Misplaced Pages

Ref.Desk archives formatting trick

I noticed your comment to this edit.
You're right, those hiden items are needed for nice formatting. They force the right (main) part of the <table> to the appropriate width, so the left coloured part with 'Computing, Sciense, Mathematics...' headers gets the wdith consistent with other tables. Without those items the coloured stripe gets wider, and that looks a bit worse. (See the previous version and compare tables for 2009 and 2010.) This was most important when the table contained only one of two months, see here. --CiaPan (talk) 09:58, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Yup, got it. Nice trick. Thanks for all your work on that page. —Steve Summit (talk) 10:56, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

WT:RD summary

If you feel up to it, I'd be interested in a slightly more fine-grained assessment of the consensus in the Cuddlyable3 discussion (Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk#results). As written, I fear that your tally of votes is apt to convey to Cuddlyable3 the message that his conduct is perfectly acceptable — if that isn't your conclusion based on the reading of the discussion it would probably be helpful to expand your remarks slightly. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:21, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking about that, too (i.e., your fear), although I hesitated before trying to summarize the entire discussion given that I wasn't an unbiased participant. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:03, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

RefDesk archives need a new month

Please tell your bot to add pages for November 2010 links in WP:Reference_desk/Archives. --CiaPan (talk) 21:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Small issue with scsbot date headers

Apparently Scsbot gets confused with the dates when no one posts a new question for over a day. It's adding the two dates at once but in the wrong order as seen in this edit. It's easy to fix by hand and easier still to just ignore it but I though you should know.--RDBury (talk) 02:38, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

It's an issue I've known about but keep forgetting, and while minor, it'd be nice to fix. Thanks for the reminder. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:17, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I came by to report the same thing: . Glad to see you're aware of the issue. —Bkell (talk) 05:23, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Me too.. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:31, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

This glitch is finally fixed. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Scsbot

A discussion has just started at Misplaced Pages talk:New contributors' help page/questions that you may be interested in. Thanks! TNXMan 15:55, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Further to this - it looks as though archiving still isn't working on NCHPQ (catchy, no?); since you were so helpful with this before perhaps you'd be so kind as to take another look? There's discussion at Wikipedia_talk:New_contributors'_help_page/questions#Needs archiving. Many thanks and happy holidays. Gonzonoir (talk) 09:43, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

The Scsbot and its deletions

Cheers - I had actually put my own back by myself, but didn't fix other deletions that had happened. I noticed a few of my own (simply because they were mine) and one edit by someone else had also been deleted. I had suspected it was this bot that had done it. Anyway, thanks. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 03:42, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Scsbot adds a month when day doesn't exist

Scsbot created Misplaced Pages:Help desk/Archives/2011 January 29 with a wrong link to "Mar" at top of the page where the following month "Feb" should have been linked. Looking back at other Help desk archives, it appears a month is added whenever the corresponding day doesn't exist in the previous or next month. For example, Misplaced Pages:Help desk/Archives/2010 May 30 correctly links to "<< Apr | May | Jun >>", but Misplaced Pages:Help desk/Archives/2010 May 31 links to "<< May | May | Jul >>". PrimeHunter (talk) 22:11, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Archiving the Computing Reference Desk

Isn't it time to archive the Computing Reference Desk again? It's now over 170 kilobytes, over two and a half times the size when it was last archived. JIP | Talk 16:23, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. The archiving will catch up tonight. (There was a bug in the bot -- exposed, I guess, by a recent MediaWiki change -- which I've just fixed.) —Steve Summit (talk) 18:18, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Something weird with Scsbot

In this edit, it appears that Scsbot ate a random chunk out of the Humanities Desk when it added the date header. Any ideas what happened there? There's a short thread at Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk#Missing question that would appreciate any followup you can provide. Cheers! TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:02, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks -- I'm on it. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:11, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Renegade

In your edit summary you characterise me as:

• renegade n. 1.An outlaw or rebel.
  2.A disloyal person who betrays or deserts his cause, religion, political party, friend, etc.
  

