User:Rich Farmbrough/Talk Archive 6

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[edit] Wikibreak

Having completed the first pass stats for the PlanetMath Exchange project, when I should have been doing Real Life, I am now taking a short Wikibreak. Rich Farmbrough 19:31, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

When you are back, you might be interested in checking out my suggestions for improving the Perl script. (Look at that, he wrote a 10 line script and is already talking wikibreak :) Oleg Alexandrov 21:58, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm as back as I'll ever be :-) . Rich Farmbrough 14:48, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

The May Day Mystery

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/European Union member states at the 2004 Summer Olympics

You might be interested to have a look. Regards. --Pgreenfinch 13:10, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Open Proxies

I want to investigate some recent vandalism coming from many IPs, I saw your note on User:Func's talk page, I would appreciate any scripts that help test for open proxies. Rich Farmbrough 22:44, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

If you want to test a specific IP for an open proxy but you don't know on which port, your best best bet is to search for the IP on the web with google. If it finds something in a "list of open proxies" it'll usually include a port and you can try editing wikipedia through that proxy; if it works you can block it indefinitely. If that fails, you can also try port scanning the host to find open proxy ports. Try nmap. --fvw* 22:18, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] fountain

not at all, thanks. I always suprise how fast wikipedia communit correctis gramma or letter mistakes :). Regards Rafikk 20:30, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Science pearls

Hello,

Since you contributed in the past to the publications’ lists, I thought that you might be interested in this new project. I’ll be glad if you will continue contributing. Thanks,APH 09:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Solar Oven/Furnace

See Talk:Solar oven DavidFarmbrough 12 Sep 05

[edit] You marked the Camp Iguana article as {POV}, but you didn't say why?

You marked the Camp Iguana article as {POV}, but you didn't say why. Aren't you supposed to say why? May I ask you how you think we can reach a consensus as to when it is no longer POV if you don't say what you consider POV about it? -- Geo Swan 22:29, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I saw your addition to the page, yesterday, and replied on Talk:Camp Iguana last night. Yes, the Bush administration made the claim that their suspects did not fall under the Geneva Conventions. But they were over-ruled by the Judicial Branch. The Judicial Branch had the final say here. Which, to my way of thinking, means that the official position of the US government, after some internal wrangling, is that the US government eventually acknowledged that they did have an obligation to have conducted "competent tribunals", in Afghanistan. This leaves me curious as to the value of including the claim. -- Geo Swan 15:40, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikify dates script

I'm sorry to say that this is breaking easy timelines... it messed up Prime Minister of New Zealand real good. Better check before you use it. Alphax τεχ 10:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the alert. There was another one, which I recognised as being special on the edit page, I would have spotted this one, but for Wikipedia's reluctance to show pages after an edit. I can prevent it recurring. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 13:41, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Rich, this also falls over when it comes across European date formats - e.g. this diff. In cases like this, where there's a mix of formats used, or where there's not enough context to tell the format of dates for sure, a script just seems like an easy way to be careless. (BTW, I do think wikifying loads of dates is a Good Thing, it's just that introducing errors in the process isn't!) sjorford #£@%&$?! 22:18, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I catch most of these, and do it differently for mm/dd/yyyy. Sometimes you can't tell which format it is and have to research (which is a bummer). If I get it wrong the zz's are a warning. I've only found about two articles which mix the // styles, but
really takes the biscuit! There's only about 400 more articles to fix, then it's back to the "simple" dates where the month is in words. Thanks again, let me know if you see any more howlers. Rich Farmbrough 22:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Enola Gay

Hey Rich, I saw the edits you did on the Enola Gay page. Just curious if you have an interest in terms of the plane. Davidpdx 9/17/05 7:00 (UTC)

Only a general way. I was fixing all refernces to the "United States Army Air Force" to read "United States Army Air Forces" Rich Farmbrough 16:37, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Rich - I noticed you wikified 1945 in the Paul Tibbets article when it was already wikified in the same paragraph. Most editors will only wikify the first occurance of linkable text in an article. I personally feel that in long articles, it is good to wikify text when it occurs in far separated sections, since the reader may not have read the section where the first link occurs. Just my 2 cents. --Rogerd 17:54, 18 September 2005 (UTC)


See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). This is to allow date preferences to work. If you set them you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way.
In particular if your preference is set for ISO dates (1995-10-22) , it requires the year as well as the month to be wikified. Rich Farmbrough 18:03, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
I see. Thanks for explaining--Rogerd 18:32, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dates / my sig

It's good to see another person is working on dates. I too have spent a quantity of time fixing incorrectly formatted dates and date links. I've been doing it manually, which has the advantage of being unlikely to cause problems, but is also painfully slow.

