User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2011 December

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 45

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Edits by:

1. Slakr at 22:09, 29 November 2011 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Slakr at 22:09, 29 November 2011 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 21:08, 17 November 2011 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Slakr at 22:09, 29 November 2011 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Slakr at 22:09, 29 November 2011 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 22:38, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 45

Template: A user has requested the attention of the operator. Once the operator has seen this message and replied, please deactivate this tag.. *

Edits by:

1. Rcsprinter123 at 17:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Slakr at 22:09, 29 November 2011 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 22:46, 29 November 2011 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rcsprinter123 at 17:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rcsprinter123 at 17:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 17:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Status update: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 45

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Edits by:

1. Rich Farmbrough at 17:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Last edit by BAGGER was by Slakr at 22:09, 29 November 2011 (UTC).
Last edit by me at 17:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC).
Last edit by anyone was by Rich Farmbrough at 17:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC).
Bottom edit was by Rich Farmbrough at 17:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 18:04, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Another template

From this edit it follows that you didn't have Template:Refcleanup as a redirect of Template:Citation style. Debresser (talk) 21:39, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Perfectly correct. Rich Farmbrough, 14:52, 2 December 2011 (UTC).

About bird classification

Something to think about while you are blocked. Do you have any thoughts on using data in lists or websites to add details to bird pages with bots or semi-automatic tools. We have been discussing how to update many bird pages at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Birds#Repetitive_work. I hope to hear from you in about two weeks time. Snowman (talk) 20:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Funnily enough I was just reading the example "Birds of Zanzibar" at the RFC over lists. One I have acquired, prpeared and consumed a little something, I'll take a closer look. Rich Farmbrough, 20:29, 14 November 2011 (UTC).

Good, you can use your talk page when blocked. Yes, it takes a methodical approach to do these tasks. Snowman (talk) 20:49, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

OK pulling the genus author off Wikispecies does not look hard. The mono-specific genera are easy enough to identify from IBC, should we be noting monogeneric families? (E.G. Limpkin.) I presume IBC is authoritative enough to cite for this. The IOC spreadsheet is golddust - do you know the licensing of the notes? Rich Farmbrough, 22:47, 14 November 2011 (UTC).

I will transcribe your question to the WP bird talk page. Please indicate if you would like any further questions copied to there. Snowman (talk)

Is IBC a typo for IOC? What notes do you refer to? Would you agree that there are 903 monotypic bird genera (including monotypic families) listed in the IOC spreadsheet? The IOC taxonomy might be controversial for some birds. The HBW list (here) might be slightly different, because of controversies. Erudite ornithology editors might clean the list manually, if they know where the controversies are. Snowman (talk) 00:43, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

IBC=International Bird Collection =HBW. The IOC spreadsheet has a notes column - we could quote this if it is freely licensed. Rich Farmbrough, 00:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC).

I expect the notes would be copyrighted, but see with the others think on the WP Bird talk page. I used the shorter spreadsheet. A list of monotypic genera from IBC might be useful somewhere. Snowman (talk) 01:09, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I did a quick check on monotypic genrea, I get the same result. Rich Farmbrough, 14:19, 15 November 2011 (UTC).

That is reassuring. Snowman (talk) 22:02, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I would like to get a similar list of monotypic genera according to HBW. It looks like I will not be able to scrape their website for this list; perhaps, I have missed something. Do you have any observations on data scraping ibc.lynxeds.com for a list of monotypic genera? You say; "the mono-specific genera are easy enough to identify from IBC". This is for monotypic genera, not monotypic species. It looks difficult to me, their might be other websites that are easier to scrape. The HBW spreadsheet might be available - see discussion on the WP Birds talk page. Snowman (talk) 00:51, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I made a list from the HBW page last night, I'll post it here later. Rich Farmbrough, 13:56, 16 November 2011 (UTC).

As well as redirect creation, interesting questions arise - is Acanthidops bairdi a typo for Acanthidops bairdii or vice versa? Is the Golden Bulbul two species or one? Etc. Rich Farmbrough, 15:14, 16 November 2011 (UTC).

Thank you for making the list. I suppose you could park it in a sub-page or remove it leaving it in the page history, if you wanted to. I have copied all 9,918 to a txt file on my PC. Interesting that the IOC list has well over 10,000. For clarity: is this list a list of every bird species on the HBW website? If so, then I could list the monotypic genera separately from it. I have not focused on the queries that you raised as yet. Did you come across a lot of listing problems? Some apparent listing anomalies might be due to taxonomy controversies, and some might be typos and other errors. The HWB list could be quite a lot different from the IOC list, partly because of the different functions of the lists. Snowman (talk) 17:00, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I have not looked it up elsewhere, but Acanthidops bairdii is the name on the en Wiki species article. In brief outline, I would be interested to know how you made the HBW list. Snowman (talk) 17:28, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

That's where I got he "ii" spelling. Google gives 17k with "i" and 4.5k with "ii". I created the list by scanning all the family pages from HBW. Rich Farmbrough, 17:48, 16 November 2011 (UTC).

Brilliant. How did you scan all those pages? I presumed that the list was alphabetical without any exceptions. Is that assumption correct. Do you agree with 929 monotypic genera according to HBW? I got a perl script to grab the genus name one line and compare it with the genus name in the line above and below. Snowman (talk) 19:28, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I get 923/926

1. Herpsilochmus sp nova: New Herpsilochmus Antwren
2. Otus sp. nova: Santa Marta Screech-owl
3. Strix sp. nova: San Isidro Owl
4. Stymphalornis sp nova: Sao Paulo Antwren

might be causing some confusion. Rich Farmbrough, 21:10, 16 November 2011 (UTC).

IUCN has 10029 aves species. Rich Farmbrough, 21:28, 16 November 2011 (UTC).

Well spotted. I think that they are the only ones listed like that on the full list. I have got all four on my derived list, so subtracting four, I get 925, which still is not the same as yours. What is "923/926"? I am expecting your count to be an integer not a range. I am subtracting one more, because Marsh Antwren (Stymphalornis acutirostris) might not be monotypic if there is a new Stymphalornis sp in that genus. That leaves 924. If there is a difference I could use a list comparer. Snowman (talk) 21:48, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I suppose it is worth doing a monotypic genus list for IUCN. Can you get there birds as a list? Snowman (talk) 21:57, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes I have not made a list, but merely counted them. The number depends on the rule one uses. Rich Farmbrough, 23:01, 16 November 2011 (UTC).

• Can you get the IUCN url (with the page number) and the corresponding species? Doing something with these would be useful for WP Birds. I do not think I could fix the IUCN links in the cite references of the on bird pages quickly, so I hope that you will be able to help and liaise with the others soon. Snowman (talk) 21:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I have requested an export of the full AVES search from IUCN. This should provide all the desired information. Rich Farmbrough, 23:01, 16 November 2011 (UTC).
    

Page move

Hello. When you moved Template:Infobox UK Legislation to Template:Infobox UK legislation, you did not move its talk page, Template talk:Infobox UK Legislation with it. I assume that this was a mistake. I am unable to fix it myself because the target page Template talk:Infobox UK legislation has a page history, and it does not appear to be possible to request the move of a talk page at Wikipedia:Requested Moves, unless I have misunderstood the instructions there. James500 (talk) 22:08, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Y Answered on user's talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 22:25, 4 December 2011 (UTC).

Violation of edit restriction

In this edit [1] you changed "Infobox Military Unit" to "Infobox military unit". This is not listed at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Template redirects and is thus a violation of your editing restriction. Additional examples of this sort of violation are [2] [3]

In the same edit you changed "portal" to "Portal". AWB does not change the capitalization of first letters of templates, so this is also a violation of your editing restriction. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:11, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, in these edits you changed <references/> to {{reflist}}. You just marked for archiving a discussion on your talk page admonishing you to avoid doing this. As it is not built into AWB and does not affect the rendered page, it is also a violation of your editing restriction. [4] [5] [6] [7]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:30, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Lol, Looks like you better reset the counter back to 0 Rich!. I didn't look through every edit example but I don't see a problem with the first four provided that other more significant edits are done at the same time. That's just me personally though and my opinions don't usually carry much weight. --Kumioko (talk) 01:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

There is no exception in these edit restrictions for edits done at the same time. The changes I mentioned are simply forbidden outright. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:51, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, this is surely a case of "thou dost complain too much" – not entirely inconsequential changes bundled with at least one consequential change. As to the 'reflist' change, I suggest:
(/(References ?==\n)[\n\s]*(?:\{\{[Rr]eflist\}\}|<references\/>)/g, '$1{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}') would make the change 'consequential' --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:05, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

If the change was made consequential, it would violate WP:CITEVAR. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:50, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I'll let it pass until something actually dramatic happens. Getting these kinds of messages after a 12 hour work day followed by 6 hours volunteering is more pathetic than dramatic. Rich Farmbrough, 02:07, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

<Sigh> Rich Farmbrough, 01:48, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Carl, I am with Kumikio on this one. An editor is allowed to make cosmetic changes, even with automated tools, as long as they are made alongside some more significant edit. If this wasn't specified in those edit restrictions you mention, then such was their intend, no doubt. Debresser (talk) 05:53, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

No, the intent was not to allow Rich to make whatever unnecessary/disputed cosmetic changes he feels like as long as he is making some significant edit - it was to prohibit Rich from making cosmetic changes of any kind unless they were built into AWB or had demonstrable consensus. –xeno^talk 13:38, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

(Otherwise, no restriction would be needed at all because cosmetic changes on their own are already prohibited by AWB's rules of use. It would be like an editing restriction prohibiting vandalism - pointless.) –xeno^talk 13:50, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Xeno, do you still feel sufficiently uninvolved as an administrator to block for these sorts of violations? — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:46, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that further violations should be reported to a noticeboard for discussion so that any block based on the editing restrictions cannot simply be unilaterally overturned. –xeno^talk 13:50, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

The discussion at AN was just archived, and the editing restrictions were not removed. So it is not clear what another discussion immediately after that one would accomplish. At the same time Elen of the Roads indicated she might be willing to handle enforcement of the restriction. I will ping her again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:52, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

And these changes have demonstrable consensus. Which is why only a select few object to them. Rich Farmbrough, 13:55, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Citing sources#How to create the list of citations indicates that <references /> and {{Reflist}} are interchangeable. I do not see demonstrable consensus that the former should always be replaced by the latter. Nor is there any consensus that template should always have their first letter capitalized, this is simply a change that you make because YOULIKEIT. –xeno^talk 14:00, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

MOS says to minimise markup. Consensus. Usage is in favour of the template 6:1. Consensus. When I consolidated several portal boxes into one it is a standard change for which there is consensus. For capitalisation of infobox names there is consensus. Rich Farmbrough, 14:06, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Can you provide some links to back that up? For example, where is the guideline, policy, MOS page, or whatever that describes a consensus on how to capitalize template calls? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:08, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Don't put words into my mouth. Rich Farmbrough, 14:18, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Usage numbers aren't really that compelling when we both know the usage numbers are where they are because you have been doing these edits for months or years. So the usage numbers are where they are at because you engineered that situation. –xeno^talk 14:09, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

We also have (I'm sure) a preponderance of US spelling over UK spelling, but that does not mean there is a consensus to change one to the other. The general rule is that optional stylistic things should be left alone unless there is a specific consensus to change them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:11, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Not-isomorphic. Rich Farmbrough, 14:18, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

You over-estimate me. I have only made 1% of the edits in en:. I will crunch some numbers this evening though. Rich Farmbrough, 14:18, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

I analyse 110 Gb of diffs (roughly 1% of the total) and found 9 cases where I had made such a change. Sine the total number of instances is about 1.4 million, accusations of fait accompli would appear to be as empty as the rest of them. Rich Farmbrough, 22:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

My biggest problem in all this is that if Rich's edits are so bad then why is it the same 4 or 5 editors crying wolf every time. I agree that some of the edits in the past were unnecessary and I also support the blocks due to the actualy errors that were introduced breaking certain articles. But when he bundles the inconsequential edits in with other more meaningful ones I don't think there is a problem. Even if there are 4 or 5 editors who are adminsn and self professed guardians of the Wiki that say other wise it doesn't make it against consensus. Additionally, by and large I think there is consensus for most of the changes with the exception of the same 4 or 5 editors. As for the UK to US spelling thats mixing apples and oranges into an already problematic discussion so lets try and stay on point. I also think arguments of edit volume are mostly kinda stupid BTW. Yes he did some edits that some thought to be pointless, so what, with the exception of the changes that actually broke the article the changes arguably made the article better, incrementally a little at a time. Just because one editor spends more time editing and less time discussing shouldn't be used as a blunt instrument in which to bludgeon them verbally! If he actually makles errors or does truly fruitless edits alone thats one thing but badgering him for this is nonsense and a waste of 99.99998% of the communities time. --Kumioko (talk) 14:38, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Xeno, the process of improving AWB is so bureaucratic and tedious. They still disconnect after some 15 seconds of idle time, even though that makes using it almost impossible, and many editors (!) have expressed their strongest feelings about it. Now, after that you can hardly expect anybody to take AWB as a standard. Debresser (talk) 15:49, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

