User talk:Thehelpfulone/Archive/February 2009

User page	Talk page	Awards	Sandbox	Email me	Guestbook

demographics pages

We're dead in the water on the "demographics of" page set, until we get those headings and section leads put in place.

We should just keep picking away at them until we're done. They're done up through Demographics of Rwanda.

Once these elements are in place it will give us something to key onto, and so it will then be an easy matter to break the rest of the chore down into simple AWB search/replace tasks (and some regex).

This is what needs to be added:

== CIA World Factbook demographic statistics == The following demographic statistics are from the [[CIA World Factbook]].

(end of sample - see the wikicode for proper spacing)

Be sure to place the population chart for each country (if there is one) at the top of the section, setting it to right alignment and its size to 300px.

For an example, see Demographics of Rwanda.

The Transhumanist 20:42, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• Please note that, beyond Demographics of Rwanda, I have already worked on Demographics of Tajikistan, Demographics of Turkmenistan, Demographics of Uzbekistan, and Demographics of Ukraine, taking a shot at standardization in line with your general guidelines.
• Another point is the location of the population chart: the chart is not based on CIA World Factbook data, and there is no compelling reason to place it at the top of the CIA statistics section. If possible, it should be placed at the top of the article, within the lead, so that it fills some of the blank space created by the table of contents and is the first thing that readers see.

--Zlerman (talk) 05:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Zlerman is right - the chart should go at the end of the lead (with right-alignment) so it sits next to the TOC. The Transhumanist 21:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Next AWB task

On the pages listed at User:The Transhumanist/Country demographics articles, please search/replace:

"The following demographic statistics are from the [[CIA World Factbook]]."

with:

"The following demographic statistics are from the [[CIA World Factbook]], unless otherwise indicated."

(without the quotes)

I look forward to your reply (on my talk page, to take advantage of Wikipedia's message alert feature).

The Transhumanist 22:54, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The Recluse article

This isn't a huge deal, but I want your input. In the Recluse article, there is a list of supposed recluses. There are absolutely no citations and I also feel that the list is not something to be had here at all. How can you define all of these people as recluses? Because they don't grant interviews? I really don't think the list belongs. I've left a message on the talk page about this, but no one has responded. What do you think about this, and what can I do to bring more attention to the matter? Thank you. Belasted (talk) 03:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Progress report: Country outlines

Development has been slow but continuous:

Penubag has done a fantastic job on the images for the awards we'll be using for our project's collaborations and contests. We now have 3 awards: a medal, a trophy, and a race ribbon. They all look tight. The trophy needs a small adjustment, but other than that, all 3 awards are complete and ready to use.

Spartaz has warned us of (threatened to take) G4 (speedy delete) action if we run a competition that resembles the previously deleted Awards Center page. So whatever we do, any contests we run must differ substantially from the methods used there.

One type of competition I've been exploring is edit racing. I'm in the process of working the bugs out of this concept - the first race didn't work as expected - you see, because we only had an award for first place, the opponent didn't think it worthwhile to continue once it was clear who the winner would be. And since editors are in different time zones and usually need to start the race at different times, we need to base winning on personal start times - he who completes his assigned edits in the least time (rather than first), wins. And last but not least is quality control. What good is winning if your edits are ripe with errors? So I'll be exploring possibilities such as using a referee (whoever is overseeing a particular race), having participants watching each other for errors to knock them back, etc. I'm not sure yet.

Rich Farmbrough has been applying his bot expertise to filling in blanks in the country outlines (the population and area entries). I'm amazed at the number of edits he pumps out each day on a myriad of projects - ours makes up but a small time slice of his activity, and yet he has saved us many hours of manual work. Perhaps we should look into how he gets so much done.  :)

Zlerman has chosen to work on one outline at a time, and is taking on Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. He also has been keen on noticing and reporting design issues pertaining to the whole set of country outlines. Keep up the good work!

Highfields has been filling in the names of capitals, and is our first race winner. Check out the award on his user pages.

As you probably know, this project has expanded to include working on any and all sets of pages that are linked to from the country outlines. Once the set of country outlines go live (in article space), traffic will likely increase for all the links included on them. The quality and usefulness of those pages will reflect heavily on the country outlines (the outlines, which are essentially lists of links, are only as good as the links they present), and therefore we've branched out to solve the biggest problems with those as well. So far, we've taken on:

• The creation of disambiguation pages for country adjectivals ("German", "French", "Taiwanese", etc. About half done.)
• The clean-up of the CIA World Factbook statistics on the "demographics of" country pages. We've been renaming those sections to provide a key string that AWB can use for targetting (for skipping and filtering). Once that's done, we'll be able to break the clean-up down into simple AWB search/replace tasks, because we'll be able to target just those pages that include the CIA stuff.
• Renaming the "Cuisine of" articles to their adjectival forms ("Chinese cuisine", "Italian cuisine", etc.)

