Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:29, 22 September 2008

Date changes

I thought that wew were temporarily not making any date changes until all arguments had been sorted out.--Kumioko (talk) 02:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Kumioko, I think numerous editors are using the script to audit dates, including the removal of autorformatting. This is an inevitable outcome of the decision made last month. UC_Bill et al. have made a case that their gathering of "statistics" demands that all DA removal stop temporarily; however, they have failed to produce a shred of evidence that their statistics (1) will be an accurate reflection of date formats on WP, and (2) have any bearing whatsoever on the removal of DA, whether in the short, medium or long terms. Tony (talk) 07:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Stop lying, Tony1. You've been asked to stop using your script to show good faith and allow the situation to cool down, not because it interferes with statistics gathering (though it does that too.) You've also been screwing up a bunch of articles by altering date formats in image titles, publication titles in references, date ranges, etc. So the script is obviously flawed and needs fixing before you continue to use it. You've also been destroying valuable metadata that will be hard to replace. A better solution would be to wrap delinked dates in some other kind of markup (a div tag or something) that would eliminate the autoformatting and the link while still allowing bots and analysis scripts to efficiently identify dates in articles. --Sapphic (talk) 01:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

It's a serious personal attack from someone who is flagrantly abusing admin rules in more than one way. I don't want harm to come to you through your actions. My advice is to take a few days off, calm down, and try to see things in a more balanced way. Tony (talk) 02:29, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Sapphic, calling another editor a liar is not nice. Please withdraw that. Lightmouse (talk) 02:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse, do you have an XML script or module available for AWB yet? I know that you have the script but I can do the date changes a lot faster with AWB (like your bots do) than I can as a page by page script. I can make my own if necessary but I thought I would ask first.--Kumioko (talk) 19:15, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I have a few scripts. The following AWB script will delink dates to day month year:

• User:Lightmouse/javascript conversion/dmy

I have not yet created one to delink dates to month day year but I can do that easily. It differs in several other respects from the monobook script but it is a reasonable approximation. Is that what you are looking for? Lightmouse (talk) 20:01, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes thank you.--Kumioko (talk) 20:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

For the benefit of morons like myself, how would one go about utilising that script in AWB? --Closedmouth (talk) 10:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

In AWB, go to the 'Tools' menu and select 'Make module'. Paste the script into the white space. Click the 'enabled' check box at the top left and press the 'make module' button. Click the 'close' button. Then run AWB as normal. Let me know how you get on. Lightmouse (talk) 11:28, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm getting this when it attempts to process the page:

Status	New
Description	Exception: ArgumentOutOfRangeException Message: Length cannot be less than zero. Parameter name: length Call stack: at System.String.InternalSubStringWithChecks(Int32 startIndex, Int32 length, Boolean fAlwaysCopy) at WikiFunctions.Tools.ApplyKeyWords(String Title, String Text) at WikiFunctions.Parse.FindandReplace.PerformFindAndReplace(String Find, String Replace, String ArticleText, String ArticleTitle, RegexOptions ROptions) at WikiFunctions.Parse.FindandReplace.MultipleFindAndReplace(String ArticleText, String strTitle, String& EditSummary) at WikiFunctions.Article.PerformFindAndReplace(FindandReplace findAndReplace, SubstTemplates substTemplates, ReplaceSpecial replaceSpecial, Boolean SkipIfNoChange) at AutoWikiBrowser.MainForm.ProcessPage(ArticleEX theArticle, Boolean mainProcess) Closedmouth (talk) 12:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
To duplicate:	]
Operating system	Microsoft Windows NT 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3
.NET FW Version	Unknown
AWB version	4.4.0.1, revision 3360 (2008-09-14 23:15:50)
Workaround	None
Fixed in version	Unknown

Is that the script, or have I broken something in my version of AWB? Never mind, that made no sense. --Closedmouth (talk) 12:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

English

Thanks for telling me about that mistake. I know it, but I don't realise that I put twice thousand, one in numbers and the other one in letters. I think that I still make mistakes in grammar. If I've made more mistakes let me know. Where are you from? Salut (=regards) --Vilarrubla (talk) 13:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I am British. Your english is very good. Salut. Lightmouse (talk) 14:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed; Lightmouse hails from where it was invented. Can't do better than that. Tony (talk) 14:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Dates

I am curious as to the reasoning behind your bot's de-wikilinking of dates. Under what conditions will it leave a date wikilinked, and under what conditions will it de-link it? I understand that years should only be linked when they are particularly significant to the topic, but surely the bot cannot make subjective decisions of significance based on the context; also, I thought it fairly standard that we wikilink birth and death dates, reign years and the like.

