Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:59, 17 June 2008

Conversion accuracy

Discussion moved to: Template_talk:Convert

Please respond to this:

Wikipedia_talk:Templates_for_deletion#Automotive_templates:_Template:Auto_hp_and_others.

References and the word "unit"

Hi,

I stopped your bot due to this edit to the Paramedics in the US article. My concern is two fold. First off, why is it wikifing the reference section? There really is no reason for things like dates to be wikified there. Second, it is doing other edits such as ] -> ]s. Shouldn't the entire word be inside the brackets, especially when divided up like that?

JPINFV (talk) 22:41, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Every edit that the bot made to that article was correct in the context which they were made. To address the things you mentioned above, yes, full dates should always be wikified so that user preferences can take effect. Also, it changed ] to ]s, which is also the correct proscribed form. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 03:16, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Hunster. I appreciate you bringing this here and do not mind you stopping the bot. To JPINFV, please take a look at the response from Hunster and the subsequent edit and see if you think the article is better now. Thanks Lightmouse (talk) 09:51, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I didn't stop the bot. I just reverted JPINFV's revert since the bot did nothing wrong. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 16:14, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I know you didn't. My response was unclear about that, sorry. The thanks for stopping the bot were directed at JPINV. I appreciate you helping out because it is always useful to have a third party view in such cases. Lightmouse (talk) 17:27, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

List of decades

Please don't unlink the decade list from the List of decades article. It's really a navigation template, but too large for inclusion in articles. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:13, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

You are right. It should not have done that. I will fix that. Thanks for letting me know. Lightmouse (talk) 18:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Date links

Hi, I thought that all dates in an article (e.g. "1805", "2008", etc.) had to be linked. Now the Lightbot comes along and is delinking all the dates I inserted into Nachman of Breslov, Nathan of Breslov and others. Should I be concerned? Are any dates supposed to be linked? Thank you, Yoninah (talk) 18:59, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

People often think that all date fragments should be linked but it is not true. As with plain english words, links are only needed if they help. You can see policy at Misplaced Pages:Mosnum#Autoformatting_and_linking and wp:overlink. Best wishes. Lightmouse (talk) 19:42, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

"Stand alone years do not need to be linked but some users prefer it" Misplaced Pages:CONTEXT#Dates. In historical articles it is useful to allow people to easily refer to the chronological context of the year. (Pages that use SnapShots make this even easier.) Given that autoformatting splits any date up into the 'day month' and separate 'year' links for unregistered users, any year will have a link to the year so it does not matter if the year alone is linked. If "the reader needs to follow the link to understand the topic" the Manual of Style allows "links to solitary years". I would suggest that you turn this bot off as it is a user choice. Tom Szczepanik (talk) 22:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

4AD record label

Your bot borked the wikilink to 4AD on the page for The Wolfgang Press. I fixed it, but you need to be aware that the page 4AD is for a record label and not the year. -- Foetusized (talk) 01:33, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing that and pointing it out to me. I will investigate. Lightmouse (talk) 09:53, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I have made a change to the code. 4AD should be left alone now. Thanks for letting me know. Lightmouse (talk) 10:04, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot

Why is this bot de-wikifying articles like Professional Wrestling in Australia? I think that's not good at all. Linking dates is important to WP if I may say so. !! Justa Punk !! 04:38, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

People often think that all date fragments should be linked but it is not true. As with plain english words, links are only needed if they help. You can see policy at Misplaced Pages:Mosnum#Autoformatting_and_linking and wp:overlink. Best wishes. Lightmouse (talk) 09:55, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I have always seen all dates being linked in all Misplaced Pages editions. Why should the English edition make it more difficult again? Belgian man (talk) 12:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I do not know why the English edition is different to the non-English editions. I am always seeking to make the English edition more suited to non-English readers by adding metric units. So I am sympathetic to the principle. If links to date fragments are needed for international consistency, then the policy needs to be changed. Please feel free to start the debate at those policy pages, I will be interested to read what people say. Lightmouse (talk) 12:32, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

The English Misplaced Pages is different to the non-English editions because of the huge amount of rules, guidelines, manuels, ... I am not going to do what you suggest because the matter doesn't interest me enough considering the effort I would do for it by starting a debate. Greetings, Belgian man (talk) 13:50, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thank you for raising it with me. I am sorry that I cannot be any help. Lightmouse (talk) 14:15, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem :) I was only wondering why dates aren't linked anymore suddenly, in fact, but I see there exist some conventions regarding to this, so in the future, I won't revert your changes anymore (as I did a few times on articles on my watchlist). And although I don't really agree with these conventions, I'll accept them from now on, no problem :) Belgian man (talk) 15:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Edmonton municipal election, 1963

