User talk:CBM/Archive 20

Stop the pointless reversions

Carl, even if Magio's edits were unnecessary your reverting them is ludicrous and an utter and complete waste of system resources. Leave them be, there is no reason to revert them just because you have nothing better to do. Create an article, make a new bot, but stop this pointless reverting just because you personally don't like it. Literally no one but you cares about these, they are insignificant. Kumioko (talk) 15:35, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Magioladitis has given me permission to roll them back. Doing so will restore things to the status quo as they were, from which point Magioladitis is free to pursue consensus to make further changes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:38, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Its pointless reverting, he said go ahead because he knows there is non reason to do so and simply feels, it seems by his tone, that its not worth arguing about and if you want to waste your time its yours to waste. Frankly though I'm tired of seeing it all the time so I reported it as vandalism. You do it too often. Its a waste of resources, it makes the article histories confusing and its just plain stupid. Which is surprising to me that you would take such a stance because we both know how intelligent you are. Your smarter than 4 of me times 2 and even I can see that there is no point to these reversions. Kumioko (talk) 15:42, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

I also wanted to followup by saying that you edit summary is not accurate. That is not what Magio said. You are tailoring the message to meet your view which is just blatantly wrong. Kumioko (talk) 15:54, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

I apologize if you find it pointless. I don't agree, but in any case I have finished the batch of test edits he made for the new version of AWB. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:00, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

The worst thing about this is that you didn't even look at the diff, you reverted a lot of them that had other things that were fixed in addition. I am going to undo them. If you wish to abuse your admin powers to block me for reverting some of your rollbacks because you didn't take the time to do the job right (not that i agree with it anyway) then so be it. Next time you are going to do 500 reverts, pay attention to what you are doing and only revert those that need it. You are wasting a lot of time over pointless, trivial stupid shit that doesn't need attention. Admins like you and Fram, making bad decisions like this make me glad I am not one but at least I know what it takes and what is acceptable conduct for one. Kumioko (talk) 16:05, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

You should not undo them. Undoing them once is fine per WP:BRD, and in this case because he gave me permission. But re-making them after that is a violation of the guideline on edit warring.

The point of rollback is specifically to not look at the diffs. Per WP:ROLLBACK one of its intended uses is "To revert widespread edits (by a misguided editor or malfunctioning bot) which are judged to be unhelpful to the encyclopedia, provided that an explanation is supplied in an appropriate location, such as at the relevant talk page". I did leave a comment on Magio's talk page, which he acknowledged, and I used a custom summary to explain the rollback.

It is asymmetric to have Magio make hundreds of edits with AWB in an essentially automated way and then ask for others to have to manually undo them. AWB is not intended to be run in this way, as Magioladitis is aware; he simply seems to have made a mistake when testing a new version, and I helped to correct that mistake. It is not as if Magio put careful human thought into each of his edits - if he had, he wouldn't have pressed "save" on the ones that only bypassed redirects. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:10, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Regarding your edits at Vandalism. If you bothered to read his comments, you are completely misrepresenting them. He did say they were test edits after being pressured by you. Even if they were, they improved the page. They didn't break anything, didn't add anything that wasn't needed, etc. The summary you used was a gross misinterpretation of the facts based on your opinion of what was said. If you read Magio's comments they clearly have the tone that these edits areen't worth arguing over and if you want to waste your time reverting them go ahead. You also undid a lot of other changes because you failed to do the job right and look at what the change was before reverting it. As for consensus. There is one and you are actually the minority. As proof look at the Template redirect page of AWB. Here is a link to the history. I rarely see Magio's name on it and a lot of others. There is a consensus even if you choose not to recognize it. Frankly I don't even know why I am fighting this stupidity. I have all but given up editing here because of Admins/editors like you misinterpreting what others say or policy to suit their own needs. And then I am the asshole because I call you out on it. The edits Magio made where clearly done in good faith. They didn't hurt anything except your narrow view of policy. Also, you are misinterpreting BRD, its purpose is not so admins with a power hunger and a point can abuse it. Its to let users feel free to make edits without worrying about asking another editor for permission. This is pointless its like talking to a wall. Kumioko (talk) 16:18, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

On second thought I'm not going to waste my time cleaning up your mess. I know you aren't going to do it either and I also know that no one else is going to stop you since you are an admin and I am only going to be the one who gets blocked for trying to enforce policy. But I am an editor and editors aren't allowed to enforce policy, especially where admins are involved. We are supposed to just sit down, keep quite and stay out of it. So I am going to go back to not editing at all. Kumioko (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Trouble with PeerReviewBot

Hello. I noticed recently that PeerReviewBot closed a peer review I had started for the article Bajkam; I believe this is the link. There had been no feedback for the review, therefore it was far from finished when it was closed. Is there any way it could be reopened so that there could be feedback? dci | TALK 18:22, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Template redirects

At this point I see no reason to continue to argue with you about this Carl. I do not think that any explanation is going to convince you that Template redirects are bad because you have your mind made up. Just as you are not going to convince me they are good because I know better. What I do think though is that if the majority of the community thinks one is right and the other is wrong, whichever that may be, then that is what we are stuck with. In the end, I don't have the desire or the endurance to continue to fight this. My days of caring about what happens here are really behind me so I am done commenting. If you want to fight to keep the system as it is with thousands of broken template redirects not working correctly because a couple entrenched editors insist there is no consensus and its not broken then all you have to do is keep fighting every editor that comments. But I have commented as much as I intend to on this subject. I was asked via email by three different editors (one of which really surprised me frankly) to explain one scenario and I have done that. My work here is done. Kumioko (talk) 01:48, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

So far your argument about template redirects appears to be centered around a template, Template:WikiProject Utah, that is not and cannot be a redirect. You did not explain any scenario in which replacing a template redirect like Template:cn helps with anything. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:51, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Carl your argument doesn't even make any sense and in fact it basically follows what I have been trying to argue. That a template redirect doesn't work. Yes, the Template:WikiProject Utah isn't "exactly" a redirect because a redirect doesn't work to do the things I need that to do. Just as it doesn't work in a lot of other scenarios I haven't bothered to build workarounds into. The fact remains that If I changed the coding in template:WP Utah to say #REDIRECT Template:WikiProject United States it would then be a redirect as you say and not a template but it wouldn't work. It wouldn't generate the categories or the parameters that are needed. Again this is just one example. It applies to many of the "redirects" to WPUS, Canada, Africa and many other projects some of which still use the old #REDIRECT without the additional logic. Is also true of a lot of other templates too. This is just an example so don't get too wrapped around the axle about symantics. Kumioko (talk) 01:59, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

