User talk:Ram-Man

Note: Contributions made from this account are multi-licensed. See Ram-Man for detailed licensing information.

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If I ask you a question, I will most likely monitor your talk page, however you may feel free to post in my talk page. All old messages are in archive1, archive2, and archive3.

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Bot Information

See User:rambot and the FAQ for current bot running information such as tasks and IP address. Before notifying me about any problems, please see the list of known problems on that page. Feel free to post any other important bugs and information below.

Mountain Park, Georgia

The census bureau has two entries for Mountain Park, Georgia. One is just a census tract with a seemingly arbitrary name in Gwinnett County (see Mountain Park, Gwinnett County, Georgia). The other is the real city, located about 25 milkes or 40km away in Fulton County, Georgia (see Mountain Park, Fulton County, Georgia). Oddly, that entry was originally under Mountain Park, Cherokee County, Georgia, which is incorrect. I'd like to move the real city to the main article, but I'm not sure how Rambot would take this, or if there is a preferred way to disambiguate in this case. Suggestions?   – radiojon 01:56, 2004 Aug 22 (UTC)

ArbCom elections

Would you be interested in running for an empty ArbCom seat? See Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2004. --mav 19:31, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I might consider it if the workload is low. Part of the problem is that I go through phases on inactivity. A few months on, a few months off. As such, I am a bit unreliable. That's part of the reason that, aside from becoming an administrator a long while ago, I have not taken a large role in Wikipedia politics. As the term is for 6 months, I may be unable to serve for such a time in a reliable capacity. I believe I have the skills and would make a good candidate in all areas except a reliable long-term, continuous presence. -- Ram-Man 19:52, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Question on marking dual-licensed edits and/or material

I posed this question on the talk page for Meta:Guide to the CC dual-license, but I thought I might as well put it here as well: (moved) -- Kukkurovaca

I responded on the meta page. -- Ram-Man 20:21, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Creative Commons

Thank you! Mark Richards 15:57, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi. I am not sure I know what changes you mean, but if it means making anything I did even more accessible as free information, then I am for it. Danny 19:08, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hey, as far as I am concerned everything I write on Wikipedia (with the exception of my user page) is public domain. I have no interest in protecting my intellectual property in regards to Wikipedia. In regards to the creative commons license I approve of it as well. Kevin Rector 19:12, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Hi. I have no problem with dual-licensing my particular dot-map contributions to Wikipedia. I simply used the same method that was/is being used by Seth Ilys. You might want to talk to him and Catbar as well as they are the other two primary contributors of dot-maps to WP. The only issue I worry about is the sheer number of maps that would need to be edited to change the license tags, but I suppose someone could make a bot to do that (you seem quite good with bots ;) . Bumm13 20:26, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Map licensing

Please see my reply on my talk page. -- The Anome 22:42, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

I trust you. Tell me what to do and it will be done. Danny 23:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm fuzzy, too. The way I understand your note on my page, if I put the dual license template {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} on my User Page, I'll grant the CreativeCommons license to all my work on Wikipedia. I have no problem with that. Should I do something to current (and future) maps? By the way, I'm not using a bot; it's manual. Thanks. Catbar (Brian Rock) 00:50, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Ok. Done. Thanks. Catbar (Brian Rock) 01:27, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Geographic article licensing

I have released all of the contribution from the Pearle and Beland accounts into the public domain, which should be compatible with any of the popular copyleft licenses. -- Beland 03:22, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Licensing

Option 2

I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. State article, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

Why would user pages be US state articles? I'm not sure the exception here makes sense. Perhaps having a template for this would be better than people typing that directly on their user pages. This way, you could check who had used each option more easily with "what links here". Angela. 14:52, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Yes the exception was a dumb copy and paste error. That exception phrase should be removed. As for the templates, we already use templates, but there are many variations to the each users choice for special exclusions. For instance, I personally limit my dual-licensing to main and main talk namespaces, while leaving the GFDL for all other namespaces. And I permit all minor edits into the public domain. There are so many variations that it would yield for many many templates. Instead it is up to people to check the user pages to look for exceptions. -- Ram-Man 15:16, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Dual-licensing county maps