Blackadam2 and Thehelpfulone have been helping out with the "demographics of" pages mentioned above.

And we have a couple speed addicts (addicted to wiki-velocity, not drugs)...

Both Robert Skyhawk and Thehelpfulone prefer (and excel at) simple AWB search/replaces. Robert hasn't actually joined our team yet, but he has been helping out quite a bit from the sidelines (via the WP:AWB/Tasks page. Unfortunately, there has recently been a non-AWB chore that has been holding things up on the AWB front - an edit to all the the headings which had to be reverted before too many new edits were made, because any new edits would make the reversion more difficult. The headings have been restored, so now the way is clear for AWB operations, and there are many search/replace tasks in the queue. AWB assignments have started again!

There's a similar bottleneck on the "Demographics of" pages (the "keying" mentioned above), but that's almost cleared too.  :)

With my internet access somewhat crippled, I've been finding it difficult to keep up with you guys. However, I expect to be accessing a Linky-capable workstation on a faster server (I'm on it right now, as you can probably tell from my contributions list for today), and so I should really pick up speed. Feels goooooood.  :)

Recruiting has been a bit slow (but steady), due in part to my crippled access, and because we've been waiting for the images for the awards to be completed. I expect the team to grow more rapidly as the bottlenecks are removed.

Well that's what's been happenin', and here's what's in the pipeline...

I'm about to begin work on a set of lists that corresponds to all the standard links on the country outlines, and these will be presented on the Topic outline of countries which will be organized exactly like the country outlines. Aside from being an extremely useful navigation aid, it will allow editors to easily see the state of country coverage on Wikipedia. I'll provide you with a link once I get up to speed on this.

In the meantime, keep up the good work!

Cheers,

The Transhumanist 05:20, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

adoption

No I would like you to adopt me not blue caper please! Coolgyingman (talk) 14:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Good luck, The Helpful One! Congratulations on your adopting of User:Coolgyingman. -BlueCaper (talk) 18:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

South Park Mexican

South Park Mexican: This article has some conflict regarding whether or not the rapper's child molestation conviction should be in the opening paragraph. Can you give some input?

I hate to repeatedly burden you. If you would like, could you let me know about some other admins that might help me in these situations? I just feel bad to ask you for every little thing. Thank you. Belasted (talk) 03:45, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Back to the demographics chore

The list at User:Thehelpfulone/Country demographics articles has been simplified to include only those for which the current task hasn't been completed yet. The task being standardizing the heading and lead sentence for the CIA World Factbook statistics section - for only those pages that have such a section, unmixed with statistics from other sources.

There are only 61 pages on the list (ignore the redlinks).

Long article information The Helpful One 00:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The CIA World Factbook Statistics look like this (but the formatting might be slightly different):

Population

11,261,795 (July 2005 est.)

10,307,333 (July 2003 est.)

9,582,418 (July 2000 est.)

note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected.

Age structure

0-14 years: 46.5% (male 2,626,911/female 2,609,857)

15-64 years: 51.1% (male 2,848,402/female 2,904,376)

65 years and over: 2.4% (male 118,043/female 154,206) (2005 est.)

0-14 years: 46.3% (male 2,396,313; female 2,378,567)

15-64 years: 50.9% (male 2,626,961; female 2,621,818)

65 years and over: 2.8% (male 131,196; female 152,478) (2003 est.)

0-14 years:48% (male 2,290,559; female 2,270,945)

15-64 years:50% (male 2,369,317; female 2,413,070)

65 years and over:2% (male 105,443; female 133,084) (2000 est.)

Median age

total: 16.46 years

male: 16.26 years

female: 16.67 years (2005 est.)

total: 16.5 years

male: 16.4 years

female: 16.6 years (2002)

Population growth rate

2.11% (2006 est.)

Birth rate

41.38 births/1,000 population (2005 est.)

39.53 births/1,000 population (2003 est.)

41.9 births/1,000 population (2000 est.)

Death rate

20.23 deaths/1,000 population (2005 est.)

24.3 deaths/1,000 population (2003 est.)

22.08 deaths/1,000 population (2000 est.)

Net migration rate

0 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2005 est.)

-0.33 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2000 est.)

Sex ratio

at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female

under 15 years: 1.01 male(s)/female

15-64 years: 0.98 male(s)/female

65 years and over: 0.76 male(s)/female

total population: 0.99 male(s)/female (2005 est.)

at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female

under 15 years: 1.01 male(s)/female

15-64 years: 1 male(s)/female

65 years and over: 0.86 male(s)/female

total population: 1 male(s)/female (2003 est.)

at birth:1.03 male(s)/female

under 15 years:1.01 male(s)/female

15-64 years:0.98 male(s)/female

65 years and over:0.79 male(s)/female

total population:0.99 male(s)/female (2000 est.)