AWB has a large collection of "general fixes". Since the problem is R.F. making up his own general fixes without broader consensus, using AWB as a standard for which general fixes have consensus makes some sense. Also, the AWB devs try to incorporate as many useful changes as consensus will allow, so if a change is not well enough supported to be in AWB, it is hard to justify making it on a semi-auto basis over large numbers of articles. A history of doing that is what led to the current restriction that R.F. is not allowed to make these changes at all. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:57, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't support that argument and heres why. AWB is used by a lot of projects besides Wikipedia and the logic AWB must also take into account these other projects. There have been plenty of times when the devs wanted to make a change for the betterment of WP but couldn't because they had to account for the other projects and sister wikis. Also, bare in mind that several bots use AWB and the edits they perform are not "built in". Using myself as an example also, I do a lot of edits that aren't built into AWB (at least not yet) such as rearranging sections (see also goes above References, external links and Further reading) based on the guidelines in the MOS. I also do this based on the MOS guidelines for talk pages. Many, many other editors also have logic they do thats not part of AWB. Before you argue that these limits are because of his edit restriction, which may be true, that is not how you phrased it above and the tone above sets a bad precedent to be used in future arguments above what kinds of edits can be done in AWB for all editors. So as I mentioned above, if he is careless andn breaks something fine, if he goes willinilly making changes for spacing and casing alone that seems to be so aggravating to some users fine, but when he is incoporating these insignificant changes with others that are more meaningful that should allowed. Otherwise these minor changes that you hate so much will stay on the article forever. --Kumioko (talk) 16:22, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

If someone does something with an AWB bot that is not built in, they need to have explicit bot approval for it. If someone manually reviews their AWB edits, they can do many things that are not built in, if they have consensus. But R.F. is under a special editing restriction that does not allow him to do even as many things as a normal AWB operator would be able to do. In particular he is not permitted to make the changes I linked in the first post of this thread. This section is not about whether to lift the editing restriction, which is what you seem to be getting towards with language like "should". The restriction is in place, and the point of this section was to document that it was violated. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:26, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

IMO the point of the restriction was to stop him from doing these edits individually and to get him to pay closer attention to the logic so pages don't get broken. Or am I missing the point. And I'm not asking for the restriction to be lifted or limited I don't see these as a problem since there being done with other edits is all and there are quite a few of us that are getting a little tired of the little boy who cried wolf act that goes on here every couple days. If you would have brought a bunch of cases where he was breaking pages and doing inconsequential edits (like removing blank spaces) I woudln't have bothered to comment at all and simply gone about my merry way as I have done in the past on such occassions. This just isn't one of those times. --Kumioko (talk) 16:39, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

See Xeno's comment above dated 13:38, 30 November 2011 (UTC). — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:46, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Blocking Rich for this IMO is utterly useless and I do not believe is in the spirit of the restriction. I personally think that creating this discussion over such petty things is more mischievous than the edits performed. I find it a little irritating frankly that the same users pull these shenanigans over and over. If he does something truly grievous like breaking articles then ok but otherwise your just wasting our time with this discussion. --Kumioko (talk) 17:04, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Deletion discussion about Between Chaos and Creation (film)

Hello, Rich Farmbrough, and thanks for contributing to Wikipedia!

I wanted to let you know that some editors are discussing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Between Chaos and Creation (film) whether the article Between Chaos and Creation (film) should be in Wikipedia. I encourage you to comment there if you think the article should be kept in the encyclopedia.

The deletion discussion doesn't mean you did something wrong. In fact, other editors may have useful suggestions on how you can continue editing and improving Between Chaos and Creation (film), which I encourage you to do. If you have any questions, feel free to ask at the Help Desk.

Thanks again for your contributions! Gaijin42 (talk) 16:13, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

References to IUCN on bird pages

See discussion at Template talk:IUCN and on WP bird talk page. These links have plagued the WP Birds project for a number of years. I guess that it would need scraping the website. Any thoughts. Snowman (talk) 20:17, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

See above section: I have the data, Just need to firm up exactly what is needed - maybe some thinking time would be good. Rich Farmbrough, 14:25, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

{{GravEngAbs}}

Could you please elaborate on your answer in this RFC. It seems it is interpreted differently by me and User:Gerardw. Thanks. — Christoph Päper 08:19, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Reverted your changes to Template:Sockpuppet category

I have reverted your changes to Template:Sockpuppet category, since it created errors on lots of Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets pages, i.e. every page with a user name longer than about 15 characters. E.g. Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of We had wheels on toast in the freezing rain started with Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of We had wheels omax index is 50 for str_sub=Suspected sock puppets of <span id="We had wheels omax index is 50 for str_sub" and so on, and was listed on Category:Pages with incorrect formatting templates use, which has at the time of writing still 580 pages, or more than one out of ten pages from the category. Fram (talk) 15:42, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes I thought of that, and probably would have investigated in more detail, but I had all sorts of other stuff going on onmy talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 16:54, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

You had plenty of time to do all kinds of other stuff, like creating dozens of categories (some of which had this problem, by the way), so that's hardly an excuse to create errors on hundreds of cat pages for nearly a day. If you don't have the time to check your changes more thoroughly, don't make them. Fram (talk) 19:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Back to automated edits

We've got to find some way to resolve this. You're driving people mad, and they seem to be driving you mad. Can you stop doing some of the stuff that drives them mad, so you can carry on doing useful stuff? There was a lot of support for taking some sort of action to stop you making automated edits, and the final terms are actually milder than those supported by a lot of people.

Will you agree to the following

• run the script off another account, not your main account.
• not fix things that are not broken. No changing capitalisations and redirects unless they are actually causing something not to work. No fiddling with non-visible whitespace. Changing them otherwise is mere cushion-straightening, and the only tolerable error rate is zero, something you have never achieved.
• and on that subject, do more error checking. Apologies, I know you probably already do some, but believe it or not I run a technical team, and they only ever error check for the errors they can think of. We always also get three or four lasses in the call centre to check the output - you'll be surprised what they spot. Obviously you don't have that luxury, but there does seem to be a consistent if low error rate in your scripted edits.
• get a clear approval before using reprogrammed AWB, because the consensus seems to be that you need to do that. If you can get clear approval to do a task, it will get people off your back.

If you can't agree to these, then as the restrictions were as far as I can see legitimately imposed after proper and thorough discussions, then the consequences listed can legitimately be applied.--Elen of the Roads (talk) 23:02, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Thing is, we're talking a different language here. Well several different languages. It makes it hard to know where to start.

First off my last 153 edits (not counting this one) have been standard Firefox edits, I'm scarcely touching AWB, because, yes, the illegitimi are carborunduming me somewhat. Before that there's two - count them - AWB edits on the 6th December.

Secondly you miss the fact that, even if we allow that the ER is binding (I worked with RD-232 on the basis that it was, to keep the mob off my back, because he was actually pretty sane, and I add, worked successfully - except when Fram kept jumping in the middle of conversations shouting "look look!") then 99% of the changes you mention are allowable - which is why it is so ludicrous to be opposed on thing like "we MUST preserve {{tocright}}" and "We must keep confusing markup". Let me stress again it's pretty much the Fram and CBM show, here, with a little Xeno thrown in from time to time.

Thirdly I am not clear what you mean by a "reprogrammed AWB." The fact is that I never even downloaded the source for AWB until CBM basically forced me to do so, to remove something that he doesn't like. It is frustrating that these tall tales are being put about - I even came across someone on IRC calumniating me. Of course its funny as well, but it does fit in nicely with the "signs of mobbing" that, I think it was, Hans Adler recently linked to.

And finally AWB is not automated edits.

On the matter of the alleged ER, it was brought about by a totally crazy discussion, arising from some really shameful behaviour on the part of several editors, and mobbing on AN/I. At one point I left simple queries on the pages of 18 editors who had chipped in with "ban him!" type comments, to the effect "On AN/I you said X, can I ask what your reason for this was?" Only one had the decency to respond, and that one withdrew their comment from AN.I and apologised. Another editor adduced these gentle enquiries as further proof of my diabolical nature. It was against this sort of background that I was initially willing to work with R2-D2 who I believed had actually put some effort into understanding the dispute, although his conclusion was completely wrong. It turned out later that he had simply cut and pasted the poorly thought out text someone else had posted. For which there was no consensus. The salient matter had all already been dealt with, in the first brou-ha-ha. He has now retired, having seen through the type of posturing and mobbing that was going on in those AN/I disputes. Unfortunately he has left me with two unilaterally imposed ERs, and a comics addict, a mathematician and a bureaucrat still hanging around my talk page making a nuisance of themselves.

It is fairly clear to the meanest intelligence that this is no longer about the encyclopedia as far as they are concerned. Fram reverts my edits, takes me to every forum he can think of, deletes articles and redirects, wheel wars, opposes everything I post where he can and generally makes a nuisance of himself. CBM has for years been doing inane reverts of users, edit warring and breaking templates, and yet he has the cheek to say I am "wasting edits". And although Xeno and CBM have some technical competence, they still are quite happy to go off half-cocked (though Xeno has the grace to apologise) on matters they don't understand. Fram - technically - just doesn't get it. And that I think is the most annoying part. It's all very well to politely point out an error on a subject where one is knowledgeable, but a lot of the criticism is over things that I know about and Fram doesn't. And it's not even worded in any way other than a command. I have long ago given up trying to teach Fram anything, which is a sad sate of affairs. I then asked him not to interact with me, several times. He has steadfastly refused.

And in case you still think, as you expressed on Arbcom (which comments still mystify me, both as to why you believed them and why you thought that was a good place to enunciate them) that I have "poor customer skills" don't forget that I had several years of frequent questions, sometimes very angry as to why "You have tagged my article." when the bot had simply dated the tags.

So really there is a lot more to this than just some nut who likes articles to look good. These are carefully thought out improvements, most of which are now built into AWB and hence "permissible". The fact that I don't feel like rolling over and dying under the bullying tactics that I have seen over that last year or so, I think should be considered commendable rather than otherwise.

Rich Farmbrough, 02:04, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Oh and just a postscriptum, "run the script off another account" among other things leads me to suppose that there is off-wiki lobbying going on here. I prefer to keep as much as possible in the light of day, and would appreciate knowing if this is the case. Rich Farmbrough, 10:02, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

The reason I brought this up is that creating another account for larger projects is something I was bullied into doing sometime ago, it was then used as a stick to beat me (or sock to beat me - think Death Wish perhaps). So I wondered where the meme had come from. Rich Farmbrough, 16:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Couple of immediate points. First, no-one is off-wiki lobbying *me*. Secondly, a lot of the objections seem to be related to introducing errors in the attempt to fix an error. This is a problem for automated edits obviously. If you do it with manual errors, while other editors may request that you be more careful, I know that I myself keep two Wikignomes permanently employed running round fixing up my bad code, failure to complete clerking, lack of signage etc, so I don't feel I can say a word about it.

There is some discussion on my talkpage, but you can read that anyway, and in fact I'd be interested if you'd read Carl's points here, and respond if you feel led in either location. I suspect people use the old/wrong/redirect names because (a) they remember them, (b) they keep a subpage of code snippets, or (c) they cut and paste out of an existing article that works the way they want, rather than go to the template documentation. I've b0rked a good many templates that way, so have learned my lesson and always look at the documentation, but if all the versions work, and the end user never sees the code, there really is no point in changing it. I agree that fixing bad code (FrontPage's approximations of html, or the junk generated by using the Macro Recorder to create your VBA), cleaning up code that the developer stopped looking at as soon as it worked (leaving 15 commented out iterations behind), documenting undocumented code, etc are all important activities. But if I can use {{TOCright}} or {{TOC right}} and get the same effect, it isn't broken and doesn't need fixing. Elen of the Roads (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll address Carl's point on your talk page to avoid muddying the debate here.

Well I'm certainly pleased about the first point, it keeps thing simpler.

The second is undoubtedly correct, people probably use all these methods to apply templates. And two more are typos and short-cuts. Indeed I extensively used {{wfy}} in the sure and certain knowledge that it would be replaced by something meaningful when it was dated. However the conclusion does not follow - for a whole bunch of reasons. Firstly we want to provide a simple interface to users, when we have some hundreds of clean-up templates and some thousands of redirects it is much easier to lean the smaller set than the larger. Moreover if we consistently use spaces in template names, and consistently use sentence case we really do lighten the cognitive load. Secondly not all redirects are benign, {{Fact}} was changed to {{Citation needed}} because the first was too bitey - it says, more or less, "Liar!", there were redirects to different templates that differed only by a space or a capital letter, there are redirects that are misleading. Because I approached this on a very gentle incremental approach, rather than making runs just to replace template redirects, this is something the community was (an is, despite a recent attempt to derail consensus) happy with. There is no problem with many hundreds of redirect replacements. There's a couple, mainly done by hand that have been picked on. This is where my patience runs thin, instead of coming and saying "Hey Infobox blah isn't on the AWB list, or better, adding it a WP:POINT message is left on my talk page with very condescending instructions "not to do it again".

In fact really WP:POINT is the crux of what Fram and CBM are doing. Really if you saw I had changed, in the course of another spelling correction edit {{Infobox UK Legislation}} to {{Infobox UK legislation}} would you go and look through a long list of allowed and almost identical infoboxes, then come back here and post that I was in violation of editing restrictions? It passes the quack test as pointy behaviour, and it's only because I cut them extra slack, being mathematicians and comics addicts, that I haven't classified it this way before.

