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I see a lot of links to Washington in a city, state context being unlinked. Is there a reason for the unlinking instead of linking to Washington (U.S. state)? —C.Fred (talk) 18:01, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I have been following the preferred format indicated by {{City-region}}. Another alternative would be Seattle, Washington instead of "Seattle, Washington"; both link to the same article, the only difference being the amount of blue and/or underlining on your screen.  :-) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:05, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
The bot made this edit, which is related, but a bit different. I don't see why it is fixing these links, they are perfectly fine. – Zntrip 03:04, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
That is correct. Washington is now a disambig page, this edit removed those disambig links. bd2412 T 03:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject Washington/Link repair. Hopefully that can help you. (It keeps the linking patterns the same so far, but that can be changed of course.) I'm hoping people with regex experience will add more and then all the interested bot owners and tool authors can include them. (I already added them to my predefined regexes in my editor.) Since your bot seems to be finding quite a bit of these, I figured I'd let you know. (I also told the WildBot author, since WildBot automatically deals with certain disambiguation issues.) --Closeapple (talk) 10:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Polkovnyk & Pulkownik

What exactly should I do? I added that into "Talk:Polkovnik" page:

 {{merged-from |Polkovnyk |date=May 2010}
 {{merged-from |Pulkownik |date=May 2010}

UeArtemis (talk) 13:56, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that is exactly right. Thank you. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Hm

That was not "fixing", that was removing. Debresser (talk) 15:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

If there is no encyclopedic sense of the term to change the link to, then unlinking is a fix. bd2412 T 17:51, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Point taken. :) Debresser (talk) 21:23, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Other uses

As far as I understand {{otheruses|foo}} was targeting to foo and after your change is will redirect to foo (dab). This will change tenths of targets, or not? -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

If the template was being used as intended, "foo" should always be a disambiguation page; and "foo (disambiguation)", if it exists, should be a redirect to "foo". However, both of those "shoulds" may have exceptions; incorrect use of templates and redirects is not unheard of. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:33, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your work in cleaning up the merged Mint Museum-related redirects, talk pages, etc, and for preserving properly the edit history of the merged articles. Contributingfactor (talk) 15:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Another fun one for you.

I have come across many instances where the page "Joe Smith (foo)" will have an intentional link to the disambig page, Joe Smith, which happens to include "Joe Smith (foo)" as one of the disambiguation terms. This, of course, should be solved with a pipe through "Joe Smith (disambiguation)". Can you generate for me a list of all pages "foo" which link to disambiguation page "bar", where "foo" is also one of the pages lined on disambiguation page "bar" itself? Cheers! bd2412 T 18:16, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

So you are looking for circular linking: "foo" links to "bar" which links to "foo", with the constraint that "bar" is a disambiguation page. Correct? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:22, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. Draw me a circle, my friend. bd2412 T 18:39, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
I did a test run (limited to 50 links) at User:RussBot/Circular links to disambiguation pages. See if this looks useful. It appears that doing a complete scan of the database with this script will take several hours, at least, and generate a huge list, so I want to be sure it is right before doing the complete list. For one thing, I'm guessing that I should change it to omit links where the target's title ends in "(disambiguation)". --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:25, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Interesting. Yes, if the non-disambig page contains a link to "Foo (disambiguation)", we can presume that it is intentional and correct (and in any case it won't show up on lists of needed repairs). You can also skip any pages that already show up in the lists from Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Disambiguation pages that link to disambiguation pages, as work on those is already underway. I would think, actually, that to the extent that there are hatnotes containing links to a disambig page, we could have a bot fix those, and where needed, make the redirect from "Foo (disambiguation)" to the disambig page "Foo". bd2412 T 17:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
OK, keep an eye on that link, because I'm re-running the script now. Besides eliminating targets that end in "(disambiguation)", I've also restricted it to links from a non-disambiguation page to a disambiguation page, which should make it somewhat more useful. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:04, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Keeping an eye on it. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Let's consider our options here. I think a bot could take care of most of these, either by deleting inappropriately placed hatnotes, or by picking out all the hatnotes for articles such as "Foo Bar (clarifying term)" which have a hatnote pointing to the disambig page "Foo Bar", and changing the hatnote to point to "Foo Bar (disambiguation)". Either way, this is a job that could be automated, and would lift thousands of disambig links out of the lists of links needing to be fixed. bd2412 T 17:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

← I agree. I think a narrowly-specified bot request is in order. If there is a link in a hatnote, and the target of the link ([[Target]]) is a disambiguation page, and the title [[Target (disambiguation)]] exists, and is a redirect back to [[Target]], then the bot can replace "Target" with "Target (disambiguation)". The somewhat tricky part is identifying which links are in hatnotes, since it requires parsing the wikitext to locate links that aren't enclosed in brackets in the template syntax. It's easy for {{Other uses}} but not so simple for some of the other templates. I'll work on that. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

On the other hand, I don't think a bot is going to be much help in "deleting inappropriately placed hatnotes." These really need a human editor to figure out whether they should be deleted, or changed to another target, or changed to a different hatnote style. I've gone through a few of them manually and it is very tedious and time-consuming to do it right. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Thank you for looking into this! bd2412 T 21:57, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Commons showing thru

I'd been using G6 because F2 in twinkle sends all kinds of 'scary' messages, which give up-loaders the wrong ideas.