In the absence of any explanation or apology, this will be seen as personal abuse. Please read both the statement at the top of my talk page and the Misplaced Pages policy WP:NPA. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 20:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

My dictionary includes the definition "a person who behaves in a rebelliously unconventional manner" which, for me, accurately characterizes your practice of moving talk page threads when replying. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:17, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Being an expert on English, one could say he's A Rebel with a Clause. :) ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 22:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Scsbot malfunction

Just a note that your bot deleted a bunch of threads (not old enough to be archived) at Misplaced Pages:New contributors' help page/questions and then replaced them with date headers (in the wrong order). I'm not sure what happened, but you may want to look into the bot's behavior. Deor (talk) 13:12, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Ugh. Thanks for catching that and fixing it up.

There's a recent failure mode which I haven't tracked down yet, but so far it hadn't resulted in damage like that. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:53, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

An idea occurred to me, but I know nothing about how bots (and Scsbot in particular) work. A number of editors, including me, have been having trouble lately with page loading on Misplaced Pages—pages, especially long ones like many discussion pages, will take forever to come up or will "hang" when only partially loaded. Could something like that be confusing Scsbot? Deor (talk) 22:13, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I think you're right; that's the failure I'm suspecting. I need to teach the bot to detect that it's happened. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:10, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Done, I think. (If the fetched page doesn't end with </html>, there's a problem.) —Steve Summit (talk) 03:05, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

It happened again, unfortunately: . Deor (talk) 14:33, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. Thanks for fixing it, again.

It may be that my "look for </html>" fix isn't adequate.

Or it may be that this particular failure resulted from my killing the bot last night (which I did) at just the wrong moment, when it seemed to be taking forever (which it was).

The good news is that I think the server problems may have been addressed, meaning that these problems will probably go away.

I wish there was a better way for the bot to detect that it had failed, rather than you (or me) having to double-check it all the time. I thought I'd invested it with more than adequate double and triple checks of its own, but somehow they haven't been sufficient in this case. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:31, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Math reference desk redux

A minor issue, but I'm still correcting dates in the math reference desk when it's slow. See this edit for example. I think the initial error is that it doesn't do an update if there are no updates on the previous day, so the date is incorrect when it comes time to do the next update.--RDBury (talk) 04:25, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

This error is finally fixed. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Help desk

I reverted the archiving of the help desk, as I was in the middle of responding to a post when it archived (and therefore also deleted that day's archive and undid its link at the August archive page). I thought the bot might need to be reset to understand that it's archiving of August 17 has been undone. I'd also like to request that it no longer archive at three days and then fill in the rest over 24 houra, but just do it once at the last possible moment. The timing is a bit short.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:06, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

The bot is specifically designed to figure out what needs doing, and to interact with parallel editing by humans, without needing "resetting". So it'll probably be okay, but thanks for your concern.

I'm not sure what you mean by "filling in the rest over 24 hours"; the intent is to archive one day's worth of content all at once.

Any changing of the archiving strategy would have to be discussed on the talk page. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Scsbot issue with date headers.

The bot just added headers for Oct 4 and Oct 3 to the Maths RD at the same time, in the same place in the wrong order. It seems not to have added the Oct 3 header before, possibly as there was nothing added Oct 2 so that date is empty. The correct thing to do though would have been to add it at or below the Oct 2 heading: if it mislikes having one heading below another it should have removed the Oct 2 heading. But it makes no sense to not add Oct 3 at the correct time only to add it later in totally the wrong place.--JohnBlackburne_deeds 01:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, the bot has a few lingering issues which I really should fix some day. Thanks for cleaning up after it. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:32, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Here's a strange instance of this Scsbot bug: . The bot added headings for October 10 and October 8, in the wrong order, skipping October 9, because it already had a heading? —Bkell (talk) 01:21, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

The bug is finally fixed. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Available for a new archiving task?