Rich Farmbrough, 16:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Note: to highlight the lunacy, examine this edit by Fram where he fixes a date (substantive edit), removes un-needed white space, changes {{cn}} to {{Citation needed}} and changes a hyphen to an en-dash. Rich Farmbrough, 01:06, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Yes, I use standard AWB changes while making substantive changes. You are allowed to do the same. Those times that I complained about an edit you made, and it turned out to be standard AWB, I acknowledged my mistake and stopped complaining about you making that kind of edit. So what "lunacy" are you actually highlighting? That I use AWB as intended and without problems? If you do the same, you won't hear anything from me. Fram (talk) 07:49, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

You clearly don't understand that while to you that type of edit is completely different in nature from replacing "tocright" with "TOC right" while fixing a spelling error, to the vast majority of sane, technically literate Wikipedians the two are basically indistinguishable. Indeed some of the things Elen asked me to agree to stop doing are precisely things that you do - that are "allowed". And even my three wise monkeys have got it wrong, as you comment above. So if no-one can tell the difference between an allowed change, and a disallowed one, without going off and doing tests, then really there must be something wrong if someone is proposing blocks based on this - or even taking any notice of it at all. Rich Farmbrough, 11:19, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Dear Elen of the Roads and Rich. I understand that I am only a simple editor, but I hope my two cents will help here. I know Rich here on Wikipedia from working together on several occasions. I mention this to make the point that Rich is an approachable and friendly editor, the point of which will become clear soon enough. In general we share the same opinions as to the desirableness of having pages (articles, templates and categories foremost) look technically elegant, well-ordered and understandable. This I add to explain that my "defending" him here and in other sections above is not without a personal interest. All the same, I'd like to remind Rich that I am waiting for him to continue the discussion above on the subject of dating format templates (where we seem to disagree).

I'd like to make a few observations, related some more some less to the issue.

• Some editors do more thorough test than others before saving the page. This is a matter which depends on the editor's character. I, for example, often reread what I wrote only after saving, and then fix typos, etc. This is not ideal, but that is the way I work. Perhaps the same is true in a certain measure for Rich.

On this same subject I'd like to make another two observations

• There is a Dutch saying that wherever people work, flints fly. Meaning that the laws of statistics dictate that the more one works, the more one errs. In view of the large number of edits Rich makes, being the most active editor on Wikipedia, it is only normal that he makes a lot of errors.
• Rich is very conscientious about replying to messages on his talkpage, and replies seriously to any and all notifications of errors made by him (in automated as well as semi-automated and hand-made edits).

And two more general comments

• I for one disagree with the editing restriction against Rich. Moreover, I don't think there is any justification for such a restriction. Especially in view of the way this restriction came about, if we may take Rich's word for it.
• As to the level of technical versatility of the editors involved I have no opinion. I did notice that Fram's posts here are sometimes less than detached. Unfortunately, even Rich sometimes gets irritated by the many critical comments here from a select group of editors, and that also doesn't help. Personally, I am a fan of the English sense of humor, and would like to use this occasion to thank Rich for "a comics addict, a mathematician and a bureaucrat". With all due respect, of course, for said editors. 21:06, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

In defence of Fram

Contrary to what Rich Farmbrough states above, all I usually do is point out errors he makes, and do it here, not on noticeboards. In those cases where I was mistaken, I acknowledged this. I don't drag Rich Farmbrough to noticeboards for every edit I don't like, I don't post here every time he changes references/ to reflist, I don't post here even for every mistake he makes and I corrects. I only drag him to noticeboards when he makes a lot of errors and refuses to correct them or otherwise creates serious problems or seriously misuses tools. In nearly every case where I started a thread on a noticeboard, general (not unanimous) agreement was that there indeed was a problem with his edits, and some corrective action was taken. Only the ArbCom case, which I started in the hope of getting more eyes on this and putting this to rest, was rejected, but with a majority of arbitrators willing to take on the case (which doesn't mean that they saw a problem with Rich Farmbrough's edits of course). Apart from that, in most cases outside review of my actions resulted in agreement with me and disagreement with Rich. E.g. he recently complained about my deletions of some improbable redirects he made. To test this, I tagged three redirects he created for speedy deletion, and all three were deleted, by three different, uninvolved admins: Template:Jewish Encylopedia, Iran (Islamic Republic of ), and Bolivia (Plurinational State of ). Please also take a lok at other things I noted here, or things I reverted: I don't believe that is a case of me not getting things on a technical level, it's just Rich Farmbrough being careless (or stubborn or whatever other reason he has to continually create so many errors). Fram (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Everyone knows CSD is broken. The rest is observer bias and mobbing behaviour. Rich Farmbrough, 16:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

I also see here some more unfounded accusations "when he makes a lot of errors and refuses to correct them"- I have never refused to correct errors I make. For example I recently went through 18,000 edits checking for a particular error, that occurred on maybe 4 or 5 pages. Rich Farmbrough, 16:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

"More" unfounded accusations? Please list the ones I haven't provided evidence for, or acknowledged that I was wrong. For this one, an example would be User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2011Oct#Please don't change correct links to redirects (or worse, to redlinks), don't "correct" quotes, and don't remove the end of lines, where you continue to create the exact same error I posted about repeatedly, or with Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Archive 2#Cite DNB and the previous WP:AN section (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive227#Rich Farmbrough violating editing restriction about this, where even after I pointed out the pages with errors (content, cats, wikilinks, ...), you didn't correct them (you claimed you did, but a simple search showed that even errors I pointed out as examples weren't corrected, never mind the other similar ones). Or take a look at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough/January 2011#Automated creation of incorrect categories, one of these discussions which you feel lead to unwarranted editing restrictions; you continue creating the same problems while multiple editors explain why they are problems and clean up after you, until you finally get blocked. Fram (talk) 19:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Everclear_%28album%29&diff=next&oldid=457308794 for example makes your first example moot.

And I never claimed not to make errors, moreover not only did I not refuse to clean up errors, I often create a list of similar errors and fix them as the same time. For example I fixed a number of incorrectly capitalised WSOP headers that other people had created.

And I'm not having a diff war with you over this, you need only find one example where I agreed something was an error and said "I'm not fixing it". Which if course you won't because that is not the type of person I am, despite your pathetic attempts to paint me otherwise.

Rich Farmbrough, 20:15, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Of course you are not having a diff war, you hardly ever provide diffs for your accusations (see e.g. the Betacommand 3 case, or the rejected Arbcom case about you). And I'm not talking about what you "say", I'm talking about what you "do". I have also "corrected" your section header above, since making it a level 2 hader removes the context (the section starts with "Contrary to what Rich Farmbrough states above", which can become meaningless once you start archiving here). Fram (talk) 20:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't provide diffs, because its a waste of my time, I know it's true and so do you. Whether you refuse to admit it to yourself or just to others I can't tell, nor does it greatly matter. The fact is I have never refused to correct a genuine error, nor would I. Rich Farmbrough, 00:13, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

I don't believe that it is true at all, please don't pretend to know what I think. All I see is time and again you are asserting things and making accusations, and time and again you refuse to back them up with diffs when requested to do so. This makes them baseless accusations and personal attacks. Fram (talk) 07:49, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Well I re-read some of the stuff you point to, including a lot of your ranting and demands for blocks and other general stirring, and remembered just how bad your interactions have been. I have really run out of good faith with you. Unless you can find an example of me refusing to fix agreed mistakes, then please depart this thread, and preferably this page and the project, which you are not a net benefit to. Rich Farmbrough, 11:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Rich. Please reflect on what you're saying. There are people who perhaps feel the above statement precisely reflects your own behaviour. Regardless of whether that's the case or not, your account is the one that has been subject to editing restricts and blocks, not anyone else's account. —Sladen (talk) 12:51, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I have reflected on it. And I nearly came back and retracted it. I even thought perhaps I should suggest some project that I should work with Fram on, so we could diffuse the tension. But I am human, and to be frank, there is nothing that Fram could do to redeem himself in my eyes, it has gone far beyond that. That's not to say I don't understand, partially, Fram's point of view. I don't say that he is without ability. However he has a talent for rubbing people up the wrong way, he has no grasp of the big picture, and has been pestering me for over a year. The fact that some of his bug reports are correct and even significant no longer matters. I just don't want to see his name. Had he stuck only to real errors, been polite, non judgemental and also listened to my responses, I would have welcomed his comments, as indeed I did at first. It is, now, too late for that. Rich Farmbrough, 13:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Reconstructing how we got here: our interactions were few and far between, until he started editing some (protected and unprotected) templates to remove cats he didn't like, deleted them out of process, and was very dismissive and uncivil about anyone and anything opposing him, which lead to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough/October 2010. Note that only a few weeks before, there was Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive643#Rich Farmbrough and unnecessary capitalization changes, which basically is a prime example of most RF discussions since, and which wasn't started by me (or any of his other current regular posters), but by totally different people. What have we there: "totally unnecessary capitalization changes", "He said that he fixed the problem, but a day later, it was back." (anyone wanted evidence of the "refuses to fix problems?" statement), "Communication with the bot owner is going to be exceedlingly hard,", "RF has a long history of controversial mass-actions and refusing to discuss them or even consider that anybody else might possibly be right. ", "Since RF can't now (and before the block, seemingly wouldn't) change this behaviour," "In my experience the user in question is unfit to be combining adminship and botting. ", and so on and so on. All this without my prompting or interference. Perhaps, just perhaps, the problem is with you? Fram (talk) 14:09, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Even then you were there to be a member of the mob. As I have repeatedly acknowledged, blanking my talk page, simply because some editors though it was funny to jump onto every thread and turn it into a battleground was a mistake. Doing it without a clear explanation of what was happening, from some misplaced desire not create conflict with said editors even more so. Although you may have only started being disruptive at that point, it didn't take more than a few days until you were making a nuisance of yourself on BRFAs and elsewhere. Anyway.. . enough time wasted on you already. Rich Farmbrough, 14:35, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Let me also state that I have not contacted anyone about this, either on or off-wiki. I don't email other users, I don't use IRC, all my wiki-related things are conducted on Wikipedia and free for everyone to check. Fram (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Singles category

Template:Singles category has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Bulwersator (talk) 09:28, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Protection

Please don't protect templates before they are even in use anywhere, like you did with Template:Page name sub. Fram (talk) 15:56, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

How about you stop deleting useful content for a few weeks, then we talk? Rich Farmbrough, 16:15, 6 December 2011 (UTC).

Examples? Fram (talk) 16:18, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Example where you wheel-warred is a good start. Rich Farmbrough, 16:31, 6 December 2011 (UTC).

So, as I expected, none. Anyway, problems you preceive with my editing are no excuse for problems with your editing (and vice versa, of course)... Fram (talk) 11:59, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Funnily enough, in human relations, your behaviour does impact on whether I want to respond to what you say, whether I care about it, and whether I even want to see your sig on my talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 16:42, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

In defence of Fram

Contrary to what Rich Farmbrough states above, all I usually do is point out errors he makes, and do it here, not on noticeboards. In those cases where I was mistaken, I acknowledged this. I don't drag Rich Farmbrough to noticeboards for every edit I don't like, I don't post here every time he changes references/ to reflist, I don't post here even for every mistake he makes and I corrects. I only drag him to noticeboards when he makes a lot of errors and refuses to correct them or otherwise creates serious problems or seriously misuses tools. In nearly every case where I started a thread on a noticeboard, general (not unanimous) agreement was that there indeed was a problem with his edits, and some corrective action was taken. Only the ArbCom case, which I started in the hope of getting more eyes on this and putting this to rest, was rejected, but with a majority of arbitrators willing to take on the case (which doesn't mean that they saw a problem with Rich Farmbrough's edits of course). Apart from that, in most cases outside review of my actions resulted in agreement with me and disagreement with Rich. E.g. he recently complained about my deletions of some improbable redirects he made. To test this, I tagged three redirects he created for speedy deletion, and all three were deleted, by three different, uninvolved admins: Template:Jewish Encylopedia, Iran (Islamic Republic of ), and Bolivia (Plurinational State of ). Please also take a lok at other things I noted here, or things I reverted: I don't believe that is a case of me not getting things on a technical level, it's just Rich Farmbrough being careless (or stubborn or whatever other reason he has to continually create so many errors). Fram (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Everyone knows CSD is broken. The rest is observer bias and mobbing behaviour. Rich Farmbrough, 16:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

I also see here some more unfounded accusations "when he makes a lot of errors and refuses to correct them"- I have never refused to correct errors I make. For example I recently went through 18,000 edits checking for a particular error, that occurred on maybe 4 or 5 pages. Rich Farmbrough, 16:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

"More" unfounded accusations? Please list the ones I haven't provided evidence for, or acknowledged that I was wrong. For this one, an example would be User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2011Oct#Please don't change correct links to redirects (or worse, to redlinks), don't "correct" quotes, and don't remove the end of lines, where you continue to create the exact same error I posted about repeatedly, or with Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Archive 2#Cite DNB and the previous WP:AN section (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive227#Rich Farmbrough violating editing restriction about this, where even after I pointed out the pages with errors (content, cats, wikilinks, ...), you didn't correct them (you claimed you did, but a simple search showed that even errors I pointed out as examples weren't corrected, never mind the other similar ones). Or take a look at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough/January 2011#Automated creation of incorrect categories, one of these discussions which you feel lead to unwarranted editing restrictions; you continue creating the same problems while multiple editors explain why they are problems and clean up after you, until you finally get blocked. Fram (talk) 19:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Everclear_%28album%29&diff=next&oldid=457308794 for example makes your first example moot.

And I never claimed not to make errors, moreover not only did I not refuse to clean up errors, I often create a list of similar errors and fix them as the same time. For example I fixed a number of incorrectly capitalised WSOP headers that other people had created.

And I'm not having a diff war with you over this, you need only find one example where I agreed something was an error and said "I'm not fixing it". Which if course you won't because that is not the type of person I am, despite your pathetic attempts to paint me otherwise.