G6 does not, but you point is noted :) Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:28, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Intentional dab pages

Heya Russ, I put together a script that counts the number of direct links to X (disambiguation) pages. I've also included redirects named X (disambiguation) that redirect to disambigs. So this is a complete list of the links I am hoping to exclude:

http://toolserver.org/~jason/named_disambig_links.php

Now, notice that links to a X (disambiguation) page via a redirect are not counted. So those links would continue to show up as links that need fixing. For example, the Collision (disambiguation) article comes up in this report as having 5 exclude-able links - those that come directly from hatnotes.

I think you'll agree that, with few exceptions (such as India (disambiguation)), the direct links to X (disambiguation) pages are truly intentional and OK to exclude from my counts. --JaGatalk 21:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I do agree. I fully support your removing these links from your counts. I would suggest, though, that you continue to maintain this report on an ongoing basis, so that we can monitor the "intentional" links and make sure they really are intentional. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:18, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Good. Yeah, I can do that. I'll just formalize the scripts I used and stuff them into a daily scheduled job. BTW, I've decided to roll this into my hatnote detection scripts (still in progress but going well) so in a single release I can take out all intentional dab links. I've every hope that integrating a distinction between intentional and unintentional dab links will be a big step for the future of the project. --JaGatalk 13:03, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Athletics (track and field)

Hi R'n'B, thanks for the heads up about the Athletics (track and field) disambiguation. That title is problematic because the two are actually separate topics – I've now split the article which was previously at that title into Athletics (sport) and track and field following long, ongoing discussion. Looks like there is little option but to sort through all the incoming links. Certainly not a task to be relished, but nevertheless an essential one. I've been holding off from doing so because I'm awaiting further input on the new article and the new title of what was previously at track and field athletics.

There's an immense amount of work to put in around this whole area, largely due to the fact that the "athletics" and "track field" topics have been entangled for so long, and there is still no article on athletic sports (as in the definition used in college athletics for example) which is also known as "athletics" in the US and has not yet been distinguished from sport (for example, Formula 1 and horse racing are not athletic sports). All very confusing to an outsider and it doesn't help that all the relevant articles were in a poor state/non-existent. Hilariously, this problem seems to have caused widespread problems on foreign language wikis as quite a large portion made translations of our own pretty messed up article! I'll look to disambiguate the incoming links shortly. Cheers! Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 10:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I imagine that fixing the templates will take care of a large fraction of the inbound links. After reading the articles, it is clear that the title Athletics (track and field) is unsatisfactory, particularly as "track and field" is actually a component of athletics, rather than the other way around. It seems to me that the various "athletic-stub" and "athletic-bio-stub" templates should link to Athletics (sport) rather than Track and field, since they might be used on articles about competitors in any of the various athletic events. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:52, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
I've just started disambiguating a few things and there are many clear cut cases that don't really need user input. For example, US colleges and schools articles frequently have [[Athletics (track and field)|Track]] or variations on the same, which should obviously be disambiguated to just track and field. Also, the medal tables in athlete biographies use {{MedalSport | Men’s [[Athletics (track and field)|Athletics]]}} which should obviously be changed to Athletics (sport) because they always concern competitions at games such as Athletics at the Summer Olympics (no international games have a specified track and field section). Maybe you're the wrong person to ask, but have you any idea of people who would be willing to use a bot to make these unambiguous changes? That could save a lot of time spent on obvious cases. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 22:35, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I can do that. The more precisely you can specify the changes to be made, the better. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:19, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I see you've already made a start on changing the links in the MedalSport template. All looks good to me on that front. Here are a few variations of when links should always be changed to track and field:
  • [[Athletics (track and field)|Track]] → [[Track and field|Track]]
  • [[Athletics (track and field)|Track and Field]] → [[Track and field]]
  • [[Athletics (track and field)|Track and field]] → [[Track and field]]
  • [[Athletics (track and field)|track and field]] → [[track and field]]
  • [[Athletics (track and field)|Track & field]] → [[Track and field]]
  • [[Athletics (track and field)|Track & Field]] → [[Track and field]]
  • [[Athletics (track and field)|track & Field]] → [[track and field]]
I'm not sure if the variations in capitals are necessary to note but these are all the major ones. I'm almost 100% sure that all links outwardly displaying "track and field" or "track" should go to that article – if not then that's really a problem within the article already that can be resolved at a later date. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 09:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Already did all those last night.  :-) R'n'B (call me Russ) 09:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Or so I thought, but I missed a bunch. Working on more, now. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:44, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
We're down from over 13,000 article links yesterday to 3,966 right now. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Now down to 1,830; but I think the bot has done as much as it can. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:23, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the disambiguation on the Levern Spencer piece. Now if only someone would help me put copyright tags on her pic and a few other sthat I want to upload! (Either belonging to me or which I have been given express premission to use.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Terryfinisterre (talkcontribs) 16:44, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much for all the work you've put in sorting out the obvious cases Russ. I know these are exceedingly boring tasks in Wikipedia, but nevertheless they are important ones. Your help is sincerely appreciated. I'll try to get on with resolving the remaining links. Cheers. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 20:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Sorry to bother you again but I'm finding quite a few more links in the medal templates but editors have used a "curly apostrophe (see the change here for example). Could you quickly fix all the links which have used a curly ' in "men's" an "women's"? Cheers! 20:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