So... are we de-linking all dates and years now? Or is the bot misbehaving? LordAmeth (talk) 17:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

With respect to your first question, Lightbot is not delinking all dates but there are thousands, if not millions, of excessive date links and Lightbot targets these. If you have a particular date link in mind and a reference, I would be happy to look at it and discuss it. People used to link all dates without thinking and the issue has been extensively debated in many places. The general policy is now against date links. I would be happy to go through it with you but you would probably get a quicker and more extensive answer at the talk page of wp:mosnum. Lightmouse (talk) 00:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Dates are now not generally linked for the purpose of autoformatting. Please see MOSNUM and MoS. Tony (talk) 09:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Yuri Gagarin

Additionally, why did this happen? I've seen nothing that says to only link the day and month, and not the year. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 17:54, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

It is the first time I have seen anything like that in tens of thousands of delinkings. It is not part of the design and to be honest, I don't know what happened. I have human-edited that article and removed the links. Lightmouse (talk) 00:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Alexander Hamilton

This edit seems deeply misguided. There is a case, although an obnoxious one, for removing the link to ], ] or ] altogether; there is no case for leaving it on the autoformatted date and removing it from 1757, for they are parallel. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:35, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot removes links to solitary years. It does not remove links from autoformattable dates. Some people add links to non-autoformatted dates because they think they look nice together and this appears to be one of those cases where people make bizarre combinations of links. You will see that I have removed all of the links now. Feel free to edit the article in any way that you think improves it. Lightmouse (talk) 00:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot

Hi. Lightbot is delinking all instances of 1798 where '1798' is any year. Can you please refer me to the approval for this? Sarah777 (talk) 19:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Sarah, At first I did not know what you meant because that looked just like a solitary year. And I think that is the point, anything that looks like a solitary year is going to be treated like one. That is why some projects deprecate them and suggest that at least one non-date word is included. I understand that Misplaced Pages as a whole is actively considering such a policy and your views on concealed date links will be welcome at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Concealed_links. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 01:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Sarah, the use of hidden links is generally not recommended, since they look identical to the solitary year-links that are widely disparaged as adding nothing at the expense of a smooth reading experience. Readers are highly unlikely to follow them. Some WikiProjects have either banned them (Music) or are considering doing so (film). If "year in X" pages can add to a reader's understanding of a topic, it's more practical to reword the first one so that it's clearly what it is, and doesn't look like a plain year-link. The first one is usually in the lead, which is a prominent place, and the conduit for the reader to reach all other sibling "year in X" pages. It's more likely they'll be viewed with a single, explicit link, ironically, and the amount of blue-splotch in the text can be minimised at the same time. Tony (talk) 09:11, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• And, for whatever it’s worth Sarah777, Tony is absolutely spot-on with his above comment. I couldn’t have said it any better. This issue has been debated on WT:MOSNUM for quite some time. Of course, once action actually starts to take place, new editors, have a “WTF” reaction and wonder where all that came from. It would be hard for anyone but a Swiss patent examiner to tortuously wade through all that has transpired on WT:MOSNUM and track the changing consensus and follow the reasoning. But Lightmouse and Tony are correct and are doing the right thing. Greg L (talk) 03:04, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Focus folks. The question I asked was what authority the bot had to delete "Years in Ireland" links. The answer is now clear; none. Sarah777 (talk) 09:03, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Mini-flags

Hi, There is a section in wp:flag that says: Flag images, especially flag icons in biographical infoboxes, should not be used to indicate birth or death places... does that seem reasonable? Lightmouse (talk) 17:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

After reading your citation, I understand the reasoning behind it - I'll withdraw the complaint. Thanks for the bot - Take Care... Dinkytown (talk) 19:24, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Removal of {{convert}}

Seriously, dude!?!?!? Why are you removing instances of {{convert}} that deal with knots in ship infoboxes (such as here)? I know you prefer the "kn" to the "knot" operator, per past discussions, actions, etc., but is this now your way of getting around the use "knot" by a "subst" of the template? Or is there some other arcane reasoning behind it? I'm at a total loss… — Bellhalla (talk) 19:38, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, why are you still changing "knot" to "kn" in uses of {{convert}}, like here? There is no call for it. We have had this discussion before (I can dig through Template_talk:Convert archive yet again to find previous discussions, if you wish to be reminded. The use of "knot" in {{convert}}—which works and is not deprecated—makes for easier, more intuitive editing (it makes no difference to readers). I have asked you to stop previously. Others have asked you to stop changing it. I will ask again: Will you, Lightmouse, and your bot, Lightbot, please cease all changes of the "knot" operator within Template:Convert? — Bellhalla (talk) 19:45, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

With respect to your first question, I have been trying to work within your unhappiness with seeing a piece of convert template code within edit mode. With respect to your second question, that is because I have not yet written the script to handle all values but it can be done. Feel free to discuss this at the talk page of the template itself. Lightmouse (talk) 00:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, the phrase 'WTF' is not nice. I am sure you don't mean it in a profane way, but it is profane. Please withdraw it. Lightmouse (talk) 02:56, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Struck, but the emotion behind is genuine. (And, trust me, that was a lot more mild than what I originally wrote before I cooled off).

I have no idea what you are talking about in reference to the first question. The first diff I linked to above had this in it before your edit:

{{convert|15|knot}}

and after your edit:

5 knots (28 km/h/17 mph)

I will repeat my question: Are you removing instances of {{convert}} because you don't like the use of the "knot" parameter within the {{convert}} template call? Perhaps you are confusing me with someone else, but I have no problem whatsoever with the template {{convert}} being used anywhere. My problem—and this relates to the second comment of mine—is when edits are made—mostly by you, Lightmouse, or your bot, Lightbot—to change the intuitive, non-deprecated, and fully functionl "knot" within a call to {{convert}} to the less-intuitive, less-understood abbreviation of "kn" within a call to {{convert}}. (Please don't dig up the whole "kn" for "kt" explanation. We've gone over that ad infinitum in the past and has nothing to do with my multiple requests for you to stop changing this code.) Here's the example of what I'm talking about from my second diff above.

