User talk:Rich Farmbrough

de:Benutzer Diskussion:DaB./Archiv 2006

The Wishing Well

Note: I will generally answer on your talk page (and usually copy here), and look for your responses here. If you see my answer here and it's not on your talk page, I'm either not happy with it (haven't finished writing it), or I forgot to copy it over. However I can't watch your talk page (sorry), so reply here. R.F.

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Full ArQuive

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SmackBot

Repeated vandalism to Subsidized Housing article

Hi Rich. We need some help with this. User:68.40.143.123) continues to vandalise the Subsidized housing article and essentially it is turning into a revert war which is useless. Other editors and I remove his POV ramblings inserted into the article and he keeps re-inserting it with no discussion. Can we get some protection ? Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 17:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Rich, for your help on this. User:68.40.143.123 is not making coherent contributions to the article. Were he to have done so, there would be no issue. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 18:13, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rich, right after the protection was lifted, the previous vandaliser (User:68.40.143.123) resumed battering the article with the same edits which were rejected before by many people. Help ? He has been warned and editors tried to converse with him but there is no hope. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 16:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rich, I did read and add some books and articles by Professor Patrick Minford, as you mentioned. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc (talk) 01:44, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Testafd

Hi Rich. Do you still have a need for Template:Testafd? If not, please list it for deletion. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 00:58, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gone. Rich Farmbrough, 20:25 3 October 2008 (UTC).

Thanks. FYI, I found it while adding to Category:Articles for deletion templates. -- Suntag ☼ 13:46, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dates

[1] It missed some full dates and a number of partial dates. See also WP:AN/I#SmackBot_changing_date_formatting_in_artlces_in_violation_of_MOS Gimmetrow 12:57, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Other cases being missed: [2] Gimmetrow 13:13, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 15:12 4 October 2008 (UTC).

Ray Parker, Jr. page

First, thank you for your edits. I take it that you are a common user who is familiar with this. I am a new user whose sources of updated information came from interviews shared with the public by Ray Parker, Jr. His original page sadly lacked updates as any musician should receive when new information becomes public so in gathering information about him and attempting to stay within Wikipedia guidelines, I have sources that I placed in however, there are still the warnings. Would you be kind enough to help me do what needs to be done in order for the page not to be deleted and it can stay 'verifiable'? Thank you

Cybdisco--Cybdisco (talk) 13:02, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Smackbot, and blank lines before stubs

I've noticed that (whilst making other edits) Smackbot is collapsing the blank lines before stubs (for example, this edit). This seems to go against the guidance at WP:STUB:

It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it.

And was wondering if this is a fault with the bot, or if there is a some other guidance that says "never have two blank lines" or something? -- ratarsed (talk) 09:33, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your message, SmackBot makes a number of changes that are available to all WP:AWB bots - in general these provide a number of non-controversial minor improvements.

The issue you raise is related to these, and has been discussed in the past [3]. I have left, or will leave, a message about your concerns on the WP:AWB pages.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 09:49 5 October 2008 (UTC).

Monoicous

Monoicous Bot mis-linking problems have started again. A non-English speaker began interwiki linking the articles incorrectly (again), and the bots are proliferating the same old problem again. --EncycloPetey (talk) 10:42, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Templates

Cheers. Need to watch my typing. (Rueful smile) Ka Faraq Gatri (talk) 15:35, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Smackbot and names with ' in them

The bot is changing names like "Queen's College", which is correct, to "Queens College", which is incorrect and will get up the noses of members of that College who are always careful to get it right. It did the same with "Woman's College". I can not see a reason for it and it is wrong. --Bduke (Discussion) 21:40, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is purely for the purposes of sort order. It will still appear under the article title in categories, but will be sorted as if it were titled as shown in DEFAULTSORT . For many articles in many categories it will make no difference but, for example if "Jo's Boys" were sorted by the title it would come before "John Dory". Rich Farmbrough, 14:38 6 October 2008 (UTC).

Exactly, as it should. --Bduke (Discussion) 21:09, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edmond Dantès

Smackbot changed the correct spelling (Dantès) to an incorrect one (Dantes) of in a DEFAULTSORT tag for Edmond Dantès. Should it do that? --Ccady (talk) 14:32, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just found the same issue with Gérard de Nerval --Ccady (talk) 14:36, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it should. Otherwise Dantès, Edmond would be listed before Dantes, Andrew. Rich Farmbrough 14:43 5 October 2008 (UTC).