(note the difference below)
  • Plain: {{MedalSport | Men's [[Athletics (track and field)|Athletics]]}}
  • Curly: {{MedalSport | Men’s [[Athletics (track and field)|Athletics]]}}
  Done It wasn't quite as easy as it looks, because it's hard to enter one of those curly quotation marks in a DOS terminal. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:49, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Help Historic Artist

Hi.. The photograph you deleted is unique historic from 1977 from Catologo One man show in New York... please can you tell me the reason is deleted. i will be happy Upload file:Photograph! Thank you(MA3ARG (talk) 13:39, 26 May 2010 (UTC))

If you can't even tell me which photo it is, how can you expect me to respond? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:01, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi. the photograph is File:Mino Argento in 1977. This artstis and his studio article Mino Argento. (MA3ARG (talk) 15:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC))

  • Welcome to Wikipedia. For your information, each page on Wikipedia has a specific title, and when you have an issue relating to a specific page, you should put [[ ]] around it so there is a link that other users can click on, like this: File:Mino Argento in 1977. In this case, you are asking about a deleted file, so we need to check the delete log: Special:Log/delete; but searching for the name "File:Mino Argento in 1977" shows no such file has ever existed. However, the file index does have an entry for "File:Mino Argento in 1977.jpg", which is a different title. The deletion log entry for that file reads as follows:
    21:15, May 25, 2010 Explicit (talk | contribs) deleted "File:Mino Argento in 1977.jpg" ‎ (Deleted because "F7: Violates non-free content criteria". using TW)
  • This explains both who deleted it (not me!), and why they deleted it. If you have any questions, I suggest you ask User:Explicit. I am curious, however, what gave you the impression in the first place that I had deleted this file. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for you help! Sorry(MA3ARG (talk) 16:08, 26 May 2010 (UTC))

Cordiality indeed

So let me get this straight ... User:Stemoc can write "WWGB is so dumb" [1] and that goes unadmonished. But if I respond then I am given a mini lecture on "atmosphere"? Methinks there is a double standard here. WWGB (talk) 00:42, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

No, not a double standard. But, as my mother taught me, two wrongs don't make a right. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 01:13, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Move

Thanks for the move of Prithvi Highway. Please move Bagmati to Bagmati River, and Pushpawati to Pushpawati River. I am unable to move these as there are redirect pages of these names. - Chandan Guha (talk) 01:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

If you are sure that these moves will be uncontroversial, you can add {{db-move}} to the top of the page that now contains the redirect; for example, on Bagmati River, you would add {{db-move|Bagmati}}. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 08:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Done. - Chandan Guha (talk) 16:23, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Copyedit-section

 Template:Copyedit-section has been nominated for merging with Template:Copy edit. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Gh87 (talk) 02:25, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Hat notes

Heya Russ,

Things are going well with the hatnote development - I hope to release in time for July's contest - but I have one dilemma I hope you can help me with. I have to identify all templates that will be designated "dab-exempt" - that is, if this template includes a link to a disambig, I will not count it as a dablink that needs fixing. (e.g. {{about}}) Now, I wanted to use Category:Hat notes, but its population dropped suddenly a day or so ago, and I still haven't figured out how, so now I'm not sure I want to depend on it if its membership is so volatile.

I could create a hidden category just to identify these dab-exempt templates, but I would prefer not to create a new category that continually needs maintenance. I would prefer to latch onto the existing Hat notes category, so when new templates are created, it would probably wind up in the proper category whether I knew about it or no.

