User talk:Anomie/Archives/2012

Help!

On the wikipedia sister site Wikiquote I was working on an article when I was autoblocked. They said that I had been sockpuppeting. I admit that I did in the past but I was innocent this time how can I tell them this if I am blocked from editing? TheyCallMeFirstKlass 16:56, 4 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deezy.D. (talk • contribs)

I see you've already received a reply at User talk:Ningauble. Anomie⚔ 17:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Fbot wrongly tagging sound files as orphaned, leading to...

I know this isn't your business but perhaps you can help. I have posted a report about Fbot mis-tagging sound files as orphaned User talk:Fbot#Incorrect tagging of used sound files as orphaned.. I hope it is only sound files. Fastily just deleted as "rude" my previous report on his talk page[1] (I was assertive, obviously I must have been over-assertive!) so a slightly independent eye would be useful. I see you have dealings in this general area. Fbot is so overwhelmongly active that I can't start to review what it actually does. Thincat (talk) 19:12, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

That certainly does not seem to be an appropriate response to your posts. I've posted at User talk:Fbot and User talk:Fastily. Anomie⚔ 02:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. That was helpful. I have commented further at User talk:Fbot#Incorrect tagging of used sound files as orphaned. I have just seen an edit Fastily made right after deleting my "rude" message[2] which makes me wonder if he suspects I am a sockpuppet (the file's uploader had earlier been blocked as a sockpuppet). That might explain Fastily's abrupt reaction. Thincat (talk) 10:27, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Preview refs proposal

Hi Anomie, I'm asking you to comment on a draft proposal in my userspace, basically the same message I left Fred Gandt. Your input is welcomed, especially since I'm not exactly a MediaWiki expert. Thanks! Franamax (talk) 22:19, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Posted at the talk page there. Anomie⚔ 01:49, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Urgent: See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/ MediaWiki:Aboutsite/ko

It is being suggested that what I think are variable pages should be deleted. Input from pro needed. fredgandt 22:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Apparently the page in question is not vital. fredgandt 01:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Looks like it has been figured out. Basically, for any MediaWiki messages that can be localized the message for the default language (here "en") is located at "MediaWiki:name", and the translations for all other languages are at "MediaWiki:name/code". Here on enwiki, the messages for languages other than the default (even en-gb) are usually not customized. If you want to see which messages are modified for a particular language, you can go to Special:AllMessages and choose "Modified" and the target language in the form at the top. Anomie⚔ 01:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

The list of messages I find customized for other languages is here. Anomie⚔ 01:31, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Wow. That's a lot of messages. It's one seriously huge place this, huh? Quite an extraordinary site. Thanks for the pointer. I might actually know what the hell is going on in a few years! fredgandt 01:38, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

SoxBot

For the record, the problem as it existed yesterday was that SoxBot and Yobot had actually commenced a full-fledged edit war; my original workaround had always been to use {{improve categories}} instead of {{uncategorized}} on articles that had hidden maintenance categories, so that SoxBot wouldn't detag them. But Yobot was starting to convert that tag to {{uncategorized}} on articles that had no real content categories, with the result that SoxBot then came along and detagged the articles — which then pushed them right back onto the uncategorized articles list again, with the inevitable consequence that if I had used the usual workaround again, I would simply have been setting off an endless tag-revise-detag loop.

I had actually asked X! to disable or reprogram SoxBot's detagging function on more than one prior occasion without response. I see that he did finally disable the function yesterday, as I requested, so thankfully I won't need to use the {{nobots}} tag again — but the reason I couldn't just wait is that I'd already been "just waiting" for months, and the prospect of a circular bot war required an immediate solution rather than waiting for more months. Bearcat (talk) 18:14, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

There was little chance of a bot war, unless Yobot was adding {{uncategorized}} as well as changing {{improve categories}} to {{uncategorized}}. And even then, you could have checked SoxBot's userpage and found out how to stop the task yourself (I was on my way to do just that when I found it had already been done). Anomie⚔ 18:46, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bot_requests#TfD_Closer

Since you run a bot that closes FfD/PUFs when an admin deletes the page, would you consider running a bot that performs the same function at TfD? -FASTILY ^(TALK) 05:17, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes. In fact, I included the possibility of doing that in AnomieBOT 59, so all that's needed is consensus at WT:TFD and a bit of coding on my part. Anomie⚔ 06:28, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Could you take a look at WP:VP(idea lab)

Hiya. An idea to develop and install a system to have some well sourced data automatically updated by script is being discussed. The perspective of a bot builder would be greatly appreciated if you can spare the time. fredgandt 00:42, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Replied there. Anomie⚔ 01:03, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you :-) fredgandt 02:01, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

I award you this cookie for your correction of some fairly substantial errors in the changes i submitted for the Useronline template. Thanks :) CJ Drop me a line! • Contribs 19:13, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Yum! Anomie⚔ 21:08, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

question

hi, anomie!i need to know how to join the bot approvals group. thanks, --ethen bowen 04:58, 29 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ethen12 (talk • contribs)

First, spend some time as a normal editor, gaining experience, trust of the community, and familiarity with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Then provide useful comments on BRFAs and successfully run several bot tasks.

I'm really beginning to wonder if you're actually here to improve the encyclopedia, or if you are just treating Wikipedia as some sort of role-playing game and trying to collect "achievements". If you really want to improve the encyclopedia, start doing so already. Stop wasting everyone's time with the attempted hat collecting. Anomie⚔ 15:23, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

trash artist, Marina DeBris

Hi

Your bot added a note about notability to Marina DeBris. After that, I added a bunch more independent references, and some references to where her artwork is displayed. Could you review and let me know what else I can do? Also, please note that DeBris is a non traditional artist, and so her work is displayed in non traditional settings, so I used non traditional citations. Thanks Socialresearch (talk) 23:12, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

AnomieBOT did not add any note to the article. If you look carefully at the article history, you'll see the tags were added by Orangemike (talk · contribs) in the previous edit. All AnomieBOT did was add the current date to the tags he added. Anomie⚔ 02:25, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Template:Strongbad

Please unprotect that. I'm not done developing it (for one thing, it needs a ns:0 test in it, just like {{xt}}, because its uses are far, far broader than it's incidental appearance in {{collapsetop}}, and people will be tempted to use it, like the xt template family in mainspace because of it's ease-of-[inappropriate] use). Just because it's used in some cases of the deployment of a widely used protected template doesn't automatically mean it needs full protection itself. Absent any cases of vandalism, it's best to leave obscure templates like this as-is. I at least need it unprotected for a little while so I can fix it. No criticism of you personally, but I really wish that admins would check with templates' principal authors to make sure they're done with them before protecting them. I realize that's not your fault, per se, it's just the paranoid micro-culture of WP:HRT. PS: Yes, I realize I can go make a case for an {{editprotected}} and wait all week for someone to respond to it and maybe decline because they don't understand the edit or don't like my sandboxing or whatever. It's a massive waste of my time. If you're only willing to unprot it for a little while, let me know, and we can schedule a time window in which I'll do the needed work. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 21:40, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Just trying to avoid a repeat of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 96#Bizarre/frightening line inserted into an article I edited or Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive736#Need help with revert, to take two examples from just the past month. Some vandals know to specifically look for unprotected subtemplates to vandalize things that most editors can't easily figure out to revert. Anyway, I've lowered it to semi for now so you can finish working on it; if you let me know when you're done, I'll reprotect it then. Anomie⚔ 22:59, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I will. I guess it's a matter of a "wikiphilosophical" difference. I'm not terribly perturbed by sneaky vandals doing things like this. The system doesn't collapse or anything. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 23:02, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm actually done with it already, but now need to make some adjustments to its parent, {{Strong}}, which was locked down for the same reason. Changes: the lang parameter needs to change to title, if it would be easier for you to just do that than unprot and reprot. The change is needed because a consensus elsewhere says supporting HTML lang= is a bad idea - the valid syntax of the input is too brittle - and people should use the wikicode language templates instead, which handle the geeky brittle stuff for us, and this is true. Meanwhile title= is actually useful (makes mouseover tooltips) and I just forgot to include it. The two use the same syntax in the code, so it's just a matter of swapping one word for the other, twice. I'll update the documentation in the interim. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 23:17, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I forgot it's different because of the xml-lang= stuff. I'm making same change to {{em}} right now; the code will be portable in a minute or two. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 23:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't forget to add title after all. All that needs to be done at {{strong}} is deletion of {{#if:{{{lang|}}}|lang="{{{lang}}}" xml:lang="{{{lang}}}"}} I can file an editprotected about that if you're busy, though no one will fix it for half a week. :-/ — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 23:23, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Done Anomie⚔ 23:48, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Sankyu beddy mush! <bow> — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 23:49, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview

Dear Anomie,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, were it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

• Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
• Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
• All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
• All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
• The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at [email protected] (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at [email protected]. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 07:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Multiple issues template usage suggestion

I have started a discussion about making the Multiple issues template the new cleanup template here. Since you have edited this template several times in the past I thought you might have some insight into this idea. --Kumioko (talk) 20:50, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Name Change

Excuse me, I figured that you'd be the person to talk to regarding name-usurpations because your bot actually helped me out with my current request. The original person I wanted to usurp, User:Konstantino, has been inactive since 2010, but User:Konstantinos has been inactive since I believe 2008. Perhaps it might be best if I ask the latter person to take their name? Kostantino888Z (talk) 02:57, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know much about the decisions behind usurpation when it's not straightforward; the bot just lists the facts for the 'crats to decide. But as far as I understand the process, you may have trouble getting Konstantinos either since the currently-active frwiki user with 33065 edits has a better claim to the name. Anomie⚔ 03:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	Thanks for creating the "my sandbox" gadget! :) ♫GoP♫TCN 13:39, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! And you're welcome! Anomie⚔ 17:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Upcoming MediaWiki & Wikimedia developers' events

Anomie, I thought you might want to know about some upcoming MediaWiki & Wikimedia developers' events (such as the Berlin hackathon in June), where you can learn more about MediaWiki customization and development, extending functionality with JavaScript, the future of ResourceLoader and Gadgets, the new Lua templating system, how to best use the web API for bots, and various upcoming features and changes. We'd love to have power users, bot maintainers and writers, and template makers at these events so we can all learn from each other and chat about what needs doing. Best wishes! Sumanah (talk) 13:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I was told you might be to one to ask about his bot request...

Izno said you might have the bot needed to fulfill the requested task -- if you would be so kind as to take a look at the request thread... :) Salvidrim! 16:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Replied there. Anomie⚔ 17:02, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not all that good with timezones, but I'll leave this here since you asked for a reminder. :) Salvidrim! 06:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I usually specify times in UTC and avoid terms like "morning", "afternoon", or "evening" in discussions because that's the only way to avoid confusion when dealing with editors around the world. Anyway, I had some real-lift stuff come up earlier, but Doing... now. Anomie⚔ 19:46, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Bot prematurely archiving Editor Review requests

Hello Anomie, I noticed that AnomieBOT closed 15 editor reviews on February 8. Many of which were still marked with an * in the title, indicating they hadn't received a review yet. I thought the bot only archived editor reviews that had received reviews. It appears the bot started archiving any requests older than 30 days and no comments for more than 7. There is a backlog at this process, so it is possible for a request to go 30 days without getting a review. Alpha_Quadrant ^(talk) 22:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it looked for Category:Wikipedians on Editor review/Backlog as an indicator that the review had not been reviewed yet; no one told me that that category was renamed to Category:Wikipedians on editor review/Backlog. Fixed now, and I watchlisted {{Not yet reviewed}} so I'll hopefully notice other breaking changes in the future. Anomie⚔ 19:56, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

User script

Hi there, is there any chance of you adapting your file-REVDELing .js for log redaction? Thanks very much, It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 00:31, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like it is possible. Looking at it now. Anomie⚔ 20:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done It works on at least Special:Log and on log excepts such as the ones shows when editing a protected or deleted page or viewing the contribs of a blocked user. I also moved the script to User:Anomie/revdel-checkboxes.js, to better match its new function. Anomie⚔ 21:32, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 00:20, 19 February 2012 (UTC)#

OK, this has got to be a very obscure bug. Now that I've had a chance to test this new feature, I would like to point out that the logging of its actions is not quite correct. Whereas the old one-at-a-time Log RevDeling method indicated the name of the log correctly (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ARevisionDelete&type=logging&target=Special%3ALog%2Fdelete&ids[40295520]=1&ids[40295505]=1&ids[40295500]=1, where I've grouped some RevDel log entries together to make it easier to see the sort of thing I'm talking about), the new mass-RevDeling is recorded as only being applied to "All public logs" (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ARevisionDelete&type=logging&target=Special%3ALog%2Fdelete&ids[41136380]=1), even though in that case both RevDels were to the same log (the user rename log). It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 01:47, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Also, these new, super-duper diffs are not actually displaying correctly (hence my need to go back and <nowiki> them). And if you paste them into a browser where you're not logged in, ReturnTo (as in, title=Special:UserLogin&action=submitlogin&type=login&returnto=) does not work properly (you get an error message), meaning you have to be logged in first and then paste the URL. Something for Bugzilla, perhaps? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 02:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Taking the last issue first, it does seem to be a bug that the return url skips array-valued parameters. Please do report it to Bugzilla. Reproducing it is simple: just go to something like [3] (which is generated from the existing checkboxes on the history page, so nothing to do with my script) when not logged in and note that the "returntoquery" parameter in the login link does not contain the "ids" from the URL.