I'll have to think about it. A quick perusal of the pros and cons didn't really give me enough incentive to want to dual-license, especially if there is any risk of my contributions becoming incompatible with Wikipedia. But as I said, I'll consider it, and make a decision once I understand a little more about the differences between the GFDL and CC-by-sa licenses. -- Wapcaplet 17:57, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Thanks for the clarification. I agree, the county maps in particular are not likely to be radically improved such that I would wish that the alterations be GFDLed; my concern, I suppose, is that I have released, or plan to release under GFDL, source material that has required a lot of work (for example, if/when I eventually post the blender scene file for my automobile diagrams) - in those cases I would prefer the requirement that further modifications also be subject to the GFDL. I'd be kind of annoyed if, say, hypothetically, an automobile manufacturer used my modified blender model in a car commercial without giving anything back to the community (assuming I understand the terms correctly). Were I to dual-license, it would most likely be for specific contributions, rather than all of my contributions collectively. If that is a possibility, then I would agree to dual-license the county map images. I trust there is a way to do so without adding the dual-license to all 5,000 of them :-) -- Wapcaplet 18:24, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm convinced; after looking into it, it does appear that CC extends free use without compromising the things I was concerned about. I hereby dual-license all my contributions as CC BySA-Dual (1.0/2.0), and will put a note on my user page to that effect. Also, you are right: User:Jdforrester participated in creating the county maps. He and I made the images, and User:The Anomebot uploaded them. The WikiProject U.S. Counties archive has the discussion that occurred at the time. -- Wapcaplet 03:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've added a statement preceding the dual-license on my user page. In case that is not adequate to cover the county map images, I hereby declare that all county map images that I created or modified, uploaded by User:The Anomebot or by any other user or bot, are multi-licensed with Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0. -- Wapcaplet 01:52, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'll dual license my contributions. I don't consider edits performed by the TNIS to be copyrightable. You may consider those edits to be public domain for all intents and purposes. -- Tim Starling 23:54, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Rambot problem

In the change from town to CDP (thank you!), some of the articles got screwed up, probably the ones where I changed town to unincorporated area. For instance, Wekiwa Springs, Florida.--SPUI 05:02, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have modified the bot to eliminate the error on my end and I will fix it on the next fun. -- Ram-Man 13:30, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Another Rambot problem

I noticed Rambot is adding municipalities in the state of Georgia to Category:Towns in Georgia; however, the proper category is Category:Towns in Georgia (U.S. state), to distinguish from the nation of the same name. Sarge Baldy 06:48, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. I will modify the bot accordingly. -- Ram-Man

We have a problem

Rambot is making some rather inappropriate changes to Michigan articles. For example, see Grosse Ile Township, Michigan, where township is becoming CDPship. Also, it has been adding Category:Charter townships in Michigan to some articles when there already is a well-populated Category:Charter Townships in Michigan--some apparently duplicate entries. older≠wiser 01:50, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

I'll have the rambot fix the "Charter Township" vs. "Charter township" problem. Unfortunately the well populated "Charter Townships" version does not match with standard naming practices, as it is not a proper name. So now that I think about it, I believe the rambot has chosen the correct choice and the other one should be phased out. So until this is resolved, I will do nothing, as I can fix it either way.

Ok, so the other problem is fairly straightforward. It seems that there is a Grosse Ile, Michigan (a CDP) and Grosse Ile Township, Michigan. The former was redirected to the latter because they are the same place. So there is a CDP and a Township which are exactly the same and I don't know why the census bureau chose to do it that way. But it is not inaccurate to call it a "...census-designated place and township...". What is wrong is the "CDPship", which is easy enough to fix in the next run over with the bot. This should be good enough to fix this problem. -- Ram-Man 02:17, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

If the CDP is identical to a legal municipality, I see little point to keeping the CDP label. I mean the CDPs are an artificial Census construct to begin with. They have little meaning to general readers except as they represent something real, like a community or municipality. If they are identical, I see little point to keeping both labels. older≠wiser 04:06, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

