather than the city (which is in the district of Karnataka, right?). I'll fix it up right now. Thanks for pointing this out.--Commander Keane 04:27, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

North Albany Football Club

I have researched the credibility of this article and I have not been able to verify any of the infromation. Firstly, there is no trace of the 'North Albany Football Club' on google nor on any Albany, Western Australia web pages. I have found no 'Collingwood Park' in Albany, although there are other places with the name in Australia but none are football grounds. Kangas is a nick name for the [[Kangaroos Football Club]; Melbourne, Victoria. While Great Southern Football League is the body responsible for Australian Rules Football on the Fleurieu Peninsula; Adelaide, South Australia. I doubt the truth in this article, but you know must know better as you are from Western Australia and you seem to approve of the article. I am sure you will be able to prove this is not a joke and that there really is a North Albany Football Club. cheers. --Mexaguil 09:19, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Challenge

The challenge has been put aside (for some time), but not forgotten! Do we still want to do this?  BDAbramson ^talk 17:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

• Perhaps it was merely ill-publicized... I never even pitched it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation!  BDAbramson ^talk 05:06, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I'll do a little PR tomorrow - hasta manyana!  BDAbramson ^talk 05:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Author is not really progress, tho - no links were fixed! But I have no grave objection, other then a nagging sense of artificiality. Wasn't Baden also dis-disambiguated? Frankly, I think Attorney should be as well.  BDAbramson ^talk 05:43, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• I take that back - identifying disambig pages that ought not be is a form of progress. Cheers!  BDAbramson ^talk 05:44, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

wp:rfa

I'd like to nominate you for admin. I keep on seeing your edits in pages I've been editting, and so reckon you'll manage to look after sysophood. You'd get it too, easily. --Wonderfool 18:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Your RfA

I removed your RfA from WP:RFA (posted by UserNewnoise because it has not been officially accepted. You should also answer the questions prior to posting on RfA (but that requirement is under some debate currently). At a minimum, you should accept. If you want to improve his chances of passing, answer the questions before posting as well. You can view the RfA here. All the best, --Durin 12:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks and query about RFA

Hi Commander Keane, You were one of the first non-Indian Wikipedians that I got to know of. I am really impressed by your work on disambiguation pages and wanted to thank you for your efforts. Your edit summaries are always precise, to the point and informative. I do not know the reason why you have not accepted the nomination for RFA. I had assumed previously that you are already a sysop. I'd think that the sysop privileges such as rollback may be useful to you in your chores in disambig. I can assure you of my support in case you accept the nomination. Regards,--Gurubrahma 13:37, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Thankyou

Thanks heaps for helping me out by fixing the AfD page so that nefertiti piercing shows up properly, I was pretty confused that it wasn't working :) --Qirex 16:23, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Bot question

At the moment the -file: command in touch.py won't take articles like Eilean Bàn, with the squiggle over the a. Could this be due to Windows or what?

Yes, probably. Wikipedia uses Unicode encoded in UTF-8, while Windows generally uses some other encodings. If your file is plain text, you can open it in Notepad, then select File | Save As..., and in the file save dialog box, at the very bottom, select "UTF-8" in the Encoding drop-down box. Hopefully that will fix it. However, the whole subject of file encodings is pretty mysterious, and I usually cross my fingers and utter a magic incantation before trying anything that involves Unicode characters. In other words, YMMV!  :-) --Russ Blau (talk) 17:46, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Stats update

Commander, your stats have been updated. I made a note on your RfA. Silly me thought you already were one or I would have nominated you myself. I'll answer the other things you posted on my talk page later. Real life things going on tonight ;-). Take care and good luck with the RfA. >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 00:32, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Complaint = USA arts lacking country id