Thanks for commenting on my experiment. You're the first person to notice, as far as I know. How did you find it, by the way? I haven't been very active lately. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 00:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I want to sign my comments like this Rich Farmbrough 08:27 20 September 2005, and couldn't figure out how to do it so I searched user talk space, and found lots of /sig pages, including yours. I finally realised I could set up my nickname as xxx [[{{subst:CURRENTDAY}} {{subst:CURRENTMONTH}}]] etc.. but I still need to sign, save then edit/save again to get the subst to work. On the subject of dates in articles, most of my uncorrected mistakes (so far I've only been told about a handful in many thousands of edits) "escape" either because I've got over~tired or goggle eyed, or because the 'pedia responds too slowly, rather than any fundamental problem. Pretty much everything has to be checked because so many articles have links to September 11th, 2001 attacks!
Also there's loads of stuff in quotes, split onto mutliple lines, and in URLs. Any ideas for the sig, by the way?
Hmm. That's a clever idea, but no, I don't think it's currently possible. You might just put to the developers that sig dates should be wikified. —Ben Brockert (42) UE News 05:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Luther Page Rewrite Discussion on

See the Luther page talk. --CTSWyneken 01:26, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Question on dates

Greetings! I note that you wikified a date on Windham, Ohio. All well and good, but the date wikified was merely the date I retrieved info from the village school's website. Somehow, I just don't have that high an opinion of myself as to think that's a notable date in the village's history. But that does bring to mind a question: Is every date mentioned in an article to be wikified per the Manual of Style? -- SwissCelt 11:39, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

The reason for wikifying dates is often not because the link is important, but rather that it is essential to make user preferences work (that little "preferences" link you see on your page when you are logged in). Gene Nygaard 21:10, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese emperors

Hi. I notice you are on a bit of a mission to Wikify dates, which is a laudable goal. However, I wouldn't bother with any of the dates in the Japanese emperor articles. Japan used a completely different calendar system until 1873, and it isn't clear yet whether the dates in those articles are Gregorian/Julian dates or Japanese dates. If the latter, they shouldn't be Wikified. Anyway, there is a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) regarding how dates should be treated in Japanese articles. Probably should wait for that to conclude before making any more changes. I plan on going through and sorting through and cleaning up those dates at some point anyway. -Jefu 16:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] It's not a date, it's an edition name

Rich, I wonder if you noticed that at the top of my own user talk page I say I'll answer points there in preference to the questioner's talk page. Anyway, you asked there about a funny date, and I've answered you there. (If you'd like to discuss it further, please do so there rather than here.)

Irrelevantly, since you last commented on AfD/Charles Gauci I think the vehemence and provenance of that article's spirited defenses have made it look more obviously vanity. I've voted "userfy" (the user in question seems to have no interest in WP that's not directly relevant to himself). -- Hoary 09:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Date links

Hello there. I see your date bot took on a vast chunk of the calendar yesterday, linking all the dates in the top paragraphs of the mmmm-dd articles. Great work! Uh... I know it's a drag to be pressganged through the medium of your user talk page, but if you have a moment, and the inclination, please take a look at the linking dates discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year and, if you're feeling inspired, share a comment or two about why it's a good idea. Thanks. –Hajor 14:05, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Replied there. It's not a bot, though, it's search and replace with manual checking! (Although the date pages were easy.) Rich Farmbrough 14:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Not a bot? Wow! Thanks for chipping in. –Hajor 14:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

NIce to be appreciated Rich Farmbrough 15:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Charles Gauci

I would like to get your attention to the so-called discussion that is going on here since it has gone way out of hand. I have been attacked personally and so has another fellow Wikipedian. Can you moderate the discussion since unfortunately it has turned out to be a constant barrage of personal attacks and name-calling by those who want to keep the article? I personally won't post again there since the discussion page is no ground for personal wars. Regards --Roderick Mallia 12:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC) Admin mt.wiki

