User talk:JimCubb/Archive 1

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Welcome

Hello, JimCubb/Archive 1, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! –Outriggr § 03:41, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Benazir Photo

Thanks for the comment. I missed that...been irregular with wiki recently. My Benazir Photo was on the front page?

--iFaqeer 10:57, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

RE:Helpme

Hi there, and thanks for your efforts! Yes, there is a way to revert to the previous version of a page. Doing this is actually quite simple. I'll explain step-by-step;

Go to the page's history and find the last good version (commonly called the LGV).
Click on the version time of the edit you're reverting to.
Click the "edit this page" tab, then fill in the edit summary appropriately and save.

This will bring the page back to the edit you chose, removing all information added after. Hope that helps! If you have any additional questions, please do come by my talk page. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 23:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

It is not only simple but almost intuitive -- Edit the last good version before the bad versions and save it. I've been working much too long in systems that are not intuitive. I need to remember how to get back into the mind set that knows that all drafts are available. I think I know how to do that.

JimCubb (talk) 23:49, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

We try to keep this place as user-friendly as possible. :) Cheers! Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP!☺} 23:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

is this something you can do...?

Sean Whitton of the Wikipedia Information Team has suggested I contact an established editor/admin living in my area to arrange verification that I am indeed the person I say I am. He gave me informations that led me to the page of those in my area and I have put this posting on the talk pages of several. I am myself in The OC. If you are agreeable to verifying my existance, how might we do so? A meet to examine my ID? Something similar? Thank you. Michael Q. Schmidt (talk) 01:27, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm putting this here as your talk page has way too much visibility. I hope this page is on your watchlist.

My schedule almost prohibits interruption. While I was wandering around to learn who you are and try to determine why you should have to verify your identity I came up with another way for you to verify who you are to Sean Whitton, whoever that is.

I seem to remember that a SAG card is a picture ID. (I saw my uncle's card many decades ago.) If so, take a picture of your SAG card, possibly obscuring the end of your membership number and any bar code that may be there. Other such cards could also be used, AMPAS, AFTRA (I think that's right), etc. This method would show that you not only Michael Q. Schmidt but you are the Michael Q. Schmidt who is an actor.

If anyone Wikipedia ever suggested that I verify my identity, unlikely but I suppose possible, I would probably use very strong language in my suggestion that the person stop occupying space and consuming oxygen that could be put to more productive uses. If there is no one else who can help you, though, let me know and we may be able to work something out.

JimCubb (talk) 19:01, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Can you look at my document, and advise?

Could you look at THIS and advise if I am preparing it correctly, as I have never done such before. Thank you. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 17:30, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you should stay completely out of it. I don't think you should have written as much as you did, if anything, in the AfD discussion because of the blatent conflict of interest. I am only getting involved because of the vitriol of those who want to delete your article. JimCubb (talk) 19:29, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

What is written is written... and I have declared my COI at the outset. However, I am preparing for an inevitable DRV and wanted input. Thanks, Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 23:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

PS: John Larroquette is a surprising nice fellow with a true humility. He kibitzed on the set of a production on which I was working. He has a delightful sense of irony about the world and its strange proclivities. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 07:50, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Art

First off, I apologize for the spam. You are receiving this message because you have indicated that you are in Southern California or interested in Southern California topics (either via category or WikiProject).

I would like to invite you to the Los Angeles edition of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Art, a photography scavenger hunt to be held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on Saturday, February 28, 2009, from 1:00 to 7:00 PM. All photos are intended for use in Wikipedia articles or on Wikimedia Commons. There will be a prize available for the person who gets the most photos on the list.

If you don't like art, why not come just to meet your fellow Wikipedians. Apparently, we haven't had a meetup in this area since June 2006!

If you are interested in attending, please add your name to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Art#Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Please make a note if you are traveling to the area (train or plane) and need transportation, which can probably be arranged via carpool, but we need time to coordinate. Lodging is as of right now out of scope, but we could discuss that if enough people are interested.

Thank you and I hope to see you there! howcheng {chat} 00:03, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Overcomplicating things

In 99% of cases, the only thing you need to do (at all) to resolve talk-page DEFAULTSORT conflicts is to add the listas parameter to the {{WikiProject Biography}} tag and ensure that its value matches that of the DEFAULTSORT on the talk page (I don't advise removing the DEFAULTSORT; it may be there for one reason or another). Few if any other project banners use or even support listas, so adding it to all of them, as you have been doing to {{WikiProject Cue sports}} and other banners in various articles, is a waste of time. Also, please be careful with Asian names. Check the article itself for a DEFAULTSORT and use the value given there. For example, at Luong Chi Dung, you removed a valid family-name-first DEFAULTSORT:Luong, Chi Dung from the talk page, and replaced it with an incorrect listas=Dung, Luong Chi (redundantly in every project banner there). Lastly, if using a banner-shell template to save space on talk pages with 3+ banners, please use {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} ({{WPBS}} for short), not {{WPB}}, as the latter makes it impossible to tell what projects are involved without expanding it manually. WPBS Syntax:

{{WikiProjectBannerShell|1= {{WikiProject Whatever|parameters...|nested=yes}} {{WikiProject What's-its-name|parameters...|nested=yes}} }}

Frankly, I'm surprised that {{WPB}} hasn't been TfD'd or merged into {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} already, since the latter is far more reader/editor-friendly, and doesn't require any special BLP parameters. PS: You can sometimes actually omit the nested=yes parameter, as many banners autodetect WPBS. I usually leave it off, and then only add it for non-compliant nested banners.

None of this is intended as particularly critical. I just don't like seeing editors waste good editing time on redundant code, nor installing templates like WPB that are intended to be helpful, but actually aren't, especially when there are genuinely-helpful variants. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 10:20, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for writing. I can assure you that my error on Talk:Luong Chi Dung was a momentary and nearly non-reproducible brain fade. I have lived in Central Orange County, California, for 38 years. I lived in Westminster during the growth of "Little Saigon" and worked in the administrative side of the County Health Care Agency for ten year. I have been married to a Korean woman for almost 39 years. I do understand how Asian names are constructed.

Now for the important part. It may help for you to understand that I use the keyboard almost exclusively and that even though I can type rapidly I prefer not to type at all. I use copy or cut and paste (plus delete if necessary) almost exclusively.

I have not memorized the properties, quirks, of all the project banners and I do not intend to do so. I do know that some banners use the listas parameter and most do not. I do know that almost all of the ones that do not use the listas parameter really do not care if it is there or not. The ones that do use it really care if it is there or not. (See Talk:Theodoros Roussopoulos for an example of how the Greece banner reacts. It is not a pretty sight.) It is safer and easier to put the listas value in every banner than to leave it off of one, such as WP Cue Sports, only to find that the banner had been modified so that it now uses the listas parameter. It appears that banners are being modified constantly.

I stopped using WPBS completely when I learned that the nested parameter was required more often than not and that one banner, I do not remember which one, ignored it and would not nest no matter what I did. However, WPB does not care if the nested parameter is there or not and all the banners are compliant. Also, I found that the living parameter in the Biog banner did not always work under WPBS.

By the way, I have noticed that many times the Cue Sports banner has been placed above the Biog banner. Most of the time that counts as a very bad idea as it is on top of the blp banner. While we all support the special nature of blp there are some editors who are beyond rabid on the subject.

As for seeing which projects have adopted which pages, for the first two years I was a registered editor I really did not care what projects were involved in a page and I suspect I was typical. From various comments I have read here and there I think most users look at an article's talk page to get a sense of the nature of the NPOV in the article. Most of the editors who care about what projects are involved in an article are members of the relevant projects who came to the page because it appeared in a Category of articles in that category. If an editor wants to know what projects are involved in a page the editor can either click show, look at the categories at the bottom of the page or edit the page.

I am willing to change the way I am doing things, however. I will use WPBS for pages with move than two but fewer than seven banners, even though it means that I have to add the nested parameter to at least some of the banners. If there are more than six banners, I will collapse them. Sound fair? (I have been told by more than a couple of people that the DEFAULTSORT is not to be used on a Talk page unless there is no other way to set the sort of the page to something other than the PAGENAME. I almost wish DEFAULTSORT did not exist.)

Thank you again for your input.

JimCubb (talk) 18:20, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

After thought

After spending my free time at work doing things more or less your way, mainly WPBS rather than WPB, I am going to have to renege on my offer above. I will not use WPB on any of the pages that are part of Cue Sports. On those pages I will continue to put the blp banner at the top of the project banners (living=yes in the Biog banner does not work when the banner is nested) and paste nested=yes into all the banners (the banners that do not require it, as the documentation for the templates they should, are very rare).

By the way, only one other editor has complained about my use of WPB. Two other editors came immediately after that editor and encouraged me to use WPB rather than WPBS.

While pages in the Cue Sports project were probably over-represented in Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts, there were originally 2,777 pages in the latter with new ones dropping in almost daily and Cue Sports only has 1,033 pages in it, there were some there. I am almost finished with the category and will move on toe Biography pages without listas parameter (or whatever it is called). I suspect I will find no pages in your project there. I will not be intruding on you for very much longer.

JimCubb (talk) 00:10, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Deaths in 2001, Deaths in January 2001, Deaths in February 2001: No redirects . . .

Um, hi. (scratching my head)

GPI-MediaWiki Union would seem to be the person to ask about this. They created those two separate month pages for January and February, thereby making redirect pages for those two months, um, inapplicable. What you seem to want is for the year page and the two month pages to be rolled back to their state in the first week of this year, and of course at that time the month pages hadn't been created yet. The 10 redirects I authored for March through Dec of 2001 only exist because of the links GPI-MediaWiki Union has on the list pages Jan and Feb! (links are in title of this post)

I'm not sure I understand how the listas parameter (which I wasn't aware of till now) applies to a death list talk page; this seems to be an outgrowth of what seems to me to be the quiet civil war inside WP between list compilers and category taggers. Until there is a (sub)category tag for every person with a WP bio that specifies what their DOB (and DOD) is, that is: "Category:Persons born on Tuesday, July 4, 1876", for example, there will be these various lists, which I think ought to be unnecessary but for the lack of fully-evolved categories and subcats.