Before your edit:

{{convert|13|knot|km/h|adj=on}}

and after your edit:

{{convert|13|kn|km/h|adj=on}}

See how the first one uses the word knot spelled out? See how the second one uses just kn? That is what I'm talking about. Just stop. Don't do it.

Seeing as how your script, bot, or whatever-it-is is making this change already, there's obviously some rule or regular expression or something that is being applied to make that change. Please remove that snippet of code, expression, or whatever-it-is and the problem will go away. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot OOPS

Lightbot incorrectly handled dates in Zil-e-Huma Usman Shaheed. See here. Granted, the dates were incorrectly formatted before but they are worse now. Shame on you Lightbot. You should have better error handling. Truthanado (talk) 00:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

As you say, the article contained an error. I have fixed the error. The phrase 'shame on you' is not very nice. Can you replace your comment with a more civil version and assume good faith please? Lightmouse (talk) 00:12, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The "shame" comment was made in jest. I didn't think a piece of software would take it personally. My apologies. I always assume good faith. It would help, though, if Lightbot were modified to look for and properly these kinds of error conditions. As a Wiki patroller, I see and correct many of these (and similar) wikilink formatting errors. Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 01:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, it was a joke. It did strike me as odd that you would have said something truly negative because my impression of you was as a civil person. I understand you now. Thanks for clarifying that.

Seriously, the Lightbot code fixes several common errors and some uncommon ones. In addition to 'fixes' I have coded for a fair amount of 'tolerance' of several types of error or weirdness. As you can imagine, the number of error permutations is near infinite. So I can't hope to address them all. As I become aware of common and important ones, and as my coding skills increase, I tinker with the code. I may stew on them till a solution occurs to me and that is why I have User talk:Lightmouse/wishlist. I am not a programmer, I am just some guy that steals code from other people and hacks it until it works, sort of. That particular defect by a previous editor plus the Lightbot response seems to me to be a rare permutation. Feel free to add it to the wishlist. I am hoping that this issue will go away soon because fewer people are adding date links now. Lightmouse (talk) 01:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Wilhelm Brasse

Recently, this Lightbot seems to be introducing inconsistencies in an article that I created and have been expanding from time to time since about late August 2008. It also is creating "edit conflict" interfering with some updating of the article. Thank you if you can prevent it from doing that by not applying it to the article in a haphazard fashion (f that is the problem). Diffs. --NYScholar (talk) 01:46, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I looked at the edit and it seems fine to me. The only complaint that I would have is that Lightbot didn't do enough, it didn't remove the unnecessary link to 'May' because that feature is currently switched off. Can you explain what you think is wrong with that edit?

With respect to the edit conflict, in the space of one and a half hours, you made ten edits. It was chance that Lightbot made a single edit in that period. There are two directions for an edit conflict. If you get there first and Lightbot attempts an edit, Lightbot will detect that and back off. If Lightbot gets there first and you attempt an edit, Lightbot can't prevent that because it does not know about your edit (if I knew of a way of avoiding the few minutes just before you edit, I would do it). Lightmouse (talk) 02:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry; but I see no reason for your deleting those links. It seems to be your own personal preference to delink the dates. On what Misplaced Pages policy or guideline are you basing your changes to these articles using this bot? --NYScholar (talk) 02:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The use of that bot is creating inconsistencies into an article whose dates were consistently linked (at least that was the intention). I have been making content changes and stylistic and English idiom editing in some articles that your edits to the dates are undoing. --NYScholar (talk) 02:35, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

NYScholar, thanks for raising these points. As a professional writer (I presume this from your username), you will know how important a smooth reading experience is. This aim is behind WP's increasing change to what might be called "smart linking", in which low-value links are minimised to make it more likely that readers will follow valuable links. This is a move from the scattergun linking that pertained in wikis four or five years ago. If you're referring to the date-autoformatting mechanism, which looks like linking but has a quite different function, please let us know. It's a separate issue. Tony (talk) 02:39, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The relevent guidelines are at place such as wp:mosnum or wp:overlink and I am sure that many people would like to consider your good work at Wilhelm Brasse in the talk pages of those guidelines. You may also wish to put the article forward for peer review, good article, or featured article and see what the reviewers think of date fragments such as months and years, plus the issue of linking for consistency. My opinion isn't very important and I expect a third party review would have other benefits too. Lightmouse (talk) 02:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply here, Tony; could you point me to a link in current Misplaced Pages WP:POL or WP:LOP or Misplaced Pages:MOS, where I can see a basis for what you are doing? I think at least for a while it would be good not to perform the bot that changes the dates on these articles relating to William Brasse; also the dates in the source citation templates are linked and the similar formatting of dates is being used for consistency; some of these events are significant enough to appear in the months and years being linked. If I am not doing that properly, please just point me via Wikilinks to the pertinent editing guidelines (doubt if they are "policies") re: formatting of dates in Misplaced Pages. There is an instruction not to revise dates that have no violation of guidelines or policies in them pertaining to varieties of English and dates in MOS; I am familiar w/ that. --NYScholar (talk) 02:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The bot has been making these changes not just in Wilhelm Brasse, but in other articles therein linked which I have also edited recently or today. --NYScholar (talk) 02:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

There was an "edit conflict" in our postings above; right now I am too busy doing other things to become involved in any "good article" review or "request for comment" on either Wilhelm Brasse or any other Misplaced Pages article. I'll look at the links you suggest a bit later. Thanks again for the replies. --NYScholar (talk) 02:55, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

