User talk:Josh Parris/Archive 4

What's wrong with the #section link?

WildBot reported that Template:External music video/doc had a broken #section link. What's broken about it? Is the bot checking the section heading of the target article for a "something links here" comment? — John Cardinal (talk) 03:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

On Wikipedia:Copyrights, the section ===Linking to copyrighted works=== has a HTML comment on the end, which confused up the bot. I've added comment stripping code, plus a secondary fall-back for when wiki-markup detection incorrectly fails in the future. Josh Parris 10:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

OK. I thought I was going blind... — John Cardinal (talk) 13:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Wildbot tagging

Hi Josh. I noticed Wildbot made tagging based on its deduction of its own motives. I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature - is it usual to CSD talk pages instead of leaving them blank? And if the bot is intended to delete its own blanked pages maybe it could save itself an edit... Anyway, I thought I'd bring it to your attention - do with it what you will. Cheers, Olaf Davis (talk) 19:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

A blue link should typically lead to content, not a blank page, which is why I suggested WildBot tag it as G7 when blanking. Presumably it could delete the page itself were it an admin bot, but typically only admins are allowed to run adminbots. –xeno^talk 19:59, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

One more suggestion: perhaps wildbot should be ignoring Redirect pages

I fixed about a half dozen pages using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:WildBot .

Using that page, I noticed that the bot tagged Chest_muscles, which is a redirect. I think that a dab link in a redirect page is much more likely to be appropriate than a dab link in a regular article. I'll leave it to your judgment how to handle that, but I would propose that Wildbot should be ignoring redirect pages.

Regards, Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 04:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

On second thought, that solution would be kind of harsh. Instead, maybe there should be a distinct template that wildbot lays down for Redirect pages, because these pose a distinct sort of problem. The template on a redirect page might include a button that tells wildbot to "ignore me forever". Pressing the button would also exclude that page from the "central category" I was talking about previously (i.e., I am using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:WildBot as a short-term substitute for that category.) Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 04:48, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

No, that's a bug. Redirects are excluded from WildBot's disambiguation activities, and if a page becomes a redirect it ought not be tagged any longer. I'll work up a fix. Josh Parris 10:40, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:WildBot/msg&hideredirs=1&hidelinks=1 is a better proxy for new pages with ambiguous links on them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:WildBot/m02&hideredirs=1&hidelinks=1 is for broken #section links. Josh Parris 10:43, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

lex regia

Provocation is used in the legal sense, but perhaps not exactly that of the Wiki article as this is Roman law. Saturnus is the Roman god.Aldrasto (talk) 05:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

I like this robot. Thanks to the creator for alerting about links going to disambiguation pages. Very helpful. --William S. Saturn (talk) 04:46, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that mades my day! Josh Parris 04:53, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Haha, i just ran across your bot too. In seconds it alerted me of a disambig link, and after i fixed it, seconds later it removed the note on the talk page. It's so fast!--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 08:27, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to third the congratulations on the usefulness and amazing swiftness of WildBot. --Cybercobra (talk) 10:06, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I ran into this bot for the first time just now. It's cool! --NeilN ^{talk to me} 06:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Requests for bot to stop

God damn that's an annoying bot

Any possibility of putting a time-delay on that thing? Maybe give an editor 5 minutes to fix the ambiguous links on his or her own before adding a nagging message to the talk page? And another 5 minutes before csd-ing the talk page once the ambiguous links are gone? I took care of the links and then went to the talk page to tag with project banners and remove the bot message; before I knew it, the talk page had been deleted (seems like extra work for those that need to delete these speedy deletes)! That's bloody frustrating, you must realize. Is 5 minutes too much to ask? Rkitko ^(talk) 04:51, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The bot is only leaving its observations on the talk page, it's not altering the article. I understand that as an experienced editor you feel like the bot is violating don't template the regulars, but I'm not sure what criteria would work best. Many editors have found the immediate feedback helpful, and often I see the message removed from the talkpage within minutes. There are a number of techniques to manually control the bot detailed below, if you don't find any palatable, I'm open to other suggestions. Josh Parris 00:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and as for the CSD tagging: there's a WP:BRFA underway to eliminate that piece of drudgery. Josh Parris 00:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Please stop using this bot so often

I don't find this bot particularly helpful at present: certainly you should slow down the number of times it visits articles. Once a day would be good enough really. In the article I'm creating, a random human being could do the disambiguation himself/herself without too much difficulty. Your bot shouldn't be visiting Handel concerti grossi Op.6 so many times. Please could you reduce this to once a day? Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 19:36, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The bot is only leaving its observations on the talk page, it's not altering the article. It responds to every edit to the article, because any edit could introduce new ambiguous terms or remove them.