Per my earlier request here, please stop inserting Template:Convert in this article, whether manually or by bot. I hope that I will not have to ask you for a third time. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 06:10, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. There must be a way to fix this. I have asked at Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(policy)#Unflagged_quotes if there might be a solution to this problem. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 09:40, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot stopped

An anonymous user apparently pushed the red button for sport and I didn't see a corresponding notice on your talk, so I removed the stopword. If everything is in order, I believe the bot should be restarted. ~ Jafet _{Speaker of many words} 09:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I appreciate your help. I have restarted it. Lightmouse (talk) 09:50, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

A Vindication of the Rights of Men

Lightbot removed important paragraph markings in quotations in A Vindication of the Rights of Men - perhaps some tweaks could be made to the program so that this doesn't happen in the future? Thanks. Awadewit (talk) 12:57, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this here. That is a feature of AWB 'General fixes'. I can report it back to the development team but I cannot see any difference that the paragraph marks make. Can you clarify what difference it makes to the reader? Lightmouse (talk) 13:03, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, in the version before the bot, there are paragraph breaks in some of the quotations. In the version after the bot, there are no paragraph breaks. This is a serious issue, as it changes the quotation. Awadewit (talk) 13:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Please see report at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#Paragraph_marks_in_General_fixes. They will know what to do. Thanks again for bringing it here. Lightmouse (talk) 13:14, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

request for comment

Hello. I would appreciate your comments here and here. Thank you. Thunderbird2 (talk) 18:32, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the best thing to do is to walk away. Right or wrong no longer matters. Lightmouse (talk) 21:38, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, perhaps that is good advice. The trouble is that I really miss those "good ol' days" with good natured banter with the likes of Tony, McCandlish and Anderson - all of them strong-minded and all willing to accept opposing opinions. Do you think those times are gone for good? I hope not. Thunderbird2 (talk) 10:52, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes I agree, the normal debate was good. I am sure that normal debate will resume eventually. Lightmouse (talk) 18:38, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

"As of"

In line 52 of this edit, Lightbot removed the wikilink around "as of 2007." This action contradicts Misplaced Pages:As of, which recommends that such statements be wikilinked so that editors can more efficiently maintain articles' currency. --zenohockey (talk) 20:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. If you look on the talk page of Misplaced Pages:As of, you will see that it is a very questionable issue. I see that the debate has petered out, perhaps it is time to raise it again. Lightmouse (talk) 21:42, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I have modified the code. It should no longer remove links to 'as of xxxx'. Thanks for your feedback. Lightmouse (talk) 04:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Good!

Links to dates aren't useful in most of the cases, thanks! --Moraleh (talk) 22:50, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

You are very welcome. I appreciate the support. Lightmouse (talk) 23:21, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot

Last few days I've noticed that your bot has been removing links to all years, even when only mentioned once, I'm not too sure why. πιππίνυ δ - (dica) 00:36, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

People often think that all date fragments should be linked but it is not true. As with plain english words, links are only needed if they help. You can see policy at Misplaced Pages:Mosnum#Autoformatting_and_linking and wp:overlink. Best wishes. Lightmouse (talk) 04:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok - the policy says single years are "not required" (but it's not exactly outlawed either). So you're going to go through 2 million articles unlink each single year you find? How does the bot test for relevance? (which appears to be one of the tests in the policy as well) πιππίνυ δ - (dica) 02:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Image filename edit

Your bot worked on rail profile today. Unfortunately, one of the algorithms is too coarse. In this article, one of the image names includes the text "155lb". The bot detected this and inserted a space, creating a redlink (since fixed).

So I don't have to fix the article again, could you tweak the bot to avoid image filenames?

Thanks -- EdJogg (talk) 00:56, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

PS - incidentally, when the bot inserts a space between the number and unit, could it add a non-breaking space please, as this confirms to WP:MOS and avoids us needing to add them manually. Thanks -- EdJogg (talk) 01:05, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting the image filename and fixing it. I have modified the code so that should not happen again. I am not a big fan of adding non-breaking spaces myself for a variety of reasons but I have no objection to other people adding them. There are other bots that add them automatically. Thanks again for picking up the filename. I appreciate it. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 04:39, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I would rather not have an NBSP either, but in order to prevent a number and its unit from being separated by an automatic page break you only have two options: NBSP or no space. I have no problem with the 'no space' option since the result is usually quite clear enough. If Mediawiki could be intelligent enough to not break a line following a number, then this would not be a problem, but I'm not sure whether that is even possible. However, until it is, it is standard practice when preparing for a Good Article (or FA) nomination to add NBSPs, because you can be certain that at least one of the reviewers will check for them.

Regards -- EdJogg (talk) 08:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

RailGauge template

Hi again. Sorry, I'm not hounding you, just more aware of what to look for after your bot has passed by!