It seems to me that talk pages ought to be generated for March et seq., and that's where the tags with the listas's go. Here's the link for the March 2001 redirect page. Now via cut/paste, here are:

November, and

Is this any help? - - - Schweiwikist (talk) 06:16, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Just digested your reply. Here are GPI-MediaWiki Union's range of odd contributions:

a range of 14 contributions, from 01:16 through 08:33 on Jan 17, 2009.

Hoping again that this helps. - - - Schweiwikist (talk) 23:47, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Update: All 12 "child" pages of "Deaths in 2001", (the pages I linked to above) should be gone by the time you read this. The names from Jan & Feb '01 are now back where they probably came from, in the 1st 2 sections of Deaths in 2001.

Schweiwikist (talk) 02:43, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Followup: Happened to read this from you on the talk page (emphasis added):

“Both are redundant . . . Any category or wannabe category that is not auto-populated should be deleted. There is too much real work to be done for anyone to waste time manually populating a list.”

Check this out: Untouchable list, handcrafted day-by-day, therefore sacrosanct.

I certainly could do without these bass-ackward lists, but there are WPians who cling to them. I've already covered this ground farther up. So your comment would be perceived as quite provocative in some circles. - - - - Schweiwikist (talk) 19:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Since I have absolutely no authority in the matter and no desire to take further action, I really don't care about those circles. If they feel they have nothing better to do, maybe it is a good thing that they are not doing anything important.

JimCubb (talk) 20:09, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

LOL! ttfn - - - - Schweiwikist (talk) 03:01, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Listas category

Hi there. I noticed this edit on the listas category talk page. You managed to sum it up pretty well! :-) I suspect that the "Those who can make the changes do not see a need to track the usage of DEFAULTSORT" is less to do with 'no need' and more to do with 'no interest'. An obvious need to track DEFAULTSORT is to ask the simple question: "Which biographical articles lack DEFAULTSORT"? The only way to answer that is to have a way of tracking which articles are using DEFAULTSORT. That is why I set up the categories to track the listas parameter, as this is a way to track usage of a template parameter. DEFAULTSORT, though, is a magic word (see Wikipedia:Magic word), and it seems these can't be tracked, or at least not easily. Carcharoth 04:32, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

{{helpme}}
I am slowly cleaning up the Biography pages without the listas parameter and on Xavier Suarez got an error that it conflicted with the DEFAULTSORT. So I went to the article page, found the only DEFAULTSORT on the page, copied the name, went back to the Talk page, looked in vain for a DEFAULTSORT on the page and pasted the name after listas=. I still got the error message.

When I went to the Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts I found a couple of thousand pages. The first biography, Abraham Izak Perold, is listed under "A" and nothing I have tried will force it into "P".

Is something not working right or do I not understand what I am seeing?

JimCubb (talk) 18:35, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Have you tried asking at the helpdesk? Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 18:36, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

That was going to be my next step. Thanks.

JimCubb (talk) 18:39, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok, now, what is a lista?

What is a lista, what does it do, why is it needed for WPBannerMeta, and why does it need to be passed through templates?--Ipatrol (talk) 21:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Collaboration

Hi there. I see you performing some of the same functions that I do and wanted to say "Hi". I also just saw your questions on Happy-Melon's page. A couple of tools have helped me out. Things like using {{WPBS}} instead of {{WPB}}... First, if you get an admin to give you WP:Rollback it will help you revert vandalism or other edits. Second, though I am new to it, is the Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, which is "supposed" to be able to roll through all pages with WikiProject Biography and add a "listas" if one does not exist...maybe even pull the existing DEFAULTSORT from the other page... I will roll through the pages for Tennis, Schools, and several "US State" projects; and make sure that our stuff is up to standard. Holler, if I can help with other things in other places. -- Mjquin_id (talk) 06:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi! I stumbled upon the Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts shortly after it was created, saw a place where I could help and jumped in without much preparation. After a few days I checked on the relative merits of {{WPBS}} and {{WPB}}, tried each and thought that I preferred the latter. After looking at some 1,800 talk pages I know I prefer the latter. While I realize that the pages I see do not represent a valid sample of all possible pages, I have seen a large number of pages that could be further categorized. At some point even the {{WPBS}} is unsightly, Talk: C.S. Lewis is a good example. I sense that the big selling point for {{WPBS}} is a non-issue as most users only look at a Talk page to get an idea of the nature of the POV in the article. So, rather than force someone to come back later and collapse the banners, paste collapse=yes into each banner, I use {{WPB}} which nests and collapses in one step and does not care if the banners want to be nested and collapsed. (I am considering writing to the authors of {{WPBS}} and {{WPB}} and ask each of them the strengths and weaknesses of each relative to the other.)

I do very little reverting. I rarely look at the article. I look at the article if I am unsure of the correct value of the listas parameter and hope to find guidance in the way the name is used in the article and the DEFAULTSORT of the article page; I look at the article most often out of curiosity ("Who or what is this?") because I get sidetracked easily; and I look at the article when the article has been automatically rated as Stub-class and I want to remove that banner.

I do not think you need to worry too much about ppossibly causing a DEFAULTSORT / listas conflict. The category that lists such conflicts is fast approaching a size that new members will be readily apparent and I can resolve the conflict very soon after it appears. (Some one is adding pages to the Heavy Metal and Punk categories. I managed to convince him to add the listas value while he is at it as those banners care about the listas. He does not put the value in the other banners that want it so the pages appear as conflicts. I catch them.)

It may be interesting to see the pages where the DEFAULTSORT value in the article and the listas value in the talk page do not match. (Yes, it would generate another Category but it could be hidden and would not have to indicate its presence.)

Thank you for the tips.

JimCubb (talk) 17:03, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Two Questions — Curiosity, not Criticism

Hi. For "living=no" you can find answers in Template_talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive_3#Request_for_comments_-_living.3Dno and in User:Kingbotk. The result of the short discussion held was that "living=no" should be added, so everybody know that the parameter has been dealt. If the parameter was missing I would go and check if I am dealing with a blp. Kingbotk has been doing the job long before me.

For the other issues you can check discussion in here and in there. The main idea is that an article is complete without place of birth, date of birth, etc. This information just adds to the article.

I think the main question you have to ask is what are we going to do with Category:Year of birth unknown and Category:Year of death unknown! There are intended for use on discussion pages but I have the impression that I go and move them there I'll start an edit war. This is the reason I am not dealing with them yet. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you are judging by very specific categories of people. Date and place of birth become difficult to locate then the person died 100 or 200 years ago. Sometimes it should not be tagged for Date of birth missing. On the other hand, for living individuals we have WP:BLP and the date of birth is sometimes a data the person wants to protect or haven't announced to the public. From my experience, these categories in many cases should not exist in the talk page nor anywhere else. Some editors keep adding them without criteria. And another thought I had: I could start adding listas more intensively but is this really helfpul when dealing with 600,000 articles? I am not completely convinced that having the talk pages sorted helps somewhere. This is too much work to do manually and I haven't seen any noteworthy results. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:23, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

If a person's date of birth or place of birth is "sensitive", then all other information about the person is suspect. I certainly would not trust anything else such a person said about himself or herself.

The talk pages are where everyone puts the project information. Someone who is looking for Oscar Chavez in Category:Unassessed Mexico articles should be able to find him as Chavez, Oscar, right? (I am ignoring the question of whether someone would be looking in Category:Unassessed Mexico articles for anything. Someone thought it could happen because the category was created.) When Category:Biography articles without listas parameter was created, someone thought that this was an area of concern.

Until yesterday there were only 375,000 pages without the listas parameter. As of right now there are less than 373,000 pages. Someone has been doing something good.

My progress not as rapid as it might because

I apply the listas parameter to all the banners on the page to avoid creating a conflict.
When necessary I move the WP Biog banner to the top so that the blp banner is on top.
If there are more than two banners on the page I use WPBS That means that I have to put "nested=yes" on the WP Biog banner. There are many more banners that need the nested parameter than there are that do not so I past it into all the banners. (I still think that WPBS is a royal pain to use and should have been deleted in favor of WPB but I am outnumbered.)

Feel free to jump in adding the listas parameter whenever you wish. There seem to be a couple of people beside me who are policing Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts so if you cause the Greece project banner to explode, a very easy thing to do, it will be caught and corrected fairly quickly.

If you are going to use a bot to do it, the more reliable source for the parameter would be the DEFAULTSORT on the article. If you can delete and DEFAULTSORT tags on the talk page, that would be a big help as well. (The DEFAULTSORT tags on the talk pages have been, in my experience, slightly less reliable than those on the article pages.)

JimCubb (talk) 00:16, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

You certainly haven't seen something like that

Check this one and then the edit history to see how long was that around. LOL -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:38, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I went through the entire history. Some one should put a note on the editor's talk page. I don't think I could do it with a straight face. I am certain tht one of the notability nazis will find the article soon enough.

You're right I had never seen anything like that. Having seen it, I do not want to see another like it again but I bet there are worse.

Thank you for sharing.

JimCubb (talk) 23:03, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't believe I had already edited that article... Rich Farmbrough, 07:21 27 February 2009 (UTC).

I can. See below.

JimCubb (talk) 07:43, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Listas

This is the biggest documented backlog on WP. Having said that it is a second or third order backlog, in the sense that it is currently merely the sort order of the talk page (and sometimes just the documentation of the sort order of the talk page) that is missing - and the normal approach of dating the tags to get a handle what are stubborn fixes is not as good at this stage as simply adding the listas. In the longer term, with a little more integrity checking going on, and addressing the other missing paramters, it may be worth doing.

