User talk:CBM/Archive 17

Article Tahash Timeline

Please look at the article Tahash, and on the Discussion Page: "Consensus on Timeline" give your opinion about the Timeline. Thank you. --Michael Paul Heart (talk) 12:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Does noncomputable imply PSPACE-hard?

this is not obvious to me. --Trovatore (talk) 23:26, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Say A is a set in PSPACE; in particular A is computable by some index e. Then given a string s, we just need to determine whether program e will halt on input s and return 1. There is an index for a program i that halts if and only if this happens, and moreover an appropriate i can be uniformly computed from s such that its length can be bounded by a polynomial of the length of s as long as we have a reasonable Goedel numbering (this is a polynomial-time version of the s-m-n theorem). So there is a polynomial-time many-one reduction of A to the halting problem. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:19, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, that I believe. But I don't see why just any noncomputable set should be PSPACE-hard, as you seemed to suggest in your edit summary. --Trovatore (talk) 02:24, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

That edit summary not really accurate. I doubt that every noncomputable set is PSPACE hard; I think it should be just an exercise using a Kleene-Post type argument modified to use polynomially clocked Turing machines. But I don't work with complexity theory much so I would have to check the details to be sure. In any case it seems like it should be false. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:34, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the answer is "unknown" since P ≠ PSPACE is an open conjecture (that everyone believes is true). If P=PSPACE then obviously every PSPACE problem is already in P without even needing the undecidable set. But intuitively, if every noncomputable set is PSPACE-hard, I think that means P^A ≥ PSPACE for a random oracle A, and that inequality looks obviously false, since it would give an immediate distinguisher between a cryptographic hash function and a random oracle, which "shouldn't happen" assuming P ≠ NP or some some slightly stronger version[1] of P ≠ NP. I could also be plain confused about the whole thing. 71.141.88.54 (talk) 00:15, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Possible PR fix?

Hi Carl, I have noticed that occasionally there are PRs which have no PR template on the article talk page. This happened recently on a PR Finetooth opened and when I asked him about it, this is what he said.

It's possible to install (but not save) the PR template on an article talk page, to view it in preview mode, and to click through and fill in the rest of the form without remembering to save on the article talk page. I think that's what I must have done, and I think that's the process that accounts for similar glitches that we see from time-to-time at PR. This is a form of operator error rather than a flaw in the template design, but maybe a guru could make a doofus-proof template that would not work unless saved first.

Does this seem like anything that could be done for {{PR}}? I have also posted this on Geometry guy's page. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I have one idea, but I need to test it some more. It's not straightforward to detect whether the page is in preview mode or is being viewed in regular mode, but maybe we can find a way to do it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

It is not a huge problem - happens a few times a month, so please do not spend a lot of time on it, just an idea. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:05, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Citing reprints to original publication date

I was looking around the citation templates for guidance on how to cite the original publication date of a reprint, when you are using the reprint, and I came across a comment you made in the big RFC on citation styles at some point in 2010 about how it is important to make the reader aware when citing a modern reprint of an old work. Would you have time to look at the approach I took here? If you click around there, it should be clear what I did (I bundled two cites together, one of which was a reprint of the other, and cited to both, but gave page numbers for the one that was actually consulted). Possibly the more correct way is to cite "Bethe 1997 (reprint of Bethe 1968), page XX". But I couldn't work out how to insert a parenthetical comment between the author name and the page number. Carcharoth (talk) 05:27, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that looks like a nice solution. The harvnb template doesn't have any way to directly handle these, but your code works and is clear about what's going on.

Many times, book reprints have exactly the same pagination as the original publication, because they are essentially just photo-reproduced rather than being re-typeset. That makes the problem easier. For reprinted journal articles, though, the pagination usually does change, and your solution seems like a clever way to deal with that. The short footnotes, instead of inline Harvard refs, are what make it work. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:43, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Assume good faith no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Assume good faith (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Link Fa stands for "featured article"

Just to inform you that "Link Fa" stands for "featured article". This means that it's a link to another wikipedia (interwiki) which is a featured article. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:10, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

If you insist on moving those to the bottom, you could have done it without re-doing the other changes, which were superfluous. I'll get back to the article eventually (it's on my watchlist anyway). — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:40, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not omniscient has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not omniscient (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not omniscient has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not omniscient (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Pokémon

The bot has been changing "Pokémon" to "Pokémon". This breaks the links to relevant categories, and is incorrect. This has only happened twice, but I would like to prevent it from happening in the future. Thanks, _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 01:49, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd also like to stop it. Unfortunately, it seems to be something changing on the toolserver; the bot code has not been changed at all recently, so there is no reason the behavior should change. I can't manage to figure out what causes it, but I keep trying. The problem is that seems to fix itself, so I can't seem to replicate the next day to figure out what's wrong. I made a change in the bot code just now, and the upload was correct. I will watchlist the page and keep an eye on it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:57, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I think it's taking an already-encoded utf8 string and re-encoding it for some reason. The unicode to byte conversion at the output side is probably the first place to check. I've seen stuff like this happen in Python (I don't know much Perl) from bogus automatic conversions of ascii to unicode on (say) concatenating an ascii and a unicode string, sort of like floating-point contagion in mixed-mode arithmetic. The problems are intermittent because the conversions only happen with certain combinations of input data. 71.141.88.54 (talk) 03:12, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the problem is double-encoded data. But when the bot code is working for a particular page, and doesn't change, the problem has to be coming from elsewhere. The trouble is too many layers that all try to correct for character sets; if they all just left everything as bytes it would be fine. So I have to either decode the final stuff, or not, depending on how it is by the time it gets to my scripts. The question that I can't answer is what layer below my code is changing. The strange thing is that if I just delete the cached version of the table that my bot created (cached on the toolserver) and have the same code recreate it, the recreated version doesn't have the problem. But the code is the same, so something else is causing it. I will figure it out eventually, but it's got me so far. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:30, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Are any other accented article name affected? Are you getting the titles from the MW API or from SQL or what? Did the problem just appear in the past couple weeks? I've seen some other weird errors since the recent MediaWiki upgrade including problems with piped links, and with edit buttons disappearing. Maybe it's worth asking on the dev irc channel or surfing bugzilla to see if anyone knows anything. 71.141.88.54 (talk) 05:07, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

When the problem happens, it affects all names that have multibyte utf8 characters in them. The problem first happened in January, to my memory, and then went away (or I fixed it). There are a few posts in my talk page archives about it, mostly for the Bjork project. The names are coming from a mysql database on the toolserver. The strange thing is that when I run the same code later, the tables seem to be fixed. That makes debugging the problem difficulty. If it would stay broken, at least I could work on locating the source of the problem. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:44, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm imagining a Perl DBI script talking to mysql, maybe through some bot framework. Are there really that many layers where encoding can happen? Maybe some connection pool where you randomly get connections in a dirty state? One idea is to use the mysql proxy to see if the double encoding is actually coming back in the result sets. I did look in bugzilla and saw various unicode issues but nothing convincingly resembling this. I don't mean to be bugging you about this, I'm just trying to help, but if you don't think it's likely to be useful it's ok to say so. 71.141.88.54 (talk) 13:45, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

There are three places where errors could happen.

1. First the script gets data from the toolserver's replicas of the enwiki databases.
2. Then it writes that data to its own mysql database.
3. Finally it reads from its own database, creates a wiki page, and uses a bot framework to copy this to the wiki.

All three of those can muck with the encoding. Like Python, PERL has both Unicode strings and encoded byte strings. However they are not strongly typed, and so you have to "just know" what format each string will be in. The trouble is that once everything is working, I would expect it to keep working, rather than changing from time to time. But since the errors are transient, I haven't managed to locate them yet. If I ever manage to work on the bot while the errors are happening, that will make it easier to find them, but it takes luck to be online right when the problems happen. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:42, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Using your own rational used a number of other times if you cannot fix the bot to do the job properly without these mistakes then the bot needs to stop until you do. Users have contested these mistakes and they are causing problems so by not fixing them when editors have notified you of them constitutes a breach of the bot policy. Its innapprpriate to tell other editors what they do breeches a bot policy and then when its your bot to ignore the rules that you so strongly push to others. --71.163.243.16 (talk) 23:26, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

It's still occasionally doing this to User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Björk but instead of changing it to "Björk" it's started changing it to "Bj�rk".[2] –anemoneprojectors– 10:35, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I have it on my watchlist, so I can check it every day. I've added some debugging code, and I'll figure out eventually what's up with it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:51, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

These problems would be easier to deal with BTW if the WikiProject Banners were standardized. --Kumioko (talk) 12:19, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

No, that is utterly and completely irrelevant to this problem. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:30, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok if you think so it must be true. --Kumioko (talk) 16:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

You could convince yourself by trying to think of a way that anything in this situation would change if the wikiproject template was renamed. There's an old adage about being silent so as not to demonstrate that you don't know what you're talking about. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:49, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Or it could be that I do understand how it works well enough to see through the snow your trying to shovel. But it doesn't matter because I don't have any accesses and I hardly edit these days so in the end you won. Since you do very few edits as opposed to the thousands I did the project lost but who really cares right cause you can program and have a couple bots. I still think its rather ironic that you have problems with your bot as shown above and take a casual attitude about the problems but if this was someone elses bot you would have demanded that the problems be fixed before the bot resumed. That has been my biggest problem with your actions all along. When it pertains to your actions your never wrong but when someone else does something that you don't agree with then there is no consensus and or they are violating a policy. --Kumioko (talk) 16:56, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

How, exactly, would changing the names of wikiproject banners affect the problem at hand? I'm interested to hear it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:11, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It wouldn't. It's clearly to do with accented letters. –anemoneprojectors– 20:40, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The tables copied correctly today but I am still watching them closely. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:18, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the majority of the time it's done correctly, it's just every now and then. –anemoneprojectors– 14:46, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Project summary table

How do projects get added to the enwp10 tools? We have Smithsonian Institution-related articles included, but for that project, we have a sub-taskforce for the Archives of American Art. We are beginning to populate Category:Archives of American Art task force articles with specific params in {{WikiProject Smithsonian Institution-related}} and would like a project summary table for the task force, if possible. Cheers. --Aude (talk) 03:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

You just need to add the appropriate categories to Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments after you set up the talk page template and the assessment categories. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:25, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

All the categories were stup in January and the table was being created by the bot. I found it in the list of projects and added it to the Archives of American Art project page. Not sure where you want it though so you might want to move it but its there. --Kumioko (talk) 13:15, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

CBM & Kumioko -- thank you so much! Good to know how simple it is to setup the assessments and it's done for the task force. :) The people we're working with at the Smithsonian will be happy to see the assessment table there, and can help in deciding priority articles to work on. Cheers. --Aude (talk) 02:16, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, CBM. You have new messages at Avicennasis's talk page.
Message added 17:07, 17 March 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Single Ladies PR

Why did you close the PR of "Single Ladies"? Jivesh • Talk2Me 11:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

According to the log at User:PeerReviewBot/Logs/Archive, the page had no comments in the last 14 days, which is one of the criteria the bot uses to close peer reviews. It's an automated process. I don't know why nobody commented on the review. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay. Thank you for your explanation. hope you did not get me wrong. I was not aware of this. Thank you once again, Carl. Jivesh • Talk2Me 13:16, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Bots exclusion

Hi.

I know you've discussed the limitations of {{bots}} previously. Just curious if you had any better solutions that could be implemented relatively easily (related to this discussion).

I thought of a system with subpages and a list of user talk pages. Something like Wikipedia:Bot opt-out where a subpage would be site-wide (Wikipedia:Bot opt-out/Site-wide) and it could transclude other subpages such as Wikipedia:Bot opt-out/EdwardsBot. Then every bot could check one or both pages' page links for the User talk namespace.

Does that sound mildly reasonable? Is there a better solution that can be implemented without MediaWiki changes?