You seem to be alternating between telling me you are leaving and not arguing any more, and then arguing some more that a page that is not a redirect is in fact a redirect... If some templates like WP Utah use #redirect without additional logic, that is wrong and the redirect pages need to be edited into proper wrapper templates. Changing them into redirects would have been doomed form the start and was a mistake if it was done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:04, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Your right they are doomed from the start as are many Template redirects. Again this is just one example of many. That is why I said in the past in several discussions that there are occasions when template redirects are bad. Not all, not most, but certainly not none as you argue. You are correct though I did say that but judging from your baiting comment I assume you meant for me to continue to comment so I did. Additionally we do not need thousands of wrapper templates just so that your argument that template redirects work just fine. If I need to convert a template redirect into a wrapper template in order for it to work then that by its very definition and complication proves without a shadow of a doubt that template redirects cause problems. Kumioko (talk) 02:08, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Your example does not show that template redirects are bad. At best it shows that trying to make something into a redirect that cannot be made into a redirect is bad. But the issue with AWB is with templates like Template:fact that are actually redirects. If you implemented WP Utah correctly, there would be no problem. Your argument would also imply that Template:WikiProject United States should be a redirect to Template:WikiProjectBannerMeta, since these stand in the same relationship as WP Utah and WP United States. It seems to me that you do not understand the purpose of template redirects, which were never intended to be a substitute for wrapper templates. Redirection and transclusion are different tools that have different purposes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:15, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Your wrong again Carl. Template:WikiProjectBannerMeta is transcluded in Template:WikiProject United States but WPUtah is a redirect to WPUS. However because template redirects don't work worth a damn we have to use a wrapper template until the WPUtah template can be replaced with the WPUS template with the Utah parameter set. This is because as you put it yourself, it just doesn't work. The point of the WPUtah template isn't to be a template and its only a wrapper template because #Redirect doesn't work, if it did I wouldn't have done to the effort of adding logic to 200+ redirects to make them into wrapper templates (and I am sure there are more). Anyway, just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I don't know how they work. I just don't agree.Kumioko (talk) 02:25, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Utah is not a redirect (look at it...) and it does transclude Template:WikiProject United States. There is no need to replace the Utah template on any talk page, you just need to fix it to include all the parameters you want it to include. It really does appear that you just don't understand how things work. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:35, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Carl Ill say it again, its not a redirect because redirects don't work, thats why its a wrapper template. We want the functionality to stay in the WPUS template, the WPUtah template just needs to redirect to WPUS, but it does not work as a redirect. Kumioko (talk) 02:41, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

What you said above at 02:25 was

• "WPUtah is a redirect to WPUS"

but then you just said

• "Ill say it again, its not a redirect"

From the beginning I said, "So far your argument about template redirects appears to be centered around a template, Template:WikiProject Utah, that is not and cannot be a redirect." At least we seem to agree on that now.

You are correct that WP Utah will not work as a redirect, just like a wrench will not work to tighten screws. That is just the way Mediawiki is designed; it has nothing to do with AWB or with actual template redirects like Template:Fact. If you ever thought that the WP Utah template should be a redirect, you were wrong, and misunderstood the point of redirects. They are not intended to do that sort of thing. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:50, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Carl your just trying to twist my words to meet your purpose. It is a redirect by purpose but because template redirects do not work for this scenario it cannot be a #REDIRECT hard redirect. It has to be a wrapper template in order to generate the appropriate parameter of Utah = Yes and generate the category showing the article is in a deprecated template. If the Template redirects could make the template reflect correctly then I would use that but it cannot. Again, your getting wrapped around this one template but its just an example. Stop looking at this as black and white ans see the gray man, think of it like Chaos theory. Trying and find order from the Chaos here. The fact remains that there are hundreds of thousands of templates redirects that do not work correctly because template redirects do not work unless its the most mundane template with no parameters. Many are, many are not. I'm not trying to saw your arguments are completely wrong, but its not always right either. There are multiple ways to get to Pi here man. There is the mathematical way and the way I do it when I go buy one at the grocery store. Kumioko (talk) 02:57, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, redirects only work when no additional parameters need to be set. That is intentional, just like wrenches don't work for screws. That does not mean there is any problem with template redirects, because nobody ever claimed they could do the thing that you want them to do. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:59, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. Finally we agree on something. That is why Template redirects are different from Article redirects. Kumioko (talk) 03:15, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Article redirects have the same property that it is not possible to add additional parameters using them, if they are transcluded somewhere. There is no technical difference between having templates in their own namespace or in the article namespace - the semantics of transclusion and redirection are identicial. The way that article redirects behave is exactly how template redirects behave, and vice versa. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:19, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough but we don't need parameters on article redirects do we. At least not that I have ever seen. I guess it might have uses but I can't see how its relevant. Anyway, I'm done discussing this. Your just trying to get me to agree your right by manipulating the conversation and trying to confuse other readers. Its bad enough you made the discussion at AWB into an endurance test that few are going to wade through. Well played BTW. If you can't convince them your right at least make the discussion so long and confusing that few are going to read through the whole thing ensuring status quo. Its really disappointing how this sort of tactic is used in ENWP these days. And people say I am a jerk because I am blunt. I find these underhanded shenanigans much more irritating. Kumioko (talk) 03:30, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

This is outrageous

Carl,

Arthur has notified me that I am in jeopardy of a 3rr violation. This is harassment. My last edit involved removing the template that Arthur wanted removed. So it consists in a cooperative act. I'm furious about this, and I am justified in being so. Furthermore, the disambiguation of type-token was productive, and it was reverted. The change from abstraction to concept makes the language neutral, rather than presuming the existence of abstract objects, which is not universally agreed upon. Arthur is in the wrong, and is acting like a child. Please do not help him, and please help me get the situation under control. Greg Bard (talk) 08:56, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

The warning seems heavy handed to me. The diff was not very good at showing exactly what changes had been made [1] and I really did not see that "concept"/"abstraction" change in it. I left several sections on the talk page yesterday to try to start some conversation. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:18, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for being so reasonable.Greg Bard (talk) 12:21, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Are there predicate of variable arity?

I know variadic functions are useful in programming but have you ever heard of this in some logic context? Tijfo098 (talk) 15:58, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

There is nothing in principle to prevent it, but I cannot think of any presentation I have seen that includes predicates with variable arities. After all you could replace them with a sequence of predicates each with a different fixed arity, and you would be back at the usual system, so there is no gain. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

That was what I was thinking too, i.e. they are of limited usefulness mathematically. Btw, it looks like Quine considered such multigrade predicates in his efforts to give formal semantics to natural languages; see talk: term (logic). This was in the 1950s or so. Tijfo098 (talk) 01:30, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it's not that simple, because if one wants to quantify over the variable-length arguments, one gets MSO not FO logic [2]; this is the so-called plural quantification. Tijfo098 (talk) 04:36, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

If one is only quantifying over finite sequences, rather than viewing these "variable arity" predicates as taking a single variable set variable, then it will still be first order. The deeper issue with "plural quantification" is that it is just a disguised form of set theory, in my analysis of it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:12, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Information

I noticed your username commenting at an Arbcom discussion regarding civility. An effort is underway that would likely benifit if your views were included. I hope you will append regards at: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Civility enforcement/Questionnaire Thank you for considering this request. My76Strat (talk) 05:30, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Opinion requested

Could you please take a look at this? It seems like it's at the very least not in the spirit of Alan Liefting's topic ban to be posting CFDs, even if not expressly forbidden by it, and in any event his topic ban prevents him from being able to post a proper CFD because he can't tag the categories. So I don't see that he should be at CFD at all other than to participate in discussions others have already started. postdlf (talk) 21:24, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that it violates at least the spirit of the ban. However, unless the volume of CFDs becomes very large, I don't think that I am willing to block him for it. I will check again in several days to see whether he has avoided explicitly changing the categories on any non-articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:09, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Peer review maintenance issues again

Hi Carl, I just went to do the PR archive maintenance for December at Wikipedia talk:Peer review/Maintenance and the new month is still November, while last month is still October. I will get a screen shot next in case you can't see it right away. I will also make the files by hand. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:50, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, I did all the necessary maintenance, but it still reads Nov and Oct (not Dec and Nov). Is it on EDT not UTC? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:56, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

When I look at the page, I don't see October on it - did I miss it? It could be that you are seeing a cached version that is old, or that one of the servers has a clock that is off. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:04, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm. I had not been on the page in several days, so I assumed it was not a cache. I was using IE 8 and used CTRL F5 to purge / reload the page. I also have the gadget where you can purge by clicking on the time in the upper right corner and when I did that just now, it brought up the correct version. Sorry to bother you and hope all is well, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:53, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

