User talk:Fritzpoll/Archive 2

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Bot FAQ 2 Congratulations on FritzpollBot 3 Infobox Settlement 4 Fallingrain 5 Your bot 6 AfD nomination of Amurn 7 Radio Wikipedia on Fritzpollbot 8 Thoughts on how this might play out for Cambodia 9 I support you! 10 AN/I thread re: Fritzpollbot 11 Proposal: create millions of improperly sourced article with MICROSOFT spam by bot 12 Documentation 13 Further refinements requested 14 Hello 15 Have some cool sunglasses 16 Disambiguation pages? 17 Bot question 18 Canada 19 Maplandia database 20 Lists 21 Just incase you didn't know about it... 22 You've had a long week. 23 preparing the data 24 Your userpage 25 Wikiproject support 26 Despair 27 The FritzpollBot discussion 28 More whiskey 29 Old proposal 30 Geo Bot

Bot FAQ

I can see that you are having to deal with the same questions over and over; you might want to consider creating a User:FritzpollBot/FAQ page to address this. -- The Anome (talk) 13:42, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion! I will probably do this, but not right now. The whole discussion is rather exhausting and I'm off for another tea break! Fritzpoll (talk) 16:04, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations on FritzpollBot

I've written a blog post about it too. If you can write up some sort of focused FAQ page about the programme that we can link to, I want to get a mention of it into the Wikimedia blog as well (since the world will notice the article count inflating) - David Gerard (talk) 16:05, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Whilst encouraging that you feel community consensus will allow it, I am slightly more reserved! :) I shall, nonetheless, get an FAQ written up and notify you tonight when it is done. I just need to work out what questions to answer... Fritzpoll (talk) 16:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Mmm I'm staying away from the village pump from now on and adding a village pump where it is actually needed in parts of Bangladesh! I;ve stated the case and 55 people have strongly supported it. Obviously we can't win them all, but we don't have to as it will be going ahead anyway. We will work out how to cover the world in the best way possible. I do hope we can get some more data though for everywhere to shut up the people who keep talking about one liners. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:19, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I think if you get the country wikiprojects involved, that'll make sure the articles are humanly maintainable or at least watchlisted - that would alleviate many people's concerns. Also, people might go "hey, here's more data on these places you could put in" - David Gerard (talk) 20:21, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's why I have stated often that I want them involved. Fritzpoll (talk) 20:30, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Infobox Settlement

I am curious about your choice of {{Infobox Settlement}} vs {{Geobox}}. I'm not closely involved with the issue, but I thought there was a "movement" towards consistently using geobox. Thanks — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:31, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

No idea!  :) Just working with what I could find. If there is a technical reason to do so, this change can be made in about...10mins...to affect all articles the bot creates Fritzpoll (talk) 16:34, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

No, if there are any doubts ask User:MJCdetroit. There snothing wrong with them except that some of the empty paramters need rmeoving. As for remaining one liners for ever. Kushgag has been expanded already and once real information becomes avilable why isn't this a useful edition 16:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC) ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000?

Yeah, I would hold off turning the bot on full throttle until the page style is hammered out in more detail, including the infobox style. It has always been one of mybiggest pet peeves on Wikipedia that different nations have used their own infoboxes in the past (e.g. {{Infobox Belgium Municipality}}, {{Infobox UK place}}, etc.), and I think now is the ideal time to create a de facto standard for Wikipedia. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:55, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

A lot of that is back-end plumbing, i.e. if the horrible twisty ParserFunctions code (the plumbing in the templates) changes, people won't care - or even notice - as long as the external interface stays the same. (Look at all the templates consolidated into Template:Infobox Officeholder, for example.) Which will increase the machine-readability of Wikipedia as a whole - David Gerard (talk) 20:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Fallingrain

I feel this edit can be programmed into the bot. It reads the nearest towns and cities from Fallingrain. Plus the altitude I spoke about at BRFA. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 16:43, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

There are still the outstanding doubts about the reliability of fallingrain, and until consensus to overturn these doubts is established, I don't feel I can use the data Fritzpoll (talk) 16:45, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Nearest towns always seems to be reliable, the problem is sometimes altitude is unreliable. I'm not saying that they are all unreliable, but for altitude on numerous occasions it has proved wrong. Such a shame as I also want to include as much info as possible ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:54, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Your bot

Hello. I have several questions about your bot before voting. Sorry for not asking on the village pump page but I found it quite messy. Hope it is not a problem.

1. There are many naming conventions for places, mostly aimed at disambiguating articles. How will it work when you'll be about to create bunch of stubs of certain country? Would you contact respective regional WikiProjects?
2. How about diacritics in titles for places from e.g. Slavic countries like the Czech Republic or Macedonia? Will your database contain them or they will must be added manually?
3. Last one is about fallingrain database. I observed many times it is a huge mess and e.g. for European countries (my own experience) completely useless as a reliable source. I bet it will be the same for other continents. I hope you will not use it.