  • Its ok giving attacks but its not acceptable for those to argue a point with either roderick Mallia or Maltesedog. They should be placed on remand, as when asked for a detailed reply, one gets attacks right back. You will see many times when I ve asked for the arguements to be only based on the matter of discussion. Nothing else. --Tancarville 10:52, 22 September 2005 (EST)
    • I have examined the votes on the AfD, and reckoned that 6/3 in favour of deletion is sufficient consensus to delete, bearing in mind that little additional notability was established. Hence I have deleted the article and closed the debate. I would suggest that anyone who wishes to see an article of this name, provide clear evidence and justification of ntability to the votes for undeletion, which data could then be incorporated into the article. Perhaps wait until he has recieved his Maltese Republic award. For example, are the books he authored published by a notable publishing house? How many copies have sold. Are they cited as standard reference works. Has he published on pain management, and is he cited? What is the nature of the award from the Republic of Malta, and how many people recieve it each year? How many people have a title of similar rank to his? Did he write the "bird book" or is that someone else? etc.
    • On the subject of personal abuse in the AfD, what a shame! It did not advance any argument an iota, and resulted in more ill feeling than was probably intended. It is clear to a dispassionate observer where the abuse stemmed from, but one has to be aware that people feel personally attacked when their contributions to the 'pedia are attacked. I speak from experience.

rgds, Rich Farmbrough 14:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Don't change file names

Thanks for the date fixes, but you can't wikify a date in a file name. [1] (SEWilco)

Thanks for spotting. I thought I had avoided the pix, I have now gone back and done the other captions. Rgds, 'Rich Farmbrough' 13:32, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reticular Formation

Hey Rich, I was just wondering what the reticulsar formation is and if it was similar to the reticular formation. Also, I wanted to know why my signature was taken off, i wrote the entire article with the exception of a few reticulsar edits.

[edit] Wikification of dates

Why, oh why, do you wikify dates? Babajobu 12:12, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Same reason you spell out small numbers. It's the right thing to do. Note that this is to allow date preferences to work. If you have them set you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Rich Farmbrough 15:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Gasp! Okay, fine, I'll support date wikification if you support the spelling out of numbers under one hundred. My only concern is that 1) wikifying dates causes some articles to become overlinked, and that in those cases an additional link is a steep price to pay for the ability to choose "11 September" over "September 11". However, I will pocket those reservations in exchange for your support in my jihad against inappropriate numerals. Babajobu 15:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
And, from the way you have done the Wikifying of the dates, it looked like it was run by some type of script. Please tell us that you are doing this, so we can point you to the right direction so we can get your script a bot flag. Zach (Sound Off) 07:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Count Stephen Sant Fournier

This getting a bit too much, User:Maltesedog now is after another biography of mine and you feel he isnt taking this personal?? He is not making any sense nor is he communicating with the author directly like Administors have in the past. He automaticly places things into deletion. He must be stopped or banned. Please view what he has done before he continues deleting all of Maltese histories. Tancarville 06:46, 26 September 2005 (EST)

- Your not doing a thing about Maltesedog or Hoary?? Typical!! *Keep Tancarville 06:55, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Dear Rich,

Placing articles for afd doesn't imply there's something wrong about the particular person who wrote them. Tancerville has valid articles, which form part of the collection in Wikipedia and are also of importance. However I cannot understand his insistance that I am abusing and placing unnecessary his articles for afd, bearing in mind that since the creation of wikipedia I have only placed 3 of his articles, without taking any consideration that they are his. I do not believe that I am not maintaing a neutral pov in this respect. I am not deleting all Maltese histories. There was concencus in wikipedia that Maltese Nobility, modern nobility should not be deleted only for the sake of being noble. It is not a question of placing articles into deletion. I have placed comments in the talk pages of the articles, but these were removed by Tanacerville. To me, this is intimidation not to place any more articles into afd. Debates occur in afd, it is not simply a question of rapidly removing articles, intense debates are generally done through afd and generally concencus is reached. I place the articles in the afd for others to see the opinions of others. Whether they want the deletion or not. It is not simply a matter of deleting a page without any consideration/discussion as Tancerville wishes to imply above. In view of the above, I would be grateful to comment on all the above so that to end this story once and for all.

