User talk:Bobblewik/Archive/2006Jul

Regular expressions

Using your monobook tool has given me the desire to finally learn regular expressions. I had a class in college that covered them, but it didn't use a real syntax, it just sought to give an understanding of the concept. I used your code and a couple of internet tutorials as a basis and I'm reasonably comfortable with them now. I've started using AWB for my categorization project, and I've adapted some of your code as a basis for my AWB regular expressions. I wanted to say thanks; overall this has made me more productive and I've learned a lot.

I'm also starting to see what you're talking about with problems with the nbsp code. Something I've run into several times is a number followed by the word "in", which my regular expression interprets as a quantity of inches. I haven't quite decided how to deal with this yet, though I've considered limiting the number of inches to three digits. That way my expression will stop recognizing a year followed by the word "in." I'll still run into issues with task force numbers, though, which have been my biggest source of false positives so far. Very often a ship article will say something like "joined TF 92 in July." Maybe I'll ignore numbers preceded by "TF."

Anyway, again, thank you for your tool. It's very helpful on its own and it's encouraged me to do a lot of other stuff. TomTheHand 17:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am delighted to have been a catalyst for your further investigation. That is very pleasing to read.

Inches: false positives are a big problem with inches but you seem to have some good ideas. I also think that we could benefit from 'open code' i.e. we publish the regex in the MoS talk page and get others to criticise, copy, adapt it. What do you think? bobblewik 21:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a good idea. I'd like to refine my regexes for another couple of days, but I'd be happy to post mine. I'd like to post mine here first and get your input before posting them at the MoS. I'd feel more comfortable getting the opinion of someone more experienced before putting them up for general peer review. TomTheHand 18:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will be happy to advise you in any way I can. bobblewik 18:32, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you look here and tell me what you think? I decided to put together a page for my regexes so I can keep it updated as they evolve. TomTheHand 21:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Date formattings

Have a quick look at this. It needs more work, esp on the whitelists. Rich Farmbrough 18:09 26 June 2006 (GMT).

I think that is excellent. I agree that the whitelists need to be populated but the concept seems sound to me. bobblewik 21:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts to AWB

Is there an easy way to convert your units and dates scripts to work in AWB? —Centrx→talk • 22:26, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know that there are differences, but I don't know the details. Perhaps you could ask at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser. I would be very interested to see what they say. bobblewik 22:29, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Gregorian chant peer review

Thanks for your comments. I don't quite understand what the policy on linking dates. If you get a chance, could you please respond to my question at Wikipedia:Peer review/Gregorian chant/archive1? Thanks! Peirigill 22:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Monobook dates tab

Hi, just a line to say thanks for the feedback about the improvement of the Oldham Riots article. I noted your suggestion to use the monobook installation you recommended; I've copied the script into my monobook, but have seen no changes to my browser (no date tab or such). Just to clarify, where should I see the date button? I'm using popups in my User:Jhamez84/monobook.js, could this be interfering, or have I not copied the script correctly. Hope you can help, I'd be very grateful! Jhamez 84 23:27, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You will only see the 'dates' tab when you are actually editing a page. Go to the article, click on 'edit this page'. Then look at the row of tabs marked 'article', 'discussion', 'edit this page', 'history', 'move', 'watch' (or 'unwatch'). If it works, you will see two more tabs to the right marked 'dates' and 'units'.

Interference with the rest of your monobook is unlikely. You copied it correctly. You will not see it if you have not clear the cache. Did you clear it? bobblewik 10:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I restarted my computer and that seems to have solved the problem. Thanks very much for pointing out that such a tool exists! Great stuff! Thanks, Jhamez 84 11:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That does sound like a cache issue. Anyway, I am glad it works for you. Please try it on articles your watchlist, categories you watch and anywhere else you want. Regards. bobblewik 11:45, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

hPa

You may wish to be aware that your bot changed an hPa to hpa on Cyclone Steve. The other corrections were right though. regards Gazjo 04:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for detecting it, fixing it, and giving me the feedback. That bug must have been there for a long time. I have fixed it now. Thanks again. bobblewik 16:07,

30 June 2006 (UTC)

revised dates

Someone told me that the "links to solitary dates" could prevent the University of Louisville page from being a G.A., so why did you relink them? 65.138.71.87 16:39, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't. bobblewik 16:40, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Date linking conflict

