User talk:Scs/Archive/2012

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Available for a new archiving task?

Hi there Ummit, I am a member of WP:WikiProject Articles for creation, and we've recently set up a help desk, which is modeled on the original help desk. Would you be interested in setting up Scsbot to archive and automatically add date header for us? For now (based on its activity so far), the archiving would be on the 6th day from the new date header; e.g. when you add a header for January 7, you archive January 1. Please let me know if you're willing to take this task and if I can assist you in any way. Cheers, CharlieEchoTango (contact) 11:36, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I can add AFCHD to the bot's repertoire, although there's a certain amount of other infrastructure that needs setting up, also. In particular, we'll need two templates, analogous to the reference desk's Template:RD Archive header and Template:RD Archive header monthly, and the help desk's Template:HD Archive header and Template:HD Archive header monthly. If you can construct those for AFDHC, I can set up a new bot instance, and we'll see what happens. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:04, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. I've set up {{AFCHD Archive header monthly}} and {{AFCHD Archive header}}, as well as Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/Archives. Is there anything else that needs setting up? Cheers, CharlieEchoTango (contact) 01:48, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I did a dry run on February 15th's questions, and it mostly worked. Couple little kinks, nothing major. Nice work on the templates. —Steve Summit (talk) 23:45, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! :-) CharlieEchoTango (contact) 23:53, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey! Thanks for noticing and deleting the mistaken Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/AFDHD/2012 February 15 before I had a chance to even request it! —Steve Summit (talk) 00:47, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

No problem, I was stalking your bot's contributions and I figured it was a mistaken page. I notice your bot does not yet add the date header on the AFC help desk (has it been added to its task?), and archived the main help desk yesterday but somehow did not get around to archive our help desk. It's getting a bit long now, with 10 days on the page (one transcluded), so I was wondering. Let me know if there is anything else I can do. Cheers, CharlieEchoTango (contact) 02:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I guess you didn't keep stalking it the next day, otherwise you'd've noticed what User:Nolelover noticed, as discussed in the thread just below. But I think I've got that (mostly) fixed, and the bot's chewing away now... —Steve Summit (talk) 01:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I did notice it, but you corrected it real fast. :P Thanks for all the help. CharlieEchoTango (contact) 01:14, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Made my day...

Just want to thank you (if I can't blame you as his owner, maybe you can pass along my regards) for this. Absolutely restored my faith in Wikipedia. Gotta ask though, how did it happen? Nolelover ^{Talk·Contribs} 14:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

My friend, I am not only the owner of that bot, but its author as well, and I still have no idea how it happened! Glad you got some amusement value out of it -- I'm still in a bit of shock, myself! (All I can say is, thank heavens for that Wiki undo button!)

That line "--abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv--" looks like it might be a MIME multipart separator, and I think MIME multipart messages are used somewhere in the guts of HTML form submission. (I should know -- I wrote the code -- but it's been a while. :-) ) But how the separator managed to get reinvented as the entirety of the submitted page remains a mystery, as does the little matter of the fact that the bot is supposed to have two or three levels of double-checks, precisely to eliminate the possibility of any catastrophic, page-nuking mistaken edits like that... —Steve Summit (talk) 22:38, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, so you are the author...yes, my first thought was that this was so odd that it just had to have happened before...but then why wouldn't it have been caught in the multiple test runs and checks? Ahh well, no harm no foul. Here's to hoping s/he/it doesn't go off on a slightly higher-profile page. Cheers, (and seriously though, thanks for your work on the bot...one less thing for helpers to worry about) Nolelover ^{Talk·Contribs} 23:41, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

In case anyone's wondering, it turned out that (a) part of the edit script got mildly confused, and inadvertently blanked its working copy of the page; and (b) when the submission script tried to submit empty content, somehow the page ended up containing the MIME separator, instead. (I suspect this has to do with the delicate definition of the trailing newline in a MIME multipart section, which becomes especially significant on empty parts.) The mild confusion in (a) really shouldn't have been so catastrophic (so I've got to further understand that, and make it more robust), and I'd like to better understand (b), too, but in the meantime, I've at least fixed the mild confusion, and added Yet Another double-check so that the master edit script won't ever try to submit blank pages. (In other words, I've basically added vandalism detection to my own bot!) —Steve Summit (talk) 01:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Not going to pretend I understand any of the above (I don't), but I just wanted to say a big thank you for helping us with the archiving despite the technical difficulties. Hey, and now you have a self-aware bot! :-) CharlieEchoTango (contact) 01:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Same as Charlie...I sorta got your first comment in this section (most pressing question was why the separator left out four letters), but the second flew by me. Just to make sure though, the bot will always archive and transclude in the same edit, so all we have to do is remove the transclusion? Nolelover ^{Talk·Contribs} 02:24, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the idea is to keep a transclusion of the most recent archive on the help desk. Normally we wouldn't have to remove the transclusion because it would be replaced the next day with the newer one, and so on. This time around the bot archived a whole lot of days, so it left more than one transclusion, which is why I removed the extra ones. CharlieEchoTango (contact) 02:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, makes sense. Thansk, that's good to know. Nolelover ^{Talk·Contribs} 02:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

