Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 18:31, 25 August 2008

Welcome!

Hello, Ajh1492, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! --Darwinek (talk) 11:14, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Podlaskie

Hi. You may be right about renaming Podlachian to Podlaskie. But these names were agreed long ago on WP, so better to wait for approval from the community first (see Portal talk:Poland/Poland-related Misplaced Pages notice board where I've started a discussion). Also you aren't allowed simply to replace a page's content with a redirect - for licensing (GFDL) reasons among others - you have to use the "move" button. If it turns out that the move is impossible without administrator assistance, you have to propose it at WP:Requested moves, following the procedure described there.--Kotniski (talk) 11:19, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

It's a massive update to the page - adding significant content and references. Ajh1492 (talk) 19:08, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

OK but still, you didn't follow the right procedure. Not that I'm an unthinking enforcer of rules, quite the reverse, but this one is quite important for copyright reasons (the edit history of an article has to be preserved, and this can only happen if you do a move in the standard way), and you need to be aware that doing this sort of thing can make people angry. However, no harm seems to have been done on this occasion. Wishing you continued successful editing! Kotniski (talk) 10:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

...and the Misplaced Pages entry for merging and moving pages says.

Merging is a normal editing action, something any editor can do, and as such does not need to be proposed and processed. If you think merging something improves the encyclopedia, you can be bold and perform the merge, as described below. Because of this, it makes little sense to object to a merge purely on procedural grounds, e.g. "you cannot do that without discussion" is not a good argument.

Just following the written process.

Ajh1492 (talk) 11:44, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

What you did was not a merge, however, it was a move. Rather than bringing two articles both with content into one, you over-wrote the redirect at one with the content at the other, then created a redirect at the first - this is known as a cut-and-paste move. This causes problems with copyright and attribution of edits - as far as the history of Podlaskie Voivodeship is concerned, it looks like you created all the material originally in this edit , and there's no clue as to the true origins and development of the article; an external observer would not know to look at the history of what is now a redirect at Podlachian Voivodeship to see who is responsible for each edit. That was why the "move" button was developed and added, because it merges and moves the history in the correct fashion so that you can check it later.

It's an easy mistake to make as a new user - I've put tags on that article and the one at North European Plain, which you moved in the same way, so that an admin will repair the histories (you need admin tools to do merge page histories). In future if you want to move a page, just click the move button and enter the new name there and the software will do the rest. However, always check the talk page first: if it's a page move that has been discussed previously but not happened for some reason (like at Podlachian Voivodeship), I'd strongly recommend using the process at WP:RM so that more people are aware and can discuss the merits of the move - there's no rush to move a page that's been sat at a title like that for a while, and the more eyes on it the better. In the case of North European Plain a bold move (using the move button!) would have been fair enough as it hadn't been previously discussed, although again a WP:RM discussion wouldn't have harmed. Knepflerle (talk) 12:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

About the file you asked for: I have text files with lists of gminas, powiats (counties), and towns (cities) in Podlaskie - I could send you them if you want. But you can get the same information by just browsing Category:Podlaskie Voivodeship and its subcategories. The bot hasn't started creating articles on the villages in that voivodeship yet.--Kotniski (talk) 09:56, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Poland geography bot

I think the bot (User:Kotbot) is working more or less in the way you suggest, except that it is creating articles on all the villages as it goes, which is quite a slow process, particularly since quite a lot of manual intervention is required. If you wanted to help speed up the process, and if you have a fixed fast Internet connection (which I don't always have), then I could send you the files and you could run the bot on your computer. (You wouldn't necessarily have to do any of the manual work; the bot runs on its own, but generates a log file of problems which - if you don't have time to tackle them yourself - you could just send back to me.) If you think you can help in this way then please contact me via "E-mail this user".--Kotniski (talk) 08:07, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Template vandalism

I already replied here. Hut 8.5 16:54, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll try, though it's going to take a while (there's a lot of them). It might be better to ask at WP:AN (then you get more than one administrator to see your request). Hut 8.5 10:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Protected everything with 50 or more uses. This vandal could have caused a lot more damage that he did - he hit a template with 58 uses when he could have hit one with 2500. Hut 8.5 12:23, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