Infant mortality rate

total: 88.29 deaths/1,000 live births

male: 95.63 deaths/1,000 live births

female: 80.72 deaths/1,000 live births (2005 est.)

total: 99.29 deaths/1,000 live births

female: 91.77 deaths/1,000 live births

male: 106.58 deaths/1,000 live births (2003 est.)

total 92.38 deaths/1,000 live births (2000 est.)

Life expectancy at birth

total population: 39.7 years

male: 39.43 years

female: 39.98 years (2005 est.)

total population: 35.25 years

male: 35.25 years

female: 35.25 years (2003 est.)

total population:37.24 years

male:37.08 years

female:37.41 years (2000 est.)

Total fertility rate

5.47 children born/woman (2005 est.)

5.25 children born/woman (2003 est.)

5.62 children born/woman (2000 est.)

HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate

Main article: HIV/AIDS in Zambia

16.5% (2003 est.)

21.5% (2001 est.)

HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS

920,000 (2003 est.)

1.2 million (2001 est.)

HIV/AIDS - deaths

89,000 (2003 est.)

120,000 (2001 est.)

Nationality

noun:Zambian(s)

adjective:Zambian

Ethnic groups

African 98.7%, European 1.1%, other 0.2%

Religions

Christian 75%, traditional beliefs 23%, small Muslim and Hindu groups

Languages

English (official), major vernaculars - Bemba, Kaonde, Lozi, Lunda, Luvale, Nyanja, Tonga, and about 70 other indigenous languages (Ambo - Aushi - Bisa - Chikunda - Cishinga - Chokwe - Gova - Ila - Inamwanga - Iwa - Kabende - Kosa - Kunda - Kwandi - Kwandu - Kwangwa - Lala - Lamba - Lenje - Leya - Lima - Liyuwa - Luano - Lucazi - Lumbu - Lundwe - Lungu - Lunda - Makoma - Mambwe - Mashasha - Mashi - Mbowe - Mbukushu - Mbumi - Mbunda - Mbwela - Mukulu - Mulonga - Ndembu - Ng'umbo - Nkoya - Nsenga - Nyengo - Nyiha - Sala - Seba - Senga - Shanjo - Shila - Simaa - Soli - Subiya - Swaka - Tabwa - Tambo - Toka - Totela - Tumbuka - Twa - Unga - Wandya - Yombe)

Literacy

definition: age 15 and over can read and write English

total population: 80.6%

male: 86.8%

female: 74.8% (2003 est.)

total population: 78.2%

male: 85.6%

female: 71.3% (1995 est.)

Bot changes to talk pages

I noticed that your bot is adding the references tag to pages where it is missing, including talk pages. I have also noticed that many of the talk page changes have been reverted. Adding the references tag to talk pages is not useful. The message has been changed so that it only shows the error on articles, thus we do not need to fix them. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:35, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Point Iroquois Light

Dear TheHelpfulOne, Thank you for cleaning that up. If you click on the navbox for Michigan lighthouses, there are a great many articles that could benefit from a similar clean up. Happy editing. Three cheers for your efforts. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 16:03, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Thanks for your prompt reply. The list is in the Michigan Lighthouse Navbox at the bottom of the page at Point Iroquois Light and contains the candidates. I've added substantially to most of those articles, and they have similar errors.

Additionally, here are some other suspects. Please take a look at:

• Pewabic Pottery
• American Museum of Magic
• Frank Murphy
• Alexander Macomb (American general)
• Northern Michigan
• Alpena, Michigan
• Traverse City, Michigan
• Irving Jacob Reuter
• Alexander Groesbeck
• Battle of Plattsburg

Thank you. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 16:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

You (& your bot) are incredibly efficient. Wow. Please also take a look at:

• Michigan
• The Thumb
• Upper Peninsula
• Lower Peninsula
  • Merci. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 16:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

FYI, there is a newly-created error on Point Iroquois Light. Please take a look. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 17:15, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Anatomy of a Murder and Trial movies could use a tweak. Sorry, but I keep recalling them. Best. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 17:42, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