Thank you very much for responding and happy editing. - Darwinek (talk) 17:02, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, no problem at all. I have just started an FAQ at User:FritzpollBot/FAQ which may answer some questions, but I will answer yours separately nonetheless. The bot first creates lists of places with associated information at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/Places, and editors are contacted to edit the lists, sort out the disambiguation pages, etc. Wikiprojects will be encouraged to be involved, and we have already begun communicating them about the work we are undertaking, since they have "local knowledge" as it were. The native spellings of names will be included with the article. Khar_Kat-e_Bala was created during a test run, and you will notice that the original native spelling is noted in the infobox.

Fallingrain will not be used for any part of this project unless its reliability improves demonstrably. Best wishes Fritzpoll (talk) 17:17, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for quick answers. Indeed, WikiProjects are the best place to gain information and knowledge from local communities. Just one issue, diacritics should be used in article titles, at least for European countries. When you'll be planning to do the Czech Republic and Poland somewhen in the future, please contact our WikiProjects and/or my person. I will be able to provide you lists of settlements from respective country government offices, which will much improve stubs quality I think. You can write my name down somewhere for future reference. :) Much appreciated. Thanks. - Darwinek (talk) 17:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Assuming it doesn't come out when I extract the data, I shall do Fritzpoll (talk) 19:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Amurn

An article that you have been involved in editing, Amurn, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amurn. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice?

Gentlemen, I recognize and appreciate your hard work on the geographical bot. Because it is clear the community does not have consensus on its current implementation, I have created a "devil's advocate" AFD procedural nomination for Amurn on behalf of several who have expressed nonnotability concerns. I believe it is appropriate for the community to discuss whether the two million towns are notable if no editor has taken a certain minimum effort to create them (the bot neatly opens the effort criterion for discussion because it makes article creation possible with a greatly decreased average effort). I think the project will have much better consensus after a bit more preparation before implementation, preferably consultation with population tables and most articles being created at the district level rather than the town level. I do not expect to take further part in the discussion. JJB 17:20, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

This is nasty stuff isn't it. What was the point in doing that. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I see the sentiment, but AfD isn't like a court of law. I'm not sure it sets precedent. Articles are deleted/kept on a case-by-case basis. Right sentiment, wrong forum Fritzpoll (talk) 17:38, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I've done my best to explain that the process will involve working wikipojects and editors in native languages for many countries to try to ensure it is done as best and efficiently as possible, but STILL people are turning up and saying that they disapprove of "unreferenced stubs with unreliable information. Yawn yawn. ANother thing is perhaps somebody could clearly state that two million articles are likely to be added over 1 year and a hald and gradually in blocks rather than a sudden flood ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 18:10, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Fritzpoll, thanks for your input (I think). Know you're busy, but I'd appreciate your further comments at Centralized notability discussion. Esteemed Mr. Blofeld, please avoid words like "nasty" in relation to specific living persons. It's pretty simple: I did it so that an actual nasty would not be the first to do it. You've done a lot of work, and now that you've suddenly hit the big time, with a little more work, you can get all the "withholds" in your column, and it would both get the job done in more orderly fashion and have a demonstrated consensus instead of wikichaos. Perhaps my AFD was mistaken; I'd like to know if Fritzpoll considers that the bot's proceeding in very strict alphabetical order may also have been mistaken. Since I am not the content area expert and you guys are, surely you can (1) find a way to integrate population data seamlessly into your proposal, and (2) tell everyone that you've succeeded in figuring out how to do so and thus immediately defuse the situation. Like I said, purpose to start with over-100,000 populations, and then go down by factors of 2 and 2.5. Then community consensus will tell you when to stop. Notability is not asserted by one atlas, as even Blofeld's edits to Amurn show. Thank you for your efforts and personal involvement with my concerns. JJB 20:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Not sure why you're doubting your thanks, but ok... :) The AfD was nothing particular, just procedurally flawed, and it wouldn't have achieved what you were trying to achieve - in a sense, I was trying to help you in this regard. I'm a little worn out at the moment - I didn't know the discussion had even started until after 12pm UTC so I've had to play catch-up explaining that this is not an automated monster out to eat Wikipedia. Not sure what you mean about alphabetical order, exactly...the countries or the lists? If the lists, that's just how I was asked to do it to make the dabbing easier. We'll need census data to incorporate population data. I can look for this, but I'm not sure it would have an effect if I did. The whole thing is out of control, and I'm not sure we'll be able to drag it back to the rational discussion I would have wanted. The straw poll was a particularly...inopportune idea. I'll get back to you on the other stuff. Be aware that I do appreciate your points, am not being stubborn - just trying to get everything in one place and not sprawl all over the place Fritzpoll (talk) 20:14, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, here's a site of use http://www.census.gov/main/www/stat_int.html - let me look at these over the next few days. I looked at Armenia, and the data look promising, if I can extract from the PDF file in some way Fritzpoll (talk) 20:38, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Radio Wikipedia on Fritzpollbot