For the next-to-last issue, the problem is that "[" and "]" are not valid URL characters. Replace them with %5B and %5D instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ARevisionDelete&type=logging&target=Special%3ALog%2Fdelete&ids%5B41136380%5D=1.

As for the first issue, I'll look into working around the issue for when all the entries checked are from the same log. If you pick entries from two different logs, though, it will have to do the "All public logs" thing. Anomie⚔ 17:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

That should do it for the workaround. Bypass your cache and let me know how it works. Anomie⚔ 21:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Looks good It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 22:28, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Cleanup and Copyedit

Hello Anomie. Please would you reconsider the change requested at Template talk:Copy edit#Compatibility tweak? Since the deletion proposal for {{Cleanup}}, we have noticed the beginning of a tendency for people to change that tag to {{copy edit}} in circumstances where copy editing is not what is required; in other words, GOCE is at risk of becoming a dumping ground. Copy editing is quite intensive, and we're pretty short of active copy editors as it is, so this is a trend we need not to facilitate. Thanks for considering it. --Stfg (talk) 19:29, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Replied at Template talk:Copy edit#Compatibility tweak. Anomie⚔ 20:01, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

trouble with Misza13's bots

...they appear to have stopped working. It was suggested in this thread that you might be able to assist. If you have the time, your help would be welcome.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 02:17, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Posted about it at WP:BON#Misza13's bots seem to be down. Anomie⚔ 19:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

good food

yum Ashley young 1 (talk) 17:26, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Ajax Preview updates

Your Ajax Preview script is amazing. However, there are a few things that I wanted to change in order to polish it further. They are all merely aesthetic changes, but I think they improve upon the script. My version is here. Feel free to check out the changes with this diff, although it's probably easier to notice the changes by just running my version for a moment. A few things you won't notice are access key changes; I moved the "p" access key to the one for "Instant preview". I also changed the "Loading" text, so it's best you test this on a longer article so that it appears longer so you can see it. I also removed instant refs when previewing an entire article since the refs are already there. Feel free to do whatever you want with these changes, cheers. Gary King (talk · scripts) 03:14, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Revert

Hi. I saw you reverted my change. Why are the "fullurl" versions being preferred over actual links? Also, it's a bit odd that Special:Contribs/newbies works while &contribs=newbies doesn't, don't you think? Likewise &contribs=newbie works while Special:Contribs/newbie doesn't. Killiondude (talk) 06:56, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Because of T36659: the "actual link" version is going to be going away in 1.20 (it was going to stop working in 1.19, but then they decided to give it a slightly longer deprecation path). As for one using "newbies" and one using "newbie", yes, that is unfortunate but it's the situation we're given. Anomie⚔ 11:53, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Link Classifier...

...appears to be broken with the latest MediaWiki update. =/ - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 00:39, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I noticed. Almost all my scripts broke for using "mw.util" instead of "mediawiki.util". Should be fixed now. Anomie⚔ 03:33, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks! - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:51, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Hehe, mine too. :)
Anyway, you noticed User:AnomieBOT/shutoff/AccidentalLangLinkFixer? Amalthea 16:28, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Dated maintenance templates

Quoted from User talk:Philip Baird Shearer:
“	When you create a new dated maintenance template or add maintenance dating to an existing template, as you did recently to {{Rayment}} and {{Rayment-hc}}, it would be very helpful if you would also add the template to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates so AnomieBOT knows what to do with all the articles suddenly dumped into the dated maintenance category. Otherwise, AnomieBOT ends up sending me an email with thousands of lines complaining that it can't find any template to date in each one of those articles and asking me to manually fix things. Of course, don't do this if there is need for someone to go through and do something more intelligent than "add |date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}} to all existing instances", but in that case it would be even better to have someone do that before activating the dating feature. Anomie⚔ 18:12, 5 March 2012 (UTC)	”

Personally I would not have bothered to add a date parameter to the {{Rayment}} template. It was added by Rich Farmbrough -- presumably because something somewhere complains if {{Self-published inline}} {{Better source}} do not have dates. I am happy to add them to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates now that I know that the lack of them disturbs you. -- PBS (talk) 19:49, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Anomie⚔ 03:21, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Category:Documentation subpages without corresponding pages

Category:Documentation subpages without corresponding pages, which you created, has been nominated for discussion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:51, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Invitation to Berlin hackathon, and possible sponsorship

Anomie, would you be interested in coming to the Berlin Wikimedia hackathon, June 1-3 2012? I can offer some travel subsidy. Please reply on my talk page on mediawiki.org if you're interested, or email me at sumanahwikimedia.org. Thanks! Best, Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 01:48, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Replied by email. Anomie⚔ 20:58, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

revdel

• List of orators

24 Sept 2010. Please see if you can restore that while looking at the page history. I don't see an option to there. - jc37 19:34, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

First step is to either (a) check the checkbox next to the revision and then click the "Del/undel selected revisions" button at the top or bottom of the history list, across from the "Compare selected revisions" button, or (b) click the linked date of the revision, and then find the "(del/undel)" link just under the title and click that, or (c) click one of the diff links on the revision and find the "(del/undel)" link in the diff column header, or (d) if you're on a log page instead of the history page, click the "more..." link on the log line for the RevDel action. Whichever method, you'll end up at a page much like this one (the URL will differ depending on the method, but the page itself is the same); at the bottom you can uncheck the three checkboxes, fill in a reason, and click "Apply to selected revision(s)". I'll leave the actual clicking of the "Apply" button to you. Anomie⚔ 20:40, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Knew about the log page (found it right after posting earlier), but wasn't aware that you couldn't do this directly from the page history (without checking the box and then hitting the button). Thanks for the update : ) - jc37 00:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, the reason I did that, was that I thought it would "stay behind" when I moved the rest of the history (and then I could just restore it at the redirect location). Apparently that isn't the case. - jc37 00:48, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, the whole point of RevDel is that it leaves the revision in place so everyone can see something was removed, which also takes care of the old problem with selective deletion where the person who made the edit after the deleted edits would look like they had made every change done in those deleted edits. OTOH, leaving the revisions in place prevents the trick which allows for fixing copy-and-paste moves, and can leave a cluttered history if a lot of revisions need to be deleted due to copyvio or the like. Anomie⚔ 00:54, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

AnomieBOT doesn't have to do anything anymore...

...Since apparently the delay of User:Helpful Pixie Bot has again been decreased to 18 minutes, to sneak in before AnomieBOT can do anything. The only thing left for you is apparently to clean up after Helpful Pixie Bot makes a mistake[4].

If you two agree on this, then fine by me, otherwise perhaps you two can have a discussion about this and decide how to handle this, as it seems rather petty now. I personally prefer AnomieBOT, since it seems to make less mistakes (notice e.g. this one from an hour ago from Helpful Pixie Bot), and doesn't make (AFAICT) unapproved and unwanted replacements like changing "references/" to "reflist"like here. Fram (talk) 10:29, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

HPB has been at a delay of 18 minutes for most of February, actually, and probably before too. I do see that HPB has been getting most of the datings over the past several hours, no idea why though. Maybe AnomieBOT's Internet connection is being slow, or maybe Rich figured out some way to make his bot slightly faster, or maybe it's just because Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template is relatively full thanks to a new bot changing {{Unreferenced}} to {{BLP unsourced}} and AnomieBOT is tripping over that.

Personally, I also prefer tag dating to happen without bypassing all the template redirects, capitalizing the templates, and the other errors and "general fixes" HPB does. But I don't care enough to bother trying to convince Rich about it, since AFAICT he very much does prefer those "extra" changes. As long as I can still see enough errors to update Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates, it doesn't matter that much to me. Anomie⚔ 14:46, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Fram (talk) 15:03, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

BTW, please do let me know if you see AnomieBOT make any preventable errors. Anomie⚔ 15:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The crat dilemma

Unfortunately, you took so much time to accept adminship, that it frustrates me now to realize that you've just spent six months handling admin duties. You are what I would call an automatic bureaucrat. Will (frustratingly) await the start of October this year to force you to stand for cratship. Wifione ^Message 06:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, if you're going to force me . I like what MBisanz said at WT:RFA#Suggestion for new crats about how 'crat jobs are boring and good 'crats should also be boring. I'm probably boring enough personally; I'll have to consider whether I'd have something to contribute to any of the boring 'crat jobs. If any of my talk page stalkers have any thoughts, feel free to chime in. Anomie⚔ 17:23, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd say October couldn't come sooner; you'd be a great candidate! Jared Preston (talk) 22:02, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Template help

Hi Anomie, I've just seen that you're around and I was wondering if I could ask you for help on some template syntax (seeing as you seem to know what you're doing). I've been trying some stuff all morning and I'm hopelessly confused. If you don't mind, I'll try formulating the question either here or on the template talk page, whichever you prefer. Jared Preston (talk) 11:26, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Best to ask at the template talk page, in case anyone else wants to join the discussion. Anomie⚔ 12:26, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, see Template talk:TransferMarkt. I've done my best in asking, it's just a bit harder without sitting side-by-side next to the expert and explaining to them what you mean, haha! Cheers. Jared Preston (talk) 12:41, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Gadget-mySandbox.js

Have you seen Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#"My sandbox" link is broken, and the help link isn't helpful.? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:19, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes. The problem appears to have been diagnosed as an issue with the deprecated secure.wikimedia.org secure server. Anomie⚔ 22:04, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know gadget programming but I would have guessed there is a way to write the link so it also works at secure.wikimedia.org. The url for the English Wikipedia is https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en. MediaWiki:Gadget-mySandbox.js currently says /w/index.php?title=Special:MyPage/sandbox&action=edit&preload=Template:User_sandbox/preload&editintro=Template:User_sandbox. It would work if these two strings could simply be concatenated: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Special:MyPage/sandbox&action=edit&preload=Template:User_sandbox/preload&editintro=Template:User_sandbox. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Sure, it could be made to work. Not sure it's really worth the effort, though, since secure.wikimedia.org is deprecated and it works fine on https://en.wikipedia.org. Anomie⚔ 02:00, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Users on secure.wikimedia.org do not see any message that it's deprecated and many still have it bookmarked. I was hoping you knew an easy fix for gadgets. I can do it in wikicode: [5] and [6] both work at any of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anomie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anomie, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User_talk:Anomie. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:43, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Page tabs template

Hi

I think you fixed the extraneous coding in the Lionel post here - Template talk:Page tabs#20 tabs.

I have proposed that it be extended to 12 tabs, rather than 20, but wondered if there would be a need for any other coding rather than just deleting the lines 13-20?

If you could advise I would be more than grateful :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 20:31, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

You should also address the issues raised in the talk page discussion. Anomie⚔ 21:11, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

By "issues raised" I take it you mean the |* issue? (which I think they were using to space between the tabs on their example)

I have edited the sandbox but I am unclear as to whether or not I can test it or find out if it is correct (as I have no clue about how the functions work). Could you please take a look on the sandbox page and check it for me?