What do you suggest? Stick with (and monitor) Category:Hat notes, or create something new, or take an entirely different tack? Thanks, --JaGatalk 22:01, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

You could take a look at the list of templates in Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/RussBot 4. That's what I'm using to identify hatnote links that should be presumed to be intentional if they point to a disambig page. However, my bot is going to change all these to Foo (disambiguation) links, so maybe that will solve your problem for you. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:20, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Hmmmm, maybe we should just depend on your bot to do the hatnote conversions, and all I would have to do is ignore the X (disambiguation) links in my link counts. That would be cleaner for my scripts, which are fragile enough already. --JaGatalk 20:15, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Bot malfunction

Your bot made this edit, which altered a correct disambiguation link in the hatnote to a link to a redirect back to the same disambiguation page. Whatever you're doing to generate the links, it's not checking for redirects. I've shut off the bot for a few minutes only, so that you can check the problem. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

That is not a malfunction, it is the intended (and approved) function of the bot. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
To convert links to disambiguation pages into redirects to disambiguation pages? The text at the cited styleguide is rather ambiguous about what is preferred for a hatnote. The only cited example does not address the situation here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:57, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, exactly. Both the bot's edit summary, and the bot's request for approval, explain the reasoning behind it. I am not sure what you find ambiguous about the following paragraph
However, if you don't find it clear, perhaps we can improve the wording. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:05, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
That would be helpful to future editors as well as for this situation. The part I'm looking at begins: "The exceptions to this are:" And then begins the first exception with a mention about hatnotes (using an equivocal example). If there is to be an exception in hatnotes, then I assume that means an exception to the principle described in the text you've quoted above. The ambiguity of the wording lies in the nature of that exception.
On reflecting more, I can see where you're coming from, and I think my problem lies in the guideline itself rather than in your implementation of it. To display the Text "see X (disambiguation)" (not piped) in a hatnote looks like an error when the user finds that it's a redirect. This is going to look like a common error if it's implemented widely. While I agree with the guideline in other respects, I have to disagree with it when applied to hatnotes where the naked page name will appear and the result is a redirect. The top of the page indicates that common sense should be used, and I wonder whether this aspect of the guideline has been fully and properly considered. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:23, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, there was a discussion of this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Bot to edit intentional disambig links in hatnotes?, and although there were differing views, the consensus was to include "(disambiguation)" in the hatnote links, rather than piping them (which I think is what you are suggesting). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:41, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
No, I don't think they should be piped; I think the link should be direct rather than through a redirect, so that the actual disambiguation page name is visible. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:19, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Unnecessary redirects

Why are you creating masses of unnecessary redirects, as in this edit? Bjørnøya (disambiguation) redirects to Bjørnøya which is what was there before. The policy note you've quoted above applies to links in article bodies not to hatnotes. -- Radagast3 (talk) 23:48, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Basically, links to dab pages in article bodies are usually an error (so intentional uses need to be marked), links to dab pages in hatnotes are generally what hatnotes are for. -- Radagast3 (talk) 00:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Concur. It would be helpful if you would stop the bot's activities on this issue for now, and discuss this. - BilCat (talk) 06:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
  • The bot is stopped for now. I suggest you take your objections to Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation, since that is where the relevant style guidelines are maintained. I will note, however, that I discussed the bot proposal extensively before it started operating, and received considerable explicit support for the specific edits that it is making. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 09:25, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Notification of continuing vandalism by User:Euroska

I have just undone some vandalism by Euroska (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) on Patareni (the same article you blocked him/her for vandalizing). I noted the repeated vandalism on Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Thought you might want to know. --Dygituljunky (talk) 07:04, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Hatnote redirects to disambiguation pages.

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Hatnote redirects to disambiguation pages.. bd2412 T 14:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

F1 Files

If your up to it I just did a query on the toolserver of all files with the same SHA 1 hash value here, I notice quite a few are bot created but alot of them will likely fall under F1. Some of the users that created those dups have uploaded the same file but at a different resolution, so checking contribs and searching for similar file names that may not be in the query would help. --nn123645 (talk) 15:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

AFD for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mixing in the Food Industry

You commented on a similar AFD here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mixing in Consumer Products. ErikHaugen (talk) 18:28, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team subpages

I've deleted some of the pages that you nominated for G6 speedy as being content-free; however, some I've declined. Pages such as Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Portugal-related articles by quality I declined because they have significant histories; in my mind, if they have significant histories, it doesn't matter that they aren't currently used. Would you be open to tagging these pages with {{historical}} instead of requesting deletion? Nyttend (talk) 21:59, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

That's fine with me. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:01, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Farsley AFC deletion

Hi

I was going to create a page for Farsley AFC, but see that you deleted one yesterday ‎- listed as (Article about a group or club, which does not indicate the importance or significance of the subject (CSD A7)).

Farsley are a replacement for a club with a long history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farsley_Celtic_A.F.C.) and will be playing in a league all of whose other members have their own Wikipedia pages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Counties_East_League) so I believe they qualify as significant enough to have their own page. Is there any possibility you could restore the existing page please?

many thanks

Chris

Chris Dunford-Kelk (talk) 11:06, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

The notability guideline says that the subject of a Wikipedia article must have received "significant coverage" in reliable sources unaffiliated with the subject. I didn't see any references to any third-party coverage of this club in the deleted article. However, I'm happy to restore it to a user subpage so that you can insert references that show the organization is notable. You can find the article at User:Chris Dunford-Kelk/Farsley AFC. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:19, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Russ. The club is new (as said, replacing a defunct club) and third-party references should start appearing within the next few days. I'll update as they come through.