The good guys are only 120,000 behind the bad guys, so we only need to fix up 60,000 pages to catch them up. Rich Farmbrough, 07:21 27 February 2009 (UTC).

As the biggest documented backlog on WP I would say that it is the most visible symptom of the biggest systemic problem on WP, editors who are overly focused on their personal agendas. "The living parameter must be completed so I must develop a bot to at a value to the living parameter. I don't care about where the page appears in the list of the pages with the living parameter." "I must apply my project's banner to this page and I do not care about whether the other banners are correct."

The reason that I am moving so slowly through the list is that when I see a problem in a banner I will try to fix it. I wish I understood more about what I know and about what I am trying to do so I would have fewer "Oops".

I have grave doubts that all the "good guys" are correct. The project banners have been "fixed" so that only the Biography banner controls the listas. How many of these are correct? How many of these have other problems?

Catching up is not enough. Elimination of the bad guys and correcting the bad guys that are hidden in the "good guys" is required. Anything less is pretense.

Is anyone coordinating the efforts of the teeming thousands of editors who are responding to your backlog notice so as to avoid edit conflicts?

JimCubb (talk) 07:41, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Jim, I don't follow other peoples talk pages but I happened to pop back here. I think we have made a lot of progress with this we now have a bunch of bots working on the problem, as well as users, and the good guys have overtaken the bad guys by about 100,000. One this is reduced to a maintenance task I will look at evaluating for consistency if no-one else has. Rich Farmbrough, 13:04 20 March 2009 (UTC).

Hi!

Things were going so well that I have been concentrating on another "problem" category just to get out of the way of the bots. I hope you can convince some of the editors who are not using bots to look at the pages with the listas parameter, one by one, and insure that the parameter is correct. I am really concerned about some of the parameters that were assigned by bots and editors in 2007 as I have run into some real nightmares while resolving DEFAULTSORT conflicts.
Once almost all the articles have been fixed there will still be a large number of user pages and sub-pages in the category. These will have to be addressed. I can think of three ways to do this.

Politely ask the user to remove the categorization tags from his page, talk page or sub-page as appropriate, citing the policy about what should not be on a user page.
If the user is not active, de-categorize the relevant page by either removing the tags or using nocat or nonwiki. If the user is active, use #1.
De-categorize the page and leave a message on the talk page that tells the user what has been done and why.

I favor #2 but it is the most labor-intensive. There are days when I really like #3 just because I have seen the messes that some users have created and want to be draconian. What are your thoughts?

JimCubb (talk) 01:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

User pages, simply fix the template not to pay attention to them. Really we are only interested in Talk: pages? I'll go and do that right now. Rich Farmbrough, 15:20 21 March 2009 (UTC).

I was told a long time ago that there was no way to keep User pages out of the category without disabling the banner. If the template can be fixed to ignore user pages life just becames a lot easier for us.

JimCubb (talk) 22:42, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

AWB tools

Dear JimCubb,

I have a couple of things I've been working on that you might be interested in, since this seems to be an area that you've dipped your feet into quite a bit.

Both are plugins for AWB. The first is one that, if you give it a page that has a WikiProject Biography tag without a listas tag, will allow you to quickly add one in. Right now, what it does is pop up a dialog asking you which way the name should be sorted, including a box for entering in your own option. It bases its options off of the title of the page, after trimming off the extras (e.g., "Talk:", and "(football player)"). It gives you either three or four options:

"Last, First" convention (a simple "pick out the last word in the string, put it at the beginning, put a comma and a space after it, then put the rest of the string in" method)
Un-reordered convention. Useful for things like band names. Basically just the name with the extras trimmed off.
If the plugin finds another listas parameter as part of another template, or a DEFAULTSORT template, it will give you the option of using that value.
Last, the "enter your own option" box.

Other features it currently has are:

Converts some Unicode characters to their ASCII equivelants
Removes extra punctuation

However, I'm probably going to re-code this one using the (I think better) code from the second one...

The second is intended to be a bot (in fact, I'm trying to get approval for it right now) would search for pages that have a listas parameter as part of another template, or a DEFAULTSORT tag. If it doesn't find one, it skips the page and moves on to the next one. If it does find something, it will copy that entry into the WikiProject Biography template, make sure all the others in the page are in sync (no pages going to the "Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts" page), and removes the DEFAULTSORT tag, if it's there. I'm doing some testing of it, and it seems to be doing pretty well...except that it doesn't fix mistakes in how the original listas/DEFAULTSORT was written, and there are some pages where it looks like the author did {{subst:WikiProject Biography}} instead of just {{WikiProject Biography}}. It doesn't recognize those just yet -- I'd like for it to be able to fix those, but I don't forsee it. However, I need to write a way for it to at least recognize them and skip them.

Anywho, I guess what I'm asking for here is your input. Any suggestions on either one? I wouldn't mind having your input on the bot approval page, either. Thanks, Matt (talk) 10:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Outstanding work!

I have commented. I hope the bot is approved. I would like the bot to run constantly until the non-trivial pages in the category are resolved then at least once a week thereafter.

I am extremely leery about my using any automated method as I am well aware of my ability to screw things up. I will leave bots and AWB plug-ins to the young and confident.

JimCubb (talk) 16:18, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Jim, I have an additional question for you.

In my testing, I've come across some pages where it looks like the person that set up the page did {{subst:WikiProject Biography}} instead of just {{WikiProject Biography}}. I'm not a talented enough programmer to know how to have my bot fix that. However, as an alternative, we could have the bot add a category tag to the end of the page -- perhaps a category like "Pages with incorrect WikiProject Biography tags". From there, someone could check that category every once in a while and fix those pages. Any thoughts on that? Matt (talk) 03:11, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. The only problem I have is how to fix it. Have you kept track of the offending pages or do you remember any of them? I would like to look at them. (I just got to the T section of Category:Biography articles without listas parameter and having said the appropriate bad words I really need a break.)

JimCubb (talk) 03:23, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

The only one I can cite right off-hand is this one. I think I've come across one other one, but it's been so long ago that I don't think I could find it quickly. Matt (talk) 03:53, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Hooray, ListasBot has been approved! Thanks for your input, I think having a second voice on the matter really helped contribute to getting this one approved. Matt (talk) 17:34, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

RE: WP Biog Banner

My apologies; I did not use any sort of scripting at that time; I only applied the banner from the list of applicable templates. I only use WP:Friendly now because I finally figured out how to use it. I'm not sure how many articles you are talking about, and I am not familiar off hand of which work groups to which each would need to be assigned. I don't know whether we're talking about a few hours or a few weeks of work here, and I do not edit nearly as much as I was able to last year.

The only way I can think of to resolove this is manually: going through my history and searching for similar edits, and then hunting for the appropriate work groups, also manually. If you have a scripted method of accomplishing this, it would be more efficient than my method. Please let me know how we can resolve this. Again, my apologies. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 14:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

RE: this. Please note that importance should be changed to priority in the BIO banner only. Other projects still use the importance field. Thanks. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 02:13, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I have to say it's another of Wikipedia's strange quirks. Frankly I don't think it's worth the hassle; I assume it was changed because subjects of biographies felt offended that they were of "low importance"? I'd suggest that we just let the bots do the work. Our energies can be put to better use. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 11:56, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorting rules

Hey Jim,

Could I get you to throw your two cents into this discussion? Thanks in advance! Matt (talk) 23:40, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Listas

Hi, thanks for your message. If I remember, I wasn't sure what they were doing there; I think I tried to fix them; but wasn't sure if I was right. I think I asked about it somewhere, but don't remember receiving an answer; so I restored them figuring someone had put them there for a reason. Please feel free to correct them if they are wrong. As I remember, a lot of them were nobility articles; hope this helps.--FeanorStar7 (talk) 21:59, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Blp=no

Hi. Blp=no it's not working. Blp should be yes or removed. Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 18:27, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

If the individual is dead add "living=no" to WikiProject Biography so people know that the article was checked. "blp=no" is useless. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

If the individual is alive add both "living=yes" to WikiProject Biography and "blp=yes" to WPBS. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:34, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

What is the blp problem? -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:41, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Normally, when WPBS is present only "blp=yes" is working (it overrides the living parameter which is not visible when WPbiogeaphy is nested). We decided in Wikiproject biography to add "living=yes" or "living=no" to all individuals to ensure that the individual has been checked if it is alive or not. "blp=no" has no usability, just takes space and load a parameter without really giving it a value (only valid value for blp is "yes"). -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The next steps are a little bit difficult. We have to go through Category:Biography articles without living parameter and check which articles apply to musical groups with at least one member alive. These have to be marked with "living=yes", They are also many article of individuals lacking Year of birth, Year of death and any estimate when the individual lived. Keep up the good work. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:06, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I noticed that you were behind the backlog. Great job! I am dealing with living individuals (and duos). This thing with groups of people is really complicating. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

ListasBot

Hi Jim,

Haven't talked to you in a while. Hope all is well.

Just thought I'd drop you a line and say "I should smack myself for not thinking of this earlier" -- I made a change to ListasBot, so that if it can't find anything else to use for the listas parameter, it will look at the article page and use the DEFAULTSORT value, if one is there. The preliminary results are that this is giving the bot a much higher chance of success at finding something to use -- out of the last 180 pages that it's looked at (as of the time of this writing), it's edited 159. Let's sit back and watch the backlog dwindle down, eh?