Rich Farmbrough, 20:15, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Of course you are not having a diff war, you hardly ever provide diffs for your accusations (see e.g. the Betacommand 3 case, or the rejected Arbcom case about you). And I'm not talking about what you "say", I'm talking about what you "do". I have also "corrected" your section header above, since making it a level 2 hader removes the context (the section starts with "Contrary to what Rich Farmbrough states above", which can become meaningless once you start archiving here). Fram (talk) 20:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't provide diffs, because its a waste of my time, I know it's true and so do you. Whether you refuse to admit it to yourself or just to others I can't tell, nor does it greatly matter. The fact is I have never refused to correct a genuine error, nor would I. Rich Farmbrough, 00:13, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

I don't believe that it is true at all, please don't pretend to know what I think. All I see is time and again you are asserting things and making accusations, and time and again you refuse to back them up with diffs when requested to do so. This makes them baseless accusations and personal attacks. Fram (talk) 07:49, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Well I re-read some of the stuff you point to, including a lot of your ranting and demands for blocks and other general stirring, and remembered just how bad your interactions have been. I have really run out of good faith with you. Unless you can find an example of me refusing to fix agreed mistakes, then please depart this thread, and preferably this page and the project, which you are not a net benefit to. Rich Farmbrough, 11:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Rich. Please reflect on what you're saying. There are people who perhaps feel the above statement precisely reflects your own behaviour. Regardless of whether that's the case or not, your account is the one that has been subject to editing restricts and blocks, not anyone else's account. —Sladen (talk) 12:51, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I have reflected on it. And I nearly came back and retracted it. I even thought perhaps I should suggest some project that I should work with Fram on, so we could diffuse the tension. But I am human, and to be frank, there is nothing that Fram could do to redeem himself in my eyes, it has gone far beyond that. That's not to say I don't understand, partially, Fram's point of view. I don't say that he is without ability. However he has a talent for rubbing people up the wrong way, he has no grasp of the big picture, and has been pestering me for over a year. The fact that some of his bug reports are correct and even significant no longer matters. I just don't want to see his name. Had he stuck only to real errors, been polite, non judgemental and also listened to my responses, I would have welcomed his comments, as indeed I did at first. It is, now, too late for that. Rich Farmbrough, 13:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Reconstructing how we got here: our interactions were few and far between, until he started editing some (protected and unprotected) templates to remove cats he didn't like, deleted them out of process, and was very dismissive and uncivil about anyone and anything opposing him, which lead to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Rich Farmbrough/October 2010. Note that only a few weeks before, there was Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive643#Rich Farmbrough and unnecessary capitalization changes, which basically is a prime example of most RF discussions since, and which wasn't started by me (or any of his other current regular posters), but by totally different people. What have we there: "totally unnecessary capitalization changes", "He said that he fixed the problem, but a day later, it was back." (anyone wanted evidence of the "refuses to fix problems?" statement), "Communication with the bot owner is going to be exceedlingly hard,", "RF has a long history of controversial mass-actions and refusing to discuss them or even consider that anybody else might possibly be right. ", "Since RF can't now (and before the block, seemingly wouldn't) change this behaviour," "In my experience the user in question is unfit to be combining adminship and botting. ", and so on and so on. All this without my prompting or interference. Perhaps, just perhaps, the problem is with you? Fram (talk) 14:09, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Even then you were there to be a member of the mob. As I have repeatedly acknowledged, blanking my talk page, simply because some editors though it was funny to jump onto every thread and turn it into a battleground was a mistake. Doing it without a clear explanation of what was happening, from some misplaced desire not create conflict with said editors even more so. Although you may have only started being disruptive at that point, it didn't take more than a few days until you were making a nuisance of yourself on BRFAs and elsewhere. Anyway.. . enough time wasted on you already. Rich Farmbrough, 14:35, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Let me also state that I have not contacted anyone about this, either on or off-wiki. I don't email other users, I don't use IRC, all my wiki-related things are conducted on Wikipedia and free for everyone to check. Fram (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, here's the pi-jaw

I let that discussion at WP:AN run itself into the ground, in the benighted hope that you would stop making the edits that are driving people mad. However, it appears that like everyone ele who runs bots (remember I'm on a committee with Xeno and Coren) you are an anal retentive with OCD on the autism spectrum. (remove dismal failure at humour. Just call me Jeremy Clarkson ) Or at the very least, you can't figure why what you do is annoying people. So it falls to me, Captain Swing the Luddite to remind you that

regardless of the editing method (i.e. manual, semi-automatic, or automatic; from any account), Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from making cosmetic changes to wikicode that have no effect on the rendered page (excepting those changes that are built-in to stock AWB or those that have demonstrable consensus or BAG approval). This includes but is not limited to: changing templates to template redirects, changing template redirects to templates (see here for AWB stock changes on this item, with the understanding that bypassing template redirects will only be done when there is a substantive edit being done), changing the spacing around headers and ordered lists (except to make an aberration consistent with the rest of the page), and changing the capitalization of templates. Furthermore, prior to orphaning/emptying and deleting categories or templates, the appropriate processes (WP:CFD/WP:TFD) should be engaged. Sanction imposed per this AN discussion, to be enforced by escalating blocks

Now you're an intelligent man, and it shouldn't come to this. So I want you to take all the code out of whatever instrument of the Devil it is that you use, that does things like this and changes <references/> to {{reflist}}, and switch cases the first letter of template names, and stuff like that. Because the next time that someone tells me that you have done it again, I will block you in the following sequence - 24hrs (in case you thought I wasn't serious), 1 week, 1 month, 1 year. And that would not be a good thing. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:32, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect, which it seems is virtually none, you are way out of order. That is not pi-jaw, it is an out and out personal attack, coupled with an amount of stupidity that exceeds anything I would expect from a sitting arbitrator. In the attempt by people, some of whom almost certainly actually are suffering from some of the conditions you accuse me of, and of which you clearly are in almost complete ignorance, to have me hauled before the august committee upon which you sit, you accused me, without any evidence, from the bench of a number of malfeasences. In addition you stuck your hand up at ANI as willing to enforce, showing that you had completely missed the question that was being asked and had not read or understood what was going on. Nor were you capable of noticing that, in the tangent that the hijiacked thread became, new accusations that were completely wrong (I.E. factually wrong) were being thrown around like confetti.

I must say this is a disappointment, after the way you handled the question of the ethnic make up of Gibraltar, I had conceived that you were competent. That estimation began to evaporate rapidly when you made your unseemly comments in ArbCom and your subsequent folly has rather inverted it.

Rich Farmbrough, 21:51, 4 December 2011 (UTC).

Do you want your rattle back yet?

Nice... Do you think your behaviour here is acceptable? Because it seems reprehensible to me, and I think I do you a service by pointing it out. Snide comments like that, however, serve no useful purpose. So better not make them. Rich Farmbrough, 00:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

I waited out the AN report

Funnily enough so did I. The question posed was whether an ER had been correctly imposed. The only opinions expressed were that it hadn't. Rich Farmbrough, 00:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

in the hope that you would be more intelligent than a certain other editor whose case I have shortly to go and write up, and would actually be able to stop pissing people off by making piddling edits that achieve no purpose that the community can fathom.

I'm only "pissing off" people who have decided to be pissed off, this is not random editors, its essentially a small group of misguided editors who have lost sight of what we are here to do. Rich Farmbrough, 00:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

I tried to be lighthearted because I know you actually edit articles as well, so you do speak a language other than Python.

Calling someone anal retentive, OCD and autistic spectrum is light-hearted? Apart from the fact you are mixing an an outdated and debunked Freudian term, a syndrome, and an organic condition, if you are using them in the pop-psychology way that a responsible person wouldn't, they are virtually synonyms. And make no mistake Wikipedia has many AS contributors, for whom we should, by and large, be grateful. Rich Farmbrough, 00:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

But no. For some reason, every chap with a bot has to make a blamed nuisance of themselves, like cycle couriers whizzing about the pavement and periodically mowing down pedestrians who don't get out of the way fast enough.

Until the massive attack on me back in September of last year, I had had no long running disputes, no blocks, no warnings, and never been "taken to AN/I". The whole farrago of nonsense stems from that most interesting event. In an attempt to meet concerns I went to considerable lengths to completely re-write my main bot, and made lots of changes to the way I was doing things. I have learnt though that there are people who will find fault with anything. In particular people who will stir things up and persecute others to the point of causing damage (and I have had emails from editors in this situation) and will continue to claim, and maybe even believe that they are "just enforcing the rule". That attitude cannot be allowed to flourish on Wikipedia, it is even more prejudicial to the project than the incivility that runs rampant and the complexity of the rules system. Rich Farmbrough, 00:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

Explain to me what was the point of anything in this edit [8] other than moving the Lennon and McCartney wikilink from pointing to a redirect to pointing to the current title, which does have some limited use, I'll grant you. Convince me it serves some useful purpose. Elen of the Roads (talk) 23:11, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Obviously that is the key component of the edit. The style has been agreed and for most articles it should be followed, there are exceptions though. The comment by the infobox is misleading, for detail on the infobox editors should go to the infobox page, where the documentation should be. Wikipedia is not here to serve the WikiProjects, rather the other way around. References in Wikipedia come after the punctuation, not before. The template {{Tracklist}} is a redirect to {{Track listing}}, "Track listing" is the preferred name for the section and the template follows suite. There is no benefit in having several versions of the template name in articles, those of us who speak languages other than Python prefer spaces between our words. Asking users (implicity) to remember that the section has one title and the template another is unnecessary cognitive load. Rich Farmbrough, 00:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

The Lennon-McCartney part was the key component? Since when do we use AWB to replace redirects with their targets? It's not as if the redirect was something ridiculous, it was the actual article title for years until it was changed without discussion earlier this year. We still have the very similar Jagger/Richards as well. There is no good reason to edit dozens of articles to get rid of a redirect for a style reason, "it should be followed" is your personal aspiration, not an accepted rule here. You are, again, imposing your preference for no actual benefit to the encyclopedia. AWB rules of use: "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." (emphasis mine) Edits like this one is not even visually changing the "/"style to the "-"style.

And, as usual (hence the editing restrictions), even such a relatively simple task leads to errors, e.g. a minor one like inserting the same template twice[9], but also a more major one, making a sentence meaningless like here. Fram (talk) 10:03, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

• Just passing by and I have two observations: 1) Lennon/McCartney should definitely be replaced because it's in Category:Unprintworthy redirects and, as such, should not be used in articles. 2) Elen, your comments are unnecessarily provocative. If someone came to my talk page and called me "an anal retentive with OCD on the autism spectrum", you can be sure that my response would be a lot angrier than Rich's very measured one. Surely you weren't trying to bait him into a dreaded personal attack, but that's how it appeared to me on first reading. Jenks24 (talk) 10:30, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Certainly wasn't my intention, and if he had told me to "get the hence thou aged crone" or similar, I wouldn't have taken offense to it. It's not that I think he is one of those things (or a cycle courier for that matter), it was intended as a hyperbolic expression. However, as an attempt at humour, it did come over as offensive (I should give up on the humour - I seem to do it badly), and I would like to apologise to Rich for the offense caused. Elen of the Roads (talk) 10:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Hyperbole is fine in its place, and I do find a lot of your comments more, shall we say, "interesting" to read than most of the dry-as-dust's contributions. Recently I have allowed myself to wax a little more lyrical, since what I say is largely ignored by those who need to listen to it, I may as well enjoy myself saying it. Rich Farmbrough, 16:52, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

I've removed that redirect from the "unprintworthy" category, as it clearly didn't belong there. The page had survived move requests before being moved without discussion to the current location. The same editor that made that move also decided that the new redirect suddenly was "unprintworthy", even though that version is used in many, many books as well, e.g. The Rough Guide to the Beatles and others[10]The Songs of John LennonThe Beatles... The current name may be better, that's not really relevant, but the other one certainly is printworthy. Even ignoring this, he also changed it when it wasn't the actual "printed" text, but a piped redirect, like in the error I gave above. Unprintworthy redirects may well be piped, there is no reason to replace these. Fram (talk) 10:53, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough, Elen. Although I can't speak for Rich, I'm sure he appreciates the apology. Fram, just because it is printworthy in other publications, does not mean it should be used in Wikipedia because it goes against our MoS (see MOS:SLASH) – an article would not get through FAC using the slash so I don't see why Rich shouldn't be replacing it. I'd encourage you to add the unprintworthy template back, but I don't think we need to make a big deal of it. I'm not sure which diff you're referring to, but I'll assume it's this one. No doubt that's an error and it shows that [[Lennon/McCartney|xyz]] should not be changed to just [[Lennon–McCartney]]. But one error in a few hundred or so edits does not seem to like a huge problem to me (and nor does it appear to be a violation of his editing restrictions). Jenks24 (talk) 11:17, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

It's (at least) two errors in the fifty or so that made this replacement, plus a few others where he replaced it for no reason (piped links). Fram (talk) 11:54, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Jenks, it is a problem in that it shows that Rich is actually using his main account for unattended automated edits, as such an error would have been caught by a careful editor in a proper semi-automated workflow (i.e. the kind where you actually review the changes you are committing rather than using an auto-save mechanism or hitting save blindly). –xeno^talk 13:45, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, his attended edits aren't that much better... He went back to the page in question, and "improved" it like this[11]. Luckily another editor corrected it twenty minutes later[12]. Fram (talk) 13:58, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Another example of that is [13] which changed "Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney" to "Written by Lennon–McCartney". — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:22, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

One more example. This edit [14] replaced the names of several templates and removed "example.jpg". But why was "example.jpg" there in the first place? The vandalism on the page - adding the name "Kailyn" - stands out both because it is in bold and because it is in a "see also" section but not linked. It's very odd to remove the image but not remove the rest of the vandalism. It is also not clear how the edit summary "copyedit" is applicable to that edit; cf. copyediting. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:22, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

So he makes a good edit, but because he didn't completely remove some vandalism, it's bad edit? No wonder Rich doesn't respond to these complaints... Jenks24 (talk) 10:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

He simply continues though, e.g. replacing here the deliberate and correct McCartney-Lennon with the reverse Lennon–McCartney. This one as well was not necessary at all. Fram (talk) 15:25, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The first edit is good because "McCartney-Lennon" --> "Lennon–McCartney" replaces a hyphen with an en dash (as is required by MOS:DASH). The second edit may well be "not necessary", but was there anything wrong with it? Every day, there are probably thousands of edits to Wikipedia that are "not necessary", but I don't think we need to block the people who do them. Jenks24 (talk) 10:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Correcting a dash and at the same tilme changing the meaning is not a "good edit" by any strectch of the imagination. MOS is always subordinate to meaning. Fram (talk) 11:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

2011-12-5

Unfortunately, the same violations are still present after the warning above. [15] still replaces <references>; [16] replaces {{tocright}}, which is not on the AWB list. Template:tocright is used on thousands of pages and is in no way deprecated by Template:TOC right.