If you want to use your bot on all of these related articles consistently, that might work to the benefit of Misplaced Pages/readers. If you do it, I'll take a look at the results later. Thanks again. --NYScholar (talk) 03:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Better summary labelling your bot's changes

Can I ask that you have better summary labelling of Lightbot's changes that it is making. I would hope that the summary would have a specific link to the reasoning and discussion that took place, rather than the non-specific and non-helpful summation that currently exists. At the moment it looks like a bot acting in isolation, and when you go to Lightbot's user and talk pages, there is nothing enlightening to what is occurring nor why? I would hope that the explanation would specifically link to the relevant part of the WP:MOS or decision-making discussion. Thanks. -- billinghurst (talk) 03:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I have asked this user in the past to make better edit summaries regarding this, and to be fair, the summaries are better than in the past, even if only marginally so. They are still far from ideal, though, because what Lightmouse/Lightbot (please fill in the appropriate entity) is doing is flat out unlinking of dates. A more honest edit summary would say something along the lines of "Automatically unlinking dates per this user's interpretation of MOS:NUM that deprecation of auto-formatted dates is the same as prohibiting them." — Bellhalla (talk) 04:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

While User:Lightmouse may have MOS:UNLINKDATES at the front of mind for that POV, there is also the page Misplaced Pages:Categorization_of_people which has specific guidance about people. Note the specific wikilink'd dates for the person. If someone is running a bot that trawls through WP, I would think that there should be the provision, if not the demand, for specific and accurate summation. Laissez faire is simply insufficient with a bot. If one doesn't care sufficiently about specifying their justification, then the request will go out for the bot to be suspended when it is the only avenue open. -- billinghurst (talk) 07:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Billinghurst, thank you for posting here. Try as I did, I couldn't find a single date or date fragement on that page that is linked or autoformatted. Can you please point me in the right direction? Concerning your point about the specificity of edit summaries, the "Unlink dates" location is about as specific as you can get surely, given that direct links to further information are provided there. Can you give me an idea of what you had in mind that would be acceptable? Tony (talk) 08:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I think they're referring to the summary "Units/dates/other" which Lightbot employs, rather than the script-assisted "Date audit" one. --Closedmouth (talk) 08:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks CM, yes, I was indeed referring to "U/d/o". Tony, it is not the words that are the issue (THE WHAT), it is the premise (THE WHY). I would think that a summation would include the basic background for why you have a bot running, if you are running a bot to comply with a guideline, then it would be useful to quote the guideline. This can be a direct line to the guideline, or belief and interpretation on your bot's talk page.

If many wikiauthors are all making the same "mistake", then the bot summation also needs to fulfil an educative & preventative function, in addition to a corrective. Similarly, if someone disagrees with what your bot is doing, an explanation of the purpose, allows the background information for people to raise their issue with you, while maintaining good faith. Regards Andrew -- billinghurst (talk) 10:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Billinghurst, my experience is that whenever I change the edit summary in response to a request from one person, there will always be another request for a change by another person. Long edit summaries get more complaints than short ones. Unfortunately, there is not a single place to look for a reasoning and discussion about date links. Even worse, that reasoning and discussion is not succinct enough for a short read and much has already been archived. If you look at the bot user page, you will see that it links to the approval for what it does. If you would like the edit summary to provide a link to wp:mosnum, I can do that. That page, its talk page, and its links all provide connections to the extensive discussions about date links. If you read the discussions and come up with a better page link than that, we could consider that too. Does that seem like a good way forward? Lightmouse (talk) 10:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Tony, lots of ways to skin a cat. a) Summary b) link in Summary to an wl#anchor on the bot talk page. I did see the approval, though when I want to see what and why a bot is doing something, explanation should not be in Geek, it should be in Joe Avge. At a minimum a link to MOSNUM.

It is possible that what I am seeing is the bot having elements of unexpected behaviour, and that the differentiation is not possible when the actual goal is not evident. The example is that it pulls date wl from ] templates, and if one looks at the recommendations for that use it specifically states to wl dates. -- billinghurst (talk) 12:24, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Another link for Lightbot's explanation of why that would be useful is Misplaced Pages:Only make links that are relevant to the context#Dates. In reflection, the guidance material is still less than clear and specific and still somewhat buried in the wp:mosnum#Date autoformatting which is somewhat muddying the discussion. -- billinghurst (talk) 00:34, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Gerard K. O'Neill

LightBot unwikilinked one of the dates in the references list, but left all the others. Wronkiew (talk) 03:56, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I have now removed all the others. Thanks for letting me know. Lightmouse (talk) 09:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot

Greetings,

In articles concerning history, linking to dates makes a lot of sense...Lightbot is currently deleting far too many date links. It is not human and does not know the difference between a necessary and unnecessary link. I suggest stopping the removal of date links.

Sincerely Ryoung122 09:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi,

Thanks for your suggestion, can you provide an example article so I can see which date links you mean? Lightmouse (talk) 09:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

, as an example. --PaterMcFly (talk) 11:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• William Holwell
• Henry Holyoake
• RD Waddilove

-- billinghurst (talk) 11:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Initial link analysis by Tony: Perhaps I could start with the first diff ("2" above). I note that the years are still linked in the infobox, and thus were double-linked, although strictly speaking that's irrelevant to the point here: whether it's sufficiently helpful to the reader to travel to the year pages to outweigh the dilution of other, possibly more pertinent links nearby in the text of this article (Abbey of St. Gall).