Cheers! Matt (talk) 10:15, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Listas

Hi there. Thanks for your message - I actually didn't realise until now that the 'DEFAULTSORT' template on an article doesn't sort the talk page as well (should have been obvious, if I'd thought about it...). From now on, I'll be adding the correct listas to the talk page of every biography I find. Robofish (talk) 22:58, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:Poetry tagging

I have recently come across an assessment tag for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Poetry where you had replaced the "Importance" field with "Priority". I am not sure of the reason you have done so, but it caused the article to be listed as non-assessed by the Version 1.0 editorial bot. As it stands "importance" is the value that the template recognizes and changing that term causes a malfunction in the assessment template. I just thought I would let you know for future reference. Mrathel (talk) 15:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

About the Bot

im really sorry, that was a mistake because the bot taggs articles in categories, and that make it tag some articles that are out of the scope of the project. Thank you for informing me. Saud (talk) 07:06, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Help Request

{{helpme}}

I am adding the listas parameter to articles that lack it. The various incarnations of Listasbot do it better but I am cleaning letters so that I can monitor them for new pages. I am almost finished with X and look at what would be in store for me in Y. I opened Talk:Yahweh ben Yahweh and found that an IP user had put a comment there in such a way that it got into the project banners. How can this be removed? (The comment concerns whether or not the person is still in jail. The person has been dead for two years.) I know it is extremely bad form to delete things on Talk Pages but perhaps an exception could be made in this case.

Thank you.

JimCubb (talk) 21:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

You can add/remove content from "comments" sections by clicking the little "edit" link next to "Comments", or you can access the page the comments are stored on directly by going to Talk:Yahweh ben Yahweh/Comments and editing that directly. Hope this helps, – Toon ^(talk) 21:57, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and it looks like the comment is a duplicate of one already on the talk page, so there's no harm in removing it. If you feel that the comment should be removed as he died a while ago, you could archive the talk page, so that the comments aren't gone, but aren't immediately visible. Best, – Toon ^(talk) 22:01, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I've deleted the page. – Toon ^(talk) 22:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

And Talk:Yahweh ben Yahweh looks much better. Thank you.

JimCubb (talk) 00:28, 15 May 2009 (UTC) (I fixed my miscopy)

listas and Arabic names

Thanks for adding listas to the templates, after I add DEFAULTSORTs! I was hoping that if I just add to one part, the rest will "automagically" update. :) – Quadell ^(talk) 18:56, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

You are almost right. If there is a DEFAULTSORT value Listasbot will paste it into the listas parameter on the next pass through the list. That could happen as soon as next month. The only ones I did were the ones that conflicted with an existing DEFAULTSORT value plus a couple at the backlog.

Thank you for your help!

JimCubb (talk) 19:03, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Tadese Tola

Whoops! I've never seen that happen before, I thought talk page and article page were always moved together? Either I did something weird or the software did. Thanks for sorting that out. It makes sense now that I didn't see any double redirects as nothing would have been directing to the talk page. According to the IAAF and the Associated Press it's with one "s" not two. Thanks very much for cleaning up after me. Cheers! 09:23, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Hold up! That cut and paste job has now broken and mixed up the article and talk page histories. This is needed to comply with the GDFL license. I'm going revert them and move them to the right spaces then request a move (this really is a bit of a saga!). Cut and paste moves are expressly discouraged as they do not give credit to the editors who have made the contributions building up the article. Yet again: D'oh! Let's see if this works... Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)^{WIKIPROJECT ATHLETICS NEEDS YOU!} 00:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, should be dealt with shortly. Just awaiting an admin move over the redirect then it should all be done. How messy this has been, I do apologise! Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)^{WIKIPROJECT ATHLETICS NEEDS YOU!} 00:48, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

License tagging for File:Ya'akov Katz-per JimCubb.PNG

Thanks for uploading File:Ya'akov Katz-per JimCubb.PNG. You don't seem to have indicated the license status of the image. Wikipedia uses a set of image copyright tags to indicate this information; to add a tag to the image, select the appropriate tag from this list, click on this link, then click "Edit this page" and add the tag to the image's description. If there doesn't seem to be a suitable tag, the image is probably not appropriate for use on Wikipedia.

For help in choosing the correct tag, or for any other questions, leave a message on Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. Thank you for your cooperation. --ImageTaggingBot (talk) 22:06, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Image tagging for File:Ya'akov Katz-per JimCubb-01.PNG

Thanks for uploading File:Ya'akov Katz-per JimCubb-01.PNG. You don't seem to have said where the image came from or who created it. We require this information to verify that the image is legally usable on Wikipedia, and because most image licenses require giving credit to the image's creator.

To add this information, click on this link, then click "Edit this page" and add the information to the image's description. If you need help, post your question on Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

Thank you for your cooperation. --ImageTaggingBot (talk) 02:05, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Image tagging for File:Ya'akov Katz-per JimCubb-01.PNG

Thanks for uploading File:Ya'akov Katz-per JimCubb-01.PNG. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided source information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 06:13, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

RE:Names and Naming Convention Question

Naming conventions will differ among the different ethnic groups in Afghanistan. A large portion of those who would have fought for the Taliban would have been those who belonged to the Pashtun ethnic group. In most cases, the first name is the given name and the last name will be a tribal name, such as Popalzai. This individual's last name does not strike me as a tribal name, and he may be following a non-Pashtun method of naming. This article from the New York Times refers to him as Mr. Karim, and the NYT being a WP:reliable source, might be the best thing to follow. --Afghana ^[talk] 06:56, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for being understanding. I will look into the situation but I can't promise too much yet. I will keep you updated. --Afghana ^[talk] 07:55, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Your assistance please...

You said you'd help with the bots that compound the corrupt data problem. Here is yet another example.

This bot is not relying on pre-exising values placed by a human. The robot is just taking wild guesses. Geo Swan (talk) 23:38, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Could you please explain further...

Could you please explain what you meant by this comment. In particular, what did you mean by: "I do think think that a person who cannot maintain his/her watchlist is an acceptable source of complaint and certainly not a person whose lack of maintenance should influence the work of the bot"?

Could you please explain where you got the idea I was not properly maintaining my watchlist?

Could you please explain where you got the idea that my efforts on the wikipedia are characterized by a maintenance problem -- one that disqualifies my concerns of having any value?

You told me that while some bots did add calculate Europeanized surnames in the past there aren't any that do so today. And I think I have shown you that there are bots today that compute their own idea of surnames.

I am going to assume you don't usually make disrespectful comments like the one I quoted. It is not my intention to bully you into an apology. I would prefer you did not apologize, but instead merely resolved to treat all your correspondents' concerns with sincere respect and attention. I do my best to offer all my correspondents the effort to honestly consider that I could be wrong, and they could be right. And I expect this in return. Geo Swan (talk) 01:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I replied to Drilnoth's latest. I've taken my time replying to your latest, as I continue to find your comments both unclear and impolite, and I wanted to take time to cool off.

You seem to have admonished me for not "protecting" articles. I found this unclear. I puzzled over this "protection" admonishment. I concluded you probably meant the addition of the redundant current base name of the article as being the protection. I am reluctant to do that until you respond to the weaknesses of this approach which I have already pointed out.

Even if ninety percent of the individuals we currently have biographies about follow the European style I continue to believe it is a big mistake to regard the European style as the default. You complained about how much work you found looking at those three in enough detail to determine whether they should or shouldn't be sorted on a European surname. That Raven1977 messed up 3 articles per minute, in their ill-advised use of the broken AWB. You said there were 700,000 biographies. How many will have to have on-going periodic error-checking so long as the bad bots are allowed to run?

I didn't draw your attention to the three instances of a bot misbehaving because I expected you to fix those instances. I drew it to your attention because I thought you offered to work with me to address the base problem -- the bad bots. You claimed no currently running bots made up their own idea how to sort articles. I drew those instances to your attention so you could see for yourself that it was a bot that was at fault. Geo Swan (talk) 18:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Back to what I believe is the heart. First, I do not believe that the "European" style should be the default. I addressed this at what I believe to be the relevant place. and have cheerfully ignored the default while working on the Q pages. I have not been too good about following the default elsewhere unless it was appropriate.

Now for what I mean by protecting pages. So far as I can tell, bots have only put DEFAULTSORT values and listas values on pages that lack those values. (Mike's bot are the only ones that I have ever seen that do not concoct a value based upon the PAGENAME.) If a page should be sorted in a manner other than the default, that page needs to have a correct value put on it as a protection against bad bots. (Please give me a link to one of the pages that Raven1977 messed up. I would like to address the problem and I want to add that editor to my list of reasons to disapprove all bots who concoct sort values.)

Look at the history of this page, click on my contributions and you will see what I mean as you go through the last 100 pages where I have applied sort values. For example, the DEFAULTSORT value for Qusai ibn Kilab is Qusai ibn Kilab and the listas parameter in the WP Biog banner on Talk:Qusai ibn Kilab is Qusai ibn Kilab. The DEFAULTSORT value for Quintus Curtius Rufus is Curtius Rufus, Quintus and the listas parameter in the WP Biog banner on Talk:Quintus Curtius Rufus is Curtius Rufus, Quintus. I do not want to think about what a bot that concocts a sort value from the PAGENAME would have done with Qusai although I know what such a bot would have done with Quintus and the bot would have been wrong in both cases.

I am just as serious about Cultural Competency in these matters as you are. Because of the nature of most of my work here I have had to be. I probably took more time than anyone else would in the first few months because I spent so much time in research. I still put extended edit summaries on the Icelanders I do. (In many instances Icelanders are sorted "Patronym, Given-name" except in Iceland-specific categories where they are sorted correctly, "Given-name Patronym". Yes, the comma is omitted.

I apologize for not being more clear before.