There are also edits which remove the " Metadata: see Wikipedia:Persondata." comment from the "persondata" template [17]. AWB actually adds this comment by default, based on this diff from the AWB documentation [18], so in particular AWB does not remove this comment by default. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:47, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

So what are you getting at here a block or the ban that you have been trying to get for months. Frankly If I was Rich I wouldn't pay any attention to anything that was said by CBM, Xeno or Fram based on the dozens of accusations. The problem is that you complain so much about such trivial things it completely takes the credibility out of your statments. Especially when he is the only one you even watch. Rich can't log an edit without one of you three picking it apart. If you had the same zeal with all the other editors in WP there would be no vandalism or sock puppetry at all, but you focus all your attention on this one editor.

As I have said before if something breaks thats a different story but if hes cleaning a few trivial edits while he is doing more significant ones which seems to be the prevailing argument these days then your just shouting into the storm. In regards to the Metadata comment that hes removing. Personally I hate the thing. I think its a waste of bytes and looks like crap on the articles and falls into the same category of crap that should be removed as those huge gaudy no more external links comments that some people like to leave. We don't usually put these comments for Categories, infoboxes or other templtes we don't need them for these either. I also think that the Lennon–McCartney edit was a good replacement and I think it shows what you really know by even brining it up. I somewhat apologize for the somewhat angry tone but its getting really really old. --Kumioko (talk) 16:03, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Rich is free to seek the lifting of his editing restrictions at any time at the appropriate venue. What he may not do is simply ignore them, despite your irresponsible suggestion and encouragement that he do so.
If the song writing credits list "McCartney-Lennon", then it should not be replaced by "Lennon-McCartney" (and in any case, it was Fram that brought this up). –xeno^talk 16:11, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

No thats not what Im saying. Knowone ever said that however I also don't think we need to get overly worked up if hes doing them with other edits either. The fact is he does a lot of edits so he is fixing a lot of things on a lot of articles that would otherwise go on for months or years. What I'm saying is that no matter what, how or when he does it he's got three editors hanging out on the fence watching his every move. The McCartney-Lennon think I was talking about was where he replace the / with an -. --Kumioko (talk) 16:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

You asked about legitimacy at the appropriate venue. Every reply to your question was that the supposed ER was illegitimate. I see no reason to re-hash that argument. Rich Farmbrough, 16:32, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

Then surely you will be able to find an uninvolved administrator who agrees with you and will remove the listings at WP:RESTRICT? Until such time, you can expect the editing restrictions to be enforced as recorded. –xeno^talk 16:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Were there an admin with sufficient integrity aware of this, then doubtless they would remove it without prompting from me. Rich Farmbrough, 16:53, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

It's about what is better. I'm sorry that your vision is cut off at the point of "there is a rule". Even "TOC right" is jargon but "tocright" is totally meaningless. The fact that there are about six times as many "TOC right" as "tocright" is not what makes it the better name, the fact that it is more understandable is what is important.

With the {{Persondata}} comment, the information is visible on the template page, there's no need to direct editors off to Wikipedia space.

Rich Farmbrough, 16:32, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

You win

On the Matter of John Shipp, I'm come to inform you that I will be leaving the article alone from here on out. Although I feel that the article is still questionable, consensus is clearly in your favor for the retention of the article. I tip my hat to you for the work and for being patient with even as I worked to get the article axed; most users are not that polite.

Sincerely,

TomStar81 (Talk) 07:15, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for those kind words. Rich Farmbrough, 13:53, 18 November 2011 (UTC).

Request for advice

Hi Rich: Although I have edited on WP for years, I don't think I have run into quite the situation that now prevails in trying to add a section about Wikipedia administration to the article Wikipedia. I wonder if you can provide some perspective on the matter. Here is how I see things:

I've made a proposal for an addition to Wikipedia regarding its organization into four levels: the WikiMedia Foundation, WP:Bureaucrats, WP:Administrators, and WP:Arbitrators. Some details about their duties and the selection process by which they are appointed are added.

If the proposal is implemented upon the article page, it is immediately reverted with citation of WP:OR, WP:NPOV, which are completely inappropriate, without any attempt to show that the criteria have been violated. A more complicated objection is WP:Primary, although there is a caveat in this document that WP may be used as a source about itself.

No argument about the applicability of these criteria is engaged upon, and no attempt to analyze just what is objectionable about these facts is made. Does it help or hurt the article? Not a consideration.

So we have here a situation where a presentation of very simple facts cannot be made because there are perhaps four or five editors that will revert it on the basis of WP:OR, WP:NPOV, WP:Primary; applicable or not.

Am I correct in thinking that this is a perfect block to presenting this material? Can you conjecture as to the source of this opposition: what is so hard to swallow here? Brews ohare (talk) 17:47, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The proposed addition is here, in case you have forgotten about it. Brews ohare (talk) 17:53, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not a perfect block, for several reasons. Firstly in terms of process you have several options, the first being BRD. You were bold, they reverted, now you should (both) discuss. If no discussion is forthcoming oe a reasonable time period, say 48 hours, you can reasonably re-insert the material. If it is reverted again, and no discussion is forthcoming, you should either look for admin support, or try another RFC, centralised discussion or a suitable noticeboard.

However on your second question, I do understand, although I don't agree with the opposition. The advantage to citing secondary sources is that it should quieten down such plaints. There is a wealth of secondary source material, I have read a number of papers that discuss some of the roles, and there is Charles Matthews book which is available on-line somewhere.

Rich Farmbrough, 18:24, 6 December 2011 (UTC).

Thanks for the comments, Rich. I have listed Matthews' book among some others here. It has a Google preview here. Some of the facts about WP administration can be found in this book, but not all. It is perfectly clear from the cited links in the book itself that the source of its information is exactly the same WP links I have used myself. There are no alternative sources for this info provided, as that would serve no purpose: WP is the best source for the description of WP's formal organization. I might attempt to use this source as backup in the article, but it is of doubtful value as it brings no additional assessment or accuracy. And because the unreflective use of WP:OR, WP:NPOV, WP:Primary by those objecting to the proposed addition appears to be primarily as impediment, I suspect further impediment will be sought. Brews ohare (talk) 19:42, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The reasons that such sources might be better in general are that they reflect study of the phenomenon, in this case Wikipedia. In this case there is little gained because the main thrust of the content will be the same (there will be no shortage of "expert" editors willing to correct or improve the section - and I'm sure it wil be improved massively and quickly) but in other cases it might be different. For example you could have written the same section with an "anti-vandal" voice, or a "Copyyvio voice" or a "pro anarchy" voice. The fact that you haven't should be reason enough for people to chill and let the text develop. Editors seem to forget that the rule is verifiability, not verification. Perhaps a better tactic is to create at draft, and encourage folk to edit it? Rich Farmbrough, 19:51, 6 December 2011 (UTC).

Sounds like a plan; I'll try that. The distinction between verifiability and verification is interesting. I guess that either can be debated. Brews ohare (talk) 22:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The draft can be found here. Brews ohare (talk) 22:43, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Waiting time for Helpful Pixie Bot

In a recent discussion on this talk page, you agreed to set a waiting time for HPbot, but you didn't set this for IP edits for some unknown reason. This creates siutatuions like [19] where 7 times in 20 minutes you edit the same article while an IP is actively editing it, thereby possibly creating edit conflicts only because the bot won't wait for an hour or so before making its edit.

The same happened e.g. here with three bot edits in five minutes.

I also notice that the waiting period for non-IP edits only seems to be about 10 minutes, even though you said that you had increased it to 1 hour[20]. Any reason that you don't actually wait for 1 hour, and for IPs as well? Fram (talk) 13:34, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I did set it to 1 hour but the effectiveness became zero as I predicted. I now have it on twice the previous delay, and effectiveness is about 50% at a guess. Rich Farmbrough, 12:17, 18 October 2011 (UTC).

I unblocked this bot on the very clear undertaking you gave me. As you have reneged on this I have reblocked the bot. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:30, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I changed it in build 615. That proved ineffective, so I changed it again in build 616. This isn't causing any complaints from the editors who are adding the tags, which is my touchstone, not, with all due respect, what you or Fram might think. Rich Farmbrough, 13:08, 18 October 2011 (UTC).

(ec)What do you mean by "effectiveness"? Are there pages that should get tag-dated but don't, due to the delay? Or do other bots get there before yours (and why is that a problem?)? Or something else? Apart from that, any reason that you can't implement the same delay for IPs, avoiding (from today) four bot edits in seven minutes to the same article[21]? Fram (talk) 12:33, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I would also be interested in the answer to the questions above as it makes no sense to me. I see no compelling reason to unblock this bot considering all the factors (the number of errors it seems to make, and the lack of responsiveness from the operator, the number of complaints on this talk page, ...). Another bot performing the same task seems to receive no complaints and is doing the job perfectly well.

RE This isn't causing any complaints from the editors who are adding the tags, it was due precisely to complaints/feedback from the bot's "clients" that this delay is being demanded. Your dismissive response to User:EEng and failure to follow through showed how you respond to your "touchstone".

To summarise I propose leaving this bot blocked indefinitely as I foresee no end to the problems encountered so far. My patience is fairly well exhausted on this matter and other bots are doing the same work without any problems, so there is no loss to Wikipedia. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:02, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Except that you treat that other bot differently, since it's editing at 10 minute delay is considered fine and dandy. This is simply prejudice brought about by the slinging of mud, and blocking the bot is bad for the encyclopedia. I addressed EEngs concerns by allowing a much longer delay in his case, as I have done for anyone who has raised the concern. Rich Farmbrough, 21:59, 19 October 2011 (UTC).

AnomieBot has a twenty minute delay, not a ten minute delay, and uses the same twenty minute delay for IPs... Fram (talk) 07:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

AnomieBOT running alone has a 20-minute delay. I have some experimental code running that automatically adjusts the delay to match (within reason) if Helpful Pixie Bot has been running faster; I did this because, way back when I started running the task, it was proposed that AnomieBOT use the same delay as (then-)SmackBot and Rich kept resetting his bot to just slightly faster. That seems to be what happened here, too, BTW: Rich turned his bot to about 19 minutes, then 18, then 16, then 14, then 10 over the course of 4 days. Anomie⚔ 12:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I didn't know that AnomieBOT was also running at 10 minutes and it doesn't make sense to me that AnomieBOT's delay should be affected by other bot's settings. It's as if you two are competing with each other, for some unknown reason, and I don't see this being helpful to the encyclopedia. This work is completely non-urgent and a delay of 24 hours would seem perfectly adequate to me. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:32, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

No competition on my part, just parity. And it lets me know to do things like this. A delay of 24 hours is IMO too long, as on even a moderately active article the bot would never be allowed to edit. Anomie⚔ 15:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Of course you would still get to see new templates regardless of which bot edits first, since Helpful Pixie Bot wouldn't know about them either - and you have code I think you said to capture these cases. Interestingly that is one reason I find AnomieBOT frustrating - that it clears certain hard cases, which in my old (AWB based) daily workflow I would see the morning after kicking off a run, enabling me to keep the bot up to date. Another advantage of an AWB daily run was that an actual delay was built in, due to the time it took to build the list and the relatively low editing speed. A third advantage was far less reads of Wikipedia. Rich Farmbrough, 22:36, 20 October 2011 (UTC).

Sigh. Time to unblock this, since the block was done on the mistaken basis that I had reneged on an undertaking to MSGJ, which even if correct would not be a reason for a block. Blocks are not punitive. Rich Farmbrough, 17:26, 16 November 2011 (UTC).

MSGJ. You said you blocked because I reneged on something. If you re-read you will find that I didn't. Please therefore unblock. Rich Farmbrough, 22:59, 22 November 2011 (UTC).

I unblocked your bot based on some very specific undertakings which you did indeed renege on. I do not need to re-read the discussion to know this. Based on all that has happened I am not inclined to trust you to run this bot in a responsible manner. As I said earlier my patience is exhausted and I will not be unblocking the bot. If you wish to seek review of this, you may post at the Administrators' noticeboard. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:36, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

If it means anything, I miss good old Smack bot; it was fast and reliable as a nuclear clock. At 22:48 I last laid down some tags @ Medal of Honor and as of 02:48 the "nicely behaved bot" has not placed dates. I also liked Smack bot because it fixed any irregularities in the article while it was in there. I used to ping Smack bot with the request template just to have it clean up articles. :) So this delay going on made go and look for what happened to your bot and I find this crap. I think they threw the baby out with the bathwater. Brad (talk) 07:48, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Templates Cat use dmy dates and Cat use mdy dates

I created {{Cat use dmy dates}} and {{Cat use mdy dates}} and applied them to the most obvious categories having to do with ballet companies and dancers (which is all I really care about!)