I just thought I should let you know ahead of time Radio Wikipedia will be running a short (65s) segment covering the current ongoing VPP debate. You can preview the segment here: Image:RADWP-Fritzpollbot.ogg. xenocidic (talk) 19:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear, what have I done?  :-S Thanks for letting me know - that was actually easier to follow than the page itself! Fritzpoll (talk) 19:39, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the page has become rather unwieldy! I've taken it off my watchlist, best of luck, I leave it to you ;p xenocidic (talk) 19:43, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure, you can have it if you like? I'll even offer you the chance to operate the bot!  ;-) Fritzpoll (talk) 19:45, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Wow. I bet your're hiding in a corner wishing all the attention would cease and things to go back to normal huh? Me too this was completely unexpected today. But please don;t give up; an incredible 80 people strongly support us, I'm sure things will work out, I may stay away from the wiki for a while as the comments by some people are kind of demoralising. I hope we are still appreciated. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 19:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I also don't like the way things over there are dissolving into mini-scraps, the way it's treated as though I am setting about the downfall of human editing by a couple of editors, or the way it is being dismissed out of hand as a terrible, or "bad bad" idea in the text and edit summaries. (Sigh) Ultimately, I wanted to find consensus, but I'd have done it by presenting facts and then opening a discussion - as this was already 12hours underway before I knew it was taking place, there are still some commentators who, through no fault of their own necessarily, aren't fully aware of exactly what the bot will do. I really wish Mr. Z-Man, though acting with the best of intents, had talked to me beforestarting this discussion. That's my piece. Off for tea. Fritzpoll (talk) 19:59, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Wise, Very wise indeed. Somebody has even claimed that I couldn't give a damn about developing wikipedia for everybody which is almost like saying Blofeld has hair down to his feet. I'm shocked at how some people have responded as if we are about to bring down the demise to wikipedia rather than actually planting seeds for major growth (which is attainable in the long run). Still over 80 people support but the willlingness of people to jump in as if its a poll is ridiculous. I'm tried to dress peoples concerns and provide a reason but I end up looking like a terrible person by them by not being happy jus tto sit back and watch them discuss somwthing and attack something they clearly know little about. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

If we could somehow obtain more information for each place automaticaly it would solve a lot of concerns I think ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts on how this might play out for Cambodia

Hi Fritzpoll, I've been investigating how this project might work itself out for Cambodia. From a first glance, it does not seem like this will be an easy task (bot or no). Cambodia actually has an amazing amount of statistical data online, which is good. For 99% of the country's villages, it has population, # of men, # of women, and # of households. Considering that most of the villages seem to be in the 200-800 range or so, this is quite detailed for a developing country. Using data from http://www.stats.nis.gov.kh/CENSUSES/villagegaz/p01.pdf and the list of coordinates, I managed to flesh out the article on Kouk Romiet commune. The datadump page had coordinates for villages with populations of 1,452, 1,660, and 1,127, but no coordingates for villages with populations of 778, 203, 339, 143, 459, 112, 196, 219, 329, 190, 1,039, 3,902, 240, 458, and 348. It also had coordinates for one of two villages without census data. Some of the names in the datadump sheet were variants of the names on .kh government sites, which is to be expected considering that Khmer can be transliterated so many different ways. Also, I am kind of confused by the naming of the naming of the villages in the datadump page, or whether the NGIS is including things beside villages (administrative divisions? other features?). Most of the names in the datadump page are preceded by "Phumi", which I am pretty sure means "village" (we have phum discussed as meaning village, and the "phumi" entries often match up to non-"phumi" villages listed on government sites). which means village per khmerlanguage.com. Mangostar (talk) 02:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC) Anyways if we want to include more data besides just these coordinates it will be a slow slog to figure out how all the listed names correspond with the Khmer govt's transliterations, which are what we are using in WP currently (at least as a general rule). Mangostar (talk) 21:58, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Let me have a look at the data. With a little ingenuity (!) we might be able to use the census data as a source, confirmed by the NGIS data. I need to look at how to process PDF files, since this seems to be the format of choice for this kind of data Fritzpoll (talk) 22:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I have a macro in Excel I made to (relatively) quickly convert this to .xls files. I've done it for one province and could continue with others. Mangostar (talk) 22:26, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Fascinating. Converting a PDF file dataset into an xls? If I send you an e-mail address, would you be willing to forward the code for the macro to me? Fritzpoll (talk) 22:28, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

A quick-n-dirty way of doing this is to use Adobe's Acrobat Reader's own functionality for exporting text from a pdf, combined with copy-n-paste. I've done this several times to build up my speadsheet of information on Ethiopian settlements. -- llywrch (talk) 22:59, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, the simplest ways are the best - thanks! This will help with a tweaked proposal I'm formulating Fritzpoll (talk) 23:03, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I support you!