Hope you're well. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:20, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

That method seems like it would be feasible. A bot would only need to fetch the links from one or two pages, which can be done efficiently with the API, and then keep a list in memory of pages not to edit. It also avoid the parsing problem, since there is already an API query for pagelinks. A similar thing could be done with categories. The main difference is that it is obvious when a user page is in a category and less obvious when it is just linked to.

In case anyone else reads this, the main problem with the "bots" template is that it is inefficient for certain types of tasks. If the bot will load the page text before editing a page, then it's OK. But if the bot simply adds a new section to the page, using the "new section" option to the edit command, then the bot never sees the page's text, so it would have to load that separately, which is inefficient. Using the "new section" method is best practice because it avoids edit conflicts. There are some other technical problems with the template (user names with commas ...) — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:50, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Right. There are advantages and disadvantages to any implementation. An indexed list of bot names is easy enough to look up. Personally, I don't like it when we try to force people to categorize themselves (for social and aesthetic reasons); bots are a bit of a different case I suppose, though.

Even if the bot is already pulling the page text of the page, it needs a parser to deal with the content of the template. The template has both positive and negative values (allow and deny) and it supports a mix of input options (bot names, keywords, magic words). I don't think most (or probably any) of the code on that page would actually catch everything that the template (documentation) claims to be capable of.

Thanks for the quick reply. Maybe now I can muster up the energy to write such an opt-out system. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:57, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Right, the example code is very simplistic and will break for nontrivial uses. Even just splitting the template onto multiple lines would break some of it. But if we could use pagelinks then the parsing problem will go away. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Invitation

Perhaps you are interested in leaving a comment at the proposed guideline for Wikipedia:Further reading sections. Tijfo098 (talk) 19:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Bot/AWB improvents

Hi Carl. We recently did some fixes in AWB's code to save runs and reduce the problem of the second runs which do nothing. Check for example Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs/Archive_19#Infobox_fixes_needs_improment_to_save_runs, Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs/Archive_19#Ref_fix_and_spacing and Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs/Archive_19#Duplicated_Persondata_has_funny_results_II. We 'll probably make a new release soon.

Rjwilmsi will help me to wrote a much better code for my bot in order to ensure the bot actually fixes the problem is supposed to. (Yes! The thing you 've been asking for a long time!) Please be a bit patient. I am busy in real life lately but I am working on the project too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:01, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Could you semi-protect a user page?

The one of User:Point-set topologist, specifically. Apparently he's not around WP anymore and an IP is vandalizing it with BLP-type issues every now and then; it seems to get missed. Tijfo098 (talk) 11:17, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I did it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:30, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Arbcom decision on MHP: OR vs exposition in mathematics

Hi Carl,

After I left this note (and more) on David Eppstein's talk page,

The arbitration of the Monty Hall problem is nearing its decision phase.

Two proposals for the arbitration committee's decision concern Wikipedia policy on mathematical articles, especially original research versus secondary sources.

Kiefer, you should ask User:CBM and User:Hans Adler to comment. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 10:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I was reminded that I should alert you. Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 12:33, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot

Hi Carl, I've got my account access in order. Can you point me towards the WP 1.0 project? Is there anything in particular that you'd like to see fixed/changed right away?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 16:45, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Does it work for you to type 'become enwp10' at the command prompt when logged in to the toolserver? If not, I will need to file a request for that. If it does work, then you have access to the bot code by just doing that. It will automatically cd to the project's directory and do a su to the project's username, 'enwp10'.

I do have things that can be done, but you should feel free to do as much or little as you are comfortable with. I don't want to overwhelm you with lots of requests. Just having another person with access to the code is a help, in case something needs to be fixed and I am unavailable. I'm sure you also have things to do with migrating your own bot to the toolserver.

One thing that I have been meaning to work on is getting the "search by category" feature working better. One difficulty with it right now is that I made a bad decision when I wrote the code, so the schema for the WP 1.0 bot database doesn't match the schema for the enwiki database, which makes it very slow to do joins between the two databases. I was planning to work on that schema change this weekend.

There is also a list of bugs at [3]. I have been using that to keep track of feature requests or other improvements that could be made. You could look through the list of open bugs to see if any of them catch your eye. I have given you access to close bugs on that list if you want to, not that you need to actually do it. I also need to give you svn permission; I filed a request here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:36, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

"become enwp10" works, but there's a password required. My email through my account here works, or you could email me on the toolserver.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:30, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

If it asks for a password, that means it isn't working right. I'll file a bug in JIRA. [4] — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:37, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

kk, thanks!
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:43, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Works now!
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:50, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Duplicate ref bot

I have made some alternate proposals for the bot that would fix duplicate references. Since you initially opposed that proposal, I'd appreciate if you could take a look and comment on the alternate proposals at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Alternate_proposals. Thanks. —SW— ^prattle 14:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

FYI

By the way, I know that this isn't really your fault: the (over or mis)use of the word "Quixotic" seems to have become something of a meme here on the English Wikipedia. I'd just like to point out Quixotic, for your consideration. It may not be as politically correct, but using "strange" or "odd" is a much better choice, most of the time. Just sayin'. Regards,
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:00, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

What I meant by the word was "trying to achieve something impossible for idealistic reasons, resulting in a lot of wasted effort". Isn't that what other people mean by the word? — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:01, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Now I can't even find where I used it to see what I wrote, but I know that was my motivation. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

VPPR, within Snottywog's bot proposal discussion.

And yea, I understand what the intended use is. It's not as though everyone is using "Quixotic" in a completely inappropriate way, it's just... Well, here's your sentence, just to provide some framing for the discussion: "...arguments that one style is better than another tend to be Qixotic." It's not as though "Quixotic" doesn't fit at all, but it's certainly forced there, is my point. Again, I can see that the primary motivation for it's use here is due to the (likely sub-conscious) use of en.wikipedia's little meme in using the word, but that in itself may be a reason to consciously choose to use different terminology, you know?

Regardless, it's not that big of a deal. This is more of a passing comment on my part, rather then any sort of complaint (I'm fairly well versed in using text, so I realize that writing a note about something like this can cause it to appear as though I think that there's some serious issue, but I assure you that it's just a small thing.)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:33, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

btw: this is what happens when I start thinking about coding (my bot, not enwp10... still waiting for... nevermind, I see DaB has fixed TS-979!). I start talking about a bunch of inane stuff, just because... sorry. :)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:48, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

That's great. I'm going to be online for an hour or so; if you run into questions or problems, feel free to ask here. I'll also be idling in #wikipedia-1.0 on the freenode.net IRC server, in case that's more convenient for you. My name there is carl-m. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:11, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

PERtable and SPERtable links

I know this is totally niggling, but can you replace the redirects at tops of these tables (i.e. [[WP:PER]] and [[WP:SPER]]) with the full links to the categories (i.e. [[:Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests]] and [[:Category:Wikipedia semi-protected edit requests]])? I'm embarrassed to even bring up this tiny WP:OVERLINK issue, but if it's not too much of a hassle for you, it would be nice if those links didn't show up on the category pages themselves. Don't worry, it's no problem if you don't want to! Cheers, — Bility (talk) 23:30, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I think I see: the problem is the blue link that happens when the table is transcluded directly onto the category page? — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:54, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's it, it's nothing important. — Bility (talk) 00:09, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I changed it on the 24th, but I forgot to leave a note here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

No problem, I had noticed it. Thank you very much! — Bility (talk) 15:34, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fait accompli has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Fait accompli (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Principle of bivalence

I've cleaned up that article so it makes some sense. You may want to make the math statements more accurate. Thanks, Tijfo098 (talk) 04:09, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank for making the lead more accessible. If it's not too much to ask, could you reply to my technical question there? I'm sure you know the answer. Tijfo098 (talk) 12:39, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. That was illuminating. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:55, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, as a continuation to that, User:Hugo Herbelin had some sort of epiphany and added the stuff about Boolean-valued models to the lead of classical logic, where it seems to be a little too technical. I think he also overstated it, because the Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra construction is only valid for propositional calculus. I'm vaguely aware of cylindric algebras (and polyadic algebras) and their correspondence to FOL, but not enough to fix the article myself. Tijfo098 (talk) 13:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, perhaps you can weigh in on whether the discussion about the extensionality of classical logic is wp:undue or not at principle of bivalence. Hugo recently removed that. Tijfo098 (talk) 13:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I left a comment a little while ago. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:39, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok, weyou've made some progress. I would suggest however that you work on algebraic semantics ahead of Boolean-valued semantics because it uses the same vague "characterized by", and it's less clear what it means in the general case (is there one?). Is the L-T algebra generalizable in some way beyond propositional calculus? Tijfo098 (talk) 15:10, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

United States portal articles needing to be tagged as WPUS

Greetings Carl. Per the discussion on my talk page here is the first list of articles that needs the WPUS banner. The attached link contains a list of 517 articles under Portal:United States needing to be tagged.

The banner should look like {{WikiProject United States|class=portal|importance=NA}}.

Please let me know if you have any questions and thanks again for the help. --Kumioko (talk) 17:27, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I am not going to tag any articles for the WPUS project. You're free, of course, to put in a bot request, or ask someone else to do it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:38, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Pretty much what I though. Making work for others because they are unwilling or incapable of doing it themselves and won't grant the ability to others that will. What a shame. --Kumioko (talk) 17:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I take it you're part of the entitled generation [5]. CBM doesn't have to do anything for you or anyone else here. In fact, he could choose not make a single edit starting right now. That would be a loss to Wikipedia. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:55, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Replied to comment on user talk page. Doesn't know the whole story. --Kumioko (talk) 13:57, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

What is the best practice for presenting inlined mathematical proofs ?

In reference to [6], I think I had already seen folded proofs on some math articles (but I don't remember where). I didn't not know about a principle against hiding. I think the problem remains of how to present the article so that the reader can smoothly read the article without being hampered by the lengthy proof (which is useful to understand better the result, but useless to understand the article). So maybe, using indentation, or a different background can help to know exactly where the proof starts and ends. Do you have any recommendation? --Hugo Herbelin (talk) 12:40, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

There may be some articles that have folded proofs - there are a lot of articles after all - but the general practice has been not to have "hidden" content in articles. It has historically had accessibility problems, and it raises the question of why the material is included only to be hidden. I don't know of any templates to put in a colored background; the main way I would divide the article is by moving the proof to a subsection of its own, so the reader could just skip to the next section header.

There has also been a lot of discussion about proofs in general at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Proofs and its archives. There's no hard and fast rule, but we seem to think that some proofs are OK, but not everything should be proved.

For the completeness theorem proof, the question in my mind was whether we needed to include it at all. I think we could give references to a few books that prove it, and maybe summarize the general steps, and that would be perfectly nice for our article. The fact that you're thinking about hiding it suggests that the reader could just skip it and still get a good experience from the article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:48, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I will re-add a subsection and postpone the problem. Maybe using a footnote (as discussed in Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Proofs, or linking to a subpage of the page, might be good, but I prefer not to take the responsibility of it unless a general rule is found. Thanks for your detailed answer. --Hugo Herbelin (talk) 12:59, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

To my thinking, this proof is the main reason for having the article. And notice that that there is nothing in the article after the proof; so removing it does not make reading the article 'smoother'. JRSpriggs (talk) 08:34, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide/Naming (British military aircraft) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide/Naming (British military aircraft) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

making sense

Hi Carl, Thanks for your comments at WPM. One of the themes there was treatment of infinitesimals at .9... Currently they seem to be summarily dismissed as a student misconception, right next to thinking that each number should have a unique decimal. Should this be amplified somehow? Tkuvho (talk) 18:26, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I have my own way that I would explain the situation to a student, but I don't know that it's easy to source, and that sort of "opinion" is always likely to be challenged by someone.