List of Michigan lighthouses

Dear TheHelpfulOne, Here is a current list of Michigan lighthouse articles. List of lifesaving stations in Michigan |list1 = Alpena Light • Au Sable Light • Beaver Island Harbor Light • Beaver Island Head Light • Big Bay Point Light • Big Sable Point Light • Bois Blanc Light • Charity Island Light • Charlevoix South Pier Light • Cheboygan Crib Light • Copper Harbor Front Range Light • Copper Harbor Light • Crisp Point Light • DeTour Reef Light • Eagle Harbor Light • Eagle River Light • Fort Gratiot Light • Forty Mile Point Light • Fourteen Foot Shoal Light • Frankfort Light • Grand Haven Light • Granite Island Light • Gravelly Shoal Light • Gull Rock Light • Harbor Beach Light • Holland Harbor Light • Ile Aux Galets • Isle Royale Light • Little Sable Point Light • Little Traverse Light • Ludington Light • Manistee Pierhead lights • Manistique East Breakwater Light • Manitou Island Light • Manning Memorial Light • Marquette Harbor Light • Martin Reef Light • McGulpin Point Light • Mendota (Bete Grise) Light • Menominee Pier Light • Mission Point Light • Munising Front Range Light • Muskegon Breakwater Light • Muskegon Pier Light • New Presque Isle Light • Old Mackinac Point Light • Old Presque Isle Light • Peninsula Point Light • Poe Reef Light • Pointe aux Barques Light • Point Betsie Light • Point Iroquois Light • Port Austin Lighthouse • Port Sanilac Light • Rock of Ages Light • Round Island Light • Saginaw River Rear Range Light • Sand Hills Light • Sand Point Light Escanaba • Sand Point Light Baraga • Seul Choix Light • South Haven Light • South Manitou Island Light • Spectacle Reef Light • Squaw Island Light • St. Clair Flats Front and Rear Range Light • St. Helena Island Light • St. Martin Island Light • Sturgeon Point Light • Tawas Point Light • Thunder Bay Island Light • Waugoshance Light • White River Light • White Shoal Light • Whitefish Point Light 7&6=thirteen (talk) 17:17, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Fort Gratiot Light has an error. Thank you for all of your work!. Best regards. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 22:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Comments on my talk page

See User talk:Robert Skyhawk#Area of, Population of "per instructions"; you may want to comment here to clarify for this user; I'm not sure if my explanation is adequate. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 17:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Garden/WikiCup/Newsletter/4

Can you please tell me a quick way of doing the differences thing? :D Thanks!  GARDEN  17:53, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiCup Newsletter

20:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Delivered by J Milburn, on behalf of the judges. 20:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Various articles associated with the Supreme Court of the United States

A lot of these articles, including articles on the 110 individual justices, have within their citations the word "Oyez". In many of the cases, it would be preferable to have the word be before the link/citation, with the following wiki link instead: Oyez. Do you have any thoughts on this? If you take a look at the Warren Burger article, that is how I think it should be handled. If you take a look at the Louis Brandeis article, that is the way it is. Best regards. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 01:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

You have a bot?

OMG!

What's it called??!

The Transhumanist 01:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes! I do have a bot, which was created in the last 2 days. It's called User:Thehelpfulbot and has already been approved for one task, the is unrelated and has the bot flag. I am happy to add tasks to the bot, just give me the tasks - and I'll request for them to be approved. I might be able to use a Python script for find/replaces instead of AWB - which might be a little bit faster than AWB.

The Helpful One 13:12, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Thehelpfulbot - that fits you to a tee.  :)

Based on the discussion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Worldbot, I'm pretty sure we don't need approval to use a bot on the country outlines. Take a look, and let me know what you think.

In the meantime, AWB can be used normally for the various tasks. The Transhumanist 21:15, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Regex tasks

Using AWB's regex feature and regex wildcards, you should be able to search for the country name on each country outline using a single search string, even though the country name differs on every outline.

Please take a look, and see if you can accomplish that. Perhaps Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Regular expression and WP:REGEX will be of help.

I have lots of search/replaces that include the country name.

I look forward to your reply with great anticipation.

The Transhumanist 01:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Here's a hypothetical example... Let's say the outlines have the "* [[Mammals of x]]" line but do not have the "* [[Birds of x]]" line yet. And I want to add the "* [[Birds of x]]" line to all of the country outlines, with the country name in place of "x". I don't know how to use Regex, and I don't have access to AWB, so I need you to figure this out. However, I am familiar with wildcards and search/replace tricks, so one strategy that would probably work is to search for "* [[Mammals of x]]", using wildcards for the "x", and then replace the whole string with a string that includes both lines ("* [[Birds of x]]" and "* [[Mammals of x]]", using regex's wildcard string matching code to insert the country name twice in place of "x" - that is, the string it found for "x" in the first place.). If you do this right, AWB will find the desired string with the outline's country name, and use the country name in the replace string as many times as you tell it to. Assuming this works, we could use this trick to insert new lines into these outlines without having to type in the country name manually. This would make expanding these outlines much easier. Hint: Figure out how to do simple search/replaces using regex, then search/replaces with "\n" (new line) in them, and then the hypothetical search/replace above. Can you do this type of regex search/replace? I look forward to your reply. The Transhumanist 21:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Bernard Madoff

Dear thehelpfulone, the formatting on this heavily edited (and contentious) article is a mess. Maybe your bot could help? 7&6=thirteen (talk) 20:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Thanks. That looks a lot better. Not perfect, but a vast improvement. 20:51, 9 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Re:IRC

I'm currently accessing Wikipedia via computers at libraries. They don't support IRC, and therefore I don't have IRC access. Sorry. The Transhumanist 21:56, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Country outlines project update

There has been a flurry of activity on the project as of late - so much so that I felt compelled to write another progress report...

