User talk:Bgwhite/Archive 50

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Another edit

Hi. This edit doesn't seem to do anything noticeable to the article. Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 07:54, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I draw your attention to the rules of use (again) - "Do not make controversial edits with it. Seek consensus for changes that could be controversial at the appropriate venue" Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 07:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Get lost. Don't write here anymore. I don't want to see or hear of your bullying. Go pick on somebody else. Read the edit summary for a change. Fram understood with what I am doing. Yet another example of do as I say and not as I do. Bgwhite (talk) 07:59, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
You're now in breach of WP:3RR with your tag-team edits. Well done. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 08:01, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Two bot edits on different days because the same problem shows up on the lists and two manual edits by me isn't 3RR. What do you not understand about not writing on my talk page. Get lost!!!! Bgwhite (talk) 08:04, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
You need to remain WP:CIVIL. I'm bringing issues of your edits/bot to your attention, so you can fix them. Obviously, ANI is the next stop if you continue. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 08:05, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Stop with your threats. I've asked you 5 times now not to write here. NEVER WRITE HERE AGAIN!!!! Bgwhite (talk) 08:08, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Bgwhite: the first edit above was polite, civil and to the point. Yet your first response was "get lost". This is not how a bot operator should respond to queries about their bot's edits. Please don't let yourself get wound up by Lugnuts.

Lugnuts: please stay off this page for at least a week because your continual comments are being perceived as harassment (even if they are not intended so). If there are serious errors, please draw them to attention of myself or WP:AN.

Thanks both for your cooperation — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@MSGJ:: you may not have seen these, but I think they are important as background to Bgwhite's response here: edit summary and [1]. Calling someone a troll on your user talk page, and then asking a polite question two days later, can easily be perceived as faux-polite and elicit an angry or exasperated reply. There probably is more than this, and I'm not necessarily claiming that these two edits are what started this (there probably is a lot of backstory), but the above reply by Bgwhite didn't come out of the blue. Fram (talk) 09:31, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes I can understand that, and thanks for the background. Somewhat hypocritical of Lugnuts ... Calling a good faith editor a troll is unacceptable, and as it happened as recently as this morning I think a block is in order. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:42, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

For future reference for me, note User talk:Fram#IBAN and trolling on Magioladitis' page. Bgwhite (talk) 10:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi. I was upset to see Magioladitis coming under criticism at WP:AN for certain automated editing and have followed the trail of discussion to here. You're both very valuable editors that Wikipedia cannot afford to lose, so I hope these issues can be resolved. I see that you both work the Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia/List of errors, and this seems to be a (the?) source of the criticism. Is there community consensus that all 108 errors in this table are of sufficient severity to not be considered cosmetic errors which would require another, more serious fix be made simultaneously to justify an edit? For example, let's look at #64, "Link equal to linktext", which is listed as priority "Low". Fram gave this edit as an example of what they feel is a "cosmetic edit", as I understand it. The edit summary (WP:CHECKWIKI error fix for #64. Do general fixes if a problem exists. - using AWB (11876)) indicates that fix #64 is the primary rationale for this edit. Is there a broad consensus for that? It seems some might prefer to relegate #64 to "general fixes" status, i.e. something that is only done in conjunction with another, less cosmetic, change that is made when AWB users have the checkbox for "Apply general (minor) fixes" checked. Maybe if two or more "minor" fixes can be made with the same edit, the combination of multiple minor fixes might rise to a level sufficient to justify an edit. Maybe, if this hasn't yet been done, the community can review the list of errors and separate the errors which are sufficiently severe to justify an immediate edit from those which need to be combined with another error to justify an automated edit. Also, can't AWB detect when the primary reason for an edit, as identified here, has already been fixed since the list of pages to fix was generated, and just skip the edit when the only thing being changed is one single item in the "general (minor) fixes" category? Wbm1058 (talk) 20:36, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Wbm1058, Fram, and Magioladitis: The last few times Magioladitis has been coming under criticism were for non-CheckWiki issues. It is valid criticism. Magioladitis' kryptonite is talk pages. The last couple of times, it is him getting overeager and his OCD kicking in. He also doesn't do edit summaries very well. I've received little criticism. Criticism is usually either Lugnuts, somebody not understanding the error (like message below), article fixed before I arrived and the vast majority of complaints, "this is how I want it".
The "this is how I want it" crowd is the most vocal and I've gone to ANI over this repeatedly. These are over accessibility errors #96 and #97 and deal with Table of Contents placement. Depending where the ToC is at, screen readers either won't see article text or can't see the ToC (see WP:TOC and WP:LEAD). The section header errors (four of them with #25 as an example) are also for accessibility issues (see WP:BADHEAD). FYI... I'm gearing up for another round of accessibility fixes (bag request) that some people will not like.
The majority of CheckWiki errors below #89 predates my time. Most of these were added 2009-2010 when CheckWiki was being greatly expanded. It was being done as a joint enwiki/dewiki doohickey. When I took over in 2013, I asked what errors should be deleted.
Some errors look as if they are minor, but have "reasons". Errors #99 and #98, for missing or unbalanced <sup> or <sub>, are because of Visual Editor. If these tags are not closed properly (say <sup>th</sub>), VE will continue along with super scripting. When the error was added, VE team was not going to fix this. Error #104 is another VE issue. Errors #26 and #38, for <i> and <b>, have tags that should not be used... WP:Deviations on the Accessibility MOS page states why. BTW, VE is causing errors to show up for #64. They usually go '''[[Acme|''Acme'']]''' ''',''' is a great company. I've submitted a bug report and it has been quickly ignored.
With AWB, you either have general fixes on or off. There is no way to pick and choose (screenshot). AWB cannot tell if an error has been fixed or not. During the same run, if AWB arrived on the article to fix one problem, it will fix all the other errors it can. If it arrives on the same article a second time, AWB will skip the article. Some errors, such as the broken brackets, we run AWB and then manually correct the ones that weren't fix by AWB. Some we fix manually that AWB can fix, but there are other issues are going on. For example, AWB can convert <b> to wikicode, however people often use <b> when they meant <br>.
CheckWiki does catch false-positives or the error is the only way it can be done in the article. For these cases we do use a whitelist system. This is the whitelist for #10, broken square brackets. Bgwhite (talk) 23:02, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Still need to study the rest of your reply above, but just a couple of immediate notes:
Maybe if certain "general fixes" are problematic when done by bots, those can be left for supervised editing only. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I did not know about the custom module. Problem is, there are hundreds of general fixes.
The two problematic fixes that pop into my head from the AWB talk pages are: 1) a blank line between nested section headers. To turn that off, one would need to turn off adding a blank line above any section header. 2) Sorting multiple references in a row into the order they appear in the article (ie, [3][7][15]). The reason for not wanting it in this order are... want it in alphabetical order, want most important first, want most important last, want ref that applies to first part of sentence go first... Bgwhite (talk) 00:10, 5 February 2016 (UTC)