They are crude copies of {{Use dmy dates}} and {{Use mdy dates}}, merely omitting the onlyarticles parameter.

I don't know whether there is an onlycategories parameter; but, if there were I would include it.

I just made the presence of the templates visible within the categories in which they are present: Articles in this category use dmy dates (and vice verse).

For the benefit of editors who do things the old-fashioned way, by hand.

This discussion began on my talk page, the Megan Fairchild section, which is now archived here.

Ohconfucius wrote that he uses a script to tag articles MDY or DMY and could use some help modifying it.

Rather than expect a script to search up and down the category tree for each article it seemed wiser to do so once and for all, tagging the categories by hand.

Ohconfucius' script needs to be modified to detect the presence of the Cat use dmy dates and Cat use mdy dates templates in any of the categories in which a given article directly resides.

NB There will be articles that lie in categories that are tagged both ways, Alexandra Ansanelli being a prime example; these ambiguous articles will need to be skipped by the script.

Ideally the script would put out a list of articles requiring human intevention — but this is far from an ideal world.

I would not be asking you, a veteran of the Date Wars, to re-enlist, but hope that this can be done discreetly and so avert future Date Wars.

You are absolutely right about how unimportant this, date format, is.

Indeed, I'd be happier if there were fewer scipts being run, ideally none, and people would do some real editing for a change! — Robert Greer (talk) 21:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

thank you

Thank you for the advice! — Robert Greer (talk) 01:30, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

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Thanks

Hi Rich,

I have noticed your helpful edits on the Ariel A. Roth article, thanks.

Most welcome. Rich Farmbrough, 01:07, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Urgent, please clean up my mess

I moved AfD to Afd. because "Articles for deletion" really should be "Afd". And because Cfd and Tfd are that way also. And I moved quite a few templates with the capital "D", together with their documentation pages. Just one page I couldn't move: Template:AfD in 3 steps. So I temporarily created Template:Afd in 3 steps with the lowercase "d", but now I need someone to delete it and do the move the way it should have been done. Could you please do that? Debresser (talk) 06:04, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

And the same precisely for Template:AfD categories, Template:REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD, and Template:REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD/doc. Debresser (talk) 06:26, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I might add that I don't believe this to be supported by consensus. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:01, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Then see it as a bold move. The arguments above stick. Of course, if someone would want to discuss it, I am more then willing to repeat these same arguments over and over. But would that really be of any use? I think this is a classical case where being bold is recommended. Debresser (talk) 13:01, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I was reverted again, with a circular argument. But respecting WP:BRD, I opened a discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion#Bold.2C_revert.2C_discuss. Perhaps it would be better to wait doing my request till after that. Also, feel free to jump in. Debresser (talk) 13:20, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I think that was super-bold. Rich Farmbrough, 13:54, 11 December 2011 (UTC).

But it needed to be done. Your help will be appreciated. Debresser (talk) 14:32, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I already see people are not going to agree with it. Although the best argument so far has been WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Sic transit gloria mundis. ;-) I think I'll turn those page I couldn't move into redirects at some point. Or perhaps I'll just keep them where they are. They don't bother anybody, and can be just just as well. Debresser (talk) 17:59, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

So let's get back to #Request_for_help. Debresser (talk) 18:00, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Substitution checking

Please see the two sections I posted about this subject on Template_talk:Fix#Substitution_check and Template_talk:Fix#Method_of_substitution_check (one right after the other). I compare Ambox with Fix, asking a few questions and making a few suggestions. Debresser (talk) 20:26, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Glad to see this has been answered. Rich Farmbrough, 21:09, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Kimchi Chronicles

Hi Rich. I just wondered if the original creation of the article for the American TV series Kimchi Chronicles (which is fine as it is and I edited it recently as well) had a kind of flaw in its creation. It seems that the original article was created by an editor called "frappeinc" (User:frappeinc) which happens to be the production company for the show and owned by Charles Pinsky in NYC: Frappé Inc.. That was the only contribution by that user. Was it a COI originally? Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 16:31, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I would say so. Unless it's a copyvio there's nothing we need to do about it now. Rich Farmbrough, 18:09, 4 December 2011 (UTC).

Right. Thanks for having a look, Rich. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 22:36, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Governing hierarchy and structure of WP

Hi Rich: You commented earlier upon this proposed addition to the page Wikipedia outlining the formal structure of WP. Since your comments, a number of further changes have been suggested and implemented. Could you take another look at this proposal and comment further? Thanks for your assistance. Brews ohare (talk) 20:38, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Sure, I'll take a look. Rich Farmbrough, 00:37, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

Disambiguation link notification

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Article Feedback Tool newsletter

Hey, all! A quick update on how version 5 of the Article Feedback Tool is developing. I'm sending this to both newsletter recipients and regular participants, because I appreciate we've been a bit quiet :).

So, we're just wrapping up the first round of user contributions. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed ideas (a full list of which can be found at the top of the page); thanks almost entirely to contributions by editors, the tool looks totally different to how it did two months ago when we were starting out. Big ideas that have made it in include a comment voting system, courtesy of User:Bensin, an idea for a more available way of deploying the feedback box, suggested by User:Utar, and the eventual integration of both oversight and the existing spam filtering tools into the new version, courtesy of..well, everyone, really :).

For now, the devs are building the first prototypes, and all the features specifications have been finalised. That doesn't mean you can't help out, however; we'll have a big pile of shiny prototypes to play around with quite soon. If you're interested in testing those, we'll be unveiling it all at this week's office hours session, which will be held on Friday 2 December at 19:00 UTC. If you can't make it, just sign up here. After that, we have a glorious round of testing to undertake; we'll be finding out what form works the best, what wording works the best, and pretty much everything else under the sun. As part of that, we need editors - people who know just what to look for - to review some sample reader comments, and make calls on which ones are useful, which ones are spam, so on and so forth. If that's something you'd be interested in doing, drop an email to okeyes@wikimedia.org.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions so far. We're making good headway, and moving forward pretty quickly :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Request

There is a good question at Template_talk:Tfm#Notice_parameters. I couldn't really answer it. If the answer is that such a change could be made, go ahead. I'll update the documentation afterwards. Debresser (talk) 15:52, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. Debresser (talk) 07:25, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

barnstar

		The Purple Star
		for equanimity under sustained criticism, that might be considered an attack. Slowking4⇔ †@1₭ 21:35, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Rich Farmbrough, 21:52, 3 December 2011 (UTC).

Request

There is a good question at Template_talk:Tfm#Notice_parameters. I couldn't really answer it. If the answer is that such a change could be made, go ahead. I'll update the documentation afterwards. Debresser (talk) 15:52, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. Debresser (talk) 07:25, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

barnstar

		The Purple Star
		for equanimity under sustained criticism, that might be considered an attack. Slowking4⇔ †@1₭ 21:35, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Rich Farmbrough, 21:52, 3 December 2011 (UTC).

The stable version template

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		For the {{Stable version}} template, a light-touch way to keep track of article stability and quality. Yaris678 (talk) 16:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

You may also be interested in Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Stable version and article milestones. Yaris678 (talk) 16:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

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Back to automated edits

We've got to find some way to resolve this. You're driving people mad, and they seem to be driving you mad. Can you stop doing some of the stuff that drives them mad, so you can carry on doing useful stuff? There was a lot of support for taking some sort of action to stop you making automated edits, and the final terms are actually milder than those supported by a lot of people.

Will you agree to the following

• run the script off another account, not your main account.
• not fix things that are not broken. No changing capitalisations and redirects unless they are actually causing something not to work. No fiddling with non-visible whitespace. Changing them otherwise is mere cushion-straightening, and the only tolerable error rate is zero, something you have never achieved.
• and on that subject, do more error checking. Apologies, I know you probably already do some, but believe it or not I run a technical team, and they only ever error check for the errors they can think of. We always also get three or four lasses in the call centre to check the output - you'll be surprised what they spot. Obviously you don't have that luxury, but there does seem to be a consistent if low error rate in your scripted edits.
• get a clear approval before using reprogrammed AWB, because the consensus seems to be that you need to do that. If you can get clear approval to do a task, it will get people off your back.

If you can't agree to these, then as the restrictions were as far as I can see legitimately imposed after proper and thorough discussions, then the consequences listed can legitimately be applied.--Elen of the Roads (talk) 23:02, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Thing is, we're talking a different language here. Well several different languages. It makes it hard to know where to start.

First off my last 153 edits (not counting this one) have been standard Firefox edits, I'm scarcely touching AWB, because, yes, the illegitimi are carborunduming me somewhat. Before that there's two - count them - AWB edits on the 6th December.

Secondly you miss the fact that, even if we allow that the ER is binding (I worked with RD-232 on the basis that it was, to keep the mob off my back, because he was actually pretty sane, and I add, worked successfully - except when Fram kept jumping in the middle of conversations shouting "look look!") then 99% of the changes you mention are allowable - which is why it is so ludicrous to be opposed on thing like "we MUST preserve {{tocright}}" and "We must keep confusing markup". Let me stress again it's pretty much the Fram and CBM show, here, with a little Xeno thrown in from time to time.

Thirdly I am not clear what you mean by a "reprogrammed AWB." The fact is that I never even downloaded the source for AWB until CBM basically forced me to do so, to remove something that he doesn't like. It is frustrating that these tall tales are being put about - I even came across someone on IRC calumniating me. Of course its funny as well, but it does fit in nicely with the "signs of mobbing" that, I think it was, Hans Adler recently linked to.

And finally AWB is not automated edits.

On the matter of the alleged ER, it was brought about by a totally crazy discussion, arising from some really shameful behaviour on the part of several editors, and mobbing on AN/I. At one point I left simple queries on the pages of 18 editors who had chipped in with "ban him!" type comments, to the effect "On AN/I you said X, can I ask what your reason for this was?" Only one had the decency to respond, and that one withdrew their comment from AN.I and apologised. Another editor adduced these gentle enquiries as further proof of my diabolical nature. It was against this sort of background that I was initially willing to work with R2-D2 who I believed had actually put some effort into understanding the dispute, although his conclusion was completely wrong. It turned out later that he had simply cut and pasted the poorly thought out text someone else had posted. For which there was no consensus. The salient matter had all already been dealt with, in the first brou-ha-ha. He has now retired, having seen through the type of posturing and mobbing that was going on in those AN/I disputes. Unfortunately he has left me with two unilaterally imposed ERs, and a comics addict, a mathematician and a bureaucrat still hanging around my talk page making a nuisance of themselves.

It is fairly clear to the meanest intelligence that this is no longer about the encyclopedia as far as they are concerned. Fram reverts my edits, takes me to every forum he can think of, deletes articles and redirects, wheel wars, opposes everything I post where he can and generally makes a nuisance of himself. CBM has for years been doing inane reverts of users, edit warring and breaking templates, and yet he has the cheek to say I am "wasting edits". And although Xeno and CBM have some technical competence, they still are quite happy to go off half-cocked (though Xeno has the grace to apologise) on matters they don't understand. Fram - technically - just doesn't get it. And that I think is the most annoying part. It's all very well to politely point out an error on a subject where one is knowledgeable, but a lot of the criticism is over things that I know about and Fram doesn't. And it's not even worded in any way other than a command. I have long ago given up trying to teach Fram anything, which is a sad sate of affairs. I then asked him not to interact with me, several times. He has steadfastly refused.

And in case you still think, as you expressed on Arbcom (which comments still mystify me, both as to why you believed them and why you thought that was a good place to enunciate them) that I have "poor customer skills" don't forget that I had several years of frequent questions, sometimes very angry as to why "You have tagged my article." when the bot had simply dated the tags.

So really there is a lot more to this than just some nut who likes articles to look good. These are carefully thought out improvements, most of which are now built into AWB and hence "permissible". The fact that I don't feel like rolling over and dying under the bullying tactics that I have seen over that last year or so, I think should be considered commendable rather than otherwise.

Rich Farmbrough, 02:04, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Oh and just a postscriptum, "run the script off another account" among other things leads me to suppose that there is off-wiki lobbying going on here. I prefer to keep as much as possible in the light of day, and would appreciate knowing if this is the case. Rich Farmbrough, 10:02, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

The reason I brought this up is that creating another account for larger projects is something I was bullied into doing sometime ago, it was then used as a stick to beat me (or sock to beat me - think Death Wish perhaps). So I wondered where the meme had come from. Rich Farmbrough, 16:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Couple of immediate points. First, no-one is off-wiki lobbying *me*. Secondly, a lot of the objections seem to be related to introducing errors in the attempt to fix an error. This is a problem for automated edits obviously. If you do it with manual errors, while other editors may request that you be more careful, I know that I myself keep two Wikignomes permanently employed running round fixing up my bad code, failure to complete clerking, lack of signage etc, so I don't feel I can say a word about it.

There is some discussion on my talkpage, but you can read that anyway, and in fact I'd be interested if you'd read Carl's points here, and respond if you feel led in either location. I suspect people use the old/wrong/redirect names because (a) they remember them, (b) they keep a subpage of code snippets, or (c) they cut and paste out of an existing article that works the way they want, rather than go to the template documentation. I've b0rked a good many templates that way, so have learned my lesson and always look at the documentation, but if all the versions work, and the end user never sees the code, there really is no point in changing it. I agree that fixing bad code (FrontPage's approximations of html, or the junk generated by using the Macro Recorder to create your VBA), cleaning up code that the developer stopped looking at as soon as it worked (leaving 15 commented out iterations behind), documenting undocumented code, etc are all important activities. But if I can use {{TOCright}} or {{TOC right}} and get the same effect, it isn't broken and doesn't need fixing. Elen of the Roads (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll address Carl's point on your talk page to avoid muddying the debate here.