First, may I observe that the whereabouts of the Abbey are unclear from the article (unless you're very familiar with the northeast corner of the Jural Mountains. A link to St. Gallen is provided, which does turn out to have a good map, but just why the general articles on Switzerland and Canton are linked next to it (thus diluting it) is unclear, since St. Gallen already has a link to each. And if "Switzerland" were to be linked at all, it should be to the relevant section Switzerland#Cantons, which has a helpful map.

However, better still would be to include a map in the article, enabling readers to see the location without having to second-guess which link will deliver this map, and having to interrupt their reading to find it, especially if they're unwise enough to choose "Switzerland" first (I'd have done that, thinking big for a big map). At what point in their reading they'd divert from the "St. Gallen" article to conduct the hunt, or whether they'd bother (most would not, I suspect), is up for grabs.

The first year-link is to 613. This is a fragmentary little half page containing a few ragtag facts. The closest ones are the death of the Queen and two Kings of Austrasia (all in the same year—do I believe this?). But just where exactly the borders of Austrasia were is unclear even from the article on that topic, so we're in the dark as to whether it had anything at all to do with the Abbey. There's no mention of "Austrasia" in the "Abbey of St. Gall" article, sadly. That sent the readers down a rabbit hole, didn't it.

"613" provides other weird and wonderful information, such as "Muhammad begins preaching Islam in public", "Isanapura becomes the capital of the Cambodian kingdom of Chenla", "Aethelfrith of Northumbria defeats the Welsh and their allies at Chester", "Shahrbaraz of Persia captures Damascus", and—seriously, folks—Heraclius, Byzantine Emperor married his own niece, Martina. And where, I ask you, is "Dumnonia", because Bledric ap Custennin died there; and just where Yang Xuangan lived requires another leap into the blue magic carpet of cyberspace. Apparently no one interesting was born at all in 613 (blank section). Down the right side (calendar box), I see that 613 was 1156 in the Thai solar calendar. What a relief.

But let's return to the topic at hand. Ah yes, and there is a mention of the Abbey of St. Gall in 613, with a helpful link back to the article we were reading in the first place. But too late, 613: the original article stole the march on you—we've just come from that statement. This illustrates my suspicion that any information in a year article that is relevant to the reader's understanding of a topic is either already in the original aritlce or should be. It would be a great little research topic for an honours student in whatever to record what links people actually do hit, both when everything in sight is linked, as here, and when the links are rationed to the high-value ones. Common sense tells me which wiki-design is more effective.

613 may be vaguely useful for discretionary browsing, and I'm sure I could make it a lot better for that purpose if I wanted to. But magic blue carpets for discretionary browsing are way down the list of priorities for a serious information source, IMO. And instead of this the article frankly needs cleaning up in the formatting of case and punctuation in its years, which is inconsistent.

Any better bids for the next year-link in that article? Tony (talk) 14:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• Common sense tells me which wiki design is the most effective: linking dates. Because when I read articles I regularly click on dates to find out the historical context of the article, and to see what other things (yes, unrelated things, I am NOT interested in related stuff, I do not have a linear mind and Misplaced Pages is NOT a linear encyclopedia, it is a hyperlinked encyclopedia where one should be able to visit an unrelated article easily). Delinking dates injure my reading experience, and it also makes me not wanting to improve any year articles as I know that they will soon all become orphaned and nobody is going to benefit from my work on them so why bother improving them? Some people remove wikilinks to dates because they want to ensure that high-priority relevant wikilinks are visible, but simply removing the "secondary" wikilinks is not a solution. A solution would be to keep all links but draw the important ones in a different way, perhaps even just making them bold. NerdyNSK (talk) 22:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• And, to add something, when reading Misplaced Pages I like its non-linear nature: I can hop from article to article clicking links and finding new stuff. But while people now start removing links they consider irrelevant then Misplaced Pages will very soon become just a linear encyclopedia, not different than the paper ones, and thus I will become totally uninterested in it. The nonlinear nature of the wiki is one of the most powerful motivations that makes me wanting to read stuff here and contribute. Actually another website has got it right: they link every word everywhere but the links have the same behaviour as the "normal text" (that's an oxymoron: there isn't normal text at all since every word is linked, even the titles). Double clicking on a word presents you a dictionary definition, a thesaurus with synonyms, and an encyclopedia article. Of course their implementation from a technical perspective could be improved, but in practice I think Misplaced Pages should try to achieve something similar. Every word, everywhere, with no single exception, should be a link (but whether it is an XHTML anchor link depends on considerations for compatibility/accessibility etc) which when clicked or doubleclicked it could open the relevant Misplaced Pages article, the relevant Wiktionary article, the relevant Wikibooks/Wikisource pages, or all of them. And this should be the default behaviour, not depended on scripts, user preferences, or customisations. NerdyNSK (talk) 23:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Better bids? The ones stripped from the Saint Gall article weren't even simple year links. Definitely a bad move by Lightbot! Andy Dingley (talk) 14:21, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Some recent edits by Lightbot (e.g. this one) have made changes outside the bot's remit (per it's approval and subsequent clarification). In that edit, it has unlinked years where the link pointed to something other than a standard year article — i.e. links of the form ]. I don't particularly wish to get into a discussion on the merits of each and every one of the links it has removed: some clearly were superfluous. But two points remain: first and foremost, the bot does not have permission to make these edits; and second, deciding which of these links are appropriate and which are not is beyond the scope of a bot — it needs human intelligence. Please stop Lightbot from making these edits. — ras52 (talk) 15:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I have switched off this function. However, it seems self-evident that a link that looks like a solitary year will be treated like one. Concealing or camouflaging links is just silly. Many of these links actually break dates and must be removed. Others have been placed there as a symptom of the link-all-dates obsession that started with autoformatting. If anyone is interested in helping readers, they should add at least one non-date word so that it won't be ignored. Lightmouse (talk) 15:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I wonder why would we ever want to disguise ] with the ambiguous ] display. This incorrectly distracts the reader into thinking that the link is a more general 1910 (which would be less pertinant to the article) than the 1910 in Ireland would be. Aside from the issue of date linking I have always disagreed with hiding the specific nature of the date/place or thing link like this.--Kumioko (talk) 17:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

