User talk:XLinkBot/Archive 8

xLinkBot not showing any contributions since October 10th

Can somebody please turn it back on? Danke. (I'm against the IMO-too-high rate of false-positives, but I'm very much in favor of the 100-per-day-typically true-positives.) User_talk:Versageek#xLinkBot_no_longer_running_since_Oct_10th HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 20:41, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Done! Dear IP, would you mind to actually define the '...too-high rate of false-positives ...'? For which rule do you think that the bot is reverting too many cases where the links really belong on the page (I've done, quite a long time ago, a list of 30 consecutive MySpace reverts, and of those, there is one which I would not have reverted - but also not have added (it is still superfluous to the official site which generally already mentions the MySpace anyway - the others had a plethora of problems, ranging from indirectness to plainly broken, misformed or misplaced) - for 10 consequtive YouTube reverts I found 2 likely copyvios (clips not posted by someone involved by the band), and for the rest some information which was indirect or the same of what was already there (and maybe even some plain spam). I know there are false positives, and I know that getting remarks (of whatever kind) can be defined as 'bitey', but I'd like to see numbers that show that XLinkBot is (significantly) 'worse' than, e.g., a human editor. I also know that if I leave a welcome message to a new editor they sometimes never return ... there is always room for improvement, and (again, with the help of the foundation) we did improve already, but I'd really like to see it relative. Showing me random cases where editors did not return after a warning .. well, I also see editors thanking XLinkBot for the information it left after a revert and continuing with, now improved, edits. I also see editors creating an account, doing one edit and not returning anymore (without that they have been left messages on their talkpage, or any other interaction). It is easy to blame XLinkBot - but show it, please. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:47, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back up and running again; appreciate it. And yes, fully agree that xLinkBot is not the cause of all woe in the wikiverse. You can call me 74, if you like. My concern is not specifically with any one regex-rule in particular. I'm sure there are some that could be tweaked, e.g. the couple of "official" wordpress-based sites that I mentioned back in the day should be whitelisted, and some of the "official" blogs should be whitelisted, and prolly there are some "official" facebook pages that should be individually whitelisted. Your zeroth assertion is that xLinkBot does more good, than harm. Nobody disputes that, or at least, I don't.

  But your other basic assertions are that 1) it is technologically impossible or at least practically infeasible to implement xLinkBot as an edit-filter slash abuse-filter, and 2) that with the WMF's wondrous guidance the current message-language is indubitably optimal. (Actually... I'm wrong about #2... you just *said* there is always room for improvement... so there is hope for my WP:RGW mission! :-) In a nutshell, you do not want to "fix" xLinkBot, if it ain't actually broke. Fair enough -- that is almost always a good idea. But before we talk evidence, we can talk fundamentals.

  *My* basic assertion is that there are some *obvious* changes that can be made to the way xLinkBot functions, which would decrease bitey-ness monotonically. For instance, I think that xLinkBot should be implemented as an edit-filter-set-on-warn. That way, as soon as somebody clicked save, they would know a couple seconds later what the problem was, and could think it over on the spot, and override xLinkBot's choice then and there. Now, perhaps that implementation-approach would be too much server-load. You have hinted that you tried something once, along those lines. But even without switching the implementation, we can save the editor time: instead of xLinkBot leaving a *passive* message on the editor's talkpage, we can leave them an interactive one, which has a click-here-to-override button. That would be less-bitey, right? It would reduce wikistress, if the bot were to say, hello $uid you just added $url and I removed it but click here to put it right back the way you had it because I'm just a bot and sometimes make mistakes.

  There are two counterarguments I see: first, that such changes are Too Hard to implement, which is what it is. But the second counterargument, that I very much dislike, is that such a change, by making it easier to override xLinkBot for the editor, will result in more facebook-spam, more myspace-gossip, more youtube-copyvio, and more WP:ELNO stuff making it into mainspace. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:50, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies .. missed them, too busy with other things .. :-) You use the same counterarguments as I would give. If there is a feasible fix, I am certainly willing to implement it, though I'd like to be convinced that it really helps vs. bringing problems (yeah, nice, a revert-the-bot-here-button - spammers would also like that, makes their live easy as well)