Well I'm certainly pleased about the first point, it keeps thing simpler.

The second is undoubtedly correct, people probably use all these methods to apply templates. And two more are typos and short-cuts. Indeed I extensively used {{wfy}} in the sure and certain knowledge that it would be replaced by something meaningful when it was dated. However the conclusion does not follow - for a whole bunch of reasons. Firstly we want to provide a simple interface to users, when we have some hundreds of clean-up templates and some thousands of redirects it is much easier to lean the smaller set than the larger. Moreover if we consistently use spaces in template names, and consistently use sentence case we really do lighten the cognitive load. Secondly not all redirects are benign, {{Fact}} was changed to {{Citation needed}} because the first was too bitey - it says, more or less, "Liar!", there were redirects to different templates that differed only by a space or a capital letter, there are redirects that are misleading. Because I approached this on a very gentle incremental approach, rather than making runs just to replace template redirects, this is something the community was (an is, despite a recent attempt to derail consensus) happy with. There is no problem with many hundreds of redirect replacements. There's a couple, mainly done by hand that have been picked on. This is where my patience runs thin, instead of coming and saying "Hey Infobox blah isn't on the AWB list, or better, adding it a WP:POINT message is left on my talk page with very condescending instructions "not to do it again".

In fact really WP:POINT is the crux of what Fram and CBM are doing. Really if you saw I had changed, in the course of another spelling correction edit {{Infobox UK Legislation}} to {{Infobox UK legislation}} would you go and look through a long list of allowed and almost identical infoboxes, then come back here and post that I was in violation of editing restrictions? It passes the quack test as pointy behaviour, and it's only because I cut them extra slack, being mathematicians and comics addicts, that I haven't classified it this way before.

Rich Farmbrough, 16:31, 7 December 2011 (UTC).

Note: to highlight the lunacy, examine this edit by Fram where he fixes a date (substantive edit), removes un-needed white space, changes {{cn}} to {{Citation needed}} and changes a hyphen to an en-dash. Rich Farmbrough, 01:06, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Yes, I use standard AWB changes while making substantive changes. You are allowed to do the same. Those times that I complained about an edit you made, and it turned out to be standard AWB, I acknowledged my mistake and stopped complaining about you making that kind of edit. So what "lunacy" are you actually highlighting? That I use AWB as intended and without problems? If you do the same, you won't hear anything from me. Fram (talk) 07:49, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

You clearly don't understand that while to you that type of edit is completely different in nature from replacing "tocright" with "TOC right" while fixing a spelling error, to the vast majority of sane, technically literate Wikipedians the two are basically indistinguishable. Indeed some of the things Elen asked me to agree to stop doing are precisely things that you do - that are "allowed". And even my three wise monkeys have got it wrong, as you comment above. So if no-one can tell the difference between an allowed change, and a disallowed one, without going off and doing tests, then really there must be something wrong if someone is proposing blocks based on this - or even taking any notice of it at all. Rich Farmbrough, 11:19, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

Dear Elen of the Roads and Rich. I understand that I am only a simple editor, but I hope my two cents will help here. I know Rich here on Wikipedia from working together on several occasions. I mention this to make the point that Rich is an approachable and friendly editor, the point of which will become clear soon enough. In general we share the same opinions as to the desirableness of having pages (articles, templates and categories foremost) look technically elegant, well-ordered and understandable. This I add to explain that my "defending" him here and in other sections above is not without a personal interest. All the same, I'd like to remind Rich that I am waiting for him to continue the discussion above on the subject of dating format templates (where we seem to disagree).

I'd like to make a few observations, related some more some less to the issue.

• Some editors do more thorough test than others before saving the page. This is a matter which depends on the editor's character. I, for example, often reread what I wrote only after saving, and then fix typos, etc. This is not ideal, but that is the way I work. Perhaps the same is true in a certain measure for Rich.

On this same subject I'd like to make another two observations

• There is a Dutch saying that wherever people work, flints fly. Meaning that the laws of statistics dictate that the more one works, the more one errs. In view of the large number of edits Rich makes, being the most active editor on Wikipedia, it is only normal that he makes a lot of errors.
• Rich is very conscientious about replying to messages on his talkpage, and replies seriously to any and all notifications of errors made by him (in automated as well as semi-automated and hand-made edits).

And two more general comments

• I for one disagree with the editing restriction against Rich. Moreover, I don't think there is any justification for such a restriction. Especially in view of the way this restriction came about, if we may take Rich's word for it.
• As to the level of technical versatility of the editors involved I have no opinion. I did notice that Fram's posts here are sometimes less than detached. Unfortunately, even Rich sometimes gets irritated by the many critical comments here from a select group of editors, and that also doesn't help. Personally, I am a fan of the English sense of humor, and would like to use this occasion to thank Rich for "a comics addict, a mathematician and a bureaucrat". With all due respect, of course, for said editors. 21:06, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the support, I'm not sure that this is being read though. The whole discussion has been fractured, partly by invidious interventions, but partly by Elen starting new threads and not responding to old ones. Rich Farmbrough, 23:54, 8 December 2011 (UTC).

I think that you are doing the right thing. The fact that you get supported and "defended" here by other editors, and moreover the fact that your opponents are the same two-three editors but your supporters are many different editors, are telltale indications that this is so. Debresser (talk) 06:52, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia organization

A description of WP organization is in this draft. Please look it over and make changes with accompanying discussion on its Talk page. Brews ohare (talk) 17:36, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Now moved to this location. Brews ohare (talk) 15:32, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

To those who have provided moral and intellectual support in these recent troubles, and especially the last days and weeks. It is, of course, irritating, annoying, frustrating and depressing when those who should know better nickel-and-dime over the most inane trivia that should have been sorted on day 2 of Wikipedia, but of course we have come to expect that after an eight year battle over the spelling of a dairy product. It is even more depressing to find that these folk have had some success in poisoning the well, as one ex-arb put it "anything repeated often enough becomes believed."

I never know quite why we loose users like some of the all-time greats we have lost this year. If they were blocked, was it justified, or was it "the cabal" or infighting? If they left have they thrown their toys out, or just been ground into submission, or is there indeed a difference? But I do, more and more, come to understand the sort of thing some of them have been on the receiving end of. Let me assure you, though, that I will not willingly join their number.

Despite the depressing nature of some recent events, and interactions, I am by nature an optimist. My optimism is buoyed whenever someone acts in a way that is for the betterment of the encyclopaedia, and especially when they can see the big picture. In particular coming out and speaking in support of what I am doing (albeit a minor part of what I am doing, but I believe important for a number of reasons, including, vitally, editor growth and retention) - in the face of some determined, some might say unswervable, opposition including some big "names" might not be considered fun. Nonetheless, they come, not just here, but on ANI and even at Arbcom, and for no more reason than to do what is right - many, indeed most, do not agree with me on everything, but they still take the time and effort to post their insights and support.

And for that I thank you.

Rich Farmbrough, 01:15, 9 December 2011 (UTC).

I'm very glad that you plan to stick around. Your leaving would be a serious loss to Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community. Cheers. The Transhumanist 01:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

		The Resilient Barnstar
		Yep, not easy at all. Thanks for your efforts to improve WP. Even "inconsequential" changes have their place in one's scripts and editing repertoire – if nothing for more effective maintenance. I've been around long enough to see how through incremental change that WP becomes a better reader's (I didn't say "user") experience. Keep yer chin up! Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:59, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

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Two Barnstars for your great work

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		For your great work in mediating over the years

Tamsier (talk) 15:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

		The Barnstar of Integrity
		You always edit with integrity and honour. A quality I respect greatly. Always there to offer help when needed to clarify Wiki policy

Tamsier (talk) 15:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Barnstars are cool. Rich Farmbrough, 21:05, 19 November 2011 (UTC).

Bot help

Hi, Rich! I was wondering if you have time/are willing to help with a simple, but voluminous task I'm facing. I am looking at replacing one parameter name of the {{ru-census}} template with another in every article which transcludes this template. Is this something you can help with? I'll let you know the details of what needs to be changed if you can. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 19, 2011; 16:12 (UTC)

Yes this won't be hard. Rich Farmbrough, 16:13, 19 December 2011 (UTC).

Thanks! Here's what need to be done. The transclusions of the {{ru-census}} template need to use "p2010_prelim" parameter instead of "p2010". After you are done with your run, I'll change it back to "p2010" for the entities for which the final 2010 Census results are available.

Your help is greatly appreciated! I will take care of tweaking the template after you finish your run.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 19, 2011; 16:50 (UTC)

Just wondering, are you finished or just taking a break?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 20, 2011; 20:59 (UTC)

ALl done, and I ran a double check. Rich Farmbrough, 21:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC).

Thanks a bunch; much appreciated! By the by, that darn rule which replaces "city/town/etc" with "inhabited locality" in the infobox name is still in place :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 20, 2011; 21:13 (UTC)

Text editor?

What (free) text editor do you recommend for editing perl scripts? The Transhumanist 21:47, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I use mainly VIM, as recommended by Anomie (also vi, notepad and the command line editor), I also have Perl IDE but I haven't done much with it. The main problem with VIM is that it doesn't cope with Unicode. Rich Farmbrough, 23:25, 10 December 2011 (UTC).

I'll try 'em. Thank you. The Transhumanist 00:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Perl text editor

Do you know of any (copyleft) text editors and/or word processors written in perl? I'd like to familiarize myself with how they work. The Transhumanist 21:49, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

No idea on this one. Rich Farmbrough, 23:25, 10 December 2011 (UTC).

These aren't Perl specific but try taking a look at notepad ++ here and Scintilla here. They may lead you to some helpful information. You can also check out Sourceforge fro some good stuff written in Perl. All three of these are Free open source software related. --Kumioko (talk) 00:07, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll take a look. The Transhumanist 00:41, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

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A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you for fixing the "Jaguar/Sandbox/3" problem. I'm afraid that I don't use Wikipedia anymore so I was not able to sort out the problem myself. Anyway, thanks! Jaguar (talk) 17:10, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome, and thanks for the barnstar! Rich Farmbrough, 21:18, 19 December 2011 (UTC).

WP:BLPN#Multiple BLP articles of Queen's Enterprise Promotion award winners

Just to let you know about this current discussion concerning a series of articles which you created. Exok (talk) 22:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Request for your perspective on SOPA

Hi Rich, there's currently an ongoing discussion about splitting the Stop Online Piracy Act page at Talk:Stop_Online_Piracy_Act#ONGOING_DISCUSSION_-_Splitting_the_Article. You've familiarized yourself with the entry before, and your insight and perspective on the matter would be appreciated. Hope to see you there, Sloggerbum (talk) 23:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Help me!

Help me to edit this article: Football at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's Asian Qualifiers User:Banhtrung1 03:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC).

You need to be a little more specific. Rich Farmbrough, 11:57, 12 December 2011 (UTC).

GoldenhollerGlory284

See also Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Golden_Glory_hijinks (in case you hadn't).  Chzz  ►  20:02, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 15:48, 19 December 2011 (UTC).

New article

I wrote a short article about a Jewish youth organisation I am familiar with. Would you mind having a look at it, and perhaps make some changes or leave me a comment? Also, do you think it should perhaps be considered a stub? It is already in main article space at Ezra USA. Debresser (talk) 17:11, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Wouldn't you say that "Shalom World Trip" is a proper noun and should be capitalised? Debresser (talk) 17:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Probably. The concept of a proper noun is not as well defined as people like to think. Regardless the text and the headline should conform. Rich Farmbrough, 17:37, 27 December 2011 (UTC).

Ok, thanks. And I guess it is not a stub any more? Debresser (talk) 17:39, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks like a reasonable short article to me. Rich Farmbrough, 17:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC).

Thanks. Debresser (talk) 17:50, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Wheel warring

You are now wheel warring on the fully protected page Template:Schooldis. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:33, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Nonsense. I was bold, you reverted, we had a discussion, showing the move was correct, so I moved it again. Rich Farmbrough, 14:44, 28 December 2011 (UTC).

See WP:WHEEL: "Do not repeat a reversed administrative action when you know that another administrator opposes it." Given that nobody else commented on the talk page, the claim that there was a discussion is also dubious, but that's a separate issue. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:48, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Rather than cherry-picking, perhaps you should read "Administrators may disagree, but except for clear and obvious mistakes, administrative actions should not be reversed without good cause, careful thought and (if likely to be objected) usually some kind of courtesy discussion." Knee-jerk preservation of garbage does not count as good cause or careful thought. Rich Farmbrough, 14:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC).

It shouldn't require saying this, but belief that your own action was correct is not an excuse for wheel warring. If another instance were to arise, I would take it to a more public forum for dispute resolution. This time I chose to just leave a reminder that you are abusing your administrator tools, nothing more. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

SOPA

Hi Rich,

I've broke a drought of about a year to make a comment on the Stop Online Piracy Act. Could you have a look at Talk:Stop Online Piracy Act#Another article that misses crucial parts of the bill as I've a number of concerns that there are important sections of the proposed legislation that aren't addressed in the article.

I've no intention of making an account, and I don't wish to reveal who I am (no, I'm not banned) though it might be possible to work out who I am. But I'm bringing to your attention on the off chance that something can be done.

Thanks, anon - 114.76.227.0 (talk) 00:06, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Might be worthwhile also considering deleting Stop Online Privacy Act. Rather an inappropriate redirect? :-) - 114.76.227.0 (talk) 00:08, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

It is fine, we are not advancing that name by having the redirect, and it seems that it is widely used, possibly in error. Rich Farmbrough, 16:02, 27 December 2011 (UTC).