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 22:12, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

You can test it by just using {{page tabs/sandbox}} instead of {{page tabs}}. But the proposed code looks good, so I went ahead and did it. Anomie⚔ 22:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I was using my sandbox5 page, and the tl sandbox, but got into difficulties with making it work.

I have got as far as adding the extra curly brackets, User:Chaosdruid/sandbox5, but is there possibly a limitation to the amount of nested functions? I cannot seem to get it to register the last three when testing on the Special:ExpandTemplates page.

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 22:12, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, that is weird - It works! but not on the special test page, ah well, thanks for the help :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 23:04, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

User script listing cleanup project

I'm leaving this message for known script authors, recent contributors to Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts, and those who've shown interest in user scripts.

This scripts listing page is in dire need of cleanup. To facilitate this, I've created a new draft listing at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts cleanup. You're invited to list scripts you know to be currently working and relevant. Eventually this draft page can replace the current scripts listing.

If you'd like to comment or collaborate on this proposal, see the discussion I started here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts#Scripts listing cleanup project. Thanks! Equazcion ^(talk) 04:46, 25 Mar 2012 (UTC)

Alpha Phi

Care to put the protection back? Less than a day from the expiration to another deletion....Naraht (talk) 16:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think that would be a good idea. Anomie⚔ 17:45, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry if that came off as sarcastic. The odd thing is I'd like to see the book in question (Pledged) knocked out as a Reliable Source, I own a copy. *ugh* However at this point, that's not the situation.Naraht (talk) 18:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Not at all, although I personally have a hard time recognizing sarcasm anyway. I really couldn't care less whether the article contains the "secret" motto or not, as long as it's removed for good reason and not because members of the group want it to be "secret". I'm only involved in it at all because someone put an {{editprotected}} on the talk page at some point. Right now I just have it semi-protected; I'll watch the article to see if anyone figures out that they could continue the war by getting autoconfirmed. Anomie⚔ 20:35, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Infobox ukcave merger completed

I noticed that you were the admin who closed the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 November 22#Template:Infobox ukcave. I finished rewriting {{Infobox cave}} with the needed parameters and migrated all the articles that transcluded {{Infobox ukcave}}. I don't think another discussion is needed to delete {{Infobox cave}}, but I'm not sure what to do. Could you take care of it? –droll [chat] 22:11, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

For the moment, just redirect it. I don't know whether there is any useful history to justify keeping ukcave around or not, nor whether it is at all useful as a redirect. WP:RFD might be the best venue for determining that. Anomie⚔ 23:13, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I went with your redirect idea. If it needs to be deleted someone will get around to it. Thanks. –droll [chat]

MeditationBot

Aha, gotcha. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 18:52, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Dispute resolution survey

Dispute Resolution – Survey Invite Hello Anomie/Archives. I am currently conducting a study on the dispute resolution processes on the English Wikipedia, in the hope that the results will help improve these processes in the future. Whether you have used dispute resolution a little or a lot, now we need to know about your experience. The survey takes around five minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist in analyzing the results of the survey. No personally identifiable information will be released. Please click HERE to participate. Many thanks in advance for your comments and thoughts. You are receiving this invitation because you have had some activity in dispute resolution over the past year. For more information, please see the associated research page. Steven Zhang DR goes to Wikimania! 02:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Some bubble tea for you!

. Monocletophat123 (talk) 17:12, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

U-8047 TRUST

When I origionaly wrote this artical it was complete and acurate. Unfortunatly many people editid it down and down and because of lack of citations. If you would alow our web site to be used for citations see www.u-boat.co.uk it would be easy to change the artical back to it's former glory. Sory if speling bad, I have learning dificultyUboater (talk) 08:50, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar

		Golden Wiki Award
		For implementing great ideas. Bgwhite (talk) 05:13, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, but it wasn't my idea. Headbomb suggested it at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 47#Bot to tag previously-deleted articles that were recreated., I just implemented it. Anomie⚔ 16:37, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, thank you for coding up the great ideas and for being humble crazy. Bgwhite (talk) 05:13, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Anomie⚔ 13:43, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Abuse Filter on the Article Feedback Tool

Hey there :). You're being contacted because you're an edit filter manager, At the moment, we're developing Version 5 of the Article Feedback Tool, which you may or may not have heard about. If you haven't; for the first time, this will involve a free-text box where readers can submit comments :). Obviously, there's going to be junk, and we want to minimise that junk. To do so, we're working the Abuse Filter into the tool.

For this to work, we need people to write and maintain filters. I'd be very grateful if you could take a look at the discussion here and the attached docs, and comment and contribute! Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Template or markup for scansion?

Hello, Anomie. User:It Is Me Here recommended you to me, though I fear you may be overqualified. Because of this discussion I've begun thinking about how verse scansion on Wikipedia might be improved. One possibility is implementing the scansion within a template or markup. (This has to do with requiring monospace, but <tt></tt> seemingly not working properly with line-initial spaces, plus an aesthetic dislike by some for the gray-box formatting.) My sense is that the line-initial-space style (as I used in the discussion) may well be the easiest and best method, but I don't want to ignore other possibilities (and maybe there are others existing that I'm not aware of). If you care to, you can see a few formatting failures at User:Phil wink/sandbox3#Scansion line tests. Might you (or someone you know) be willing to discuss pros, cons, abilities, limitations of templates/markup with me in the future? This is certainly not in a "work order" phase yet... just spitballing. Thanks much. Phil wink (talk) 01:42, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, if it's just a matter of the default styling, you could just use a <pre> with appropriate styles to override the normal grey box: <pre style="border:none;background-color:transparent">

  ×  /    ×  /    ×   /     ×  /      ×    /
When I | consid | er how | my light | is spent

Although it would be better to get the appropriate styles added to MediaWiki:Common.css so just something like <pre class="plain"> could be used. Anomie⚔ 02:16, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

That's what I'm talking about! I gotta ask smart people questions more often. Thanks! Phil wink (talk) 02:39, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Oops... Is there a way I can selectively accommodate markup in pre (a no-nowiki!)? This is a virtue of line-initial space formatting that I've just lost...

  ×  /    ×  /    ×   /     ×  /      ×    /
When I | consid | er how | my light | is spent <ref> Milton: ''On His Blindness'' 1</ref>

Thanks. Phil wink (talk) 03:19, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, you could use {{#tag:pre}}:

  ×  /    ×  /    ×   /     ×  /      ×    /
When I | consid | er how | my light | is spent 

Although then you have to use alternative markup such as {{!}} or &#x7c; for "|", which breaks the alignment in the edit box. Anomie⚔ 02:19, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

What about <poem>? Its purpose is to retain lineation and line-initial spaces, it keeps the ref, and with "style" it can be made to indent and monospace:

  × / × / × / × / × /
When I | consid | er how | my light | is spent

The only problem is that it still eliminates line-interior spaces (which you can see ruins the first line). I think that's a bit strange. I can think of (though it pains me) some modernist poems which actually require interior spaces. Maybe you know of some addition style element that could resolve this, or just possibly the actual function of <poem> could be tweaked? Phil wink (talk) 03:24, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

white-space:pre would be the style element needed to make multiple spaces show up, if they were output in the first place. The problem with <poem> and most other tags is that HTML Tidy that is used to clean up the page output will collapse all whitespace to a single space (except in <pre> tags), so the browser never sees it. Anomie⚔ 16:02, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

OK, I don't know yet if I'll make a formal request, but I think you've helped me get to the core issues. I'd be very grateful if you'd take a look here to see if you agree I've caught the germane details, and if not, set me straight (feel free to make any necessary clarifications there, even though it's my page). And... would you have any interest in pursuing either of these paths? Thanks again for all your help! Phil wink (talk) 17:47, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a good summary to me. Anomie⚔ 17:55, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry to keep bugging you, but I seem to be at a dead end. I've posted notes on my proposed new markup at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Scansion markup, to no avail. I take it this is the wrong venue. Do you know where I should present this proposal? Thanks. Phil wink (talk) 02:44, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes it's hard to get anyone to care enough to comment on a proposal, especially for something as esoteric as this. I'm not sure where else you could go, though, as I'd guess you already posted at the relevant WikiProjects as well. Anomie⚔ 02:55, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Alright. Thanks again for your help. Phil wink (talk) 03:22, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Have commented a little bit at the Village Pump (technical). Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager 08:01, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Request

Hi, please don't reinsert this link to Goa Inquisition. It belongs to a Hindu fundamentalist website. The article is purported to have been authored by historian Teotonio de Souza. However, the fellow has clarified on his blog that it's a hoax and he is not its author. Refer [7]. Thanks. Joyson Prabhu ^{Holla at me!} 17:57, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

You are very confused. I did not do anything there; my bot, AnomieBOT, did. The problem there is that you successively removed only one of the several instances of the "vgweb.org" source from the article, each time leaving a in the article (e.g. [8]). All the bot did was fix the error by copying the text of the reference to one of the remaining "vgweb.org" reference tags. Next time, make sure you remove all instances of the reference rather than just the one containing the actual text of the reference and you won't have this problem. Anomie⚔ 18:09, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry and thanks for clarifying that! Joyson Prabhu ^{Holla at me!} 19:32, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Infobox road

Thanks for applying the change. Can you do me a favor at the template though? The intent was for the restrictions to appear after tourist routes, and I goofed on what number the label and data should be. Can you condense the numbering in there a little? Here's the code:

|label9= Existed:
|data9= {{#if:{{{established|}}}{{{formed|}}}|{{{established|}}}{{{formed|}}} – {{#if:{{{decommissioned|}}}{{{deleted|}}}|{{{decommissioned|}}}{{{deleted|}}}|present}}|}}
|label10= History:
|data10= {{{history|}}}
|label12 = Time period:
|data12  = {{{time_period|}}}
|label13= Cultural<br>significance:
|data13= {{#if:{{{time_period|}}}|{{{significance|}}}|}}
|label14= Related<br>routes:
|data14 = {{#if:{{{time_period|}}}|{{{related|}}}|}}
|label16= Tourist<br>routes:
|data16= {{#if:{{{tourist|}}}|{{#ifeq:{{Infobox road/hide/tourist|{{{state|}}}{{{province|}}}|{{{country|}}}}}|no|{{{tourist|}}}|}}|}}
|label17 = Restrictions:
|data17  = {{{restrictions|}}}
|label19 = Allocation:
|data19  = {{#ifeq:{{{country|}}}|AUS|{{{allocation|}}}}}

And then drop out

|label8 = Restrictions:
|data8  = {{{restrictions|}}}

Thanks! Imzadi 1979 → 05:25, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Went ahead and did it, hope you don't mind. --Rschen7754 07:02, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't mind, thanks. Anomie⚔ 14:12, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

JS & css code for highlighting watchlist and page historys

I copied your code for these to give that pale blue shading. Great - much better than bold, green stars etc. Thanks. NtheP (talk) 13:23, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Glad you like it! Anomie⚔ 16:37, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi, in light of the changes tonight have you managed to tweak this code so it still works? I miss my blue shading :-( NtheP (talk) 22:39, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Lately I've been using the script I mentioned at Wikipedia talk:Customizing watchlists#Useful little userscript, but if you want just the style it's easy enough. You can remove the bit from User:Nthep/common.js, and change the User:Nthep/common.css part to:

span.updatedmarker {
    display: none;
}
.mw-special-Watchlist #mw-watchlist-resetbutton {
    display: inline;
}

.mw-special-Watchlist .mw-changeslist-line-watched .mw-title {
    font-weight:normal;
}
.mw-special-Watchlist li.mw-changeslist-line-watched {
    background-color: #eef;
}

.action-history #pagehistory li.selected {
    /* Confusing otherwise */
    background-color: transparent;
}
.action-history li.mw-history-line-updated,
.action-history #pagehistory li.selected.mw-history-line-updated {
    background-color: #eef;
}

Anomie⚔ 00:29, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks (again!) NtheP (talk) 08:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Changing user

hello my friend. the code python of changing user is very cool. Can I request give me this python code? if you want plz email([email protected]) me. i want translate this code and use in fawiki/Mahdi.hajiha (talk) 16:35, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about. I've coded next to nothing in Python. Anomie⚔ 16:37, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm talking aboutthis edit. is not the pywikipedia code? something file example.py?:)/Mahdi.hajiha (talk) 17:50, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