I would just like to say that I support the running of your bot, but only partially. I do not like the idea of the bot adding articles for villages with a population of, let's say, less than 100. If you were somehow about to get the bot to create stubs for all above 100 people, then I would be able to give you some unwavering support, but I still support you anyways. Cheers, Razorflame 22:15, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Lol - this was a nice title to see in my watchlist! Thank you - although a majority of users gave unwavering support, I'm seeing if I can build a wider consensus using some population data. Thank you very much for your note Fritzpoll (talk) 22:21, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

For most regions, it is impossible to tell how many people live in a particular town, but consider overpopulation is present in many of the places the bot will start. Also, using Burkina Faso where there is population data, I'd venture to say that 99% of the towns have greater than 100. By the way, Fritzpoll, could you not run the FritzpollBot on Burkina Faso? It skipped a few and added some points that weren't exactly settlements. I'm an Editorofthewiki^{[citation needed]} 01:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

AN/I thread re: Fritzpollbot

Just thought I should let you know an AN/I thread was just started about FritzpollBot: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Proposal: create millions of improperly sourced article with MICROSOFT spam by bot. xenocidic ( talk ¿ listen ) 23:51, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: create millions of improperly sourced article with MICROSOFT spam by bot

While I love the idea of using a bot to create articles on real places with proper sourcing, the test cases created so far by User talk:Fritzpoll have improper sourcing and include a spam link to Microsoft. This is unacceptable. I tried noting it on an example and was reverted, so I am saying so here and at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. What would Microsoft pay for 4 million articles that say

*[http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/mapcenter/map.aspx Search for ______ in the MSN Encarta atlas]

WAS 4.250 (talk) 23:56, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Well if wikipedia had a decent atlas there wouldn't need to be a link ♦Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 10:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I would rather you'd waited for my response before running off to AN/I. That would have been the sensible thing to do Fritzpoll (talk) 10:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see the Encarta links gone as well, please. Although they invite the user to do a search, the link itself does nothing other than take you to the Encarta site, and adds no value at all to the article; worse, it creates an expectation of a useful and specific link, where there is only a generic link to one particular commercial site. At least with Google Maps or Yahoo Maps it would have been possible to create a link which went directly to the result of a map search. However, I don't believe that we should be promoting any specific commercial site with links from potentially millions of pages. In the long run, this should be capable of being resolved in a way similar to the solutions used for ISBN and geotag links, where the link is to an indirection page which provides links to all of the relevant external resources of that kind. Until then, can we please not have these links at all? -- The Anome (talk) 10:49, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Look at the pages referenced - I really, really, can't keep repeating myself everywhere - I can't spend 30 minutes answering the same question in several different places. As I said at the AN/I page, they are already scheduled for removal. I even explained why they were there to begin with, but that they didn't function technically. I have also said ("Motion to recess...") on the centralised page that I am working on a better proposal, and that essentially discussion of the existing proposal, and its example pages is pointless. For goodness' sake - give me some time to respond to the major issues, rather than forcing me to repeat myself. 48 hour wikibreak for me Fritzpoll (talk) 10:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh: I didn't see that. Thanks for addressing the issue, and please accept my apologies for not seeing that you had answered this question elsewhere. -- The Anome (talk) 11:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That's alright - not your fault. I'm just a bit frustrated, as repetition seems to have been my watchword these past 48 hours, and it means I haven't got the energy to actually work out how to fix it so that there can be a consensus, and not just a majority Fritzpoll (talk) 11:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

On a more constructive note, the geohack page currently gives an error if passed a page name but no coordinate parameters; if it could be changed to give links to text searches in those map engines that support them, this would probably be ideal for your purposes. -- The Anome (talk) 11:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Documentation

Something else that I would want to know is the order in which the articles are created. Are you going by country in alphabetical order or something like that? I can't find that... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah the bot will go alphabetically from Asia (so Afghanistan first, then Az... etc) and then within each country, it will go by alphabetical city/town or village from A.. to ...Z. Cheers!Calaka (talk)

Further refinements requested

Since we're data mining the US GNS data, we should use their variant names, where existant, and also use the NameID - unique for each name (incl. variants) for each feature, and you can use {{GEOnet2}} passing the NameID as the first parameter and a link to the precise page for the feature's proper name, rather than a generalized link to the service itself. More precise and probably no more complex for your bot to be programmed that way. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 02:39, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That's great - I was struggling to find a way of referencing it without pointing to a download. Cheers Fritzpoll (talk) 10:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello

Hi. Phew this has hit the big time hasn;t it. I look forward to seeing your new proposal. It may be a good idea to start Wikipedia:WikiProject GeoBot or something a get a big project together for large scale planning involving each of the respective wikiprojects, and also working at expanding some of those created by the bot. It will inevitably go ahead won't it? ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 09:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Nothing is inevitable. Try to find sources of data that we can add to the articles as they are created. I am looking at Cambodia over lunch. Might wikibreak for a few days - I actually can't handle the responses:I'm only one man! Fritzpoll (talk) 10:43, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Try looking at User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE/ArchiveMay2008. 328 kb in one month on my talk page! ♦Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 11:24, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