@Wbm1058, Fram, and Magioladitis: The bot request for fixing WP:LISTGAP issues has been approved. This will appear to be a cosmetic change to most people. Could you look at the bottom of the request for a proposed edit summary. Comments on the summary, example and anything else would be greatly appreciated. Bgwhite (talk) 06:11, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

You are a glutton for punishment. I made a suggestion over there. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 4 February

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:22, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:50, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind help

Since 2007, I have attempted to contribute both information and donations to this site. My money is accepted but the editors have been less than helpful. You are the first person here who did not make me feel ignorant and inconsequential. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your kindness and assistance. Another "editor" (who will remain anonymous) made me feel as though I'm breaching some secret society by making minor corrections to the page of my ex-husband who was murdered 1997. Because of his children, his legacy is important to us and must be accurate, not culled by crawl bots from less than reputable non-news websites and blogs who write inaccurate info without exercising due diligence. I've been working as a consultant, publicist, photographer, and record label executive in R&B and hip hop for 46 years. I thought that I could contribute some background info (with appropriate research links and footnotes) on black American musicians who might otherwise be forgotten. Wikipedia already has less entries on minorities as it is - I wanted to make this site more racially diverse. I rely on Wikipedia greatly to assist my clients and for marketing strategies and business plans. However, it seems that my help is not wanted. I will not be making any more contributions in the future. But I really appreciate your help and professional work ethic. R&BDiva (talk) 17:03, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@R&BDiva: I hope the explanations on my talk page and yours were a sufficient invitation for you to join our club and provide positive contributions to this encyclopedia. GoingBatty (talk) 03:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
R&BDiva added her email address to User_talk:GoingBatty#Let's_start_again...... Could you please use your admin powers to mop that up for her? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 5 February

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:18, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Your bot broke a URL

In this edit your bot broke a link. It's the cite to Classic Boat's "Elizabeth Meyer – Queen of the J-Class" article. I can't see the difference between the two links, so I assume that the original URL contains a unicode character. This is the correct link - you corrected it to this. --Stroller (talk) 12:25, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Bot run for removing blank lines in list

Thanks for all your hard work in taking on this job. I wanted to point out - mainly for complainants who want to "see better in the edit box" - that a line containing just a "*" leaves a visible gap in the edit box, but produces a list item that is neither displayed, nor announced by screen readers because it has display:none set. It's a work-around that is less than optimal, but might deflect some complaints. 

* long item a
*
* long item b

produces:

  • long item a
  • long item b

It's interesting that definition lists are handled differently by the wiki-parser. A line containing only any number of ":" is ignored completely, allowing visible gaps to be placed the edit-box of threaded discussions without problem. 

: long comment a
:
: long comment b
: long comment c
:: long comment d
::
:: long comment e

produces:

long comment a
long comment b
long comment c
long comment d
long comment e

Here's hoping this may save you from some bludgeoning. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:11, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Reverted bot edit

Hi Bgwhite! I have reverted this bot edit, which put the article into Category:Pages with URL errors. Normally we wouldn't want to use other Wikipedias as references, but I think an article ABOUT another Wikipedia would be a reasonable expection. What do you think is the best long-term solution for this citation? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 23:41, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Undid edit

I undid this edit as the bracket was correct. Understandable as it looks like an error in isolation, but I thankfully checked it as AWB and bot edits on maths pages often go wrong.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 21:52, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you JohnBlackburne. I've added the page to the whitelist along with the other math articles. Bgwhite (talk) 22:24, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

aticles

you put on the speedly deletion that if i improve the articles that could delete the speedly deletion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Junoloara (talk • contribs) 07:58, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Junoloara, I never put a speedy delete on the pages and you can't remove those. You can't remove Articles for Deletion tags either, which is what you did. You are removing prods that were applied from multiple people without addressing any of the concerns. You are removing Prods from people who are associated with Wikipedia:WikiProject Professional wrestling, which means they are experts. You cannot use cagematch references except for specific matches. You might want to get a clue that every one of your added articles are being put up for deletion for the same reason. Stop using multiple IPs and your user account, you've already been warned about that. Bgwhite (talk) 08:18, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Incorrect re-deletion of Smurfing (online gaming)

In your re-deletion of Smurfing (online gaming) you stated that the article "Had no refs then, still has no refs".

This is incorrect.

There was a single reference from GamesRadar. I made this quite clear on the talk page (which has now also been deleted by you), giving this as the reason for recreating a previously-deleted article; the previous rationale did not apply.

(I was not the author of the material; I simply transferred it from the disambiguation page I was tidying up).

Can you please explain why you deleted this article?

Ubcule (talk) 16:24, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Ubcule, there was no reference. There was a link that talked about something else that just mentioned Smurfing. That is not a reference. That doesn't come close to "significant coverage" portion of WP:GNG to be considered a ref. There previous rational was there was no references with another comment saying they remember the term, but it wasn't notable. You had to have references that meet GNG to overcome the previous deletion. I also deleted it after it had been nominated for deletion. Bgwhite (talk) 06:24, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

If the summary given had been that the (would-be) reference did not meet acceptable standards- for the reason you gave- or that the subject didn't have enough coverage to meet WP:GNG, that would have been clear.
There was a (would-be) reference in standard "cite web" format and a reflist. Simply stating "Had no refs then, still has no refs" may be technically correct (if one accepts your argument above), but in that context and in the absence of further explanation it was still pedantically misleading and unhelpful.
I also disagree with your portrayal of the reference, which includes the on-topic content: "the term “Smurf” also has a comfy place in the video game world. In the world of alt (alternate) and mule (strictly item storage) accounts or characters, smurfs have their own use. Smurfing is a way for high-level players to secretly slip into more noob-like environments and trounce everyone there. It’s also used to get around certain constraints that the higher level account has to deal with."
As I said, I wasn't the author of this material, and I don't claim that it was great quality- my part was simply to move it from the dab page (where it didn't belong) to its own article. Frankly, I'd have been quite happy for the uncited parts to be pruned and for it to be merged by others (more into video gaming). However, I *wouldn't* have recreated a deleted article if I'd felt that the previous rationale applied verbatim, and I still don't believe that it did.
This is also why I disagreed with the decision to nominate it for speedy deletion; the nominator conceded on the talk page that he'd nominated it simply because it had previously been deleted, and when I pointed out that there *was* a reference, he/she agreed and intended to remove it the notice. IMHO, this article should (at most) have been a PROD, not a speedy.
Anyway, when I saw "still has no refs" I assumed you'd simply rubberstamped the "speedy" without checking my response. As I said, whether or not it was technically correct, the deletion summary was misleading and unhelpful in that context. Ubcule (talk) 13:52, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-06