If you don't like the attentions of the bot, you can:

1. use the preview button rather than the save button,
2. tag your article with {{bots|deny=WildBot}},
3. draft in user-space and move into article-space once you've finished construction, or
4. tag your article with {{underconstruction}} or variants thereof

and it will bother you no more. Josh Parris 00:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Some of your suggestions are helpful. But as someone who has edited a number of long articles, I think your third and fourth are unhelpful. Long articles are rarely edited in user space - it just does not work psychologically. If you had written an article like Handel organ concertos Op.4, you would realize that there is far more involved in their creation - a lot of thought and planning which can only be done over a prolonged period. For example the main text for the Handel concerti grossi Op.6 was missing from one of the main copyright libraries in the UK (the University Library in Cambridge) so had to be purchased by me from amazon.co.uk before writing the article. My advice is to remember not to template the regulars (cf your suggestions 3 and 4). Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 08:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Template talk:Long Beach, New York

I just founf out that Template talk:Long Beach, New York exists, and was tagged for speedy deletion, and I'd rather not see that happen. Would you mind if I closed some of the redirects in order to remove the criteria for deletion? ----DanTD (talk) 23:49, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

db-g7 no longer applies as soon as anyone else edits; I'll make changes to ensure the bot removes the tag if that happens. Josh Parris 23:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Erroneous tagging of articles with radio station calls

In the article Mormon Channel, Wildbot erroneously flagged several links as ambiguous. Those links, early on in the article, are in fact links to articles existing in Wikipedia already about each radio station involved. It is clear from the article that the intent is for these to go to the radio station articles, and all of them do in fact go straight to the radio station articles involved.

The one exception could be KSL-FM, as there are indeed two separate articles one for the AM/FM station and one for the TV station, but the link should go directly to the radio station article as it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.27.224.139 (talk) 02:40, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, I edited that page to disambiguate with Dispenser's tool. It also isn't in WildBot's watchlist. I need to run a check against everything WildBot has ever edited, and its watchlist. Josh Parris 04:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Turns out it was evil pixies; db12 died earlier today, and I suspect that's where a bunch of watchlist entries went, down the db12 gurgler. Josh Parris 10:48, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

At least 77 pages have been edited by WildBot but aren't in its watchlist. I've just run past them again, and they're inserted into the watchlist, so you should now see a resumption of advertised services. Josh Parris 13:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Found an editing error, one radio station link went to the wrong station, the article linked to was another station that at one time ahd the KIRO calls. Also cleared up the KIRO-FM matter further as the AM and FM air separate programming anyway, and also KTAR-FM so those now for sure go to the right place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.27.224.139 (talk) 00:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Principles of interpretation - incorrectly identified broken section link

The bot incorrectly identified Daniel 7#Principles_of_Interpretation as a broken section link. The reason the bot thought the link was broken was because the article has "interpretation" (small first letter), and the section link has "Interpretation" (capital first letter). Article names are case sensitive in this situation, but section names are case insensitive in this situation. Obankston (talk) 08:19, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

You must be using a different browser, because it's totally broken for me. FF3.5.5. I'm picking you're using IE? Josh Parris 10:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I am using IE 7. Since different browsers are different, we can go with the more restrictive condition, which is case sensitive for section names. I fixed the link to the section name in the article. Obankston (talk) 16:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Nagaruban Arumugam

In response to your comments:

"I've looked really hard at merging, but given the "grueling" hours that Nagaruban Arumugam was working before his car crash was 50/week"

Can you clarify the source that says "50 hour a week"?