In the actual 0.999... article, do you feel that infinitesimals are treated badly? I think they should be treated well, and I looked at the article briefly yesterday to make sure that there wasn't too much anti-infinitesimal bias in the article itself. The final paragraph of the lede could use some improvement, I think, but the section titled "infinitesials" looks OK. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:24, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I take it as a compliment as I wrote a large part of that section. Maybe we can think of a creative way of improving on the lede. My basic problem is with the assumption that student ideas about .999... show a "misconception about the real numbers". What does this phrase mean exactly? To the extent that a student cannot have a misconception about something he has not been taught, this phrase reveals a foundationalist attitude on the part of the speaker, to the effect that the "real" numbers are the foundation of "reality" itself. Since reality is just there, even before we teach it to the student, it makes sense to say that the student has a misconception about it. If we reject the foundationalist stance, what remains is a mismatch between student intuition, on the one hand, and a very useful mathematical model that they will be taught in the future, on the other. In other words, the student idea that a "number" described as "zero, point, followed by an infinity of 9s" only becomes a "misconception" once we interpret "number" as meaning "Cantor-Dedekind number". Now this is not to say that we should put all this in the lede :) only to explain why students should be given more credit for their nonstandard intuitions, as analyzed by Robert Ely. Just as quantum theory is a refinement of the classical theory, so student intuitions require a refinement of the traditional number system to be properly accounted for. Professional mathematicians obviously acknowledge the fact that "zero, point, followed by an infinite hypernatural's worth of 9s" is a perfectly legitimate number that falls short of 1, so the analogy with quantum theory is a bit backwards. Tkuvho (talk) 20:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that many mathematical logicians know very little about nonstandard analysis, and most other mathematicians know nothing about it, because it essentially never comes up outside the field of logic. Regardless of anyone's opinion about foundationalism, the "real line" is one of the primary objects of study of core mathematics, and so developing the right ideas about it (e.g. there are no infinitesimals) is crucial for students. Very few of them will learn any other model than "real line = Dedekind complete ordered field".

My personal feeling is that most mathematicians accept the axiom of completeness as a postulate about the real numbers; they may or may not view it as an accurate statement about physical reality but they accept it as a completely accurate statement about the real line. The loss of the axiom of completeness in nonstandard analysis, and the corresponding need for "logical" considerations, is not appealing to working mathematicians. To the extent that student intuitions don't match up with the axioms for a Dedekind complete ordered field, working mathematicians would probably say those intuitions are incorrect. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:38, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Carl, I think we are in full agreement as to both the usefulness and the prevalence of the real number system. I started this thread as a follow-up to your comment at WPM that infinitesimals are a key to understanding the .999... issue. We seem similarly to agree that the detailed section on infinitesimals at .999... is justified. If one starts with 1 and subtracts off an infinitesimal, one will get a decimal string necessarily starting with an infinity of 9s in any system strong enough to have decimal expansions (already PRA is enough for this). But student intuitions cannot be realized in the real number system due to the absence of infinitesimals. A short statement to this effect in the lede would nicely summarize the infinitesimal section, and also reflect the legitimate minority view that we are dealing with nonstandard conceptions rather than erroneous conceptions. Tkuvho (talk) 07:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the last paragraph of the lede could be split into two parts, one for the education stuff and a second on alternative number systems. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Here is what the current version looks like: The equality 0.999... = 1 has long been accepted by mathematicians and taught in textbooks to students. In the last few decades, researchers of mathematics education have studied the reception of this equality among students, many of whom initially question or reject it. Many are persuaded by an appeal to authority from textbooks and teachers, or by arithmetic reasoning as below to accept that the two are equal. However, some are often uneasy enough that they seek further justification. The students' reasoning for denying or affirming the equality is typically based on their intuition that each number has a unique decimal expansion, that nonzero infinitesimal numbers should exist, or that the expansion of 0.999... eventually terminates. These intuitions fail in the real numbers, but alternative number systems can be constructed bearing some of them out. Indeed, some settings contain numbers that are "just shy" of 1, or adequal to 1. These are generally unrelated to 0.999..., but they are of considerable interest in mathematical analysis. Breaking this up into two paragraphs is still consistent with regulations as this gives us 4 lede paragraphs altogether. How would you do it? Tkuvho (talk) 11:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a major improvement :) Tkuvho (talk) 14:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

We're doin' it wrong

Oh noes, that article again. Tijfo098 (talk) 08:21, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Minor and trivial edits

I don't think that edits like this and this should be done alone. This are exactly the kinds of trivial and minor edits that you have so strongly opposed as they change only times. They might change the rendering of the page but its still a waste of resources. --Kumioko (talk) 14:04, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Those edits are in the bot's user space and were approved by the bot approvals group (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/VeblenBot_3). I am not eager to continue explaining the bot policy to you, but I can tell you that you don't seem to understand it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:16, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I do understand it actually it just seems that it doesn't apply to you. The only reason I haven't brought this up to BAG or somewhere is because they are relatively infrequent and in the bots userspace. If they were more common and outside the userspace I would have brought it up for discussion already but I still think they are more of a waste of resources than the edits I was doing that you revoked my access over. --Kumioko (talk) 14:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The bot edits the PER and SPER tables every half hour and has been doing so for years IIRC. Please feel free to bring it up with BAG if you think it's a violation of the bot policy. I am not volunteering to mentor you; please find someone else to explain the bot policy and the differences between AWB and approved bots. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

As I said above its in the bots user space so its not a huge issue but I think that every half hour is a complete waste and I might make a mention of that. As for the other comment I am not asking for you to explain it to me nor am I asking you to be a mentor to me. I think you are too wrapped up in your personal views to think of you as mentor material and I am sure you have similar feelings about me. --Kumioko (talk) 15:16, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

It's impossible to read

ASCII art is impossible to read in this article. Especially, the first formula in "Kuratowski definition". Introducing the LateX makes it much better. Compare before and now. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:07, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

This is not impossible to read:

{ a, b, {c} }

— Carl (CBM · talk) 14:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The whole section used formulas with larger fonts. Before, this cross-reading I couldn't see the first formula. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:10, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Right now e.g. the "variants" section uses two different size fonts on my browser, because some of the "math" is shown in image form and some is shown in text form. See my comment on Hans' user talk page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

WP 1.0 Workflow

Hi Carl. Thanks for your support :)

I hope this (http://min.us/mPagEBe0tIasX#1) is a more accurate portrayal of the current workflow? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yuvipanda (talk • contribs) 22:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that looks good. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

da Vinci Barnstar

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		Awarded to Carl for his tireless work on Wikipedia Release Version Tools. DThomsen8 (talk) 14:28, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I really appreciate it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:45, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Recommendation to delete an uneeded redirect for Template:Maths rating

Greetings Carl, I wanted to let you know I submitted a recommendation to delete an unused and probably uneeded redirect relating to template:Maths rating. You can see the request here. --Kumioko (talk) 19:53, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Useful Javascripts

I want to suggest that you use the following lines on your user page:.

• User:CBM/csd.js – better automatic CSD summaries

• How to install User scripts

Some of your useful Javascripts sound good to me, but I would appreciate an easy link to the install instructions, and I was puzzled by the term CSD summaries. --DThomsen8 (talk) 22:15, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Template_talk:Unreferenced#Nearing_closure

I just made a post, I have tried not to take your words out of context. I hope you will consider the post in the good faith that I have I always tried to work with you in. Continued delay seems counter productive. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:55, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

proper class means no power operation

Please comment here if you get a chance. Tkuvho (talk) 18:29, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Current PR Link

I'm just curious why {{CF/Content review/Raw}} links to the talk page of the article, rather than the main page? Personally I think it would be great if it linked to the main page so that if one is using some tool like popups, it is easy to see what the page is about. If there is no reason for it to be the current way, I would like to request to make this change. Thanks, MrKIA11 (talk) 21:18, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The Raw format was originally designed for use only on the VeblenBot pages, and primarily for maintenance purposes. In such circumstances it is more convenient to access the talk page, as that is where the content review process was started. However, it is also the default format for peer reviews. I agree that this is unfortunate when the information is transcluded onto WikiProject pages, where it would be more useful to link to the article. We could of course link to both. Geometry guy 21:17, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I assumed that the bot would use a magicword rather than a link. It would just make it more convenient, but it's not a necessity. MrKIA11 (talk) 21:44, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't need to be that way for the bot, but is aimed editors who help to manage the workflow at content review processes. The set-up could be improved, I think, and will look more closely at it when I have time. Geometry guy 20:28, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

BAGBot: Your bot request VeblenBot 7

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/VeblenBot 7 as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 20:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

Query

Did we do something to offend you or the bot? User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Custom/Roads-1 hasn't been updated since the 10th. On a side note, would it be possible to add a column to the table for us and CRWP (User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Custom/Canada-Roads-1) to display the article totals? Between the Stub and ω columns, it would just be a total of the articles, like WP:USRD/A/L has on the "live" table. Once again, thanks for all you do. Imzadi 1979 → 18:27, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry I asked! The bot blanked the US table and the Canadian one too! Imzadi 1979 → 19:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The table of all 0s was due to a type while I fixed the code just now. I have been doing some upgrades to the bot over the last two weeks to make it more efficient to search for articles by category. The custom tables were the last item on my list to update for the new code. The bot has uploaded correct versions of the road tables now, and it should go back to uploading them regularly. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:37, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Phew! Thanks! :-) Imzadi 1979 → 19:40, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I also added the total column just now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:45, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Invitation to take part in a study

I am a Wikipedian, who is studying the phenomenon on Wikipedia. I need your help to conduct my research on about understanding "Motivation of Wikipedia contributors." I would like to invite you to Main Study. Please give me your valuable time, which estimates about 20 minutes. I chose you as a English Wikipedia user who made edits recently through the RecentChange page. Refer to the first page in the online survey form for more information on the study and me.cooldenny (talk) 02:04, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

2006 cut & paste move

Text was cut from there to Dynamic logic (modal logic). Can you histmerge them? Tijfo098 (talk) 15:03, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

If you can, you should only merge starting with this edit, which changed the topic! Tijfo098 (talk) 15:10, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually you can histmerge from beginning; it doesn't really matter where the pre-Charles-Stuart-2004 edits go because all that was nonsense—none of those jumbled topics are called dynamic logic anywhere. Tijfo098 (talk) 18:37, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I split the history of Dynamic logic in half, put the old half into Dynamic logic (modal logic) and put the new half (for a disambiguation page) back into Dynamic logic. For the record, here is how to do that:

1. Move Dynamic logic to Dynamic logic/2011-4-29
2. Delete Dynamic logic/2011-4-29
3. Restore just the new revisions back into Dynamic logic/2011-4-29
4. Move Dynamic logic/2011-4-29 back to Dynamic logic
5. Restore the remaining revisions into Dynamic logic/2011-4-29
6. Delete Dynamic logic (modal logic)
7. Move Dynamic logic/2011-4-29 to Dynamic logic (modal logic)
8. Restore the revisions of Dynamic logic (modal logic) that were deleted
9. Make sure the newest content of Dynamic logic (modal logic) is in the top edit.

— Carl (CBM · talk) 19:41, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm aware of the process, but I'm not an admin, so I couldn't have done the delete actions myself. Tijfo098 (talk) 20:33, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry; I didn't mean you should have done it, I just wanted to record the steps because the other page is very opaque. I was happy to do it, I just had to plan it our for a few minutes. I've done history merges in the past, but not of this sort. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:03, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, since you wrote the above, it might not be a bad idea to use it to replace the example in that help page. It's more clearly written and less hypothetical. Tijfo098 (talk) 03:34, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

(Military of Japan is now a redirect, as it probably should be, but I doubt dynamic logic will ever become one.) Tijfo098 (talk) 03:37, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

A couple suggestions for the Assessment table

I know we have had some negative dealings in the past but I had a couple suggestions that I wanted to submit as possible changes to the Assessment table matrix. I was going to suggest these be made to the WikiProject Template for WPUS but before I do I wanted to make sure that the bot that builds the tables could handle it.