It's no problem. The different servers are sometimes off from each other, but not usually by more than a few minutes. More likely it was a caching issue. In the past couple years they have turned up the caching for logged in users, which previously was not so aggressive. The dates on that page are only recalculated when the page is parsed, so if your version was cached it could be very old. The system does not realize that it has to be reparsed without being re-edited, so even if you are gone a few days it could still be cached. You can also force it to be reparsed by making a null edit to the page, or changing some white space. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:03, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, I will make sure to purge with the clock gadget next time before trying anything else (that forces it too). Thanks again for all you do, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:09, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Loves Libraries Seattle

Decemmber 8 - Wikipedia Loves Libraries Seattle - You're invited

Seattle Public Library

Date Saturday, December 8, 2012 Time 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Location Seattle Public Library Meeting Room 1 on Level 4, Central Library, 1000 4th Avenue, Seattle WA, 98104 Event An editathon on Seattle-related Wikipedia articles with Wikipedia tutorials and Librarian assistance on hand. Hashtag #wikiloveslib or #glamwiki. Registration http://wll-seattle.eventbrite.com or use on-wiki regsistration. Yours, Maximilianklein (talk) 04:11, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

More pointless reversions

I really do wish you would stop with the pointless reversions like this. The bot cleaned up the category and a couple other things while it was there. Even if it was not needed your pointless and petty reversion serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than to antagonize Magioladitis. If the edit Yobot did was pointless in your opinion then bring it up, don't revert it. Its just a wast of resources and completely disrespectful of others time in doing these good faith edits. Kumioko (talk) 22:50, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I have to say I don't agree with you. The edits you are talking about are a clear violation of the AWB rules against cosmetic edits. It must have been a good faith error of Magioladitis to allow Yobot to save these edits, because no reasonable bot operator would think that it is acceptable to run a bot job solely to change the capitalization of category links. Moreover, some editors prefer to use HTML entities over the Unicode equivalents, and WP:MOSMATH allows HTML entities to be used; there is no policy-based reason to change them to Unicode symbols, and doing so makes articles harder to edit.

If you continue to raise this sort of issue on my talk page, I am not likely to bother responding any further, because I think you know my opinion, and would be aware of the community norms if you spend the necessary time to learn them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:06, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Obviously we don't agree. That much at least is certainly clear. If the edits are a clear violation (and I don't believe they are) and you mean what you say then reverting them is just as much a violation as the edits themselves were. I also think that you are wrong that fixing the categorization is a violation. There is no reason to not allow the fixes to categories.

I also think its completely inappropriate for you to state he is not a reasonable bot operator. I believe he is doing a great job. Maybe if you think he is doing a bad job you could use some of your bot programming skills to make a bot that actually does edits to articles rather than just bots that have no benefit whatsoever to the articles themselves. I think if maybe you were actually down in the trenches doing edits to more than the same 10 articles, or reverting the work of others rather than doing some of your own, I would probably feel differently, but when the majority of your work over the last month is pointless reverts, then its hard for me to think of you as a meaningful editor. A great programmer yes, but that is not what this place is about and I think you have lost sight of that.

I also think that you are completely wrong when you say it makes the articles harder to edit. It might if the editor is a mathematician or a programmer that's true, but most editors are not and therefore using HTML code for this non sense just makes it harder for the majority of editors to edit. We shouldn't be writing in code so the elitists can practice their craft, we should make things easy and inviting.

Basically, I think these reverts are petty and childish. I think you are doing it just to be an irritation because to be frank, doing the edit or not doing the edit doesn't harm the article. So having some jerk revert it just to prove a point, is just plain abusive to other editors. Personally I think you are a childish bully and your reverts are akin to a child throwing a temper tantrum and sticking out their tongue.

I would also add that I understand the rules perfectly well I just choose to interpret them differently. I see a lot of gray area where it appears you see only black and white with no gray whatsoever. A trait common to people who are good logical thinkers and would be drawn to a profession like full time mathematician. Perfectly respectable and a well suited career to you I think. You seem to be very good at it, but you also seem to not be very good at interpreting policies that require common sense when there are gray areas.

Lastly, this is your talk page and you are free to delete my edits, respond or not respond as you see fit but don't think for a second I won't call you out, just as I would any other editor, for doing something that appears to be nothing but intentionally antagonizing a fellow editor. There are already too many editors like you who think because you are an admin and have some extra tools you rule the roost and you can do what you want. Kumioko (talk) 02:10, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Confusing bot

Please could someone look at this bot's behaviour over on fecal incontinence. A peer review was closed before anyone had carried out the review. TY lesion (talk) 20:12, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The bot is doing what it is supposed to do, but the peer review people have been having issues lately with not getting to every peer review before it is automatically closed. You can safely re-open the peer review (just undo the bot's edit on the article talk page and on the peer review page). You should also ask at WT:PR for someone to look into the article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:24, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I see, thanks for advice I will do this.lesion (talk) 21:37, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Further to above, I undid the bot's archiving. Is a bot supposed to auto generate a section on this page Wikipedia:Peer review#Natural sciences and mathematics from the text entered on the articles PR page? (Wikipedia:Peer review/Fecal incontinence/archive1). Thanks for advice. lesion (talk) 21:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The bot does do it, but there can be a delay before it refreshes the list. The peer review is showing up now in the "Social sciences" section of the page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:56, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I still don't see why the bot placed it under social sciences...probably a mistake of mine when I listed it for PR...but thanks for your help.lesion (talk) 22:57, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

This edit should fix it the next time the bot updates the category lists. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:08, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. lesion (talk) 19:02, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	Damn you bots. They are too awesome. Ankit MaityTalkContribs 09:50, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Inquiry about Assessment Data

Hello, me and user:EpochFail are working into building a predictive model to understand how social groups affect the quality of articles. We have attempted so far to use the AFT4 data as our predictor variable but we suspect there may be bias in human-reported reader quality measures. We believe that the official editor ratings may prove to be a more accurate predictor variable and therefore give us a better understanding in how social groups of editors affect article quality. Which brings me to my point. Is there any way that we can gain access in the editor ratings records tracked by the bot (e.g. if there is database through toolserver)? Also, does the bot maintain a historical record of older ratings or just current ratings for articles? Thanks in advance and please feel free to ask any questions you may have related to the project. Michael Tsikerdekis (talk) 12:13, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I can give you data from the toolserver database where the current records are. The historical data is stored in log pages such as Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality log. The page history of these can be parsed to extract all the ratings by that project over time. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:56, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Carl! If you could give the current ratings for the pages based on the toolserver database it would be great. Later on, we may try and retrieve history records through the logs. Could you send the dataset on my email tsikerdekis ( at ) gmail.com or through google drive? I also have an account on toolserver but no access on the database (but EpochFail does). Michael Tsikerdekis (talk) 22:30, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

There are millions of records in the database - do you have some particular set of articles you are interested in? I can give you ratings for a particular project, or for a particular set of articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:57, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

It's better to have a random sample of articles, or better yet a stratified random sample for model building. For the 9 assessment categories (including lists for now, FA,A,GA,B,C,Start,Stub,FL,List) could you sample 10,000 records for each category randomly? Michael Tsikerdekis (talk) 08:08, 5 December 2012 (UTC) UPDATE: Just saw that the A category has 1063 articles only and the FA has less than 10,000. It is more important to have equal numbers between categories than a large number of articles. Could you give me a random sample that contains 1,000 records for each category? Michael Tsikerdekis (talk) 08:15, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I can easily give you 1,000 random article titles that currently have each assessment; as I was saying the only records I have on the toolserver are the current ratings. If you're interested in seeing the history, you will have two issues. The first is that the same article could have different ratings by different projects, so you have to decide which project's history of assessments you want to look at. The second issue is that you'd need someone to write code to parse the history logs on the wiki to get the data you are interested in.