"... and that the mention in the Australian Parliament was a one-liner in a multi-column question by a backbencher trying to make a point about health funding in his electorate (no parliamentary condolence motion, no further mention by that or any other member since)"

It was definitely not a one liner; the MP gave a brief summary of the life, and his work that lead to the incident.

It is not clear why these unsubstantiated comments were made. But it is very irresponsible for a Wiki administrator to make them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.168.69.130 (talk) 21:26, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/long-hours-claimed-dr-nagaruban-ruban-arumugam-life/story-e6freuzr-1225743703973 says "Junior doctors report working an average 50 or more hours a week." But given earlier in the article it says "his car ran off the road during the five-hour drive back to his wife Akalya." it's more likely the long solo drive than long working hours did him in; presumably it wasn't his daily commute and at the end of a long working day there was a bed for him to go to as an alternative. There's nothing that can be pointed at as a reliable source attributing his death to working hours. If there was I would have moved appropriate material into Medical resident work hours and redirected the article there, per the previous AfD.

As to the parliamentary mention, you're right. The member for Parkes spoke for several minutes on the matter; my recollection of the material was incorrect. Then the member for Port Adelaide expressed, on behalf on the government, condolences to the family of the doctor that the member for Parkes spoke of. On that same day, condolences were expressed in the parliamentary record for 1,053 other people. Josh Parris 02:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello Josh Parris! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 1 of the articles that you created is tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to insure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. if you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 944 article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the article:

1. Graeme John - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 19:33, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to keep working on this. Josh Parris 10:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

G7 taggings

Hi! I think it would be better for WildBot to strike out its suggestions once they've been taken care of, instead of tagging the empty talk page for deletion. This just generates work for admins working on the speedy deletion backlog for no reason. Also, I think it's pretty un-wiki to delete one's talk page comments. Just my two cents. Jafeluv (talk) 10:55, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

There's an adminbot at bot review that will automatically delete the talkpage after it's been blanked ... there will be no additional admin actions required :-) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Yay for automation! Jafeluv (talk) 12:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Please stop the G7 taggings. Consider Talk:Ponderosa Elementary School (Spokane Valley, WA). In this case the bot created, edited, adn requested deeltion of the same page 3 times within 2 hours, leading to multiple manual admin interventions. When and if a bot is approved to handle such deletions, fine (although I will probably oppose approval of any such bot). Besides, in each case where I have found one of the bot's G7 tags, there was a good reason to have a non-empty talk page in any case. And retaining the hsitory of the links changed or removed by the bot has some value, also. DES ^(talk) 03:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I just got his with a race condition whereby someone replaced the CSD tag with actual talk text, but before they did this I was reviewing the old page. So of course I deleted the page with the new text. Could you review the way that the bot tags under G7? It can occasionally cause issues. - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 06:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

As you know, with systems like this, race conditions happen. I don't know of any way to avoid them, but I'm open to all suggestions as to minimizing them. If Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/7SeriesBOT gets up, the window will become pretty small (time between checking for compliance and deletion will be sub-second). Josh Parris 06:49, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

DESiegel, I've disabled the G7 tagging per your request. Josh Parris 06:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

And for clarification, the bot doesn't fix anything itself, it just presents a to-do list for humans, so I don't see it's edits as being of any great value in the historical record (given the todo list is done to the article itself, it's kinda redundant). There was a suggestion at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Unexpected side-effect of not bothering the editors that once WildBot blanked the talkpage (ie, all problems fixed), if g7 applied it ought to tag for g7 to not confuse people with a blank - but not redlinked - talkpage; I thought that was fairly reasonable. Josh Parris 07:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Given that clarification, i agree that retaining the history of the bot's talk page comments is less important. I reviewed Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Unexpected side-effect of not bothering the editors and i would have support "option 1" just let the admins deal with it. I don't think that blank talk pages are such a huge problem, and in most cases soemthign actually belongs there anyway. But if the admin bot for auto-deleting G7s in such cases gets approved, then many of my objections to the tagging go away. While I have objected to that bot, it wouldn't be the eand of the world if it were approved.

Thanks for your work improving Wikipedia. DES ^(talk) 08:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Can you help?