No, the code for that is at User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/CHUUClerk.pm and is written in Perl using my own bot library (which is all published at User:AnomieBOT/source). The code is released under the GPL and/or the Artistic License, and since it's published on Wikipedia it is also available under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 License and the GFDL. Anomie⚔ 18:11, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

is great.:) but one question. when i want run this code what i am do? meaning in toolserver or my pc? i save is example.pl?its work with commons arguments python?/can i ask you the source of the code work in(bot:Requests for approval) thanks/Mahdi.hajiha (talk) 18:49, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

If you wanted to run exactly this code, you'd have to have Perl and the correct Perl modules installed, then copy conf.sample.ini to conf.ini and fill in the important bits (particularly the username and password, and create a configuration section for "[bot 2]"), delete everything except CHUUClerk.pm from the "tasks" directory, and then execute ./bot.pl tasks from the top source directory to start the bot. But running code you don't understand is often not a good idea. Anomie⚔ 20:07, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

i'm download this. im need this? sorry bot where am i create this file(conf.sample.ini) or tasks? and where im run ./bot.pl tasks . thanks alot/Mahdi.hajiha (talk) 06:29, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

More guideline clarification

Hi Anomie, I'd appreciate you taking another look at Talk:Zeitgeist: The Movie#Zeitgeist: Final Edition if you have the time. Arthur seems to have completely misunderstood the guidelines, or is willfully misinterpreting them. To be perfectly honest I'm beginning to get annoyed with him and I'm on the verge of loosing my objectivity (behaviour not becoming of a good Wikipedian, I know *blushes*). And, of course, I may be wrong. Perish the thought! ;-) Kind regards, nagualdesign (talk) 07:55, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Maintain patience! It is sadly the case that sometimes someone will have a personal problem with an article or part of an article, and will attempt to misapply Wikipedia's policies and guidelines to have it removed (and there are also times when someone will do the same to keep some bit of information). I'm glad to see Equazcion waded in there, as I'm really not all that good at dealing with that sort of thing. Anomie⚔ 10:30, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Yes, Equazcion seems to have hit the nail on the head by referring to WP:ABOUTSELF, and you've hit the nail on the head by saying, "Maintain patience!" :-P You're right, of course. I decided to take some time out to cool off a bit, and perhaps let Arthur digest the information. I have good instincts though, and my best guess would be that he's a 'good Christian' who feels that he's doing the right thing, in which case he's unlikely to listen to reason. Zeitgeist: The Movie is an assault on Christianity, you see. Take care. nagualdesign (talk) 10:47, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Gang of Eight (Soviet Union)

Rename

Rename in State Committee on the State of Emergency . Violation. The distortion of facts, neutrality. No need to confuse Constitution USSR and United States. In the Soviet Union under the Constitution, article 6 ruled by one party. The KGB has authority to arrest any Government leader and the President USSR CPI-RUS (talk) 16:04, 15 Mai 2012 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about. I think you are very confused. You might have better luck contacting one of the users listed at this link for help. Anomie⚔ 13:10, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

User:Anomie/revdel-checkboxes

Hi, it looks like (some of) your user script will become part of the MW software with version 1.20 wmf3, to be implemented in a week or so I think, so you may wish to take a look in case you need/want to do anything. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 23:22, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

It looks like the changes to MediaWiki are enough that the part of the script that adds the checkboxes to the log lines will silently fail, while the other part of the script will keep working fine. You will lose the ability to revdel in the log snippets (e.g. when editing protected pages), because MediaWiki does the checkboxes itself but doesn't do the del/undel button. Anomie⚔ 01:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Questions from MSGJ

Hi Anomie! Could I have your opinion of the following ideas?

• When dating maintenance templates, include not only the month+year but also the day of the month. With a little magic in {{ambox}} this needn't affect the category system, but it may be helpful in cases when editors are trying to track down who added a particular tag.
• Bypassing template redirects when adding dates. One of the things HPB used to do, and although I guess there was never explicit approval for it, I don't think there was ever a complaint about this particular type of change. I understand that you have wisely avoided this issue, but might it be worth exploring whether there is consensus to do this?

Best — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:46, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Opinions:

• It would be possible, but then we get into issues with MDY versus DMY date order (not that the template would care). I'm not sure it's worth the hassle. Personally, I find Wikiblame (or actually, my own wikiblame-like tool) more useful for finding stuff in the revision history, and we have it linked from the header of every history page.
• Not interested. There are already enough people who get confused when {{cn}} changes to {{cn|date=May 2012}}, more will get confused when it changes to {{citation needed|date=May 2012}}. And really, I just don't see the point of it. Also, I personally find WP:AWB/TR is often abused (templates are only supposed to be added after consensus, not on the whim of an editor) and I'd rather have no part of it, much less a part of bypassing all maintenance template redirects.

HTH. Anomie⚔ 23:59, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the response. I was just exploring ideas! By the way, would you mind having a look at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 48#Bot for Template:Cleanup as this might be an easy task for your bot? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:54, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

To avoid engvar problems, we could use the ISO date format. If we were to do that, it might be worth going further and putting a timestamp on these templates. This would allow a message like (tag placed 5 months ago) which might be more useful than just the month and year. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:57, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Back when the whole "end user date formatting" thing was going on, there were vocal people arguing against YMD date order (and even more against "ISO" date order, since they didn't like proleptic Gregorian and such). Anomie⚔ 15:09, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

The point

I'm not sure if you read through them in their entirety, but the point of my comments at VPT were that there appears to be a problem, and the problem I sought to address was not the same one I've brought up before regarding developer behavior. The problem is evidenced in people's reactions and the reverts that must ensue afterwards. We won't change that by poking fun at their reactions nor by telling them they should be reacting differently (that hasn't worked yet, anyway), so it would make sense to say that something else needs to be done instead. I don't know if you program as a hobby or by profession, but if it's the latter, you could be used to the benefit of management telling people that software changes are beneficial and they're going to need to get used to them one way or the other. There is no such structure here. You're frustrated at a problem that will continue as long as our only solution is to lash out. Equazcion ^(talk) 18:04, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

AnomieBot - NewArticleAFDTagger

I was wondering if it would be a good idea to include past Prods and CSD along with past AfDs? Articles get Proded, deleted and return without any improvement being made. A few days ago, I speedied an article for copyright violations and it had been speedied twice before for copyright. There are the Template:Old prod and Template:Oldcsd templates. Bgwhite (talk) 07:47, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

The difficulty is in detecting them. I suppose most CSDs could be detected by looking for a link to WP:CSD in the deletion summary; do people use a common format for deleting prods? Anomie⚔ 14:54, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm confused, which is my normal state. How are you detecting previous AfD? Most people use twinkle and it creates the Template:Prod or editors manually add the template. There are a ton of templates for CSDs, each with a different name. Twinkle will use the Tempaalge:Db-*. Bgwhite (talk) 18:08, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

For a previous AFD, you can look for the subpages of WP:AFD, and look in the deletion summary for links to WP:AFD subpages as a bonus. But for a prod or CSD, all you have to go on is the deletion summary, and without being an adminbot the bot can't see what templates might have been on the page before it was deleted. Anomie⚔ 19:31, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I understand now. Any way you could look at the page's previous logs and determine from that? Bgwhite (talk) 22:03, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

That's what I'd have to do. I expect CSD deletions usually mention which CSD criterion, but is there any real convention for prods? Anomie⚔ 22:35, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Other than the two main prods, no. There would be no reason for your bot to tag BLPprods as the re-created article may or may not have references, which is easy to spot. There is no convention for regular prods. Bgwhite (talk) 23:14, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Question of an article being created that was previously deleted via a Prod surfaced on my talk page. I was just wonder what the status was and if thought of a way to make it doable? Bgwhite (talk) 23:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Message on page creation

Hey Anomie. You mentioned at WT:RfA that it was possible to show a message on page creation. I'd be quite happy to rephrase the warning so that it was relevant to anyone starting an RfA, but I couldn't see a way to make the message relevant to editors who are just voting on the RfA. So... how on earth do you put up a notice on page creation? Worm^TT · (talk) 13:33, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Ignore me, I know the answer and your comment on WT:RFA confirmed it. I should think more. Have now fixed it. Cheers. Worm^TT · (talk) 13:44, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks good! Anomie⚔ 16:18, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:Video game ratings

Hi! I'm not sure this was what I wanted. For example, if you look at the infobox in the NHL 13 article (to the right), it says "The template (Video game ratings) is being considered for deletion." above the ratings. That's why <noinclude> should be wrapped around the TFD template. Thanks, HeyMid (contribs) 21:14, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

So you don't think people should be told about the possible deletion of the template, like they are told about the possible deletion of almost every other template listed at TFD? Anomie⚔ 22:26, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Not really, but in this case I believe it makes the information in the infobox more messy. I think it's harder to put the TFD template in infoboxes, because there is limited space for the TFD text. But it's acceptable for me. Cheers, HeyMid (contribs) 22:42, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

API:Search

Thanks for the link to that. The search is pretty straightforward to use, but I could not see a parameter that would restrict the results to a WikiProject. I guess it just does content search. Or is there a way to say "wproj=physics" within a get command one sends to it? The selection of "importance=high" would have also been useful. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 06:54, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

The API search does the same thing the website search does. To search within a WikiProject, AFAIK you'd have to do multiple queries and cross-reference the results with the various WikiProject categories clientside. Anomie⚔ 13:00, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that was also my guess. Had the 50 limit not been there, it would have been easier, but I guess I have to figure out how to overcome the 50 limit issue by multiple queries. As an aside, one could eventually hack this by having a bot routinely add wikiprojects to the page as specially marked comments, then a new variation of search could have just used those as search keywords, so it would still be content search, but extended content search. But that is probably somewhat down the road. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 13:09, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

mw:API:Query#Continuing queries should help you with the 50 limit. Anomie⚔ 13:59, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Right. Thank you. FYI, I am doing this just to generate a report on the use of self-published books in key project articles. They are all over the place, and I had used a few myself, not knowing they were self-published. The eventual challenge is to extract the publisher partial ISBNs so they can be searched and reported. History2007 (talk) 14:36, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

You have a reply...

I've replied at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#replacing references temporarily.     The Transhumanist 11:48, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Anomiebot

Hey. Anomiebot replaced my template with text when I did not want him/her (What gender is Anomiebot?) to edit my page. I have put up a notice asking that people don't edit my page. But I put it in english. Is there a template that I can put up on my page to ask robots as well to stay away? BTW thanks for being an admin.

Oh! I almost forgot to sign my post. Legolover26 (talk) 15:23, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

To tell many bots to not edit your userpage, place {{nobots}} somewhere on the page. But I don't know why you would want {{uw-ublock}} on your userpage when you are not blocked, and you may find that others will remove it in the future. Anomie⚔ 15:34, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

VPT

Hi. Just in case it wasn't clear in the discussion, I just wanted to thank you for your patience and help explaining/clarifying things : ) - jc37 08:59, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome! Anomie⚔ 10:23, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Template help

Hi, Anomie. You've been kind enough to help another editor in my position, so I hope you won't mind my coming to you with a request. Over a week ago I posted at Template talk:NRISref about a grammatical error in the template's published text. Since I cannot edit the template, I was wondering if you might take a look at my note there when you have a moment. Thanks very much for any help. With regards, Tenebrae (talk) 00:06, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Replied there. Anomie⚔ 15:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmm...