Could you add another template to your exceptions list please? If you examine {{RailGauge}} you will see that the valid parameters include many such things as "2ft6in". This is an obvious target for the bot (as recently happened on handcar), but the template relies on a contiguous character string to work. This template is a relatively new creation, designed to replace a plethora of separate rail gauge templates, and as such will be present in thousands of articles, so modification might be tricky.

(PS - you'll need to check the history of handcar if you are interested in seeing what happened. I just realised that there is a simple way of avoiding attracting the attention of the bot in the first place - replace the parameter with the number-of-inches equivalent number! (Done) However, I'm sure there are many other articles in the same situation.)

Regards -- EdJogg (talk) 09:00, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for raising this. I took a look at the history of that article and I can see what you mean. I will have a think about it and see if I can get the bot to avoid those. But I am glad that you found a solution. If you ask me again in a 3 days, I might be able to do what you did for all the articles you want.

Have you considered using the 'convert' template? Ask the people at Template talk:Convert because I am sure that the needs of rail articles can be catered for. Lightmouse (talk) 18:28, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

LightBot Problem

Hi. Lightbot made these changes, including categorizing a recently dead person as a Living Person; removing valid wiki-links to the various century articles, etc. I don't know what caused it to do this, but you may want to check! Nimur (talk) 15:21, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for bringing this to me. The links to date fragments are often said to be an unwanted side-effect of autoformatting which is only intended for full dates. People often think that all date fragments should be linked but it is not true. As with plain english words, links are only needed if they help. You can see policy at Misplaced Pages:Mosnum#Autoformatting_and_linking and wp:overlink. I cannot understand why the category was added, it is very strange. I have asked for developer input at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#Unwanted_addition_of_category. They might know what is going on. Take a look and see what they say. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 18:16, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

The AWB code has been updated as you will see if you follow the link. This generic issue for people marked as recently dead should not happen again. Thank you very much for bringing it here. Lightmouse (talk) 20:13, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Glad to be of service! That was the really unusual action; the wikilinks are a matter of style policy; but adding the category was definitely a bug! Nimur (talk) 22:55, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

problem with deleting <p> tags_tags-2008-06-16T15:33:00.000Z">

Please adjust Lighbot so that it doesnt delete <p> tags inside blockquotes or quoting templates (for example, {{bquote}}, {{cquote}}, etc.). They are sometimes legitimately needed there. Kaldari (talk) 15:33, 16 June 2008 (UTC)_tags"> _tags">

This issue was raised earlier (see above on this page). It appears to be due to AWB General Fixes. It is now reported to the developers at: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#Paragraph_marks_in_General_fixes. They should know what to do. Thanks for mentioning it. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 18:05, 16 June 2008 (UTC)_tags"> _tags">

Date script isn't finding the British style | Script assisted. Units/dates/other

Look at Dextropropoxyphene which I've left in its current state. It has a bunch of dates written as 31st December 2007, but your script doesn't attempt to correct these ones. Thanks -- KelleyCook (talk) 17:36, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for contacting me. The bot has not touched that article as far as I know. You are correct, the bot would not amend those dates anyway because it only amends them as part of delinking. It would be a lot more difficult to amend unlinked dates and I am not actually aware that there is anything wrong with unlinked dates like that. Lightmouse (talk) 17:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

According to Misplaced Pages:MOSNUM#Dates it should be 31 December 2007. Thunderbird2 (talk) 18:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Minor bot issue

Hi there,

Just noticed your bot's edit to Shag Point Branch. Part of the edit stripped ] ] of all its coding rather than just the unnecessary "April 1|" part. I've now edited the article so that the date appears according to user preferences, but I thought I better point this out to you. - Axver (talk) 04:50, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot issue

Was wondering why Lightbot would remove wikification from a specific year (1984, 1998, etc.) or from a century (18th century, 19th century, etc.) or from a "s" (1800s, 1980s, etc.)? These seem like exceedingly useful wikifications that allow for people to follow them, but this bot is removing them. (perhaps unintentionally?) Thanks! Cardsplayer4life (talk) 05:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree. Your bot is overapplying the policy you continually quote. It says "Such links must not be used unless the reader needs to follow the link to understand the topic; see WP:CONTEXT."

How can your bot possibly understand if there is a contextual reason for inserting a link? It is absurd to just remove all instances without considering that there may be a valid reason for including a link.

Since these links don't detract from the meaning of the articles in any serious way, why expend so much effort in removing them and potentially annoying so many editors? Surely edits should only be made by a bot when there is a very clearly identifiable case and they are completely uncontroversial.

☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 05:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Please at least have the bot include a link in the edit summary pointing to the policy that it's enforcing. --P3d0 (talk) 21:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)