Hi Josh! I came across your username, and I'm hoping you can help give me a little guidance. I'm new to Wikipedia! I'm trying to post a new article, but I do not yet have my 10-edits under my belt. Consequently, it appears that someone (who? I have no idea) needs to authenticate my article before it can get moved to the main wiki space. Can you do this? Can you tell me who can help me out? This is my first attempt to create an article, so any feedback would be appreciated. You can find the article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sherazade96/Impact_of_Lighting_and_Daylight_in_K-12_School_Buildings Thanks for any help you can provide! Finding details on how to move articles while still having newbie status is very difficult. Sherazade96 (talk) 18:48, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Westgate Hall, Canterbury

Your bot found what it thought were ambiguous links to Herne Bay on this page, but Herne Bay Museum, the Herne Bay Gazette and Herne Bay Times are all sources of information about the impending demolition of the Westgate Hall, as Herne Bay Museum and Westgate Hall are to be closed by the same Council in the same budget, and they are part of a joint pressure group. There are no gratuitous, ambiguous or pointless links.--Storye book (talk) 20:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

If you take a look at Herne Bay you;ll find out what an ambiguous link is - it's one to a disambiguation page, a page of terms that could all be called the same thing. There are three Herne Bays in Wikipedia at the moment, I took the liberty of picking the one in Kent - presumably that's the one you meant. Josh Parris 01:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

G7 tagging confusing

WildBot bug?

I just expanded the article on Gbedu. Checking the talk page, I came across this version where WildBot was correctly pointing out that the Yoruba link to a disambiguation page should be fixed. I did that, went back to the talk page and found this version. Strange. Any idea what happened? I checked with the editor who created the page and di the first set of edits, and he doesn't understand it. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:48, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I can see why the big notice with flashing lights can be confusing. I'm getting some fixes in place. Josh Parris 00:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Problematic CSD'ing of talk page

WildBot created a talk page for Sudden acceleration to point out some links to disambiguation pages. When I fixed those ambiguous links, WildBot removed its ambiguous-link warning, but instead of simply blanking or deleting the talk page, it put a CSD notice on the talk page ("the author of the only substantial content has requested deletion in good faith ... by blanking the page").

In addition to creating extra work, this confused me: I thought the CSD referred to the article, not the talk page, and thought I might have accidentally blanked the article.

I suggest two changes:

• When CSD'ing a talk page, modify the notice so it explicitly refers to the talk page: "This _talk_ page was tagged by WildBot..."
• When blanking a talk page that was only ever edited by the bot itself, just delete it rather than suggesting that a human delete it.

Jruderman (talk) 22:27, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Both good suggestions, both difficult. The notice is just a template, so I'd have to create my own custom notice; If I was to do that, I think I'd have a lot less flashing red lights and so forth, little mind a tweak to the notice text. Like you, the bot isn't an admin so isn't able to delete pages. However, I am working on a solution. Josh Parris 00:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

• The mystery is solved! The bot was suggesting the talk page should be deleted, not the article. But that was not obvious at all. Most (all) articles can use a talk page anyway. Why not just add a template that says something like "This is a talk page, where editors can discuss changes to {articlename}. Please sign all comments with ~~~~"? Aymatth2 (talk) 13:33, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

  WildBot could place {{Talk header}} on the page, but that's just as confusing as a blank page, because it tells you that "this is where we talk about the article", and then proceeds not to. Josh Parris 22:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion for obsolete talk pages

I haven't been very active lately on Wikipedia, and haven't really paid attention to what WildBot has been doing, but I happened to stumble across the discussion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/7SeriesBOT and in particular the comment by Bwilkins that "I have to admit it's a little annoying to follow a bluelink to a completely blank page." It struck me that this is, in fact, mainly an interface/expectation issue (people don't expect pages to be blank; when they see one, they assume something is wrong), and that there might be a third way besides having WildBot either blank the page or tag it with {{db-g7}}: have the bot replace its report with a small custom note explaining why the page is there, perhaps something like:

Optionally, the tag (which should probably go in WildBot's userspace, say, at User:WildBot/done) could also categorize the page into a subcategory of CAT:USD, so that admins (or adminbots) could find and delete them if they want without having them clutter up CAT:USD itself. Note that the wording I've suggested above is phrased so as to technically constitute a "deletion request by the sole author of the page" as per WP:CSD#G7. What do you think of such an idea? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I think your idea has legs. I'll wait to see how the 7SeriesBOT BRFA shakes out, and if necessary this may be an appropriate fallback position; for the moment I'm leaving the G7-tagging turned off in WildBot - I don't need any more admins yelling at me. Josh Parris 15:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

False positive (in this case at least)

The bot has left a notice on Petter Pilgaard for the word Stylist. As this dab page disambiguates to two types of stylists and the article's sources don't clarify which of the two is meant, the link should be to the dab page. __meco (talk) 21:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Not quite a false positive, it just means that it's hard to figure out. Whilst the dab page currently lists two equally plausible options, when stylist (rapper) gets added, it will be just that little bit more confusing. It's better to do one of two things: tag [[stylist]]{{dn}} giving stylist, or follow through on the {{dn}} instructions and dig up some secondary sources that clarify if the stylist meant is hair, wardrobe or both, and rewrite to make that clear. Josh Parris 00:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, I should change WildBot to consider tagging with {{dn}} to be disambiguating. Josh Parris 00:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation page cleanup

You commented on my DAB edits. Firstly, it's cute that you monitor DABs because some of them are in crazy shape - important job. I keep both WP:DAB and MOS:DAB open while I work and I have to say that they are ambiguous and contradictory - maybe we could DAB it. Anyhow, can be more specific? I don't know what you're trying to imply. Hutcher (talk) 02:30, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page. Josh Parris 07:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! You're right I didn't realize that wikilinks were not permitted in entry descriptions (it's a wiki article so I thought that was the entire point :S ). So I had links all over the place in the Goliath DAB that you objected to but despite that I think the other work I did made the article more useful. Here's a version in my sandbox User:Hutcher/Goliath is this acceptable? Hutcher (talk) 10:49, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

lex regia

I answered on Jan 27 (see above). Why is the box still there?Aldrasto (talk) 11:33, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Presumably no one has fixed the problems; is that the case? 22:49, 7 February 2010 (UTC) 22:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Elżbieta Sieniawska

Link to Serenissima disambiguation (meaning - the official Latin name of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) was intended. BurgererSF (talk) 13:13, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

And until I just created it, linking to Serenissima (disambiguation) as suggested by Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Fixing a page would have been a redlink. I'll see if I can do something about that. Josh Parris 02:21, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Nomination

I have nominated you for BAG membership at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Josh Parris. Please review the nomination and if you accept, transclude to WT:BAG and notify the appropriate pages listed in policy. Good luck. MBisanz ^talk 18:07, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the support, if successful I hope my tenure is productive and positive. Josh Parris 04:19, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Wildbot messages improvements

One thing about Wildbot that drives me nuts is the length of the messages used and the ammount of real estate used on talk page (see WP:TPL). For example, on Pit (nuclear weapon), there is:

To me, this could greatly be improved, to something like

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:23, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

On first blush, I'd agree with you, and I've had plans to collapse the various errors into a single template call.

But once you brought it up, I've had to think about it, and it occurred to me the best way of minimizing the screen real estate consumed by the boxes is by fixing the problems listed. WildBot will immediately remove the boxes when the problems are fixed, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to fix them either (pun not intended, in fact it's more a nuclear scientist-type pun). If the boxes are annoying, all the better - there's motivation to fix them. If the message just blurs into the background, nothing will be done about the problems identified and the problems may as well be listed on some kind of "list of pages with problems" page that no one will read - and I particularly want the authors of the page to realise when there's a problem, as it's handy training for them ("here's stuff that can go wrong") plus they have the more expertise in the subject matter than a repair specialist will. Josh Parris 23:28, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