JimCubb (talk) 20:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Re:Wiki Fixes by Your bot

Ups, it seems like my bot had been doing wrong edits with the template {{Lifetime}}, and as you see in the history of the three articles articles that you showed me ([1], [2], [3]) I have already fixed the wrong template substitution. Locos ~ epraix Beaste~praix 20:07, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll check my bot contributions to seek more mistakes as these ones, cheers! Locos ~ epraix Beaste~praix 20:09, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome ;) Locos ~ epraix Beaste~praix 22:23, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback}} Since you commented there, I thought I'd ask you to. (By the way, the bug with putting the DEFAULTSORTs under categories seems to have been fixed in AWB). –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Project banners

Hi, I know you like project banners to take up as little space as possible on a page. I wonder if you could look at the following two examples and tell me which you prefer, and why? That might help me to understand your thinking. Notice that they both take up one line until you press "show". — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Method A

Years High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Years, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Years on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.YearsWikipedia:WikiProject YearsTemplate:WikiProject YearsYears articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Christianity Low‑importance

	Christianity portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChristianityWikipedia:WikiProject ChristianityTemplate:WikiProject ChristianityChristianity articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Time Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Time, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Time on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TimeWikipedia:WikiProject TimeTemplate:WikiProject TimeTime articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Method B

Years High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Years, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Years on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.YearsWikipedia:WikiProject YearsTemplate:WikiProject YearsYears articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Christianity Low‑importance

	Christianity portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChristianityWikipedia:WikiProject ChristianityTemplate:WikiProject ChristianityChristianity articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Time Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Time, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Time on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TimeWikipedia:WikiProject TimeTemplate:WikiProject TimeTime articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

I have no preference. The way I look at it. If a person clicks a "show" button, that is a willful act. If it is felt that "show" should reveal all the bells and whistles in a project banner or none of them, I really will not care. I can see advantages to each approach.

Here is probably too much information on my thinking, what I do and why I do it.

I do not believe that the project banners do much good in recruiting members. (I have absolutely no data to support this belief.) I am only in WP Biog because I found a niche in cleaning up the clerical problems in that project's articles. I sometimes wish that I had found a project that collected the same sort of data but had one-tenth the number of articles. I was not recruited by the project banner.

My preference for WPB over WPBS was based on two things. Its ease of use and the unsubstantiated claims for superiority of WPBS. Ease of use is obvious to me. WPBS was designed to be a uncollapsed shell with collapsed banners. It was deemed sufficient for pages with more than three but fewer than five banners. At one point, very early in the history of the shells, two different editors stated that it was unlikely that any article would be in more than five projects. So, WPBS was applied to talk pages as soon as it was found that there were more than two project banners on the page. Each of the shells had in its documentation that once a shell had been applied to a page it should not be converted to the other one without discussion on that page. This documentation had not been removed as of the first of this week. So WPB was applied to very few talk pages in comparison to the number that had WPBS and conversion to it was severely limited. The only time I collapsed a shell was a month after I resolved a DEFAULTSORT conflict on the C S Lewis page and gave notice that I intended to collapse the 13 project banners that were on the page at the time. After the month had passed, it was more like six weeks, I simply deleted the last letter in WPBS and saved the page.

I have often been asked why I would prefer the less powerful of the two shells, the less versatile of the two shells. I have replied that I prefer the more powerful of the two shells, it has taken six months of tweaking for WPBS to be able to do what WPB has done all along; I do not care about versatility; and I prefer ease of use along with suitability for the purpose. I am still being accused of preferring one over the other without reason.

The thing that bothers me most about the whole brouhaha was the conversion. It was suggested that a bot be developed to convert all instances of WPB to WPBS. No notice of this was placed on the WPB talk page. I pointed out the restriction placed on conversion by the documentation and was told that the documentation was ancient and no one would object to the conversion. (The documentation was not changed.) I kept quiet about the bot but watched for its formal proposal so that I could address the approval process with the documentation issue. Some one must have been reading my mind. Instead of a bot some one jest went in and re-programmed WPB so that it became WPBS with collapsed=yes. There was no notice of this on the talk page of either shell and I did not learn about it until the editor who had done it told me.

Not only was the need for approval of a bot avoided but no consensus was sought and no notice was given. What is worse I think that what was done would be considered acceptable by most of the powers that be as there seems to be no control over who is allowed to make programming changes. For that reason, and that reason alone, I have pretty much resigned from the field. I did put a note on the WPB talk page and the note after mine showed that our favorite template tinkerer completely missed my point, again.

That is probably more than you wanted to know.

JimCubb (talk) 20:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes it probably was more than I needed :) When you post such long answers you run the risk that (a) nobody will read it and (b) your main point will be lost! Anyway what I took from your response is that

You want project banners to take the minimum amount of space possible.
You don't care about whether method A or B is used because you will never click "show" so it makes no difference to you.

Hopefully you realise that there are some people who do like to see project banners on the page (for example the people who go round assessing articles) and that there is a delicate balance in the amount of information that should be shown. Just as they can click "show" to see more info, you can also click "hide" to reveal it, and your solution to hide everything may not be optimum in all cases.

Let's look at an example: Talk:Jesse Arnelle which you edited earlier today.

Your version, which is method B above, is absolutely terrible in my opinion. Why? Because at the start there is too little information (for my personal preference), but when I click "show" I get far too much information and it all appears together and in a mess.
I much prefer this version because when I click "show", the information is organised and clear and I can click to see the banner I am interested in straight away.
In fact, because this talk page has nothing else on it really, my best solution is this one but would have no problems about moving to #2 if the talk page became cluttered with other types of banners.

Can you see my thinking? I would like to ask you to consider not imposing style #1 on all these kinds of talk pages but instead to use #2 or #3 sometimes. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:06, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

As I understand the situation, #1 is what happens now under WPB because WPB calls WPBS with the collapsed parameter. As I stated, I never paid any attention to what was seen when the "show" button was pushed.

I believe you are missing my main point, although I may not have stated it. Basically, I am working on problem pages in WP Biog such as Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts, Category:Biography articles needing priority parameter replacement and everyone’s favorite for a bot to work on, Category:Biography articles without listas parameter.

When, in the course of cleaning the last (because it is to the point that a bot is nearly worthless), I notice a missing living parameter, an automatic assessment parameter, or more than two project banners I fix those items also.

I almost always have to look at the article to determine a listas value so if there is no indication that the person has died (the article is in the present tense), I can safely assume that the person is alive. If the article consists of only a couple of sentences I can verify that it is a stub as you verified that Jesse Arnelle is a Start-class article.* (Wouldn’t everyone be happier if the “Auto” banner were as simple as the blp banner?)

I know I am fighting a losing battle because it seem, as I mentioned above, that Category:Biography articles without listas parameter is a category that everyone wants a bot to work on and no one wants to do the manual editing that is now necessary. Therefore, I use the methods that are the easiest for me for all the tasks. Back when many banners needed the nested parameter to work under WPBS, I used WPB just because I did not feel I had the time to enter a nested value and paste it into the other banners. Since that issue was resolved I have used WPBS for all pages that had more than two but fewer than six project banners. I have used and will continue to use WPB for all pages that have more than five project banners. I hope that WPB can be retained as a short cut to WPBS with a collapsed parameter.

What I wish even more, though, is that WPB could still have its original code with a change for its appearance after the show button is pushed. WPB seemed to have a different logic in its programming than WPBS used. The biggest clue was that it did not require a banner to have the nested parameter. The second clue, and the real reason I think it should be kept, is that, because of the differences between the two shells, there were times while folks were tinkering with WPBS or other things when WPBS would mis-behave but WPB was working well. I believe it was useful to have two different shells that behaved differently. I could be wrong.

*I was quite heartened to see that you had verified the automatic assessment. Very few who have called my attention to a page as an example have cleaned the page. It is as if they did not want to be caught editing a page by typing rather than use a bot.

JimCubb (talk) 20:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi there. I did reply to your message on my talk page. I don't know if you noticed. I also put your proposal for WPB on the talk page there. Regarding your recent edits to some shells, such as this one, I really appreciate the gesture. But this is what we are planning to get a bot to do in the near future, so I wouldn't spend much time on it! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:06, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Would you able to comment on the latest specific proposals on Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell when you get a chance? We are trying to establish a consensus there. Based on your latest comments on my talk page, my proposal regarding WPB instances (see the first footnote there), which was mainly a compromise to your position, may not be necessary anymore. Cheers — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:16, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Well done for reverting your edit to Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell. Such comments are really not helpful have no place here. Shall we work together and not against each other? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:29, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I hope that you will not be offended if I take what I infer to be meant as a compliment as not a compliment but more as condescension. The good news is that your "compliment" has alerted me to the need for me to avoid being condescending in my responses to others.

I reverted myself not because it was not helpful but because it was not written well enough to accomplish anything. I hope to be able to write it again in a way that will convince others, not only the admins who have been sufficiently cleaver as to be able to circumvent the various approval processes but also the innocent bystanders, that not all that has been done with the shells has been positive.

I firmly believe that too much effort as been spent on {{WPBS}} to "improve" it; that {{WPB}} did exactly what it was purported to do; that a very small group of persons decided that {{WPB}} was no good and {{WPBS}} was the be all and end all of shells but it needed some tweaking. Also I believe that much too much of the effort was directed to enabling bots rather than enabling editors who work manually.

Not to worry as I don't hold much hope that I well ever be able to write well enough to accomplish my goal. I am not certain that I want to be.

I am left with accepting the situation as it stand and the hope that some admin will see that the documentation for each of the shells needs to be completely rewritten.

JimCubb (talk) 01:38, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

2006 Harris County, Texas hate crime assault

As I see there, this article is the target of David Ritcheson. Moreover, it discusses a person and it is located in Category:2007 deaths. I would tag it as "non-bio=yes". -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I added "non-bio" to the talk page of the redirect. Probably is better. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:44, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding picky, pedantic or dense, isn't a non-bio biography a contradiction of terms? The first sentence of Biography is, "A biography is a description or account of someone's life, which is usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film."

However, if there has been agreement that such a thing is desirable, how many folks would object if I were to put "non-bio" on all the remaining bands in Category:Biography articles without listas parameter?

JimCubb (talk) 21:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Right now "non-bio" is used only for redirects that redirect to something else than the person itself. Like the example above. I think it's better to create something else than adding "non-bio" to musical groups. Btw, I think Category:Biography articles without listas parameter will be depopulated very soon with the help of ListasBot. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The last time I checked ListasBot was getting only about 0.5% hit ratio. ListasBot applies the sort value from either {{DEFAULTSORT}} or {{lifetime}} on the article page. If neither is there, ListasBot is stuck.