There are two different ways I can pick the random sample. I can sample from the set of pairs (project, article) to get 1000 with each rating, or I can sample just from the set of articles, taking the highest rating for each one as the "overall" rating. I will get slightly different results depending on how I do it; the former way will be more likely to select articles that are rated by multiple projects, the latter way doesn't select any individual project for each article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:58, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Interesting choices I have :-) . Well, let's go with the latter one and obtain the best rating even if an article is rated by multiple projects. This will make the final model slightly more optimistic probably as I am assuming that projects with the most vested interest in an article will rate more favorably. But, I don't see this as a big problem for what we are trying to do. As for the historical records, if need be I can write a script to obtain historical records but for now we'll try to predict quality based on the current ratings. Btw, is there on the database a date field for when the current rating was declared by a project? We'll be retrieving historical records on all articles and this will help us retrieve all revision information before the moment an article is given a current rating. Michael Tsikerdekis (talk) 17:36, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I will send you the data over the weekend. I do have the dates for them, because the assessment is technically accomplished by putting the talk page in a category, and a date is stored for when each page in a category was most recently added to the category. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:15, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I put a selection of 1,000 articles from each quality rating at http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/data/RatingsData.20121208.txt . — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:27, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you very much for your help! Michael Tsikerdekis (talk) 15:50, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review bot: increasing time before automatic closure

You may be aware that a shortage of regular peer reviewers means that a large number of peer review pages are being closed by the bot after 14 days, without review comments. I have suggested that the interval ought to be increased to 21 days, to improve articles' chances of getting reviewed; some discussion on this particular point is shown on the WP:FAC talkpage. Would it be possible to effect this change, which can only be helpful in the present attempts to revive peer review? Brianboulton (talk) 18:50, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I am happy to implement whatever consensus goes for, as long as (like here) there are no technical issues. I will make the change over the weekend. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:12, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I made the change. I also added some documentation to the PeerReviewBot user page; the criteria were in the bot request but that is a more obscure location. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:33, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much! Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:39, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Font size

You are right on this one per WP:FONTSIZE. There is no need to change the font size. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:41, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

There is also no reason to replace the <font tag, though, and WP:MOSTEXT does not say anything about it. This is another CHECKWIKI "error" that is not actually an error. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:43, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Font face should be removed per WP:FONTFAMILY. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:46, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

On one hand, the edit in question did not change the font face [3]. On the other hand, the MOS says not to do it with CSS, so changing to the span tag with a style attribute is not any better. The MOS says nothing about the font tag in particular. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:50, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

FONT is deprecated in HTML 4 in favor of CSS stylesheets. SPAN is a generic inline container. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:50, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

There are many discussion in various forums in the net. Here is one link: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4182554/html-css-font-color-vs-span-style -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:54, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I am very aware of the status of the <font> tag in HTML. But every browser supports it, and will for the foreseeable future. There is a significant difference between "valid HTML" from the standards pint of view and "valid HTML" from the browser point of view.

At the same time, an edit summary that claims that replacing <font> with <span> is somehow replacing HTML with wikitext is nonsense, because both are HTML, and both are also valid wikitext. This seems to be yet another thing that was thrown into CHECKWIKI without adequate discussion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:39, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Heads up

Speedy vandalism reverts indicates this may need attention [4], and [5]. Thanks. 99.135.5.186 (talk) 00:20, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

There was an announcement that someone would come in as an editor and start deleting this exact information today, which together with these edits[6], [7], and [8], followed by this identical edit, supports that there may be a WP:SP issue. 64.134.223.140 (talk) 20:43, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I have not had time to consider it carefully, but the "announcement" does raise a point: is there a sound rationale to name the children? — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:53, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Does not WP:BLP apply to the children? JRSpriggs (talk) 04:05, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

That is precisely the issue I was wondering about. I did not have a chance to look into it with the detail I need to make my own decision. But it appears that someone else has removed the information about the children, and my first thought is that removal was probably correct. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:03, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Count vs number assessed/not assessed

This is a post I just put on the WikiProject Math talk page, but I wanted to send it to you since you seemed to have knowledge of the scope/function of the bot that looks for article assessments. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help with this!

I was pleased to find that there are more than 2800 articles in the project, which is mentioned here on the project page. I was also pleased to find that there are fewer than 200 articles in need of assessment, which is found here on the project page.

However, the total number of articles in the assessment table (~10,500) is much less than the number of articles (>28,000). Clearly there are many articles not in being assessed - some of them are important, and even some good, such as Implicit function theorem. This is a major issue. Does anyone know the reason, or a way that I could help?

Thanks, Brent Perreault (talk) 15:06, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

I left a long comment on the wikiproject page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:18, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Feel free to delete the posting here if you think it's appropriate. Brent Perreault (talk) 15:56, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Script update

Can you please update your script (I don't if this easy or not) not to move above WPBIO, at least in the case there is a blp tag attached? -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:01, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 21

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Seasons greetings

	Happy Holidays 2012! Happy New Year and all the best in 2013! Thanks for all you do here, and best wishes for the year to come.
	Ruhrfisch ><>°° 03:14, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

This holiday season...

		Festivus for the rest of us!
		Frank Costanza: "Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way." Cosmo Kramer: "What happened to the doll?" Frank Costanza: "It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!" Kramer: "That must have been some kind of doll." Frank Costanza: "She was." This holiday season, have a fantastic Festivus! —Theopolisme 16:00, 25 December 2012 (UTC) Spread the Festivus Miracle by adding {{subst|User:Theopolisme/festivus}} to someone's talk page.

would like deleted page on author Dudley M. Lynch

I'm interested in getting the data from the deleted page of Dudley M. Lynch, author of the Duke of Duval, an account of a political machine in South Texas. The nickname "Landslide Lyndon" was given to the future president when he squeaked out a victory for the US senate in 1948. This story is recounted in Mr. Lynch's book, and involved the shady political dealings of the Dukes of Duval. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chester minute (talk • contribs) 05:46, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Could you tell me the exact title of the deleted article? In most cases it is no problem to send a copy of the deleted article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:50, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

archieve

Hello, you Archived wrong peer review on Priyanka Chopra award list. This is the new peer review which has started just today and not even got any feedback. I had reverted your edit. You can help by informing Featured list candidate bot to archive the FLC nomination. Thank you.—PKS:1142 · ^(TALK) 11:43, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Alan Liefting block

Can you leave a block notice? I saw your summary, "violation of a topic ban", but being unfamiliar with the underlying situation, I don't know what the topic ban he violated was. His recent actions included a lot of removing redlinked images, so I'm curious if he got blocked for a completely procedural edit which he might not have understood he was making. Ryan Vesey 15:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Woops, I found the notice. Ryan Vesey 15:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, are you able to link to the topic ban? From the earliest blocks, it appears that he was blocked for removing mainspace categories from AFC pages. To my knowledge, mainspace categories should not be included in template space and some of his edits, removing Category:Religion from Category:Catholocism for example, were just examples of removing categories when their subcategories were already used. Ryan Vesey 15:20, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Found it [9] but it sure is disappointing that someone can be blocked for a month for editing constructively. Ryan Vesey 15:22, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

The root of the issue seems to be that Alan feels that templates and images should never be in content categories, but there is no broad consensus overall to unilaterally remove those pages from those categories. He was also removing content categories from draft articles in user space, which was viewed as unfriendly to new editors. The issue went to ANI several times [10] [11] and eventually a topic ban passed. I also think that Alan does a lot of constructive editing, so it is sad to see him going back to category-related edits when there are many other things (like redlinked images) where he can edit seemingly without any complaints. The length of the block is just a reflection that this is the fourth block under the editing restriction; the original blocks were much shorter. The fact that this is the fourth block is also why I didn't link to the original discussions in the block note, just to the most recent one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Peer review bot issue

Hi Carl, the peer review bot seems to have stopped transcluding peer reviews on WP:PR. Please see here. Thanks for all you do, and in advance for any help solving this issue. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:51, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Simple English proposal at the Pump

Hello,

As one of the participants in the Bot Request about getting the Simple Wiki to the top of the Languages, you are invited to participate in the reopened discussion of the same. Your feedback will be appreciated.