Hi there Ummit, I am a member of WP:WikiProject Articles for creation, and we've recently set up a help desk, which is modeled on the original help desk. Would you be interested in setting up Scsbot to archive and automatically add date header for us? For now (based on its activity so far), the archiving would be on the 6th day from the new date header; e.g. when you add a header for January 7, you archive January 1. Please let me know if you're willing to take this task and if I can assist you in any way. Cheers, CharlieEchoTango (contact) 11:36, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I can add AFCHD to the bot's repertoire, although there's a certain amount of other infrastructure that needs setting up, also. In particular, we'll need two templates, analogous to the reference desk's Template:RD Archive header and Template:RD Archive header monthly, and the help desk's Template:HD Archive header and Template:HD Archive header monthly. If you can construct those for AFDHC, I can set up a new bot instance, and we'll see what happens. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:04, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. I've set up {{AFCHD Archive header monthly}} and {{AFCHD Archive header}}, as well as Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/Archives. Is there anything else that needs setting up? Cheers, CharlieEchoTango (contact) 01:48, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I did a dry run on February 15th's questions, and it mostly worked. Couple little kinks, nothing major. Nice work on the templates. —Steve Summit (talk) 23:45, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! :-) CharlieEchoTango (contact) 23:53, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey! Thanks for noticing and deleting the mistaken Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Archives/AFDHD/2012 February 15 before I had a chance to even request it! —Steve Summit (talk) 00:47, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

No problem, I was stalking your bot's contributions and I figured it was a mistaken page. I notice your bot does not yet add the date header on the AFC help desk (has it been added to its task?), and archived the main help desk yesterday but somehow did not get around to archive our help desk. It's getting a bit long now, with 10 days on the page (one transcluded), so I was wondering. Let me know if there is anything else I can do. Cheers, CharlieEchoTango (contact) 02:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I guess you didn't keep stalking it the next day, otherwise you'd've noticed what User:Nolelover noticed, as discussed in the thread just below. But I think I've got that (mostly) fixed, and the bot's chewing away now... —Steve Summit (talk) 01:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I did notice it, but you corrected it real fast. :P Thanks for all the help. CharlieEchoTango (contact) 01:14, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Made my day...

Just want to thank you (if I can't blame you as his owner, maybe you can pass along my regards) for this. Absolutely restored my faith in Misplaced Pages. Gotta ask though, how did it happen? Nolelover 14:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

My friend, I am not only the owner of that bot, but its author as well, and I still have no idea how it happened! Glad you got some amusement value out of it -- I'm still in a bit of shock, myself! (All I can say is, thank heavens for that Wiki undo button!)

That line "--abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv--" looks like it might be a MIME multipart separator, and I think MIME multipart messages are used somewhere in the guts of HTML form submission. (I should know -- I wrote the code -- but it's been a while. :-) ) But how the separator managed to get reinvented as the entirety of the submitted page remains a mystery, as does the little matter of the fact that the bot is supposed to have two or three levels of double-checks, precisely to eliminate the possibility of any catastrophic, page-nuking mistaken edits like that... —Steve Summit (talk) 22:38, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, so you are the author...yes, my first thought was that this was so odd that it just had to have happened before...but then why wouldn't it have been caught in the multiple test runs and checks? Ahh well, no harm no foul. Here's to hoping s/he/it doesn't go off on a slightly higher-profile page. Cheers, (and seriously though, thanks for your work on the bot...one less thing for helpers to worry about) Nolelover 23:41, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

In case anyone's wondering, it turned out that (a) part of the edit script got mildly confused, and inadvertently blanked its working copy of the page; and (b) when the submission script tried to submit empty content, somehow the page ended up containing the MIME separator, instead. (I suspect this has to do with the delicate definition of the trailing newline in a MIME multipart section, which becomes especially significant on empty parts.) The mild confusion in (a) really shouldn't have been so catastrophic (so I've got to further understand that, and make it more robust), and I'd like to better understand (b), too, but in the meantime, I've at least fixed the mild confusion, and added Yet Another double-check so that the master edit script won't ever try to submit blank pages. (In other words, I've basically added an vandalism detection to my own bot!) —Steve Summit (talk) 01:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Not going to pretend I understand any of the above (I don't), but I just wanted to say a big thank you for helping us with the archiving despite the technical difficulties. Hey, and now you have a self-aware bot! :-) CharlieEchoTango (contact) 01:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Same as Charlie...I sorta got your first comment in this section (most pressing question was why the separator left out four letters), but the second flew by me. Just to make sure though, the bot will always archive and transclude in the same edit, so all we have to do is remove the transclusion? Nolelover 02:24, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the idea is to keep a transclusion of the most recent archive on the help desk. Normally we wouldn't have to remove the transclusion because it would be replaced the next day with the newer one, and so on. This time around the bot archived a whole lot of days, so it left more than one transclusion, which is why I removed the extra ones. CharlieEchoTango (contact) 02:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, makes sense. Thansk, that's good to know. Nolelover 02:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