• I am all for having the Special:AbuseFilter taking over XLinkBot (I was the one that immediately tried when the EditFilter was enabled on en.wikipedia), but regexing edits with the edit filter and make that encompass all the regexes in the XLinkBot revertlist, was shown to bring it down. Filters are still being disabled as being too heavy on the server. Also, there is a request for an improved blacklist-system (for years .. it is much more interesting for the developers to tweak the edit-experience and add wikilove-applets than to upgrade a misnamed, non-transparent, and inconvenient system which uses regexes that only a few people understand ..), which, if implemented in a smart way, could do the same: set rules to block, set others to 'warn', make sure that the rules get appropriately logged - as the AbuseFilter does.
• As I said earlier, there are, likely, improvements possible on the messages - but do note that XLinkBot also reverts real spammers (sometimes those who are in disguise ..) - some middle ground should be found (it is too easy to say 'Sorry, sorry, SORRY, I know, I am just a mere bot, and I reverted your link addition - please, if you are a genuine editor, click HERE to instantly undo the edit, but if you are a spammer, do NOT use that button, use THIS button instead and report yourself to be indefinitely blocked!!' (same is for an edit-filter set to warn - real spammers will just ignore - OF COURSE my link should be here, it pays my bills, SCREW that edit filter, it is just an extra click).
• Note as well, most new editors and IP editors already ignored a 'warning' when they were trying to add a new external link, pointing them to the external links guideline, and none of them were 'bitten' away by that (hey, they utterly ignored it!) - I get less and less convinced by the remark that XLinkBot is too bitey when an editor, after being warned about the new external link that they added like in an edit filter (more difficult than that!), still proceed to do that and then find XLinkBot reverting them .. Dôh, you knew that new external links are bound to rules here on Wikipedia, still you add and are then bitten because a bot 'told you off'. Hmm, sure - if anything, the first warning they get is not clear enough. (I wonder how many real spammers think 'no shit, I am trying to spam Wikipedia, but they have rules on external links .. you know what, I am grabbing a coffee and a smoke, and try it on another website, this is not going to help us ..')
• Whitelisting is a feature that is already implemented in the bot (User:XLinkBot/WhiteList). However, regarding that, we do not know which blogspots/facebooks/myspaces to whitelist until they are being requested, and many blogspots/facebooks/myspaces are only applicable to one page, the page of the subject, and even there, in most of the cases, it does not belong (see WP:ELOFFICIAL). Do note, of the 30 MySpace reverts I looked through, probably 10-15 were of a real person - problem was, that all except one was linked from the page where it 'should' be (and even that one was questionable). We could have whitelisted those 15, but that would still have given 14 that were not 'where they were supposed to be', if they were supposed to be linked at all. Most of the cases that I see here were people 'complain' are actually about such links that in the end were 'correct', but should not be here anyway.

Note that I hinted at it - but the tracks are still available in Wikipedia - hardly anything gets deleted, and I try to do as much as possible on transparent on Wikipedia. The edit-filter data should still be there, as well as the edits by WMF to make the messages from the bot less-bitey, as well as their statistics of the success. Only to find that back is a problem ..

Basically, I would really suggest that the developers do something that is suitable as a replacement, I am all for it (even if only for having statistics on spammers whose links are blocked, but who still try to put their links here .. I know it happens (it was 'tried' once, spammers started again a couple of days after a 'rogue' admin requested removal and another 'rogue' admin performed that; currently there is a case where the company that had its links blacklisted in 2008 is still optimizing pages related to them), but statistics are, currently, impossible to get.

Thanks for the great reply. I'm still interested in this subject, but I'm sucked into the wiki-vortex elsewhere at this moment. I'll reply properly at a later time. But basically, my contention is this. Spammers will bypass warnings, yes. Making it easy for good-faith contributors, that one in a hundred or one in a thousand, also makes it easier for spammers. But the only *true* security is to turn off all the servers in the farm, unplug them from the wall, and bury the datacenter under eighty tons of impenetrable granite. Convenience and security are often opposed. Here's my idea, in a nutshell. We should be nice to the spammers. *Scrupulously* nice. We should fill their eyeballs with butterflies, dancing pink hearts, wikiLove kittens and cookies and so on. Oh, we're so sorry that you keep running into more and more warnings! Oh please accept our sincere apologies that your IP has been throttled! This must all be a big mistake! You are a good faith contributor, we want you here, please contact an admin who will help you get around these annoying problems! We love love love contributors, thanks thanks thanks so much!

  Actual false-positives will be annoyed at the inconvenience, but will get a chuckle out of the wild gyrations of the boht that just screwed them up. Then they'll go on about their business, improving wikipedia, and learn what not to do. Spammers will, by definition, fail to learn what not to do. Sooner or later, a human will review their history. Sooner, if we can write some bayesian networks that detect spammer-like-patterns of edit-history, right? Right. In the meanwhile, to the extent that they are employing humans, for bypassing captcha and clicking okay on our sickly-sweet funny-the-first-time warning, they are going to be having morale problems. Officious tone? They don't care. Firm stop-now? They don't care. Redacted redacted javascript powered flying butterfly flash movies where you have to catch the pretty butterfly with a net to prove you are a good-faith contributor, while listening to the kindergarten sing-along music carefully, since the captcha-question depends on the song-lyrics? Willing to bet it will drive them nuts. Drive up the cost of spamming wikipedia, and we will drive them away, to less-famous but also less-annoyingly-well-defended targets.

  Of course, my real long-term goal is to boost the number of active editors. xLinkBot could be shut down, if we had enough editors to let five random people eyeball-review every single EL that was inserted, within five seconds of insertion, right? That's my long-term scheme. Hope this helps, thanks for improving wikipedia, see you around. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:30, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

You obviously haven't heard of sweat-shops yet - spammers don't care about catching butterflies, they just find some cheap labour in far-far-away to 'solve' captchas for them, there is no nuisance to them there (remember, they have to solve captchas already, with a text explaining our 'rules' printed above it ..). Flower-power is nice, but the persistence of earning money wins .. unfortunately.