G'day, Vcxlor here. Yeah, I have been doing random searches recently (amongst 30 legit, there are the self bios, ads, etc etc) amongst it all, and almost every one of the USA articles ( so and so place population 187 etc) lacks any id of the USA in its text, although the guidelines say otherwise in the category instructions. I assume that someone could run a bot on the issue (I dont know how bots work) but I'd give a reasonable bet there are at least 10,000 items in wikipedia that have articles about USA items that do not identify the usa as being the location or domain of the subject. Perhaps the 'systemaic bias' forums would be the best bet, on this sort of issue. If you wonder what I am on about, just run 'random article' for say, 30 or 40 hits, and you will get an american county for sure, and you'll see what I mean. On a good day you'll get 10 out of those 40. Anyway seeya.vcxlor 15:52, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Special bot query

I have a job for a bot - at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases, we've decided to modify the way U.S. Supreme Court case citations are presented in our 400+ court case articles. The change entails putting a reference at a specific point near the top to a note at a specific point near the bottom. Can a bot do this? Or must I rack up my edit count even higher? ;-) Cheers! BDAbramson T 05:05, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Sodium sulfide

I'm sure the stuff exists, I'll need to doublecheck some sources to see if any of the info in there is (in)correct. Give me a few hours. - Mgm|^(talk) 17:10, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

KM

Howdy, Commander. KM was easy because a large majority of the links need to point to Kilometre, though there were quite a few for Comoros, KM programming language and Clan Knightmare. I used User:Lupin's Popups tool to get the ones linked to KM and a manual bot to check the ones with a redirect Km. Had to do a bit of unlinking on a few that were just all over the page.  ;-). This one probably wasn't a good example since it was so easy. >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 18:50, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Using just Lupin's tool, I had 227 dab corrections in one hour. Using the python bot, I had an astonishing 502 and that was on "manual" where you check each and every link before it is updated. I can't imagine what would happen if someone let that bot run wide open!! I think it is supposed to throttle itself to no more than 10 updates per minute--so 600 should be the theoretical max....but, with a fast connection and no throttle, I am sure it could have wiped out KM in a few minutes. It took me from 06:01 till 09:02 (UTC). Have a good sleep ;-) >: Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist • E@} 19:45, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Network dab

Help :-)! I am running into quite a few wikilinks for Network that would be best suited for just a dictionary definition of network. Is there a presedence for doing this? Or is it best to leave it, uh, ambiguated. Your thoughts are appreciated, future Admin ;-) >: Roby Wayne ^Talk 03:56, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Excellent points. I am skipping anything that looks like it just doesn't belong to the obvious (computer network, telecommunications network, radio network, Network (film), etc.). Once I get that done, I'll post the comment at the talk page on WP:DPL. You're helpful as always!! >: Roby Wayne ^Talk 06:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Good question :-)...I was thinking about that earlier. I don't see manually editing each link with a script popping the choices up on a screen (solve_disambiguation.py) any different than manually editing each link with a script dropping down a list on a screen (Lupin's popups). In either, I make a decision on each and every edit, so I run it under my name. If I were to write a script that went out and made mass edits without prompting for each, I'd consider that to be more "bot-like" so that it could be segregated and corrected quickly if something went wrong. Knowing how disambiguations are, I'd be petrified to run one of these things wide open....imagine the damage!!! >: Roby Wayne ^Talk 07:04, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Hmmmm. It came up and said that I wasn't on that page, but it didn't error out the solve_disambiguation.py script. Perhaps a bug? I'll head over to WP:BOTS and see what's going on over there after I get some sleep.  :-). I can see the case where an automatic bot should be flagged, but if they also want to flag manual tasks, they'd have to flag popups-assisted activities, too, which I think would be bad. Lupin's tool is awesome. >: Roby Wayne ^Talk 07:15, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Changes without discussion??