By default, the bot keeps 3-4 days in their entirety, and 3 an additional days transcluded. That's tunable, and some of the other pages it archives have different combinations. What would you guys prefer? —Steve Summit (talk) 04:21, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for the explanation, I wasn't aware the default left three transclusions, I was looking at WP:HD where there is only one. If it's not too much trouble, I think 5+1 would be a good combination for us, much like the 3+1 used on WP:HD, but with two extra days. Otherwise the 3+3 default works fine too, just a bit less ideal if something is archived/transcluded before being answered. Best, CharlieEchoTango (contact) 04:38, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we could go with a bit more time...I've already seen a couple of places where new users have gone 3-4 days between replies. IMO, the less transcluded days we have (where newbies are just gonna get confused...why is my question here, but when I edit this I'm on a different page?) the better. Nolelover 21:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I've set it for 5+1. That meant it didn't have anything to do tonight, but in a day or two it should settle down to steady state. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:40, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Date headers again

Just a heads-up that your bot has failed to add date headers to the reference desks the past two days. Deor (talk) 11:41, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Something went wrong on computing desk

The bot removed July 30th but never archived it. It did create the talk page redirect and added July 30 to the index . Looking at the bots history, every other archive seems to have gone fine. I reverted the removal although perhaps it would have been better to manually archive July 30th as I'm not sure how the bot will handle the existing talk page and index for July 30. I was wondering if one of the links got added to the spam blacklist stopping it from saving but had no problems saving July 30 on the sandbox myself just now. Nil Einne (talk) 06:22, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I now see an error message in the logs, which I overlooked when reviewing them after last night's run. I'll take care of it.

(And don't worry, it's easy enough to take care of the talk page and index on a rearchival.) —Steve Summit (talk) 10:36, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

wrong section order again

User:Scsbot has just added missing headers for two days to WP:RD/MATH in this edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?diff=prev&oldid=511011720
However, it did it slightly wrong, putting the fourth and fifth of September headers after the existing Sep 6. Additionally it didn't notice that "missing header for a day" is NOT equivalent to "header for a missing day", and the "September 5" header landed far below the Sept 5 threads.
The section ordering has already been corrected. Regards, CiaPan (talk) 05:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

PS. Should I rather put the above message at the bot's talk page...? CiaPan (talk)

Ugh. This is disappointing. Last night was the first run of the new version in which I finally fixed the long-standing bug that would have caused it to insert September 4 and September 5 in the wrong order. The fix worked, in that it did get them in the right order, but you're right, it put September 5 in the wrong place, and it shouldn't really have inserted September 4 at all.

I think I understand the remaining bug and how to fix it; I'll work on it some more tonight. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Leaving me a message here is fine.

Remaining bug(s) fixed, I think. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:26, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Notice of Dispute resolution discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute in which you may have been involved. Content disputes can hold up article development, therefore we request your participation in the discussion to help find a resolution. The thread is "Talk:India".The discussion is about the topic Template:Largest cities of India. Thank you! Your feedback would be highly valued there. Mrt3366 14:50, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Your comments added a new aspect to the discussion that — although present in the back of my mind — wasn't in that page before. I implore you to comment on this page. Since it's also going to be important. You're not the first guy to see the issue clearly. An editor informed me, “FAs have for a long time been plagued by ownership issues and some weird desire to allow their primary contributors to veto edits of which they disapprove”. If guys like you who see the issue clearly, don't stand up, then this will never change. Mrt3366 15:52, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I won't be able to do too much. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:41, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Straw poll notice

There is a straw-poll in a discussion where you were involved. Mrt3366 14:40, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

DRN Closure notice

Three of the main parties in this dispute, Fowler&Fowler, AVC, and Mrt3366, the filing editor, have expressed a desire to close the DRN. Any thoughts? It looks like the filing editor has gone ahead to create an RfC on the issue. The discussion is currently spread between three locations (Talk:India, the DRN case, and the RfC page), which is a practice that is not encouraged.
— User:So God created Manchester

I thought you should know this. Mrt3366 07:16, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Yup. I've now commented at the RFC. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:06, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

The sad part is, I tried to explain to him personally but all this to absolutely no avail. He thinks my approach was "sanctimonious affirmations of good intentions". Wow...Hahahahaha!! And I am the one "who is having a hard time growing up"! Mrt3366 07:21, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Bot inactive?