It is not trivial to know when two entities are identical because users have merged articles and the like and I don't have any way of tracking that. In the case where "town" was changed to something else, both the something else and CDP are used together, which is not offensive. If someone doesn't like it, they can remove it, but CDP should probably stay with the statistics if that is what those statistics represent. We shouldn't just not use CDP because we don't like it if it matches the statistics associated with it. In the cases where the article still said town, see my comment below. -- Ram-Man 04:36, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

There is a similar problem with Dedham, Massachusetts where "town" has been replaced with "census-designated place" or "CDP" everywhere it appears. From what I can tell from the link to "CDP", this is inaccurate, and according to the Town Charter of Dedham [1] "The inhabitants of the Town of Dedham, within the territorial limits established by law, shall continue to be a body corporate and politic under the name 'Town of Dedham.'" -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:56, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'll respond to both of you in general. When the rambot created all of the articles it converted CDP to town. Now town has a specific legal meaning that may or may not be valid. However, CDP is always going to be accurate. It was a mistake to do it that way, but it happened and it had to be fixed. Now in order to fix it, all town references (correct or wrong) had to be turned into CDP. Now this may put us back a little, but where it stands now is that we have to take all of the articles where the correct wording IS town, and change it back. The rambot will never again change town to CDP, as it has done this completely and the fix is done forever. It is unfortunate and there are over 5,000 CDPs, but I can't think of another solution. -- Ram-Man 04:28, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Two things. First, the edits to change "CDPship" back to "township" actually removed a space so it changed them to say "thetownship" (I think I manually editted one, but figured it might be better if I left the bot fix these). Second, in cases where the CDP is identical to an existing municipality, I think it is confusing for general readers to place CDP terminology in a prominent place like the intro. Perhaps an unobtrusive note somewhere, but just not so prominent as in the first sentence. older≠wiser 13:30, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Also, Rambot has been adding a few township articles in Michigan to Category:Unincorporated communities in Michigan--I do not think this is appropriate. The townships are not unincorporated although they may contain unincorporated communities. older≠wiser 13:39, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Also, despite what the Census Bureau says, De Witt County, Illinois is known locally as DeWitt County, Illinois. older≠wiser 13:48, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Alas, I'll fix the "thetownship" to "the township". You think after so many attempts I would stop doing stupid little mistakes. At least they are easy to fix. The only case where the rambot would add Category:Unincorporated communities in Michigan would be if the article already contained " is an unincorporated community in " in the article itself. It's attempting to auto-categorize and put in missing categories. In these cases I don't see how that would be wrong, however, give me an example and I'll see what went wrong. -- Ram-Man 16:25, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

For example, see Alcona Township, Michigan or Bunker Hill Township, Michigan. I have added lists of communities to townships, which often include unincorporated communities. older≠wiser 16:57, Nov 20, 2004

Ok, i've modified the bot to be more restrictive in the auto-categorization attempts. If it makes any more changes in Michigan, I'll have to check them all (although I'm almost done). Hopefully this will fix the problems. -- Ram-Man 17:18, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Errata

Is there someplace to list corrections to Census-generated stuff that might help Rambot avoid stepping over already made corrections? For example, Stambaugh, Michigan and Mineral Hills, Michigan merged into Iron River, Michigan in 2000 and are no longer separate municipalities. I removed Category:Cities in Michigan but Rambot re-added it. I have since updated the phrasing (past tense) to make it clearer, so if the bot relies on a specific string, that may be sufficient. older≠wiser 17:43, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

If the rambot sees "is a city", it will think it is a city because the article said it was a city! Since you changed it to "was a city", the rambot will not add the city category because it is not a city anymore, it was a city. Your changes to the article are sufficient to cause the rambot to skip over it, and this should be done in the future. The rambot will still maintain the two old articles, but it shouldn't interfere with the categories or the new city name. You are absolutely correct in thinking the updated phrasing would fix it. Besides, the updating phrasing is much prefered anyway. BTW, thanks for all your help in checking the rambot's accuracy. Sometimes it takes weeks or months to find little tiny errors. At least we don't have to do anything major like the town -> CDP fix again. -- Ram-Man 18:05, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Springfield, Mo Poverty Edit

I believe that the recent edit to Springfield, Missouri changed some factual information about the poverty statistics. I've detailed them on the Talk:Springfield,_Missouri page. Is the new or old version accurate? -Amoore 22:31, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Bartlesville OK