• I personally have no problem with "hidden" year dates, as they keep the article text cleaner: linking the phrase "in 1910" or "was built in 1910" and wikilinking it to "1910 in architecture" or something is stupid: the words "in" or "built" are not related to the link in any way; only the year is. As Misplaced Pages matures and if in the end year articles get better, people will start linking to the specific year articles (eg "1910 in science") rather than to the general year articles, and readers will be able to assume that year links are towards subject year articles. But even if they link to general years, that's not a problem. A motivation for clicking a year is to escape from a boring article and reading something unrelated while still staying within a particular historical period. If I get bored reading about the second world war, I may want to visit the 1943 wikilink to see what else, except war, was happening in that year. Delinking years denies me this pleasure and is pure evil. NerdyNSK (talk) 22:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Kumioko is right: "hidden" links are a waste, because readers will think they're the usual useless stand-alone year-link. You can always work the explicit group of words smoothly into one of the sentences: that way, readers are much more likely to follow the link. But just do it once, in a prominent place (usually the lead)—this can be the gateway through which readers access all of the sibling "year in X" articles, without the need to work every such link into their home sentences throughout the article. Smart linking, it's called. Tony (talk) 03:15, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps because, on occasion, it's evident from the context? But I'm not trying to defend any of the links in particular. Actually, I agree that many (but probably not all) are inappropriate and should go. However, my two points remain: first the bot doesn't have permission to do this, and second deciding which links should be removed is beyond the scope of what a bot can reasonably do without human assistance. — ras52 (talk) 17:25, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Nobody born in 613? There, fixed that for ya! — BRIAN0918 • 2008-09-19 20:16Z

The Initial link analysis by Tony: seems misdirected. It attempts to make the point that because some wikilinks do not provide a lot of useful information, then we should not wikilink. The purpose of Misplaced Pages is to provide information, and wikilinks do just that; they open the door to additional information ... if the reader chooses to use it by clicking on the link. To decide that some links are good while others are not is censorship, which Misplaced Pages is not. NerdyNSK has the right idea; linking dates can be useful, depends on the reader. And since our main goal is to provide information to our readers, why are we removing links? We should be adding them and letting our readers decide if they want to use them. A good argument could be made that every word in every article should be wikilinked, everything blue. Then, if the reader wants extra information on anything (a word he may not fully understand, the location of a referenced town, what else happened in the year the person was born, etc.), all that information is only a mouse click away. Truthanado (talk) 00:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

"every word in every article should be wikilinked, everything blue"—Ah, I didn't know you were one of the All-the-web crowd that wants every item to be bright blue, like this. There we are. Sorry, but that's not the way WP has evolved, thank god. And I keep saying that anyone is free to type any item into the search box, while having a reasonably smooth read of the text—that is, without more than a controlled amount of bright blue. Tony (talk) 02:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

...also that's been addressed more thoroughly at WP:Allwiki, fyi Brando130 (talk) 06:24, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Date link question

Hello again, I am still trying to make an edit that will remove date links from ] type dates. Have you been able to figure this out yet?--Kumioko (talk) 20:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

There ought to be a "delink ISO" option in the toolkit. Gimmetrow 03:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how this would be possible, how would the script know if ] is 1 February or 2 January? --Closedmouth (talk) 14:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Curious format

New one to me. Gimmetrow 03:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems that there is an infinite number of ways that autoformatting can be broken. Frankly, I am no longer surprised by broken autoformatting, although I am surprised that the pro-autoformatting crowd don't care enough about autoformatting to fix broken links so that it works. The linking to irrelevant page articles shows that some people do not link to add value or to autoformat, they are just acting like "Monkey see, monkey do". The script would normally delink the solitary months, but that feature is currently switched off. Lightmouse (talk) 15:23, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Date linking request (birth and death years)

I can understand that some people don't want articles to become a "sea of blue" by linking to all dates.

But can I make a request, that when birth and death dates are initially given after a person's name at the top of an article -- eg John of Trevisa (1342 - 1402), which your 'bot delinked this morning, that these do stay linked.

It is useful to have some link somewhere on the page that links into the hierarchy of date pages, so that people can click their way through to find out what was happening in particular centuries/decades/years that a subject lived; and of all the links on the page, the birth and death dates would seem especially appropriate for this end.

The John Trevisa article was hardly "overlinked" for dates: these were the only two dates linked in the whole piece.

So, can I make the request that: (i) the 'bot stops delinking birth years and death years after the subject's name. (ii) the 'bot is made to restore linking of birth years and death years that it has previously delinked.