More racing award graphics!

Penubag has completed 4 more award graphics for our upcoming edit races. They look great!

New outline developer

Buaidh has joined the effort to develop country outlines. Like Zlerman, he has chosen specific outlines to work on. Which ones? All the countries of the Americas!

Bots!

User talk:Thehelpfulone now has a bot, and User talk:Robert Skyhawk has requested approval for one. Work on the country outlines using these should start soon. I feel the technological singularity approaching.  :)

Regex

Several of us have been trying to figure out how to use regular expressions (regex), in AWB, and once we have done this, we should be able to insert country names into entries for all the outlines using a single search/replace regex.

User talk:Thehelpfulone has successfully used AWB and regex to complete a 2-line search/replace using the \n command.

Regex repository - please add to it!

As a reference aid, I've set up the page User:The Transhumanist/Regexes for reporting the regexes we use. Please post regexes you've used successfully to that page. That way, everyone on the team can learn from each others' successes and we thereby leverage our experience collectively. Thank you.

The Transhumanist 22:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost, February 8, 2009

The Wikipedia Signpost Weekly Delivery

Volume 5, Issue 6	8 February 2009	About the Signpost

News and notes: Elections, licensing update, and more	Wikipedia in the news: Wikipedia's future, WikiDashboard, and "wiki-snobs"
Dispatches: April Fools 2009 mainpage	WikiProject Report: WikiProject Music
Features and admins	The Report on Lengthy Litigation

You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist. If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list.--ragesoss (talk) 15:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Delivered by §hepBot (Disable) at 23:11, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

re: regex

If you'd like to see someone else's regex work, check out User talk:Robert Skyhawk/Country Outline task list. (Not all of it is regex, but a lot of it is, and he's included the regexes themselves).

The Transhumanist 01:49, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Request for an opinion

If its appropriate to request this and you have time, would you please check out comments made at Talk:Python_reticulatus#Debate_regarding_length_claims_made_by_various_zoos and Talk:Python_reticulatus#Verifiability. It is my position that I've endured days of personal attacks and incivility from User:Mokele and User:Jwinius.

• User:Mokele has told me "Cry me a river. I see absolutely no reason to listen to a mere amateur. Come back when you have a graduate degree in herpetology. Until then, stop wasting our time" and represents his editorial standpoints as "I don't give a crap if the news articles meet some overly-vague WP rule...we should stick to peer-reviewed scientific journal sources ONLY" and has referred to my good faith edits as "unencyclopedic crap" (all comments at [1]).
• User:Jwinius has informed me that I am "silly", [2], "petulant" , "irritable", "thin-skinned", [3] etc.

I've lost count of how many times I've encouraged courtesy in these users. Perhaps encouragement of good behavior coming from someone other than myself and User:Cygnis insignis might have effect. User:Cygnis insignis's comments on our discussion begin as follows “I've waded through the incivility, bold assumptions, uncited assertions, expletives and other obstruction to this good faith contribution. However this is not the place for identifying this obnoxious pattern of behavior...” (see hidden comments at [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Python_reticulatus&action=edit&section=17) Ultimately, this dispute is about a claim made by User:Mokele and User:Jwinius to allow certain content at Python_reticulatus#Captivity that they deem unencyclopedic. Thanks for considering my comments. --Boston (talk) 06:27, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Protection on The Game (Harvard-Yale)

You protected this article about two months ago. At the moment there is no ongoing discussion on the Talk page, and the issue seems to have been closed at RFC. I found this archived discussion, and the most recent comment is about a month old. Is this issue resolved? Is it time to unprotect the article? If not, could you perform an edit for me? The hatnote should be removed, per WP:NAMB--the title of the article is not ambiguous. Cheers!--ShelfSkewed Talk 07:05, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiCup Newsletter

23:31, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost — February 16, 2009

From the editor — A new leaf

Commons Picture of the Year
Picture of the Year 2008 begins voting

News and notes
Flagged Revisions, historical image discovery, and more

In the news
Political tiff, error repeated in press, predictions of doom

Dispatches
How busy was 2008?

WikiProject report
WikiProject Gaelic games

Discussion report
Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations

Features and admins
Approved this week

Technology report
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

Arbitration report
The Report on Lengthy Litigation

You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist.
If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list.