Scsbot seems to have stopped after its October 8 run. I cannot tell why, but its services were appreciated and are deeply missed at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk (and probably elsewhere too). Could you please give it a little nudge and get it operational again? Thanks in advace, Huon (talk) 12:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes. See this thread. Something changed on the Mediawiki side, and I haven't yet fully determined whether/how much I need to fix the bot, or if I can just wait for bug 40789 to be fixed. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the explanation. I'll spread the word. I assume it's best to just archive manually until the Mediawiki bug gets fixed. Huon (talk) 20:30, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

If your page isn't completely overflowing, you might want to wait a day or two before manually archiving, since doing so is such a nuisance.

If the MediaWiki situation hasn't resolved in a day or two, I'll spend some more time looking into whether or not I can reasonably adapt the bot. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I replied to the question you posted at User talk:PleaseStand#bug 40789? there. PleaseStand (talk) 17:51, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I've dropped a note on bugzilla in my official capacity asking for backporting. Hope that helps :). Ironholds (talk) 03:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello. You have a new message at User talk:PleaseStand#bug 40789?'s talk page.

Help desk archiving

The bot is correctly adding date headers to various noticeboards, but is not doing any archiving. Is this deliberate? -- John of Reading (talk) 06:49, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this note. I still don't know what's going on. You're right, the bot's ability to add date headers has come back -- but it's still failing at the actual archiving. (Which makes no sense, because what's causing the bot to fail is an initial login problem which isn't directly related either to adding dates or doing archiving.) —Steve Summit (talk) 03:10, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I have been manually doing Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk I thought maybe I was archiving before the bot, so it never did more that add the date. Since I now see this post, I will continue. I have seen several posts from bot owners about tool-server log in problems. You may want to poke around. --  :- ) Don 23:17, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk

Thanks for returning and saving me from the tedium. When I was manually archiving, I added the date link to the section header. Works well. Possible to implement with out big hassle? -- :- ) Don 18:19, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the manual archiving. If you can show me an example of the link you're talking about, I can see about automating it. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:41, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Just compare Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/Archives/September 2012#September 1 to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/Archives/October 2012#October 1. I made the first line under the date a link for the Section Title. -- :- ) Don 06:53, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Archiving math reference desk way too soon

The math reference desk for 28 November was archived on 01:16, 2 December 2012 while discussions of 28 November threads were still going on. That caused the most recent edits to not show up in the reference desk's history. This was way too soon to be archiving. Please reset the bot for a lag of at least a week. Thanks. Duoduoduo (talk) 13:04, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry you felt it was too soon, but that's the normal archiving interval, agreed on by consensus.

If you would like to discuss a change, please bring it up on the Reference Desk talk page. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:38, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay. Could you give me a link to the discussion that led to the consensus, so maybe I'll be convinced without even bringing it up again there? Thanks. Duoduoduo (talk) 14:53, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

It was a long, long time ago; I don't remember exactly when.

Feel free to ask again.

The main driving factor is still page size and load time, for the benefit of editors (there are evidently still plenty) who are viewing and/or editing the desks using less than high-bandwidth links. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:29, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

What I don't understand is why the things that have been archived remain on the unarchived page for a few more days. (I don't know anything about computer site management, so I apologize if I'm asking about something that should be obvious to me.) But it seems to me that load time of the refdesk page is not going to be held down by archiving something while leaving it on the refdesk page. For example, right now the November archives for the math desk go through Nov. 29, yet November 27, 28, and 29 are still on the math refdesk. And when somebody posts something on a Nov. 28 thread, the post shows up on both the Nov. 28 section of the refdesk and the Nov. 28 section of the archives, but does not show up in the "history" section of changes to the refdesk. So someone like me who checks the history section for recent changes is misled into thinking that no recent changes have been made to a Nov. 28 thread of interest. Duoduoduo (talk) 13:43, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The technique you're talking about is called "transclusion", and you're right: the (typically three) most-recently archived day's worth of content for each reference desk are included on the page as shown. And somewhat magically, if you try to edit one of these transcluded sections, you end up editing the archive page instead.