However, I cannot understand why placing an opinion on the afd page for deletion can cause so much personal anger. Should I be intimidated by such users? I've had articles deleted such as the on the Mediterranean Region, now recreated ignoring all my work and intense research but if other users thought it was appropriate deletion, I said - I give up and did not keep insisting and taking it against the person who placed it for deletion. I am not against Maltese History far from it. I take active interest. But articles like Stephen Sant Fournier and the one of Charles Gauci, have nothing to do with history. These people are alive. Maltesedog 20:19, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese Dates

I noticed that you wikified another Japanese date. The Japanese lunisolar calendar was completely different from the Western calendar. Therefore, wikifying them doesn't make any sense, because they do not correspond. -Jefu 23:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Khalistan

Could you please wikify the dates again in Khalistan? Your changes were lost when I reverted the changes of a persistent vandal. You have made the changes to a POV/vandalized version. Thanks! --Vivin Paliath (വിവിന് പാലിയത്)

No problem, Thanks a bunch! --Vivin Paliath (വിവിന് പാലിയത്)

[edit] dates in Russian personalia

Hi there Rich! just thought I'd share with you some odd peculiarity of the calendar in Russia (which you might not be aware of; sorry if I'm beating yet another dead horse... :) OK, so in Russian personalia, the dates of birth and death are often cited in both New Style and Old Style because in Russia, the calendar shift from the Julian to Gregorian has occured less than a century ago (!) and much of the published biographical data still show dates under both calendars or even under the Old Style only (causes confusion often, must I admit :)

For example, Ivan Goncharov article has the dates listed by the New Style, and these will be the ones that get recorded into the births/deaths Calendar and born/died Categories. And, the article also shows the dates under the Old Style for reference -- those were left unwikified intentionally. I'd be okay with leaving them wikified as long as they won't automatically go into the said Categories or events Calendars. Would they? not quite sure how exactly that works in the English wikipedia... I also feel that leaving them unwikified helps clarity as the "proper" dates stand out -- but this is certainly a one person opinion. What'd be your take on this? Regards - Introvert talk 23:16, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Suppose Ivan Ivanovitch was born 6 January 1813 NS 25 December 1812 OS.
As I see it there are four issues here:
  1. Will the "born in 1812" category include Ivan wrongly?
  2. Will the 1812 article include Ivan Iavanovitch on the OS birthday?
  3. Will the 25 December page include Ivan?
  4. Will it look OK?


  1. I don't think so, the process is smarter than that, and wiifying the date certainly won't affect it.
  2. No, that's a manual process (or the page wuld be overloaded).
  3. Ditto.
  4. Yes, I think because otherwise the date will look something like 6 January 1813 NS December 25 1812 OS to some users.


Rgds,
Rich Farmbrough 09:05, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
All right! Ivan Ivanovich will be properly tagged and logged :) Yes, I wasn't sure how the inclusion into the calendar categories works (I know that it is automated in the Russian wikipedia). If it is to remain manual, then... I shouldn't have taken your time. Regarding #4, like I said I do prefer the "otherwise" because this way, it helps the contemporary calendar dates properly stand out, but it is of course a matter of personal taste. Thank you again for taking time to explain - Introvert talk 03:19, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Careful with bot

Please note that I had to revert your edit here because what you wikified was not a date.

Also note that a date written in the month-day-year order properly needs a comma after the day and before the year, which you are removing on a mass scale, such as in this article. --Jiang 05:49, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I will try to avoid pinyin in future! By the way it's not a bot, it's search and replace. Rich Farmbrough 09:14, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt response. Usually the pinyin has tones instead of numbers, and with time, numbered pinyin will be converted to tones pinyin.

I would prefer that dates written in North American Month-day style by default not be purposely changed to European day-Month unless the subject is European as it would unnecessarily favor one style over the other. I don't think the edit here is appropriate because the subject is Chinese, and in China, dates are written Month-day and not day-month (but then again, the format is something like 2005.10.02 for today and not October 2, 2005, so I think no change in the default is the best solution for this case). --Jiang 09:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

2005.10.02 can be quickly wikified as [[2005-10-02]] which renders depending on your date preferences as 2005-10-02. Rich Farmbrough 22:07, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spot the difference

OK. I give up. Unless you are a bot (in which case, here is my copy of the News Chronicle and I claim my £5) I've looked and I've looked, but I still can't see the difference you made with your "Wikify dates" edit to Jabbeke. -- Picapica 16:55, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I was puzzled to start with as well, you had already done the date so my search and replace would have no effect, normally if an edit makes no difference, then it is not saved. But I must have been super observant, and removed the space before the closing square brackets around the website reference. Rich Farmbrough 22:14, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Edward St George