Cheers, TheOriginalSoni (talk) 16:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, CBM. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals).
Message added 18:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

TheOriginalSoni (talk) 18:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Maths

Right - I'll go through and add 'em in in a bit. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:06, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:07, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Sure. It may have to wait a couple of hours, but I don't see why I can't do it before bed. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:08, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:09, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

College football articles by quality log

CBM, I've noticed something buggy going on at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/College football articles by quality log. Three articles (Saint Peter's Peacocks football, Siena Saints football, St. John's Red Storm football) keep coming up as reassessed on every run of the log. Can you look into that? Thanks and all the best, Jweiss11 (talk) 16:02, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

The issue is that the toolserver database has some bad info in it, so it appears to the bot as if the pages are in multiple categories. This is not visible on the wiki, but there is a tool you can use to see what categories the toolserver thinks the page is in, located here. The only solution I know is to delete and then undelete the talk page, which will fix the info in the toolserver's database. Two other maintainers have taken over the WP 1.0 bot, by the way, Theopolisme and Wolfgang42. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. User talk:WP 1.0 bot still directs such issues to you. Perhaps that should be updated. I'll follow up with the new maintainers. Thanks again. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:33, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I had forgotten about that page. The user page was updated, but not the user talk. I have fixed it now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:40, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Comment needed

I made this Feature Request: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature_requests#Don.27t_replace_underscores_from_certain_wikilinks. Please write us your opinion about it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

New math article

Born-oppenheimer equation and The Born-Oppenheimer Equation for Time-Dependent Molecular Systems are two new identical articles. I'm not entirely sure why the article should be around as it appears to be some duplication to Born–Oppenheimer. I see Eigenfunctions are present and all I remember about them from college 100 years ago makes me want to curl up in a fetal position. As this is more up your alley, could you take a look. Bgwhite (talk) 07:06, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I will try to look into it. It's not really my area - mathematics is very diverse, and I know very little about either differential equations or quantum mechanics. But I can make do well enough to figure out why there are three articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:58, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Epeefleche

You may or may not be aware that the RFC/U on Epeefleche's approach to removing easily and obviously verifiable content has closed. Epeefleche essentially ignored you and I, and refused to respond to the main point of my criticism. The closing admin, also, has gone on to completely ignore your and my perspectives also in taking Epeefleche's side. Yes, there was a roughly two-thirds split against my position (keeping in mind that there was some circumstantial evidence of offwiki canvassing, including that Epeefleche has a background of doing exactly that), but that's not a unanimous enough reason to categorically ignore one side, and then to criticise me. This is an outright endorsement of the strategies and approaches used by Epeefleche's side, i.e., that wikidramamongering is an effective defence against any criticism and to silence opponents.

I no longer care. This is the final nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned regarding the culture at wikipedia. I have retired, primarily due to the admin conduct around the wikidrama of this RFC/U, and do not intend to return. There are other communities around the web that I have found which are far less combative and far less tolerant of dramamongers, and perhaps I'll see you there. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 00:39, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the note. There were so may conflicting factors at the RFC that I am not particularly surprised by the outcome - I did not post an opinion there because I thought it would be futile. I hope that you have good luck and a good time elsewhere, and hopefully we'll meet again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:33, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, CBM. Please check your email; you've got mail! The subject is Question.
Message added 15:40, 15 March 2013 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

—Theopolisme (talk) 15:40, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning it here. I sent a response. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:28, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Banner Tag

Hi, I've noticed you tagged your sandboxes with the WP:Japan banners. Not sure what your intent is, but the pages show up in lists and categories of Japanese articles, such as where I first noticed, here: Category:Unknown-importance Japan-related articles. If your intent was to keep the banners on-hand as a reminder somehow, might I suggest you link to the template page? You can find it here: Template:WikiProject Japan. Hope this helps. Boneyard90 (talk) 15:11, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I blanked the pages again. In general the WP 1.0 bot ignores ratings on user pages, so the templates there would not affect the overall statistics. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:54, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

It showed up again in the Category:Unknown-importance Japan-related articles. Difficult to ignore. Can you make it importance =na ? Boneyard90 (talk) 17:16, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I removed the tags entirely, which should have made it go away. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:04, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Joke requests

That's an April Fools' Day tradition. Where is there precedent that it's a blockable offense if it's clearly being done as a harmless April Fools' prank? I see none. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:32, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

• And yes, I was blocked, but you're forgetting the part about how a.) I was blocked by a trigger-happy admin a good three hours after I had stopped pranking, and b.) was swiftly unblocked by one admin who agreed that blocking for April Fools' pranks was over the line. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:34, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Many of the pranks aren't harmless. If you try to pull off a joke but screw something up in the process, I'd say a block for the rest of the day is fair. Especially if it's the 14th joke AfD you've created. ‑Scottywong| gab _ 04:07, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

• Very funny. Now can you undelete it? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 19:23, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Deleting infobox parameters

Hi ... I'm having a discussion with an editor here with regard to the deletion of infobox parameters that are as yet unused -- for example, date of death. I think I once saw you discuss the issue, so if you like feel free to add in your thoughts at that discussion, whatever they may be. --Epeefleche (talk) 04:51, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Block of Alan Liefting

Greetings CBM. I wanted to know that I made a comment at Alan's talk page regarding your recent block. I think it was an extremely poor decision and only proves that the Arbcom sanction against him does more to limit improvements to the pedia than to protecting it. It is a punishment for the sake of a punishment and does nothing to protect anything. Least of all the project. Based on a familiarity with your edits and demeanor I am certain you won't, but I encourage you to reconsider your block. Kumioko (talk) 13:19, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

• Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "Alan Liefting and long blocks". Thank you. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:04, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at ANI

• I have opened a discussion at ANI about the situation on Alan's talk page. Kumioko (talk) 14:48, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Curry's Paradox

Hi, if I may quote you, on your last comment on Curry's Paradox talk page, you said: «The argument does not have any extra assumption in it, which is why it is a paradox. The argument proves that "if this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists" is actually true, by proving that if the hypothesis is true, then Santa Claus exists. The ability to prove this is the source of the paradox. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:37, 16 March 2013 (UTC)», of which I must disagree (you can see my comments on the article's talk page). Where is the proofing ability? Where is the paradox? I came to you because you seem an expert in this theme.

Let's assume "If this sentence is true, then Germany borders China" is true. Then its contrapositive, is "If Germany doesn't border China, then this sentence is not true." Unlike other paradoxes, such as Russell's paradox (the example of the barbers is good to understand it), where the sentence may not be true nor false (the barber must shave himself, because he is a man who doesn't shave himself, and thus he becomes a man that shaves himself, so he must not shave himself), in this case it may be false, which breaks the supposed paradox. Isn't this right? I'd thank you for an answer to this, in order for me to either prove you wrong or understand something I don't understand yet, and being able to contribute to the respective article (and others related to that "naive set theory logic". JMCF125 (talk) 22:30, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

The first step in understanding the paradox is realizing that the way that one proves a statement of the form "if A, then B" is to assume A and then show that B must hold. That is the standard method for proving implications in mathematics. The second step is to apply that process to the sentence "If this sentence is true, then Germany borders China." — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:33, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I know modus ponens, but I don't think it can be applied when the first premise isn't true; how can it yield true when the first premise is false? That way, I could say "If I'm right, 2+2=5", and as the first premise "if I'm right" relies of truthiness of the statement, and the truthiness of the statement relies on the first premise, it is clear that assuming that one is true, they would both (and, consequently, 2+2=5) be true. My point is that it is not necessary for any of them to be true, and that, by contraposition (in this case "if 2+2≠5, I'm not right"), it is utterly impossible for any of them to be true; while it is necessary for them to be false. Can you tell me what prevents them from being all false? Thank you for your time. JMCF125 (talk) 10:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

If both the hypothesis and conclusion of in implication are false, then the overall implication is true - that is part of the definition of the material conditional. There is only one way that an implication "if P then Q" can be false - if P is true and Q is false.