By default, the bot keeps 3-4 days in their entirety, and 3 an additional days transcluded. That's tunable, and some of the other pages it archives have different combinations. What would you guys prefer? —Steve Summit (talk) 04:21, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for the explanation, I wasn't aware the default left three transclusions, I was looking at WP:HD where there is only one. If it's not too much trouble, I think 5+1 would be a good combination for us, much like the 3+1 used on WP:HD, but with two extra days. Otherwise the 3+3 default works fine too, just a bit less ideal if something is archived/transcluded before being answered. Best, CharlieEchoTango (contact) 04:38, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we could go with a bit more time...I've already seen a couple of places where new users have gone 3-4 days between replies. IMO, the less transcluded days we have (where newbies are just gonna get confused...why is my question here, but when I edit this I'm on a different page?) the better. Nolelover ^{Talk·Contribs} 21:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I've set it for 5+1. That meant it didn't have anything to do tonight, but in a day or two it should settle down to steady state. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:40, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Date headers again

Just a heads-up that your bot has failed to add date headers to the reference desks the past two days. Deor (talk) 11:41, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Something went wrong on computing desk

The bot removed July 30th [1] but never archived it. It did create the talk page redirect [2] and added July 30 to the index [3]. Looking at the bots history, every other archive seems to have gone fine. I reverted the removal although perhaps it would have been better to manually archive July 30th as I'm not sure how the bot will handle the existing talk page and index for July 30. I was wondering if one of the links got added to the spam blacklist stopping it from saving but had no problems saving July 30 on the sandbox myself just now. Nil Einne (talk) 06:22, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I now see an error message in the logs, which I overlooked when reviewing them after last night's run. I'll take care of it.

(And don't worry, it's easy enough to take care of the talk page and index on a rearchival.) —Steve Summit (talk) 10:36, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

wrong section order again

User:Scsbot has just added missing headers for two days to WP:RD/MATH in this edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=511011720
However, it did it slightly wrong, putting the fourth and fifth of September headers after the existing Sep 6. Additionally it didn't notice that "missing header for a day" is NOT equivalent to "header for a missing day", and the "September 5" header landed far below the Sept 5 threads.
The section ordering has already been corrected. Regards, CiaPan (talk) 05:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

PS. Should I rather put the above message at the bot's talk page...? CiaPan (talk)

Ugh. This is disappointing. Last night was the first run of the new version in which I finally fixed the long-standing bug that would have caused it to insert September 4 and September 5 in the wrong order. The fix worked, in that it did get them in the right order, but you're right, it put September 5 in the wrong place, and it shouldn't really have inserted September 4 at all.

I think I understand the remaining bug and how to fix it; I'll work on it some more tonight. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Leaving me a message here is fine.

Remaining bug(s) fixed, I think. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:26, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Notice of Dispute resolution discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute in which you may have been involved. Content disputes can hold up article development, therefore we request your participation in the discussion to help find a resolution. The thread is "Talk:India".The discussion is about the topic Template:Largest cities of India. Thank you! Your feedback would be highly valued there. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 14:50, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Your comments added a new aspect to the discussion that — although present in the back of my mind — wasn't in that page before. I implore you to comment on this page. Since it's also going to be important. You're not the first guy to see the issue clearly. An editor informed me, “FAs have for a long time been plagued by ownership issues and some weird desire to allow their primary contributors to veto edits of which they disapprove”. If guys like you who see the issue clearly, don't stand up, then this will never change. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 15:52, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I won't be able to do too much. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:41, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Straw poll notice

There is a straw-poll in a discussion where you were involved. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 14:40, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

DRN Closure notice

Three of the main parties in this dispute, Fowler&Fowler, AVC, and Mrt3366, the filing editor, have expressed a desire to close the DRN. Any thoughts? It looks like the filing editor has gone ahead to create an RfC on the issue. The discussion is currently spread between three locations (Talk:India, the DRN case, and the RfC page), which is a practice that is not encouraged.
— User:So God created Manchester

I thought you should know this. Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 07:16, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Yup. I've now commented at the RFC. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:06, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Scs. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/City population templates.
Message added 07:21, 17 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

"And you are talking up mutual respect? That will surely make a cat laugh." - apparently my username will be dragged in every comment fowler makes regardless of who he is talking to. Wow! I must have made a hell of an impact on his mind. :)

The sad part is, I tried to explain to him personally but all this to absolutely no avail. He thinks my approach was "sanctimonious affirmations of good intentions". Wow...Hahahahaha!! And I am the one "who is having a hard time growing up"! Mrt3366^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 07:21, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Bot inactive?