Those are the cases that require a human being with experience and patience to look at the article page, determine and apply a valid value for {{DEFAULTSORT}} and copy that value to the |listas= parameter. The human being can also verifiy automatic Stub classification and apply the living parameter apply {{WPBS}} as necessary.

Feel free to jump in at any time. Pick a page at random, do the top five or ten in each column and move on. I believe that there are only two persons who are working on Category:Biography articles without listas parameter so its population is growing because contributors can create and Yobot can tag deficient pages faster than two (maybe three) people can correct them.

JimCubb (talk) 18:40, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I've commented at the template talk page discussion, and raised my objection there and provided some of the background. Listasbot is doing great work, but I think the categories are needed until the work is finished, and (as you say) humans have done what the bot cannot do. Other stuff that still needs doing is defining what "non-bio" is to be used for (as noted above) and ensuring it is used consistently. The biggest set of biography articles are ones about a single named person. The others tend to be bands (the biggest subgroup) or articles about more than one person (e.g. about two people, three people, or a group of people, not always a band). I call these "group bios". It would be very nice to get those labelled so there is a better idea of how many "true" (or 'single person') biographies there are. The other sort of non-bio articles are ones about a baronetcy, or some family tree, or hereditary title, type of article, or even daughter articles (like "early life of Isaac Newton") or biographical-type crime articles like "Murder of X", and so on. A consistent approach to either include and mark such articles, or exclude them, is needed. But for now, listas is the discussion I'll try and comment on if I get time. Carcharoth (talk) 22:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT placement test

You've been corrected at Template talk:Lifetime#Placement, but just to confirm the ordering of {{DEFAULTSORT}} and Category tags does not affect the operation of {{DEFAULTSORT}}.

Until {{X1}} and {{X2}} get cleared, you can confirm this at Category:X1 where my Markhurd/Sandbox, its subpage and their corresponding talk pages are sorted according to the DEFAULTSORT, irrespective of its placement. Mark Hurd (talk) 18:25, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I trusted the example to be the general case, but thank you.

JimCubb (talk) 18:29, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Talk back

helpme

DEFAULTSORT Problems

On The Eye (2008 film), The Eye (2002 film), The Eye 10, The Eye 2 and Pang brothers there is something in the body of the article that is setting the sort value of the page to "Eye, The". I cannot find it. I have even pasted the text of each of the articles into a text processor and can find it. Any ideas on where it is and how to get rid of it?
In Mexican general election, 2006 each of the two graphs is setting a sort value.for the page. This should not happen, should it?

Thank you.

When you leave messages, please remember to "sign" your name, by putting ~~~~ (four tilde signs) at the end. This will add your name, and the date and time.

I have removed {{DEFAULTSORT:Eye (2008 film), The}} from The Eye (2008 film), with this edit, which should sort out problem a (for that article at least). Does that explain it?

I will look at b) now, and also I note that there is some problem with the navbox at the end of The Eye (2008 film). I'll write more here soon. Chzz ► 19:30, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I've removed the sort stuff from Template:The_Eye, so I think that one is now OK. I'll look at the 2nd issue now (with the Mexico election article) Chzz ► 19:35, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, fixed, I hope. For some reason, the graphs are in subpages called Mexican general election, 2006/Graph and Mexican general election, 2006/Graph 2. These also had 'DEFAULTSORT' specified. I removed these, so now, Mexican general election, 2006 looks OK. Please use another 'helpme' thing if there are further problems. Cheers, Chzz ► 19:45, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Greetings from WikiProject California!

Welcome to WikiProject California!

I noticed you recently added yourself to our Participants' list, and I wanted to welcome you to our project. Our goal is to facilitate collaboration on California-related articles, and everyone is welcome to join. Here are some suggested activities:

Discuss with other members at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject California
Cleanup some of the articles listed for cleanup
Have a look at the Article alerts

As a member it would be helpful if you would

Add the project page to your watchlist
Add yourself to the participant category, either by adding a userbox, or by adding [[Category:WikiProject California participants|{{PAGENAME}}]] to your userpage.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask at the project talk page, or feel free to ask me on my talk page.

Again, welcome! -Optigan13 (talk) 00:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Hey Jim

I was just looking over some stuff, I think you need to be a little cautious about. Firstly defaultsorts do make sense on redirect pages. Secondly the WP bio project banner applies to articles other than biographies, they even have a field "non-bio = yes" that is used in these cases. thirdly be careful overwriting talk pages of redirects, these often contain important information such as links to deletion debates. All the best. Rich Farmbrough, 11:50, 2 September 2009 (UTC).

I didn't realise you were the "they" (they even have a field) I was referring to! The mysteries of WP Bio project are far to arcane and deep for me.

However I am reasonably well versed in listas, having added a ridiculous number of them, only getting tripped up on some "Jacobs" or some such who, I was told were Middle Eastern, and therefore should not be name reversed (I am still not sure I agree with this, first it's very fuzzy, I have just changed the sort order for Moazzam Begg. The comment there implied that we use JimCubb/Archive 1 for people who are put in categories that are mainly Arabic names. I don't recall the proponents of that idea saying that we should use last name first in categories that are mainly western style names. I incline to the latter view, because I think most readers will look for Abdullah Mohammed under M.), and indeed DEFAULTSORT. The cases in question the defaultsort value was just plain wrong according to the rules for living people. Of course the existing defaultsort was corrected and the one from lifetime was not there until the subst: took effect. If you looked at the edit summary you will have seen that a second pass would have occurred which would, incidentally, have corrected this, as well as removing one DEFAULTSORT. Nonetheless I have abandoned using subst: because of this and other reasons, basically the need to a second pass. So far I have been concentrating on articles where there are both DEFAULTSORT and lifetime, there are of course others that have one or more of the categorises and lifetime, others with the wrong syntax - too many or too few pipes, wrong defaultsort, invalid layouts for centuries, spaces instead of empty strings and so forth. In recognition of the fact that I put a few items in DEFAAULTSORT confliccts I've fixed the rest there, and also the MediaWiki message so it doesn't get categorised. Theres more to say but that's enough typing for now. Rich Farmbrough, 06:33, 3 September 2009 (UTC).

I have been banging against that brick wall for months. A small group of people, User:Geo Swan is the one I have seen most often and he may be the only one, hold the position that all persons who have Arabic names should follow the Arabic naming conventions. I have generally left a note within the existing note to the effect that the person in the article is not Arabic but (in the case of Mr. Begg) and not only would follow a different naming convention from the Arabs but may be insulted by being considered an Arab. I take the usage in the article as my guide, as with Mr. Begg, and move on.

I had to get a little sharp with our "esteemed colleague" User:Geo Swan when he refused to "correct" values he thought were wrong but simply eliminated them. After I had indicated that the values were necessary epecially if they were identical to the PAGENAME so that a bot would not enter an incorrect value a bot did just that three times. He deleted the incorrect values, put a note on the bot's talk page with incorrect links and told me about it. I entered correct values, gave the bot's owner the correct links and told User:Geo Swan what I had done, indicating that he should attempt in the future to improve things rather than make them worse and complain as he had been doing. I do not think he has bothered me since then.

Copied to Rich's Talk page.

JimCubb (talk) 20:11, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, having read Arabic naming conventions, it seems that the last name is the family name. It may be more a question of moving the articles to the correct name rather than having to treat them differently for spurious reasons. Rich Farmbrough, 05:50, 5 September 2009 (UTC).

Template:Broken ref/doc

(copied from mine)

The normal practice is to sort templates to the Greek letter Tau in categories where they are ancillary rather than true members. One tau was for template, one for the documentation, and one to override the value set by the other template. The page is fixed, if someone wants it sorted differently they need to change it properly, or errors will recur. I would carry on "ignoring that concern" (if I were you) as checking 2.5 million edits might take a while. Rich Farmbrough, 06:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC).

Indentation of your signature

Hello. I have a small request. Could you please remove the indentation from your signature? When someone replies to a message, the general practice is to indent one more level than the previous indentation. As your signature is indented one more level than your text, discussions tend to get overindented whenever you're involved, making it more difficult to deal with. It also makes it appear that the preceding text was unsigned, and your signature is an odd reply. I think many users would be grateful if you stopped adding the extra indentation. Thank you. 159.83.4.148 (talk) 23:14, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It is jarring. Geo Swan (talk) 18:16, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

'Tis a small thing. I am certain you'll get over it. JimCubb (talk) 20:03, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note

Jim, thanks for the message you left for me regarding the listas variable......PK T(alk) 01:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Could you please explain...

I've requested you return to Talk:Qalandar_Shah and explain this edit.

Thanks Geo Swan (talk) 20:15, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

HMS Howe (1805)

Hi Jim, thanks for sorting out the Defaultsort on Howe. So that I do a better job in the future, can you explain what the Defaultsort does, and what the difference is between "Howe", "Howe, HMS", "Howe (1805)", and similar equivalent variants that I have seen on other articles? Also, what is a better way of handling the situation when a vessel has two names, especially when the second name was in use for longer than the first? I would appreciate any info and suggestions. Regards, Acad Ronin (talk) 16:20, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Jim, that was helpful. I have seen all sorts of variants and had no idea what effect the variants would have. Henceforth I am going to standardize on the formula you used for Howe (1805). It makes the most sense. I refuse to think about Icelandic names. :-) Lastly, I will continue to think about the problem of vessels with more than one name over their career. It happens often, and sometimes they are better known by a later name than their article name.Regards,Acad Ronin (talk) 00:31, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Just wondering

These came up on my watchlist: [4], [5], [6], likewise the talk page bio sort params. Am I missing something? I thought that DEFAULTSORT was only necessary when the words needed to be out of order, to sort numbers (especially Roman numerals) correctly, or if the lettering differed in case or accents. • Anakin ^(talk) 13:32, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

There are three answers to your question.