While consensus is good, setting up the village pump in that way was one of the worst things that could be done and it has put us under a lot of unnecessary pressure that we don't need. I'm sure we can work something out, whats frustrating is answering the same question over and over again. Perhaps a swim in the Bristol Channel for several days would sort it out ♦Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 11:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting choice - I'm a Bristol man myself! Fritzpoll (talk) 12:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thats an excellent proposal but you;ve made me look like the bad guy. "harrassing people when they disagree - discussion is fine, belittlement of opinions is not" is clearly an attack at me. I spent hours yesterday trying to explain that it wouldn't be operated in the way people showed. I didn't intentionally "belittle" peoples opinions other than those that showed absolutely no resemblance to the actual proposal. Many of the concerns were valid, particularly those on the fence to which I refrained from "harassing" Ernst Stavro Blofeld ^{$1 million?} 12:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Lol - I wan't actually thinking of you - may I rephrase? Sorry - I was thinking of three or four others Fritzpoll (talk) 12:11, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

LOL I see. But one or two of the opposers labelled me as a badger yesterday so I wondered if you were referring to the bald badger. Believe me I would have rather not to see that straw poll. Perhaps you could add something to assert at the start of the proposal that maybe 2 million articles won't be created and that this number of permanent non notable sub stubs won't be created, which seemd to be the biggest problem before. If we assert thate ther emay be a lesser number, that are notable, and are more than one liners this would do a great deal I think Ernst Stavro Blofeld ^{$1 million?} 12:14, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I have recieved an email from the one of the operators of maplandia anyway who is more than happy (as you can imagine) for wikipedia to be connected with maplandia.

Hi James,

thanks a lot for your email and nice words about our website. Sorry for late answer, I am busy with my studies. I would be very happy for every link from wikipedia. Thank you for that. We have tried to include as much countries and regions as we could, so I am happy when this is useful for someone else. Please let me know if I can somehow help you.

Best regards, Martin Frohlich

Fritz, Frohlich?? German efficiency? Is Fritz your real name? Ernst Stavro Blofeld ^{$1 million?} 12:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Haha - I am of German descent, and that is a pet name my German family use for me. I'm not sure that the bot will now automatically add maplandia. But we will see what we will see. Fritzpoll (talk) 13:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Have some cool sunglasses

Because you deserve them, for keeping your cool in a situation where a bunch of not too nice things have been said about your bot. Keep it up! --Conti|✉ 13:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

 :) Thank you very much Fritzpoll (talk) 13:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages?

Hi, I have a question. Would the bot end up making disambiguation pages? That is, if there are a bunch of identical place names in an area, with slightly different article titles to disambiguate them, will the bot make a disambiguation page for them, or will this be left to human editors to (eventually) do? Or will human editors be doing it as part of the process? (As I understand it, the bot will be heavily assisted by editors) --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 09:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually we are trying to avoid disambiguation pages. That is why we need humans to have a look at the list and ensure all blue links and any multiple named red links are appropriately modified so every article on the list ends up being created. If its a blue link, the bot will skip it and then a possible article wont be created while if its a red link with multiple names (but different cities) then the name neeeds to be modfieid by region/district/state so all the articles of the same name are created. Before the bot runs, this process of checking to make sure it is all perfect is undertaken on a country by country basis, before the bot is run. Yes the bot needs to be heavily assisted by editors and all the support that can be mustered from the wikiprojects will be heavily encouraged. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 09:29, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, where there are 2 redlink towns both named "Foo", humans should be creating "Foo" as a dab and changing the two entries that the bot will process to Foo, A and Foo, B - which will be the choices at Foo dab page. Otherwise Foo in Afghanistan will be created and all Foos in countries later in the alphabet would be relegated; this would be an undue preference for locations in "A" countries vs. others....As you can see, there's lots to do. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 16:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

This is absolutely correct, and the new WikiProject would organise volunteers in this manner Fritzpoll (talk) 16:12, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot question

For what it's worth, I think the major problems you recently faced were at least in part due to the work being done by a small group of editors without consultation from any of the active groups already involved in the nations. For what it's worth, this might be a reasonable course of action.

Notify every national/territorial WikiProject, task force, or work group that there is an intention to create these articles. These groups can I think all be found on the geography pages of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.

Request the members of those projects help create the lists of localities for their individual states. Place some form of detailed instructions of how to generate such lists on the Missing encyclopedic articles/Places page so that the individuals creating these lists will have a clear idea how to do so.

Give them a little notice in advance when their articles are going to be run, and then notify them when its completed.

I think allowing those individuals who are already involved in the topics to have a bit more active input in the discussion should be all that's required for it to function smoothly. Anyway, just an idea. John Carter (talk) 13:40, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

If you think that's a good idea, then you'll love the alternative proposal I just posted onto the discussion page. I fully agree, and it was always an intention that we never adequately expressed. Hopefully this has now been done! Fritzpoll (talk) 13:42, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Well this is exactly how it should have been addressed initially. it would have saved a lot of trouble yesterday. There will still be people who will oppose because thats what they do but anybody who reads that should not react as they did before. Good move. Shortly before you showed me the initial proposal, I was going to propose that you establish anew wikirpoject to deal with this and take away specific messages targetted at you and towards the group to share the burden.