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Syntax highlighting support is now available for 53 more computer languages. [2]
  • When you get a notification that an edit has been reverted, the notification now quotes part of the edit summary. [3]
  • RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [4]

Changes this week

  • Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [5][6]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Other sites will be able to tell when visitors come from links on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. They used to be able to do this until we started using forced HTTPS in June 2015. This is planned to happen on 15 February. [7][8]
  • Wikidata will have a new data type called "external-id". It will be used for references to external resources. It will be enabled on February 16. Some properties will be changed to the new data type. [9][10][11]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:58, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Limburg Cathedral

Don't quite get "painted in rock colour". The cathedral was grey when I was I child, "original" colours restored in the 20th century, - and even more original in a second round of restoration which is ongoing inside. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:57, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Gerda Arendt I just moved a sentence, with the image as a ref, from the article and into the image caption. Bgwhite (talk) 23:02, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
But I don't understand that sentence ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:07, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Gerda Arendt Change or remove it as I didn't add it or know the subject. Of course, my wife says I talk gibberish and knows nothing. Bgwhite (talk) 23:26, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Don't listen to that. I practice the art if ignoring. Did you know that there was edit war on my talk? I said I would ignore on Sunday but am still sort of speechless. Did you know that I wrote an article on a Limburg Bishop who opposed the pope? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:02, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Gerda Arendt Sigh... I briefly skimmed your talk page and saw Infobox and composer in same message and stopped there. Yup, that is one thing to ignore on Sunday. Interesting article on Kamphaus. He is one person I'd like to get to know and like to be 1/10th of a person he is. Bgwhite (talk) 20:03, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I heard yesterday that he (Kamphaus) is getting frail but held the service to inaugurate a new chapel. After my Easter FAC, I will look if I can add that. - I was reverted on Pierre Boulez, and a newbie on Georges Bizet. I went right into the lion's den, project composers: this reverting needs to stop, it's removal of sourced information. As if classical composers were anything special. Read the discussion on Boulez, it's kind of amusing when we get to ownership points. Imagine: one editor with 159 edits opposes, how many more edits do three supporters have to make who have now 14, 11 and 9 edits. Will opposers who never edited the article other than reverting get malus points? Sarcasm makes it bearable. What I (almost) can't take is the talk about my friend who died. I archived heartache today. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:14, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 8 February

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that some edits performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. They are as follows:

Please check these pages and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:20, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Class Fixing Article

Good morning - can you please undelete Winter Plummer? I'm running a class on Women and War, and we are working on creating stubs for important women who have died in wartime. I do know that just being a person and dying isn't worthy of an encyclopedia entry, but we are building an overall narrative of women warriors and these stubs are a part of that project. I was about to assign the stub for revision (which, I admit, it completely needs) when I found it was deleted. I would be thankful if you could undelete it and, if you don't mind, add your input on what needs to be fixed on the talk page. Bellicist (talk) 15:04, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Bellicist I've recreated the article at Draft:Winter Plummer. This way, you can work on it without the fear of it being deleted. I should warn you that every article must stand on its own. Currently, Plummer isn't close to being notable. Also, the funeral chapel ref isn't reliable for most things as the info comes from the family. Bgwhite (talk) 18:26, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Origin theories of Christopher Columbus

Bgwhite, you reverted some changes on the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_theories_of_Christopher_Columbus page that I had tried to correct. The reference inserted in the article is bogus. The the book, "Długosz, Jan. Annales seu cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae. IM Publications, 1997." says no such thing about King Wladyslaw. Długosz's only reference to any homosexuality is in the year 1447 (3 years after Varna) at and is about King Casimir's court. Not about King Wladyslaw. If you insist on keeping the false reference in the article please provide the exact page for the reference, otherwise one should remove the false reference.Reynatour (talk) 20:44, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Reynatour I don't know who is right or wrong. Syntax was done wrong. I noticed an established editor reverting different people, so I reverted again. I suggest you take it up on the article's talk page. Bgwhite (talk) 21:16, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

check wikipedia on nlwiki

Accoording to Stefan Kühn you manage the check wikipedia project these days. Can you drop code 006, no defaultsort with special characters, for nlwiki as we now switched to uca-nl sorting, see phabricator:T125774. Akoopal (talk) 13:10, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Akoopal I turned off #006 and #037. How is it, you can file a phab ticket and have it done in a week, but phab tickets to fix VE bugs never see the light of day? Bgwhite (talk) 19:40, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Please stop removing non-rendering spaces

Although BG19bot made a couple of worthwhile edits here, it also made a number of completely unnecessary ones, specifically removing spaces that don't affect the rendered output.

It also added a newline between a template call and a comment related to the template call - I wanted them on the same line.

Many editors are in the habit of hitting the space bar at least once after every period, even if the period is at the end of a paragraph. There is no effect on the rendered text, so no reason to remove it.

While removing such spaces does not affect the text seen by the reader, the bot's edits do increase editor workload. They complicate the editing history of the article and make diffs between versions more time-consuming to go through. Many of these changes can be difficult to see and evaluate in the diffs display. This can sometimes cause a lot of wasted time and effort for later editors trying to figure out what a previous edit has done.

All because of edits that do not improve the article for the reader, not in the slightest detail.

I would like you to consider not making such non-rendering edits in the future.

Thank you for considering this suggestion. I realize you are acting in good faith to improve the encyclopedia as you see it, but please consider that you are making unnecessary work for those who follow you. Jeh (talk) 21:56, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