Many thanks

Chris

Chris Dunford-Kelk (talk) 11:36, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi Russ

I've now added three external references to the page that's sitting in my subpage. Could you check it over and confirm if it is sufficient, and if so could the page be published please.

many thanks

Chris

Chris Dunford-Kelk (talk) 23:03, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Unabashed borrow

Hi R'n'B, I unabashedly borrowed the "Welcome to my talk page" box from the top of your talk page. Let me know if you want me to delete it. --Dygituljunky (talk) 15:35, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

That's fine. I'm pretty sure I borrowed it from somewhere else, myself.... --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:36, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

I have been here since 2005 and never knew you could do that - many thanks Porturology (talk) 09:45, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Re: Your comment

Wikipedia uses common names for biographies of people (Wikipedia:Use common names). Ken McCaw was generally known as Ken McCaw, not Kenneth McCaw, and thus, this is what the subject is referred by on Wikipedia. Rebecca (talk) 15:09, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Since I know nothing about the gentleman in question, I will have to take your word for it, though it is a bit surprising that the article about him never once refers to him by the name by which he was generally known. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:36, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
While we Australians are very informal, I don't think it would be good Wikipedia style to start a sentence in a political biography with "Ken" or even "Ken McCaw". Porturology (talk) 22:26, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

My User Page

You seem to have deleted my User page. Could you please re-instate it as I do exist? Thanks

GeorgieFamingo —Preceding unsigned comment added by GeorgieFamingo (talkcontribs) 04:32, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Your page was a redirect to User:Famingo, a page that does not exist. (It is not a question of whether the user exists, but whether any page exists with that title.) The page that used to be at that title never had any content, anyway. You can simply start a new page at any time by clicking on the red link for User:GeorgieFamingo. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 09:54, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Edge Festival 2009.jpg‎

Russ, couldn't you just have deleted it anyway?!? Haha. No seriously, I can't think what other CSD would apply to this file, and it really is redundant as there is a replica .png version. Can you help me? --SteelersFanUK06 HereWeGo2010! 20:00, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Re: Page titles

HI Russ, thank you for the help and letting me learn how to correctly move all pages of an article to where their new title is. Sorry for any inconvenience caused by my that incorrect "cut and paste move". Regards, --Lvhis (talk) 18:41, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Don’t

1 2 Assuming these were good faith edits, I encourage you to think more broadly about what may be meant in context by linking a dab page instead of one of its topics, before you go ‘fix’ing something that works better the way it is. --WikidSmaht (talk) 08:27, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Just noticed more( admittedly from before my original comment), including this... You have a list of dab links to leave alone, right? Perhaps spouse should be added to that. I don’t have patience to correct every instance where you changed the link to point to marriage, but that is not really appropriate either. That article refers to the instutution, and does not really cover the roles of the spouses within the marriage as well as the individual husband and wife articles. Alternatively, you could change every instance of “spouse” to husband or wife”( or “wife or husband”); that would be an acceptable if cumbersome alternative, although it might precipitate edit wars.-WikidSmaht (talk) 10:54, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi. RussBot appears per User:RussBot/Distinguishing disambigs#Disambiguation pages not to like the fact that the {{Distinguish}} on SEPA points to CIPA, another similar-sounding disambiguation page. What is wrong with this configuration? If it is ok, how can we get RussBot to not care about it? Thanks!   — Jeff G. ツ 01:44, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

You probably should ask BD2412 (talk), since I generated that list at his request. However, I don't think there's necessarily anything "wrong" with being on that list. It's just identifying pages to be looked at manually. Possibly the link should be changed to CIPA (disambiguation) per WP:INTDABLINK. R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:57, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Hatnote bot

Hey Russ, I saw your hatnote-fixing bot is on hold. How's it going? Do you think you'll be able to run it again, or have people protested? --JaGatalk 23:47, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

There was a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Hatnote redirects to disambiguation pages. which doesn't seem to have achieved any consensus. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:36, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
Hrm. Now we're in limbo. Pity, really, I've been doing some of this hatnote work and thinking, man, a bot could do this in no time. I'll drop a comment. --JaGatalk 11:47, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

“Belgian Americans” vs. “Americans of Belgian descent”