All of a sudden the link-colors script seems not to be working. Did something change somewhere? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:59, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

API is b0rken. Sysadmins are investigating. Anomie⚔ 03:06, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. (At least it's not børk børk børken...) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:08, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

The report

Hi, FYI, your API:Search suggestion was very helpful and resulted in this report. I still can not get it to do exact searches, but that seems to be a feature of the engine. So I will have to figure something else out, but the API route made things much easier. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 08:11, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. Anomie⚔ 11:56, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon

Still a problem, I've replied to your post in this section at WP:VPT#MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon. Dougweller (talk) 09:14, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Replied there. Anomie⚔ 11:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Mysterious entry at Featured pictures

(Continuing the discussion from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories#Alternative proposal(s)) The first image I see at Category:Featured pictures is File:An F-A-18C Hornet launches from the flight deck of the conventionally powered aircraft carrier.jpg, an image which does not show that category. However, the image's filename is shown in that category as File:050817-N-3488C-028.jpg, which has plenty of incoming links. That REDIRECT doesn't show any categories, either. When I look at the code of that page, it shows a few bits and pieces, but no REDIRECT. What's also odd is the lack a message at the top of the page "Redirected from ...". Can you explain that and where the category comes from? (If it's too convoluted to explain in 2 sentences, just say so – I won't lose any sleep over this.) -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:53, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

How strange. The file description page for File:050817-N-3488C-028.jpg exists locally, but there is no image. On Commons, the page commons:File:050817-N-3488C-028.jpg also exists but as a redirect to File:An F-A-18C Hornet launches from the flight deck of the conventionally powered aircraft carrier.jpg. So when someone tries to view File:050817-N-3488C-028.jpg, they wind up getting (silently!) redirected thanks to the Commons redirect, and even if they try to look at the "redirect=no" link they see the information for the Commons redirect rather than the local page. It seems like there is a bug or two somewhere in there, although I'm not sure exactly where.

The category comes from the local version of File:050817-N-3488C-028.jpg, of course; even though there is no way to view it besides editing it and then previewing, the categories and such still do take effect. Anomie⚔ 14:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Update: The bug where the Commons redirect overrides the local file page is already filed as T30299. T16117 covers the redirect issue. Anomie⚔ 14:35, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

As an aside, there's no such thing as a "F-A-18C Hornet", rather F/A-18C. The 'remove slashes in filenames' went a bit too far here. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 17:52, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

wake up your bot pls

Anomie, your bot is asleep? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:27, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

This morning AnomieBOT's computer was hanging trying to allocate the ptys for ssh login, and then I noticed it died completely around 17:00 UTC. I'll be on location to reboot it manually soon. Anomie⚔ 20:59, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:02, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Bot is back up now. Anomie⚔ 21:43, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Fiddling with the linkclassifier

Hey, Anomie, would you mind terribly if I copied your link classifier script to my userspace and fiddled with it? I think it's adding things on the end of the title attributes of reflinks, which is messing up a script I just wrote a little bit. Thanks! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:12, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Go ahead. If you find any bugs in my script, please let me know. And if you don't, it might be best to blank your copy when you're done to avoid unneeded forking. Anomie⚔ 19:31, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay, so the problem is with the following lines changing the titles of ref tag links:

            var m=a.href.match(/#.*/);
            if(m){
                a.title=a.title.replace(/#.*/,'')+m[0].replace(/_/g,' ').replace(/\.([0-9A-F][0-9A-F])/gi, function(x,n){ return String.fromCharCode(parseInt(n,16)); });
            }

I'm having a little trouble parsing out the intent of these lines (regexes aren't my strongest of suits), but I'm guessing it's for changing the titles of anchored wikilinks. Was this intended to also affect the ref tags? If it wasn't, then it should be able to be fixed by changing if(m) to if(m && !a.href.match("#cite_note")). If it was, well, I guess I'm SOL, but thanks anyway! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:03, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done That's exactly what it is doing; the problem is that a link to a section with non-ascii characters in the name is encoded, and it's easy enough to decode it for legibility. Anomie⚔ 20:08, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

template:summarize

Hello, I just updated {{summarize}} to support "|date=", I was wondering if your bot should add dates for it? 70.49.127.65 (talk) 21:58, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Since the template doesn't add any category, the bot won't be able to find the template in order to date it. Anomie⚔ 00:42, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Standard

• User_talk:Philippe_(WMF)#FYI

I asked for some similar clarifications as well. - jc37 20:28, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Help needed with posting to COI notice board

Hi Anomie. You helped me with directions on resolving a COI dispute for FindTheBest on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#FindTheBest.com

I wrote an article on FindTheBest following all of the NPOV and COI guidelines. You can find it on my user sandbox. I posted the article in the COI Notice Board but I'm not sure if I did it correctly. Could you please help me out? I would greatly appreciate any and all help. Cheers, Evan (talk) 23:03, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

It looks like you posted it well enough, now you just have to wait for someone to respond. Anomie⚔ 01:16, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

KFC

Hi, can you direct AnomieBOT to KFC please? Thanks. Farrtj (talk) 09:20, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

AnomieBOT will get there in due time. One of the servers has been lagging for the past several hours, so AnomieBOT is pausing until the lag goes down. See [9], AnomieBOT only edits when all those numbers are under 5. Anomie⚔ 16:48, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		I'm awarding you this barnstar as a token of my appreciation for writing the complicated CSS code we needed to get the new {{article issues}} template launched, and for sticking around until it was finally deployed. The end result is fantastic! Thanks a million. :)  -- WikHead (talk) 10:18, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Anomie⚔ 14:21, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

anomiebot created a minor mess.

Looks like AnomieBOT went thru tagging Thai people with the WikiProject Biography banner. Only problem is that they already had the banner. See Talk:Aditya Assarat, Talk:Christina Aguilar, Talk:Samuel Ajayi, Talk:Jean-Baptiste Akassou, .... I'm going thru and removing the second banner. Bgwhite (talk) 23:16, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Forgot, the bot also added the "importance" parameter to the Biography banner. The importance/priority parameter hasn't been used for several years. It was replaced with group specific parameters such as sports-priority, a&e-work-priority or musician-work-priority. I thought every rule around here had to keep changing so we couldn't remember everything. Bgwhite (talk) 23:28, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Ugh. I have no idea what caused that, I can't manage to reproduce it even when feeding it exactly the same article before it edited the first time. Task ended, thank you for cleaning it up. Anomie⚔ 03:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Subst magic

Please can you add your self-subst magic to Template:Template for discussion. We have recently changed it so that it needs to be substituted, but twinkle is still transcluding it. This would be a temporary fix until twinkle is updated. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:02, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Please ignore the above, I realise this is impossible. It is the de-subst magic I was thinking about! That's me getting confused — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:04, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Mock diffs

Hi, i just saw this and you've made a really fine job.

A while ago i created {{wiki diff}} in an attempt to have a template for mock diffs… but could only simulate very basic diffs… So i was wondering could you take a look? In case have any sudden brainwaves as to how it could be made usable.

And about the CSS classes you mention… would it be easy to create a mock diff template using them, and having an available CSS that users can import into their own .css page?… benzband (talk) 19:02, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Re: Unsigned comment templates

I've made all the changes that I can to the unsigned templates: only the protected {{Undated}} could be slightly fixed before adding them all to User:AnomieBOT/TemplateSubster force (note that {{Unsigned-unk}} should probably be left transcluded until someone adds a full {{Unsigned}}). Thanks for following up on this. --xensyria^T 22:43, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Template talk:Useronline

I've left a message on Template talk:Useronline, could you please help? Callanecc (talk • contribs) talkback (etc) template appreciated. 14:04, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Replied there. Anomie⚔ 14:44, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

And that has fixed it. Thanks, Callanecc (talk • contribs) talkback (etc) template appreciated. 06:10, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

I give you this cookie for helping User:Callanecc and fixing my incorrect JavaScript. I copied it in from another location and after I had finished testing it I forgot to change it to work for all users. Thanks again! CJ Drop me a line! • Contribs 10:27, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Yum! You're welcome! Anomie⚔ 15:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

{{Coord unsourced}}

The reason it's both is because of coord's in infoboxes where it can't be inlined. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Usually we use separate templates for inline and "box" versions of a maintenance template. Anomie⚔ 18:01, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Well if you want to seperate them , feel free, just let me know the new names Sfan00 IMG (talk) 18:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Another geodata related template

{{Derived geodata}} - I'm using this on article that appear to have a number of coordinates derived from WikiMapia/Google etc. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 10:23, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Are you wanting it to be a dated template? If so, I've just written instructions at Wikipedia:Creating a dated maintenance category on how to do it.

BTW, I note that your base category is misnamed (it should have a lowercase 'g'). And the value for your |issue= is a bit long: it should be the short bit of text you would include in {{multiple issues}}. Anomie⚔ 16:02, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

On the subject of Geocoding

• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates#Template:Coord_unsourced - A concern has been expressed that this

template is too 'noisy'. Suggestions. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 16:12, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

• I also re-did {{coord review}} as blank template for tracking stuff, it should probably follow {{coord missing}} in

terms of categorisation Sfan00 IMG (talk) 16:12, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

DRV bot

Hi Anomie, can you take a look at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 48#DRV bot? It should be a pretty simple task. T. Canens (talk) 06:28, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Replied at Wikipedia talk:Deletion review#DRV bot request. If I don't file a BRFA for at least the page-creation task in a few days, please do ping me. Anomie⚔ 14:03, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist question

Hello, Not sure if this has anything to do with anything, but after the recent edits on MediaWiki:Common.css the nice functionality of bolding pages on my watch-list has disappeared. (I don't claim to have looked at all the recent changes, or to try and understand what is what there.) The button to clear the page is also not there anymore. This is only on the English Wikipedia, so I'm guessing someone (admin level) changed something somewhere! Thanks--Education does not equal common sense. 我不在乎 22:55, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Bolding_of_unread_in_Watchlist_again... for the details.

Wikipedia:Customizing watchlists has been updated. It tells how to add the functionality back in. Bgwhite (talk) 23:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. (I wish it wasn't so arbitrary when and what gets changed, it's almost as bad as Facebook changes!)--Education does not equal common sense. 我不在乎 23:18, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

What changed is that MediaWiki was updated to apply a class to the entire watchlist entry, instead of just a <strong> on the page title (ironically, this was in part due to complaints by Equazcion, who is now complaining that things were changed to fix his original complaint). But this change meant all the style rules, both the ones they shoved into MediaWiki:Common.css and the ones people use in their user CSS, needed to be updated. Anomie⚔ 00:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

thank you for ASCII chart

Dear Anomie,

Thank you for contributing a clean and easy-to-read ASCII chart Commons:File:ASCII Code Chart.svg currently used in the ASCII article.

I see that someone else made some small tweaks to that chart. I've already written on page User talk:AzaToth about one change I think should be reverted back to your version.

--DavidCary (talk) 04:13, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

If you might be agreeable...

Hi Anomie, if you might be agreeable to stand for an RfB, it will be privilege to nominate you. Kind regards. Wifione ^Message 04:06, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Would I really stand a chance though? I've never even !voted on an RfA, and I still haven't found time to look into WP:CHU. Anomie⚔ 12:37, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

MedcabBot

Hi there, do you think you could repurpose MedCabBot to work with DRN? There are different parameters it'd need to function, but I can provide these if it's possible. Regards, Steven Zhang ^{Get involved in DR!} 02:36, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Maybe, although at a quick glance it doesn't look very similar. Anomie⚔ 02:46, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

A BOT-created table

I'm working on improving templates for the {{request edit}} queue to bring it up to the same level of quality and process as AfCs and request edits for edit-protected pages and found myself at your doorstep. I'm looking for a table like this or this, but for this category. User:The Earwig sent me your way. How hard is it to create a similar table for requested edits? We're still hammering out some other major template changes along these lines as well. User:King4057 (EthicalWiki) 05:12, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

 Done User:AnomieBOT/EDITREQTable. The color scheme is that fully-protected pages are in red, semiprotected are in yellow, non-protected mainspace pages are in green, and non-protected non-mainspace pages are in white. Anomie⚔ 21:27, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Awesome!! Is there a way to take off the second two columns? So it's just the page and the date it was tagged. User:King4057 (EthicalWiki) 01:16, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

It's possible. But there is a use: non-admins working on the category might find it useful to know which pages they cannot complete the request for, so they can leave these for admins or for later reject-only review. Anomie⚔ 03:07, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Streamworks International

AnomieBOT placed a buzzword box into a section of the article Streamworks International. I have since modified the section based on more sources found about the subject. Would you be so kind as to look at the section and give me feedback on whether the section has been improved? Thanks! Ryoga3099 (talk) 11:41, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

No, it didn't. The {{buzzword}} was added in the previous edit by Mean as custard (talk · contribs); all AnomieBOT did was add {{date}}. Anomie⚔ 18:13, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Template:Split section

Hello! Please see Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Can a faithful copy of a PD image be copyrighted?.
The SVG file might be copyrightable as computer software (so it shouldn't be retagged), but it isn't used in the rendered template. MediaWiki's PNG conversion is PD; it contains only a visual design that I created and released into the public domain, not the potentially copyrighted SVG code. Therefore, no attribution is required. —David Levy 02:33, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

And what happens then when T5593 gets fixed? Anomie⚔ 05:05, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

That's a valid concern, but I've seen no indication that such a change is in the works. —David Levy 05:15, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems shortsighted to me to make changes that will have to be reverted when the bug is fixed. Especially when the solution is so somple: just go back to your original gif and make a new SVG that doesn't have licensing issues. I might do it myself if no one beats me to it. Anomie⚔ 05:19, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Especially when the solution is so somple: just go back to your original gif and make a new SVG that doesn't have licensing issues.