XLinkBot is only en.wikipedia (though 'ready' to go cross-wiki) - 'we' are monitoring 801 wikis, hundreds of edits a minute - I guess MediaWiki would have to hire their own sweat-shop (wait, we are an organisation of volunteers .. they get paid enough to pay sweat-shops). And there are spambots capable of spamming Wikipedia.

I would like to agree on closing down XLinkBot at some point, when better methods are coming to place. Until then, I prefer to work on the middle-way - be friendly enough not to scare away new editors (I don't think that the very first message the bot leaves accuses the editor of spam), but strong enough to scare away spammers (tell that what was added does seem to be conflicting with our rules). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:11, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Non ASCII characters.

Take a look at your edit on User_talk:187.240.148.120 (which I've since fixed). The link should be Thalía, not ThalÃa. Looks like a problem with handling non-ASCII? Nick Levine (talk) 11:15, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I know. Thanks for pointing me to that again - I'll see if I can solve it one of these days (problem is, it is difficult to test, you only notice when it hits a page that has the problem). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:54, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Coin references linking to worldcoinnews.blogspot.com are always being removed

• worldcoinnews.blogspot.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

However, I am a reliable source of coin news, always checking for news at official Mint and Central banks, of using my own numismatic collection resources...

How could I succeed in adding information to Wikipedia in this way? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.22.96.67 (talk) 09:33, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

"However, I am a reliable source of coin news ..." .. could you please read the conflict of interest guideline to learn about adding sites that you are affiliated with and the reliable sources guideline to learn what is actually a reliable source? ~

".. always checking for news at official Mint and Central banks ..", now, those are the (albeit primary) sources that are reliable. Thanks you. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

CavinKare

Please help me with this page. Don't no where am i going wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Revathy Iyer (talk • contribs) 06:11, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Please read the policies and guidelines as has been pointed out to you already (please read the guidelines and policies that are linked from your talkpage. Wikipedia is NOT an advertising service, repository of links, etc. etc. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:18, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Boarsodi link by Bill transition centre

Hi, The link I made to the Borsodi page consists of a number of articles I have written about him over the past two years. They include biography; life, times and works, and represent the most up-to-date information about Borsodi. I am considered the leading Borsodi scholar. The blog site seemed to be the best way to make this information available but it seems useful to link it from the wiki page Thank you Bill Sharp Bill transition centre — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bill transition centre (talk • contribs) 21:10, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

This does not really argue why, per the external links guideline, these links should be added. I think you should work on expanding the prose, not just put links.

Also, there may be problems with the username you chose, I would suggest you change it, or start a new account - see here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:24, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Kiki Haynes

Why was it reverted the info? 96.59.136.148 (talk) 00:36, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

You added a twitter-reference - not the best of sources, and the bot informed you of that - I am not convinced either that this is a suitable source. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:28, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Revert Changes

Bot killed an addition I made, too. --173.160.130.14 (talk) 03:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

You added an about.com reference (though not in the reference-format, so the bot could not detect that). As you added more references, I have reverted the bot. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:32, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Aram Khachaturian Link

I am not sure what was wrong with the YouTube link I've provided to illustrate Aram Khachaturian's Waltz music in the respective article. Ryazan Philharmonic Society (the one that shows the Waltz video on its respective YouTube channel) has generously permitted me to share the link. There is no any spam/advertisement/malware in there at all. The linked YouTube content clearly relates to Aram Khachaturian's Wikipedia article. I also know that YouTubes have been used extensively to illustrate Wikipedia articles. Still, the bot has removed my link. Why? -- Hautboist (talk) 19:34, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

We are not an internet directory, and not everything that is out there needs to be linked. Also, a link does not need to be spam to be inappropriate according to our policies and guidelines. If I see the size of the article, and the quality of the references and external links there, I don't think that video's need to be added. Please see the external links guideline for more information. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:37, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

External Link. Hiermonymus Bosch

Hi,

first : sorry for my poor english. I want to defend the external link I put on the page of The Garden of Earthly Delights. It is a link to the official page of El Bosque. animated short movie, directly inspired by The Garden of Earthly Delights. All the artwork is the H. Bosch artwork, recomposed and animated. This short film got selecioned in many internacionals festivals and got best sort film award en el festival international MARFICI en MAr del Plata, Argentina. Of course if you feel that movie don't have to be on the wikipedi page I will accept this. But I'd like ti know exactly the reasons of putting out my link. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ange Potier (talk • contribs) 19:49, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the question and explanation. I think that the answer is in the external link guideline. You say that the movie was inspired by this subject. Don't you think that is a stretch regarding providing more encyclopedic information about the subject. We don't link to everything that is more or less related, just what provides more understanding. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:23, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

re my external link reversion

I had a link to my website on my ideographic language (neoideograms.wordpress.com)up under "ideogram" a couple of times, but i give up. I see your one of your criteria is that an external link add to an encyclopedic knowledge of the topic. Examples certainly add to encyclopedic knowledge. I could try "writing systems" but I don't see any contemporary systems up there. It seems to me that you are being conservative/exclusive to the detriment of readers knowledge. --Brumpfschmlog (talk) 21:13, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Did you try the addition of actual prose, actual knowledge, dropping the conservative thought that your website should be included? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:38, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Alapati Dharma Rao