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 06:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I support this request. (I expect that (ii) may not be possible, or at least may require more implementation effort than the author is able to devote to it. Nevertheless, I fully support (i).) — ras52 (talk) 08:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Support. Several editors have expressed this (or similar) comment, that it is useful to see what else was happening in a given year. There are those who say the reader can easily type the date in the search box, to which we must ask ourselves: shouldn't we make it easier for our readers to find information that they are interested in, not harder? Truthanado (talk) 13:42, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Who asked for some voting process? Please read my recent entry on this very page about the difficulty of finding year-pages that do satisfy the MoS requirement that they significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic at hand. I'm interested to know just how the pages on 1342 and 1402 are at all useful to the topic of Trevisa—perhaps you can convince me (I'm open). As for the orphan issue, I'm aftraid that the community has deprecated the linking of solitary years for a long time now. If such pages were in good shape generally, I'd be pleased to join a program to promote them on the project—Main page exposure, FA promotion, etc. But they're not in good shape at all—quite the opposite—and I see little evidence that they're improving. If you want my opinion, back past a certain time, year-pages should be conflated into cohesive, well-written decade pages, given the relative paucity of information on a world scale. Ragtag threadbare fragmented year-pages from the 14th century are a big question mark to a lot of people. Tony (talk) 15:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

To repeat what I've written above: I think it's valuable to have some links on the page to the date hierarchy, because those date pages act as gateways to further links - such as the decade pages, or the century pages; or (perhaps particularly valuable) the "state leaders in year X" pages -- all of which can be very useful, to let people link their way through, if they want to know about the political and historical background at a particular time.

Tony may not like the year pages, but nevertheless at least half a dozen do get featured from the front page every day in the "On this day..." feature; it's not as if they don't appear on that page. As for consensus, long standing consensus has been to be judicious in the choice of date links, and not to link everything (but not to link nothing, either). If this has changed, I'd like to know the well-attended RfC that changed it, because whenever I've looked in at Talk:MOSNUM, I've seen strong debate on the issue.

In WP we accept and welcome that different people have different interests, and like to use WP in different ways -- and we try to accommodate and make WP useful to them all. The issue isn't that some people don't find the year pages useful - after all, there's a huge amount on WP that most of us may never find personally useful. Rather, it's clear from all the discussions, we should recognise the many who do find links into the year-page hierarchy sometimes useful, and we should consider how to continue to preserve that usefulness to them.

Linking the year-of-birth and year-of-death dates seems to be a very good compromise between linking everything and linking nothing, and IMO a sensibly judged balance. Jheald (talk) 16:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Jheald. It's an excellent compromise. There seem to be enough editors commenting that some linking of dates is useful to justify keeping the links that are already there. To respond to Tony's question, several editors have already mentioned that it mighte be interesting to our readers to see what else was going on while John Trevisa was alive. Being able to easily link to his birth 1342 and death 1402 years help our readers do just that. As has been pointed out in several other discussions (the main justification to deprecate wikilinked dates), what's really important is what's right for our readers, and giving them the option of getting information they may be interested in is the right thing to do. Truthanado (talk) 00:24, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Just as presenting text without low-value links for diversionary browsing is important for our readers. You still haven't demonstrated by either of these articles provides information that will significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and why—if there does happen to be vaguely relevant factoid there—it wouldn't be better within the article. Tony (talk) 01:42, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that on this page that the users have to demonstrate that fact on this discussion.

I am concerned about what is an overarching guideline/policy-type question is being discussed and a resolution attempted tucked away as a discussion about what a bot is doing. A bot is a technical instrument that implements a procedural aspect, and that alone. A policy sits overarching and it cannot be demonstrated to me that there is clear agreement on an agreed guideline. While the guideline ] sits at the top of the system, that it too needs to be heeded. The discussion belongs somewhere open for the broader community where those from projects like Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Biography can have opportunity for input. --billinghurst (talk) 02:21, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I am concerned that when something becomes a Wiki-trend, it is suddenly enforced with a "Lightbot"--which ensures compliance with a "standard" that is little more than someone's opinion. The whole point of Misplaced Pages is to be able to link quickly to related material. If dates did not matter, they would not be given in an article. To deny wikilinks to dates is like denying a child knowledge of their parents.Ryoung122 08:51, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

• Hang on, Ryoung: the removal of date autoformatting and of the linking of date fragments is not "someone's opinion", but clearly in line with the deprecation of the first and the classification of low added-value chronological links as overlinking in WP's style guides. I'm surprised that you're not thanking Lightmouse for his efforts, which are sparing editors the manual labour of updating their articles to current guidelines as well as rendering the articles easier to read and maximising the utility of our high-value links. In fact, optimising this superb feature of wikis is uppermost in the motivation to apply the style guidelines. Tony (talk) 14:02, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot, stubs, and categories.