First, it has been decided at WPBIOG that every biography should have a value for {{DEFAULTSORT}} if for no other reason than to indicate that a person had look at the page and had made a conscious decision about how the page should be sorted.

Second, there have been and may still be, bots that go through the WPBIO pages, automatically assume that two-word titles on pages are names and construct a sort value base upon that assumption. Fortunately, these bots do not replace sort values. By assigning a sort value to the article and its talk page I have prevented such a bot from assigning sort values to the pages you have mentioned of "Silhouettes, Wallpaper", "Concert, Walking" and "Mink, Walt", respectively.

Third, those articles that can be legitimately sorted by PAGENAME conceal the articles that cannot on Category:Biography articles without listas parameter. Look at the first page of that category. See all the Arabic names that probably a valid as sort values? See how difficult it is to find the ones that are sorted incorrectly?

JimCubb (talk) 21:18, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Wow, yeah, I see what you mean. I understand now, I thought it just was AWB being stupid. Thanks for taking the time to give such a thorough answer. • Anakin ^(talk) 11:28, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Comment

We have discussed the compromises open for how to, or whether to, make exceptions to the sort order of individuals names. We have discussed the maintenance burden imposed by those various choices.

Your preferred choice was to "protect" articles about individuals who had names that should not be shoehorned into the European convention that all names have an inheritable last-name/surname, by sticking the entire current name of the article into those fields. (Currently up to four fields: {{defaultsort}}, and fields of the {{persondata}}, {{lifetime}} and {{WikiProject Biography}}.) One of the points I tried to make was that there was a maintenance burden I wasn't sure you were recognizing in your preferred choice. Namely, your approach still meant that those articles would no longer sort correctly if the "move" mechanism was used to rename the article -- that it would still sort under the old name, not the new name -- unless someone were to manually go in and edit those fields. No one, except you and I, realizes this is necessary.

Back on 2009-06-26, in Talk:Mohamed_el_Gharani I wrote:

I think it is a mistake to have to "protect" non-European biographical articles from Europeanization of the sort keys, by placing a sort key identical to the current article name. Articles on individuals with Arabic names are frequently renamed -- due to the peculiarities of Arabic to English transliteration. This kind of "protection" results in an unncessary maintenance burden when the article is renamed.

That article was renamed just two days after I left that note. And it was renamed again today. That is two moves in six months.

The current name of this article is "Mohamed_el_Gharani" but it sorts on "Muhammad Hamid Al Qarani". For categories with lots of Arabic names, that is not even close.

My alternate approach is to get the robots that suggest Europeanization, and the real human quality control volunteers to respect a tag whose purpose is to protect the article from naive Europeanization.

The whole approach to having a "default sort" of biographies was poorly thought out. Some key person, early in the process, seems never to have considered the possibility that there were any individuals who had names that shouldn't be sorted in the European style. It has seemed to me that your preferred approach is an after-thought -- and, not really satisfactory.

If only a relatively few non-European articles need to be manually renamed in your prefered approach -- but the work necessary to do correct the renamed files is high, your preferred approach can be costly.

We have been discussing this for about eight months now. I am sure if I checked the revision history of all the articles on my watchlist that shouldn't be Europeanized, to look for individuals whose articles were renamed in that period, I am sure I would find a considerable number. It would be an incredible amount of work, so I am not going to do so.

Could a bot be set to examine the sort keys in the {{defaultsort}}, {{persondata}}, {{lifetime}} and {{WikiProject Biography}} templates, looking for instances where (1) the sort key doesn't have a comma, but (2) the value differs from the current name of the article? Yes. Having found an instance, should the bot be authorized to change that sort key value to the current name of the article?

Authorizing bots to perform tasks that really require human judgment is how we got into this mess. So I would have reservations about setting an additional bot to try to clean up after the rogue bots.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 04:54, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Just because it seemed to be a good idea I have spent the last three minutes (timed) perusing the article in question, Mohamed el Gharani. The problem is much larger than you state. The subject of the article, as identified by the bold print at the beginning of the article, is "Muhammad Hamid Al Qarani".

There is no instance in the article where the subject is referred to as "el Gharani". The subject is almost always referred to as "Al Qarani". The exceptions are in the section about the Boston Globe investigations where he is referred to as "Al Gharani" and the section about the 2006 suicides where he is referred to as "Mohammed el-Gharani", "el-Gharani" (note the hyphens) and twice as "Al Qaranhi". When an article such as this moved due to a new spelling or new transliteration of the person's name, it is incumbent upon the person who made the move to also change all instances of the name in the article to the new spelling. Having done so, it would be no appreciable increased effort to also change the sort values — either {{lifetime}} or {{DEFAULTSORT}} and the |listas= on the talk page. I have fixed both the {{DEFAULTSORT}} and the |listas= for this person because they were incorrect after the latest move. It took me 45 seconds. Now some one needs to fix all the names within article, starting with the lead paragraph and the infobox. You may want to mention that in future discussions about the moving of articles because of the spelling of the name.

Actually, I am rather pleased that it only took me 45 seconds to fix the {{DEFAULTSORT}} and |listas=. My average is just over a minute. I could take care of the Arab names on the first page of Category:Biography articles without listas parameter in about an hour and expose those articles that are truly sorted incorrectly. (See my answer to Anakin, above.)

By the way, so that I can be certain that we are using the same terms, here is a little bit about {{DEFAULTSORT}} and sort values. {{DEFAULTSORT}} looks like a template but it is not. It is a magic word within the wiki program. What I am adding are sort values to the magic word to indicate that an editor has looked at the article and has determined what the sort value should be. {{lifetime}} is a template that includes a person's year of birth, year of death and the sort value for the magic word. The sort value for |listas= sets the sort value for the project banners only. Any categories on the talk page should have a pipe, "|", to indicate the correct sort value.

Happy editing, especially in your fixing of the names within all those renamed articles!

JimCubb (talk) 01:15, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

{{DEFAULTSORT}} not a template? Other keywords are enclosed between double underscores. This keyword is enclosed between double braces ... becasue someone likes variety? Lol.

You wrote: "{{lifetime}} is a template that includes a person's year of birth, year of death and the sort value for the magic word. The sort value for |listas= sets the sort value for the project banners only. Any categories on the talk page should have a pipe, "|", to indicate the correct sort value." But: (1) isn't there another bot out there, which assuming that listas values are correct, then plugs them into new {{DEFAULTSORT}} not-templates? (2) Weren't a large, but unknown, number of the existing "listas" values (inappropriately IMO) supplied by User:Kingboyk's robots?

I don't know if this has been solved, now, but six months ago I saw many indications that there were currently active robot assisted editing tools, which incorporated the bad code, and kept recommending inappropriate Europeanization of non-European names. I have been wonder how that happened. I used to be a computer programmer. And, after a couple of painful mistakes, I made the first thing all my programs do is to check, and verify that they were still authorized, hadn't bee superceded; and then to verify that they were authorized to work on the data files the user invoked them to run on. When my programs found they had been superceded, or invoked to process data they weren't authorized to process, they told the user, and bailed out. I haven't looked into the wikipedia bots and robot-assisted edite tools very deeply. But this lead me to suspect that these bots and robot assisted editing tools are not routinely checking to verify that they were still authorized. I suspected good faith users had downloaded and were using out of date versions -- which would be a terrible mistake.

I confess, the concern you brought up about the article containing multiple transliterations didn't occur to me. Will you let me think about it for a couple of days? Geo Swan (talk) 04:18, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

From the {{DEFAULTSORT}} documentation:

Please use {{DEFAULTSORT:Sortkey}} rather than {{DEFAULTSORT|Sortkey}}, with a colon (":"), not a pipe symbol ("|"). This uses the magic word directly instead of using the template to call the magic word.

{{DEFAULTSORT:<sort key>}} is a magic word used to apply a sort key to many categories at once. It can be overridden for individual categories applied to an article by manually applying a sort key.

You seem to have missed my point about {{lifetime}} probably because it was not stated. {{lifetime}} includes a sort value and either it or (exclusive or) {{DEFAULTSORT}} should be on the page. Mikaey's last version of listasbot was the one that took the most likely to be correct sort value from the article and pasted it into the |listas= on the talk page. He and I never discussed it but we each were surprised at how many times a sort value had been put on the article but not copied to the talk page especially when the sort value had been applied by the same editor who put the banner on the talk page.

There is no system of review for bots or users of AWB. Once either is approved they can run forever. There is also no approval mechanism for revisions of the programming of templates. That used to upset me greatly.

As of right now it appears that Mohamed el Gharani is named incorrectly. The bold letters at the beginning of the lead paragraph and the bold letters in the infobox indicate that the subject of the article is "Muhammad Hamid Al Qarani", "u" not "o", "mm" not "m", "ad" not "ed", "Al" not "el" and "Qa" not "Gha". Don't be overly concerned that this result of an irresponsible move is confusing. It does not seem to bother anyone but me.

I wish you luck in convincing those who have moved articles because of a change in spelling to also change the spelling within the articles. Acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of one's actions is extremely rare among editors.
JimCubb (talk) 05:26, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Autoreviewer

Hello, I have replied to your note about the autoreviewer right. Thanks for being so conscientious. Keep up the good work. Agolib (talk) 23:46, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

WPbiography and Listas

Hi JimCubb. I have two questions for you since you work a lot with listas:

How often do you find special characters (for example: Ć,é,ó) in listas. Is it worth to implement a feature in WP:AWB that will correct these problems every time or a bot run would be enough?
What do you think of a bot running in "Biography articles without listas parameter" and add listas to all single-word articles? Are there many of them in there?

Thanks, -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:31, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi!