I'll take a look. Rich Farmbrough, 16:02, 27 December 2011 (UTC).

Proposed deletion of Paul Davidson (business)

The article Paul Davidson (business) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

non-notable per tag

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Kerowyn ^{Leave a note} 22:12, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Nickelodeon

Hi, I want to possibly add a watchlist patrol for WikiProject Nickelodeon, including the talk pages and Recent changes which I've created without a bot. Could someone add it? Thanks. JJ98 (talk) 07:37, 18 December 2011 (UTC) [X] copied from User talk:Femto Bot by Femto Bot, (possibly the smallest bot in the world) 07:40, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I added it to the list, but there's a little tweaking required. Rich Farmbrough, 22:10, 20 December 2011 (UTC).

WP:Cambridge

Wikiproject Cambridge is now part of Wikipedia:WikiProject East Anglia. Wilbysuffolk Talk to me 21:15, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

KK thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 21:19, 19 December 2011 (UTC).

The Signpost: 19 December 2011

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Dates in Russian

Here's another bug I've found: [22]. The dates in Russian should not be converted to English even when they are actually just dates (a translation of the whole ref needs to be added, if only to maintain the style), but in this particular case these dates are in fact parts of the book title, so translating them mangles the ref completely. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 20, 2011; 21:57 (UTC)

OK thanks for that. Rich Farmbrough, 22:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC).

Another request

You are going to hate me, but can you also do a similar run for {{ru-pop-ref}}, replacing the "2010Census" parameter with "2010Census_prelim"?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 21, 2011; 18:04 (UTC)

The last one of these really should have had a BRFA, as should the "Encyclopedia Britannica" task. I let those go, but now that there is a third one, which seems to implicate a couple thousand articles, a BRFA is certainly necessary. Edits of this scale should be done by accounts with a bot flag, not by human editors. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Funny enough getting a BRFA through in a sensible amount of time is well nigh impossible, in no small part due to the shenanigans of you and Fram. Rich Farmbrough, 18:34, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

BAG is actually quite fast for these sorts of things, when it is clear that the change should be made and there aren't any objections. I don't have any objection to the parameter replacement, but it does need to go through the approval system. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:43, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, unless it's me. I have sat waiting for weeks to even get an acknowledgement from BAG, yet when I take 3 hours to reply to Fram I get blocked. I'm not complaining, that's just the facts and I have to live with it. And so does everyone else. It is however not of my making. Rich Farmbrough, 18:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

Besides which there are a small but significant number of mis-spellings that are correct. Rich Farmbrough, 18:37, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

Bot approval does not prevent manual review of the edits, but a task that involves thousands of articles needs to go through BAG before it starts even if it will be manually reviewed. In particular there are ENGVAR issues that should have been considered in public for the EB task. I let that one pass, but I did notice it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:43, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

It's a proper name, using the Latin alphabet in standardised capitalisation. The engvar considerations only apply the use of encyclopaedia/encyclopedia in running text, which I have not touched (although I previously corrected about 2000 exavmples of spellings such as encylo- . (I take it you don't think we should preserve "Brittanica" - it is after all just a signifier.) Rich Farmbrough, 18:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

The way that the "ae" ligature is dealt with varies greatly from British to American English, as I'm sure you know. Like I said, I let that one pass, but it is far from obvious that (1) the 'ae' spelling should be used in articles that employ American English and (2) that a ligature, rather than a digraph, should be used at all. Ligatures are not matters of spelling, they are matters of typography, and I think our house style generally uses the digraph for 'ae'. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:05, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

It's Gdasnk or Danzig, but you are always Carl and never Karl. Rich Farmbrough, 19:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

But Martin Löb is also Martin Loeb, and Michelle Pfeiffer is also Michelle Pfeiffer. The latter of those is a much more parallel analogy. In general the MOS seems to recommend the digraph 'ae' over a ligature. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

It is very different. You can if you wish go and spill much wikiblood over the use of diacritics in various nationalities personal names but that turns on WP:COMMONNAME. This is just a case of WP:WRONG. Even on Wikipædia, where the digraph is hard to type, in 9,220 cases people had used the digraph. The remaining few thousand cases varied widely, from clear misspellings (Enclopedia, Brittanica...) to those where the digraph had simply been split. It is (I believe) Loeb's Classics any other spelling is simply wrong, if that is the proper name. If the trademark abuses English significantly more egregiously than the Britannica does, then we reserve the right to Englishize it, for example Toys R Us or Ebay. Which is as it should be. Rich Farmbrough, 22:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

(If you are really interested see Æ and Ligature which both explicitly cite this example, making it perfectly clear that it is a spelling difference and is also correct.) Rich Farmbrough, 22:25, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

I don't think that template is used explicitly.Rich Farmbrough, 22:00, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

It is, actually. See, for example, Belgorod Oblast. And regarding the above—should I file a BRFA request, will you do it, or is there some other course of action?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 22, 2011; 12:56 (UTC)

Ping?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 26, 2011; 18:25 (UTC)

Ah so this is the value of parameter 1. Rich Farmbrough, 18:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC).

Yup, that's it. On an unrelated notice, could you please turn off the rule which changes "city", "town", etc. to "inhabited locality" in the infobox name? I cringe at the thought of having to restore those for the third time :) Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 27, 2011; 19:12 (UTC)

OK, done. Not sure what value shaving different names for the template serves. Rich Farmbrough, 19:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC).

It currently serves no purpose, but I am planning to eventually create separate templates for cities/town, urban-type settlements, etc. to wrap around the inhabited locality template, as each type has some peculiarities which the generic template does not address too well. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 27, 2011; 19:22 (UTC)

Category:Pages_with_2010Census_set_in_ru-pop-ref need looking at. Rich Farmbrough, 01:43, 28 December 2011 (UTC).

Thanks a bunch! I'll take care of the rest. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 28, 2011; 16:47 (UTC)

Deletion review for Duff (d.967)

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Duff (d.967). Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Jenks24 (talk) 11:42, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Mopani Copper Mine

Hi Rich, I've restored this after you deleted it as I don't think it was anywhere near worthy of deletion under G11. I've removed some of the worst spammy stuff instead. Cheers SmartSE (talk) 20:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Some of the text looks as if it's pumping copper. One of the references cited shows that there are suggestions of fraudulent activity here. I thought the difficulty in distinguishing the PR work form simple factual statements too great to be worth the candle. Rich Farmbrough, 21:09, 13 December 2011 (UTC).

Re: a little challenge

Previously, you wrote:

In fact a little challenge:

1. get the stats for the previous year for one page
2. output the data in a format suitable for a wiki-page - using a by-month table and a year total on the right.
3. do the same for a list of pages
4. We could build this into a little bot.

I saw how to do #1 and #3 in your initial ("Stats") script. How do you do #2? The Transhumanist 22:01, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

OK so by "Previous year" I meant Dec 2010, Jan 2011, Feb 2011....

To output the data in Wiki-format you just need to use the print command. Perl is generally very forgiving about print:

print '{|\n!December\n!-\n...';

(note both types of quotes work, they are subtlety different.)

print "\|$number";

You might need to use a for loop.

Rich Farmbrough, 22:11, 11 December 2011 (UTC).

But how do you put the data in a file ("print" just displays it on the screen, right?), and then how do you place it in a page on Wikipedia? The Transhumanist 03:21, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

. One thing at a time. If you open a file for output then you can print to it.

open MYPAGE, ">mypage,txt;

print MYPAGE "Some words and a newline.\n";

close MYPAGE;

Rich Farmbrough, 18:06, 17 December 2011 (UTC).

Nice. By the way, was that supposed to be "mypage.txt" (mypage dot txt)?

Thank you for the tip. I'm now reading the Input and Output chapter of the Llama book.

And I found the documentation on get () (which you used in the initial script).

Okay, here's my next question...

Now that you have content in a file, how to you place that content on a Wikipedia page? The Transhumanist 23:53, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Duff (d.967) listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Duff (d.967). Since you had some involvement with the Duff (d.967) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so).  Sandstein  17:41, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Portal box to Portal

Greetings Rich. I noticed (as did others) that you were replacing {{Portal box}} with {{Portal}}. IMO all well and good however I have opened up a discussion on the Portal box talk page to solicate some opinions of eliminating portal box completely and just using Portal. Comments have already been made about also merging a couple of other Portal related templates and just using {{Portal}} for those as well. So, in the mean time could you stop making the Portal box to Portal edits so that we can discuss the consolidation of these templates (then maybe we can do a bot request or something and just be done). This will eliminate the possibility of changing one and then end up changing it back again after the discussion is over. Thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 20:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Request

There was a question on Template_talk:Merge#Avoid_blank_line_at_end about a template you made. I gave an answer, but you may have more to say. Debresser (talk) 17:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for doing so. Debresser (talk) 07:25, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Change of venue

Talk page followers might be interested in Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#RfC on Template redirects. Rich Farmbrough, 11:23, 1 December 2011 (UTC).

Michael Largo - machine translated

Hi, you've recently fixed some spelling in that article but the whole text is at times unreadable machine translation of its Italian version, it seems. :) What's the policy on that? WillNess (talk) 11:16, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Depends how bad it is. In this case it is quicker to fix it up than to research a new article. Rich Farmbrough, 11:48, 20 December 2011 (UTC).

Stable version template

I have posted on the talk page of Template:Stable_version and would like your input there. Great job, by the way, that's an excellent idea.

Falconus^{p t c} 13:37, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I also took the liberty of adding a couple features, which I am currently updating in the documentation. If you don't like them, let me know, and I'll rework them or take them back down (e.g. if I'm taking this in a direction that you did not intend). Falconus^{p t c} 19:40, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

A dab issue

Can you throw light on the point at Talk:Michael Tyson (antiquary), by any chance? PS you said Humph! re the recent Cambridge meetup. There was something screwy about the site notice, but not that I could see; so apologies if you were blind-sided. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:24, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

NP. Rich Farmbrough, 18:12, 27 December 2011 (UTC).

HPB unblock

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Rich Farmbrough/Archive (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

Block was hasty and confused, since it was based on an assurance to change operational parameters of a task, which was kept, and later fine tuning of those parameters was wrongly treated as a breaking of that assurance - which in itself would not be a good block reason anyway.

Decline reason:

I think there is enough reason for this bot to remain blocked, at least until some sort of conclusion is reached regarding waiting times. — Joseph Fox 09:41, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

---

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Relevant discussion is at User talk:Rich Farmbrough#Waiting time for Helpful Pixie Bot. Anomie⚔ 00:13, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Joseph Fox bat me to declining the unblock. However, here are some of my thoughts.

1. Breaking the assurance on the basis of which the unblock was made certainly is a perfectly good reason for reblocking, and I am at a loss to imagine why you think not.
2. Reducing the waiting time to a small fraction of the time that you had stated in order to get an unblock was scarcely "fine tuning".
3. Whether it was "fine tuning" or not, if you are unblocked on the basis of assuring us that the waiting time is half an hour, then reducing that time to less than half an hour is breaking that assurance: it is not "wrongly treated as a breaking of that assurance".

JamesBWatson (talk) 10:01, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Waiting time was not even part of the original block. Various time delays have been suggested by various editors, ranging from "as fast as possible" to a week, which I have been happy to comply with. After introducing the waiting time in release 615 as promised, I adjusted it in later builds to allow the bot to actually work. Investigation of the code seemed to show that AnomieBot was comparing elapsed time to an uninitialized value, and hence waiting based purely on other tasks it was doing. Manual adjustment of the delay was then the natural step. I am sorry people seem to see this as a bad faith act. Rich Farmbrough, 13:41, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Whether or not waiting time was "part of the original block", it is clear that the unblock was based on an assurance that the waiting time had been increased. I don't know whether anyone else thought the change was done in bad faith, but I didn't. You made a change which invalidated the reason why the account had been unblocked. What your intentions were in do8ing so was irrelevant. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:12, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

James this sounds sensible of course. The implication of it is that I would have to clear any future changes in the timing of the bot with MSGJ - who has gone off impatiently anyway. This would be hard enough with someone who was willing and able to have intelligent discussion about the matter. Rich Farmbrough, 18:29, 4 December 2011 (UTC).

Do you acknowledge the possibility of the error, reocgnize the concern, and is it fixed? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:50, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, yes and yes in the sense that I now know that Anomie Bot has been running with an adaptive response speed, based on Pixe Bot's and that Anomie Bot has received no complaints about its speed. I have always been willing to discuss the question of response speed in a rational manner and add rational or irrational delays for individual users. Rich Farmbrough, 18:23, 4 December 2011 (UTC).

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

Rich Farmbrough/Archive (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

---

Request reason:

See above

Accept reason:

Per above. Also blocking admins seem to be on hiatus, and blocking rationale makes next to no sense. Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:21, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough, 12:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC).

OK I've waited long enough for the bureaucracy. Since the blocking admin flounced out, and no one else seems to be interested, I will resolve this myself, presently. Rich Farmbrough, 12:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC).

Thank you Reaper, you are a scholar. Rich Farmbrough, 16:32, 29 December 2011 (UTC).

Non-free files in your user space

Hey there Rich Farmbrough, thank you for your contributions! I am a bot, alerting you that non-free files are not allowed in user or talk space. I removed some files I found on User:Rich Farmbrough/Final Fantasy (video game)/Header.

• See a log of files removed today here.
• Shut off the bot here.
• Report errors here.
• If you have any questions, place a {{helpme}} template, along with your question, beneath this message.

Thank you, -- DASHBot (talk) 05:03, 31 December 2011 (UTC)