Re: your adjustments to the Plague and creation of List of Bubonic plague outbreaks. At least three editors had discussed plans for an expanded Plague article. This article's intent was, over time, to move beyond bubonic plague, and provide information about the impact of disease, i.e. "plague", on society. We also discussed including a more detailed list of "plague" outbreaks. Only part of this discussion is found on the discussion page. Consensus is a Wiki virtue, is it not? So, I found these changes, without listing your reasons and allowing time for discussion, somewhat abrupt. What is your intent in splitting out the list and eliminating the stub article? Will watch your new list page for response. WBardwin 23:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

well, the original plague article was created at the spur of the moment, as three of us were trying to organize the vast amount of information on plague's impact on human culture, specifically bubonic at the time. I'm afraid we set it up as a place holder while more research and thinking was done. So -- really no harm done. I suppose I was feeling guilty about putting off the research an article of that magnitude is going to take. I've done a little expansion to the original text in preparation for the bigger article. I don't think I'll be able to coerce my reference librarian to letting me bring home the two volumes of plague encyclopedia I will need anytime soon, at least until after the holidays. If anyone else has information on other disease outbreaks - we could make a start on distinct lists on smallpox, typhus, etc. Please forgive my cranky note. Best wishes, and again my apologies. WBardwin 01:40, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

"EP" piping

I gather why such indirect links are not useful for disambiguation pages but in this case it's an album title, the title being "EP". Calling it "EP (Music CD)" on there seems to add further confusion, rather than take away from it, especially as it states "EP (Music CD)" a singles compilation by The Fiery Furnaces, which it is not. My edit was mainly done to change it from being an album to being a compilation so you may leave it like that but I'm not quite sure I agree with you. Thanks for the note anyway. Jellypuzzle 12:06, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

bold text

I think there's a certain size at which you can't see whether a text is bold anymore. Making it smaller makes it appear as if bolding has gone. - Mgm|^(talk) 21:12, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

You're a sysop!

Hi, Commander Keane, Congratulations on Becoming a Sysop

Hey there. I'm pleased to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator! You've volunteered to do housekeeping duties that normal users sadly cannot participate in. Sysops can't do a lot of stuff: They can't delete pages just like that (except patent nonsense like "aojt9085yu8;3ou"), and they can't protect pages in an edit war they are involved in. But they can delete random junk, ban anonymous vandals, delete pages listed on Votes for deletion (provided there's a consensus) for more than one week, protect pages when asked to, and keep the few protected pages that exist on Wikipedia up to date.

Almost anything you can do can be undone, but please take a look at The Administrators' how-to guide and the Administrators' reading list before you get started (although you should have read that during your candidacy ;). Take a look before experimenting with your powers. Also, please add Administrators' noticeboard to your watchlist, as there are always discussions/requests for admins there. If you have any questions drop me a message at My talk page. Have fun! =Nichalp «Talk»=

Please also add your name to WP:LA. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:31, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

• Congratulations, sir, and many happy returns. :-) BDAbramson T 14:33, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

• You Da Man! Glad to have you aboard. --RoySmith 20:43, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

• Congrats on adminship. Dlyons493 Talk 22:34, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

• Many congratulations and welcome to the janitorial staff! You certainly deserved it!! >: Roby Wayne ^Talk 20:15, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

solve_disambiguation.py question

A solve_disambiguation.py question: Can you seed the script so that you can have two prompts running at the same time without clashing (ie trying to fix the same links)? Eg, could you have one start from the bottom of the wlh list, and the other from the top?--Commander Keane 17:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Good idea, but as the program is currently written it doesn't seem to be possible. It shouldn't be too hard to add a "-offset" command line option, though. --Russ Blau (talk) 18:25, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

the bot might be breaking deliberate ambiguation

On 16:11, 12 November 2005 (UTC) User:Commander Keane bot replaced Emin Society's link to magic with a link to magic (paranormal). This was definately not the intended meaning in the article, which deliberately linked to the disambiguation page trying to cover the abstract term. I suspect that this will occur again, with other terms linked from there, and quite probably within other articles throughout wikipedia. The phenomenon of cover was discussed on Talk:Emin Society in August but has far-reaching implications. -- 70.29.131.204 00:34, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Every disambiguation change made by the bot is descided by me looking at the page. In this case the mention of occult made me think that Magic (paranormal) was appropriate. If it was a mistake I apologise. However, the Magic (paranormal) article has a clear link to Magic (illusion) in the header - minimising harm. If a link is made to Magic (disambiguation) instead of Magic the bot (and me) are much less likely (~0%) to change it.--Commander Keane 09:23, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Re: Sorcery (disambiguation)

Many thanks for pointing out the special rules re: disamiguation pages. There is so much to learn about Wikipedia I guess we never stop learning.