We do already have a guideline (WP:HRT) which says that high risk templates should be protected - it's just that the number of templates with enough uses to make a tempting target is huge, mass protecting templates is extremely dull work, most people don't know about the scale of the problem, and there are some users who have an issue with mass protecting pages. If you go to Special:MostLinkedTemplates you will see that the really high risk templates with tens of thousands of uses have already been protected, so we are getting somewhere. If you want to raise awareness the best place to ask is WP:AN since most active admins read that page. Hut 8.5 10:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Templates

Thanks. :) It is a standard format for navboxes. - Darwinek (talk) 08:56, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Files

Just to let you know - I'm about to send you the bot files by e-mail, together with instructions on how to set it up. --Kotniski (talk) 16:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I will keep my eye out for the e-mail. Ajh1492 (talk) 19:16, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Mass moves

Try to inform the Polish noticeboard. You may also try to issue WP:RM for affected articles. - Darwinek (talk) 09:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Additional Mass Moves

I also find it interesting that once my move request was made

• 13:25, 25 July 2008 (hist) (diff) Misplaced Pages:Requested moves‎ (→25 July 2008)

a number of other articles Grodno Governorate, Grodno Voblast and Belostok Oblast were edited to remove most, if not all Polish/Lithuanian traces, and Russified.

• 15:20, 25 July 2008 (hist) (diff) m Grodno Governorate‎
• 15:20, 25 July 2008 (hist) (diff) Grodno Governorate‎
• 15:12, 25 July 2008 (hist) (diff) m Belastok Voblast‎ (What does Polish have to do here?)
• 15:10, 25 July 2008 (hist) (diff) m Belostok Oblast‎
• 15:09, 25 July 2008 (hist) (diff) m Belostok Oblast‎
• 15:08, 25 July 2008 (hist) (diff) Belostok Oblast

These articles had been sitting for a number of months without significant revision prior to my effort to contribute with adding relevant facts, improving formating (infoboxes, etc.) and related article linkage - no commentary. Strange that it was just the articles I edited, not the Vilna Governorate, Kiev Voivodeship and other articles from the Western Krai - those still have references in Polish and Lithuanian.

What did I do? I replaced the Polish & Lithuanian items that had been removed while keeping the Russian references (probably should have been Belorussian references) that were in keeping with what Knepflerle said: ones from English-language texts should be found and used. Then I kept on upgrading the entries by adding relevant non-POV material, like the WP guidelines say . . .

Ajh1492 (talk) 21:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Unreferenced, bot created stub articles

Hi. The user page of Kotniski says you are minding Kotbot while he is away for 10 days, so I bring my concern to you. I see that Kotbot is creating a great many pages about towns, villages, or hamlets in Poland, apparently sourced only to the corresponding Polish encyclopedia article. In the English Misplaced Pages a bot some time ago created articles about cities and hamlets based on a U.S. government census database. We know these places exist, because the government did a census of the people who lived there. We have deleted many articles about claimed geographic places or villages because sometimes it is just a street where a developer built a housing development, and is really part of a larger city. In other cases, we have deleted articles about claimed places because they were total hoaxes. The way to prevent this is by complying with the verifiability requirement by citing one or more reliable sources to show there is such a village or town at the claimed place with the claimed name. The US stubs also included population information. The articles Kotbot is creating generall have no reliable source. No Misplaced Pages is a reliable source, because each contains some hoax articles or articles making unverifiable claims. I see no mechanism to go back and delete these bot-created articles if the corresponding article is later deleted from the non-English Misplaced Pages. "Trust me" is not a substitute for WP:RS and WP:V.. Please only create articles having population information and at least one reliable source. It need not be online or in English. I have created a discussion about this at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#Bot creating unreferenced articles about geographic places. Please turn off the bot until consensus is reached there on whether creation of stub articles lacking reliable sources should be allowed. Thanks. Edison (talk) 17:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

The population data is based off the Central Statistical Office (GUS) Population: Size and Structure by Administrative Division (in Polish) dated 2007-12-31. GUS is partially equivalent to the US Department of Commerce. The villages are also only the Sołectwo, so there is a basis for creation. As the KotBot page says, it only creates the pages that it has been instructed to create - it's not a free-range bot :). Kotinski and myself, as native English speakers who understand Polish fluently, are verifying the pages as they are created. We will be increasing content, over time, as additional passes are made through the articles, so by no means are the articles completed.