I just don't want to "jump the gun" and start a WikiProject until there is a consensus about what we are doing Fritzpoll (talk) 14:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Well of course, the proposal is made at the WP:COuncil you don't just go ahead a create a whole wikiproject. ANy project has to have council approval first but in light of rthe discussion yesterday this wouls seem essential ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 14:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Canada

This is the primary address of the census data table for municipalities. It can be rearranged to list them in any sort order, including alphabetical. Just above the table to the right, there's also an option to view a geographic index with a separate alphabetical list for each letter.

This is the page to use to search for an individual city or town's "profile" page, which presents its census data in more detail than the data table.

I've begun preparing a reference list, Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/Municipalities, of all Canadian municipalities that don't yet have articles, although it's not yet complete as I only started compiling it yesterday. It can be moved to any other title or reformatted if necessary.

I'll have some more resources for you later, but those are the big three that will be in use across the board. Bearcat (talk) 14:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've proposed an alternative at the village pump discussion. I'm a bit confused by two of the opposers so far - they are arguing that decisions on article creation should be done by intelligent humans. I'm pretty certain that's what the bot proposal says too... Fritzpoll (talk) 15:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Fritz leaving a note like "if a significant number of people say "yes without reservations" we can move ahead faster, if a significant number say "no, it's just a bad idea," we can speedy-cancel it. Thats asking for trouble (many people don't want to move ahead). The opposers will relish it as they don't want change anyway. If a bot was adding these articles I could stop spending all my time on starting geo stubs and start spending more quality time in writing new articles like the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake like I did this afternoon and devleoping existing ones and geo stubs. People just aren't giving it a chance. The articles evne those on villages WILL be created eventually and to not approve something like this is madness as in years time we will mor elikely have more inconsistent articles and unreferenced work because the "community" wouldn't accept it is more efficient. It is a gross waste of time if they can't see that a bot gives editors a chance to concentrate on quality evne more so. Nobody has any problems with unleashing a bot thats does administriative tasks with spamming people tallk pages with countless image messages etc, so why should a controlled and regulated bot which is completely organized by humans that will add missing content be such an issue to developing what actually matter, the encyclopedia.

♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I didn't. That was someone else. I don't like it either. Good move on moving the page, btw Fritzpoll (talk) 16:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Well I had hoped for a decent adult conversation (hey i don't mean dirrty talk lol) and discussion for planning the best solution, not a battle again. What is the point in repating the vote thing which creates aggression again? The village pump is not a good place for constructive planning. It is like a public market place plagued with shoppers and pick pockets and just shows what kind of a "community" wikipedia is. People will always disapprove of change and disruust others. Many people are complete opposites, its amazing how different peoples views can be. I would like to see how many of those on the fence could see any light with the new proposals -I greatly appreicate your efforts today to answer them. I appreciate consensus with important issues such as this but in my experience time is wasted unneccesarily in support and oppose issues when it should be discussed on the best course of action to improve something. I really think the straw poll should be removed and converstation moved to a place where it can be discussed rationally without the barriers that people keep putting up with straw polls which deflects people attention away from proper discussion. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Lol! I agree, but this seems to be how it is done here. On the bright side, the new proposal does seem to be winning people over - and the extra category of people with reservations is promoting discussion further down. Give it some time, and I think we will be pleasantly surprised. This process has already made the bot better, let's see how much more it can be improved Fritzpoll (talk) 17:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

What might be a good idea is to start with a country which has a lot of data to be added. If we could start generating articles more resourceful and articles with clear valuable content people aremore likely to see it isn't so bad after all. IN a way it has to be proved that a]the articles can be constructed in an organized way and generatign encyclopedic content and b] we have to prove that the articles will be expanded ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Maplandia database

I am also interested in using the Maplandia data to help the activities of User:The Anomebot2 in annotating existing articles without geodata. My pattern-matching code tries hard to resolve ambiguity wherever possible, but it cannot correctly resolve cases where more than place of the same name exists in the same country. Maplandia's hierarchical information would be invaluable for this: if Maplandia can yield a rough disambiguation to approximate coordinates, I can then cross-reference the data with the GNS data for confirmation. Is it available as a dump? -- The Anome (talk) 18:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Lists

If we are to make 1000 a cut off point, the best thing we can do I think is to create lists of the other places (or all places) places by district/province in the mainspace and have information in tables and the wiki min atlases globes in the tables and create redirects. At least this way the wikipedia would recognize every place but would be contained in a table until more info could be found to start them. At least the tables then would convey some info on them until there is enough to create full article. I know its a little like winning bronze but at least wikipedia would recognize 2 million places and have some sort of reference on their locations or basic statistics. Kind of like List of United Kingdom locations: Aa-Ak for every country and chuck in opulation data or whatever to the tables where possible. Just a thought ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 19:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Just incase you didn't know about it...

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cities would likely be a good centralized place to recruit volunteers to deal with the FritzpollBot articles. This is a brilliant idea, and there's no doubt in my mind that it will be approved. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 00:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the tip Fritzpoll (talk) 11:05, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

You've had a long week.