You're also right in that the fully-rendered composite page (including all transclusions) must still be transmitted to a user's browser, meaning that load time is not decreased by the archival of a day's worth of content that is then transcluded. I don't honestly remember what the additional tradeoffs might have been that prompted us to do this sort of delayed half-archiving.

Coincidentally, someone else has asked about the archiving interval at Misplaced Pages talk:Reference desk#six days only?, so feel free to join in that discussion. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:16, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Help Desk date header missing

I'll fix it myself.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:56, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Also did it on the New contributors' help page.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:01, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Also a problem today.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:40, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

On both pages.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:32, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

skype number on date in article???

Was wondering what a skype number was doing on the Fiji Misplaced Pages article I changed it back to the date as was appropriate but it was changed back by the User:Ummit, not sure the purpose or appropriate placing of the skype number would someone enlighten as to why a skype number was placed on this article??

User:Maikeli

The formatting in question is a simple non-breaking space,  .

I'm not sure what makes this look like a "Skype phone number" to you.

It looks like an ordinary space to me. —Steve Summit (talk) 05:13, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Maybe there's something wrong with my pc got renew my anti virus, it shows up as a skype number to call in NZ (call 3500 1000 in New Zealand)??? go figure, sorry about that gotta chk my PC cheers for the explanation User:Maikeli

Okay, good luck with that! —Steve Summit (talk) 20:33, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Help Desk archiving problem

I have had difficulty with Internet access for the past month and chose only high-priority sites. I just noticed that several January archive pages had a link to the March archives when they should actually link to February, and I fixed this.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:07, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

This is the problem I reported at #Scsbot adds a month when day doesn't exist. Assuming the bot substitutes {{HD Archive header}}, and {{RD Archive header}} for the refdesk, I think I have fixed it for the future with and . Wrong links in old archives are not fixed by this. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:52, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Muscovy duck

Hi Ummit. I see that in 2007 you moved Muscovy Duck to Muscovy duck. Yet, it is back at Muscovy Duck. Any idea why? Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 22:43, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in User:Rui Gabriel Correia, Jimfbleak moved the page back again to Muscovy Duck the next day. See & --Ushau97 (talk) 08:01, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

It's a long-standing convention that bird species are fully capitalised Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:20, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Scsbot at WP:NHD

Hi. Consensus have been established that WP:NHD should be merged with WP:THQ. So can you remove Scsbot's adding date header function at WP:NHD. Discussion for merge at WT:TH#Merging with Misplaced Pages:New contributors' help page/questions - revisited. I am leaving this message here because Scsbot's talk page says that it will stop the bot. --Ushau97 (talk) 17:19, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

All set. (And thanks for leaving the message here, not there.) —Steve Summit (talk) 18:48, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Wrong month links descriptions in Ref Desk Archives

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(slightly reordered for better readability). Note the visible contents does not correspond to actual links destinations.

Same error on May, 31 on Maths and Computing, did not check other desks.--CiaPan (talk) 05:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh, dear. I see what you mean.

Now I don't remember whether that text is generated explicitly by the bot, or implicitly by one of several archive header templates. I'll look into it. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Last year Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 May 31 had the links:

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I guess it was my template edits mentioned above in #Help Desk archiving problem which caused the links to go to the intended months April, May, June this year in Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 May 31, but the displayed month after the pipe remained wrong. I don't know where it comes from. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting

You are invited to the 2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting, on 20 July 2013 in Boston! We will be talking about the future of the chapter, including GLAM, Wiki Loves Monuments, and where we want to take our chapter in the future! EdwardsBot (talk) 10:09, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Your comments on the move preparation page

Hi Steve, thanks for your sincere comments here, which I very much agree with. I'd appreciate it if you could copy edit it a little to see if you can take some of what comes across as some irritation to me. I can read and appreciate that you have tried to keep it very non-confrontational already, but I think it could be even better in that regard. If not, thanks for at least considering it (and writing it in the first place). Cheers, Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:00, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Martijn. Explained and revised. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:38, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Appreciated! Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:50, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Bradley Manning/October 2013 move request

Greetings. Because you participated in the August 2013 move request regarding this subject, you may be interested in participating in the current discussion. This notice is provided pursuant to Misplaced Pages:Canvassing#Appropriate notification. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:40, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, yes. Thanks for the reminder -- I had meant to weigh in on that when the time came. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:22, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Requesting your opinion

Hi. Can you offer your opinion in this consensus discussion? It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 18:08, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid that at some point in your soliciting of those 49 opinions you may have made a mistake, because I haven't been participating in that discussion and I don't know anything about it. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:38, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Help desk archiving

Are you aware that Scsbot hasn't archived the Misplaced Pages:Help desk since 30 November? -- John of Reading (talk) 08:54, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and it hasn't been archiving the reference desks, either.