1. We have categories to track Featured Lists and articles but we don't currently have a good way to account for Featured Images, sounds and the like. I don't think we need a separate one for each type but I thought a category for Featured media might be useful. Especially with the possibility of including these types of content on the Main page from time to time.
2. We don't have any way to account for Featured topics. I know this is a relatively small subset of content but I thought I would mention it anyway.

Thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 18:29, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

One way to do with would be to create a custom assessment type Template:FM-Class (for "featured media"). Assess all the featured media as FM class. Then use the Template:ReleaseVersionParameters to have the WP 1.0 bot track that custom assessment for your project. All of that can be done entirely with wiki edits without needing any access to the bot. The downside is that the pages would all be marked as 'FM-Class' instead of 'File-Class'.

A less ideal wasy is to just get all the featured media into a category (e.g. Category:WikiProject United States featured media) and assess it with the standard File-Class. Then I can write a routine for the bot to use that category to make a custom table. The downside of this is that I have to edit the bot's source code.

I'd prefer the first way, because it would make it possible for other projects to do the same thing. I can configure the ReleaseVersionParameters for you once the pages are all assessed as FM-Class. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:47, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok thanks, that gives me some options at least. Good point about losing the visibility of it being a file. --Kumioko (talk) 00:46, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Accepted for GSoC

Hi, just to note that I've been accepted for GSoC to work on the WP1.0 selection extension :) Yuvi (talk) 19:27, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Principle of bivalence

A few months ago you had commented at Talk:Principle of bivalence#Rename request. A new page-rename request has been started for this same page. Do you have any thoughts for Talk:Principle of bivalence#New request? DMacks (talk) 09:31, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Record charts has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Record charts (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

inconsequential changes

There's an ANI discussion about something I recall you had a position on (in principle): Wikipedia:ANI#Yobot and inconsequential changes yet again. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:33, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Canterbury

The "a" or "an historic" controversy has cropped up again for this article, and various people seem to want to use edit summaries for an is/isn't tennis game. Even apart from the fact that both are correct in this instance, about two-thirds of Canterbury residents speak Estuarine dialect, so they say "istoric", not "historic", and "an historic" is normal usage for them. The city is dominated by the cathedral community, two public schools who send a high proportion of pupils to Oxbridge, and the University of Kent. Most denizens of these establishments are aware of 18th and 19th century English to the extent that it would sound odd to them not to say "an historic". Since both "a" and "an" are correct, it would be odd to make arbitrary use of "a" when "an" is appropriate for this part of the world. Just thought you might be interested. Cheers. --Storye book (talk) 23:04, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. This seems to be an even more direct application of WP:ENGVAR than in American English where "an historic" is just a well established usage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:10, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

However a massive proportion of the residents of the city are not locals, but people born outside the local area and moved in due to it being a centre of education. You say that due to the universities and public schools they speak the Estuarine dialect when that actually speaks against the residents you are referring to as having one consistent dialect since they have come from all over the country. The University of Kent has one of the highest foreign student ratios in the country, The Kings School brings in people from all over also. Canterbury also has a high population of residents born outside the area who come for the education and then stay. If you spend time in the city you can tell there isn't even a consistent local accent among the populace due to this and it also being a tourism centre. Canterbury Tail talk 11:07, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I quote from Canterbury Tail above: "You say that due to the universities and public schools they speak the Estuarine dialect" - you misunderstand. The Estuarine dialect is the dialect of the ordinary local people, and is spoken by a high proportion of people in the towns of south-east England. (To outsiders it may sound rather like Cockney, if that helps?). In recent decades due to social blending it has been adopted by the privileged and the educated; you may remember that Princess Diana spoke it on occasion.

Regarding tourists: the most common language spoken by tourists in the streets of Canterbury is French, which is not surprising since France is the closest part of Europe to the south-east coast. "An historic" is easier to pronounce and more logical for French people who do not pronounce the "h" in their own language.

Usage by local speakers of Estuarine and by French people is only one aspect of the matter. Usage by the educated is another. Usage of phrases such as "an historic" in order to imply a certain register requires experience of reading a fair number of books written before 1900. One can usually identify those who are without such experience by examining the logic and elegance of their written English. For example: "but people born outside the local area and moved in", and "due to this and it also being a tourism centre" both suggest inexperience of literature written under Swiftian influence. Such literature would normally use the phrase "an historic" for reasons of elegance, and institutions such as The Kings School would promote such usage, whatever the national origins of its pupils (I know that because my son was educated at Kings). --Storye book (talk) 11:36, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Please refrain from commenting on any perceived education of another editor. This is about Canterbury not editors. And I've started a thread on the Canterbury talk page. Canterbury Tail talk 12:41, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/All current discussions has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/All current discussions (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy/Criteria has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy/Criteria (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/All current discussions has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/All current discussions (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:01, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:01, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:01, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy/Criteria has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy/Criteria (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:01, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles

In light of your participation in the discussion(s) regarding the treatment of disambiguation pages on the "Lists of mathematics articles" pages, please indicate your preference in the straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:08, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Less AWB problems

rev 7716 fixes the problem with template redirects not loaded in settings switch. This means you will see less "bypass redirect only" edits in the short future caused by my bot running on the same list twice. This also enables me to start dealing checkwiki errors in separate settings files at some point. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:17, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's great. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:50, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot Issue

With this edit, WP 1.0 bot added the same log information to the quality log as it did the day before. JPG-GR (talk) 02:41, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I think this is due to the high lag the toolserver databases are having right now. I have turned off the log uploads temporarily. The log data will still be available on the WP 1.0 bot's web tool at toolserver.org/~enwp10 . — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:15, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

User:VeblenBot/PERtable

Hello Carl. Could you possibly add a link to User:VeblenBot/PERtable inside the table somewhere, so that people who want to copy it know where the code is. (For example, it could be piped "view" in the header.) Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

In case that was confusing, I had in mind something like this. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:52, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I added links sort of like a navbox: — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:21, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:41, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

{{User:VeblenBot/PERtable}}

Curiosity

Just out of curiosity when you warned Delta on the 12/13th about violating his speed (and citing a specific set of edits) were you aware that on that day he violated his editing restrictions somewhere between a dozen and dozen separate times?--Crossmr (talk) 11:46, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I was not aware at the time, but in any case I thought a warning was the right first step, since it had been some time since the last block. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Math bot

It's been nearly a week since Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality log was updated last; is there a problem with the bot?--RDBury (talk) 02:22, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

It's been over a week since Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/College football articles by quality log was updated. Can we get this going again? Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:35, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

(Responding to both) I had to turn that off temporarily because of very high replication lag on the toolserver. The lag is back down now and I started a run of the log updates a couple hours ago, which should finish in the next few hours. The daily updates of data in the web tool at http://toolserver.org/~enwp10 have not been affected, and so the log data there has been up to date. The project summary tables were also copied. So the only thing affected by the lag was copying assessment logs to the wiki. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:File mover has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:File mover (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:File mover has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:File mover (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

WP 1.0 global class list

So in order to update the bot's global class list, all that needs to be done is to update ~/.wp10.conf, or is there anything else that needs to be done first? (Like stopping the bot somehow) Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 21:51, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

There's no need to stop the bot, it won't re-read the configuration file after it starts and it starts fresh each day. Make sure that you pick a number that's not already being used, so that the new class sorts in the right order. I have never needed to change a number, I would have to investigate what to do in that case. But if you just add a new one, it should work fine. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:43, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:File mover no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:File mover (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:File mover no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:File mover (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

New request category

Just a heads up, two new categories—Category:Answered semi-protected edit requests and Category:Answered protected edit requests—have been created. They are categorized with Category:Wikipedia semi-protected edit requests and Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests, respectively, which is tricking your bot into adding them to the SPER and PER tables. Cheers, — Bility (talk) 17:16, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Protected edit requests table

The table of protected edit requests here lists user pages with titles ending in .css and .js as "not protected". Since they are editable only by administrators and the user to whom they belong, this is misleading. Requests for edits to such pages are rare, but there are valid reasons to do so. Thanks Gurch (talk) 01:21, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

They are, in fact, not protected; the restriction on editing them is separate from page protection. In principle they could be explicitly protected as well. I trust people who are handling protected edit requests will realize that these requests need to be looked at, too. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:24, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (stations in Poland) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (stations in Poland) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Russia) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Russia) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (U.S. state and territory highways) no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (U.S. state and territory highways) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Russia) no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Russia) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion for an improvement to the Assessment tables

Greetings CBM, I haven't seen you around much so I guess you've been busy. I had a suggestion for an improvement to the assessment tables that I thought I would run by you. When the table created the total at the bottom it includes all content, which is great, but could another countn be added above the total for Article total that only counts articles (FA, A, B, C, GA, Start, Stub, List and FL). For projects like WPUS (and quite a few others) that track other forms of content besides articles like files and categories this would help us in determining the number of actual articles aside from total content. --Kumioko (talk) 19:12, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Minor edits

So I'm just wondering but if a user performs a minor edit and you revert it as you did here would that not also constitute a minor edit? It seems like if a minor edit does get done, then undoing it would be just as trivial nd probably even more so. --Kumioko (talk) 21:30, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the general principle of WP:BRD applies. Moreover, if nobody undid these inappropriate edits, then they would have a de facto status. And, furthermore, the restriction on trivial edits is part of the rules for WP:AWB, and these rules are stricter than the general rules (I don't know of any general rule about minor edits). AWB has stricter rules because it is more prone to misuse.

However, at least recently, I limit myself to undoing these edits on the pages I am already watching. In other words, I am watching the page countable set anyway, for all sorts of edits, and the inappropriate edit by R.F. came to me rather than me going to it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:41, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

re: Delta

Just friendly advice from a (relatively) uninvolved editor: I wouldn't go writing stuff like that on his page ... it can, in some peoples' eyes, come across as antagonistic.
Having said that ... WOW! That may be one of the most obtuse examples of Weinerishness I have run into here in a long time.

Thanks. My goal was not to be antagonistic; rather I was giving Delta a direct warning as an admin that he will be blocked under his editing restrictions if he makes many of that kind of edit. Because a pattern of that sort of edit is what would lead to a block, it's necessary to point out several examples. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:56, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

OH ... I didn't know that he was under restrictions. I don't pretend to know the nuances of this, but I could see where this could be considered disruptive, and hence that it could be sanctionable. I am glad you folks are on this. Very best of luck in your work! LonelyBeacon (talk) 14:29, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

stats

Hi CBM, You ran some very useful stats for me on RFA a few months ago, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to rerun them so that I can do a midyear update on the state of RFA. We seem to have stabilised the number of our active admins, I suspect due to Email notification of changes to usertalkpages. But stats as to the first edit month of our admins and also the same stats for our "active" admins would I think give a useful insight into the health and i suspect greying of our admin cadre. Thanks in anticipation ϢereSpielChequers 15:20, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Here is the data from today. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:46, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

2001: 9
2002: 29
2003: 70
2004: 139
2005: 209
2006: 184
2007: 65
2008: 37
2009: 14
2010: 3
Bots: 4
Total: 759  

Question about articles by quality and importance tables

I can't speak for any other projects, but I have noticed that the WP:USRD table has been off slightly the last few days. After it updates, the number of stub-class articles is 4 lower than the count shown in the stub-class category. Currently, the table shows 3,490, while the category shows 3,494. Checking the project watchlist shows that no articles have been assessed from stub since today's update. Thanks in advance. –Fredddie™ 22:19, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

When I use the API to get a list of all articles in the category, there are only 3,490. This means that the count on the category page is not correct; this happens sometimes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:49, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. Thanks again. –Fredddie™ 01:59, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Nightcore

We should have an article on Nightcore, a style of music. However, it appears that it has been created and deleted several times. As an alternative, I wanted to redirect it to List of styles of music: N–R which provides a tiny bit of information about it, but there does not seem to be any way for me, an ordinary user, to create even a redirect. Nightcore is defined at the urban directory entry on nightcore. There are very many uploads at youtube within the nightcore genre. JRSpriggs (talk) 19:54, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I created a redirect, but unfortunately the notability does seem to be somewhat marginal, so if someone objects I won't be able to put up much of an argument in favor of keeping it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:15, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. JRSpriggs (talk) 17:20, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version_1.0 Editorial Team/South Sudan articles by quality statistics

Attempted to create this, but I guess I don't know how to do it properly. How can I run the bot to start this page properly? CycloneGU (talk) 17:41, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

No problem. The bot would have done it automatically on the next full update, as well. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:56, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I wanted to do it today because South Sudan gained its independence today (I'm in Canada and working on this, I must be dedicated *LOL*). I think doing another manual bot run in a day or two might be good as well, since there is a lot of category shifting going on right now and the numbers will be out of whack in mere hours after the first run. I think after another run in a couple of days we can let automatic updates take over. CycloneGU (talk) 18:01, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Can we do one more manual run today? A lot of categories have moved around in the last 48 hours, so it should put some better data into the table. After this, I think automatic updates will work. A manual update of "Sudan" might be handy as well since a lot of pages came from that category. CycloneGU (talk) 14:05, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The automatic updates have been running every day (they ran on the 10th). I did a manual update just now but I don't think much had changed since yesterday's run. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:10, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, the list didn't seem before to update since two days ago, so that's odd. It's updated now. Strange that the C, B, etc. articles haven't traversed over yet; I wonder if I should have set up the table as a subsection of the Africa project. Does it look to be set up correctly?