Please keep the University of Louisville page out your current date linking edit war with User:Rebecca. This page is up for Good Article consideration and your nonsense could effect this pages approval. 65.142.158.113 18:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dates

Why are you removing all date links?Bridesmill 22:50, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to take me for a fool, Bobblewik. Every time you stop making these edits, you only start again after a couple of months, as if the people who disagree with them will have forgotten about it. Do you want me to throw this one upstairs to the arbitration committee? I'm sick and tired of having to do this dance with you every couple of months to get you to make edits you shouldn't be making in the first place, when there's plenty of other helpful things you could be doing. I've rollbacked the lot this time, but please let it be the last of them. Rebecca 02:34, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, please cease trying to involve newbies in your crusade. After the long discussion that was had on this issue, you should know better. Rebecca 02:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This also applies to telling newbies that they have to do something that policy very clearly does not state in order for their articles to become featured. Trying to force your opinion on people via the back door is not on, Bobblewik. Rebecca 04:43, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

Thank you for your constructive criticism of the FAC for Cryptography, which became a featured article today. I appreciate your effort and attention! Mango juice^talk 19:49, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Percentages in MOS

I have responded at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Proposal for section Percentages. —Centrx→talk • 23:51, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arichival of talk page

Yes, simply copy the code at the top of my page, making the necessary (and obvious) alterations. Sorry for the delay in replying. Incidentally your "E-mail this user" is not working at the moment. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 10:40 5 July 2006 (GMT).

Thanks! bobblewik 21:15, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mail to me works now, I think

Mail to me works now, I think. I don't check it often, perhaps once per day if that. If you don't get a reply within 48 hours, let me know here. bobblewik 20:36, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A Mind Forever Voyaging / The Plan

I disagree with your decapitalization of all cases of "Plan" in A Mind Forever Voyaging. I think it should be capitalized most of the time because it's an abbreviation of the name, and if I recall correctly, it was consistently called "the Plan" in the game. On the other hand, "the plan" could refer to just any plan, making it slightly more difficult to skim the text (since context needs to establish we're still talking about the Plan and not some other plan). - furrykef (Talk at me) 22:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is wrong to have a capital with a common noun. Capitals are reserved for proper nouns. I think we both agree on that.

We appear to disagree on which type of noun it is.

The use of the definite article 'the' rather than the indefinite article 'a' makes it specific which plan is being discussed. However, if you still think I am wrong, just add capitals in the way you think best. bobblewik 07:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thrasybulus

I've partially reverted your changes to this article. The two dates you delinked were the only two linked in the whole article--hardly overlinking--and each was linked for a good reason; 411 BC and 404 BC are probably the two most eventful years of the late 5th century, and a great number of the events relate to Thrasybulus's career. If you hadn't noticed, Quadell went through this article and delinked all the extraneous dates a while ago; I specifically relinked these two. If you still think they should be delinked, let me know and we can discuss it, but I think these fall squarely in the category of "useful links". --Robth^Talk 13:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't notice Quadells' edit. As you imply, 2 out of about 25 is a very small proportion. But that made them more noticeable. That is a good thing if they are useful. I do not think they are and they just look anomalous to me. However, I will leave your edit as is. Thanks for the feedback. bobblewik 15:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop

Your bot is indescriminately delinking dates at random. Some of which seem potentially useful in context. I don't think you've got it set up very well. Kevin_b_er 11:21, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you say which ones you think are useful? bobblewik 11:29, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked

You've been blocked for editing with what appears to be an unapproved bot. Seeing as you have been blocked for indiscriminately delinking articles before (the last block being a week long), I've blocked you for 1 month.

I would suggest that if you consider this an important issue, to do the edits by hand and provide an explanation on why a particular year should not be linked. If your removal of links is contested, don't just change them again, but engage in conversation with people to come to an agreement. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Possible unblock

I got a message from User:Rich Farmbrough asking me to reconsider your block. If you are willing to leave more descriptive edit summaries or talk page messages on your delinkings (with reasonings on why you removed a particular link) and throttle the number of such edits down to something below 6 in a minute, I'd be happy to unblock you immediately. Otherwise, I'll have to wait until Rich provides me with some info I asked him for. - Mgm|^(talk) 23:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will happily accept the speed limit of 6 per minute. Although for practical reasons, I would be much happier with the equivalent per hour limit.

I will be happy to use a different edit summary. Although I don't think it will make much difference. I have tried many different edit summaries and you may also want to look at User:Quadell's edit summaries. If you suggest an acceptable way of describing the improvement of an article by removal of excessive links to non-preference dates, I will try it.