@Jeh: See the edit summary. Per WP:REFPUNC, punctuation does not go after a reference, but before. This is why the bot arrived. This is standard operating procedure for AWB bots for atleast 5+ years. Bgwhite (talk) 22:03, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I fail to see how that is at all responsive. I didn't say a thing about the correction of punctuation after a reference. Indeed, I made a point of saying that the bot did make a couple of worthwhile edits. My comment has to do with removal of whitespace that doesn't affect the rendered output. Jeh (talk) 22:10, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Jeh, per the edit summary, it did General Fixes. These are part of AWB. This has been around 5+ years. General fixes can be done when fixing something else. General fixes has bot approval. Per the link given in the edit summary, you can see there are several hundred general fixes. The bot cannot give what is fixed due to limited edit summary space, therefore the edit summary that was given... Why the bot arrived and the general fixes link. What General fixes the bot did:
  1. It fixed WP:REFPUNC issue
  2. Fixed wrong cite template used.
  3. Fixed using the correct dash between page numbers.
  4. Fixed a case where wikilink and text were the same thing (automorphism).
  5. Removed white space at the end of six paragraphs, out of ~40 possible places. This is neither hurting nor harming. You are the first person to ever complain about removing a space at the end of a paragraph in my 4 years of running the bot. They complaint seems to be it makes it hard to evaluate the diff. People and bots make changes to articles everyday. This is part of Wikipedia.
I don't know what else to say. Sorry for fixing mistakes on your article. Bgwhite (talk) 22:40, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm not saying a thing about "fixing mistakes" (1 through 3 in your list). My point is exactly that a space at the end of a paragraph is neither hurting nor harming, therefore is not a "mistake" and should not be "fixed". Why should "part of Wikipedia" be looking at a diff that includes six completely unnecessary changes? Changes that are tough to see in the diff display and make no change whatsoever in the rendered text? This whitespace-churning increases editor workload for absolutely no benefit to the reader. For that matter, edit 4 in your list was fixing a non-mistake too, but at least it was easy to spot what the bot did. Jeh (talk) 22:52, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm going to chime in here, asking that your bot stop doing edits like this [12] in violation of WP:COSMETICBOT. It should be fairly easy to select the option of skipping articles when "whitespace only" or "cosmetic only" to the bot's logic. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:12, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
However, this one was fine, except perhaps when it moved the comment to its own line. I've never seen that one done before. If it's in the AWB genfixes, a bug report should probably be filed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:15, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Headbomb, just once, it would be nice if someone didn't accuse and instead please ask why it was done. There are many Checkwiki errors that require whitespace to be moved. Broken brackets ({ {reflist }}), section headers, invisible Unicode, missing ref tags (< ref>), defaultsort problem, etc. The article you showed was fixed by me, just before the bot arrived. The article was flagged for borked ref tags and broken brackets. Bgwhite (talk) 23:34, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
It's no accusation, it's a fact and a request. If the bot's already been fixed, great. If not, please fix it. If it's a one off, carry on. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:47, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Headbomb I don't think you understood my response. It has nothing with the bot being fixed. There are some errors that require the "whitespace only" to be unchecked. The bot ran on List of particles with it unchecked. As the error on the page was already fixed, in this case by me, it did a cosmetic edit. Some errors are fixed before I get there. On most days, the bots runs are completed within 6 hours of the list being generated. It's a little later now with Magioladitis out of action. On many errors, I run the bot and fix manually anything the bot didn't correct. I've gotten complaints that I should wait later in case of vandalism causing the error. The bot will make cosmetic edits. I try to keep it at a minimum. Bgwhite (talk) 00:35, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Headbomb Should note that I just got finished with a 2,000 article bot run. It involved deleting white space, therefore the "whitespace only" box was unchecked. Bgwhite (talk) 00:41, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Like I said if it's a one-off, whatever. This seems to have been caused by prior vandalism rather than by operator negligence. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:02, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, most of the complaints here are about edits that are included as part of AWB's general fixes. If you do not like those fixes, which are performed by many bots and by human editors who use AWB, an AWB talk page seems like the right venue for those complaints. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:01, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Star Wars Episode VIII

Hello Bgwhite! I need you to move or merge Draft:Star Wars: Episode VIII → Star Wars Episode VIII — I think it'll be better if you move Star Wars Episode VIII to Star Wars Episode 8 or just delete to make a way for the draft move and then redirect it back to original article. I've already requested it at Czar, but I think it'll be better if it is done soon. Thanks. --Captain Assassin! «T ♦ C ♦ G» 18:29, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Assassin, as in the past, I don't know how to do a history merge and don't dare to do one. Bgwhite (talk) 20:13, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
It's done already. Thanks. --Captain Assassin! «T ♦ C ♦ G» 02:54, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

?

Check Template:T20I cricket matches my page was on correct title. -Anjana LarkaSEND WIKILOVE💗 08:03, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Anjana Larka That doesn't matter. You blanked List of T20 cricket matches featuring Pakistan to redirect to the one you created, List of Pakistan Twenty20 International matches. You then copy/pasted the old one to the new one. That is a copyright violation as you obliterated everybody's past contribution to the article. This is not done. Period. This is no reason to blank everybody's contributions to match the article title to the template's title. The two titles do not have to match. Worse, you got into an edit war in trying to redirect the old article. Bgwhite (talk) 08:14, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
ok Sorry I choosed the wrong way should have moved it to correct title and one more thing I didn't copied your talk page style but can I copy now? amazing work -Anjana LarkaSEND WIKILOVE💗 08:21, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Anjana Larka I said you can copy the talk page style, just avoid the neon green background. Bgwhite (talk) 08:25, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Cesc Gay

You were right of course - that reference in Cesc Gay should have pointed to the New York Times. Sorry about that! --Lemnaminor (talk) 17:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Visit Singapore!

MEV Ltd.

Thanks for cleaning up my edits. It was my 1st try at a rewrite intended to update and improve neutrality. Have I succeded?

JohnP53 (talk) 14:59, 12 February 2016 (UTC)JohnP53JohnP53 (talk) 14:59, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

JohnP53 My only complaint would be the removal of the some refs. I don't know what the refs said or if they are correct to use. Adding some refs back into the article would be very good idea. Everything else looks good. Bgwhite (talk) 22:57, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Visual editor?

BG, who is in charge of the software and features for "visual editor"? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:35, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