This article needs reliable sources and author is trying to put URL in his/her article which may cause copyright violation and the article is not written in encyclopedic language. I tagged it for speedy deletion but I think you reverted my edit. Nechlison (talk) 12:53, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

No, the bot reverted to your edit (actually re-instating the tag). The editor removed it again afterwards. Maybe the editor needs some more warnings, and if all else fails, AfD it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:39, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Don't Do This

Hello XLinkBot, and to the Wikipedia. I've read your message, but I worked for 2 days on the article, Kumarason Chinnadurai. Please revert it back to it's full article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ganapati Pujans (talk • contribs) 03:34, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I've undone the bot edit, but removed the 'offending' links. That article really needs reliable sources, please find some which are from respectable newspapers. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:48, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

"Judea Declares War on Germany"

The link http://socioecohistory.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/judea_declares_war_on_germany.jpg is an image of a frontpage of the Daily Express, "Judea Declares War on Germany", which dates of March 1933. Any copyright is expired after 80 years. It relates to the wikiarticle as a search on "Judea Declares War on Germany" refers to this wikipage.

For inclusion in the wiki commons or wikimedia, I don't know how to process. Please do so for us. Thanks.173.176.120.156 (talk) 20:31, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

us? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:52, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

XLinkBot showing up on my watchlist.

I have bot edits shut off on my watchlist, yet edits done by XLinkBot still show up. This isn't a huge deal, but it would eliminate a little bit of clutter on my watchlist if what ever script needs to be added to prevent this could be done. Thanks for your (and/or the collectively) great work on this bot. Sulfurboy (talk) 21:57, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

It is a deliberate choice that XLinkBot does not have a bot-bit, so it's edits show up for review. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:52, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Twitter handle for Kerry Rhodes incorrect

XLinkBot has been removing the verified Twitter account of Kerry Rhodes on its list as links to remove. https://twitter.com/kerry25rhodes is the correct account (see the verified badge on the page). https://twitter.com/kerryrhodes is the incorrect account (see the porn spam...). Can someone please correct the link list? Cheers. EvergreenFir (talk) 21:50, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

No. See WP:OFFICIAL - we do not link to all possible web-presences of a notable subject. Please file a request for blacklisting for the incorrect, porn version. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:52, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

It seems quite common practice to list facebook, offical webpages, and twitter. EvergreenFir (talk) 05:53, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it is commonly in violation of WP:ELOFFICIAL, and actually, 'what Wikipedia is not' (we're not writing the yellow pages or a linkfarm). Also this is one of the reasons that many of these sites are on XLinkBot - they are superfluous to the, often (though indeed not always) existing <subject>.<tld>-links, and if they are not, one might want to question the notability of the subject. There are only few exceptions why the twitter needs to be linked next to the official site, and if there only is a twitter then, generally, the subject is not notable enough for a Wikipedia page. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:36, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Recent reversion on United Popular Front page

The last major edit before the reversion was a big rewrite in order to make the page not be a political dissertation. Not sure why your bot has revered it. Please advice on what to do, to prevent this kind of thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doth4580 (talk • contribs) 11:01, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, what was done was what the bot suggested (in part) - reverting. However, the 'offending' external links were not removed, while after reading the external links guideline that would have been the proper solution. I have done so. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Brutal edit

In identifying and attempting to remove an external link from my page Xlinkbot managed to wipe out a whole lot more and reverted the article back to it's status before a whole day's work. Thanks not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aljezur-International (talk • contribs) 11:14, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

You're right, but .. have you read our conflict of interest guideline, the material is somewhat promotional (what is the reason that the page has to link to the beaches of Aljezur, we're talking about the school? And " is housed in beautiful converted farmhouse premises with extensive grounds, a horticultural project garden and access to a stunning natural watercourse" .. stunning, beautiful - we are writing an encyclopedia here), and it seems you are using at least 4 different accounts. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:29, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

RE: January 2014

I'm sorry about the bad malicious edits that happened; with my account unfortunately a younger sibling had access of my account and had vandalized a few Ultimate Marvel Articles (which I've reverted). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gokufan8989 (talk • contribs) 05:52, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Message left to editors

When XLinkBot undoes edits it leaves the following message on the talk page of the editor it has reverted:

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page 'X' has been reverted. Your edit here to 'X' was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed ('X') is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. If the external link you inserted or changed was to a blog, forum, free web hosting service, fansite, or similar site (see 'Links to avoid', #11), then please check the information on the external site thoroughly. Note that such sites should probably not be linked to if they contain information that is in violation of the creator's copyright (see Linking to copyrighted works), or they are not written by a recognised, reliable source. Linking to sites that you are involved with is also strongly discouraged (see conflict of interest). If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks, XLinkBot

This is a very cold and unwelcoming way to inform an editor about a mistake which - in my experience - tends to have been done in good faith. This is especially damaging as many of the editors who make this mistake are very new to Wikipedia and this is likely to put them off editing in the future. The multiple wikilinks can be daunting for those unfamiliar with Wikipedia and the use of the negative 'although' implies that the editor was definitely not contributing constructively.

