User talk:John of Reading

Merry Christmas!

RezonansowyakaRezy (talk | contribs) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year! Spread the Christmas cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas3}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

--Rezonansowy_akaRezy (talk | contribs) 00:06, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User talk:Sunil Sisodiya

A tag has been placed on User talk:Sunil Sisodiya requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section U5 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to consist of writings, information, discussions, and/or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals. Please note that Wikipedia is not a free Web hosting service. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, 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 from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Melcous (talk) 04:07, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

@Melcous: Er, thank you. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:26, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry about that John - apparently you automatically got this message viaTwinkle because you created that talk page (with another warning). I will inform the actual spammer :) Cheers, Melcous (talk)

Reference errors on 26 December

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

• On the Uncover (song) page, your edit caused a broken reference name (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:24, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Fixed - and very strange references there were, too. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:03, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

AWB on Ubuntu

A discussion is going on at Wikimedia mailing list on using AWB on Ubunutu. Please check the discussion and update documentations. If needed, please send me an email, so that I can forward conversations till now. Please add a {{YGM}} on my talk if you mail me. --Tito Dutta (talk) 12:45, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Note to self: starting with this message. @Titodutta: Sorry, I can't help with this! I have no experience with Ubuntu and only use AWB under Windows. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:18, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Happy New Year John of Reading!

Happy New Year!

John of Reading,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. ツ Pdebee.^{(talk)(guestbook)} 17:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2016}} to user talk pages.

Dear John,
Thank you for your help and for everything else you do in support of our encyclopedia.
I wish you a great New Year in 2016!
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.^{(talk)(guestbook)} 17:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Wisconsin Green Party for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Wisconsin Green Party is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wisconsin Green Party until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Me-123567-Me (talk) 18:24, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Inactive portal

Oops! What's the correct tag for this? ww2censor (talk) 22:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

@Ww2censor: I've added {{Outdated}}, which seems to fit. That portal really does need some loving care and attention... -- John of Reading (talk) 22:40, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I dont' think there is an inactive portal template. I've been watching for years but nothing happens even though some racing pages are edited. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 23:02, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

University of St Andrews

Please check refs, number 20 and 21 - the quotes on 21 should be left in, but is the format OK? Please check 20 as it does not immediately go to the history section Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.182.146.167 (talk) 08:32, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

This has already been asked at the Help desk. That should be enough. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:41, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Help searching for "|?]]" at the end of categories

I'm trying to find Category\:Astronomical objects discovered in \d\d\d\d\|\?\]\], but "incategory:" doesn't have this functionality, and "insource:", it seems, only works inside templates. Do you know if there's a way to find these without a database scan?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:39, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: Well, after twenty minutes experimentation I've made it work! It seems that the \d construct is not part of this variant of the regular expression syntax. Recoding the year as [0-9]{4} leads to a search that works: [1]. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:07, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Good god. You are the man. Yeah, I spent 1.5 hours searching before coming here. But, I'm glad we didn't take the brute-force (database) method, otherwise losing this very practical advice. Thanks! :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:20, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: Though Help:Searching/Regex#Character classes says that [0-9] doesn't work properly either. When I next download a database I'll do a scan anyway to see if we're missing thousands of matches. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:32, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Luckily, in the meantime, I've made better use of my time by downloading enwiki-20151201, which should contain a few more than the 109 matches you found above, since I've been doing some category maintenance. I've just started unzipping it, which will take a little over an hour. I'll let you know what I find.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:43, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

DB Scanner returns 113 matches for Astronomical objects discovered in \d\d\d\d\|\?\]\] for 20151201, a few more than 109, as expected. It also shows that [0-9] indeed processes all 10 digits, instead of the stated first four ([0-3]).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:24, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

My archiving hero!!!!

Thanks a gazillion for fixing the Occupation page archiving. I have some serious mindblock going on when it comes to that feature. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:40, 15 January 2016 (UTC)