Thanks BTW! CycloneGU (talk) 18:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

The assessment categories needed to be in Category:South Sudan articles by quality. I fixed that and updated the table. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:32, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Much better. This was my first time trying to set up something like this (no one else had started doing it *LOL*), and I figured I missed something. Thanks for taking care of that, I'll head back to the project and comment on the talk page about the table. =) CycloneGU (talk) 18:39, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Trinidad and Tobago Wikipedians' notice board/Style guide has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Trinidad and Tobago Wikipedians' notice board/Style guide (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Am I misreading this?

Can anyone tell me what happened here? Why was the review closed? Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:49, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

According to the log, the article is on FAC. Peer reviews are closed when the article goes to FAC to avoid duplication of effort. In this case, I think the issue is that the FAC was never completely closed. You need to ask someone in the FA group to fix that, and then you can re-open the peer review after they confirm the FAC is closed, and the peer review bot will leave it open. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:19, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Ahhh, weird. OK I'll see what I can do. Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:32, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Access to u_enwp10

Hi CBM, I was working on a database request that involved outputting all the Projects, and corresponding article counts tracked by ~enwp10. Would it be possible to give me (read only) access to the u_enwp10 database on the toolserver? It appears that I was using an outdated database when I responded to the request. Tim1357 ^talk 14:34, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

P.S. An alternative would be for you to handle the request yourself. Whichever you'd like. Tim1357 ^talk 14:34, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

The database is p_enwp10; right now all the tables have a 'tmp' prefix, although that will chagne when I get around to renaming them. I would be happy to give you read-only access to the db, but I have to do that by filing a support request and waiting for the devs to do it [7]. In the meantime I ran the query and put the results at http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/data/ . — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:45, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Would it be a better idea to rename the database to p_enwp10_p? That way anyone who wants to do a read-only query to the database wouldn't need to request access via Jira. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:02, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I will ask whether that would work. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:04, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

It will work, but renaming the database requires copying all the data to the new name. I will add it to my list of things to do when time permits. Thanks for the suggestion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:21, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Defaultsort bug fixed

rev 7784 Defaultsort bug fixed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:22, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation/PrimaryTopicDefinition has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Disambiguation/PrimaryTopicDefinition (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Truth vs Provability

Sorry that I was a bit brusque in my reply to your comment on my talk page.

I'd like, if I may, to talk a little further on what you said earlier, particularly this bit:

"Provability is a property of the formal system, but truth is not determined until we also pick a semantics, and only then can we ask whether provability implies truth and whether truth implies provability. The thing you are calling "deductive truth" is usually just called "provability", because it is not a form of "truth" at all. For example, in classical mathematics we would assert that every statement is either true or false (semantically) but we do not expect that every statement is either provable or disprovable in a fixed formal system (syntactically)."

If you you look at number theory, which begins with the Peano axioms, and proceeds from these to prove (or disprove) a whole bunch of theorems/propositions/statements about numbers, the proof is the series of logical steps that derive a theorem (and those logical steps ALL trace back to and rest upon the axioms, ultimately). For any given proposition, it requires a proof to determine the truth value (= true or false) of that proposition.

I know the word truth is used in many other ways, but within formal systems — and in programming languages — a truth value is just the final result 0 or 1, true or false. This truth value derives from the proof process: from the series of logical steps running continuously from the axioms to the proposition.

I am not clear why you are suggesting that this is not a form of truth?

By the way, what do you mean when you say "syntactically"? I just want to check if we are using the same definition of this term. Drgao (talk) 23:40, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The way that things are usually organized today is as follows:

1. First, we define the formal language for a theory, by fixing a signature and defining the set of formulas in that signature. Formulas are syntactic objects.
2. Then we define the set of axioms for the theory T. But we have not yet defined enough to talk about provability.
3. Then we define a deductive system, which allows us to define the provability relation $\vdash$. Now (and only now) we can talk about a formula being provable from the axioms of T. The combination of the formal language, the set of axioms, and the deductive system is called a formal system. But we still cannot talk about "truth", only about provability.
4. Now we fix a class of interpretations for our theory. Each of these interpretations can be identified with a function from the set of sentences in our theory to $\{T,F\}$, but we typically talk about the satisfaction relation $\vDash$ instead, where $I\vDash \phi$ means that interpretation I makes the sentence φ true. The relation $\vdash$ is syntactic and relates only to provability; the relation $\vDash$ is semantic and relates to truth.

At this point we can talk about provability and about truth, but there is no reason in general to think they are related. If we can prove that

If $T\vdash \phi$ then every interpretation in our class of interpretations which satisfies T also satisfies φ

then we call the deductive system sound. If we can prove the converse of that statement, we call the deductive system complete. But soundness and completeness depend both on the deductive system and on the class of interpretations chosen; we can make them fail by changing either the deductive system or the class of allowable interpretations.

As an example, in first-order logic we use any of the well-known deductive systems, and we use as our class of interpretations all the interpretations that are obtainable from first-order structures. Gödel's completeness theorem shows that this leads to a sound and complete deductive system.

When we think about the foundational aspects of Gödel's theorem, we are worried about truth in one particular interpretation, namely the one in which a sentence in the language of arithmetic is declared true when its terms are read disquotationally. The Gödel sentence for a reasonable theory T will be true in this interpretation, but it will not be provable within T. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:16, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that detailed and clear reply, Carl. Well clearly-written, but as yet not so clear in my mind. Steps 1 to 3 are fine, no problem there; but I was unaware that there are such intricacies involved in interpreting a formal system. I've always assumed that a formal system required no interpretation at all; that it was its own self-contained system, that mathematicians/logicians could happily work on without having any regard whatsoever for its denotation in the physical world. I shall examine this subject of interpretation, and see if it throws any light for me on Gödel's 1st theorem. I am still unable to imagine how a proposition can be simultaneously both true and unprovable. My understanding of Gödel's work was that it sort of created tripartite truth values, such that a proposition could be true, false, or undecidable, with these three possibilities being mutually exclusive. I cannot envisage a context where a proposition is both true and undecidable at the same time (or, for that matter, both false and undecidable at the same time). If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the key to this is step 4: the interpretation. I am going to read up on this. Drgao (talk) 07:39, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Drgao, your problem is that you're assuming that arithmetic is a "formal system" in the first place. It is not. Formal axiomatic systems such as Peano arithmetic describe part of arithmetic, but not all of it.

Arithmetic itself is not about axioms, but about natural numbers. Natural numbers are not defined by axioms; they are the intuitively clear objects that you have understood at least since you were eight years old. You will never know any better what a natural number is, than you did at the age of eight (nor will anyone else, because you already knew what they were perfectly well). Axiomatics may help you find out things *about* the natural numbers, but is completely useless in helping you understand what they *are*, which is something you already knew before you ever heard of axioms. --Trovatore (talk) 07:56, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I am fine with the general philosophical underpinnings of mathematics, Trovatore. I am just at the moment focused on this one technical point of how a proposition can be simultaneously both true and undecidable. Drgao (talk) 08:48, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

"Undecidable" is not a truth value. If T is a consistent theory (with the additional technical stipulations), then its Goedel sentence G_T is undecidable in T, not undecidable period.

You really should develop the habit of saying that G_T is "independent of T" rather than "undecidable"; this is the better way of putting it for several reasons, one of which is that it encourages you to remember that it's independent of T, not independent period; "independent period" doesn't make any sense either grammatically or mathematically. --Trovatore (talk) 09:27, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

One way to see how something could be true but not provable is to think about the system obtained by starting with first-order logic and removing all the deductive rules. Now nothing at all it provable (not even axioms of T if we remove the rule that lets us introduce an axiom) but we have not changed the truth value of any sentence in any interpretation. Similarly, if a sentence is not provable in a theory T, and we want it to be provable, we could just add the sentence as a new axiom to make a larger theory which contains T and proves the sentence which was undecidable in T. This would also leave all truth values in all interpretations unchanged, although now some interpretations that satisfied T may not satisfy the larger theory.

Provability of a sentence only depends on the formal system (formal language, axioms, deductive system). Changing the class of allowable interpretations won't affect provability. On the other hand, truth only depends on an interpretation; changing the axioms or deductive system will not affect whether a sentence is true under a particular interpretation. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:23, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

If a formal language is given an interpretation with a finite model, then we can actually calculate whether a sentence is true or false. And in this case, we can define a (finite) set of rules of inference which can be used to prove every true sentence, and disprove every false sentence.

However, the natural numbers are infinite. And it turns out that the truth or falsity of sentences of predicate logic applied to $\langle \mathbb {N} ,0,{}^{\prime },+,\times \rangle \,$ cannot be computed in general because the universal and existential quantifiers refer to infinitary operations. So while we can say what we want them to mean, we cannot always figure out to what truth value that leads. In fact, Alfred Tarski showed how to take any attempt to compute truth and find a sentence which is an exception to it. Essentially, one constructs a sentence which embodies the liar paradox ("This sentence is false.").

Similarly, however clever we may be, we cannot devise a computable set of rules of inference which can prove all such true sentences and only them. And Kurt Gödel showed how to take any attempt to devise a sound, complete, and computable set of axioms for arithmetic and find a sentence ("This sentence is unprovable.") which is an exception to it. JRSpriggs (talk) 18:31, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Carl, for your crisp summary, namely: "On the other hand, truth only depends on an interpretation; changing the axioms or deductive system will not affect whether a sentence is true under a particular interpretation" which defines well what you mean by the technical term "truth". It seems that the definition of the term "truth" only relates to the way a sentence/proposition captures and expresses (under some interpretation) aspects of the physical world. Am I correct in thinking this? And thus by this particular definition of truth, if, hypothetically, the there were no physical world, nor any other class of world external to our formal system, then presumably there could be no truth at all, by this definition? I am just asking these questions in order to get a better grip on what is meant by the technical term "truth", in the context it is used here.

And when you talk about the provability of a given (non-axiom) sentence/proposition in a formal system, does this provability resolve to a value (like true or false)? For example: take the formal system of Peano arithmetic (ie, the syntax rules, axioms and deductive system), but with the absence of any interpretation for the abstract symbols, +, -, x, ÷, =, 1, 2, 3,..., etc; now in the absence of an interpretation, if I take a simple sentence like 3 + 3 = 6, what can provability say about this sentence? Is it still possible to show that this sentence is true without any interpretation? Or, if you don't want use the word "true", is the sentence 3 + 3 = 6 is "provable" in the absence of an interpretation, but with the normal syntax rules, axioms and deductive system of Peano arithmetic?