I suggest that this message is changed to sound much more positive. Something along the lines of:

Hello! I'm an automated computer program called XLinkBot and I'd like to thank you for your contribution(s) to Wikipedia - we really appreciate your help. Unfortunately I had to recently undo one of your edits because it added an external link ('X') that could be a breach of Wikipedia's guidelines on external links and is on my list of links to remove. If this was not the case and you think I made a mistake please feel free to undo my revert. If it turns out the external link was unsuitable for Wikipedia but you made other changes to the article you'd like to keep, you make these changes again without re-adding the link.

Here are a few tips to help avoid similar problems in the future:

• Try to avoid linking to sites that is are in violation of the creator's copyright
• It's generally not a good idea to link to a site that you are personally involved in as you could have a conflict of interest
• If you are linking to blogs, forums, free web hosting services and fansites you should take special care in checking that their content is suitable for Wikipedia
• It's always best to link to sites that are written by a recognised, reliable source

If you are new to Wikipedia you might find the teahouse, a place for new editors to ask questions, useful. If want to find out more about about me visit my my FAQ page. Thanks, XLinkBot

Jr8825 • Talk 10:58, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the ideas and suggestions. I'll have a better look this afternoon. Note that the message is not a 'single' message, but composed from several parts. They are all accessible from the settings (User:XLinkBot/Settings).

I do prefer that the 'what' and 'why' are included in the message - some people add 5 links, and XLinkBot is only reverting because of 1 of them. Also, noting down the link does enables the real spam to be found more efficiently. We might also want to think about the 'breach of guideline' you suggest. As I said, will come back to this later today. Thanks!! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:22, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Just quick - the message is created from (firstrevertremark OR uw-spam# warning) + (revertexplanation or referenceexplanation) + (ownremark-text) + (endtext) + (isiptext if IP). For the 'ownremark-text' multiple may fit:

• firstrevertremark=Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page $pagename has been reverted.
  
• revertexplanation=Your edit [$diffurl here] to $pagename was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed ($link) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia.
• referenceexplanation=Your edit [$diffurl here] to $pagename was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links in references which are discouraged per our reliable sources guideline. The reference(s) you added or changed ($link) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia.
• endtext=
  If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks!
• isiptext=
  If this is a shared IP address, and you didn't make the edit, please ignore this notice.

The 'points' are caused by:

• ownremark=image|media|petition|blog|payforview|email|wiki|fallingrain|telephone1|telephone2|copyright
• emailtext=Wikipedia pages should not contain personal information such as email addresses. For more information, please read Wikipedia:Biography of Living People, specifically the section about personal information.
• telephone1text=Wikipedia pages should not contain personal information such as telephone numbers. For more information, please read Wikipedia:Biography of Living People, specifically the section about personal information.
• telephone2text=It appears that you inserted a telephone number to $pagename. Wikipedia pages should not contain personal information. For more information, please read Wikipedia:Biography of Living People, specifically the section about personal information.
• imagetext=If the external link you inserted or changed was to a media file (e.g. an image file) on an external server, then note that linking to such files may be subject to Wikipedia's copyright policy and therefore probably should not be linked to. Please consider using our upload facility to upload a suitable media file.
• mediatext=If the external link you inserted or changed was to a media file (e.g. a sound or video file) on an external server, then note that linking to such files may be subject to Wikipedia's copyright policy, as well as other parts of our external links guideline. If the information you linked to is indeed in violation of copyright, then such information should not be linked to. Please consider using our upload facility to upload a suitable media file, or consider linking to the original.
• petitiontext=If the external link you inserted or changed was to a petition site then please note that wikipedia is not a soapbox, and that such links generally should not be included.
• wikitext=If the external link you inserted or changed was to an external Wiki, then please note that these links should generally not be included (see 'links to avoid' #12).
• blogtext=If the external link you inserted or changed was to a blog, forum, free web hosting service, fansite, or similar site (see 'Links to avoid', #11), then please check the information on the external site thoroughly. Note that such sites should probably not be linked to if they contain information that is in violation of the creator's copyright (see Linking to copyrighted works), or they are not written by a recognised, reliable source. Linking to sites that you are involved with is also strongly discouraged (see conflict of interest).
• payforviewtext=If the external link you inserted or changed was to a site that provides payment for people visiting the that page, then note that Wikipedia is not an advertising service. Linking to sites that you are involved with is also strongly discouraged (see conflict of interest).
• fallingraintext=If you were adding a link or reference to fallingrain.com, then you should be aware that this site is considered on wikipedia to be an unreliable source. More information can be found MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#Fallingrain.com here (permanent). Please consider to use/find another source for the information.
• copyrighttext=The site you were adding contains information which is in violation of copyright. Please check if the information on the page is not in violation of copyright before considering to re-add the link.

Later I have the code as well, so I can probably give more detailed info (have to review, haven't touched this for ages). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:39, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The whole message doesn't necessarily need to be changed, in my opinion only the first section needs to be significantly reworded to assume good faith. I see now how the system of adapting the message to the circumstances works (pretty clever!) If I have time I can put together a draft of suggested changes (maybe just slight rewording for each section of the message and cutting down the number of links). Thanks for your help with this, it's really appreciated! Jr8825 • Talk 14:16, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! These things are editable by any admin (the settings are fully protected), and can be reverted if they give problems - I have no problem with anyone tinkering them to optimize them. XLinkBot reads the settings page before every revert that it does, so all changes to that page are effective on the next edit (barring it failing to read the page due to glitches in MediaWiki). Please do check the next revert and the message it leaves after changing the messages to see if there are no curiosities (XLinkBot does add some <br /> and some 'newlines' between some of the lines, which are not in the settings, but that will be obvious after the revert if the message does not come out as intended.