Apply that to the sentence C = "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists". So P is "this sentence is true" and Q is "Santa Claus exists". If the overall sentence C is false, that means that P is true and Q is false. But P says that C is true, so assuming that C is false leads to a contradiction... That on its own shows that the sentence C cannot be false. But then, since Santa Claus doesn't exist, C should not be true, either, and we have a paradox.

It may also be that you are trying to find a way to make the paradoxical sentence non-paradoxical - that's impossible. Yes, it is very strange that C cannot be false, because our initial guess is that it should not be true. But, much like "this sentence is false", there is no coherent way to assign it a truth value, which is what makes it a paradox. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah, now I see (specially thanks to the first paragraph). And I notice the contrapositive, "If Germany doesn't border China, then this sentence is false", isn't true or false either. The converse "If Germany borders China, then this sentence is true" and the inverse "If this sentence is false, Germany doesn't border China" seem to be under the same circumstances. Thank you for explaining this to me. I did have the feeling I was missing something... JMCF125 (talk) 17:26, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Re

Yobot is not my concern, but Wikipedia's instruction creep and bureaucracy are problematic and ambiguous rules are one part of the problem. In all fairness, you yourself are calling the kettle black. NBSP Reverting valid plurals here. The NBSP matter is interesting though because while it imparts no change it does impart changes. So agree to disagree... the actual matter from Materialscientist was NBSP and Simplify links. Strange though that CHECKWIKI issues (valid as they are) and performed by an approved bot are deemed as such, even when they are backed by WP:MOS. I'd like to pick your brain instead of trying to make a battleground out of it. Specifically, what threshold counts as insignificant? What about WP:MOS which defines these errors for corrections? If a correcting a single typo is valid, why not correcting all or just one issue? NBSP is a prime example, it is of great help to mobile users, but most editors will not know how to put it in, should another editor be criticized for simply correcting it? Does the individual who neglects the correction or is unaware of it in other pages to blame? No, this whole 'insignificant edit' matter draws ire for a few reasons and those reasons typically stand in the way of improving it. Watchlist disruption appears to be the major concern, but not even bots can avoid it, and if the editors were so troubled by such changes why not AWB it themselves and fix said issues, they are all done in mass. Bots cause more issues when they selectively go about 'tasks' and avoid all others. AWB for me leads to interesting issues being fixed like on Bugs bunny where my AWB run let me catch wind of the Persondata for a fictional character which I stripped out. AWB edits are not supposed to be combined with manual edits without stating it as such because the tag always appears to be semi-automated. Though a issue which I should bring up, but I don't think you care about, the issues with the pages for things like punctuation after refs, format and links are all under MOS, and why they bother people is because there is this weird belief that edits = importance. I don't bask in self-righteous glory because I have X number of edits, but I do like the fact that I correct a lot of typos for TypoScan. I find enjoyment in correcting errors, and what constitutes a significant error is different for everyone. And once the issues are done and corrected most pages won't see an AWB edit from me for years. To keep skipping the same pages on the genfix list over and over really made me question 'why', but it was the previous discussion and MaterialScientist which gave me the impetus to try and define this. A little pushback is what I expect, nay require, to come to a decision about it. Because aren't we all liable to be accused for that little NBSP that makes a difference or making sure that italicized title exists and bolding the title of the article in that first sentence? Those kinds of edits contribute to the functionality and workings of Wikipedia just as the spider curtails the insect population. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 16:34, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The issue is not insignificant edits on their own - it's the combination of insignficant edits and AWB, which allows editors to make thousands of insignificant edits in a single 4-hours editing session. There is no general rule against editors making a few insignificant edits by hand on articles they have been editing - it may even be a good idea. But there has never been community consensus for bots and bot-like AWB editors to go around making trivial changes such as just removing underscores, replacing redirects, etc. - things which are arguably not problems at all, since the articles are fine as they are. That latter fact may explain why editors don't "just do it themselves".

Separately, there is no reason not to combine manual edits with AWB edits, it's perfectly fine. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:57, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

VeblenBot and GA Review question

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_reassessment#Talk:No_worries.2FGA2_request_for_community_reassessment, do you know how to fix this? — Cirt (talk) 18:38, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind, we've found a workable solution, — Cirt (talk) 05:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Max User Connections

Hi, I was trying to view the number of particular quality articles in the Atheism Wikiproject but am receiving the error message 'User 'enwp10' has exceeded the 'max_user_connections' resource (current value: 15)'. Anything you can do about this? The lists would be very useful to me. Cheers, Samwalton9 (talk) 14:21, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, CBM. You have new messages at I dream of horses's talk page.
Message added 04:47, 8 May 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Toolserver dead?

Hi Carl, do you know anything more about the status of various bots and tools now that Toolserver is down / dead? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 22:42, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

The server seems to be back up - I can login to it. But the automated jobs are not running properly yet, they seem to be just sitting in the queue. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks - I can archive peer reviews by hand if worse comes to worse. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 10:52, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

zeteo

Hi, since you expressed some interest in zeteo in the past, I would like to draw your attention to a post concerning it, here. Thanks, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 04:52, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Peer review

Why was this peer review archived if no one replied to it? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 08:04, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

The criteria are listed at User:PeerReviewBot/Logs/Archive. You can re-open the review - the bot won't re-close it immediately or anything like that. But usually when the bot is closing uncommented peer reviews it means that you should leave a comment at WT:Peer review to point out that they are getting a backlog. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:50, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Update tool not functioning

I've been wanting to update the Wikipedia:WikiProject Oklahoma assessment list but the update tool is taking me to an error message. There seems to be other tool malfunctions also. Could you solve the problem? Okheric (talk) 18:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

The toolserver in general has been having severe problems lately. I stepped down from maintaining the bot some time ago, but in this case I think the toolserver problems are the real issue. I would recommend checking WT:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index which is the central discussion page for the WP 1.0 system. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:21, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to take a short survey about communication and efficiency of WikiProjects for my research

Hi Carl, I'm working on a project to study the running of WikiProject and possible performance measures for it. I learn from WikiProject Mathematics talk page that you are an active member of the project. I would like to invite you to take a short survey for my study. If you are available to take our survey, could you please reply an email to me? I'm new to Wikipedia, I can't send too many emails to other editors due to anti-spam measure. Thank you very much for your time. Xiangju (talk) 15:49, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Hewitt again?

Hi, Carl. Looking at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Carl Hewitt#Log of blocks and bans you seem to be the administrator most familiar with the situation. There is a new report Wikipedia:ANI#User:AnotherPseudonym and Carl Hewitt. Could you comment on that one? Psychotropic sentence (talk) 06:02, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Prufrock and cite templates

I appreciate that you offered your input on that discussion.--ColonelHenry (talk) 16:38, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I think the issue with templates there seems to be resolved now, so it should be possible for you to go back to regular article work, without having to continue to re-argue something that was settled years ago. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:09, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• Apparently it's not resolved. Bender seems to be belligerent about it and resolved to do it just for spite.--ColonelHenry (talk) 00:37, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Two other people have commented on the thread at WT:CITE - I hope you can let some other people comment, let the situation cool down, and move on to more productive things.