(talk page stalker). Dirtlawyer1, I know Whatamidoing (WMF) is a wheel with VisualEditor. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 02:27, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
Dirtlawyer1, Whatamidoing is the "community liaison" for VE. Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback is the main page to report problems or questions. However, it is worthless to report problems as they will end up being ignored. Bgwhite (talk) 02:53, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
BG, I have no prior experience with WAID or the WMF software people. My issue is simple: they need to either include an option for American-style MDY dates, or they need to stop having auto-fill dates altogether (including the present no-option DMY and ISO dates) for the footnote completion function. As presently structured, it violates the ENGVAR and MOS:DATE guidelines, in that it fails to recognize articles about American subjects, written in American English, with pre-established use of American-style dates -- including even those with MDY date templates. Frankly, a lot of us are tired of having to clean up these date messes, and having discovered one of the root causes is VE, it's time to do something about it. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:47, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
Dirtlawyer1 I looked for any date issues in phabricator and I did not find any. However, searching that thing isn't the easiest, so there still maybe a bug report. Whatamidoing (WMF) would be the best person to ask, therefore the ping. Unfortunately, she is the messenger, so she takes the brunt of people's VE ire, including mine. I'm also spending more and more of my time fixing VE and ContentCrapulator's mess ups. Problems are only increasing as old problems are not fixed and new ones come around. Bgwhite (talk) 06:02, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
And I have only unsatisfactory information to share with you: The request for the mw:citoid service to figure out what date system is being used in an article has been considered, and a decision was taken to continue to provide exactly the same support for date formats as the old autofilling citation tool for the wikitext editor does, i.e., exactly none. Dates are served up in a form that is easily comprehensible to any computer, and if a given wiki doesn't like the date format, then either the date's display can be converted by the citation template (allegedly not hard) or the underlying wikitext can be changed by a bot (allegedly easy, and presumably something that needs to happen now on articles that that have dates added through all existing automated methods).
If you find yourself having insomnia, then I can relay a list of reasons, but I assume that the interesting parts are the bottom line and possible ways to cope with it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:05, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): ISO-formmatted dates (e.g., "2016-02-09") are computer gobbledygook that only are allowed to exist in footnote access dates because a handful of ISO-date-format enthusiasts refuse to permit their universal extermination. There is no meaningful difference between dates in text, reference publication dates, and footnote retrieval dates; any decent character-parsing software should be able to recognize any of the standard date formats. Wikipedia is written for human readers, not machine-readable computer language, and ISO-formatted dates are not permitted in Wikipedia text. That they survive at all on Wikipedia is more than a little annoying to those of who strive for articles written in a coherent and consistent variety of English which is related to each article topic. It is obnoxious that the defaults for Visual Editor footnotes would be set to ISO (e.g., "2016-02-09") and British/Commonwealth-style DMY dates (e.g., "9 February 2016") when more than half of the English language editors write in American English as their mother tongue, and more than half of the articles on the English Wikipedia are written in American English. If adding what I believe to be a relatively simple automated fix to Visual Editor is technically impractical for whatever reason, then the simple solution would be to disable the auto-fill dates entirely; alternatively, I suppose editors maintaining articles written in American English could just revert these non-conforming Visual Editor date changes on sight, but that would defeat the whole point of having Visual Editor's auto-fill functions, wouldn't it? Something needs to be done about this, WAID, because it's a huge source of aggravation, annoyance and additional clean-up and maintenance work for good-faith editors caused by what is effectively an amateurish software glitch. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:25, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
I understand the frustration. However, I may not have been clear: Reference autofilling is not actually happening in the visual editor. The autofilling service is called mw:Citoid. It is completely separate, and it works in the wikitext editor, too – and completely outside of any editing environment, for that matter.
The main advantage to using the ISO format is that the date can be transformed reliably into whatever date format any wiki wants. {{cite web|url=http://www.example.com|title=Example Page |df=mdy|date=2016-02-09}} displays as "Example Page". February 9, 2016. – exactly the format that you want for the reader on a {{use mdy dates}} page. This means that you don't actually need to change the date format in the template; you just need to tell the template which the date format to use. Even better, the parameter to specify the format can be added by bot or AWB to 100% of templated citations in an article, rather than just the small minority that are added through citoid, so it solves all the date-formatting problems, regardless of choice of tools or the decade that the template was added, instead of just the ~4% of newly added dates that happen to come from Citoid this year. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
Just a couple of points: @Whatamidoing (WMF): Almost any valid date can be transformed reliably into whatever date format any wiki wants. In 2013 I made a draft Lua module Module:Sandbox/RexxS/DateData to get an idea of easy it might be to do that job. There's some test data with results at User:RexxS/DateDataTest not perfect, but it does parse "between 16 and 17 December in the year of our Lord 1770" into
12 word(s)
between
16 <- Number
and
17 <- Number
12 <- Month
in
the
year
of
our
Lord
1770 <- Year
1770-12-16
 (1770-12-16)between 16 and 17 December in the year of our Lord 1770
Obviously the bit that is in ISO format can then be re-rendered into any other desired format. The point is that we don't have to input ISO dates to get a date in our preferred format - any valid date will do - so ISO offers no advantage over any other format.
@Dirtlawyer1: As Nick Bottom says "Comparisons are odious", but I suspect you may not be quite right in your assertion about the proportion of editors speaking American English. Of course, the important numbers are those of readers: there are around 1,200 million English speakers, of which around 300 million live in the USA. Whatever the proportion, I completely agree with your conclusions that both dmy and mdy must be catered for, and ISO is an irrelevance. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 02:12, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
RexxS, are you defining "01-02-2016" as an invalid date? IMO that date cannot be reliably transformed into anything except a question about whether the writer meant January 2nd or Feburary 1st. Perhaps you will disagree, but it seems to me that the ISO format – and knowing that you will always get an ISO format from this service – is actually an improvement over that ambiguous date. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:32, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, of course. "01-02-2016" is ambiguous and is therefore not a valid representation of a single data value. It represents two dates, not one. But anybody who writes "13 Feb 2016" or "February 13, 2016" or "The thirteenth of February in the year 2016" is writing a date that "can be transformed reliably into whatever date format any wiki wants". The ISO format has no "main advantage" in that respect and nobody needs work in ISO format. It's fine for computers to read, but remains a pretty poor choice for human readers, with compactness being its only redeeming feature. --RexxS (talk) 14:03, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Undid part of your edit

Hello Bgwhite, I would like to notify that I undid part of your edit in these 2 edits for the notes & references section, as I think the "overflow style" looks more organized there with the long, ongoing list of notes & references, unless there is a policy, which I am not aware of, disallows that. Thank you. −Edward (t⋇c) 13:26, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

XXxed9war3d The problem is on mobile devices. Looking at the article on a cell phone, I only see three refs at a time. On a normal page, the entire screen contains refs. Also, one can only use their finger in the small ref box to scroll. On a normal page, one can scroll the refs with the entire screen. It's best to go with what all the other articles do. Bgwhite (talk) 05:27, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Good grief, what a mess that article is. I've taken an axe to the fontsizing, the hidden content, and the scrolling references. No doubt there will be some blowback, but we have a manual of style for a reason.
@XXxed9war3d: Yes, you're unaware of WP:Manual of Style § Scrolling lists and collapsible content which specifically mentions reference lists among the elements that we don't allow to scroll. --RexxS (talk) 16:14, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-07

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • You can now edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [13]
  • You can now use the Math extension to write chemistry formulas. [14]

Problems

  • A few editors might have been logged in as someone else because of a bug. For security reasons everyone was logged out on 9 February. If you have seen this bug, you can report it. [15][16]

Changes this week

  • There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. The plan was to have it leave beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. It will happen on 16 February instead. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [17][18]
  • Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [19]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The search function on Wikimedia wikis will get a completion suggester that tries to find the right pages as the user is typing. It will also recognize some typos. This will probably happen in March. It is currently in beta. [20]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Psalter Pahlavi Comment