Please, do make sure that the $link (as a readable and working link, for tracking reasons and so the person knows what link actually was the 'problem'!) and $regex (can be in a comment) are somewhere in the messages - the link is for tracking, the rule is sometimes handy to figure out why the bot reverted (there are some which are exotic and, though very uncommon, miscatches are possible as well). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:04, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm still planning to do this, but I'm pretty busy at the moment so I've copied this conversation to my user space so it doesn't disappear into some archive for ever more. Jr8825 • Talk 06:17, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

statement is incorrect about LYNX.

Please remove this statement and keep it off the page. The statement is about another agency in Central Florida.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.69.18.61 (talk) 20:09, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Please discuss this on the talkpage - negative information does have a place as well if it is appropriately sourced. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Bees Algorithm webpage, why the link shouldn't be included?

hi

why was my edit reverted? The notification says that "The external link(s) you added or changed (http://beesalgorithmsite.altervista.org/) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia."

From what I understood, "an official link is a link to a website or other Internet service that meets both of the following criteria:

1 The linked content is controlled by the subject (organization or individual person) of the Wikipedia article.

2 The linked content primarily covers the area for which the subject of the article is notable."

In the case of the link to http://beesalgorithmsite.altervista.org/, I have control of the link (I am the creator and administrator of the page), and the linked content covers solely the subject of the article. There are also no advertisements, no petitions, access is free, and the website does not refer to manufacturers, suppliers, customers or any other commercial enterprise.

I would be very grateful if you could explain me how I violated Wikipedia's guidelines so I won't repeat the mistake in the future.

Thanks. --Marco castellani 1965 (talk) 21:22, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

You haven't violated the external links guideline, and as is explained in the second part of the message, you could have plainly reverted the bot in this case. However, may I point you to the conflict of interest guideline? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I removed one or more external links you added to the page Robert Harris (poet),

The two links I added to Robert Harris (poet) where to a WordPress site used as web page for a literary magazine. The link was to two poems by Robert Harris. All of Harris' work is currently out of print and these links are basically the only online poems by Harris so I thought it was important to include them.

Markr60 (talk) 11:17, 25 January 2014 (UTC)Mark60

That it is out of print is not important, you can point to the paper copies (using ISBN for books?). Also, are you sure that the information on wordpress is not in violation of copyright, Robert Harris is not dead for that long, so probably all his work is still under copyright. If not, one or two of the links may be suitable. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Harvester (video game)

Dear XLinkBot,

I edited the page "Harvester (video game)" and added the external link and a reference to that link. You did not accept that, but I have a very good reason for the link(s). Harvester is an old video game and most of the information you can find about it is misleading or false. The only reliable and active source for the information is Harvester fan page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/lodge.level.4). The creator of the fan page has interviewed the people who made Harvester (there's plenty of interviews on the fan page) and the people who made Harvester have also participated in building the fan page.

I personally can see no reason for you to not accept the changes I made to the page "Harvester (video game)". If you still are going to undo the changes could you please specify why so I won't do the same mistake again. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Testerinen (talk • contribs) 20:43, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Fan pages are not authoritative. See Wikipedia:External links and Wikipedia:Citing sources for explanation of linking. This is an encyclopaedia. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:41, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmm .. that article is only referenced by one reference to said fanpage - and you say there is hardly or no independent material .. I am sorry, I'll AfD the article to get some external input on it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:56, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

neutralising the url that the bot adds

I would like to neutralise the link that XlinkBot adds as part of its reversion message so that it is not an active link. One so that they don't get the value of a link to their site, and 2) to stop the link showing up on the bots internal reports, which is a little irritation when you do a linksearch check. I was thinking that we could wrap $link inside <nowiki>$link</nowiki>. Can anyone envisage an issue with that? — billinghurst sDrewth 05:37, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the link is there so it gets found - you can find spammers easily now by the Special:LinkSearch. And I don't think they get any value from the link on the talkpage - no-one will be looking for their talkpage and it is no-indexed anyway. If there are so many talkpages that have the link that it gets annoying, then maybe it is time to blacklist, and if it is with regards to facebook, no sane person would use the special:linksearch to find a specific facebook .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:47, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Laughter yoga page

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your help, need to make a fresh start on the laughter yoga entry. I am talking with friends for help, will look to do it asap.