Isn't that a problem with the Wikipedia sorting on category pages? If Wikipedia does not change that, then I would think that it is more important to spell it right than to sort it right.--Ccady (talk) 22:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

But DEFAULTSORT is ONLY used for sorting, and nothing else. It was invented to work around the problem that Wikipedia sorting isn't correct in many cases, and the bug is hard enough to fix that other issues have taken priority ahead of it. Studerby (talk) 00:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

SmackBot: An Airman's Letter to His Mother

An Airman's Letter to His Mother Hi, just want to point out that the bot erroneously changed the default sort for this article from "Airman's Letter to His Mother, An" to "Airmans Letter to His Mother, An", dropping the possessive apostrophe. [4] Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 23:18, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's correct sorting. Apostrophe's aren't used in sorting. Studerby (talk) 00:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it correct sorting? In many cases it is changing a name to something that is incorrect. --Bduke (Discussion) 01:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What Studerby's saying is that the bot {{DEFAULTSORT}} modification doesn't affect how the name displays, only how it sorts in a list. But, as I point out below, it messes up the sorting, too. —Danorton (talk) 04:51, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's correct sorting for some things but it's not for many others. Consider this example list:

Stephen's Academy
Stephen's University
Stephens School

Removing all apostrophes results in this incorrect ordering:

Stephen's Academy
Stephens School
Stephen's University

Removing apostrophes puts things in the wrong natural order. The purpose is to remove things that don't affect natural order, but removing all apostrophes incorrectly affects the order.

"Stephen" (and "Stephen's") is a different name from and should appear before "Stephens".

The bot is doing the wrong thing. If it's following guidelines, stop the bot from doing that particular wrong thing while I fix the guidelines. —Danorton (talk) 04:36, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How to treat apostrophes in sorting is conventional. Many reference publications, such as the online Encyclopedia Britannica, have chosen the convention that apostrophes are treated as if they are not there, when sorting article titles. (See for example that "Queens College" falls between "Queen's Chamber" and "Queen's Counsel" in their online index.)

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary has made a similar yet different choice, ignoring both apostrophes and spaces, as you can see for yourself.

Wikipedia has chosen the same sorting convention, to ignore apostrophes when sorting, but the only current mechanism to do this is an explicit sort key. In other words, the sort ordering you deem "incorrect" is correct.

The fact that ASCII-based sorting (or UTF-8-based sorting, which the wiki software uses) gives a different order is irrelevant. Studerby (talk) 16:51, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You write: "Wikipedia has chosen the same sorting convention..." Where, exactly, does Wikipedia indicate that it has chosen this convention? (We should move this discussion there if the history there doesn't show that these specific issues were considered.) —Danorton (talk) 17:59, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Smackbot: sorting

Looks like Smackbot isn't handling all the issues around apostrophes correctly. A common case is a name "X'Y" (such as O'Reilly), that sorts as "Xy" (e.g. Oreilly). Smackbot is leaving the "Y" capitalized. I can't think of case where the "Y" shouldn't be lower case; in essence, we're simulated case in-sensitive sorting by forcing each word to have a capitalized first letter and an all lower remainder. Studerby (talk) 00:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm planning another pass to deal with Rich Farmbrough, 02:43 6 October 2008 (UTC).

British dates

Incidentally these are not British dates, they are used by extensively in the UK and less extensively in the US (my estimates 85%-95% and 30-40% respectively).

Hi,

I don't think changing dates to British format (day, then month) automatically is a good idea, since it affects even pages that should go the other way, as was recently done in Project for the New American Century. Maybe the bot can somehow sense which way the dates go on a page it's editing, and stick with that one? Korny O'Near (talk) 16:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's definitely broken. It is correctly removing the wikilinks, but it shouldn't be changing the order. e.g.:

[[May 30]], [[2007]] → 30 May 2007

should be

[[May 30]], [[2007]] → May 30, 2007

Also, this seems like dup work that at least one other bot is doing (but doing correctly). —Danorton (talk) 19:45, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, I just now fixed the damage to Project for the New American Century from the bot and manually did what the bot should have done. —Danorton (talk) 20:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well that article did contain four international dates, calling it damage is going a bit strong. Rich Farmbrough, 22:51 6 October 2008 (UTC).

I fixed what I trust is the last 2 date errors that were related to the bot's edits in that article. Considering the amount of edits it has taken to make correct what the bot did, the term "damage" seems to be a valid use of the word. Don't be so defensive, Rich. Bots should help. When they don't, people have a right to complain. Truthanado (talk) 00:10, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's a revert button. Rich Farmbrough, 09:51 7 October 2008 (UTC).