Or put another way: in the absence of an interpretation, but with the normal syntax rules, axioms and deductive system of Peano arithmetic, can this formal system distinguish "correct" sentences like 3+3=6, 2+3=5, from "incorrect" sentences like 1+1=3, 2+2=9? Drgao (talk) 03:41, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

If you don't have an interpretation, you can show that it is provable, but not that it is true.

But the point is that people knew that it was true long before there was any notion of a formal system to prove it in. There is a standard interpretation that everyone knows, and it is in this interpretation that it is true. It is also in this interpretation that everyone knows, that the Goedel sentence of a consistent theory is true. --Trovatore (talk) 03:59, 18 July 2011 (UTC) Note: Drgao added to the text I was responding to after I responded. The sentence that I was saying everyone knew is true was 3+3=6; that may not be clear anymore. --Trovatore (talk) 05:01, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

To CBM and Trovatore: I think your insistence that truth and provability are unrelated is misleading. The value of a term and the truth-value of a formula are intended to be directly calculated (in principle) inductively from sub-terms (or sub-formulas) to super-terms (or super-formulas). While provability is an attempt to arrive at the same result by an indirect method — transforming and combining formulas known to be "true" (theorems) and seeing whether one can get the desired formula (or its negation). There would be little point in discussing proof at all if it was not intended to get at truth. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:47, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

It's intended to, in the normal case. No doubt about that.

But it doesn't always succeed. If you start with false assumptions, or use unsound rules of inference, you can prove false conclusions.

We can study provability in the abstract without caring whether it has anything to do with truth. In fact we can study it in meaningless languages whose sentences are neither true nor false, because they don't mean anything.

That's kind of what Drgao seems to think mathematics in general is. But it just isn't. Because it isn't, we have to be careful to keep in mind that provability/refutability are not truth values. If you want to just study provability, and forget about truth, you are entitled to do that, but you can't call it truth. --Trovatore (talk) 06:57, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Trovatore: Firstly, it is rather silly to jump to the conclusion that, just because I am currently focused on the formal system, that this means I must have a formalist viewpoint. This assumption is logical non sequitur already. Secondly, I know of no convention that says the word "truth" is only to be deployed to describe semantics. I am interested in the truth values in a formal logical system. I am suggesting that within the body of Gödel's proof, when one asks the question of whether the Gödel sentence is true or not, in this context, the word true relates to logical truth, and this question is asked in exactly the same way is we would ask whether any other proposition, such as "3 + 3 = 6", is true or not. Drgao (talk) 08:35, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, it is asked in the same way you would ask if 3+3=6 is true or not. And if T is consistent, then G_T is true, in just that sense. --Trovatore (talk) 08:43, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Drgao, there is indeed a convention that truth is used only in relation to semantics, and that is exactly what I have been explaining. I would say this is the definition of "semantics", in fact. As long ago as the publication of the incompleteness theorems, we realized that there is a sharp difference between provability and truth, and that no effective formal system can capture everything that is true about the natural numbers. We can make stronger and stronger axiom system which prove more and more theorems that are true in the natural numbers, but there is no complete (effective) system.

By the way, you have mentioned the "physical world" but this is not really relevant; interpretations can be completely abstract objects without any spatiotemporal aspects.

As I pointed out earlier, provability does not have many of the attributes we expect truth to have. In particular, various parts of the T-schema become incorrect if we substitute "provable" for "true". It is not right that if $\phi \lor \psi$ is provable then $\phi$ is provable or $\psi$ is provable, and the rules for $\exists$ and $\to$ are also incorrect.

Moreover, if we try to identify truth with provability, then the entire concepts of soundness and completeness become vacuous, and every system is both sound and complete in the sense of the completeness theorem. This is another reason why proof and truth are treated separately, so that we can study this sort of distinction.

Let's look at a different example than the Gödel sentence. The Paris–Harrington theorem gives another statement in the language of arithmetic which is neither provable nor disprovable in Peano arithmetic. The lack of provability on its own does not tells us anything about whether this statement is true in the natural numbers. If it was provable, it would be true, because Peano arithmetic is sound, and if it was disprovable then it would be false. Now "logical truth" is the same as "provable with no axioms using only the deductive system". Because the statement at hand is not provable or disprovable even with all the axioms of Peano arithmetic, it is not a logical truth. But nevertheless it must be either true or false as a statement about the natural numbers, just like every other statement in the language of arithmetic. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:04, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that exposition, Carl. It makes clear how a statement that is unprovable with respect to one set of axioms may nevertheless be a true statement about natural numbers. I am quite happy with the concept that no formal system will ever capture all the truths about the natural numbers.

Just for amusement, I have just been toying with a very slight modification to the ending of Gödel's first theorem. This alternate ending avoids saying "G is both true and unprovable", and rather just concludes that "G is unprovable". I don't know if this alternate ending makes any sense; I imagine there may be some flaw; but on the face of it, it does seem to avoid the "true and unprovable" conclusion.

As normal, we have:

G = "this statement cannot be proven true in T"

Now, we can ask the question whether G can be proved or disproved in T. Since we are considering the notion of unprovability, logically there should be three possible answers to this question, as follows:

(1) G can be proven true within T.

(2) G can be proven false within T.

(3) G is unprovable within T.

Option (3) is a sort of last resort option, when options (1) and (2) are both shown not to be the case.

Now, answer (1) cannot be the case, since if G were proved true, it would lead to a contradiction, as the statement G itself says that "I cannot be proven true in T".

Similarly, answer (2) cannot be the case either, since if G were proved false, it would also lead to a contradiction, as the negation of G says "I can be proven true in T".

This leaves us only one option left: answer (3), that G is unprovable.

The flaw in the above may be that we have assumed the existence of unprovability beforehand.

Anyway, I was just toying with this to try to better understand things. Drgao (talk) 03:01, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Of course, if you know that A is both B and C, you can always just say A is C, and you'll be right. But you won't have said everything you can. Sometimes that's a good choice, but in the current case it isn't.

It's important to say that, for a consistent theory T, the Goedel sentence G_T is both true understood as a claim about the natural numbers, not necessarily as a claim about the objects of discourse of T, and that it's unprovable in T.

Yes, that juxtaposition will break the expectations of some readers. That's good. That's the reaction we want. In some sense that's a big part of the point of the theorems; they show that truth cannot be considered to be the same as provability. --Trovatore (talk) 03:30, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Title/PrincipalNamingCriteria (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Have you seen this?

Though I'd let you know after you help with List of mathematics journals. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:27, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot question

I am looking to get the details behind the WP 1.0 bot produced table at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index. I could perhaps get something similar by finding someone with toolserver access and begging for a few queries to be run, but what I would like to get (ideal world here) is a list of all articles (page_title and page_id) in each cell of the index. I know there is some fuzziness about placement, especially for importance. My primary interest is in the articles at each quality level (class/category)but I am interested in the detail, if possible. Is that information stored somewhere, and can it readily be exported to a flatfile or mysql table? Thanks. Wikipositivist (talk) 20:58, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The information is all in a database on the toolserver. I exported the data into a flat file at [8]. The database query is at [9], but the tool's database is not public yet so you should ask me if you need me to run it again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:20, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Wikipositivist (talk) 19:34, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your very sensible interjections at GLAM/ARKive. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:23, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Page name corruption in file

Thank you for the detail data from the WP 1.0 bot that you set earlier. One issue I have run into is that some of the page names are corrupted. For example, Gyula_Zsivótzky appears as Gyula_Zsivótzky. Unfortunately, I don't know how to search for pages in Wikipedia by page_id unless I first create my own local instance and run a query through MySQL. Can you tell what happened with the names? Do you know of any way to get the original page names to output correctly? I can certainly go through wildcard searches to find most of them as I run into them, but if there is a way to get the original output with the page names correct (without onerous burden on volunteer labor, that is), I would very much like to get it. Thanks for all the help. Wikipositivist (talk) 20:51, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

The data is in UTF-8 format. I extracted just the lines containing 'Gyula' into this file [10]. If you look at that in your web browser, and set the character encoding to UTF-8, you will see that the accents are correct. In Firefox you set that by going to View->Character Encoding->Unicode (UTF-8). All the data in the WMF databases, and all the data in the WP 1.0 bot's database, is in UTF-8 format. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:00, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers. I'll check it out. My spreadsheet program interprets them wrong, but I did notice that they were consistent, so different encoding makes more sense than "corruption" in any case (I should be more diligent in selecting my verbiage). Thanks again for the help. Wikipositivist (talk) 23:50, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Canada-related articles has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Canada-related articles (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Canada-related articles) no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Canada-related articles) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Essay stats?

I noticed the bot is no longer ranking essay impact at User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Custom/Essays-1 Did it stop supporting Wikiproject Essays or did something change? ɳorɑfʈ ^Talk! 00:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

There was a bug. I fixed it and had the system upload the table. It should continue uploading it, but you won't see an edit in the history unless the data actually changes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:59, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Ireland-related articles) no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Ireland-related articles) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Chemistry/Nomenclature has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Chemistry/Nomenclature (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (chemistry)/Nomenclature no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (chemistry)/Nomenclature (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Bot glitch

What's happening here? It keeps linking to a FA page that doesn't exist. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 06:06, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

It's related to the category "Pages with too many expensive parser function calls" that was on that page. Either there are more candidates than there have been, or the devs have changed the limits. I tweaked the template that is doing the formatting, which should fix things for now. Eventually someone should re-do the template to use fewer #ifexists calls. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:57, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

On the subject of VeblenBot, I have noticed that most of the messages you get from it are like "such-and-such has been marked as a guideline" followed almost immediately by another one saying "such-and-such no longer marked as a guideline". I presume that this is due to some over-eager person marking it and then being reverted by a cooler head. Would it not be better for VeblenBot to wait a little while and see whether the marking remains unreverted instead of bothering people with mutually canceling messages? JRSpriggs (talk) 20:46, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

It would make sense, but it would take more coding. Some of the messages above on my talk page are for renamed pages, which in principle the bot could try to detect as well. This particular bot function was written to be very simplistic, though. I just have it post to my talk page so that I can see if it makes any egregious errors. I don't have much energy to rewrite it, because it seems like such a trivial task. I have thought about just turning it off. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:56, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Dumb question about a couple reverts

I noticed in my travels through the Wikiexpanse that you reverted a couple of edits and I was wondering why. In some examples it seems to be simply because of a template redirect change and in one example here it seems appropriate to clarify the link template even if it is just a simply redirect template change. It just seems to me that whether the original edit was justified or not reverting it seems double wasteful. --Kumioko (talk) 17:24, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

"Wasteful" is a concept that applies to AWB edits – the AWB rules are more strict than the rules for ordinary editing. The edit you linked is a typical example of an edit that should not be made with AWB, so I reverted it when it appeared on my watchlist, which is my prerogative under WP:BRD. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:02, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Pretty much what I thought. --Kumioko (talk) 19:11, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Page size warning edits by VeblenBot

Can you please point me to a task approval for these edits? Peachey88 ^{(T · C)} 00:33, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Probably not; the people at PR asked for them. I'll turn them off and file a request. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:59, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

It appears from Wikipedia:Help desk#Wikipedia talk:Peer review that either I or Peachey88 has misunderstood what VeblenBot is reporting. If it is about Wikipedia:Template limits#Post-expand include size as I think then a piped link in the VeblenBot posts would be helpful. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:14, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

None of that particularly matters in-regards to this post. Peachey88 ^{(T · C)} 01:57, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I think it matters. At Wikipedia:Help desk#Wikipedia talk:Peer review you wrote "we have no limits" and "Pay no attention to the messages". If the messages had linked to Wikipedia:Template limits#Post-expand include size then I guess you would have seen that we do have limits and should pay attention to the messages. I doubt you would have asked the bot owner for a task approval in that case. It seems a bit bureaucratic for editing a single page with a helpful and correct warning, and it was on request from maintainers of that page who still want the messages. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:34, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I ask all bot owners for links to tasks approval if I come across a task which the bot doesn't appear to be approved for, the fact I mis-interpreted said message has no real relevance to the aforementioned request here. Peachey88 ^{(T · C)} 07:46, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (writing systems) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (writing systems) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

DRV

Your reverting in the ISO 15924 DRV yesterday was a helpful deed. thank you. -DePiep (talk) 02:50, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Naming conventions has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Naming conventions (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Naming Conventions no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Naming Conventions (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Improving an Articles Assessment Score.