Dear Sir,

This is about the diff http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frans_Van_Coetsem&action=historysubmit&diff=370966493&oldid=370919007, in which you changed the category I thought Frans Van Coetsem should be assigned to, Belgian Americans, into American people of Belgian descent. FVC was born a Belgian, in Belgium, and about half to two thirds of his life he was Belgian, until he became a naturalized American citizen. I thought an American of Belgian descent was someone whose ancestors were Belgian but who was born an American citizen (either because his ancestors had become American citizens or because his or her mother happened to be in the USA when she gave birth). I am perfectly willing to have my definition corrected so that FVC falls under it, for I am a Wikipedia newbie with lots to learn. But then I would really like—and for my future Wikipedia work I may well need—the definition of the Wikipedia category ”Belgian American”. I am looking forward to your reply.Polla ta deina (talk) 17:30, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Hello. The edit to which you refer was made by RussBot, an automated process. The reason for the edit was that Category:Belgian Americans is a redirect to Category:American people of Belgian descent, as you can see by clicking on the link for the first category. (By the way, Belgian Americans and Category:Belgian Americans refer to two different pages on Wikipedia, so you should try not to link to one of them when you really mean the other.) RussBot does not decide which categories are redirected; it merely follows the instructions left for it by other users. In this case, there was a discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_February_17#American_people_by_ethnic_or_national_origin which resulted in the renaming of a large group of categories, including the ones you are interested in. The reasons for the decision are given in that discussion. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:15, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
Dear Russ, Thanks for your answer, the gist of which I get. The discussion I'll leave to those interested in the categorization problem, a class of Wikipedians I don't belong to (yet?). But now that I know that Belgian Americans redirects to Americans of Belgian descent I don't mind the recategorization at all and I will in future (of which I hope I'll have one in Wikipedia) use only the latter. Unfortunately I don't remember how I arrived at my categorization. What I do remember is that I found the category somewhere and that I never suspected it was a redirect, so I never clicked the link and never saw the redirect. I've learned my lesson: when categorizing, click on the category before assigning anyone or anything to it. I repeat my thanks. — On my Gebruikerspagina/User page I give away too many details about myself to risk giving my first name, for fear Jan en Klein Pierke (that's the Dutch equivalent of ‘every Tom, Dick and Harry’) will be able to identify me. Your “Hello” is fine, and so is “Hi there!” -- Polla ta deina (talk) 15:39, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Replacing globalize template

Hi. I noticed that you twice reverted my edit and replaced the globalize template with the globalize/USA template in the Oath of enlistment article. As stated on the template's talk page and the message that appears within the template itself, globalize/USA is deprecated, its use is discouraged, and it is currently being considered for deletion. Therefore, please do not change it back. --386-DX (talk) 12:01, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Pete Nottage

Hi, was wondering if you could help me. Someone has set up a wikipedia page for me, which is very nice. However I found out this morning that it has been marked for speedy deletion. I decided to get involved to prove the information is accurate but I keep going round in circles with the administrator going through it. I see that in the past you've reviewed one of my colleague's wiki pages and wondered if you could do the same for me and advise on how I can improve it enough to rid it of the speedy deletion request? Thanks, Pete. PeteNottage (talk) 15:01, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, for now, the page is not marked for speedy deletion, so there's no immediate issue. What I noted, however, is that the sources cited on the Pete Nottage article are all promotional materials; that is, they are sources that directly or indirectly are related to you, not independent third-party sources. For the article to be kept, Wikipedia guidelines require coverage of the subject in "published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." Citations to some independent, reliable sources would greatly improve the article's chances to be kept. My advice to you, though, is that (apart from correcting any inaccuracies, which you are encouraged to do) you should allow other users to edit the article rather than trying to do it yourself. As you can surely appreciate, you are probably not the best candidate to provide an unbiased, objective account of yourself; therefore, we discourage users from writing articles about themselves. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:35, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much; you've made the most sense to me! I'll have a talk with other people and try to get them to verify their sources, then we'll see what happens. Thanks a lot! You've been lots of help. Pete PeteNottage (talk) 16:25, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

re csd.py & RS-422

csd.py has been reporting RS-422 as a candidate for speedy deletion for 32 days now... Herostratus (talk) 04:03, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I know. It's a glitch in the toolserver database. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 09:36, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Disturbed

All taken care of, Sir. See Talk:Disturbed (band)#Inbound links. Cheers, Arbitrarily0 (talk) 15:42, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:14, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Project on Government Oversight - req. for revisit.

Per WP:UNDUE tag here. I've wrestled most of the overt POV down, and prodded for RS, with mixed success. It's an NGO which seems to have had little negative RS press, and most press ends up being regurgitated press releases. I have some leads on funding, though it will end up seeming like POV from me. --Lexein (talk) 19:32, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Greetings! I'm looking for additional input in this discussion - please comment if you have an opinion. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:45, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Request

Hello! I admire the amount of work that you have done, in repairing links to disambiguation pages. But when you are done fixing an ambiguous term, could you please take the time to remove the entry from the To do list, and add it to the bottom of the Done list? It makes it easier to see how we are progressing, and prevents people from trying to fix a page that has already been fixed. Thanks, and keep up the good work! Fortdj33 (talk) 16:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Hatnote redirect bot

Have you, by any chance, made any progress on creating a summary of what the hatnote repair bot is doing (or supposed to be doing) and why? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It was lost on a back burner. Thanks for the bump. I will try to get something for you to look at by Thursday. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 17:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

TAPCIS Deleted!