I occasionally find special characters in {{DEFAULTSORT}} on article pages. I do not find them in |listas= because I am looking at pages that do not have |listas=. Although they disturb me when I find them I am more disturbed by the number of pages with special characters in what used to be Category:Biography articles with listas parameter and are now in Category:WikiProject Biography articles. I do not know enough about WP:AWB to know how it works but a bot run through Category:WikiProject Biography articles strikes me as a really good idea.
I do not think there are many of them but a bot run to fix all of them is also a good idea.

Thank you for asking. JimCubb (talk) 19:58, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Northern Ireland

'tis done. Rich Farmbrough, 19:08, 24 May 2010 (UTC).

Re: User:JohnTBoy

Hi Jim,

Yikes! Blocked users are allowed to edit their talk page. However, this privilege is designed for making unblock requests, not for drafting articles or whatever he was doing! I'll revert the talk page to an earlier state and protect it. I know that my rollback didn't really solve the problem, but I'll do more work on the page. Thanks for informing me about this somewhat unusual behaviour. Graham87 06:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I've deleted the page and protected it against re-creation. For the record, there are only 180 deleted edits; 29 of those were from before November 2009, when the most recent itteration of the page was created. That's still quite bizarre, however. Graham87 06:56, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

When reviewing, edits should be accepted if they are not obvious vandalism or BLP violations, and not clearly problematic in light of the reason given for protection (see Wikipedia:Reviewing process). More detailed documentation and guidelines can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. MBisanz ^talk 02:16, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Placement of Missing Birth/Death Information Category Tags

I appreciate your contacting me regarding the CfD which affected the placement of these maintenance categories and would also like to take this opportunity to offer my sincere apologies for having neglected to initiate communication in response to your earlier postings. I had been using Wikipedia since its first year, 2001, but did not become a contributor until January 2006, seven months after the initial two of these maintenance categories, Year of birth missing and Year of death missing, were created in June 2005. An additional eleven related categories came into being between March and November 2006, while the last three, Year of birth missing (living people), Place of birth missing (living people) and Date of birth missing (living people), appeared in May 2007. I created two of the latter, "Year (living people)" and "Place (living people)" and described some of the reasoning behind the creation in my May 2, 2007 comment at the newly-instituted Category talk:Year of birth missing (living people)#Category history. A maximum of only four of these categories can be logically appended to any single biographical entry — 1. Year or date (but not both) of birth, 2. Year or date (but not both) of death, 3. Place of birth and 4. Place of death, while most entries use none of them or only one, possibly two.

All of the foregoing notwithstanding, a few editors continued to submit these categories for deletion, positing that their presence created clutter amidst article categories. The deletion and subsequent restoration of some of these categories (one of them, "Cause of death missing", was deleted in March 2007 and never restored), prompted the April 2007 CfD you mention, proposing that only the three "defining" categories — Year of birth missing, Year of birth missing (living people) and Year of death missing were eligible to remain among article categories, while the remaining twelve should be repurposed to the discussion page, where they would be out of sight and, unfortunately, out of mind. As has already been pointed out, had the "hidden category" option existed back then, it would have obviated the need for such actions.

Three years after that April 2007 CfD, an April-June 2010 CfD came to the conclusion that the 2007 arguments for retaining the twelve categories on the discussion pages of biographical entries had become outmoded/outdated and presented no objections to the restoration of all entries in Category:Articles missing birth or death information to article pages. An associated deletion discussion is still ongoing at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_June 9#Category:Date_of_birth_unknown, with relation to Date of birth unknown and Date of death unknown.—Roman Spinner (talk) 17:01, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Your assistance please...

Could you please review this comment, and confirm my recollection of our discussions corresponds with yours? Geo Swan (talk) 21:25, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

1990 Bdo World Darts Championship

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a search with the contents of 1990 Bdo World Darts Championship, and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: 1990 BDO World Darts Championship. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. CorenSearchBot (talk) 01:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The prods at Movable singularity are against policy

Hi Jim. The prods at Movable singularity are against policy. Proposed deletion are for uncontroversial deletions. That an article is not referenced is not a legitimate reason for deletion (see WP:DEL). An unreferenced article about a notable topic would never survive an AFD debate. The second prod is expressly against policy: An article may be PRODed only once and If any person objects to the deletion (usually by removing the proposed deletion tag), the proposal is aborted and may not be re-proposed. (see Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. Please familiarize yourself with relevant policy before using the prod tag. Thanks, Paul August ☎ 12:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Paul. Here is why I re-instated the tag. It was placed on the article for lack of references. Sure enough, after many years there were no references on the article. The prod was removed because "subject is notable." Notability was not the issue. As a justification for removing the prod it was as valid as "a formula has been added". The last time I looked at the article there was no justification of notability in the article.

The point is moot, however. After many years there is finally a reference in the article. Whether or not it is reliable or applicable is not my concern although judging from the reason the prod was removed I think there is a good possibility that the reference has nothing at all to do with the article. JimCubb (talk) 21:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Did you read the bolded passages I quoted from Wikipedia:Proposed deletion above? Your prod violated policy. If you continue to violate policy you could be subject to sanction. Paul August ☎ 21:47, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

The situation was very much a one-off.

I re-instated the tag because I felt the reason it had been deleted did not address the reason it had been applied. I have since learned that the tag was not the correct one and should not have been applied in the first place. However, there is a policy that unreferenced material may be removed and since the article completely lacked references it could have been deleted for that reason.

I doubt if I have touched more than a dozen such tags in all my time as an editor. All of the rest of the tags I touched were ones that I deleted because either they were no longer applicable (the issue had been addressed but the tag had not been removed) or they had been applied incorrectly, were very old and were just taking up space. (The tags that refer editors to the discussion on the talk page but the tagging editor had not initiated any such discussion, there was no relevant discussion on the talk page or there was no talk page. The last was true twice.)

Calm down. No real harm was done. The article now has a reference. JimCubb (talk) 17:40, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm calm. And you are right no harm was done. I simply wanted to make that you were familiar with deletion policy and understood your mistake, so as to avoid possible future harm. Paul August ☎ 19:47, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

You may be calm but you are becoming tiresome.

I acted in good faith. The reason given for deleting the prod did not address the reason given for applying the prod. I did not run to the talk page of the editor who deleted the prod and suggest that the editor learn to read with comprehension. I must admit that the main reason I did not do that is that I have found that inability to read with comprehension is rampant.
I was not aware of the policy regarding prods that seems to concern you. Had I been aware of it, I would have considered it silly and ignored it. (cf. the 5th pillar of WP). Now that I am aware of it I consider extremely silly and counterproductive to improving the encyclopedia.
Rather than continuing to harass me I suggest you look at the list of maths articles that lack references and do what you can to improve them, including inline citations especially to establish notability, in addition to adding a reference. An editor with more time than I have could easily get a large number of the articles deleted on the grounds of lack of references, lack of demonstration of notability based on reliable sources and lack of concern by the project based on the amount of time the article was on the list without its deficiencies being addressed.

Happy editing. JimCubb (talk) 07:20, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure you acted in good faith. And I believe you when you say you were acting in ignorance of the policy. But it is important that you realize that Wikipedia works by the consensus of it's editors. You are welcome to disagree with policy, which represents that consensus, but you must nevertheless follow it. Failure to do so can result in your losing the right to edit. Regards, Paul August ☎ 14:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Turning Ten

On Saturday January 15, 2011, Wikipedia will turn 10 years and people all over the globe will be celebrating Wikipedia on that day. No event is currently planned for Orange County Wikipedians, so I am leaving a message with some of the currently involved editors listed in "Wikipedians in Orange County, California" to see if we might want to meet on that day, lunch, dinner, group photo or other ideas welcomed? I will start a "Turning Ten" discussion thread on my Talk page to see if any interest can be planned for and determined. I am located in Old Towne Orange off the circle.Tinkermen (talk) 19:39, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

PROD issue

I think I misread your post on the PROD talk page. It appears what you're saying is that removing the PROD removes the notice that something was wrong?

If so, then something is definitely wrong... PROD is not a cleanup tag! If the problem with the article is a lack of references, PRODing it is absolutely not the thing to do.

Sadly, there's a profusion of "right things", so many I've completely given up on tagging in general. I'd go so far as to say they should be removed from the engine. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:10, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

This all started when I stumbled upon and article that had been prodded for lack of references. The prod was deleted because "the subject is notable" and I felt that the justification for removing the tag was completely non-responsive to the issue.

I doubt that the issue has been resolved but I am trying to get out of it. If I were to remain in the fray I would insist on a massive streamlining of tags; a drastic reduction in the rules and a resolution of all the conflicts in the rules; and a strict enforcement of the rules that remain. It may take the rest of my life and would keep me from making any other contribution to the encyclopedia but I would prevail.

I hope to be left alone so that I can go back to using the encyclopedia and preforming my gnome-like task.

Happy editing! JimCubb (talk) 07:31, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Bot for listas

Hi. You can check my BRFA in Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 19. I 'll certainly need your support and help in supervising the edits in order to ensure we are gonna get it right. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:01, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Please comment in Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 19 on Celebi. I made some remarks. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:04, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I am waiting for your next task. :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

"Resolved default sort conflict"

If you see this mistake on a list of episodes, that means that someone messed with the formatting elsewhere.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 17:45, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The conflict was created because the smaller article was linked into the larger article rather than copied. JimCubb (talk) 18:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

re: listas

Hi Jim, thanks for letting me know. My apologies for not taking the initiative to check beforehand! Will definitely take more care in future to check out different/foreign naming conventions. 97198 (talk) 08:21, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Víctor Manuel Chávez Segovia

This help request has been answered. If you need more help, you can ask another question on your talk page, contact the responding user(s) directly on their user talk page, or consider visiting the Teahouse.

I ran across this article in Category:Biography articles without listas parameter. Most of the information in this article is about Cesar Dorado. I put a message on the author's talk page two weeks ago but nothing has been done. Can the article be deleted? JimCubb (talk) 20:23, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I have proposed deletion, and we will have to wait and see what happens. JamesBWatson (talk) 20:53, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.