I'm not sure if I'm addressing a person or a machine, but you seen to be insisting that Bartlesville Oklahoma is in Osage County when it is in Washington County

http://www.countycourthouse.org/main.htm

Don't take my word for it, see what the folks that have to say for them selves. life is good - Carptrash 06:18, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Geographic references

A week or two ago, I added id's to each footnote in Geographic references. I think that you should update rambot to link directly to these, if you have not already done so. (By the way, the footnote number is the text of the id - <sup>1</sup> became <sup id="1">1</sup>, etc.) -- ABCD | Talk 00:30, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that page is in my watchlist and I noticed you changing it. The bot has already performed updates in that nature and is done! Thanks for thinking of doing that. -- Ram-Man 01:09, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you know -- ABCD | Talk 21:28, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nashville-Davidson (balance), Tennessee

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Nashville-Davidson (balance), Tennessee -- just an FYI, in case you have an opinion on this. older≠wiser 16:49, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Formatting of "External links"

Rambot has twice changed the formatting of the "External links" header on Long Beach, New York. For some reason it insists on changing to from not have a space between the equals and the words, to having a space between the equals and the words. Not only do I know do this, as it makes no sense, but I have reverted the changes only to have them come back. It also makes no sense that the bot would do it only to "External links". Please stop this from happening. GPHemsley→◊ 00:05, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Image copyright tags

You've changed all the copyright tags I put on my photos. I'm not entirely sure why as it seems one box is preferable to two. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 00:28, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Extremely inaccurate geographical statistics

I'm spamming this complaint around a bit as I'm unsure where the responsibility lies. I have started a discussion on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) regarding the extremely inaccurate geographical statistics I noticed for a couple of coastal cities. (For example, Malibu, California, is about 20 square miles. The Rambot statistics listed it as 101 square miles, and 80% water). Another user has tracked down the problem. It appears to be systemic - coastal areas are computed as if their borders are far out to sea. Can anything be done? The information is worse than useless. Here is what user Ilya reported:

copied from Talk:Santa Monica, California

What about this map? It looks like the city is going into the water by quite a bit. I know that's not the best map, but perhaps this is how area is calculated in census area calculations. -- Ilya 00:55, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Dual licensing

I have dual licensed my own material under CC-BY-SA. I see no need to do that for Robbot, since its changes are all so trivial that I do not consider them copyrightable, and thus being in the public domain by default. - Andre Engels 14:35, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have added CC-by-SA to my user page. - UtherSRG 17:24, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is probably going to sound terribly anal. :) I'd like to license my text contributions as PD, but I would like photographs I've taken myself and uploaded to be CC-by-SA. How would I go about wording that? - Hephaestos|§ 18:03, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You give me way too much credit, man. I don't understand hardly a word of what you're asking me to do. Dumb it down, way down. Everyking 19:56, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ok, well, if I had any objections to people freely using my work I wouldn't be here, so I put the message on my user page. Everyking 22:24, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have dual licensed my contributions and placed a notice on my user page. older≠wiser 21:12, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

I used to have a notice on my user page saying that all my text is in the public domain (and whatever I write still is), but what with one thing and another it kept getting lost. It might be an idea to maintain a central list of multiply-licensed contributions rather than putting it on separate user pages... 62.254.128.4 22:29, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC) (Kate, not logged in)

Hey Ram-Man, I think the only work I have ever done on US city articles is adding a tiny sentence to Lakeland, Florida. So you can do whatever you want with that... Adam Bishop 01:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The Bot in New Jersey.

I notice this change made by the bot. While the original article was indeed wrong in calling Lyndhurst a town, the correction made was, in fact, incorrect. Lyndhurst is a Township. We shouldn't assume that every incorrect reference to town is, in fact, supposed to be a reference to CDP. john k 00:14, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Furthermore, the bot originally made an article at Lyndhurst Township, New Jersey. This was then merged into the Lyndhurst, New Jersey article when it should have been the other way around. john k 00:17, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Licensing

I have no problem with licensing my edits in whatever way you want to do it. RickK 05:47, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)