KotBot is an approved 'Bot doing the task it was designed to perform.

Ajh1492 (talk) 18:16, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Please respond at the Village pump, so as to avoid having mini-discussions scattered at various places. The Bot approval discussion did not address policies WP:V and WP:RS. The articles for villages rarely include population, which if unknown, makes the village look non-notable. Thanks. Edison (talk) 18:18, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I find it rather rude that a discussion about any concerns could not have been discussed here first. I could have stated what KotBot is trying to do. Instead the decision was made to air the complaint in front of the entire community. Ajh1492 (talk) 18:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry if you find it "rude" but I consider it a crisis when I look at "new articles" and most of them are created by this bot which makes every dot on a map into an unreferenced and uninformative stub article which doesn't even say what the population of the place is. Please address your concerns at Village Pump as to the policy issues. ThanksEdison (talk) 01:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

A Crisis? You really need to step away from the computer, dude. Ajh1492 (talk) 13:37, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

As I said, it seemed a crisis because most of the new articles were unreferenced stubs created by this bot, at a rate of 5 or so a minute , when it was approved for 2 per minute. A day's work at AFD is about 120 articles, so this bot was creating as many stubs in a few minutes as a full day of AFD is typically required to remove, unless they were in a group nomination, which I do not like. The aythorization also said it should add population and area, which it has not done for the villages, only for the gmina. The concern about unreferenced and unverified articles was previously brought to the talk page of the bot creator, where he dismissed them. The next step is to bring it to the attention of the community, which I did. I checked in the public library and could not find information there about a sample of these villages. The smallest towns in Poland which apear in the multivolume "Columbia Gazetteer of the World" appear to have several thousand. Is there really no information anywhere on the population of these villages? I added a couple of references to Morag, population 14500, but it had a pretty good article from the first edit. Is there really no source for these smaller villages other than the population and area of their gmina? Then how about limiting the coverage to a listing of the village sin the gmina article initially. Then if anyone found any references for a village, it could be made into its own article. Gmina Tuszyn indicates the rural villages of that gmina number 22 and have a total of 4512 inhabitants for an average population of 205. has a total population of 3098 in 28 villages, for an average of 110. This is like having an article for every city block in a city, or every square mile of rural land, which seems overkill. Edison (talk) 19:12, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Database question

Which file in lists the sołectwo? Thank you. --NE2 05:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

• Gazetteer of 44.600 official settlement names from the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Warsaw, Poland - data presented is from GUS.
• National Official Register of Territorial Division of the Country - TERYT register contains systems of:

   ** identifiers and names of units of administrative division,
   ** identifiers and names of localities,
   ** statistical regions and census enumeration areas,
   ** identification of addresses of streets, real estates, buildings and dwellings. 

• GUS Regional Databank

Ajh1492 (talk) 01:31, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Kotbot

Per this AN/I thread please don't run the bot while the village pump discussion is ongoing. BJ 09:02, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

GEOBOT

Hi do you know any editors who would be willing to run the GEOBOT that was approved?. It might not be a bad idea if a few editors with a knowledge of computer programming and bots who could be running it, after all we have a project set up to run it and it seems unfair for us to expect to depend on Mr. Fritz to run it alone. Do you have a knowledge of bots and how we would go about running it for other countries besides Poland? Ideally I had wanted to draw up a detailed world list of settlements with global coordinates in a table as was originally proposed. The Bald One 19:23, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I am a programmer by profession and I have a rather good knowledge of how WP bots operate. I would be willing to run the Bot after Poland is finished. And I do have a higher-speed dedicated internet connection. Ajh1492 (talk) 00:43, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

GG

Feel free to drop me a line on Gadu-Gadu one of those days! :) My contact info is on my userpage.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)