I've been (a) traveling, (b) scandalously busy, and (c) without my normal computer, but I've finally patched together enough of my environment to get some piecemeal archiving done tonight. Full, normal archiving will resume on Sunday. "We apologise for the inconvenience." —Steve Summit (talk) 19:34, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and thanks for the manual archiving you've been doing in the meantime -- you can relax now. 19:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

I see you've got the bot account working again - thank you! -- John of Reading (talk) 08:17, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Science desk archiving

The bot seems to have got a bit out of control and archived two days at the same time on Science Refdesk. I'm pretty sure we want more than 3 days to answer questions. (Note the Refdesks have a weird system where messages are archived and remain available - it's possible the bot did the one but failed to do the other. I reverted the second archiving for the moment until something is sorted out. Wnt (talk) 03:11, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm on vacation and didn't run the bot last night, therefore it had two days to do tonight, to catch up.

(This sort of thing happens with some regularity.) —Steve Summit (talk) 04:51, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

(Oh, and, thanks, but yes, I'm well familiar with that "weird system"! :-) —Steve Summit (talk) 18:21, 29 December 2013 (UTC))

Encoding hyperlinks to section titles containing LaTeX

Hi, Steve, here is another feature I noticed in archives. Some people, esp. on Maths RD, use maths notation with <math>...</math> in their sections' titles, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?diff=prev&oldid=586828254. These titles get spoiled in monthly TOC pages (see RD arch Math Dec 2013#11 or Dec 2013#19). This seems to be a result of removing all instances of a backslash, which is a controlling character for LaTeX typesetting.

Additionally the hyperlink generated in the monthly TOC doesn't meet the section's anchor in a daily archive page.
This is a link in Dec 2013#19:

https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Mathematics/2013_December_19#Let_mathcal.7BN.7D_be_Baire_space._How_to_prove_that_mathcal.7BN.7D.5Eomega_is_homeomorphic_to_mathcal.7BN.7D.3F

(it keeps all the contents except 'math' tags and LaTeX controls)
and this is its actual target:

https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Mathematics/2013_December_19#Let_be_Baire_space._How_to_prove_that_is_homeomorphic_to_.3F

(with 'math' tags and all their contents dropped). --CiaPan (talk) 06:36, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

PS.
Don't rush, that's not a big deal, just a note. --CiaPan (talk) 06:38, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

The short answer is that the bot's handling of markup in titles has always been simpleminded, has never been intended to be 100% correct or complete.

The longer answer will probably have to (sorry!) wait 'til I get back from vacation. :-) —Steve Summit (talk) 03:58, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

"start improving the encyclopaedia"

Um, I think I do that every single day. And have done for eight-and-a-half years. With dozens of featured lists and articles, ITN appearances, DYKs, good article reviews, FL reviews, FA reviews, administration, 'cratship, FL directorship, advocacy of ACCESS, MOS enlightenment, 105,000+ edits etc. The fact that you wish to characterise my entire contribution history as simply the spat with the way Bugs and his cohorts treat the reference desk as a chat forum is a real shame. I have no idea who you are or what you do around here, but I would not jump to such extreme conclusions on my very first communication with you. I see you spend a lot of time around talk pages, Misplaced Pages pages etc. Perhaps it's time you started to "improve" the encyclopaedia? Happy new year. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:54, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Purge page caches on MediaWiki

Steve, in response to your comment on the reference desk talk-page: you can append ?action=purge to the end of the URL to force a page cache refresh. More details are on the MediaWiki manual-page: Manual:Purge. Thanks for your vigilant management of the archive-bot and your continued contribution to the reference desk! Nimur (talk) 22:37, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Note

You might want to keep your eye on that one user, as he's showing signs of coming unhinged. Happy new year. :) ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 23:32, 31 December 2013 (UTC)