I was indulging in a little nostalgia about CompuServe as it once was and saw that you've deleted a reference in the CompuServe listing to TAPCIS. That's too bad! Perhaps I can help.

Along with thousands of other early adaptors I was an enthusiastic user of TAPCIS, (The Access Program for the Compuserve Information Service) from 1986 until 2004 when advances in CompuServe technology rendered this brilliant little DOS-based program obsolete.

Written in Borland's Turbo Pascal, TAPCIS was a $79 Shareware program that automated access to CompuServe. [1]

At a time when subscribers paid for timed access and had to spend time online reading and replying to messages, the TAPCIS autopilot took its users online with a single keystroke, bypassing the windows interface while it a sent all email and forum postings written offline, received new messages, downloaded requested files, and logged off CompuServe.

TAPCIS was the brainchild of Howard Benner, a marketing executive from Wilmington, Del. Benner he joined CompuServe in 1981 and soon after authored TAPCIS. [2]

That's the bare bones, If I can help by rewriting this or adding further info, please let me know.

Keith Thekiwikeith (talk) 11:19, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

When? This from the CompuServe article:

12:47, 22 May 2009 R'n'B (talk | contribs) deleted "TapCIS" ‎ (Not enough context to identify article's subject (CSD A1))

Keith 58.28.158.176 (talk) 08:29, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

  • Oh, I see. I couldn't find it yesterday because the capitalization was different. Using [[ brackets ]] around links is also helpful. Anyway, I see you've created a new TapCIS article which is drastically different from what I deleted, so thanks for your contribution. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 09:47, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Motto Shop Archiving

Thanks for fixing that. :) It seems that it was beyond me. ~~ Hi878 (Come shout at me!) 16:19, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

hatnote note

R'n'B,

As promised, a simple note for the bot to point to when making hatnote updates. I have currently left out any discussion of piping as 1) it looks like the details have not been decided yet and 2) I'm not sure it needs to be included and would complicate the message - but we can see how that goes. Also, the link to the "Redirect in hatnotes" discussion would have to be made "archive" proof.

This bot ensures that the intentional links to disambiguation pages in hatnotes can be readily identified in "what links here" reports. The best way to accomplish this (at present) is to make sure the link includes an appended "(disambiguation)". The "what links here" reports for the disambiguation page can then be used to efficiently identify _unintentional_ links to disambiguation pages so they may be corrected. For further information, see Wikipedia Talk:Disambiguation#Redirects in hatnotes, WP:INTDABLINK and WP:DPL.

--John (User:Jwy/talk) 15:59, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

  • In light of the direction the discussion is going, can we preemptively make the "foo (disambiguation)" redirects to those disambig pages which will probably require them? This would include all pages on the lists of disambiguation pages that link to disambiguation pages (we've been making those left and right already, but it's a drain on the speed of resolving those links). It would also prospectively include all disambig links presently occurring in hatnotes, and perhaps all disambiguation pages with any incoming links at all. bd2412 T 00:40, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
    • And by "can we" I mean "can you"; or, more accurately, "can your bot"; and by "can" I mean, "please do, if technically possible", particularly with respect to disambig pages linked from other disambig pages. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:17, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Now pending at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/RussBot 5; comments are welcome there. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Perfect. Thanks! bd2412 T 18:47, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Sunderland

Please note that when disambiguating Sunderland (north east of England town) and the date is before 1 April 1974, the correct dab is Sunderland, Co Durham. Mjroots (talk) 15:37, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Special request on New York disambigs.

Hey bud! Per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#Proposal for New York villages within towns, can you generate a list of all disambig pages having "New York" in the name? I'll hand-sort the ones for which "Foo, New York" is a town and a village completely within that town, or the like, and a bot can fix all the links to point to the village. Cheers! bd2412 T 11:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

User:R'n'B/Very short pages

Is this page still in use? There is an entry on there that an individual doesn't want showing up in Google. It could be redacted, but perhaps the page is no longer needed? User /user talk pages should probably be excluded from future runs of this report for similar reasons. –xenotalk 14:11, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

The point of the report (I requested it) was to ferret out pages too short to contain any actual content, which were likely vandal/test pages. I deleted a bunch of them when it was made, but I am not currently doing anything with it. bd2412 T 14:27, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
Shall we just delete it for now? (It might function better as an ongoing WP:DBR that excludes user pages and other false positives) –xenotalk 14:29, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
No objection to deleting the list. Bear in mind that for purposes of this list, I did not consider user pages to be false positives. bd2412 T 14:30, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
I'll delete it for now then. One way to identify false positives among user pages would be to exclude it if the last revision user was the owner of the user page. –xenotalk 14:34, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Android

Hi

Can you tell me what made you rename the page without notifying the Robotics project ? I cannot believe that an article that is listed as "high importance" would be moved in this way without letting us know.