And by keeping these boxes so damned ugly, it's a good way to get the bot blocked. And I'll be the first in line to support that block. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow, harsh dude. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 23:55, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Information that is not well-presented is information that gets ignored as spam. People will get accustomed to the ugly banners, and will ignore them once they realize that it takes way too much effort to find what's relevant in them. The mentality "let's be sloppy to piss people off" is repulsive on so many levels.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:58, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Probably much harsher than how I wanted to come across (hit enter too fast for one). For what it's worth, I'm much more interested in making this bot rock, than having it suck. (Hence why I'm here in the first place). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I was a little startled too, knowing you as I do. I separated out the timeline - editing of comments in place caused me no-end of confusion and delay. Yes, we all want the bot to be better; and I think we ought to revert to science rather than savagery to determine the answer. There's no reason we can't trial what you're suggesting, gather statistics and determine the way forward. First, let's decide what "better" is - for me it's been about getting the problems fixed quickly, whilst minimizing the amount of shouting I receive. So I'd measure that as turn-around time from notice placement to problem-fixed, and problem-fixed rate.

For the next two days I'll be pretty busy IRL, but I can get back to addressing this after that. Headbomb, if you'd like to refine your presentation ideas, that'd be great; at the moment your suggestions don't offer enough hand-holding for the newbies to fix their problems. I'll think about the necessary code changes to support multiple errors within a single template.

When I'm more available, we'll run a 2-4K edit trial (a couple of days, maybe more) and measure the results against the success criteria. Headbomb: nominate success criteria - naturally, it needs to be quantifiable. Josh Parris 00:25, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Dunno what exactly you mean by "not enough hand-holding for newbies". The "help" links are rather prominent...? As for the template, it's a rather trivial thing to code if I can get a list of type of problems that WildBot picks up. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Try to remember 47000 edits ago, your first edit. The terror that anything you do could break the Wikipedia. Stumbling across the talk page would be a bit of an effort. The show/hide links might not make sense. Who's this dab person? Why are these things problems? How do I fix them, why would I care? The stuff that folks who have been round the block a few times just don't even think about any more because it's second nature. Josh Parris 05:26, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I also remember being able to read and click on links. If something is clickable and reads [show/hide], then a sane person would assume that clicking that will show/hide something. If I did not know what section links (or disambiguation pages) were, I would have clicked on "help" because that seems like the place to go when you don't know something. We can always add messages in the hidden sections for more instructions, but I would keep the collapsed appearance more or less the same as above. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 18:18, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the boxes should be combined, they are separate issues after all. Both designs have the same flaw that they don't tell users the important information first. Here's my attempt at correcting interface problems:

Wikipedians don't understand what an ambiguous link is (they do know what disambiguation link is), so I've removed it. "Disambiguation" should be probably be linked, but I'm afraid of over linking. The "Updated by ... on ..." implies that the bot keeps it up to date. — Dispenser 20:47, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

If all's going well, the bot does keep the boxes up to date, but at the moment it's lagging by about thirteen hours. I'm scrambling to get something scraped together to improve this. Josh Parris 23:42, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Match Sacia

Bot left a note on the talk page of a deleted page. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 18:57, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, WildBot is running 13 hours behind at the moment and things are only slowly getting any better. Even with that, I'm kinda surprised at that; what was the time difference between the 05:56, 13 February 2010 delete of Match Sacia and the bot's edit of Talk:Match Sacia (as a non-admin, I can't grab this info)? If it was more than, say a few minutes, I've got a problem that needs fixing. Josh Parris 23:34, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Benjamin Ingham article

Thanks for bringing a couple of items in this article to my attention for editing.

This article uses the term Moravians several times throughout. I have correctly linked only the first use of this term in the article,Moravians. All other uses of this term are unlinked.

As it turned out, I did have a link that needed to be adjusted, just not the one identified.CUoD (talk) 19:45, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I Made It

I Made It (Cash Money Heroes) ambiguous links have been fixed remove your notice on the Talk page of the article.