Scsbot seems to have stopped after its October 8 run. I cannot tell why, but its services were appreciated and are deeply missed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk (and probably elsewhere too). Could you please give it a little nudge and get it operational again? Thanks in advace, Huon (talk) 12:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes. See this thread. Something changed on the Mediawiki side, and I haven't yet fully determined whether/how much I need to fix the bot, or if I can just wait for bug 40789 to be fixed. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the explanation. I'll spread the word. I assume it's best to just archive manually until the Mediawiki bug gets fixed. Huon (talk) 20:30, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

If your page isn't completely overflowing, you might want to wait a day or two before manually archiving, since doing so is such a nuisance.

If the MediaWiki situation hasn't resolved in a day or two, I'll spend some more time looking into whether or not I can reasonably adapt the bot. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I replied to the question you posted at User talk:PleaseStand#bug 40789? there. PleaseStand (talk) 17:51, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I've dropped a note on bugzilla in my official capacity asking for backporting. Hope that helps :). Ironholds (talk) 03:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Help desk archiving

The bot is correctly adding date headers to various noticeboards, but is not doing any archiving. Is this deliberate? -- John of Reading (talk) 06:49, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this note. I still don't know what's going on. You're right, the bot's ability to add date headers has come back -- but it's still failing at the actual archiving. (Which makes no sense, because what's causing the bot to fail is an initial login problem which isn't directly related either to adding dates or doing archiving.) —Steve Summit (talk) 03:10, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I have been manually doing Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk I thought maybe I was archiving before the bot, so it never did more that add the date. Since I now see this post, I will continue. I have seen several posts from bot owners about tool-server log in problems. You may want to poke around. --  :- ) Don 23:17, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk

Thanks for returning and saving me from the tedium. When I was manually archiving, I added the date link to the section header. Works well. Possible to implement with out big hassle? -- :- ) Don 18:19, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

[Sorry I didn't reply earlier.]

Thanks for the manual archiving. If you can show me an example of the link you're talking about, I can see about automating it. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:41, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Just compare Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/Archives/September 2012#September 1 to Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/Archives/October 2012#October 1. I made the first line under the date a link for the Section Title. -- :- ) Don 06:53, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Archiving math reference desk way too soon

The math reference desk for 28 November was archived on 01:16, 2 December 2012 while discussions of 28 November threads were still going on. That caused the most recent edits to not show up in the reference desk's history. This was way too soon to be archiving. Please reset the bot for a lag of at least a week. Thanks. Duoduoduo (talk) 13:04, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry you felt it was too soon, but that's the normal archiving interval, agreed on by consensus.

If you would like to discuss a change, please bring it up on the Reference Desk talk page. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:38, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay. Could you give me a link to the discussion that led to the consensus, so maybe I'll be convinced without even bringing it up again there? Thanks. Duoduoduo (talk) 14:53, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

It was a long, long time ago; I don't remember exactly when.

Feel free to ask again.

The main driving factor is still page size and load time, for the benefit of editors (there are evidently still plenty) who are viewing and/or editing the desks using less than high-bandwidth links. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:29, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

What I don't understand is why the things that have been archived remain on the unarchived page for a few more days. (I don't know anything about computer site management, so I apologize if I'm asking about something that should be obvious to me.) But it seems to me that load time of the refdesk page is not going to be held down by archiving something while leaving it on the refdesk page. For example, right now the November archives for the math desk go through Nov. 29, yet November 27, 28, and 29 are still on the math refdesk. And when somebody posts something on a Nov. 28 thread, the post shows up on both the Nov. 28 section of the refdesk and the Nov. 28 section of the archives, but does not show up in the "history" section of changes to the refdesk. So someone like me who checks the history section for recent changes is misled into thinking that no recent changes have been made to a Nov. 28 thread of interest. Duoduoduo (talk) 13:43, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The technique you're talking about is called "transclusion", and you're right: the (typically three) most-recently archived day's worth of content for each reference desk are included on the page as shown. And somewhat magically, if you try to edit one of these transcluded sections, you end up editing the archive page instead.

You're also right in that the fully-rendered composite page (including all transclusions) must still be transmitted to a user's browser, meaning that load time is not decreased by the archival of a day's worth of content that is then transcluded. I don't honestly remember what the additional tradeoffs might have been that prompted us to do this sort of delayed half-archiving.

Coincidentally, someone else has asked about the archiving interval at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#six days only?, so feel free to join in that discussion. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:16, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Help Desk date header missing

I'll fix it myself.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:56, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Also did it on the New contributors' help page.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:01, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Also a problem today.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:40, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

On both pages.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:32, 24 December 2012 (UTC)