User:Kumioko suggested I contact you. Can you please tell me how I might be able to improve U.S. Figure Skating's score. It's current score is 647 and has been so since before significant edits/additions. This article has had major additions to its content, references, citations, tables, pictures, etc. Please see here:

http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Figure_skating&importance=High-Class&quality=C-Class

Thanks in advance! Jcflnj (talk) 16:12, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I computed the score by hand, and it wasn't right, so I found that bug and fixed it. That made the score go up some - the system wasn't recognizing the importance properly. The main way to make the score go up now would be to (1) increase the quality rating of the article and (2) increase the "external interest score", primarily by adding interlanguage links if there are articles on other wikis about your topic. However, the external interest data is only updated occasionally, because it is parsed from a database dump; I do think particularly when there is a new release version coming out, because the score is used primarily (only?) to select articles for release versions. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:08, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you so much for looking into this. As you might be able to tell, I have spent a lot of time and effort to improve this article. As an aside, do you think the article might deserve a quality rating of "B"? I have just spent some time addressing another editor's comments. Jcflnj (talk) 23:44, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Re: Importance categories

Oh, didn't notice that. You think we should fix {{Articles by Importance}} then? Add an optional new parameter to match the behaviour of {{cat importance}}? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:58, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

The categories for the individual assessments do need to be categorized into the "by importance" category. If wikiprojects were relying on the "cat importance" template to do that, the "articles by importance" one should probably do the same thing to avoid confusion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:13, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Importance = Other?

I've noticed that some articles have begun to land in the "Other" category by importance, although their importance parameter is left blank in the project banner. For example: User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Croatia - Dalekovod's importance is listed as "Other", but the corresponding parameter is empty in the WikiProject Croatia banner, so the article really should be placed into "???" column. GregorB (talk) 19:11, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Someone broke the importance category hierarchy for your project. I fixed that, and now the bot is detecting the categories again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:51, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Looks fine now, thanks! GregorB (talk) 14:55, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Contract bridge/Manual of Style/Appendix 1: Article creation and naming guidelines has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:WikiProject Contract bridge/Manual of Style/Appendix 1: Article creation and naming guidelines (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

WP 1.0 Bot question

Hi CBM, I see you are the operator of WP 1.0 Bot, so I was hoping you could help me. Recently, Wikipedia:WikiProject AFL was moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Australian rules football and as a result, all the project's categories, including the importance/quality categories, were moved. I was hoping you could update pages like Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/AFL articles by quality statistics and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/AFL articles by quality log so they reflect the new category names? I thought about trying to do this myself, but I thought I'd probably do more harm than good. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 02:17, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

The bot detected the categories for the new name, so they seem to be in order. The logs will be updated later today automatically. I had the bot upload the table just now, and updated the old table page to use the new table. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:34, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

That's great, thanks. Jenks24 (talk) 14:46, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Verifiability/Draft has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Verifiability/Draft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Verifiability/Draft has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Verifiability/Draft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Chemistry/Nomenclature no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Chemistry/Nomenclature (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Vacillating Bot !

Could you have a look at the history and content of Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Color articles by quality log, where the WP 1.0 bot (talk · contribs) seems to keep changing its mind? This was brought up at WP:Help desk#Vacillating Bot !. Thanks. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:57, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Up until today, the page was marked as both Stub-class and Start-class [11]. That's not a valid rating, but the only effect it has on the bot is that the bot will think the page is reassessed each day. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:19, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Up until a few minutes ago, the above history link [12] was indeed marked as both Stub-class and Start-class. However, the Start-class was caused by transclusion of Talk:Celadon (color)/Comments which was incorrectly categorized. I have fixed it.[13] PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Matrix representation

I am new to Wikipedia. I know that you are an active user on wikipedia. I have seen that you have edited the page matrix representation which is now my job to edit for this semester. Looking forward to a great experience editing wikipedia. kavita (talk) 15:23, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Delegitimization as a tactic has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Delegitimization as a tactic (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Delegitimization as a tactic has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Delegitimization as a tactic (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot stopped editing

12 hours ago. Agathoclea (talk) 13:31, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see what the problem is? The bot seems to have finished its automatic daily run without any problems. The bot does not run constantly, just once per day. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:44, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Maybe just me getting confused :-) I saw the Wales log yesterday without the Germany log and got itchy. Its like the morning papers not arriving in time for breakfast. Your work is appreciated as it helps keeping an eye on articles. Agathoclea (talk) 13:56, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I looked into this some. There are two processes running daily on the server. One of them fetches data from the wiki and stores it in a database for the bot to use. This takes about 10 hours. The other updates the tables and logs on the wiki from that database. It seems the update from the 20th didn't finish, due to the database server disconnecting, which is OK because the next update will catch it. That update already ran today on the 21st, so I told the system to upload the logs Germany for you. There were 3 pages of changes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Just saw that in my watchlist. Thanks for the extra upload run. Agathoclea (talk) 17:08, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

sockpuppet editing

There is an open WP:SPI case looking at sockpuppet editing primarily on the Johann Hari/ Talk page. As you edited the Johann Hari/Talk page between 2004 and 2011, your input is welcomed. Yonmei (talk) 22:29, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

WP Wales

something went south. Agathoclea (talk) 21:25, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Same with WP Spaceflight. I presume others are affected but apparently not all, I've seen some that are fine. Curious. ChiZeroOne (talk) 22:13, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

This happens sometimes when the toolserver database is reset while the bot is uploading tables. I keep trying to find the right parameters to a certain system function to tell the bot to stop when it happens, but the documentation is spotty and I can't kill the DB on demand to test them. In any case, the real data is never lost, the "0" values just don't reflect the real data. I have started a new upload process which will fix the tables in the next hour or two. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:56, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

This email seems to explain the reason. The bot does use sql and it would have been running at that time. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:02, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Bot working?

Just curious if your bot is working because I've not seen any updates in over 48 hours according to its contributions… --LauraHale (talk) 06:05, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I will double-check it later today. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:34, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Malfunction

The bot is pretty much zeroing all project tables... GregorB (talk) 20:42, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Came here to say the same thing. 117Avenue (talk) 01:18, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. This is almost certainly the same problem as last week; if you look at the tables at toolserver.org/~enwp10 the data is there. I am traveling today. There is a good chance the bot will correct things automatically on the next run. I will check on everything when I get back in about 36 hours. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:46, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

It looks like there was a db outage on the toolserver. I have been trying to convince my bot to stop running when this happens, but so far it has been ignoring me. In any case, the bot seems to have recovered and any the tables should have been uploaded again yesterday, automatically. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:43, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Looks good. GregorB (talk) 17:57, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Noticeboards has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Noticeboards (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I'm the editor that marked the above page as a guideline. I noticed the report on WP:VP. Was wondering if you could program this to automatically notify the origianal editor as well as posting to VP and here when changes occur. something to the effect of.

Hello {{username}} this bot has noted that you placed the {{template}} on {{pagename}} and has notified the [[Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#{{section}}|community]]. Pages should only be marked as policy or guidelines when it represents a widely held consensus and may be reverted if no such consensus exists.~~~~

(ok the above could use some wordsmithing, but you get the idea. Just a friendly thought. Crazynas ^t 18:25, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

It's surprisingly difficult to determine who puts a page in a category. For example, if page A transcludes B, and B is edited to include a category, then A will be marked even though there is no entry in the history of A to explain why. I appreciate it would be helpful for cases where the edit wasn't intentional, but it's not something I can do right now. At least the bot message lets other people know to look into it; the bot message can always be removed if things are resolved and no more input is needed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:37, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Bot missed a page newly marked as policy

As far as I can tell, the bot missed the fact that Wikipedia:Don't be a snitch was created and marked as policy. Granted, the page was vandalism, and it's been deleted, but as the bot was editing when the page was created around 18:00 yesterday (it was tagged for speedy after about an hour, and deleted after about an hour and a half after creation), I can't figure out why the bot didn't pick it up. Sorry to put three different edits into making this comment, but I just realised that you'll reply here, so please leave me a talkback. Nyttend (talk) 10:58, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Hm, okay; I've just looked at the bot's userpage and noticed that it runs at 18:52 daily to check for new policy pages. Does it wait for a little while and then check the new pages to see if they're still marked? Seventeen minutes elapsed before the next person edited the page, and more than half an hour passed before the template was removed. Nyttend (talk) 11:16, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer; I had guessed that the bot was supposed to check the list of transclusions for {{policy}} and make note of any differences. Nyttend (talk) 12:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Traveling

I am traveling until October 23. Please report any bot issues on this page, and I will respond as soon as practical. The bots I run are intended to recover from temporary errors (particularly WP 1.0 bot, which has been affected by temporary toolserver issues recently). If a bot needs to be blocked (presumably not for edits in its own user space), please remember to disable autoblock, as the bots all run on toolserver. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:56, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Noticeboards no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Noticeboards (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

PeerReviewBot

Just wanted to let you know that PeerReviewBot was blocked by Kudpung after the bot archived Kudpung's PR request which was 14 days old and had not received any comments yet (S/he assumed the bot was malfunctioning, when it was just the horrendous backlog to blame). I unblocked the account. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:01, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I guess the next scheduled run is in a couple hours. I expect the bot will just pick up automatically, but if it doesn't I should be able to look into it within 24h. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:59, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Images no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Images (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot

Why is the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Military history articles by quality log no longer being updated on a daily basis?--MOLEY (talk) 19:14, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

The toolserver database was hanging on the Biography project. I tweaked the code so that it should be less affected by this sort of thing. The bot was able to upload the tables after that, and it should go back to uploading them when there are changes (it does not make an edit if there aren't changes). If you see other problems, please let me know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:45, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot malfunctioning

It would appear that User:WP 1.0 bot has blanked all the assessment tables it usually updates. I have reverted one, but I assume there must be something amiss that needs to be fixed. --Stemonitis (talk) 11:54, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. This is the same problem as above, caused by the toolserver database being flaky. I implemented a workaround yesterday for the logs, and I just now made the same change in the code to upload tables. This should prevent the problem from re-occurring. Unfortunately it is hard to test because I can't make the database die on demand, so I have to make a change and see if it works the next time the database has this problem. Anyway, the bot is uploading a new set of tables now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:41, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks for a quick response! --Stemonitis (talk) 12:44, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Another Δ error example

Was provided by Hammersoft in the initial example of WP:VPR#Δ proposed task #15. I don't know if it's worth mentioning to ArbCom though. Since you have presented a sample already, I'm not going to write about that error myself. Honestly, I didn't expect my request for clarification to take such a turn. But since the Arbs asked for this type of information... Uʔ (talk) 18:05, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Question about the assessment tables

Greetings, I was wondering if it is possible to make a small modification to the assessment table for WikiProject United states. Currently the table totals all content into one total but I would like to know if its possible to also add totals for Article content and Non article content separately? --Kumioko (talk)

Can you make a mockup of the table you want? No links are required, just the layout. I can try to make a custom table that matches. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:05, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I can do that, lemme see if I can figure that out. --Kumioko (talk) 21:39, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Notification of arbitration case

An arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Betacommand 3. Evidence that you wish the Arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence sub-page, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Betacommand 3/Evidence. Please add your evidence by May 27, 2011, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can contribute to the case workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Betacommand 3/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 00:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Questions to the parties on the Betacommand 3 arbitration case

Drafting arbitrator User:Kirill Lokshin has posted some questions to the parties. As you are either an involved party or have presented evidence in this case, your input is sollicited. For the Arbitration Committee --Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 13:51, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Arbcom bot word count

Don't worry too much about it; it's not very accurate. It has some obvious bugs that I've reported to the owner. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 00:17, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I just want to keep the big red warning at bay, and I'm near the limit, but I can trim again if I need to. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:20, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Misuse of the sandbox has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Misuse of the sandbox (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Lusin's separation theorem

Hi,

I did not quite understand your comment "Did not clean up anything, based up diff". Did I do something wrong?