Thought you might enjoy this whiskey (if not, you at least deserve it). Keep up the good work. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 01:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Make it a double, on me! P.S. the radio segment ran today. xenocidic ( talk ¿ listen ) 01:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll drink it later - it's still a little early over here! But thanks - I feel like I need it Fritzpoll (talk) 11:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

preparing the data

Please take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cape Verde/FritzpollBot and let us know if that format is ok or not and what else can we do to help prepare the data for parsing by the bot. Thanks, Waldir ^talk 02:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Wow. Just...wow. That looks really good - I am a little real-life busy for the next two days or so, so if you don't mind, I'll look at it more throughly then. But this was exactly the kind of collaboration I was after Fritzpoll (talk) 11:07, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Your userpage

Hey Fritzpoll, after checking out the proposal for your bot, I came across your userpage and I couldn't help but notice that you added {{User FixMyPage}} on it. I could try to help you out on your page if you would like me to, but I would need to know specifically what you would like done (grouping userboxes, organizing awards, using html, etc.). Feel free to "drop me a line" (borrowed that quote from some user whom I've forgoten about).--Sunny910910 ^{(talk|Contributions|Guest)} 03:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Genius - I will, as soon as I have a think about what I want. A part of the problem is that I haven't the imagination to make it look pretty Fritzpoll (talk) 11:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, take your time. Message me when you've decided.--Sunny910910 ^{(talk|Contributions|Guest)} 01:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject support

I have sent a message to the wikiprojects in relation to Azerbaijan, Bangladesh (including WP:Bengal), Cambodia, Cyprus (also WP:Greece), East Timor & Hong Kong. I sent it to these wikiprojects and not the others as the other countries have their dabbing completed/checked. I will send a message to them to have a look/assist/support us in any way possible if you want? (I just figured the dabbing part of the project needs to be organized for those countries first). Cheers!Calaka (talk) 05:14, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Good work, but bear in mind that the new proposals may mean we need to restart these countries. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by restart the countries? As in you will have to do the dabbing again? Or will you need to recreate a list for every country all over again based on new criteria? If its the later then when the lists are updated/fixed/modified I will be happy to update the info on the talk pages of the respective wikiprojects. Oh and I hope you do not get overwhelmed by the length of the new village pump discussion :D. Cheers! Calaka (talk) 11:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

World gazetteer lists -these list the population of the main cities and towns by country, For sure we'll have many of them and they are detailed enough, but for many countries even some of the main places will be missing. But apparently an official census hasn't been done since 1979 in Afghnsistan ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 11:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Azerbaijan etc ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 11:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

World cities and towns ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 11:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at these later - may be useful if we can assess the reliability. i.e. where did world-gazetteer get the data from, does it match up with the "raw" census data for a given country, etc. Then this can go into our generic all-purpose source list. Afghanistan is definitely a problem. A census was conducted recently, but only very coarse data is available at present Fritzpoll (talk) 11:49, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well its partly for political reasons. With those MSN Encarta links I'm not going to go through 1000 articles and remove them. A bot (not meaning yours) could easily do that if people are going to fuss about it. Also you sia dabout cleaning up what we've got. There are about 25,000 French commune stubs without infoboxes (which can be copied directly from french wikipedia and inserted in the articles. It is just a cut and paste job and I;ve got a back log of about 25,000 articles to go through manually ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 11:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The idea that the bot can amend existing articles has already been floated on the discussion page. It will be easy to get the bot to fix the old articles, with the Encarta links, add infoboxes etc. but I won't run the bot until I am utterly, utterly certain that the community has settled on what the bot should and should not do Fritzpoll (talk) 11:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Mmm I understand, but you may have to wait a long long time before everybody approves. There is never likely to be any real agreement on what should be done on wikiepdia however much people discuss something. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 12:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we're far off consensus that the bot should operate, although I can't judge that independently. All there will be is the question of what limits to place on what it creates. Agreement is never achieved, but consensus is. You've waited this long, you can wait a few more days - I am very confident that this will result in an acceptable solution Fritzpoll (talk) 12:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

You have an email address? I have something to say that I;d rather not say in plain view on here ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 12:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, just e-mail this user, using the link in the toolbox on the right. I'm happy for you to have the address when I reply, but not publish it here in wiki-space Fritzpoll (talk) 12:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I know that but despite having my email address written in and before I could email people, now I can't as it always comes uo with a message that I should be logged in. I haven;t been able to email anybody from wikipedia for months. I think it needs reconfirming. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 12:34, 3 June 2008 (UTC) Well send shortly ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 13:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

"You got mail" ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 13:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

"So do you" :) Fritzpoll (talk) 13:49, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes I agree totally and think that would be the best to start with. Ironic isn't it that I share the same name as my nemesis. Regards ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 14:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and that I have such a dull, run-of-the-mill, almost unbelievable name Fritzpoll (talk) 14:07, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

That was my granddad's name. "Fred Anderson". Tough guy from London born in 1900, died 1993. Was a gym instructor in the Royal Navy, boxer, martial artist, swimmer and gymnast. Disciplined, I think woudll summarize him!! I rmeember him showing me how to do pressups when he was 90! ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 15:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC).