Yes, that's precisely what I'd like to do. I recreated the minor improvements lost to the database malfunction in 2008, and I've been trying to figure out Inkscape's "Trace Bitmap" feature since yesterday. Unfortunately, I've always struggled with that program (and SVGs in general). I could have sworn that I successfully traced a bitmap at some point in the past, but I'm having no luck this time.

I might do it myself if no one beats me to it.

I would sincerely appreciate it. —David Levy 05:47, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

 Done File:Splitsection PD.svg was only a few minutes' work for such a simple image. FWIW, I loaded the gif into Inkscape, traced the shapes using the "pen" tool and then tweaked the positioning of the nodes manually, copied the colors, and then cleaned up Inkscape's output to remove unneeded cruft.

Feel free to transfer it to Commons (I purposefully didn't {{Keep local}} it), and I leave it to you whether to leave File:Splitsection.svg where it is or to move it out of the way to allow the PD version to occupy the logical filename. Anomie⚔ 15:15, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Anomie! I used a text editor to update the arrow's color (and also changed "33.5" to "34"), uploaded the file to Commons as File:Splitsection.svg and deleted the old revisions.

It was very kind of you to do this. It bothered me (probably more than it should have) to know that the switch from raster to vector resulted in added restrictions, so I'm relieved that we now have a PD SVG. Thanks again! —David Levy 17:26, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. I deleted File:Splitsection PD.svg as F8/G7 to avoid having multiple versions laying around. Anomie⚔ 17:44, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Minor changes to MediationBot

Would it be possible to add the following features to MediationBot?

1. When listing a case on Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Tasks, the bot removes any instance of {{Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Tasks/None}} under the "Unassigned" header that is not commented-out.
2. The bot periodically checks all four sections of the template, and for each section if no case (or nomination) is listed then the None currently template is re-added.
3. When the bot actions an accepted request, {{Medcombox}} is changed so that |status=mediator.
4. When the bot actions a new nomination, a listing is added to the Tasks template using Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Tasks/N (removing the None template if applicable). When the bot removes a decided nomination, the associated Tasks listing is deleted (and the None template is re-added if applicable).

If you would prefer I move this request to the bot issues page, I would be happy to do so; I'm not sure where you prefer to receive queries about already-running bots. If these changes are possible, please add them to the bot's functionality. Thank you, AGK [•] 22:13, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

In terms of existing features, I forgot one thing: when actioning a rejected request, could the bot please change the category to Category:Requests for mediation rejected requests instead of Category:Mediation Committee rejected cases? I renamed the category because it conflated requests with cases, which has created substantial confusion among our users in the past. AGK [•] 00:18, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

 Done All of the above. None of this seems too major, and certainly falls under the broad description of "Clerking for MedCom" that the bot is approved for. Let me know if anything goes awry. Anomie⚔ 16:43, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. The Bot already maintains an Open Tasks template, but we are hoping to add some functionality to the template. When you have time, please consider whether to implement Template:MedComTasks would be acceptable within the scope of the bot's current tasks, and if it is acceptable then whether any feature there is not feasible. Your response to the proposed updates to the template is not urgently needed, but I do appreciate your time. AGK [•] 20:50, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Yobot

Hi, after holiday I am just catching up and spotted this edit by Yobot. You unblocked for a specific task that this edit is not in line with. It is also cosmetic in nature. Has there been any change to the status of Yobot or is this grounds for a re-block? Keith D (talk) 22:17, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

That edit is a violation of WP:COSMETICBOT. I have no objection to someone reblocking based on that, but I don't have time to involve myself in the matter right now. Anomie⚔ 10:41, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

La Cleopatra (poem)

Hi, how can I solve the request of Refimprove for this voice?. The article has got already its own references and I need your help in order to undesrtand better what am I asked to do. Thanks in advance. Moustaky (talk) 19:30, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• no answer for me? Moustaky (talk) 10:17, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

  Have you tried asking CouchSurfer222 (talk · contribs), who is the one who added the tag is the first place? Other than that, why don't you try expanding the article to be more than 3 sentences and a few lists? Anomie⚔ 10:44, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Why not use {{fix}} directly?

The template {{failed verification}}, which does produce the tag ^{[not in citation given]}, is certainly easier to use than {{fix}}, but "citation", in the singular, is inappropriate when there are more than one. Why do you object to my putting forth a little extra effort to produce an accurate message? Peter M. Brown (talk) 19:22, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

For one thing, you formatted it wrong so it didn't categorize correctly. It also makes the wikitext more complex, means that if consensus dictates a change to the tag then every article needs editing rather than just the one template, and it goes against the template's own documentation: It should not be used directly on articles by itself. Anomie⚔ 23:19, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I certainly welcome a correction to the format. The fact that I got it wrong suggests that the documentation is unclear. I could pose, on the template talk page, the same question I pose here, suggesting that the prohibition against using the template directly be lifted, but I thought you might be able to explain. You seem to be suggesting that my use of a template on one article has some effect on other articles; I don't see how that could work.

You put {{failed verification}} on one reference. I have now put it on the other. It looks pretty silly with both of them there. Of course, I won't leave things that way; in a month or less, I will either delete the badly sourced claim and its references or else alter the claim to agree with the sources. In the meantime, though, why can't I use {{fix}} to flag the references as ^{[not in citations given]}? Why can't I, as a responsible editor, be the one to choose both the text and the category? Peter M. Brown (talk) 00:10, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Your main problem was that you used |cat= where you should have used |cat-date=, although you also created a tag with a rather unhelpful link and no useful tooltip, and you missed categorizing into Category:All articles with unsourced statements. To really do it right, you should have used something along the lines of {{fix|link=Wikipedia:Verifiability|text=not in citations given|title=The material in the vicinity of this tag failed verification of its source citations|date=August 2012|cat=[[Category:All articles with unsourced statements]]|cat-date=Category:Articles with unsourced statements}}. All to change one word from singular to plural. And the consider what happens if you copy this into many articles, and then the community wants to change the link from Wikipedia:Verifiability to a page more specifically addressing the issues in the tag: for {{failed verification}}, just the one template needs editing, while for your custom tag someone has to go through and edit all those articles.

If the singular versus plural in the tag is really that much of a concern, wouldn't it make more sense to either make {{failed verification plural}} or make {{failed verification}} recognize a "plural" parameter to change the one word? Anomie⚔ 01:03, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, I have now edited it to use [[Category]] explicitly. Am I now following the rules? Peter M. Brown (talk) 00:56, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

No, you still screwed it up. Even worse, IMO, as now it lacks the noprint and Inline-Template CSS classes (the former used to skip the tags when printing the article and the latter to support users' adjusting their user css to change the format of or hide these tags. And the categorization is still all wrong, and will probably only get worse if an AWB user or certain bots comes along, as the category will be divorced from the pseudo-tag. Anomie⚔ 01:03, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the code. I have never created a template; perhaps it's time I learned how. Wouldn't I just make all the errors you've caught, in a different context? I certainly don't have the courage to change a template. Peter M. Brown (talk) 01:29, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

You're always welcome to ask for help, from someone like me who knows templates well or at WP:VPT if you don't know anyone. In this case, if you were going to create the new template I would suggest you make a copy of the old template and then make the few edits needed (be sure to credit the original in the edit summary when creating the new one!). If you were going to go the route of having a |, you'd need to use {{edit protected}} anyway since the template is fully-protected but the change would be to replace "citation" with something like "{{#ifeq:{{yesno|{{{plural|no}}}}}|yes|citations|citation}}". In this case, I'd suggest the latter route to avoid increasing the maintenance burden. Anomie⚔ 12:51, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Since this section will be archived, I am creating a page User:Peter M. Brown/Anomie 2012 to retain the information. Thanks again for your help. Peter M. Brown (talk) 14:22, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Request

re User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/DatedCategoryCreator.pm The bot creates the monthly category, and adds the template {{Monthly clean up category}} (e.g. [10]). As appeared from a VPT:#Templates_and_expansion_depth thread (you contributed to), this template can cause newPP to reach Highest expansion depth: 41/40, adding the page to Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded. This is an old template, but the newPP categorisation is recent (May 2012?), showing a backlog.
Nicely this specific template already has a shortcut to skip the depth (string manipulation of the earlier composed name: "1911 Britannica articles needing updates from August 2012"). From the documentation: #Limitations: add year, monthnr and month name as parameter. I did in the Category mentioned earlier [11], and the issue is solved. My request: can the bot in the future pages add these three parameters standard? (changing existing pages to be asked elsewhere - any suggestion?). -DePiep (talk) 06:53, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm inclined to say "Let's see if Lua replacements for Category:String manipulation templates fixes the issue". Anomie⚔ 10:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Of course. See you under the Moon of Rio. -DePiep (talk) 06:48, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

WP:CON

The sarcastic tone of this was not necessary. Disgustingly dismissive edits such as that are why admins are held with such contempt. I don't care which "side" gets its "way" in this dispute, I was simply pointing out the issues with reverting to a year-old version. You clearly did not even have the courtesy to even read the request in its entirety. If you had, you would have restored the interwikis, which was entirely uncontroversial. —WFC— 17:02, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

As I said, the admin who did the protection was involved in the discussion, so your request was at best admin shopping. Anomie⚔ 17:13, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Your judgement is that there was not consensus to significantly change course, and that jc37 is capable of handling it. Fine: note that I have neither taken the matter to ANI nor attempted to reset the template. But neither your opinion, nor the fact that the community (including myself) overwhelmingly believes that you are well equipped to make such calls (as evidenced by your relatively recent RfA), gives you the right to treat a good faith if misguided request as trolling, nor me as the scum of the earth. You have continued to do both in this thread. —WFC— 17:36, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) WFC, I presume Anomie's use of File:The Wrong Version.svg is what you find dismissive. For my part, I interpret his use of that image to be an attempt at humour in replying to a request that could reasonably be interpreted to fall within the scope of m:The Wrong Version. Just as sysops can be put in the stocks without being degraded, so too can an administrator pretend to overreact to a request to revert a protected article without being "disgustingly dismissive". To this outsider, it seems like you have overreacted. YMMV. AGK [•] 18:09, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikicode in prot log entry

Hi, re your protection of Template:Taxobox in October 2011 - the presence of an unbalanced <includeonly> in the prot reason is causing non-display of the text "and cascading prevents editing the doc subpage. See talk." on User:AnomieBOT/PERTable; worse, it hides the whole of this row, although both of these do display when transcluded. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:55, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

 Fixed The bot will now correctly escape HTMLish tags when quoting the comment. Anomie⚔ 16:34, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you --Redrose64 (talk) 16:38, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Like you said

Yep. See here. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:42, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Block formatting breaking the page layout, extremely oversized fonts, far too long, and past issues with images and external links in the sig too judging by removed talk page comments. I think that guy needs to be warned to fix his signature once and for all or be blocked for disruptive editing. Would you like to do it? You seem to be a better communicator than I am, I'll probably be too blunt. Anomie⚔ 16:14, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

It's over a week since his last edit, which happens to be where I first noticed this sig. Looking at preceding contribs, it's also the only instance. With that in mind, also the nine-day interval, it might be best to wait for a second instance. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:46, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Bot bug

[12]. T. Canens (talk) 03:03, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

GIGO. The close header for Antiseptic Bloodbath was screwed up, it didn't match the output of {{DRV top}}, so the bot got confused and basically thought the entire discussion up to the end of the next section's close header was part of the {{{1}}} value. I've added some checks to the bot to have it not remove any headers (and instead complain to User talk:AnomieBOT) if this sort of thing seems to happen again. Anomie⚔ 15:00, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Your spam whitelist request