Delivered by §hepBot (Disable) at 07:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Stub template moves

Stub templates should be at the end of the article and not before categories as far as I know. If you move stubs forward then they become the first category listed at the end of the article. They really should be the last. Also, I thought the MoS said don't leave a blank line after headings? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:23, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't recall where I saw it. I think it was the bot that was doing this. If I notice this again, I'll let you know which article. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

William Howard Taft and Edward Douglass White

Dear thehelpfulone, I cleaned up most of the footnotes on Taft. White's not quite as done. Both could use a run through by your bot. Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 15:43, 15 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Thanks for getting back to me. Of course, you are entitled to a day off in 'The real world'(can't find the right wiki link for that, I know it exists). Don't forget Taft. Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 13:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

I see you got Taft, too. Missed that. Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 13:34, 17 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

The Game (Harvard-Yale)

Hi,

You unprotected The Game (Harvard-Yale) today and there is already someone trying to re-add the logos (free or non-free, whatever the case); however, the RFC definitely isn't closed. It has actually moved on to mediation. I don't want to request that you reprotect the article; however, I similarly don't want to have to return it to status quo until consensus is decided at the RFC/mediation case. What can you do? --Izno (talk) 01:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, this is from someone who clearly has not paid attention at all to what the debate is with the sports logos. The title of the RfC is the use of non-free logos in sports articles. The logos I placed on the site are free. They have nothing to do with the RfC. No matter what the resolution of any of the dispute resolution, these images will not be affected. If you and Izno want to blindly prevent additions that are simply not covered by the RfC, mediation request, etc., then you are being misguided. Notice that no one from the anti-non-free-image-use side had any problem with my additions, it came from an editor who has the temerity to say "free or non-free, whatever the case," indicating that this comes from someone who just doesn't care what the issues being debated are. Why have we had this long discussion if editors outside the debate are going to ignore the discussion and blindly revert changes that do not have anything to do with the debate at issue? Go read the RfC discussion and you will understand that these images are not at issue. Izno flat out refused to address the fact that free issues are not part of the debate. That's actually the whole debate: one side wants to minimize non-free image use, and the other thinks it is not a problem.

What is the point of Bold, Revert, Discuss, if no one will discuss? The logos that were removed before were non-free logos. One idea that came about from the discussion is that a lot of the non-free images have free equivalents. So we started a repository of free images at WP:FBS logos But there are a lot of schools that do not have such, therefore, the discussion proceeds as to how to handle those that do not have free equivalents. Go read the varied alternatives and you will see that is the sticking point.

Why do the two of you simply not care that these images just flat out are not part of the discussion? Just because Izno claims that a debate about the use of non-free logos now simply covers all logos does not make it true. If you are going to demand that a decision be made about non-free images before anyone can add free images, fine. But you are both having a knee-jerk reaction without looking into what you are doing. It's pretty inexcusable if it continues.--2008Olympian^chitchat 13:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Lake Champlain

Dear thehelpfulone, this could use a tweak. Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 14:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Nice tweak. Attaboy! 7&6=thirteen (talk) 15:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Your Bot

Hey Thehelpfulone =]. I noticed you are running a bot that adds reference sections, Using noreferences.py at a guess :P. You should make it add {{reflist}} instead of </references>. To do this go to roughly line 150 and add 'en': u'{{reflist}}', directly above 'fi': u'{{viitteet}}',. If you need help drop me a message. ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 12:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Frank Murphy

I appreciate that you already ran your bot through this article. However, there is another issue. Do you have anything that will take raw book citations and put them into the proper template. Cuz this article has a lot of the, and doing it manually will wear my fingers to the bone. Just askin'? Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 17:56, 19 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Thanks for trying. You are right, it didn't make much difference this time. I appreciate the Inspector Gadget suggestion. For now, I've got get on my horse and trek to Cleveland -- and the weather does not look promising. Cheers and h.e. Best to you. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 18:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Outhouse

I haven't worked on it in a very long time. I wrote most of it under my ISP number, before I adopted my nom de plume. I'm sure your bot will do it lots of good. Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 18:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Veni, vidi, vici. I knew it would be fertile ground. Of course, someone else in similar situations said "Peccavi", 'I have Sindh.' Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 18:38, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Simple Find / Replace for my bot

Hi there!

I was wondering if you could give me a simple find / replace task for my bot to do with AWB, to allow it to complete the 20 trial edits required before it is approved.

Thanks,

The Helpful One 13:57, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

To the pages listed at user:The Transhumanist/Country outlines, replace:

"The following topic outline is provided"

with:

"The following [[topic outline]] is provided"

Without the quotes, of course.

The Transhumanist 04:25, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

How to remove a wrong categorization of a user page

Hi there! I don't know why, but my user page User talk:G Purevdorj is listed as Category:Unassessed_language_articles. As this categorization is not helpful, I'd really like to change this. But I don't know how: As far as I know, I don't have any WP languages template on my user page that I could delete. I'd be grateful if you could look into this. Best wishes, G Purevdorj (talk) 10:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

For your bot...

		The Original Barnstar
		Your bot adding {{Reflist}}s to those articles that need them has made plenty of articles look that bit better. J Milburn (talk) 14:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Regex 2-line search/replace task

Please find:

• [[International rankings of

And replace it with:

• Demonym(s):
• [[International rankings of

Good luck.

Have fun.

The Transhumanist 20:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi there,

For this task - do I use the pages listed at User:The Transhumanist/Country outlines?