I believe you are mistaken in believing Psalter Pahlavi is in a PUA. Perhaps you are confusing the range U+10B80–U+10BAF with U+100B80–U+100BAF (which is in a PUA)? Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 21:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Brightgalrs, my reasoning when I edited the page.
  1. Every cell in the Unicode columns were empty boxes. They are boxes in both Chrome and Firefox. Thus, the average English reader cannot see these without special fonts installed.
  2. The Unicode character in the first row (Aleph) is U+F080. PUA range is U+E000..U+F8FF. Therefore, the character is a PUA.
  3. If the first character is a PUA and I cannot see any of the rest of the characters, then there is no need for the Unicode column.
Bgwhite (talk) 22:01, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Ah yes. So it looks like I made a mistake with the first character "Aleph" (should have been U+10B80) and then you assumed the rest of the characters were in that range. To reiterate, Psalter Pahlavi's block in Unicode is not in PUA. I'll restore the previous version and correct the Aleph.Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 22:14, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Brightgalrs You didn't see the rest of the message. Nobody can see these without the special font installed. A language that has been dead for ~1,500 years is not something that people will have installed on the computer. There is no reason to have the column when only very, very few can see it. Bgwhite (talk) 22:27, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
I based it on the Aramaic alphabet article, which has a column for the Unicode even though I can't see it. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 22:31, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Oh and I did see the rest of your message, I just assumed you were arguing against having PUA characters in an article. No malice or incompetence here. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 22:33, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Brightgalrs Yup, why reinvent the wheel when one can copy. Do it all the time myself. It's your call on what to do. Bgwhite (talk) 22:43, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
We can do it your way. There is the Unicode at the bottom of the article anyway. Happy AWBing. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 22:46, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Akerman LLP edit summary

Bgwhite, I'm a little concerned about your edit summary for Akerman LLP of general fixes and cleanup here. What exactly did you do? It's changed quite a bit more than a "general fix" to me. I think references were removed and while the prior editor was clearly promotional, that wasn't a revert and fix but something more. Can you please explain a bit of your reasoning? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:04, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Ricky81682 Beyond the obvious fixes... Removed the notable cases section as they aren't notable and were promotional. I'm sure "notable" cases were handled in which they lost. The last three sections were copyright violations. Community partnerships was copied from [21] and [22]. Commitment to Diversity section copied from [23], plus atleast 10 different sites had the same thing. Looking at the notable cases section again, they are also a copyright violation. Bgwhite (talk) 05:33, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Ok, I used a multi-edit diff rather than this one. Ok so you just removed the entire Notable Matters discussions and did general fixes. I'd ask that you mention that deletion next time in your edit summary if you could so it's a little clearer. The page has a number of copyright issues and I can't figure out a decent lede (law firms are annoyingly hard to do for some reason). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:47, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Check Wikipedia

Hi, I have a question about Check Wikipedia. Here there are only 115 articles. Please note that the last scanned dump was on 2016-02-03. I tried to scan the last dump (2016-02-03) using AWB. I set this regex: \s+\[\[([^|:]*)\|(\1)\]\] (case sensitive) and AWB finds about 4800 articles. Can you tell me why Check Wikipedia's list is not complete? Thanks. Bye. --The Polish (talk) 19:58, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The Polish The difference in article count is even more interesting because my regex finds things yours doesn't. I won't have time to look at this in detail for a few more days. Bgwhite (talk) 22:05, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
No problem, maybe Check Wikipedia uses a different (not perfect?) regex. I have a question: look for ex. here, how it is possible that there is in the list "Choroba Crohna"? The last dump was on 2016-02-03 and the wrong edit in Choroba Crohna was on 2016-02-15. So, does Check Wikipedia scan the last plwiki dump (as it is written on WP:WCW) or check errors in real time? --The Polish (talk) 00:31, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
The Polish I did a scan using your regex on 15% of enwiki's dump and got 42 articles. I looked at the first 15. They either: 1) had an error that CheckWiki agrees with 2) an error was fixed after the dump, 3) there is an error, but it is inside comment tags, thus CheckWiki doesn't flag it. Could you look at some of the articles in the list and see what is going on? You can also leave the list (first couple hundred) in you sandbox and I can take a look at it. Bgwhite (talk) 23:56, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 16 February

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:22, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Hadamard’s gamma function

It appears that when you moved Hadamard’s gamma function to Hadamard's gamma function (with a different style of apostrophe), you then deleted the new redirect page that was left behind, calling it non-controversial cleanup. I think that was a mistake and I have restored the redirect page. Generally redirects from misspellings, misnomers, mis-punctuated names, mis-capitalized names, and alternative names should be kept so that if anyone links to them or enters them into the search box they will find the article. Otherwise they might conclude no article on the topic exists and the might then start a new article with an alternative name. See Wikipedia:Redirect#Purposes_of_redirects. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:41, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Michael Hardy I moved the article per MOS to the correct apostrophe. There is no reason to complain about it and it wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a mistake on removing the redirect link. The MediaWiki software already converts "bad" apostrophe to the "good" (straight) apostrophe. So, if somebody types "Ado’s theorem" into the search box, it comes up with the straight apostrophe link. There are no redirects set up for Ado's theorem with bad apostrophe. There is no reason for the keeping the redirect as the software already handles it. Please delete it again. Bgwhite (talk) 23:00, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
I never thought it was a mistake to move the article. And the software does not automatically handle this in links: Ado’s theorem. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:11, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Michael Hardy You said, "...enters them into the search box". I said, "So, if somebody types "Ado’s theorem" into the search box,". Your stated reason for the redirect was search box. I only said search box. Bgwhite (talk) 23:32, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
But there are always those two concerns in this situation: the search box and links. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:07, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Slash (punctuation)

Thanks for your work tidying the place up, but you need to be more careful with your botwork on the punctuation pages. You "corrected" a passage explicitly talking about the use of a double hyphen (i.e., --) with an en dash, entirely mucking up the point being made. (Don't worry: already fixed. Just letting you know.) — LlywelynII 02:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Llywelyn As an en dash is normal in 99.9% of these situations, you might want to use the {{Not a typo}} template. This will tell humans and AWB to not "correct" it. Also ½ and ⅓ don't meet accessibility guidelines. I personally can't make out the fraction. You may want to use {{frac}} or {{sfrac}}. Bgwhite (talk) 05:38, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Bgwhite It is not the community's job to wrap things in tags to protect them from your bots. If your bots are malformatting pages, it is your job to tone it down. — LlywelynII 16:20, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
Llywelyn I see you removed the frac template that I placed. This was done for accessibility reasons. It lets screen readers know it is a fraction. Bgwhite (talk) 08:21, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Bgwhite I see you are misformatting the page. Kindly stop. It's great to increase accessibility. There are limits to it. Displaying formatting on a page about formatting is one of them. (If there's an overriding policy, kindly link it but MOS:FRAC has nothing on it and this likely falls under WP:IAR. We're specifically illustrating formatting here—ditto mention of precomposed fractions—and wrecking that with your template is not actually {{readerfriendly}}.) — LlywelynII 16:20, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Kamal Chand Sogani