By the way, I thought that one of your comments on your talk page is a perfect example of the reason for CITEVAR. You shouldn't have to stop what you are otherwise doing to argue with some random person about whether to change the citation style in an article you're working on - particularly when both sides of the argument come down mostly to personal taste. It's an enormous waste of productivity for everyone involved, and the basic purpose of CITEVAR is to bring those conversations to a faster end. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:14, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

The situation would have been way cooler had ColonelHenry not called me "a dick" while deliberately ignoring all the inconsistency in his citation style which I pointed out, and if you had not accused me of "badgering" people. --bender235 (talk) 18:52, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

@Carl. What is it about Wikipedia that brings this out in people? I have never run into so many editors who are deliberately obtuse and intractable on cut-and-dry easy-to-follow issues. I know I am no saint, but at least I walk away when I'm wrong.--ColonelHenry (talk) 11:57, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

User:Bender235, cite templates, harassment

I've repeatedly asked User:Bender235 to stop contacting me, he persisted, I brought it to WP:ANI, and instead of instructing Bender235 to stop contacting me (which is a simple request), the microscope is turned on me rather than stopping the harassment. If you're interested, please help at WP:ANI#I have asked a User:Bender235 to stop contacting me, user persists..

It was obvious the AN/I post was ridiculous. Trying the WP:MEAT tactic won't help. --bender235 (talk) 15:53, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Other templates

Something I wonder, since (like WP:WCC) this is something I do, too: is the "unilateral addition" of templates like {{Persondata}} or {{Authority control}} also discouraged by some rule I am not aware of? I'm asking because adding these is a lot of effort, and I would not want to waste my time on this if someone later reverted all of it. Then I wouldn't attempt to do it in the first place. --bender235 (talk) 18:52, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

There are only a few areas that come mind where there are special rules: national English variations (WP:RETAIN), date styles (WP:DATERET), and citations (WP:CITEVAR). There is also general advice in the lede of WP:MOS. The similarity that these have is that they all concern purely stylistic issues. We know from many, extremely long discussions that there is no general agreement about these issues, so in these special cases we arbitrarily choose the first significant contributor solely to avoid interminable discussions about which option is better. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:16, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I'll continue to add those templates then. --bender235 (talk) 20:43, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

[V]SPACEVAR?

Hi Carl. Judging by your post at ANI today you are an expert on issues such as citation variations (CITEVAR) and other kinds of style-related variations. Were there any discussions about vertical spacing (amount and syntax used) in articles and perhaps how they related to individual editors' preferences? I've asked a question at the talk page of MOS whether MOS regulates vertical spacing in some way. Perhaps you know... 86.121.18.17 (talk) 21:20, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

There is no firm rule that I know about. AWB will change the number of blank lines in various ways as part of its general fixes, and some editors change it in other ways as part of their manual editing. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:31, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

So, if some editors choose to prevent AWB from making certain changes, then forcing changes like Special:Contributions/91.10.19.237 tried is basically a bad idea per "If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor" from MOS? 86.121.18.17 (talk) 05:28, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Whenever things like that get discussed, the discussions seem to go around in circles. On the one hand, there is some desire for consistency; on the other hand, the MOS does say that optional things should not be changed on a whim. If an editor persists long enough at this sort of thing, and enough people get irritated, then eventually some ad hoc prohibition is enforced, but it takes a really persistent editor to achieve that. But most of the time there is no very satisfying conclusion. I would suggest just asking the IP to stop, and see if that works. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:01, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for June 20

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<math> to {{math}}

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Linear_function_(calculus)&diff=561961528&oldid=561960649

I noticed one orphan </math> left after your edit, but it is a petty matter. It is more important that you neglect to italicize variables. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:17, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I thought that the {{math}} already took care of that! Frankly, I was somewhat irritated that you unilaterally added the <mvar> and {{math}} syntax to the article, but I did not remove it. However, it is an enormous irritation to deal with, and so if you prefer to keep it, I'll leave it to you to add whatever you need to all the variables. My personal fix would be to go back to the style I used originally, when I wikified the article from HTML, which I find much easier to make consistent. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:21, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Generally, I only converted bare wiki to {{math}}. Although I ultimately agreed that {{math}}ification of Robinson arithmetic was not necessary because it does not use <math>, the situation is different for Linear function (calculus) because it needs either <math> or {{math}} and should not be written in simple wiki code only. I hope, you know that <math> + {{math}} looks more uniform than <math> + bare wiki. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:31, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Surely you know there is no consensus that {{math}} is an improvement over bare wiki formatting. I am making an effort here to compromise by not returning to the bare wiki formatting I originally used. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:33, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Surely I know, because I demonstrated a past example where bare wiki is an acceptable solution. Initial Lfahlberg’s version constituted a mix of <math> with bare wiki, and his wiki was a dirty, illiterate wiki without spaces and littered with detestable U+002D - HYPHEN-MINUS. I opted to replace a poor bare wiki with a professional-grade "texhtml" template formatting. What would you advice me in this situation: to convert all article to <math> and wait a half-minute until MathJax processed dozens of expressions like $A$? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:45, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Look, I'm trying to compromise here, but when I have to take time to defend myself on my talk page - when I was not the one who put the awful {{math}} style on the article in the first place - it makes me feel as if my effort to compromise is not being reciprocated. It makes me wonder whether I should have just removed the {{math}} syntax, which was added without any discussion and with no note in the edit summary [12], gone back to bare wiki style that was used previously, removed the remaining <math> tags that I didn't have time to remove originally, and washed my hands of the matter.

I don't want to spend any additional time talking about it. If you want to use that style, I am willing to compromise for this one particular article, but you will have to take responsibility for fixing up any formatting that doesn't fit into your vision of what the style should be. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:54, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Something on notability, non-triviality

Hi,

I know we had our differences, and this is exactly why I draw on you for this matter. Because I think I could use someone's opinion who won't automatically agree with me out of sympathy (no offense). The thing is, in this AfD, we somewhat disagree what qualifies as "non-trivial coverage". The other two are a bit biased since they created the article, so your input would be helpful. And maybe I am in fact on the wrong track here. Regards, bender235 (talk) 10:19, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

RfC re MOS quotation punctuation practices

Carl, thank you for your recent comments in the ongoing MOS discussion regarding quotation punctuation practices. Please note that there is also a straw poll !vote occurring further up the MOS talk page from where you made your comments. As inevitably happens in TLDR walls of text, your opinion on point may be lost in the sea of text unless you also register your !vote. Regards, Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:53, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Curry's paradox

Could you take a look at this? Cheers, —Ruud 08:02, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Talk notification

Please see here. bogdanb (talk) 09:08, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Protected template

On 20 July 2008 (I know, a long time ago) you protected the template Template:Convert/PD/km2. I am regularly annoyed to see text produced by this template and the similar Template:Convert/PD/acre, Template:Convert/PD/ha, Template:Convert/PD/sqmi, saying, for example, "The population density was 1,286.2 inhabitants per square mile (496.6 /km2)." "Inhabitants" is totally superfluous. Can it be removed from the template(s)? Emeraude (talk) 11:17, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I have copied this to here, and if nobody objects I will edit the templates in a week or so. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:13, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Re: PR category page

Thanks very much - I was able to remove the June category and add the August one just now (still have to do the rest of the PR chores). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:00, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Categories

Hey Carl. I back! Not sure if you will block me for creating new article related categories so just to be on the safe side I thought I would ask you to create one for me (mind you if you block me for a year I may well get myself well and truly weaned off WP!). Anyway, Category:Divorce needs a Category:Divorce by country subcat and Category:Divorce in the United Kingdom‎ will have to be moved into it. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 12:06, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Got another one - Category:Crown Research Institutes of New Zealand has a redundant link to Crown Research Institutes. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:38, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Done. (No thanks required Alan, obviously, and welcome back!) The Rambling Man (talk) 19:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Peer review