The Helpful One 23:00, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Sorry about the ambiguity. The Transhumanist 23:08, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done This task. The Helpful One 23:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Simple search/replace: Adjective: to Adjectival(s):

On just the country outlines in article space, please do the following search/replace.

Please find:

• Adjective:

And replace it with:

• Adjectival(s):

(of course, use the wiki-code for the search/replace).  :)

You can use the list User:The Transhumanist/Country outlines, and then use AWB's list filter to whittle it down to just the pages in the main namespace.

The Transhumanist 21:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done The Helpful One 00:07, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

A two-step search/replace

This one will take two passes, and uses substitution as well.

Pass one

Please replace:

• Adjectival(s):

With:

{{subst:User:The Transhumanist/Sandbox29}}

 Doing... The Helpful One 00:11, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Pass two (includes 2 search/replaces)

Then replace:

• Common English exonym(s): [[Topic outline of

With:

• Common English exonym(s): [[

(Important: There is a blank space after "of").

And replace:

• Official English exonym(s): [[English exonyms for present-day nations and states| of Topic outline of

With:

• Official English exonym(s): [[English exonyms for present-day nations and states| of

(Important: There is also a blank space after the last "of" in both of those strings).

(As always, use the wikicode for the search/replaces, instead of cutting and pasting directly what you see above - but leave out the "nowiki" codes!!!).

Good luck, have fun.  :)

In case somebody (Zlerman)  :) points it out to you, the "official English exonym" above is purposely incomplete, and will require somebody to fill in the missing part of the name. We can do that in batches by creating appropriate input lists of countries that share the same form ("Republic of"), etc. But that'll be a (near) future task.

A couple of the links are invisible (with blank pipes), because those also need to be filled in.

By the way, if the adjectival(s) line is cut in two by the use of the substitution method above, you'll need to do a third pass to reconnect it into a single line.

I sure hope there aren't any typos in the instructions or template. Cuz this could get messy.  :)

The Transhumanist 21:55, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: Since pass one inserts some intentionally incorrect (temporary) data, pass two should be done immediately afterwards. Forgot to mention this above. Good luck. The Transhumanist 22:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

List creation tasks (using AWB)

I need you to create two link lists for me...

List one

Starting with User:The Transhumanist/Country outlines, and using AWB's list filter, filter out all the pages that include "= Administrative divisions of ".

(notice the equals sign - er, heading code. This should catch all the headings, regardless of how many equals signs they have.)

The resulting list will be the country outlines that are missing that section.

Post the resulting list on my talk page.

List two

Again, starting with User:The Transhumanist/Country outlines, and using AWB's list filter, filter out all the pages that include "= Municipalities of ".

The resulting list will be the country outlines that are missing that section.

Post the resulting list on my talk page.

Good luck.

Have fun.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 23:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

(P.S.: I think we'll be able to add in the missing sections using a 2-pass search/replace like the one I posted in a previous message above - but this depends on if the list creation tasks work).

Thanks

Thank for answering my questions in a time of crisis. --♪♫The New Mikemoral^talk_contribs 01:55, 21 February 2009 (UTC) For you:

You, {{{1}}}, have just been awarded The New Mikemoral's generic barnstar in miniature. You can earn this award too for other generic things, just like {{{1}}} did.

and this:

SURVIVORThis user survived the Wikipedia crash of 21 Feb. 2009.

--♪♫The New Mikemoral^talk_contribs 01:55, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

RE: List creation tasks (using AWB)

List one

There's no articles on the list - am I missing something? The Helpful One 00:45, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

List two

There's no articles on the list either! - am I missing something? The Helpful One 00:45, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

reply

Yes, I'd say we're missing something.

Did you include the quotes? That would ruin the search.

If not, try dropping the equals sign from the search strings, and try again.

The Transhumanist 00:26, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

RE: A two-step search/replace

Hi again,

Pass 1 - should it be /sandbox29 instead of /Sandbox29?

The Helpful One 00:14, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I've fixed the problem. Either should work. The file is named /Sandbox29. (A quick look at Special:PrefixIndex would have answered your question immediately - which is better than waiting on me). The Transhumanist 22:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

New team member

Be sure to welcome our newest member, User talk:NuclearWarfare, to the team!

See his talk page for the task he's taking on.

The Transhumanist 00:03, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

If you run into a problem with "PAGENAME"

I gave Robert Skyhawk a similar task, and he solved the problem like this:

Slight Problem...3 passes will be needed

When I did Pass 1, there's a problem with the parser functions that we overlooked. The first pass involved placing the command {{PAGENAME}} in links, however, we didn't subst: it, meaning that in the wikicode, the name of the page still appears as {{PAGENAME}}. So, the second Find & Replace won't give us anything, since the text "Topic Outlne of" doesn't actually exist in the wikicode.

