User talk:DMcMPO11AAUK/Archive Nov 2007

How the RFC bot error log works

First off, thank you for all your work. This is how the RFC bot error list works: whenever the bot sets out to populate lists, which it does every five minutes, if it detects an error in an RFC, it adds it to the list regardless of being listed or not. At midnight UTC time (8PM EDT, I think), there is a cronjob on the bot's computer (incidentally, the Wikimedia Toolserver) ordering that the list is deleted everyday. Therefore, you can tell if a day has no malformed RFCs if loading the error page gives you a 404 error. MessedRocker (talk) (write this article) 10:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

external links?

Just curious why the official site of this school (and one or two other schools) was removed from the external links? Bstone 21:07, 25 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you read the edit summaries you'll understand the reasoning. If the institution's website is shown in the article's infobox, then it doesn't need to be repeated in external links. If external links is empty, it can be removed. WP generally deprecates having external links that are not references, so if we can remove it that improves the article by WP standards. See WP:External links#Important points to remember. DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 00:01, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

100th Anniversary of a Magazine

Thanks for sharing the information.

Well, I still feel it was unncessary to state that the magazine was the 100th issue, since it should be common knowledge (being stated earlier that the magazine was established in 1906)

I think (not too sure) that saying that is considered a "peacock term" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.208.220.208 (talk) 14:57, 26 October 2007 (UTC) [reply]

RFC bot proposal

There's really no need for the bot to have a whole new mechanism for ignoring archived RFCs, as RFCs expire after 30 days anyway (where the bot removes the tag and therefore delists them). MessedRocker (talk) (write this article) 17:46, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Citing References/Sources

DMcMPO11AAUK, Thanks very much for sharing your knowledge! =) I shall be working on the references sections soon.

-Scot- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scot P. Hardie (talk • contribs) 16:13, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MathWorld

MathWorld is "blatant advertising"???? Never mind the fact that the article was created before Wikipedia was considered notable enough to be worth using as an advertising site; never mind that nearly 1500 other articles link to this one; never mind the fact that it's highly respected in the profession; never mind the fact that MathWorld rivals Wikipedia as the primary source of information on mathematics on the web, and WAS the primary source of information on mathematics on the web for years before Wikipedia expanded to the point where it could compete. You decided to ignore all of that and propose speedy deletion because it's "blatant advertising". Don't you know that speedy deletion is only for things that could reasonably be considered uncontestable? Are you trying to destroy all of your credibility? Michael Hardy 17:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Having looked at several Wolfram / Mathematica related articles, I nominated three which appeared to have no significant content and which linked to websites that appeared to exist primarily to advertise or showcase Wolfram products as CSD. Note that the article has no references whatsoever, and if the lead paragraph indicates what it's notable for, as it should do, then what it claims to be notable for includes "sponsored by Wolfram Research Inc., the creators of the Mathematica computer algebra system." Given that it (a) has no references, (b) claims notability primarily through the company that owns the URL, and (c) seems to exist mainly as a mechanism to insert links to corporate webspace in WP, I CSD'd it along with 2 similar articles. As the CSD template was removed from the Mathworld article, I raised an AFD. I still believe the article is non encyclopaedic and in it's present form is simply spam links. Perhaps as such a supporter of the article you could improve it. DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 17:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It needs a bit of a clean up, yes. There are better ways to address such issues. But your contention that this is merely advertising is way off base, especially given the article's age. --Gnome Economics 18:20, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The content of the site predates its sponsorship by Wolfram Research, as the article states. The article has existed since November 2003, a time when Wikipedia barely existed and editors did not feel obliged to add a footnote after every period. Vast numbers of pages link to not only the article, but also the site. There never has been and never will be a Wikipedia policy not to have articles on commercial ventures, not even ones we detest. In short, no matter where we look it is blindingly obvious that the "MathWorld" article is not a candidate for any kind of deletion, and to propose speedy deletion crosses the boundary of absurdity. This once I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and write this off as a novice mistake since you've only really been contributing for about two months. Don't do this again. --KSmrq^T 21:25, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioning that they publish the Mathematica software is not advertising; rather it identifies who Wolfram is. Everybody uses Mathematica every day (except maybe some people who use it far less often but who know and speak to people every day who use it every day; I'm more-or-less in that group and think of myself as something of an exception in that regard) (and except for many non-mathematicians). What Mathematica is is more well-known than who Wolfram is. So saying Wolfram is the publisher of Mathematica makes it clear who Wolfram is. Michael Hardy 19:42, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could work as a new slogan for Numb3rs. "We all use Mathematica every day...". -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:56, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding RFC

I noticed on the MUA:Belize talk page that you re-added a few more RFC templates, but doesn't that break the RFC bot? Or has that problem been fixed? 67.177.149.119 21:25, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple templates in different sections confuses the bot, multiple templates in the same section aren't processed correctly, but the incorrect processing under those conditions gives correct results as long as all the templates have the same section and reason information. Templates wrapped in nowiki tags in a document with a template also break things, especially if they're before the active template in the document. It's a feature of the way the RFC bot searches the document to find the template. DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 23:51, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Re: RfCs

{{ExampleRFCxxx|Talk:Lenticular lens}} DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 14:47, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All I did was move the template from the article page. Its content has nothing to do with me – Gurch 16:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, I went back through the talk page history to see who had added the template to the talk page, as the talk page was being flagged on the RFC bot broken RFC list. DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 23:35, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ross University School of Medicine RFC

Hello and good afternoon. I see that you removed the RUSOM RFCs which I placed. I admit I have relatively little experience with RFCs. However, instead of simply removing them (and thus preventing comment from other editors) might you have been able to fix them? The question remains unresolved and the quality of the article is suffering. Thank you. Bstone 18:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I did the same to your RFCs as I did to all the other non-trivially broken RFCs that I found - if I just fix all the broken I find then people that tried to use the templates will never realise what they're doing wrong, and so next time they'll make the same mistakes and someone else will have to fix the templates or tell them the templates were incorrectly filled out. It's better to mark the broken RFC templates so that the people that want the RFCs to appear on the RFC lists can fix their own RFC templates. I seem to recall that in your case you just used the RFCxxx template name on it's own and did not include a reason, so I would have been unable to complete the template. If you had read the RFC instructions, you would have seen that you need to include three parameters in the RFCxxx template, and that the method of including the parameters is not the normal

template name|param 1|param 2|param 3

but rather a specialised

template name | param 1 name = param 1 value !! param 2 name = param 2 value !! param 3 name = param 3 value

format. I've added detailed examples to your talk page. DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 23:31, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

David Vitter RFC

I'm totally at a loss why you are questioning the RFC format. The RFC was included on the page for political RFCs, received comments and then I removed it manually. Do you have a problem if I revert your changes to the Vitter talk page as they are offering no added value except confusion? Thanks. ∴ Therefore | talk 15:53, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm questioning the RFC format because the RFC is triggering an error entry in the RFC bot error log. Looking at the RFC template it had no " reason = blah blah blah !!" parameter. I find broken RFCs by looking through the RFC bot error logs, and generally try and advise the editor responsible for placing the RFC request in the discussion page concerned of the problem. DMcMPO11AAUK/Talk/Contribs 23:56, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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