The bot is putting stubs below categories making the markup unnecessarily confusing because stub notices are rendered above the categories in articles. Please stop. -- Jeandré, 2008-09-20t10:40z

Last time I saw anything about this practice, it was recommended, since this allows the "real" user categories to be displayed before the more technical and less-valuable (for casual users, of course) stub categories. This is, personally, the way I and many others arrange categories and stub templates in articles. Beyond this, I really cannot understand what you mean by "rendered above the categories in articles". Categories aren't rendered in articles at all...they are just links provided at the bottom of article pages. Cats on top or stubs on top, doesn't affect how the article appears, unless a non-monobook skin displays in some bizarre fashion. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 11:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you are saying. I disagree that this is confusing, though, considering that categories are rendered in the same location on every single page. As well, considering categories are clearly identified as "

It's part of AWB's general fixes (not to mention the MOS), this is a very odd demand. --Closedmouth (talk) 14:00, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Re: release date

Thanks for the info. I've also just realized that date links are deprecated, which I support, but I still like to see dates formatted to my preferences. I'll put it back to your edit and I'll see what solution comes up.+mt 19:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, it will be interesting to see. Lightmouse (talk) 19:39, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

City of Chester (UK Parliament constituency)

Hey. Just noticed that all the years have been de-linked on the above article. Not sure if this is right given that the dates don't appear anywhere else on the page? If I've misunderstood the role of the Bot, sorry, but it seems like the links have been taken away for no reason. Cheers, doktorb _words 08:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, really useful. I guess what /should/ happen on articles like this, of course, is link to "United Kingdom General Election, 19XX" instead of just the "cold links" to years. As you say people can just type four figures into the search box if they want to find a year. Those links to UK elections can be something for me to do later, methinks...=) Cheers, doktorb _words 09:32, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is a live debate about this. Some issues are that people think links should be targetted. Some also think that links should be not be hidden behind a year link because they will be ignored just like a year link (a suggestion is to have at least one non-date word in the link). Lightmouse (talk) 10:07, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Second request: Please stop removing instances of {{Convert}}

Please stop removing instances of template {{convert}} dealing with ship speeds from infoboxes in ship articles as you did recently here. I have asked you previously to stop (here) but you have continued. Please stop using whatever assistive tools you are using to prevent your further removal of speed conversions unless and until they can be altered to avoid such removals in the future. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand. What is your objection? Lightmouse (talk) 15:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Changing date format in "A Moment Like This"

I just wanted to tell you to be careful changing the date format on articles from American to international. Although Leona Lewis did sing "A Moment Like This," it was first the coronation song for American Idol sung by Kelly Clarkson. Per WP:MOSDATE the article should have consistent dates across it, the article has strong national ties to use the American date format and the article started and evolved using the American date format. Therefore the article should just use the American date format. Aspects (talk) 13:44, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you that the article should be consistent. That was partly the motivation for the edit. The edit removed inconsistent linked dates and made them consistent. I saw that the inconsistency involved three mdy formats followed by four dmy formats. The 'Show changes' of the edit highlighted several UK elements in the article and so I plumped for dmy. I agree with you now that the mdy format is appropriate. Between us, our contributions have revealed and eliminated anomalies within the links. Thank you for helping. Lightmouse (talk) 15:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Strange behaviour for Calendar era

This edit only partially removes date linking, and does not deal with commas after the day-of-month in the so-called American format. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. The code for BC/AD dates is a bit more complicated than for non-BC/AD dates. I have updated the code and it should now avoid that type of date. Lightbot is not designed to fix errors with commas. The monobook script does do it but not for BC/AD dates. It seems that the more you look at dates, the more errors become apparent. Thanks again. Lightmouse (talk) 21:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the statement "Lightbot is not designed to fix errors with commas." A date such as ] ] is a valid date (although it would not be were it not for date autoformatting), and will be rendered in some correct format by the date autoformatting software. When Lightbot is done with it, it should be rendered as some correct format; that should be a design criteria for Lightbot.

(I use "correct" in the narrow sense of not having an obvious typographic error in the immediate vicinity of the date, and not in the larger context of whether the format is appropriate for the article.) --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:25, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Is there a suite of test cases, containing all the cases that Lightbot has ever had trouble with, that Lightbot is tested on every time any change is made? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:48, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey lightmouse, I think I fixed this problem. If you check my code I added a line that just looks for month and day to catch anything not covered in your code. I also added a line that converts the 1 January XXXX date format to January 1, XXXX. I only use it when I am editing american articles though, anything non US I block it out.--Kumioko (talk) 00:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Dates within image captions

This edit removed a year link for a full date within an image caption --JimWae (talk) 20:10, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

It should not have done that. I will investigate. Thanks for letting me know. Regards. Lightmouse (talk) 21:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Just did it again - to date at start of image caption http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=New_York_Tribune&curid=360819&diff=240113393&oldid=239854741 --JimWae (talk) 23:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot edit mangled Adlai E. Stevenson I

In at least one case, when there is a date followed by text followed by a year, Lightbot is deleting the entire prose between the years and making the date incorrect. See diff 240022391 for Adlai E. Stevenson, where Lightbot removed a half paragraph of text between one year and another one. I didn't put a stop on Lightbot's talk page because I couldn't find another example quickly — so, hopefully, this is rare. --Closeapple (talk) 22:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Bot error

Hi, Lightbot deleted a significant portion of the New Zealand Police article with this edit. I've undone the bot edit and manually delinked the dates. Looks like a one time issue with the 1-1-1 emergency number. XLerate (talk) 01:47, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Automated de-linking of years is often harmful to articles

I noted that Lightbot deleted the year links in Manayunk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Linking to years is as useful as any other link: some readers like to get perspective on what else was happening about the same time as an event. Yes, they can look the year up explicitly, but by that logic, there is no need for any links. There is currently disagreement about this point at MOSNUM. In the meantime, I fail to understand why you have undertaken to automate the removal of links that some editors believe are useful. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:29, 22 September 2008 (UTC)