I can fix this, but it will involve going through each of the articles and changing {{PAGENAME}} to {{subst:PAGENAME}}, then making the pass that will remove "Topic Outline of". Sorry that neither of us caught this.

By the way, instead of just removing "Topic Outline of", I should probably be removing the whole "Wikipedia:WikiProject Topic Outlines..." bit, right?

Thanks, Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 18:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The fix is  Done. Starting on the original second pass now. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 19:43, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Typo fix

In the pages listed at User:The Transhumanist/Country outlines...

Please replace:

* [[International rankings

with:

• [[International rankings

The Transhumanist 20:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Ran into a problem with "English exonyms"

I just noticed something:

The exonym entries do not work for those countries where English is their official language. In those countries, the countries' English name(s) are not exonyms. So we need to correct this problem...

Please change:

Common English exonym

to:

Common English country name

and change:

Official English exonym

to:

Official English country name

Thank you.

(Having fun yet?)  :)

The Transhumanist 20:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

More to this problem...

Please replace:

[[English exonyms for present-day nations and states|

with:

[[

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 21:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiCup Newsletter

21:53, 22 February 2009 (UTC) The Helpful Bot 21:53, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Lansing, Michigan

Population figures beingn vandaliized again. This time by 99.147.186.214. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 22:29, 22 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

---

Thanks for the help. FYI, this was very similar to the vandalism we experience on this page, and on Grand Rapids, Michigan and a bunch of other places a couple of days back. Lots of made up pop. data (Owhich I know is a popular target, no pun intended. Albeit from a different IP address. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 01:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

The project may be catching on. Take a look at this!

Someone not on the team has come along and moved one of the country outline drafts to article space. This is a great sign, as it means the set of pages is attracting attention.

It's Topic outline of Romania.

Please help complete it ASAP. Here's why:

It's got some awkward stuff in there, including blank links, redlinks (that need to be bluelinked by creating redirects), and apparently irrelevant entries (kept for comparison purposes, that need to be filled in with "none"), etc.

Many editors tend to remove awkward stuff instead of complete it.

We should finish up Topic outline of Romania before they remove anything.

Thank you.

Good luck.

Have fun.

The Transhumanist 03:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Steward elections

• Thanks for your vote, for or against, and your constructive comments. I did try to make it clear what my reason for logging in or not logging in was. The main point I would make, however is that everyone's needs are different. Mine is anonymity. I am, however going to have to delete any specific edit count goal as meaningless. Apteva (talk) 19:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

NavBar Help

Hello again. I need some more help. Could you help me with my NavBar? I cannot figure out how to remove the final picture without messing the rest of the bar up. Thanks. --♪♫The New Mikemoral^talk_contribs 00:57, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		Again thank for you help. ♪♫The New Mikemoraltalkcontribs 23:35, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost — February 23, 2009

This week, the Wikipedia Signpost published volume 5, issue 8, which includes these articles:

• Philosophers analyze Wikipedia as a knowledge source
• An automated article monitoring system for WikiProjects
• News and notes: Wikimania, usability, picture contest, milestones
• Wikipedia in the news: Lessons for Brits, patent citations
• Dispatches: Hundredth Featured sound approaches
• Wikiproject report: WikiProject Islam
• Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations
• Features and admins: Approved this week
• Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
• Arbitration report: The Report on Lengthy Litigation

The kinks are still being worked out in a new design for these Signpost deliveries, and we apologize for the plain format for this week.

Delivered by §hepBot (Disable) at 22:13, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Here's a fun one: Link lists bot task

We need to see all the standard links in the country outline system. This task will create a set of lists that will let us browse each link type.

This task includes two passes on the pages listed at User:The Transhumanist/Lists by country.

By the way, I've named them weird like that to prevent me from confusing them with existing lists. These are "the X files".  :)

Pass one

For this pass, set AWB so it skips pages that exist. You only want it to work for pages that do not exist yet.  :)

To the pages listed at User:The Transhumanist/Lists by country, add this:

{{subst:User:The Transhumanist/Country list template}}

(if you copy the above from your talk page's wikicode, leave out the "nowiki" codes!)

Pass two

Now that you've just created the pages, for this pass, AWB shouldn't skip existing pages. Set it not to skip.

For the pages listed at User:The Transhumanist/Lists by country, do the following search/replace:

Remove: "The Transhumanist/Lists by country/"

(i.e., replace it with an empty replacement string. Without the quotes, of course.)

and replace:

" of x "

with:

" of "

(without the quotes, and notice that there is a blank space before "of" and after "x").

Good luck. (I hope this works).

Have fun.

(Don't worry, I tested the above procedure on a page already.)

The Transhumanist 17:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Randomness

I just happened to look at your guestbook today :O User:Thehelpfulone/Guestbook. And it just happened that today was the exact day that I signed it and the last day i looked at it last :P. Exactly a year! and only 10 mins latter as well! :P Amazing :P ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 20:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)