Kind regards

Nihat — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ntsolak (talk • contribs) 09:52, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Bees Algorithm webpage

Hi Dirk, thanks for explaining. I have still not clear whether there is any conflict of interest in what I published in the linked website and in the Wikipedia page. They were both (web site and Wikipedia page) written to disseminate scientific knowledge, and the website contains also some software (C++ and Matlab code) which is freely distributed for scientific purposes. I cited some of my work, in a way that I think should conform with the standards of what is considered 'reasonable' according to Wikipedia guidelines. I have also noticed that other Wikipedia pages about Swarm intelligence Algorithms (Ant Colony Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization, Artificial Bee Colony) contain links to websites dedicated to the algorithm described. The only conflict I can think of is that I have written about something that is part of my research interests. If this is not acceptable, please let me know. Finally, I apologise for nagging you about this point, but it was my very first contribution to Wikipedia, and since I am planning to contribute again on scientific subjects of my interest, I would like to have things very clear. Thanks

--Marco castellani 1965 (talk) 16:51, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

You are the maintainer/creator/administrator of the page, even if the information is neutral, free, etc., you are involved in the subject. It does not forbid you to edit, but suggests that you are somewhat careful editing such pages. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:54, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Re: Jean Amery

I tried to fix a dead link to a published biographical essay on Jean Amery, which was originally published in "Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work," ed. S. Lillian Kremer (New York: Routledge, 2002). I am the author of this essay and hold the copyright. The essay is reprinted as a page--not a blog posting--at my blogpost site. The mere fact that it is associated with a blog should not disqualify it, especially since the original appeared in an authoritative print version. Thanks.

D. G. Myers Department of English Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.60.153.22 (talk) 01:40, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I see you've done what XLinkBot suggests for the exceptions - you've reverted the bot. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:33, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

User:XLinkBot

	WikiLove
	WikiLove for User:XLinkBot Cya2evernote (talk) 22:33, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Mahshid Moshiri

Good morning XLinkBot. Thanks for your notification. You have undone my last reference editing in Mahshid Moshiri's article, Can you disable comment above the article? : (A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.... writen September 2008). By the way, I'm going to insert a picture of Mahshid Moshiri in her page. Thank you and I'm waiting for your advice --Alma moshiri (talk) 10:04, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Massive reversion at Savart wheel

I have undone a massive reversion by this bot [1], presumably triggered by an external link to a youtube video [2] that seems to have been legally uploaded by its maker [3], as duly credited on the page: see Savart wheel#External links. Regards, 86.173.146.3 (talk) 20:37, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• YouTube links should not be included in articles, full stop. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 20:53, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh, is that a new regulation (per WP:YOUTUBE, it certainly hasn't always been that way)? If so, please could you be so kind as to provide the relevant link. Thank you, 86.173.146.3 (talk) 20:56, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• WP:ELNO. This does not add anything of value to the article, so it shouldn't be included. Also, linking a Spanish YouTube video/Tumblr page on enwiki is definitely not appropriate (your edit doesn't specify which is in Spanish, so I'm assuming they both are)
• "Social networking sites (such as Myspace and Facebook), chat or discussion forums/groups (such as Yahoo! Groups), Twitter feeds, Usenet newsgroups or e-mail lists." - That's a specific strikeout for the Tumblr part. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 21:36, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• This does not add anything of value to the article, so it shouldn't be included. I've no idea how you think you can make such a statement when you've obviously not bothered to look at the video. It actually provides a real-life demonstration (and the best one I could find) of the phenomenon discussed on the page.

Also, linking a Spanish YouTube video/Tumblr page on enwiki is definitely not appropriate (your edit doesn't specify which is in Spanish, so I'm assuming they both are) If you'd bothered to take a look at the brief video, you'd have seen that there is not a single word spoken in it, so your assumption was simply wrong.

• "Social networking sites (such as Myspace and Facebook), chat or discussion forums/groups (such as Yahoo! Groups), Twitter feeds, Usenet newsgroups or e-mail lists." - That's a specific strikeout for the Tumblr part." Well, the Tumblr link was only there to credit the maker of the video, which I believe is good practice. (Fwiw, the Tumblr link was to an academic page, but I say it was really only there to credit the maker of the video.)

I'm still waiting for a response from you regarding your interpretation of WP:YOUTUBE as YouTube links should not be included in articles, full stop.

More generally, I'm afraid I have to observe that you really seem to know how to discourage a gf Wikipedia editor who had enjoyably spent two days expanding a page on genuinely encyclopedic (from [4] to [5]). I was really pleased with this work and I felt it could make a genuinely interesting and informative DYK. Now, after the negative feedback here, my work feels devalued and I feel mightily pissed off... And really wanting to get away from Wikipedia for some time. 86.173.146.3 (talk) 22:23, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not going to click on a YouTube link in an article. Or a Tumblr link in an article. Neither should be there, full stop. As usual, the guideline has not caught up to standard practice, which is to remove any external link to YouTube. This is why XLinkBot is configured in exactly this way. I'm not belittling your work in the slightest, and I suggest you don't try throwing ad hominems about my age around either; I don't claim to have the slightest clue about this topic (hence why I haven't watchlisted it), it is simply the inappropriate links that I am objecting to. I would encourage you to continue editing (and to get an account; XLinkBot doesn't tend to react to autoconfirmed editors as much), just to not include links to YouTube or social networking sites; your expansion of the article seemed decent. XLinkBot is set up to use rollback as this is the standard practice for anti-vandal bots, because otherwise the offending edit may be bogged down in a big pile, and unrevertable by bot. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 22:38, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the "decent", but for someone almost three times your age who happens to lives alone without much social contact this is no simply fun. Btw, I made no ad hominem about your age: the post titled "Sorry..." on your user page (which you promptly deleted) was meant to be conciliatory [6].