I appreciate your willingness to discuss this. There are many editors that are interested in finding a way forward on this issue. bobblewik 07:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, afaik at WP:BOTS "bot speed" is defined as not waiting 30-60 seconds between consecutive edits: for "6 per minute" you need bot approval;

Bobblewik has been denied approval of a date delinking bot twice (that is at any speed), I would advise against superseding that community decision by the decision of a single admin;

What is perceived by many Wikipedians as Bobblewik's insensitivity to "context" of date links is the real issue I suppose.

Anyway, here I quote myself [1]:

"what I'm looking for is a commitment to undo the contentious edits as described above. I don't see that commitment. Sorry, I can't help you with your block under these circumstances (if that is what you'd like – I'm not even certain about that). On the contrary, I'd recommend to extend the block to indefinite, there is even no commitment to refrain from such contentious edits in the future, although you've got plenty of people that have explained to you exactly what is so contentious about them. --Francis Schonken 15:04, 21 May 2006 (UTC)"[reply]

What the majority of complainants say they want is an edit speed of less than 1 or 2 per minute (but rarely say which). I would suggest that past experience would show Bobblewik will be prepared to accept this - I will look at technical assistance if it's possible. I will also give some thought as to how I can help with what I see as the substantive problem, re-applying the process to articles (or ideally links) that have proven controversial in the past. With over 400,000 dubious date links, there are plenty more to chose from. Hope this helps. Rich Farmbrough 22:15 17 July 2006 (GMT).

Rich, please let everybody speak for him/herself. Your interpretation of what the "majority of complainants say" is not near to what I learnt from months of discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Several archives were filled with talks on which I was active too for a considerable amount of time. But all of that does not summarize to what you say. Similarly on the WP:BOTS-related talk pages.

And I resent your "400,000 dubious date links" while you write it down as if it were a statement of fact. It isn't. It's an opinion of some people. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no policy or guideline giving the tools with which you would be allowed to unlink 400,000 dates, no matter how "dubious" you appreciate them being linked. And if something is contentious, you don't make a (semi-)automatic process to proceed indiscriminately with an action that is perceived as contentious by many, and not covered by guidelines or policies (while the guideline *deliberately* expresses that Wikipedians have different views on this). The speed at which this is done is not the issue. The fact that the (semi-)automatic process, and in particular Bobblewik who operates it, don't capture differences in significance of date links according to context, is what this is about.

There is no commitment by Bobblewik to refrain from such contentious edits in the future, that settles it for the present block, as far as I'm concerned. --Francis Schonken 23:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From my experience, the vast majority, over 90 % of year links, are superfluous. Shall we say 360 000 +? I support unblocking Bobblewik, but I also think we need to properly revisit policy on this. --Guinnog 23:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bad edit creating an image redlink

Hi Bobblewik,

In Mark McNee, your edit created an image redlink.

Thanks for catching that and correcting it. That class of error is predictable, I am hoping to find a solution. bobblewik 18:00, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With regards to your block for date delinking, I think it'd be better if you just give up on date delinking, even if you think it's legitimate to delink dates. There's more to wikipedia than delinking dates. Andjam 09:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Although legitimate, it is not the most important thing. Regards bobblewik 18:00, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pointless fixes

Like [2] break images in articles for no good reason. Blindly using some tool or other to do such things without proper human oversigt (or lack of human oversigt if not using a tool) is careless. -Splash - tk 13:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for catching that and correcting it. That class of error is predictable, I am hoping to find a solution. bobblewik 14:06, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've run into similar issues using regexes in AWB; I haven't worked out a solution just yet other than paying more careful attention. It really increases the amount of manual labor involved and I'd love to get it worked out. The latest version of AWB has an option to not modify external or image links with regexes, but internal links still get changed, so I'm constantly having to remove my nbsp from links to Oerlikon 20 mm cannon. TomTheHand 14:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I also have increased my attention. I think it was User:Rich Farmbrough that suggested that a fix was possible. I imagine that the solution involves scanning a line for '.jpg', '.htm', '.svg' etc. and avoiding adjacent non-space characters. Similarly for the nbsp problem, it may be possible to avoid text within '[' and ']'. In both cases, I don't yet know how to implement the code efficiently. I could probably solve the specific nbsp instance you quote with some effort, but there are lots of instances in the class. bobblewik 14:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]