Hi, this is to let you know that your request at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist has now been processed and will soon be closed and archived. To find the request, search for your username at that page. Stifle (talk) 17:32, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

I think something got confused ;) Anomie⚔ 18:06, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Tim1357#Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DASHBot WebCite

As the user who closed this BRFA, you may be interested in this thread. →Σσς. 22:53, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Random question

I'm just curious — since AnomieBot isn't an admin, how is it able to detect deleted edits for WP:USURP purposes? Nyttend (talk) 23:18, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Since the bot is not an admin, it can't query the deleted edits directly. It can get the edit count from the API (i.e. this), which includes both deleted and non-deleted edits but does not include the dummy revisions created for page moves and other log actions. So the bot takes the user's entire list of contributions, tries to match them up with their log actions, and subtracts to estimate the deleted edits. Occasionally it can't match them up right (the log entry and the dummy revision can sometimes be recorded a few seconds off), but the estimate is usually close enough. Anomie⚔ 23:48, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation! I've never seen that page (is it the basis for the edit count given in Special:Preferences?) and am now not confused at all. Nyttend (talk) 23:51, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

It's the same edit count as the one given in Special:Preferences; the page itself is just the MediaWiki API. Anomie⚔ 00:08, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#KISS_image_filter

Thanks for your prototype at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#KISS_image_filter - much appreciated. However the risk is high that if you don't follow this up to develop it a little more and make it at least an optional gadget that the idea will run out of steam and get forgotten. If you can find the time for it, I'd be grateful. Thanks, Rd232 ^talk 12:18, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I made the prototype just to prove we could hide the images entirely from a gadget, without requiring changes to MediaWiki itself. But unless there is consensus to actually make this gadget and consensus on how exactly it should work, including where exactly the "on/off" switch goes, I'm not really inclined to do much more with it. I also note that #3 (besides "turn off the gadget") and #4 in the original proposal are unlikely to be doable, and some people seem to have supported only if these features are included. Anomie⚔ 17:23, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I assumed that the gadget could store at least the general preferences (per-page might be too unwieldy) the way Twinkle stores a user's preferences. As to UI design: for the optional gadget, I'd say it's perfectly fine to choose something, anything (lefthand Toolbox would do) to get the show on the road. Once it's working, the design can be discussed; but trying to perfect it beforehand is likely to prevent anything happening. Rd232 ^talk 12:19, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Adding to Penguin Cabal

Hi there, noticed your Penguin Cabal page, nice work! Wondering if I could link some more images (Youngstown State and Pittsburgh Pens) to the article. Thanks for the consideration! Marketdiamond (talk) 22:04, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any appropriate free images in Pittsburgh Penguins (note that making the copyrighted image on the shirt of this image the focus of the use would make the use non-free) or in Youngstown State University. What exactly did you have in mind? Anomie⚔ 01:52, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Elliott Miles McKinley

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Talk:Elliott_Miles_McKinley regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Please review. Your bot says delete - which is correct - then someone put keep. See comments on article talk page. Thank you. Jrcrin001 (talk) 19:25, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Hot Cat discussion at VPP

Thank you for your interest in the discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Proposal:_enable_HotCat_for_all_editors_by_default. Please note that I have now proposed 5 different, more nuanced versions of the original suggestion, to better gauge to what level (if any) we are willing to make Hot Cat more accessible. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 16:37, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Gadgets

Hi, what you guys are doing here MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition breaks the Teahouse gadget. Is it possible to put it back? heather walls (talk) 02:25, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Worked for me. Try clearing your cache. Anomie⚔ 02:28, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

It works for me now, also...so mysterious. :) heather walls (talk) 02:29, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, we just fixed the breakage. Probably this edit is what fixed the problems people were having. See also WP:VPT#"wikitable sortable" tables are no longer sortable. Anomie⚔ 02:32, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Teahouse test

I noticed where you tested an edit at the Teahouse. Recently I also performed a test. I don't know how involved you are with this initiative but I did want to ask someone why the question link does not allow for a preview. Would you know anything about this, by chance. Thank you for considering this and for your contributions to Wikipedia. 76Strat ^String da _Broke da (talk) 02:34, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

No idea. I was just testing it because of the section just above. Anomie⚔ 02:37, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Charinsert positioning

Considering there currently is no consensus as to where the thing should go, I really probably shouldn't have moved it just yet. But do you think it would be worth moving back below the buttons, at least for now (or more accurately, removing the stuff repositioning it)? Would need to make sure your fixes aren't lost, though, if folks decide they do want it directly under the editbox later. Although it probably should have been prepended to the editoptions instead of stuck before it, too, if Oliver's changes involve what I think they do... whoops again.

Also, would you know of any good ways to try to get more people involved in the disccusion in general? -— Isarra ༆ 18:10, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

If you want to take out the moving, just take out (or comment out) the line

$( '.editOptions' ).before( placeholder );

Not sure if it's worth changing it again, since no one besides me seems to have complained about it and I added my variable so I can prevent it from moving for my own account.

As for more visitors, I guess you could advertise it again at the Village pumps; I see it's already on WP:CENT and listed as an RFC. Not sure if you could convince people to add it as a watchlist notice. Anomie⚔ 20:34, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Aiight, thanks. And given that there is already a watchlist notice about other edit interface changes, that would probably be a little weird even if it were added. -— Isarra ༆ 00:04, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry ref Peacock

I did a deep revert and it hadn't occured to me that the technical features had changed in the meantime (which was dumb of me really) --BozMo talk 13:08, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Signature

Thanks for you advice about this, i see it only now. :) Bye, AndreaFox ^{Knock here...} 14:30, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Glad I could help! Anomie⚔ 14:45, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Cleanup categories CfD

Hi Anomie I have closed the CfD 2012 September 25 discussion on monthly cleanup categories as "delete".

You mentioned that some related templates may now be un-needed, so I just thought I's suggest that you may want to nominate them at WP:TFD. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:34, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

I think I'll just G6 them. Anomie⚔ 13:09, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Yobot

When you unblocked Yobot in July, was it your intention to allow it solely to handle one task, or was it a general unblock? At the time, I thought you had worked out an agreement that it would just do that one task. In any case, it is running another "checkwiki" task, and making lots of cosmetic edits again. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] The edit summary for all of those refers to checkwiki error 38, which is about replacing the "i" html tag with apostrophes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:06, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

If it's violating WP:COSMETICBOT again, which it certainly sounds like its doing from your description, please do reblock it. Anomie⚔ 13:26, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

There was a bug with the italics fix which I now fixed. I am also working on adding skip conditions to ensure this won;t happen in the future. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:08, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Check for instance that were inverted tags like this one in some of them. This needs further AWB bug fixing. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:13, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Two bugs were fixed: rev 8453 and rev 8455. One was reported: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#FixSyntax_should_fix_reversed_italics_tags_inside_cite_fields. Still working on improving more. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:18, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

anomie bot stopped updating editprotected tables

Apparently something is interfering with anomiebot's updating of the tables that go at the top of the editprotected and editsemiprotected categories since 10/2. Discussion from WP:VPT reproduced below. Any idea what the problem is?Sailsbystars (talk) 16:23, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Anyone know what's up at semi-protected edit requests or the edit requests categories? The template usages at the bottom of the page seem to be added correctly, but the boxes at the top that list the request along with reason for protection seem to have stopped updating around 2 October. This disconnect may be part of the reason why edit requests are taking longer than usual to process, which was the subject of an ANI. Sailsbystars (talk) 15:52, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

The category pages transclude User:AnomieBOT/SPERTable and User:AnomieBOT/PERTable. They have not been updated by User:AnomieBOT since 2 October. I don't know why. You can contact the bot operator at User talk:Anomie. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:07, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

It looks like the OOM Killer took out some of AnomieBOT's processes; I've restarted them now. I'll have to think about what I can do to make it more obvious to me that something like that went wrong for the future. Anomie⚔ 17:35, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Rescuing refs

The rescue refs feature is nice. Can it be invoked at will on a page? Thanks. History2007 (talk) 12:40, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

No, the bot will just automatically go to any page that has a broken reference, as indicated by the corresponding categories. Anomie⚔ 13:21, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, so it is a question of waiting for it.... Thanks. History2007 (talk) 13:23, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

You can also check User:AnomieBOT/OrphanReferenceFixer log (normally updated every 6 hours) to see if the bot has looked at it, and what it found there. Anomie⚔ 13:35, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

It would actually be easier to fix it by hand than look at the bot log. Ideally there should be a WMF menu button that says: "fix orphans" and it will just do it. History2007 (talk) 09:06, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

If the error is left after the bot has processed the page, it would have to be fixed manually anyway. Anomie⚔ 13:01, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but as you are editing, it will help not to have to wait 2 hours for the fix. If the utility does not do it, then can do manually. Anyway, I will stop now, but you can suggest to WMF if you like. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 13:23, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Re: Wayback links

Oh OK. I had a feeling there was another way to do those, but I forgot about those parameters. Thanks! --Jtalledo (talk) 19:21, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Photo

I have restored image in article Operation Storm per your conclusion. All best. --WhiteWriter^speaks 11:08, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

What an editor can do about this now? Please, give me an advice. --WhiteWriter^speaks 13:43, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Looks like you did already in this edit. Anomie⚔ 17:32, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

It looks like it was still not enough for FPoS, i hope that now it is... Thanks anyway! --WhiteWriter^speaks 19:33, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

File:Ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia.jp

I'm afraid your closure of this FFD is mistaken, as it is based on a rather blatant misreading of the policy. You claim that "The reference to WP:NFC#UUI5 seems invalid: that seems to be talking about using an image from one war to illustrate the general concept of "war" on an article about another war." This is very definitely not what WP:NFC says. It says: "An image whose subject happens to be a war, to illustrate an article on the war"; obviously that means the article on the specific war in question. As such, the present case incontrovertibly does fall under UUI#5. What UUI#5 means, and has always meant, is that historic photographs can not freely be used to illustrate historic events merely because the event is interesting and important. As the corresponding entry in the positive list WP:NFCI#8 makes clear, there are essentially two types of cases where historic photographs of historic events can be used: either the image is "iconic", in which case it must be the object of reliably sourced commentary (which is not the case here), or it must fulfill NFCC#8 and NFCC#1 in some other way, in which case it must convey some identifiable piece of concrete, factual information that could not appropriately be covered in other ways. While NFCC#8 may be, as you say, "often subjective", it nevertheless is based on some rational criteria, and subjectiveness is not a matter of random "I like it" arbitrariness. In particular, NFCC demands that "replaceability with text" must be seriously considered, and that was the point at issue here. The challenge to the file, as made in the nomination, was that the content of the image could easily be covered by a textual description, and none of the keep !votes addressed this argument. Closing of NFCC-related FFDs is not a vote count, and administrators are not only entitled but obliged to uphold overriding project-wide Foundation policy in this matter, even against a local consensus. In these circumstances, keep votes that did not address the crucial policy issue had to be discarded. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:15, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Few agreed with you on the specific manner in which policy applies to that image. DRV is that way. Anomie⚔ 13:10, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Before it gets embarrassing for you at DRV, do you at least concede your error about the reading of UUI? Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:13, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Only slightly; the subject of the image is discussed in the target article, so it's still not an arbitrary image of the war. Anomie⚔ 17:30, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

DRV bot, again

I guess it's not recognizing the September 28 one as closed? T. Canens (talk) 05:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

It should remove it tomorrow, the bot keeps any non-empty page in "Recent" until its over 14 days old. It shouldn't have removed Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 October 2 yet, but it likely got confused there because someone used {{hab}} instead of {{subst:DRV bottom}} when closing it. Anomie⚔ 10:40, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

That "someone" would be me :( Thanks a lot! T. Canens (talk) 05:19, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Allison R. Palmer

Hi, Your bot added a "who says"-tag to the Allison R. Palmer article I created recently. The qualification "leading expert on the Cambrian period", that the tag applies to is actually verbatum from the German wiki article of which the English page is basically a translation. Although it is not a such in the cited websites, a would uphold the qualification is covered bij the assessment of Palmers achievements described on those websites. Any suggestions? Kind regards, Dwergenpaartje (talk) 11:12, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I suggest you talk to Theroadislong (talk · contribs), who the the person who actually added the tag in this edit; if you look closely at AnomieBOT's edit, you'll notice that it only added |date=October 2012 to the tag that was already there. Anomie⚔ 15:18, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I'll do that. Thanks. Dwergenpaartje (talk) 10:42, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Pycode

hello. can bot(MahdiBot) run same code like unusedfile.py, checkimages.py, etc.? if can in BRFA rigor for Requests for approval? regards--:)Mahdi ^talk 13:11, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Running tasks like those would need another BRFA. As far as checkimages.py goes, a bot using that same exact code was denied recently. Legoktm (talk) 13:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

so im not chance?:)--:)Mahdi ^talk 18:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Committed Identity

First I want to thank you for all of the wonderful things you do here. You are one of my wiki-role-models! I am having trouble setting up my committed identity. I have my hash created, (xAv8vARdtNwj4IKg2p4pBbcqyzxuAhsJxpek1OpDj6BCjieVwLFoJn3Y+QDgcM+He05rkHNC2dInnI7ClD5vkA==) and I think all I need to do is create the userbox like you have on your user page. The template instructions were confusing for me, and I am a little wary of simply cutting and pasting your userboxen, and replacing my hash with yours. Is it that simple? --Sue Rangell 20:37, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Wow, thanks! Yeah, it pretty much is that simple. Anomie⚔ 23:50, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Tip

Here's a little tip Anomie:

You created your Wikipedia account on 18 June 2005. On your userpage, anywhere on your userbox, you might like to write the following source:

{{User Wikipedian For|year=2005|month=6|day=18}}

If you do that, this will appear on your userbox:

This user has been on Wikipedia for 19 years, 5 months and 3 days.