Perhaps you could add an extra proposal that the bot could be used to clean up existing articles first by adding an infobox or details of something before eahc country is started. If you could prove that the bot could make existing articles consistent and generate new content it would likely gain more support ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:10, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Despair

Fritz half the people opposing are not even reading what it entails. Reasons for opposing have often been given as "there is no such thing as inherent notability". Does it not state that articles will be selected for notability first by human editors? Whatever you propose people don't seem to read it properly. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I ahve given up trying to corect them - they are also largely drive-by editors, so they don't come back to read the responses. Maybe I'll make some comments when I get back. On the bright side, it weakens the oppossing argument when they haven't read it. What I mostly enjoy is that 30mins ago, someone posted a strong oppose....to the old, archived page. Fascinated to know why... :) Fritzpoll (talk) 16:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

More evidence even from the biggest speaker on the page "We can never achieve good encyclopedic content from a fully mechanical process. The bot should be used to make our work easier, not to replace it entirely". What in Frank butcher's name does he think it is??? How many frankin times have we said that we write the articles to make it easier to develop "not replace it entirely", does he think we plan a future of wikipedia where humans are banned from writing wikipedia and it is run by a bunch of mad robots. Groan groan ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The FritzpollBot discussion

The FritzpollBot discussion is a total mess. I can't make heads or tails of it. Can you please put some sort of explanation as to what FritzpollBot actually does (or is proposed to do) on the discussion page. Right now, it seems to assume that you have already read the previous volume of discussion. Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 19:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, if you could add some sort of example of what you are actually proposing to the proposal, it would go a long way to helping people understand what is being discussed. Hopefully you've done some sort of pilot version of what you are proposing. If not, I would strongly suggest doing that first. All the examples I've been able to find so far of what this Bot generates are not in line with what you are currently proposing. Perhaps you could just work with 1 WikiProject to do one country and then show the rest of Wikipedia the fruits of your efforts in order to seek approval for broader implementation. Kaldari (talk) 19:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

If you want to go ahead with a "test run", we've got all the American Samoa and Anguilla ppl's listed now, and neither has particularly large numbers. I could try to find some other sources for one or both and try to help prune the nonnotable ones, so we could have a decent trial run. John Carter (talk) 00:02, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Full census data available for American Samoa here. Mangostar (talk) 04:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

More whiskey

. Nothing to say. I need a cigarette. (I quit cold over a year ago)....Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 22:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I'll add, that the supports are clueful, the opposers (not all, but a majority) have no idea what they're talking about. Some of them just happened to notice something new on their watchlist I'd surmise and thought "Hey! I'll oppose that for sure!" Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 22:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Mmm Just like the obnoxious 15 year old Filipino kid who turned up at the last one.... Does seems so. Well again the support clearly outdoes the opposition and even those who were on the fence beofre have mostly changed their minds which is what you wanted wasn't it. I don't think we have any maps for America Samoa, location wise and thats not really the most "un American" country to start with LOL, but I don't care as long as it starts running and generating articles with useful sources and information. It would be indeed best to start with a country with such data, so go for it. I'll see if there are any maps ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 10:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

OK I've requested a Template:Location map American Samoa using Image:American Samoa-CIA WFB Map.png so fingers crossed. Are you here today? ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 10:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Well I understand how you must be fed up with it but I've just set up a new section to the page for editors interested in joining it. If we could show a team can be trusted to mnonitor and coordinate the bot this would help the cause. I'd rather not have to answer every question though, perhaps it could be shared between several of us. It might do you good to have a few days away (but please don't leave us!!). ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 15:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

In the words of a fellow Germanic gentleman, I'll be back Fritzpoll (talk) 15:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Well we now have 85 supports including with reservations. 100 people strongly supported before. Anything which equates to 100 supports on wikipedia is a major thing as it is always recorded the number of times people voted over 100 etc. When you return it is high time we set up the project to deal with it and start on the huge task at hand. It is very clear that the vast majority support this plus having the green light to use the bot we now need to discuss in the new wikirpoject space the best way to implement it. Take a few days break and when you return we'll put the plan into action. Consensus is clear we now need to set up the necessary infrastructure to organize starting each country and gaining new project membership. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 17:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Old proposal

I fail to understand the proffered justification for the archiving of the original, and the proposal of a "refined" proposal.

As can be seen from both the "archived" proposal and the discussion on it, the proposal had huge support.

The present proposal is terribly cumbersome; I gave up reading through it and don't plan to support it though I supported the initial one. Though continuing discussion is always fine, and revised proposals should be proffered if the initial one does not have wide support, I think it is ridiculous that the whole proposal was archived in this particular case. And that yet further proposals, discussion, and straw polls are needed all over again, as if starting from zero.

A strong majority of people agreed that the initial proposal would have been a fantastic addition to Wikipedia. I propose ditching the current discussion and going with it. Dovi (talk) 13:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Geo Bot

Just a mention your bot has been talked about in issue 5 of Radio Wikipedia. StewieGriffin! • Talk 20:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)