Why have you archived my request for peer review? It has not had a review at all yet so so it seems pointless to close, it will only have to be listed again. Is there some new guideline that says they have to be closed after a certain period? Since you are on holiday (according to your page hatnote) and cannot deal with this now I am going to revert the close. SpinningSpark 16:47, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

File:Atan2 circle.png listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Atan2 circle.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 20:33, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

User:VeblenBot/C/GAR/56

Recent reassessments are not displaying well here. --George Ho (talk) 19:04, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

I have notified this to WP:administrators' noticeboard. --George Ho (talk) 17:54, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to respond originally. I will look at that thread. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:32, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

CITEVAR

I do respect Wikipedia guidelines, but do you really believe your broad reading of WP:CITEVAR was appropriate in this case? As I see it, CITEVAR is a tie-breaker in cases where two parties cannot agree over a citation style: they then keep the existing one. But if there is no argument in the first place, why prohibit a change in style? One could, as you might argue now, always seek the approval of the article's previous editors (especially the one(s) that created the existing citation style). This is, however, not always possible. The sole creator of additive model was an anonymous user in 2009. Your reading of CITEVAR therefore creates the same hassle for WP:WCC as current copyright law creates for artists wanting to use orphaned works: since one cannot ask the original author for permission, the article has to remain untouched forever. And that is just sad. --bender235 (talk) 07:49, 29 August 2013 (UTC) (P.S.: I observed that, under your reading of WP:CITEVAR, modifications of the citation style are okay, as long as they don't involve citation templates of any sorts.)

I hope at some point you might reply to this and explain your interpretation of CITEVAR. To make things easier, I might start. In its core statement, CITEVAR reads: "As with spelling differences, if there is disagreement about which style is best, defer to the style used by the first major contributor." Correct me if I'm wrong, but to me the first part states the conditio sine qua non. Which is to say: leave the established citation style untouched if and only if there is a dispute. In other words: if no dispute, feel free to change it.

In the end, this topic is no different from infoboxes. The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article, but still they are useful in the eyes of the majority of our community and therefore are widely implemented. Like with you and citation templates, they are also people who don't like infoboxes. Sometimes even entire WikiProjects. So is it a problem that I frequently add infoboxes? Do I first have to seek a grand overhaul of MOS in order to get your permission for these types of edits? You tell me. --bender235 (talk) 14:46, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Jitse's bot

I'm in the process of migrating my bot to the toolserver. You mentioned including it in a maths multi-maintainer account some time ago. What is the next step for this? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 16:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

If you are working on migrating, you want to use Wikimedia Labs instead of Toolserver, which will be decommissioned in 2014. There is a quick start guide at https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Getting_Started . I am not any sort of admin there but if you run into problems I may be able to answer questions. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:14, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I thought that was not yet suitable for running bots. Do you have anything running there? I just managed to have something running on toolserver (though not everything) so not too keen to migrate again, especially if the environment is still changing all the time. But otherwise the toolserver may be turned off at some time and I'll have to migrate just when I have little time. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 19:46, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

The labs are up and running well, and they have all the relevant capabilities of toolserver (including database replicas). I do have a couple projects that have been running there for a while. Every project goes in its own account there - basically everything is set up to be multi-maintainer friendly from the beginning. So you create a user account, then create a bot account, then run the bot program under the bot account via the qsub job scheduler. I found it relatively easy to migrate. I believe the end-of-life date for toolserver is in June 2014. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:09, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I transitioned to the labs without major problems. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:43, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear it worked for you. In my experience since I switched, the labs servers have been more stable than the toolserver. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:46, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

University of Algiers

Hello CBM,

This is just a courtesy visit to apprise you that I took the liberty to cite the Geo-co-ordinate data to your above article, also adding a relevant source. Hopefully, you'd like it. Best regards, (MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 11:39, 13 September 2013 (UTC))

SelectionBot quality scores

I've recently been digging around a bit as part of my research on Wikipedia quality assessment and came across the release versions and SelectionBot. One of the things I'm now curious about is how the quality scores used in SelectionBot came about. Search around on Wikipedia and reading up on pages surrounding v1.0 assessment, the v0.7 release, SelectionBot, etc... did not reveal any clues. Could you help shed some light on this issue? Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 21:46, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi again. I'm still wondering about this. If you could share some info or let me know where to find the answer, that would be really helpful, thanks! Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 20:39, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

The description of that is at Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/SelectionBot. I don't think there is any other description of it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:32, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Sigma-algebra

Hi Carl. Since you deal more with math pages than I do I would like to ask a question: Page is tagged with "equation needed". Reading the article for a bit I think this tag may be useless. What do you think? -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:49, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Your edit here

I don't see why you undid the edits by Magioladitis here. You almost did the same as s/he: "no improvement, violation of AWB rules, and violation of NOTBROKEN".

• no improvement - you accually changed the template to a redirect to the template.
• violation of AWB rules - You did not use the AWB-tool
• violation of NOTBROKEN - The talk page was fine, but you reverted it anyways...so:

Whack! You've been whacked with a wet trout. Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know you did something silly.

-(t) Josve05a (c) 19:05, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

What the edit summary indicates is that the edit I undid was not an improvement, because it violated the AWB rules and WP:NOTBROKEN. If you do not understand the situation, you should probably not handle fish at the same time. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:07, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I understand that it was not improvement, but neither was your edit to the articles talk page. You coud just as easily written it on his talk page and not made that edit. (Exacly, I can't handle fish, that's why I am giving it away to you). -(t) Josve05a (c) 19:10, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

In these cases, letting the edit stand just condones the inappropriate behavior of the AWB user. In other words, if they are allowed to violate the rules and nobody undoes the edit, then the de facto state of the article is the way they edited it, even though they should not have made the edit. Therefore, the article should be brought back to the initial state before the inappropriate edit was made, to restore the status quo. So my undo has the benefit of discouraging further abuse in the future. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:20, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Reference needed

Hi Carl!

I need a particular reference. I thought that you might know of one. I don't have access to journals, and even if I had, I'm not sure I could locate what I need (and much less understand it).

Construction (probably using Cohen forcing) of a ZF model satisfying the following for some set X:

• X is infinite.
• X is Dedekind-finite.
• X cannot be partitioned into finite sets of size n for any n > 1. YohanN7 (talk) 09:59, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I need it for Group structure and the axiom of choice that was accepted for main space a day or so ago. Best regards, YohanN7 (talk) 12:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

For any set X, { {x} | x∈X } is a partition of X into finite sets. JRSpriggs (talk) 09:28, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Right, the third item should be qualified with "of size n for any n > 1". Thanks. YohanN7 (talk) 09:59, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I never did much with Dedekind-finite sets (or other traditional choice-related set theory), so I am afraid I don't know any reference. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:55, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Arthur Rubin (talk · contribs)'s parents wrote a book on the axiom of choice, so he is more likely to know about this subject. JRSpriggs (talk) 03:20, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. Arthur Rubin is noted.YohanN7 (talk) 15:33, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Seasonal greetings

	Merry Christmas and best wishes for a happy, healthy and productive 2014!
	Ruhrfisch ><>°° 01:33, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Stats

Hi CBM, I'm putting together an update end of year item re RFA for the signpost, and I was wondering if you'd be so kind as to contribute an update of your wiki generation stats for our active admins. If you have an automated way of doing it wikigeneration stats for all admins would also be really helpful, I can do that manually but it takes hours. ϢereSpielChequers 08:21, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I am afraid that, with the toolserver being decommissioned, I don't have the code that I used to generate that. The general idea was that I just had a script to make a list of all active admins (taken from the on-wiki list that a bot generates), and then I got the first edit for each of them using a bunch of queries to the toolserver database, and then I compiled the stats. Possibly someone on WP:BOTREQ could code something like that again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:45, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

OK thanks will try there. ϢereSpielChequers 11:55, 31 December 2013 (UTC)