Android is not just a robot term. It is incorrect to title it (robot) as it also refers to artificial organisms and not just humanoid robots. Irregardless of the seraches and whether or not they will or will not eventually die down it seems that this rename decision is based on a policy that is interpreted incorrectly. If a person searches for Android and not Android OS that surely is their mistake in not correctly inseerting terms to search for. As I have stated

There is also the issue of the 700 pages which now have to be sifted through for link fixing. The hatnotes and links to the dab page were more than adequate and have worked fine and I do not see why there is suddenly a need for this change unless it is simply down to incorrect search params.

THis should neve have been made on the basis of search hits. The searches provided by the editor are 3 to 2 in favour of Android OS but that does not mean that the existing system of hatnotes and links was not working.

Everyone knows that "An Android" is not a phone operating system and that the Android OS is a derivative. I am asking for the Android to be included as a vital page.

I would appreciate anything that can be done to quickly get the page back to "Android" from "Android (robot)" until that process has been completed on the grounds of

1 The high importance to the robotics project 2 The incorrect title 3 The links that need to be fixed and then changed back again if the vital status is accepted. 4 The closeness of the hits 5 The fact that no request seems to have been made at page move boards (although that may not be correct as I canot find an archive of any kind to check older decisions)

PLease do not take any of this as against your decision to move, I assume you acted on the information to hand, but rather that I am bringing new information that would have swayed your choice against making the decision you made or at least in the time frame it was made (and I appreciate that the discussion was there for a while but it still was not informed to the Robotics project or myself or any of the others).

Chaosdruid (talk) 21:48, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Hello. There is a way to look at the history of a page. For example, you can go to the page Android and click on the "History" tab at the top. Or you can follow this link. When you do, look at the history and see which user moved the page. Hint: it was not me. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:42, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Trolling again

Hello, I spotted this on the talk page of SpacemanSpiff. Thoughts? --Dave ♠♣♥♦№1185♪♫™ 18:18, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Well

I think you've got me for this month re: the disam contest. I'm just about dry and I'm going to be on a Wikibreak for a few days this week. Congrats :) --User:Woohookitty Disamming fool! 04:37, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

trial of the knights templar

I was a paralegal for many years and in the law "discovery" and "disclosure" (as to process), have two slightly different meanings.

DISCOVERY -PRE-TRIAL process of obtaining facts in a LAWSUIT through various means such as INTERROGATORIES, DEPOSITIONS, and DOCUMENT PRODUCTION http://www.pralaw.com/legalresources/glossary.aspx?id=58

DISCLOSURE - Criminal Law: Right to Evidence Disclosure A defendant who's charged with committing a crime must plan a defense for trial. In order to plan the best defense, he may need to know certain information that's in the hands of the government. The defendant has the legal right to have access to many types of evidence before trial. The process of obtaining relevant information that's held by the other party is called discovery. There are certain types of information that the government must legally disclose to the defendant upon his request. However, there are certain types of information that doesn't need to be legally disclosed. http://criminal.lawyers.com/Criminal-Law-Basics/Criminal-Law-Right-to-Evidence-Disclosure.html

It is easy to misuse the terms-their meaning is almost identical. Mugginsx (talk) 15:33, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

DAB contest

That is a really fascinating point. I do wonder if we've intimidated everyone else? It used to more of a group effort but its become basically you and I the last few months. I wonder if we should try that. If you look at my user page, I have a whole list of pages I patrol every day. I could just stick to those. --User:Woohookitty Disamming fool! 02:40, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Bristol, Kenosha County, Wisconsin

Hi-the village of Bristol, Wisconsin voted to incorporate the remaining town of Bristol, Kenosha County, Wisconsin and this took effect on July 4, 2010. Having the old article about a Wisconsin town that was annexed by a village that legally no longer exists will just add confusion to whoever would be reading it. The village of Rochester, Wisconsin had the old town of Rochester incorporated into the village and the article about the town got redirected to the article about the village of Rochester with no problems. I still think the article about the old town of Bristol needs to be redirected to the Bristol, Wisconsin to prevent any confusion. Thank you-RFD (talk) 22:16, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

  • I don't see how anyone will be confused, when the intro to the article says that it is a "former town" and specifically says that it was annexed by the village. However, I would have no objection if you wanted to merge the content of the article about the former town into the one about the village; my concern is that by just redirecting the old page, you hid all the content about the population, geography, etc. of the location. The place still exists, even if its form of government has changed, and there is no reason to remove information about it from the encyclopedia. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:20, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick note to say: Thanks for the disambiguation! Jcoplien (talk) 19:47, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

One quick note-part of the old town of Bristol was annexed by the village of Pleasant Prairie at the same time the remaining town of Bristol was annexed by the village of Bristol. There was a civil court case involving the annexation. This means the information involving the old town of Bristol, the village of Pleasant Prairie is not accurate and someone will have to wrie the demographic, geographic section of the village of Bristol article once information becomes available. I will probably wait. Thank you-RFD (talk) 14:25, 22 August 2010 (UTC)