Many thanks for your comments regarding Steve Sant Fournier and also on Edward St George. Edward St George was born to the Count von Zimmermann Barbaro and had everything one can imagine with a silverlining. Though Edward after a life in the legal profession and other assocations, went into an unknown and turned around a community into one of the best in the world. His website biography done by his grandson doesnt really explain all of his generousity and legacies which a GREAT man had left behind. Edward married into the English gentry and nobility but never used his background as a basis of life but through hard work and determination. If Edward had lived another several years would have received a Knight Bachelor from HM, Queen of UK and Bahamas for his efforts. Tancarville 20:46, 3 October 2005 (EST)

[edit] Aircraft specs policy

Several weeks ago, you voted in the WikiProject Aircraft Specifications Survey. One of the results of the survey was that the specifications for the various aircraft articles will now be displayed using a template. Ericg and I have just finished developing that template; a lengthier bulletin can be found on the WT:Air talkpage. Naturally, we will need to begin a drive to update the aircraft articles. However, several topics in the survey did reach establish consensus, and they need to be resolved before we implement the template. It is crticial that we make some conclusion, so that updating of the specs can resume as soon as possible. You can take part in the discussions here. Thanks, Ingoolemo talk 06:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Wikify dates"

You made an edit to List of Native American tribes with the edit summary, "Wikify dates" [2] While the edit itself was a useful one, the difference between the edit summary and the change that you actually made makes it harder for someone like me who is verifying that any given edit wasn't vandalism. Please use descriptive edit summaries that match the changes you are making. Thanks. -Harmil 14:32, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I had not realized what a compulsion this seems to be for you until I reviewed your recent edits. The following changes:
are just a sampling of your "Wikify dates" edits over the last couple of days. None of them have anything to do with dates, though they are not actually vandalism either. You seem to have a desire to contribute, so why are you so insistent on making the edit histories of these articles inaccurate? -Harmil 13:01, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Simply a default edit summary, that didn't get turned off. Rich Farmbrough 17:54, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

You might want to be a bit more careful when you convert dates - see Silver Dollar City, specifically the various statments that "childern under 8 may ..." - that is NOT a date. N0YKG 21:57, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia UK meeting

Hi Rich, there will probably be a meeting for the purpose of discussing Wikimedia UK this Sunday, which you might like to attend. You could add your name there if so. Cormaggio @ 23:55, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hi Rich,

Princess Margaret of Prussia was also hit by some of the endless mess left by user:Arrigo if I remember well. I never had any dealings with that article apart from a piped link repair and a minor lay-out tweak.

As a suggestion, maybe ask user:deb, I believe she has more experience here than I have (about that type of Princesses) - Not so long ago I left her this note: diff --Francis Schonken 12:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Put up the merge templates for the two identical margaret(e)s (suggesting a direction for merging) nonetheless - PS, If you happen to see Cormaggio this WE, send him my regards! --Francis Schonken 12:32, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

I, FireFox hereby award you this Minor Barnstar for all your brilliant minor edits!
I, FireFox hereby award you this Minor Barnstar for all your brilliant minor edits!

FireFox 19:30, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 2005 South Asia earthquake

Image:WikiThanks.png Thank you for your contribution at 2005 South Asia earthquake. Please keep it up!!! Pradeepsomani (talk)

[edit] IP Address?

I don't know if I have a shared IP address. How would that happen? C2 aaron 12:57, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
It's sort of a high school. It's a school in a residential treatment facility. It has kids from different grades in it. Me, Justin, and Buddy (Aaron) are all in high school though. C2 aaron 13:44, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Me, Justintmartin, and Buddy Love

Me, Justintmartin, Buddy Love, and Brittany h 2 o share the same IP then. And, I edited Buddy's page for him. He asked me to. C2 aaron 13:22, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 9814072356

Just called by to say nice job on expanding 9814072356. FWIW, I have voted strong keep on its Afd page. Gandalf61 11:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page Deletion

Are you an admin? Can you get LP aaron C2, P.I.D, Samantha Day, Sarah Love, and Brittany h2 o

deleted? 2 or 3 of them were created by Buddy Love, and 2 were created by me (sorry, it won't happen again). Thanks. C2 aaron 13:23, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

I typed to Jessica Liao, to give advice on kids. 10 or 15 minutes later, I went back to her talk page. I found out, Buddy Love had edited my advice, so his signature would be on it. I reverted it back already. C2 aaron 13:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Obliged

Sorry, but I have reverted several of your edits. Please don't change English from one form to another to suit personal preferences. - SimonP 14:58, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] autoblocks