This article is not a Promotional page and is incomplete as we are working on it. You recently removed the Academics, Awards and Featured form this article. Kindly let us complete and also let us know why Academics, Awards and Featured must not be mentioned in a biography of a Philosophy Scholar and researcher. Kindly guide and assist as The professor associated is the only teacher guiding non Sanskrit students to learn Apabhramsa from past 55 years.नाहर (talk)Naahar

Naahar As stated in the reference summary, there were no references. Also, Wikipedia is not a place to put up a CV. There needs to be more than just a bunch of bullet points. Bgwhite (talk) 18:13, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

San people

Thanks. (for this) Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 10:23, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

BG19bot reference naming issues

Sometimes the bot adds a label to a reference and inexplicably also removes the reference info, as is shown in the following two edits:

  • [24] where <ref>{{cite web|url=http://engineering.nyu.edu/people/theodore-s-rappaport |title=Theodore S. Rappaport | NYU Tandon School of Engineering |website=Engineering.nyu.edu |date=2015-04-08 |accessdate=2016-02-18}}</ref> was changed to <ref name=":0"/>
  • [25] where <ref>{{cite web|last1=Dillet|first1=Romain|title=DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz To Take On AWS|url=http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/06/digitalocean-raises-37-million-from-andreessen-horowitz/|publisher=TechCrunch}}</ref> was changed to <ref name="d"/>

99.236.126.9 (talk) 20:15, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

99.236.126.9 The bot didn't remove any references or info. There were two identical references, so it combined them. This is called a "named reference". See WP:REFNAME for more info. Bgwhite (talk) 00:26, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-08

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Problems

  • There was no new MediaWiki version last week. Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week instead. This is because of a bug that made saving pages take longer time. [28][29]

Changes this week

  • After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [30]

Meetings

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:22, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Can you perhaps take a look?

Hi. I am not sure where to take this, but I see you have also edited an article I edit, and are a wikipedia administrator. I have run into an editor who I don't think is editing fairly. He just deletes what I add, even though it has reliable newspapers as sources. With not-a-reason reasons. He seems to enjoy it, and has been blocked before for edit warring a number of times but is doing this now. And when I put my case to the article talk page, his response? He followed me to another page I had just edited -- very clearly, if you look at the times of the edits and previous history of editing of that article -- and deleted my substantial addition that had many citations for the sentences, to many reliable newspapers. I've told another editor, but I do not know if he is the right person. But I told him here ... can you maybe take a look at this? It is very upsetting to have someone just delete your stuff willy nilly, and then follow you around to do it again for no sensible reason but enjoying upsetting you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:HJ_Mitchell#And_now_the_editor_I_mentioned_is_hounding_me

199.102.168.8 (talk) 22:56, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Long division

I'm afraid I don't understand your comment. The three rule I see are:

  1. Avoid using the template as a blunt instrument
  2. Address the root problem with the bot owner or bot community
  3. Remove the template tag once the underlying problem has been resolved.

Taking these in turn:

  1. I don't believe I was using it as a "blunt instrument". The problem lies specifically with Yobot and so I only blocked Yobot.
  2. See User_talk:Magioladitis#Yobot_and_Long_division, I took the matter up with the controller of Yobot immediately.
  3. The problem has not been adressed or resolved as far as I know.

Why then am I in breach of the rules?

Your revision has corrupted the layout of the mixed mode sum. Was this intentional? I would suggest to you that leaving it in its corrupt form is not helpful to readers, even if it does enable the bots free reign. After all WP:RF, not WP:BOTfirst!

You seem to be pretty senior, so I'll leave the mess for you to deal with in the correct manner and will monitor how you do so. Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:41, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Martin of Sheffield Sorry, I didn't see any messages at Yobot's talk page. You did follow the rules. However, just denying Yobot won't fix the issue. I was at the article with AWB and I was going to do the same thing Yobot did. Either the article needs to be "fixed" or the bot deny expanded (ie {{bots|deny|AWB}}. I see you left another message at Magioladitis' talk page and he should help out to do what is best. Bgwhite (talk) 10:22, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for sorting things out. For your information: Magioladitis specifically asks discussion to be placed on his talk page, not on Yobot's talk page, unless the intention is to stop yobot from running. "Please edit this page only if you want to stop Yobot. For comments and questions about its actions please use Magioladitis' talk page", which was why there were no comments there to be seen. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Page deleted without response to objection or suggestion

06:29, 23 February 2016 Bgwhite (talk | contribs) deleted page María Concepción Zúñiga López (A1: Very short article lacking sufficient context to identify subject of article (TW)) as stated the page was NOT an article but a RELAY page -- please reply to objections or suggest a better alternative; there are many similar pages to delete so if you have no CONSTRUCTIVE recommendations for IMPROVEMENT please do not destroy work in progress. I appreciate and effect all constructive recommendations. If my format is not correct, please advise as to the correct process to RELAY / catch / correct keyboard inaccuracies -- I suggested disambiguation but I was not certain that was the correct approach. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Startarrant (talk • contribs)

Startarrant There is no such thing as a "RELAY" page. You had part of an article, I think that's what it was, listed there. I hadn't a clue what you were trying to do. You might be thinking of a redirect. Bgwhite (talk) 00:10, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

THANK YOU -- REDIRECT

That was what I needed to know. I will work on that. -- startarrant — Preceding unsigned comment added by Startarrant (talk • contribs) 00:12, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

BG19bot - rule #48

Hi Bgwhite.

How do I stop the BG19bot edits on articles, or at least parts of articles, for at least #48, such as the recent ones on:

The linking of the page in itself was quite deliberate, because the linked item is part of section transcluded text into other articles and from there there needs to be a link back to the source article.

BG19bot does not seem to be listed as {{nobots}} compliant ?