For the record, there were over 100 dates in that article that were jumbled by the bot. Saying "there's a revert button" is like saying "just press delete" in response to spam. Such errors are disruptive and most article readers aren't editors. —Danorton (talk) 00:26, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No it's not. One click on the revert button would have undone all those changes to dates whether there were 100 or 1000 of them. Rich Farmbrough, 08:49 9 October 2008 (UTC).

Nonetheless sorry to have put you to trouble, and your suggestion in the original post is appreciated. Rich Farmbrough, 08:57 9 October 2008 (UTC).

Virgin America

Virgin America Hello, I'd ask that you please not edit a page that is protected, as your recent edit in removing capitalization on the phrase 'Main Cabin' is incorrect formatting. 'Main Cabin' is the official name of the cabin per Virgin America, and therefore is a proper noun and must be capitalized. In my opinion, it is unfair to take advantage of a page protection when most users cannot make corrections to your edits. Regards, NcSchu_(Talk) 13:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comment. It's not "taking advantage" - there are over 1000 admins who can correct me, and you can leave a note here if I make a mistake and I will correct myself. If I was edit-warring on the page it would be "taking advantage". Rich Farmbrough, 15:33 7 October 2008 (UTC).

Yea you need to stop abusing your privileges with Virgin America or I am more than ready to alert other administrators to your actions! Consider yourself warned. 45Factoid44 (talk) 15:29, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh for heaven's sake, if it's a problem I'd self-revert, left a talk page note. Rich Farmbrough, 15:33 7 October 2008 (UTC).

P.S. Neither of you asked me to revert my edit, that was what was needed. Since you didn't I almost assumed that it had been done by someone else - I have reverted. Rich Farmbrough, 16:17 7 October 2008 (UTC).

Sorry, I was just trying to hint towards it, without yelling at you to revert or something. I just look at 1000 out of the millions of non-admin editors as a very small proportion of the editing population. NcSchu_(Talk) 18:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Don't tell anyone (:-) but most of those millions of accounts have never edited, and many are thought to be mass created vandals.Rich Farmbrough, 18:44 7 October 2008 (UTC).

SmackBot is tagging and breaking redirects

I have noticed that Smackbot has been breaking redirects by tagging them as stubs and orphans. Examples of this behavior are available here, here, and here. The redirects being tagged are of the form #REDIRECT:[[target]] and date from 2004, so this may be a case of Smackbot not recognizing an old redirect syntax. --Allen3 ^talk 13:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 14:17 7 October 2008 (UTC).

AfD nomination of Texline Independent School District

An article that you have been involved in editing, Texline Independent School District, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Texline Independent School District. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Whenaxis (talk) 23:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clarify -> Confusing

Hi, just writing regarding the recent edit SmackBot made to PRINCE2. I added a 'Clarify' tag (inline), to which SmackBot correctly added a pipe and date, but it changed '{{Clarify}}' to '{{Confusing}}' which is not inline, leaving a banner in the middle of a paragraph. I've reverted 'Confusing' to 'Clarify' and left the pipe. Cheers, Millstream3 (talk) 09:58, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and oh buggerit. Rich Farmbrough, 10:29 8 October 2008 (UTC).

The redirect was changed.. sigh. Rich Farmbrough, 10:32 8 October 2008 (UTC).

Gary Young edits

Hi Rich,

I made several edits to comply with your advertisement image that was placed.

Thanks for the feedback - I think the new edits I made make it more editorial in nature.

Thanks!

Rich Nelson —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ragesteel (talk • contribs) 14:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dab pages

Just noticing that Smackbot has created a number of redirects over the last couple of days, in the format "XXXX (disambiguation)", which redirects to "XXXX". I was wondering if there's a particular project or initiative that this is in support of? Taking an interest only because dab clean up is a primary focus for me. Thanks! Mlaffs (talk) 02:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rich Farmbrough,

Greetings!

I just say your message here. Is it possible to generate a similar list for Malayalam wikipedia. http://ml.wikipedia.org/. --Shijualex (talk) 07:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Totally-disputed-section in Math equations

SmackBot was stopped a few days ago with the complaint that it had inserted {{Totally-disputed-section}} templates into Math equations. The bot has since been restarted, but I don't see any evidence that this problem was addressed. 97.77.68.10 (talk) 18:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]