Yes, but you only fixed the first of several references, so the ambiguous links remained. Josh Parris 23:29, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Hetoimasia

Please stop your annoying bot doing this - the link is fine. Johnbod (talk) 22:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

That's the problem with trying to make an efficient program, some things fall through the gaps - in this case, what are disambiguation pages has been cached saving a half-hour load of all list of all of them. On the downside, that means the cache can become stale, as it did in this case. I'm working on keeping the cache up-to-date. In the meantime, I've refreshed the cache. So it should stop annoying you. Josh Parris 03:08, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Johnbod (talk) 03:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Bot

Hey, love your new bot! (assuming it is new - I've never seen it working before). It found nine dabs that I missed in a bunch of new articles I wrote yesterday. Without it, they would probably have sat there for months, maybe years, without ever being fixed. My only criticism is - why didn't someone think of this before? :) Gatoclass (talk) 00:55, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Based on my experience, it's a lot of hard work getting a highly active bot through the approval process and then keeping it alive during its early life. I'm still shaking bugs out of it, and it's been running almost a month now. Perhaps that's why good ideas are tough to turn into reality. If you have a good idea, drop over to WP:BOTREQ and tell us about it. Josh Parris 03:11, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Patrick Bitature

Hello, Please manually look at the article Patrick Bitature again. The disambiguation issues with ICSA, Casinos and MTN have been resolved (or so I thought), but the Bot has not picked that up yet. Thanks.Fsmatovu (talk) 01:54, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

The bot's been having a little trouble over the last few days. It's currently running through all it's history and should be up to date within the day. Josh Parris 02:15, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Vladimir Horowitz discography

Hi, your bot has left a message here and I'm not sure how to correct it. Is this a malfunction as the links seem to work fine. Etincelles ^(talk) 12:56, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm guessing you're using Internet Explorer. Nocturnes Op. 27 (Chopin)#Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2 is the correct link - you've used a lowercase m for major in your article. Most other browsers will get to the correct page, but not leap to the Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2 section. Josh Parris 13:08, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Etincelles ^(talk) 13:19, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I have tried to fix the links but the message wont go. Etincelles ^(talk) 15:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Nocturnes Op. 27 (Chopin)#Nocturne_in_C-sharp_Minor,_Op._27,_No._1 was linked to twice; you got the first one, but not the second. I should count them on the list, shouldn't I? Josh Parris 15:55, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that would be helpful, but thanks for your help anyway. Etincelles ^(talk) 16:26, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to the Bot Approvals Group

Just wanted to let you know that, consensus having been reached, you are now a member of the Bot Approvals Group. Congrats! -- Pakaran 21:20, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Any update on Wildbot 5 (books)?

You said you wanted to run the rest of the trial yesterday...? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 03:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I got distracted by something shinny. Done now. Fixes to follow. Josh Parris 09:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

CSD's by WildBot

Hey Josh...I'm going through a lot of user-requested CSD's from WildBot. Personally, I like to keep the talkpage history of what the bot did to correct the article. I've been individually either declining the CSD, or going off to find a project that the article could be a part of. Either way, it seems like a lot of work for CSD when the history is actually beneficial to the article. Maybe it's just my opinion ... what do you think? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:17, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The bot doesn't fix anything itself, it just presents a to-do list for humans, so I don't see it's edits as being of any great value in the historical record (given the todo list is done to the article itself, it's kinda redundant). There was a suggestion at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Unexpected side-effect of not bothering the editors that once WildBot blanked the talkpage (ie, all problems fixed), if g7 applied it ought to tag for g7 to not confuse people with a blank - but not redlinked - talkpage; I thought that was fairly reasonable. I've lobbied for a g7 bot at Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_33#db-author bot but was knocked back - I encourage you, as an affected admin, to re-request at Wikipedia:Bot_requests (it would require an admin to operate; I could provide a fully coded bot in a matter of an hour). I did a trial g7 earlier today and the turn-around time was 90 minutes. My g7 bot could drop that to 15 seconds. Josh Parris 13:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

What framework does the G7 bot run on? I could run it. –xeno^talk 20:00, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I am of course tempted - never run a bot before. Send me some details as to what I need to do, I'll look at it! (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 22:01, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You'd need a 24/7 computer system to run it from; typically that means toolserver. You'd also need to put your hand up at the WP:BRfA for running it.Josh Parris 23:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd knock it up in pywikipedia; any system with a Python interpreter installed could run it. Like I said to BWilkins, it would need a 24/7 home. Josh Parris 23:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm drafting up the Bot request here (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Drafted and transcluded :-) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I have installed Python ... and pulled down Pywikipedia with SVN. I just have to try and get'er going! (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 09:47, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

It hacked up a lung on a couple of malformed templates - see the log. It actually ended the bot. I dealt with the pages manually under my own account, and have re-started it. It hasn't done anything since. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks like returning to G7-tagging by WildBot might just be a good idea ... I see some code change recommendations on the BRFA page (capitalization of tagging, etc) ... some of them I can probably add myself. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 17:03, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

New lung hacked up this morning .. details on User talk:Bwilkins 7SeriesBOT (talk) 11:06, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

New hiccup...