The user#N blocks represent autoblocks of the underlying IP address when a particular username is blocked. This is implemented by the Mediawiki software. -- Curps 00:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Physical Effects of Abortion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Effects_of_Abortion can be changed to be more neutral. I have wikified and marked as not NPOV. It was marked as from the Catholic Encyclopedia...if we have a template for it, I assume that it's ok. raylu 16:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page Deletion

This is LP aaron C2( C2 aaron ). Could you please delete my User and User talk pages or have them deleted? Thanks. LP aaron C2 17:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Overlinking

[3]: did you really mean to wikify the date on which I accessed a web reference? What is the point of that? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:32, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). This is to allow date preferences to work. If you have them set them you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way.
In particular if your preference is set for ISO dates (1995-10-22) , it requires the year as well as the month to be wikified. Rich Farmbrough 09:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page Deletion

This is User:P I D ( C2 aaron ). Can you please delete my user and user talk pages? Preacher In Development 15:23, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

thank you but never mind

Pimp Juice 14:07, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History of the administrative division of Russia

Hi, Rich! I should have probably mentioned this before, because you apparently are wikifying dates in bulk (in a semi-bot mode, perhaps?). Just wanted to let you know that the dates in the History of the administrative division of Russia series of articles (such as this one do not need to be wikified. The reason for that is that there are two sets of dates given—Gregorian and Julian. The Gregorian date is the main one, so it's linked. Linking the Julian date would be redundant (and not quite correct). The other dates/years are duplicates—the first instance is already linked, so there is no need to wikify the rest (otherwise it looks over-linked). Please let me know if you have questions. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 00:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for contating me. This is more about formatting than linkage. For example this is how Administrative divisions of Russia in 1713-1714 looks to someone with their date preferences set to number-month-year.

  • 19 May (May 8 in the Julian calendar), 1713 - the capital of Russia was moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
  • 28 July(17), 19 May 1713 - Riga Governorate was formed on the recently acquired lands in the north-west of Russia.
  • July 28(17), 1713 - Smolensk Governorate was abolished; its territory was divided between Moscow and Riga Governorates.

I would probably go for somthing like this.

I brought the years next to the dates for people who have their prefernces set to ISO date format, and also to avoid interrupting the flow of the date. I've moved the Russia link to the first occurance, and removed some bolding. I've also removed the word "was" but that's stylistic choice.

Meanwhile in the real article I've linked the second "July 28", for the moment, the rest I leave to you. I will try to avoid these articles for now, but I suspect I've done most of them.

In the longer term I may look at getting a slightly different markup for dates.

Regards,

Rich Farmbrough 09:32, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow, you must get really tired explaining the same thing over and over again, to each and every person having a question, considering the magnitude of the changes. Anyway, thank you for explaining the bigger picture. Even though I have little to no compassion to people who want to see the dates in the "28 July" format, I understand poor suckers cannot live the other way around, so having a choice is a must :)
I am still, however, a little confused about duplicate dates. The admin division articles only have a few, but I can imagine some articles would get tons of identical date references. Linking them all to achieve the desired formatting effect overloads the page with redundant links, while not linking them leads to inconsistency of date display. Do you have a solution for this problem? No need to go into fine details; if this question had already been asked, I'd appreciate if you could just point me to the right discussion thread.
Same would probably apply to Julian/Gregorian dates—linking both of them is not really the right thing to do (because they both map to only one real-life day), but, as you mentioned, not linking them may break the formatting.
Again, thank you for taking time to write a detailed explanation. I am a date-linking freak myself :), but the issues above leave me somewhat concerned. Take care!—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 12:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that in an ideal world dates should only really be blue and underlined if they are strictly important. That's what I meant about a diffenet markup. I've been thinkng something like <<September 23 1999>> or <<13 September>> etc. The possibilty also exists to put functionality to deal with OS dates, japanese dates, Jewish/Muslim dates etc. Ideally it would be extended to things like <<Cretaceous>> and <<11:15 pm UTC>>. The date linking project is about 80%+ complete I reckon (altough new ones will occur), and I've had probably only 20 enquiries, in every shade of politeness! One of the intersting things is it takes me to bakwaters of the 'pedia where I've found almost every solecism possible, which is useful for planning other cleanup projects. They will not be manual though! (If they happen at all.) Rich Farmbrough 12:46, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Are the developers considering the new markup for that purpose yet, or is it more of a wish-list item?—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 15:06, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect date wikifying