-=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 19:13, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Regarding "the weather in London"

According to the discussion page, it's obsecure enough for it to be a red link... See my further comments on Wikipedia talk:Bots. --AllyUnion (talk) 23:48, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi there

I came across the project randomly, before actually signing up for an account I did link repairs whenever I came across them while using Wikipedia for personal uses. When I found the project I figured I would pitch in whenever I had some time to help out. I don't use that link in my repairs because I'm usually at work and just do the repairs on downtime. I may keep a small window open with it so I can just copy paste it instead of typing it every time. Thanks for the welcome. Thaagenson 17:25, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank You

Dear Commander Keane,
    Thank you for fixing my attempt to improve the style of the Thank You dab page. I saw the changes you made, and reread the sections of the Manual of Style regarding the use of bullets, so I'll do better next time. I thought the piped links were required by the Style Guide, since somehow I had the idea that the words Thank You had to be linked. Now I know.
    By the way, as a reader of Wikipedia, I find its greatest strength is its disambiguation pages. No other source of information on the Internet has such a convenient way of zeroing in on exactly the information that I'm looking for. Sure, some sites have nice "site maps" and google search bars, but the disambiguation page written especially with the point of view of "what is my reader really looking for?" exists nowhere else. It is my goal to help make this resource even better. This is the reason I started "helping" (stepping over the line from bold to reckless, I admit) and this is the reason I joined the disambiguation project. I'm looking forward to really helping in future, to make this thing even better than it already is.—GraemeMcRae^talk 17:49, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Reputable and Reliable Source?

Please check the discussion page on the_eXile concerning "Reputable and Reliable Source?"

ACOTF: Rabbit-proof fence

Hi, I noticed that you've listed yourself as a participant at Wikipedia:WikiProject Perth. As you may or may not know, the current Wikipedia:Australian Collaboration of the Fortnight is rabbit-proof fence. It would be great if we could put a picture of the actual fence up. Just wondering if you are in a position to take such a picture at all?

(Don't feel obliged to reply to this, but if you like you can leave me a note on my Talk page.) cheers -- pfctdayelise 13:36, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:Disambig

About your edit to {{disambig}}. Dab pages that list topics are doing so incorrectly - contrary to the manual of style. The previous wording of "which lists articles that may otherwise share" was fundamentally correct, while "a list of topics associated" is wrong. Would you consider discussing this somewhere.--Commander Keane 05:47, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

By "topics," I meant both article links and singe-sentence mentions of alternative connotations that lack dedicated articles (but often contain links to related articles). I wasn't referring to pages that contain full-fledged write-ups of disparate topics (which, of course, is incorrect).

I do see how "topics" isn't the best word to convey the intended message, and I just changed it to "meanings," which hopefully is less ambiguous. Thanks very much for bringing this issue to my attention (instead of reverting). I sincerely appreciate it. If you still have concerns regarding the wording, I'm more than willing to discuss them at the template's talk page. —Lifeisunfair 14:37, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

New Vision

Hi. How shall we format or cleanup New Vision? User:Jstdadd justadded his MLM company to the article. Do we disambiguate, or leave it alone? Thanks! -- Perfecto 15:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Theory of relativity

Commander Keane, I noticed this article listed as an article that needs DAB. However, this article does not appear to be a disambiguation page. Can your review this article please and give your thoughts? Thank you,