Eno Lirpa (talk) 11:13, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I would run a a db scan see how common it is. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:01, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
rev 11943 BoldTitle: don't do anything if article contains section tags as "section" is used to transclude text in other articles so self link may be a valid use case. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:02, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Rjwilmsi: Will you ask checkwiki to add exception for section, either entirely ignoring page or ignoring text within section tags for this self link rule? 30 matches 42% I'll stop there. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:04, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
@Magioladitis and Eno Lirpa:. I don't see this as a problem Maigoladitis. Eno Lirpa is adding transcluding just to article's lead. In some cases, only a sentence. There is no need to transclude a sentence. They currently don't appear to be used. Eno Lirpa is doing it completely different than what WP:TRANS says to do. If Eno Lirpa follows standard procedure, this wouldn't be a problem. @Redrose64: as he knows more about syntax and get his opinion. Bgwhite (talk) 19:12, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
How is it completely different? WP:TRANS even uses lead section inclusion as an example. Sure I have picked the first sentence. I strongly suggest (WP:BOLDLY) that there should be a lot more of this, especially for use in list articles for example. This would allow much more encyclopedic lists, whereby there was some definitional material available in the list rather than too often just a partially vague title which people can waste time on clicking in the dark, etc. Similarly I strongly suggest that it should be often used as an alternative to just partially blind {{See also}}s, giving some definitional material which people can read before they click down a blind alley.
Yes, ignoring text between section tags for #48 would be perfect.
My approach is about encyclopedic consistency between articles, not just reusing volumes of material, hence one sentence, one paragrpah, or a whole section are all important.
Eno Lirpa (talk) 20:05, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Eno Lirpa What I'm saying about is that you are doing it differently than WP:TRANS. It never mentions <section>. Doing it differently than 99.9% of how it is done causes problems. No example in WP:TRANS uses just a lead or even a couple of sentences. Doing a sentence is a complete waste. Paragraphs are understandable, but not a sentence. It also causes more problems than it solves. Being bold is fine, but not when someone objects. Bgwhite (talk) 21:15, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
I also left you a note on your talk page. It appears you are not following guidelines and rushing around. You are brand new, take some time to learn. You are doing things how you think it should be done, not how it really should be done. That's fine as I did that too when I was new. Bgwhite (talk) 21:27, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Just for the record, I garee with Bgwhite on that. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:45, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm? Am trying to get clarity here. Sorry re WP:TRANS. I meant Help:Labeled section transclusion, which is referred from WP:TRANS re lead examples. By the way, WP:TRANS does give an example of three short sentences being transcluded, ie, Joseph Gordon-Levitt re Hit Record. So are you saying if it a short paragraph and something similar to that it is okay? (See also WP:ODNT?)
Not sure that I am rushing around. I was trying to clean up 8 year orphans, so the changes the bot and you have done to my edits may well have reorphaned the respective articles. I will look at a better way of doing what I did in the relevant articles and make sure they are still no longer orphans.
Comment?
Eno Lirpa (talk) 06:40, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 23 February

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:23, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Fixed by another editor. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:00, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Reverted deletion of G2 poem

I have reverted your deletion of the charming little poem in honour of the G2 expressway between Beijing and Shanghai that I found on Twitter the other day. Your credentials within Chinese literature is not visible from your profile. I thought the reason for deletion "all messed up" was a little short. If you would care to elaborate on why the poem did not belong there in your opinion? It is not uncommon that major infrastructure projects in China lend themselves to poetic praise, and such have been included in other Wiki articles. Do you read Chinese at all?--94.242.58.159 (talk) 16:46, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

It was messed up. Don't copy straight from the twitter feed as it adds alot of extraneous material A twitter poem is not notable. This is the English Wikipedia, not Chinese. Write English here. Bgwhite (talk) 18:49, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

really

articles on wikipedia really people like Dilpreet Dhillon ‎ and Inder chahal ‎ in punjab is more then 1000 is you gonna make articles on then common it's wikipedia man people in punjab is like every one wanna singer and most people make a song like joke and you gonna putt on wikipedia all of them — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.253.154.210 (talk) 04:37, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I haven't a clue what you are saying as it appears you don't know English. I haven't edited the articles, so I don't know you left a message here. I just edited them and they are in poor shape. There are no references. Bgwhite (talk) 05:45, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Daniel Horvath (actor) article

Hello @BG19bot first of all thank you very much for your time and determination for the article of an actor Daniel Horvath, I translated the page from his Spanish version and really put all the useful references in order to give the best quality for wikipedia I could, therefore please check the bio of this actor and hope that you will approve and be able to arrase the tag of multiple issues because there is all related information is given already. Thank you very much for your consideration, if you have any question please do not hesitated to contact back.--Anonimoushh (talk) 12:20, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

@BG19bot I really appreciate your help and good treat of my article but now I really need your help as a professional in wikipedia, please can you help me of fixing what you have mentioned before: (WP:CHECKWIKI error fix for #16. Remove invisible Unicode characters. Do general fixes if a problem exists. -, replaced: → (11)) I really can not fined it :( ... need your help...thank you so much.--Anonimoushh (talk) 13:18, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Invitation to join the Ten Year Society

Dear Bgwhite/Archive 50,

I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.

Best regards, Dan Koehl (talk) 13:21, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Robert Black 'bad ISBN'

Thanks for tidying the references I've added on the Robert Black article. There is one thing which has somewhat confused me - the repeated tweaking of the ISBN for Nigel Weir's book 'British Serial Killers' (which I own). The ISBN I've added is now concise and correct (I just misplaced the order of a 6 & 7 and I'll fix that). It ends in a 5. Here is an online copy of the book (although I assume you've verified this). Kind regards. --Kieronoldham (talk) 00:55, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Doris Stevens

Please respect the tag on the file. You just lost me a ton of work. It is in use. I will release it as soon as I am finished, but now I have to reconstruct all the corrections I just did and lost. I love help, but put the "in use" tag on it to prevent edit conflicts. All my work just went up in smoke on the last paragraphs. *sigh* SusunW (talk) 01:58, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

SusunW You don't lose any work in an edit conflict. Press back button in the browser and do a copy/paste. I've suffered hundreds of edit conflicts and never lost anything. Bgwhite (talk) 02:05, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
You may not, lose anything in an edit conflict, but almost always my work is all lost. I am not remotely technical. I have zero ability to recover any of it. 50 minutes of work and sourcing is gone with no record of same. That is why I put the in use tag on the file. As I said, I appreciate help, but if it has an in use tag on it, I cannot imagine why you would edit it. As soon as I reconstruct this paragraph, I am out for the night, so you are free to do whatever you want to it and I will change the tag, as I always do when I am not actively editing. SusunW (talk) 02:19, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
SusunW I was just showing you how to recover for next time, so you don't lose work. Bgwhite (talk) 02:25, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
I'll try that next time. I have no confidence I will be able to do it. WP is not a platform for writers, as it expects one to have technical skill that many writers don't have. I have released the file. So feel free to do whatever you want to it. Right now am just trying to flesh it out. I'm almost finished with that and then will do some editing. Trying to get her to GA for Women's History Month. SusunW (talk) 02:34, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
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