Hi Rich,

Properly-wikified dates are good, and I'm glad you're working on it. However, your bot has been making erroneous edits which I've had to revert. Consider this edit and my reversion. One is a direct quotation which shouldn't be modified. Also the dates in the infobox are already wikified by the template so that people don't have to remember to do it themselves. I'm not sure whether that's the right or wrong thing to do, but it's the way it's done, and if you wikify them again they end up as [[[[21 June]]]] which renders as [[21 June]]. I found another example where you'd done that too. I'm worried we're going to end up wasting a lot of time reverting your edits if you don't make a special case for that. Thanks. Stephen Turner 13:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes, most of the cricket articles are so good I usually cancel the edit. I also made a change to search and replace some time ago, to ignore dates immediately preceded by an "=" sign, I can then override by inserting a space between the = and the date. However I've had a better idea...
  • In the round, I'm making a few uncorrected mistakes, but out of many thousand edits, and improving all the time. Quotes are hard, and can only be checked by inspection, (and sometimes the "quote" is a translated, in which case the wikifining is the right thing to do), but I can certainly exclude lines starting with ":".
  • Incidentally, beause of wikilag, I do a bunch of pages, check them, then the next bunch, arguably the checking is the weakest point of the process, and the better the rest, the weaker the checking gets. Also worth noting, the main part of wikifying dates is almost done.
Regards, Rich Farmbrough 14:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi! I reverted part of your edit here because dates in URLs do definitively not need wikification. You might want to exclude this kind of behaviour from any automated processes. --zerofoks 20:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Adminship

Rich, I would appreciate any input you have for my Request for Administrator. Thanks so much --Reflex Reaction 21:24, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Non-Western dates

Dude, we've had this discussion before. Non-Western dates (Empress Gemmei) do not correspond to Western dates, and therefore should not be wickified.

Dude, same answer.

[edit] 1st Cav dates

You should check out Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers) before editing more dates and deleting commas. The style is supposed to be either

and the styles should agree throughout the article.

(I will someday try to clean up that page, but it's such a mess, I've put it low on my list.) Hal Jespersen 00:34, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Just for you I've made them consistant. Rich Farmbrough 00:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] See note at top of page.

It's in big letters. Night night. Rich Farmbrough 00:40, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Kent State shootings

You made a real mess of many dates in Kent State shootings. I've managed to remove all of the errors I found. Your little search and replace operation wikified several dates that shouldn't have been. One was inside a url (.../may4/...), and several were inside external links. One was already a link!

Thanks for fixing errors, you could have reverted the changes, or just notified me.

Since you actually call it "search and replace", I'm thinking you did this with just a text editor or word processor. As someone who was once employed to do some serious processing of legal documents in Perl, I can tell you you're going to have to do a lot better than that. Learn about Regular expressions for a start. And it's best you use a programming language, so you can construct logic when RE's are insufficient. Like making sure you're not making a link inside an existing link.

I'm using RegExps, there is a limit to what they can do.

But at least check your changes more carefully! And why are they all marked as minor? Imroy 13:00, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I make about 0.1% mistakes, which I think is quite good. I generally find about 1% of speedy delete pages, about 1% of incorrectly titled pages, vandalism, user signed pages and all sorts of other rubbish. They are marked minor so as not to clog up the "recent changes" page. Rich Farmbrough 17:26, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Please do something to prevent the script wikifying dates in signatures and so forth. Thanks. Rob Church Talk | FAHD 18:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Date edits - problem

Hey looks like your script tripped up when it ran across Charles Cardwell McCabe

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Cardwell_McCabe&diff=23922523&oldid=23850744

I came across it while on "random article patrol". You might want to review the edits it made to make sure it didn't break anything else. Keep up the good work. Megapixie 14:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting this. It was a one-off reg-ex search and replace that went wrong, so it's not likely to affect other articles - but if you find any more errors, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 18:45, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Just thought I'd let you know that I've noticed your bot wikifying dates in people's sigs when they sign after placing a {copyvio} tag on an article. I've never been sure why we (used to?) ask people to sign the article in these cases, but quite a few people do. This isn't important, particularly, I just thought I'd let you know. The one annoyance it does cause is that it's nice to be able to get the last diff from the CP listing and, when your bot is the last diff, it means accessin the history instead. Only a minor thing. -Splashtalk 22:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, taken care of. Rich Farmbrough 10:47, 30 October 2005 (UTC)