Cheers! :) CURTAINTOAD! ^TALK! 05:22, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, although I don't feel any need for including that information on my userpage. Particularly since I only made 14 edits up until 2007, so it might be a bit misleading. Anomie⚔ 11:54, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Note

• Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_October_10#Category:Wikipedia_icons

Dunno if you were notified (asked) about this. - jc37 06:15, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, no one had bothered to tell me about it. Anomie⚔ 11:40, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Closed as NC to delete.

You might want to add an explanatory note to the category page, noting/explaining the need for the category (and the icons in the category) here at en.wp. - jc37 20:20, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Reasons for RfA failures

Hi Anomie! I saw your comment on the talk page for RfA asking if anyone has conducted a study of the reasons for RfA opposes. The discussion seems to have moved on, but I thought I'd let you know that I'm conducting one - I'm working through all of the RfA discussions using a discourse analysis model to look at whether or not the expectations of candidates have changed, and to what extent they have varied over the years. I was a fair way along at one stage, but had to move my attention to another topic, so I'll get back to it over the semester break. Unfortunately, though, I don't have any useful data for you now, as I'm working through it chronologically, so I I'm still in 2009. - Bilby (talk) 15:01, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Nifty, that'll be interesting to see results for. Anomie⚔ 16:35, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

David Anthony redirect

Your bot marked David Anthony as an article previously marked for deletion. It seems like the redirect that I created is totally unrelated to redirect I created. If there is more than one notable David Anthony then it should be turned into a disambig page? Reub2000 (talk) 04:58, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

If there's more than one notable "David Anthony", it should be a disambiguation page. OTOH, if there is only one notable "David Anthony" then a redirect is fine, even if there are non-notable "David Anthony"s. See WP:DAB for details, and since this deals with living people there might be some help at WP:BLP (and the people at WP:BLPN would probably be able to give you more specific guidance). Anomie⚔ 12:48, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Exynos (system on chip)

Hello, there is an IP who damages this article and adds wrong information into the article while there is an English valid source in technology subjects (Engadget) but the IP insistence on a foreign language source while we all know English Wikipedia prefers English and of course valid sources (like Engadget). Please make the article to a semi-protected page. sincerely --Faramarz^♚♔♚ 10:27, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

You should make your request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Anomie⚔ 13:09, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations

First, it seems be only interact when a malformatted case request breaks MediationBot, so thank you for running the invaluable bot. You will have been operating MediationBot for two years this February, and we mediators are grateful for what you do. Second, I read about this in the Signpost. Congratulations! May you do much good in your new position! AGK [•] 20:08, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, and thank you! Anomie⚔ 21:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

• +1. But have you linked your name yet to this account? If not, I'll recommend removing this reference and the one above. Wifione ^Message 03:40, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
  • The cat is out of the bag on that one, since it was posted to wikitech-l last week. Anomie⚔ 04:06, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
    • Ok :) Best wishes. Wifione ^Message 04:18, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for inquiry at User_talk:Legoktm#Inquiry_about_User:Legobot

Hello Anomie,  Abu Torsam  has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Go on, smile! Cheers, and happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

User:Anomie/useridentifier.js

Hi Anomie, any chance you could add icons for filemover and autopatrolled to your script? Also thanks for {{tps}}'ing on my talk page :) Legoktm (talk) 16:50, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Sure. Any group can be added easily enough, as long as it has a decent icon. Anomie⚔ 18:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Template talk:Cite jstor

Thanks for your quick attention to my message at Template talk:Cite jstor. Apologies, I made a mistake and there was in fact no problem. Gareth Jones (talk) 20:43, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

The Admin's Barnstar

		The Admin's Barnstar
		For all your hard work and administration in the MediaWiki namespace. Cheers. --Hu12 (talk) 21:16, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Anomie⚔ 03:04, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Script

Sorry if I broke something, though I can't find out what exactly I broke. — Edokter (talk) — 21:18, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the harsh comment; I had just opened dozens of history pages from my watchlist, and nothing was highlighted! The problem is that the specificity of #pagehistory li.selected in skins/common/shared.css is higher than on .action-history.histswitch-highlight li.selected.mw-history-line-updated that you changed things to, so the color specified there overrode the intended highlight color from my script (although since you missed making the same change in the .action-history.histswitch-highlight #pagehistory li.selected in the previous rule, it was actually that rule's color being used). Anomie⚔ 21:28, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Baseball team infoboxes

Please kindly revisit your recent closure at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 November 14#Baseball team infoboxes You made a single closure, but there are several nominations, grouped under a subheading for convenience, but with individual debates. At least some of them seem to result in "merge". Individual consideration, and a separate closure, is needed, for each. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:04, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Why don't you go discuss them with the WikiProject instead? They're the ones who can really give them knowledgable individual consideration. Anomie⚔ 15:30, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I reiterate: Please kindly revisit your recent closure; individual consideration, and a separate closure, is needed, for each. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Reopened bug FYI

Hi Anomie; thank you for mentioning T13700 during the Editrequest I put in for the Cn REDIRECT and the CN REDIRECT on this talk page. When admin Mr. Stradivarius made the edits, I noted that the Cn REDIRECT had been placed into the "Protected redirects" category, but the CN REDIRECT had been placed instead into the "Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates" category. Since I had not read where this undesirable result had been mentioned during the previous session with that bug, I went ahead and reopened it. This is just an FYI, and thank you again for letting me know about that bug! – Paine (Climax!)  02:23, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I expect the recommended fix will be to arrange for some sort of override for the miscategorization. Anomie⚔ 03:06, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Sounds over my head. If I knew how to do that I would, but it sounds like more of a bandaid than a true fix. – Paine (Climax!)  15:55, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Anomie, I was wondering why some redirects, like the CN redirect, are listed on the WP:Cascade-protected items page, and both the "Edit" appears instead of "Source" and the redirect gets placed in the wrong category, the Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates category, but then for other redirects, like the Cn redirect, which is also listed on the WP:Cascade-protected items page, both the "Source" appears (instead of "Edit") and it is placed in the Protected redirects category, the correct category? I have raised the issue of this inconsistency at T13700. – Paine (Climax!)  19:48, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:Cn is fully protected in addition to the cascading protection; this doesn't make any difference to the actual level of protection, but the full protection does cause the "edit" tab to change to "view source" and the categorization code to be able to detect that the page is protected. Template:CN is not itself protected, only the cascading applies. Anomie⚔ 01:27, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

So, for the unindoctrinated like me, it begs the question, "Why not just fully protect the CN template?" That would make it like the Cn template, correctly tabbed and properly categorized, wouldn't it? Am I missing something? Does it have something to do with the sheer number of adversely affected redirects? – Paine (Climax!)  03:15, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

That could be done, sure. The template itself is cascade-protected to ensure that any subtemplates it uses are also protected, but I don't know why the redirects are also cascade-protected instead of just directly protected. Your best chance at getting an answer might be to dig through the history of Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items to find who added the redirects in the first place and ask them why they did so. Anomie⚔ 04:39, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

You can help....

Hi!
We at India Noticeboard are discussing some sort of flagging arrangement for reviewed articles and some help from editors who have knowledge of bots would be useful. Please take a look at the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics#Large_amount_of_un-patrolled_bad_edits and guide us. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 19:19, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Alpha Phi

I spent a bit of time attempting to keep the "secret motto" on Alpha Phi and talk:Alpha Phi. I was about to reply to [this edit] when it struck me that I was, essentially, alienating a group to keep a piece of information which seems only useful for antagonizing them (Neener-neener, I know your secret motto!) While I despise censorship, it seems that maintaining their "secret" motto is not really beneficial to Wikipedia. Any opinions? Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 07:27, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I don't care about their "secret motto". I just protected the page to stop the edit warring to remove sourced content, but eventually discussion seems to have decided that the source cited wasn't really reliable. Anomie⚔ 12:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello!

	Hello!
	Hello, Anomie I do have to admit,you corrected one of my mistakes.Thanks:) NMoran0449 (talk) 02:09, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

OrphanReferenceFixer

Have you thought about making that a web based on-demand tool similar to REFLINKS? Werieth (talk) 16:59, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't know that it would work too well; it can take a long time to run on an article with many revisions, and it automatically runs on every article in the categories it can fix. Anomie⚔ 00:47, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Blacklisted sites

Hi!
Do you deal with blacklisted and spam sites as well? I had one problem. If you remember, we met while i did some errors in removing references to a blacklisted site India-forum.com. The main reason for getting it blacklisted was that it was basically a chat forum of fans and hence far away from being reliable. Another problem was that it was a huge source of copy-paste artistry. Now, when i find some obvious copyvios, i can remove them from articles, but can not report it anywhere on talk pages or other forums. I am not even able to insert that link in edit summary. Do you know a way out of this? Is there some general norm or something of adding dot or dash or something to change the link but still communicate it? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 11:23, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

In edit summaries, leave off the "http://" from the beginning if it's necessary to include the URL at all. On talk pages or the like, you can do the same or you can wrap the URL in <nowiki></nowiki> tags. Anomie⚔ 19:49, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh of course! That was very simple. Silly me! §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 03:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

template transclusion counts

Regarding this, could you perhaps also comment on that topic at Template talk:Infobox settlement/Other templates up for TfD and/or at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2012 December 18#Template:Infobox County? Thanks. 05:30, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox settlement/Other templates up for TfD#Statistics - Can you explain the drop between 8 and 22 June 2009 (move occurred in between) and the drop for the redirect one year later? Would like you update the talk page there. NVanMinh (talk) 10:09, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

The most likely reason for the drop in 2009 is because before the move, all transclusions of {{Infobox settlement}} were also transclusions of {{Infobox Settlement}}; after the move, this was not the case. The most likely reason for the big drop between 2010-06-08 and 2010-06-22 is probably because a bot bypassed the redirects while updating the template parameters for an approved task, as in this edit. I think it's time for you to drop the stick now. Anomie⚔ 13:05, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

cyberpower is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

As one of my wikifriends, I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas. I hope you had a great one.—cyberpower _Online^{Merry Christmas} 02:02, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

CURTAINTOAD! ^TALK! — is wishing you a Happy New Year! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the New Year cheer by adding {{subst:New Year 1}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hey Anomie! Wishing you a very happy New Year :) CURTAINTOAD! ^TALK! 09:41, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Technical review

Could you look over Wikipedia:Changing_username/Simple#Quinxorin_.E2.86.92_.C2.BB and let me know your opinion? Thanks. MBisanz ^talk 21:28, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Replied there. Anomie⚔ 23:57, 30 December 2012 (UTC)