Thanks a lot, Sasha (talk) 15:27, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

The edit [14] did three things:

• Replaced the "otheruses4" template with the "about" template. The former is a redirect but using it carries semantic information about the purpose, and in general redirects are not broken.
• Replaced an HTML entity name with a direct Unicode character (⊆). There is no consensus one way or the other which of these is better. WP:MOSMATH gives many examples using entity names, for example.
• Some whitespace changes.

The AWB rules of use state,

"Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits such as only adding or removing some white space, moving a stub tag, converting some HTML to Unicode, removing underscores from piped links, bypassing a redirect, or something equally trivial."

The edit in question did only these things. For these reasons - the edit did nothing that objectively improved the articles, and moreover it violated the AWB rules - I undid it. In general, the "clean up" abilities of AWB should be used only in conjunction with other edits, and used gingerly. For example, in non-math articles it may be generally helpful to replace HTML entities with Unicode characters, especially when the entities are used just for diacritics, but in math articles the replacement should mostly be avoided when the entities are used for mathematical symbols. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:00, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello Carl,

thank you very much for the explanation. I will try to use AWB with more thought.

Sasha (talk) 15:37, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

It's no problem, really; I wasn't going to come complain about it, I just undid the edit when it appeared on my watchlist. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:48, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (manuscripts) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (manuscripts) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (manuscript names) no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (manuscript names) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

User:WP 1.0 bot

I have just blocked User:WP 1.0 bot, because it was blanking the assessment tables again. I remember you fixed this problem before, so let me know when it's fixed again and I will gladly unblock. --Stemonitis (talk) 10:12, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Here are two links that relate to the consensus or lack of it on this matter: Talk:List_of_minor_planets and Wikipedia:Notability (astronomical objects). I had just left him a notification when you asked me to do so. Sorry I should have been quicker about it. Chrisrus (talk) 00:24, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Database report using project assessments

Back in July, Tim1357 asked you for help generating a report of WikiProjects by size, which you provided. Would it be possible to update this information on a monthly basis so it can be added to the database reports? -Mabeenot (talk) 19:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Wha Hoppen?

this edit seems to have made all these assessment headers redlinked again. I tried to fix it by updating the names on this page from sfba to san francisco bay area, but the bot seems to have reversed it. I am just clever enough to have done my initial fix, but i have no idea how to actually block a bot from affecting the page. maybe i shouldnt have even fixed it, maybe it was going to be fixed automatically. If you can help, id appreciate it. its making this assessment panel all redlinks at the task force page.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 21:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Did you rename the 'SFBA' project to 'San Francisco Bay Area'? The table you want is probably at User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/San Francisco Bay Area. There is no way to make the 'SFBA' table use categories are not named 'SFBA'. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:31, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Im not sure how to rename the project. I mean, i know how to rename articles, and i suppose i can do the same here, but I am concerned that i will chose some sort of sub page, or not be aware of some manual step. If it really just needs to be renamed, how come someone else didnt do it? seems odd that no one thought to rename the project, after all the categories got renamed. If you know what to do, please do it, this is possibly a little too complicated for a nonprogrammer like myself.(mercurywoodrose)75.61.135.200 (talk) 06:41, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

holy crap, i think i did just rename and fix it. I guess im more clever than i give myself credit. hope it sticks. thanks for the helpful pointer, it got me going in apparently the right direction.(mercurywoodrose)75.61.135.200 (talk) 06:50, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

What I was saying is that you should probably use [[[User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/San Francisco Bay Area]] instead. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

TS

I was looking through /mnt/user-store on the TS and see that you have 20GB of data there that is for the most part over a year old. Can you please take a look and see if you still need that data, as user-store is getting low on space Im looking for ways to elevate that issue. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 22:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I deleted some files that had average daily hitcounts for enwiki articles, from Wikipedia 0.8. But it didn't make much of a dent overall. There are 90GB free on the volume. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:48, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

User:VeblenBot/PERtable isn't being updated

Please fix! Anomie⚔ 01:26, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems to be related to this problem. I can run the script fine by hand but the cron daemon seems to be borked on the toolserver host where the script runs. I assume they will fix this on toolserver tomorrow, otherwise I will implement some sort of workaround. Thanks for the note, I would not have noticed very quickly. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:52, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dispute Resolution

You may be interested in this. Peter jackson (talk) 11:18, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Not working

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Atlantic hurricane articles by quality log - this is not being updated. I just thought I'd give a heads up. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 05:40, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems a lot of these project quality logs are not being updated, e.g. Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/College football articles by quality log, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/American football articles by quality log, and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Sports articles by quality log. Would be great to have this back up and running. This stuff is very useful for maintenance and monitoring new articles. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:40, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

There have been some problems with the toolserver's database lately, so this had been disabled while I tried to work around those problems. I told the bot to upload the tables again yesterday, and I am running it again right now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:32, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

ratemath.js

I have updated this script; the new version can be found at User:This, that and the other/ratemath.js. I have tested it and it appears to work correctly. — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:41, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Citation

Have you noticed that your a cited reference here. I feel this has kind of gotten out of hand and I am not sure what to do. Tkuvho has passed 3RR at this point, but I am not out to get him blocked, so I don't want to do anything official. But I feel like my hands are tied. I let the matter sit for several months, no one came by to add to the discussion. So I tried again to improve the statement incorporating some of Tkuvho's work and we are right back to the same revert war. I am probably guilty as anyone, so I am not really sure what I am doing besides expressing frustration. That and letting you know your referenced and you may want to take it out, or not, but I am not ready to hit the undo button at this point. Thenub314 (talk) 22:06, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Possible WP 1.0 bot bug

Hey, just want to let you know that User:WP 1.0 bot made this funky edit to the overall articles table yesterday. Do with that what you will. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 01:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I found the bug and fixed it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:04, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Child protection has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Child protection (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Child protection has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Child protection (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Possible VeblenBot glitch

Peer review was getting too large and the partial transclusion trick did not work. I usually check wp:pr/d and it was OK as far as I could tell. Then I noticed that WP:PR had the peer reviews transcluded twice. The problem is in User:VeblenBot/C/Philosophy and religion peer reviews. I tired removing the problem lines, here diff, but VeblenBot just re-inserted the problem. My guess is that a bad PR is the root of this - will go look for it next. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:11, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I found it I think: see User talk:Ruhrfisch. Geometry guy 04:16, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Seems to have worked - thanks Geometry guy! Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:27, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Not sure if there is a proeblem or not - keep getting notices and I have done the partial translucion trick twice now (once is usally sufficient). No obvious problems with PR, but usually there are many PR well over 15,000 when the notices appear and this is not the case now. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 12:15, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the previous problem - now at least one PR is not being listed. I looked at it but did not see any obvious problems. Wikipedia_talk:Peer_review#My_peer_review_request Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:51, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I tweaked the category list at the same time, and apparently I left a blank line somewhere. It should be fixed now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:47, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so much, I really appreciate all you do here to keep the place and in particular peer review functional and functioning smoothly. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:26, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

In fact....

Barnstar

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		Given with respect and admiration to Carl for all your work here, and in particular for your help with bots that keep the place running smoothly. Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 21:26, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Let me echo that sentiment. As a multi-talented and invaluable "renaissance man" of Wikipedia, Carl is an especially appropriate recipient of this particular award. Geometry guy 22:23, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (astronomical objects) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Notability (astronomical objects) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Were Δ's restrictions suspended in 2010?

There's a interesting chunk of conversation on WP:BN from 2010 [15],

@Betacommand, you've stated a few times you are under no restrictions, however WP:RESTRICT has a section listed for User:Betacommand with an expiry time of 'indefinite'. Has this been vacated? –xeno^talk 14:12, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Im not sure why that was placed there as those are not actual editing restrictions. Rather the conclusion of an arbcom case. Other than stressing that I follow standard policies, with that case there where no specific editing restrictions put into place. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 15:17, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Nobody contradicted him there. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:45, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know, the community-placed sanctions from 2007 have never been removed. The arbcom decision Betacommand 2 lists the community restrictions to this day, with no note that they might have lapsed, and the block log there shows blocks for violations in 2010 and 2011. The arbcom motion to unban him does not mention the existing restrictions, either to affirm or remove them, although it did add some additional restrictions. One would think that if the restrictions were not actually in effect, Δ would have pointed that out in May when he was blocked for a week under them. Also, I gave two links in the evidence at arbcom where people proposed lifting the restrictions but no consensus to lift them developed. Again, presumably Δ would have pointed out if the restrictions had already been lifted.

It seems that the community's restrictions were never copied to Wikipedia:Editing restrictions. In 2009 AzaToth copied some arbcom restrictions from the Betacommand 2 case there [16], but didn't copy the community restrictions. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:24, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Right now both ArbCom and community restrictions are listed on that page. There is a footnote "[Betacommand 1]" from his ArbCom restriction pointing to the community ones further down on that page. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 02:40, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

It's true that on the date of that discussion the community restrictions were not mentioned on that page. [17]. By the way, I've made the link from one section to the other more direct. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 02:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

New Page Patrol survey

New page patrol – Survey Invitation Hello CBM/Archive 17! The WMF is currently developing new tools to make new page patrolling much easier. Whether you have patrolled many pages or only a few, we now need to know about your experience. The survey takes only 6 minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist us in analyzing the results of the survey; the WMF will not use the information to identify you. If this invitation also appears on other accounts you may have, please complete the survey once only. If this has been sent to you in error and you have never patrolled new pages, please ignore it. Please click HERE to take part. Many thanks in advance for providing this essential feedback. You are receiving this invitation because you have patrolled new pages. For more information, please see NPP Survey

WikiProject assessment system kaput?

I've been getting errors from connections such as http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=UK_road&importance=Top-Class&quality=FA-Class advising me to advise you that "User 'enwp10' has exceeded the 'max_user_connections' resource (current value: 15)". Been down for at least a half-hour. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:45, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. The trouble is that the web interface sometimes does not drop connections, for some reason. I will need to get a toolserver dev to kill them, it seems. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cuisines) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cuisines) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cuisines) no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cuisines) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject:Dorset assessment log - bot stopped updating

Hello CBM. The bot which normally updates the assessments of articles for the above WikiProject seems to have stopped working (it hasn't updated since December 5th; previously it was updating every 3 or 4 days). I notice you posted a statement about the bot a couple of years ago on the Project's talk page, so thought I'd give you a shout. Are you able to help? Many thanks, PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The toolserver has been having problems lately, which has had an impact on the update procedure. The categories for the Dorset project appear to be set up correctly, but for some reason the project data was not updated on the 8th. I will watch the logs from the current update to see if the problem happens again. Thanks for the notification, — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:48, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello again. The updates appear to be occurring normally again, so thanks for keeping an eye on it (or for fixing it, if that's what you did). Cheers, PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:32, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

No problem. I am still watching it. The toolserver database seems to be working better than it was, so the updates have been going smoother. I hope to get back to having an update every 24 hours soon. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:33, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

content dispute

Hi Carl, I feel there was an inappropriate interference by an administrator in a content dispute. Specifically, a 3RR was reported where there was none; instead of rebuffing the error, the administrator issued a warning before I had a chance to express my position. I feel administrative action is not a good way to resolve a content dispute, perhaps you could comment. Tkuvho (talk) 13:22, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

There is a heavyhanded comment by johnston which I feel is an inappropriate interference in content disputes. Tkuvho (talk) 20:58, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy/Draft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change for WT:Update (see User:VeblenBot/PolicyNotes for more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC)