User talk:MER-C/archives/30

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Bots

Hi, MER-C. :) I have to sadly conclude that Verno is no longer available to us. :( I have received no responses to my last couple of e-mails. I'm hoping that this is because he has happily settled into a new life on the low-technology island of his dreams. But I'm here because I want to ask for a new bot to take over some of what Verno's bot did, and I wanted to see what we need doin' before I do that.

Obviously, we need User:VWBot tasks to be taken up by something else. Do you know of anything else? (I'm going to ask NortyNort to stop by here as well. :)) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:32, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Aside from making me a cup of coffee in the morning, two other bots that are down were identified here. DumbBOT and Zorglbot created new days at WP:CP and added the SCV templates, etc. This is being done manually now. If I think of any other duties that would be helpful, I will drop by here again.--NortyNort (Holla) 03:14, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

It's conceptually very easy but I don't have the resources to run this kind of bot (need an always on computer with cron). If you can get the source code off Verno and give it to someone who can run a bot, that would solve our problems. MER-C 04:03, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Alas, I have not gotten a response from Verno in some time. :/ I really just wanted to be sure I knew everything we needed from a bot before seeing if I can round up somebody to make us one. It sounds like we just need something to replace what we had, then, insofar as possible. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:41, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

There's a list of tasks on User:VWBot; the ones we're missing that are easily replaceable are 1, 3, 5 and 9. MER-C 13:23, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

First post from me in ages, thanks to trying to write my PhD thesis, but anyway have some possible useful input here. In answer to the "always on" problem then I suggest getting a toolserver account. If Verno's uncontactable then I think we're going to have a problem getting the source code as according to his bot requests it's not publicly available. I'm sure I can create a bot to do the tasks, the problem is I won't be able to even start making one until the end of the month when I hand in my thesis so it would be best is we see if someone else is more immediately available. Dpmuk (talk) 14:48, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

The toolserver does not have a Java runtime, so that's not an option. I can write the code, I just need someone to run it. MER-C 01:32, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Just logged onto my toolserver account and it appears to have a java runtime to me (at least on willow). Am I missing something? Dpmuk (talk) 17:07, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh hey, it does. (This isn't particularly obvious from the toolserver wiki). I hacked up some code today but it needs some polishing before BRFA, etc. I think the fastest way is for me to give you a JAR to run. MER-C 07:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I was writing my bot request when I noticed this conversation had continued. :) MER-C, are you going to be able to write a bot for us, or do I need to ask still? I don't know from Java runtime and etc., so I don't know if the Bot is still needed. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:15, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

[1]. It's still rough around the edges (hence the filename Blah) and is totally untested. Oh, and the contribution surveyor is fried. I don't know if it is generic Toolserver suckiness or if the tool is actually broken. MER-C 03:47, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

(It was the toolserver.) MER-C 13:25, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Note to self. MER-C 13:09, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Okay. :) Just let me know if you need somebody to agitate, and I'll take on that challenge. :D Meanwhile, I've just found another CCI, one that I suspect we would have been able to uncover earlier if Corensearchbot were still going. Oi. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:15, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Possible Bug Report and Feature Request

Hi MER-C. Hope you're well. I've been working a great deal with Wiki.java, and I really feel I must compliment you for your excellent bot framework. If it helps, I believe I have discovered a bug you may be interested in. Wiki.getCategoryMemberes(String name) does not appear to support certain unicode characters. Take the following code:

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import org.wikipedia.*;
import java.net.*;

public class Demo
{
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
  {
    Wiki wiki = new Wiki();
    String[] l = wiki.getCategoryMembers("FTest");
    for (String str : l)
       System.out.println(str);
  }
}

The expected output is:

User:Fastily/AäáãǣėƐħóöūü

The actual output is:

User:Fastily/A???????????

If it's not a bug or if I'm missing something, sorry for wasting your time.

I also have a feature request I was hoping you could implement: Wiki.delete(String page)? I tried implementing such a method myself, but after doing some research, I found I did not have the technical expertise to do it. In all honesty, I am a total noob programmer who started learning java not but a few months ago. I remember you told me you hadn't implemented any sysop functions because you weren't an admin. If you're willing, I'd be more than happy to help you test this method and compile whatever resources you may need. If you're not interested, it's okay, no pressure. This method would be a huge help to me in an upcoming bot I hope to write. Please consider. All the best, FASTILY ^(TALK) 05:42, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

On Windows the command line font does not support Unicode. Instead of printing to System.out, could you please create a dialog box (JOptionPane) and screencap it? As for deleting, it's the easiest of the sysop actions to add. MER-C 11:47, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Works for me in Netbeans, so the issue is probably some variant of what I mentioned above. Deletion was added in r26. MER-C 05:01, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Now that I look at it, I think it may be a non-issue. Just got it to work. I'm running Mac Snow Lepord using the Terminal command line. Thanks for looking into it though! If it helps with [2], I wrote a mostly functional delete method at User:Fastily/delete.java (i.e. deletes any pages passed in with the specified reason, but doesn't really log anything). Guess you were right, it wasn't that difficult to implement. Regards, FASTILY ^(TALK) 04:57, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Re:Spam

Hi, I have explained to Surajt88, there was no deliberate intention and apologies if I got it wrong, I saw the hotcorsets.co.uk links and noticed there is no further contribution or mention of hotcorsets.co.uk. All I did was exactly what they and others have done, yet these links have not been removed so I assumed it OK to add to it. I would be grateful if you can let me know what I have done different to the person who added hotcorsets.co.uk? I have noticed there is also no mention of Symington Corsets, only a single mention under Market Harborough. Please can you advise if it would be OK for me to write a contibution on them, as I am already authoring some work on them? Many thanks, Andrew 19:56, 11 August 2011 (UTC) Andy-Thom 19:57, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The conduct of whoever added hotcorsets.co.uk is irrelevant -- it is your abuse of Wikipedia for promotional purposes that is the issue here.

The Corsetique brand name originally evolved from a fusion of various chic words that best described our corset quality, design range and wearer comfort. Words such as:

— User:Amt586thompson/sandbox (emphasis added)

If your article on Symington Corsets is going to be similar to this then don't bother. MER-C 03:28, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I get your point, I have never contributed to Wiki before, so I used the format from the contibutions like IBM and Accenture. I can see how this comes across as commercial spam - so am deleting the corsetique bit i'm writing from the sandbox. With regards to the work on Symington Corsets, again I will create something, and will place it in the sandbox first. When ready, I will ask for your help and views before we make it public. Once again, apoligies for how I may have come across, I now understand it would have been prudent to have got to know things better first. I'm not sure exactly how this works but others that I came across that you may want to look into are links for: Curvelining Garment C & S Constructions Wasp Creations These seem to be commercial spam also. If I see any other suspects, I'll let you know. Thanks for your help.

Andrew Andy-Thom 11:47, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Could you please post the domain names here so that I can run them through the database tomorrow to check for systematic spamming? You are free, of course, to remove the links if they do not comply with the WP:ELNO#external links guideline in the meantime. MER-C 14:04, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

refspam

Hello, when you remove refs, you should add citation needed to those removed ones, now there is new data without any sources thx -->Typ932 ^T·C 08:36, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

delete()

Hi MER-C, I tried testing out Wiki.java's new delete() method with the call:

wiki.delete("Category:Disputed non-free Wikipedia files as of 8 August 2011", "[[WP:CSD#G6|G6]]: Housekeeping and routine (non-controversial) cleanup");

I received the following terminal output when running the program:

Aug 16, 2011 1:24:31 PM Wiki getPageInfo()
INFO: [en.wikipedia.org] Successfully retrieved page info for Category:Disputed non-free Wikipedia files as of 8 August 2011.
Aug 16, 2011 1:24:32 PM Wiki delete()
WARNING: [en.wikipedia.org] Exception: MediaWiki error, response was <?xml version="1.0"?><api><delete title="Category:Disputed non-free Wikipedia files as of 8 August 2011" reason="" /></api> Retrying....
Aug 16, 2011 1:24:32 PM Wiki getPageInfo()
INFO: [en.wikipedia.org] Successfully retrieved page info for Category:Disputed non-free Wikipedia files as of 8 August 2011.
Aug 16, 2011 1:24:32 PM org.wikipedia.Wiki delete
INFO: Page "Category:Disputed non-free Wikipedia files as of 8 August 2011" does not exist.

I ran the program twice, and obtained the same result: the page was deleted, but without a reason (See log). The deletions at 20:21 and 20:24 were made by the aforementioned method call. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 21:37, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

On a side note, I found that wiki.login(username, password) does not accept any of the following characters in passwords: {'!', '@', '#', '$', "%', '^', '&', '*', '(', ')', '/', '-', '+'}, ect. When you have time, could you look into it? Thanks for everything you've done so far! All the best, FASTILY ^(TALK) 21:40, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Line 966: change out.write(username); to out.write(URLEncoder.encode(username), "UTF-8");

Line 968: change out.write(password); to out.write(URLEncoder.encode(password), "UTF-8");

Line 1888: change buffer.append("&summary="); to buffer.append("&reason=");

That should fix both problems. MER-C 02:54, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you meant

966: out.write(username); to out.write(URLEncoder.encode(username, "UTF-8"));

968 out.write(password); to out.write(URLEncoder.encode(new String(password), "UTF-8"));

Aside from that, no problems. Thanks again for all your help! Best, FASTILY ^(TALK) 04:52, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you again. Between lines 6280 and 6281, you may want to add

if (line.contains("<delete title="))
    return;

The API doesn't return a standard "success" message after properly deleting a page so the delete() method was retrying deletion despite a successful deletion. This code will fix the issue. Regards. FASTILY ^(TALK) 19:45, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. MER-C 03:43, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Great, thanks! -FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:51, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

A brownie for you!

Hello MER-C! I hope you accept this brownie as an amicable greeting from a fellow Wikipedian, SwisterTwister talk 04:08, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Om, nom, nom... burp. Thanks. MER-C 06:48, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Fake article

Someone turned up quite a few of these at Talk:International Biographical Centre - may need a group deletion. Dougweller (talk) 11:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, looks like you already know! That's a start anyway. Dougweller (talk) 11:10, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I had a look, beyond the first two the signal to noise ratio (um, okay) drops significantly to be not really worthwhile. MER-C 12:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Outreach

Did you see my comments at the Village Pump? I'll repeat them here: Has anyone checked to see how many of these accounts turn out to be vandalism accounts? I know I've found several. One big problem for me is that nothing is put on their talk page. Normally we hope new users will get a talk page welcome message. Looking at the timing of one I just blocked, the user page message was added before their first edit. But when they edited, they will not have seen any banner telling them they had a user page, right? But if there had been a talk page message tailored towards new users, the new message banner would have flashed up when they edited. And when I say tailored towards new users, I mean something that kindly and tactfully says what are constructive edits and what are not, and maybe even gently says non-constructive edits lead to editing priveleges being withdrawn. Does this make any sense to you? Dougweller (talk) 06:00, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I will refrain from posting this at the Village [PD]ump because I have a feeling this won't go down particularly well. It makes sense to automatically whack a welcome template on the talk page of new users coming through this process but I have a strong feeling your idea will be forgotten about, ignored and/or shunted down the priority list in favour of other inane, and in some cases downright stupid ideas. (Aren't we supposed to have a WYSIWYG editor by last year now?) Furthermore, these seems to be a little community resistance to automated welcomes. MER-C 08:36, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Marshallsumter CCI

I opposed a CCI earlier saying it'd be simpler to delete if there were any copyvios, but at that time I didn't realize the impact on existing articles. Can you check the section "Existing article contributions" under the ANI report and comment. Many of the sources used require some access to the journals so it's not something that's easily identified. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 09:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Talk of CCI handling

Hello, MER-C. You have new messages at Moonriddengirl's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

This is just preliminary conversation, but, of course, I thought you might like to be a part of it. We're talking about ways to streamline the CCI process to make sure that listings don't languish forever. I think we'd need to VP it before implementation, but input from those who are most familiar with them could be helpful. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:59, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Bug Report

Hi MER-C, hope you're well. I think I may have found a bug in Wiki.java. When running the following code:

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import org.wikipedia.*;
import javax.security.auth.login.*;
import java.net.*;

public class getImageTest
{
  public static void main (String[] args) throws IOException
  {
    byte[] b = new Wiki().getImage("GD - Yesterday.jpg");
  }
}

the program throws a MalformedURLException. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 00:55, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Does the stack trace point to line 2909? MER-C 11:17, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it does:

Fastily:Fbot $ java getImageTest
Sep 25, 2011 5:45:33 PM Wiki getCurrentDatabaseLag()
INFO: [en.wikipedia.org] Current database replication lag is 0 seconds.
Exception in thread "main" java.net.MalformedURLException: no protocol: l version=
	at java.net.URL.<init>(URL.java:567)
	at java.net.URL.<init>(URL.java:464)
	at java.net.URL.<init>(URL.java:413)
	at org.wikipedia.Wiki.getImage(Wiki.java:2909)
	at org.wikipedia.Wiki.getImage(Wiki.java:2871)
	at getImageTest.main(getImageTest.java:11)

-FASTILY ^(TALK) 00:46, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Fixed in r31. MER-C 06:47, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Great! Thank you! :) -FASTILY ^(TALK) 07:30, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

DePuy external links

Hi there,

I added a new external link to the DePuy company entry and I see you reverted it back shortly afterwards. May I ask why? I work for Johnson & Johnson (owners of DePuy) and the site I added is the OFFICIAL DePuy surgeon education site for the company. While DePuy.com is the official corporate site, www.do-surgery.com is a very important resource for our customer base.

I just read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ELNO#Official_links about linking to official company websites and this website appears to comply with both requirements:

1. The linked content is controlled by the subject (organization or individual person) of the Wikipedia article. 2. The linked content primarily covers the area for which the subject of the article is notable.

Furthermore, it states that 'More than one official link should be provided only when the additional links provide the reader with unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites'. I believe in this instance this is true.

Additionally, and importantly, there is another statement 'In other situations, it may be appropriate to provide more than one link, such as when a business has one website for the corporate headquarters and another for consumer information'. This is most definitely true.

As I believe that this list is legitimate under the 'official links' requirements set out above, would you mind if I reinstate it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jnjmedical (talk • contribs)

Not quite. If you continued reading, you would have noticed the heading "Minimize the number of links". It is apparent that to view content beyond the front page requires registration and is hence useless for the vast majority of Wikipedia readers (see links to avoid #6, #7). There are other things too: the link description was totally uninformative, suggests the site consists of user-generated content and makes no obvious connection with the article contents. (Yes, I should have been a bit more careful but in hindsight with the conflict of interest, it's always best to discuss.)

Hi there. Thanks for responding. I did notice that section on minimising links but thought two external links for a company the size of DePuy was not unreasonable. To only allow 1 link to our corporate site when we have dedicated sites for our primary customer base seems a little harsh. I admit that the name 'do-surgery' does not relate specifically to DePuy. I am happy to rename it to something more appropriate e.g. Official DePuy Surgeon eLearning website. Although the site does require registration (due to this website being dedicated to our surgeon customer base and the content inappropriate to consumers), it states that the points you refer to under 'Links normally to be avoided' apply only to sites that are NOT official pages of the article's subject (this is stated in the introduction of the page section). In this instance, the external linking site IS an official page specific to the subject of the article. jjmc-ds

That's reasonable. I'm about to disappear until tomorrow so feel free to reinsert the link with an appropriate description. When you do so, use the edit summary to link to this discussion (this helps prevent others from reverting). By the way, would you happen to know about any reputable, independent articles and/or the website (not just reprints of press releases or advertisements masquerading as articles)? These can be used as references in WP's article. MER-C 13:31, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi there. I have contacted one of my colleagues to try and obtain references. Do-Surgery won an award back in 2009 and I am trying to locate details of this. I'll let you know if I find anything. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjmc-ds (talk • contribs)

Acknowledged; thanks for the effort. MER-C 13:12, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, I suggest you get a new username before you are blocked. MER-C 09:37, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out the potential issues with my username. I was unaware that such policies exist. I have updated it to something more appropriate jjmc-ds

CCI update

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Ose\fio is now complete. Thank you for your assistance in the evaluation of this CCI.

Closed two today! And created a new update template.--Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:22, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, by the way, I've added a not very elegant workaround to the name display issues in {{CCI-closed}}. It adds the name of the contributor parenthetically after the link to the number. It'll serve for now, I suppose. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:22, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Yay squared! I'll remember that. I've got a couple favo(u)rs regarding outstanding

• Mwhite148: Please nominate the concerned images on Commons for deletion. I don't contribute there any more except for spam removal as the problems there are much worse then en.wp.
• Jacobisq: I think the copying here is too trivial for a CCI, but I would appreciate a second opinion.

Thanks. (I'll clear out the remaining requests on Saturday.) MER-C 13:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Will do as soon as I catch up on my talk page. :) (I'm taking this morning to catch up on this kind of thing.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:11, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Re:Mwhite148, will do, but I want to talk to a Commons admin about it first. I'm watching for one to pop up on Gchat. :)

I'm finding it hard to make a call on Jacobisq. It's great that he put his content into quotation marks, but his work is not transformative. In a lot of places, he's just lifted the text to create a kind of quilt of other people's words. :( For example, the lead of Fixation (psychology):

Fixation: 'concept originated by Sigmund Freud (1905a) to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits'.[1] Subsequently '"Fixation" acquired a broader connotation. With the development of theory of libidinal stages...the term came to mean a persistent attachment, not only to the specific instinctual aims of a particular era, but, instead, to the entire complex of self and object relation'[2] at that time.

It seems like there are five original words in that paragraph: Fixation...subsequently...at that time. Wow, this is a mess. I'm just not sure right now the best way to organize cleanup of it. Let's leave this one open a bit longer while I think about it and perhaps broach the subject with the contributor. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:53, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I've left the fellow a note here. This seems to me to a bit akin to somebody uploading a lot of content under NFC where some of the material may not conform. I'll try to keep an eye out and see what he says. Hopefully he'll be willing and able to work on this one himself. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:14, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

And just closed Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/FlyingToaster. Is today some kind of record? Dare I hope that a few more will get knocked off? :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:34, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caiyad Phahad

Would you reply to my comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caiyad Phahad regarding userfication? Thank you, Cunard (talk) 06:19, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Would you reply at the AfD regarding the GFDL-violating, WP:FAKEARTICLE-violating copy-and-paste of the article to User:Phoenix B 1of3/Caiyad Phahad? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 03:47, 11 October 2011 (UTC)