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C:\pywiki\g7bot.py", line 195, in <module>

bot.run()

File "C:\pywiki\g7bot.py", line 152, in run

self.log(page, u"isn't a Talk page")

File "C:\pywiki\g7bot.py", line 136, in log

print u"%s %s" % (page.title(), text)

File "C:\PYTHON26\LIB\encodings\cp437.py", line 12, in encode

return codecs.charmap_encode(input,errors,encoding_map)

UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters in position 0-5: character maps to <undefined>

7SeriesBOT (talk) 00:35, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

New one today: Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C:\pywiki\g7bot.py", line 196, in <module>

bot.run()

File "C:\pywiki\g7bot.py", line 151, in run

for page in self.pages_in_category(db_g7_category):

File "C:\pywiki\g7bot.py", line 85, in pages_in_categor

result = wikipedia.query.GetData(params, self.site)

File "C:\pywiki\query.py", line 127, in GetData

jsontext = site.getUrl( path, retry=True, sysop=sysop

File "C:\pywiki\wikipedia.py", line 5959, in getUrl

f = MyURLopener.open(request)

File "C:\PYTHON26\LIB\urllib2.py", line 395, in open

response = meth(req, response)

File "C:\PYTHON26\LIB\urllib2.py", line 508, in http_re

'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)

File "C:\PYTHON26\LIB\urllib2.py", line 433, in error

return self._call_chain(*args)

File "C:\PYTHON26\LIB\urllib2.py", line 367, in _call_c

result = func(*args)

File "C:\PYTHON26\LIB\urllib2.py", line 516, in http_er

raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, hdrs,

urllib2.HTTPError: HTTP Error 500: Internal Server Error 7SeriesBOT (talk) 12:13, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I've been getting them myself, and I'm not quite sure what to do about it. I was under the impression that the pywikipedia library handled all that crap for me, and until recently it has. That one I'll mull over and get back to you when I'm happy with the answer. Josh Parris 12:49, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Now I can see it processing articles, but it hasn't touched the log in a couple of days ... 7SeriesBOT (talk) 20:27, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Swearword! I commented out line 147 for local testing. I guess I checked that in. Please, with the un-commenting. Josh Parris 23:04, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Here's a funny one: one author created the talkpage, then blanked it: someone else tagged it, and of course because of "multiple editors", bot could not delete it ... (from Talk:ENI_award)

   * (diff) 10:39, 20 February 2010 . . Zhang He (talk | contribs | block) (9 bytes) (Tagging page for speedy deletion, blanked or requested by creator (HG))
   * (diff) 10:27, 20 February 2010 . . Mohandas110 (talk | contribs | block) (empty) (←Blanked the page)
   * (diff) 02:17, 14 October 2009 . . Mohandas110 (talk | contribs | block) (198 bytes) (←Created page with 'I have tried to add some references, external links and bibliography to add authenticity of this article and request you to keep this article in wikipedia, as I sha...')

This is more of a "policy/task" issue more than technical, but should likely be brought up. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 15:46, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that should probably be left for the human admin review. –xeno^talk 15:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps. I certainly don't intend to propose an extension of 7SeriesBOT in this task, but it might be something filed away for later; if the last action of the only contributor was to blank the page and there's only been one subsequent edit tagging it, that might fly. But page blanking is an implicit request for deletion, not explicit, so it may be best if human judgment is deferred to. Having said that, we're not seeing all that many talk-page delete requests anyway, so the effort expended to develop that functionality might not be worth it. Josh Parris 15:55, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Hey Josh, let us have a few more seconds before you start WildBotting all over the place. I think I started the Shelagh Donohoe about 30seconds before you chimed in. -Thanks. Jim. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjozoko (talk • contribs) 16:43, 24 February 2010 (UTC)