I don't want to get into any further argument, but I have to say say that I believe you have absolutely no right to impose your will on Wikipedia based on personal considerations such as As usual, the guideline has not caught up to standard practice.... 86.173.146.3 (talk) 22:53, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• The ad hominem was you referencing my age in any way; it is irrelevant. I am not a minor. As an experienced editor, I think you'll find I'm not "imposing my will" - I'm talking from personal experience, and it is well known that guidelines and policy are not necessarily worded in the same way they are now used. Again, I would request that you do carry on improving articles, but avoid using potentially controversial links, like YouTube. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 23:05, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

It may be helpful for you to know that the bot didn't just remove the link, it actually removed all my edits - which happened to be the vast majority of the page [7]. I don't know whether that's something that your anti-vandalism bot does systematically to ips, or whether there's some other technical glitch. 86.173.146.3 (talk) 23:47, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

First, it undoes all subsequent edits from one user, which is something that all antivandalism bots do, and which was empirically found to leave less problems (for real spam: if there are edits around, they are generally also spam, for other edits, 'newbies' try often to add a link, fail in the first edit and then correct - leaving the first edit 'breaks' the page; moreover, in any case the bot makes a mistake, you have to undo the bot edit, and whether it is encompassing one or 10 or 50 edits does not make much of a difference)

Secondly - yes, Youtube videos, blogs, facebooks and all that stuff is discouraged. For youtube: first: some of the material IS copyvio (and unfortunately we run into that regularly with youtube), second: it is not accessible to all (for me, part of YouTube - and even Wikipedia - is blocked, useless, futile), third: most of the material on YouTube is not educational (no, we do not need a video of your birthday on our article Birthday ..), fourth: some computers can't play it (I still have problem with an iPad accessing videos from some sources), fifth: it still requires reasonable bandwidth (am I missing points?). That being said, in some cases it does add to an article, there is good material on YouTube which really enhances the article and which could be linked. Reverting the bot, fine, but if an editor is challenging it, then it goes first to the talkpage - the burden is on the editor adding it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:59, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Edit summary

This doesn't explain what you do. (good edit, but reasons needs to change, so heads up for you rbot)(Lihaas (talk) 07:03, 4 March 2014 (UTC)).

Well, I think it did - it reverted an edit that added a reference to the site stated in the edit summary .. can you explain what you think it did not explain? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:16, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Bad regex

Your bot is harassing a new user trying to write an article in his userspace because of a broken regex. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 03:17, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Bad link - that site is actively spammed by its owner in a multi-year spam campaign. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:04, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Overwriting existing talk page messages

When the bot left a message at User talk:Daniela Wüstenberg (which it was correct to do), it overwrote the existing message on the page [8]. On this occasion the message was just a demonstration from a fellow trainee at an editathon so it was not too important. It really shouldn't be overwriting existing messages though in case they are important. Thryduulf (talk) 14:55, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I think this has been a glitch in the MediaWiki software, I'll have a look at the logs, but I don't think it is a real bot-mistake. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:05, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Lam Hoi Sin wikipedia page

Dear Sir/Madam,

Sorry I thought I can direct quote from the source if I had cited the references. Please delete the notice and the content and I will re-edit the content later.

Thank you very much for your kind attention!

Yours, lalawikieditlala

I've undone the edit, seems to be an exception to the rule - this seems to be the official website of the subject. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:07, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Video Posting Query

Hi ... the City of Newport commissioned a number of "Community Videos" to be professionally produced. They are posted on YouTube, and linked to there by various city and other web sites, and it would be helpful to include them on the city's Wikipedia listing as well. I am the producer/owner of 100% of the video content, and confirm that all music has been paid-for and legally licensed. Thus, as the videos we seek to include via external links were commissioned by the City of Newport ... they violate no copyright ... and YouTube does not appear to be a black-listed site per se on the FAQ page ... I would like respectfully to request that the links to the 2 videos be allowed. Please feel free to verify that they do not violate any other policy guidelines, if you wish, by viewing the videos (one of which received a very legitimate Telly Award) at the links where they reside (copied below). Thank you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJyJ9VbCW9E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6qHiAwnvXU

DVDesigns (talk) 05:33, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think these videos are necessary - we are not writing a linkfarm. I have removed them again. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:09, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 12 March 2014

I edited the page, but it didn't save properly.

````SabreCreator SabreCreator (talk) 21:15, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. — {{U|Technical 13}} <sup>(t • e • c)</sup> 21:21, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, I don't know what you mean. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:49, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Total Siyapaa

Look this movie got 98% negative reviews and the boxoffice opening was low in India. But the Wiki page has wrong information. Only three critics gave positive reviews but there are 50 critics who gave negative reviews. try to understand please. If you think I am wrong in my style, then you check my links and do it yourself. This editing and re editing. is a headache. I deleted the discussion as the edit was becoming long — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZORDANLIGHTER (talk • contribs) 17:08, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

What were you adding where? Some sites, whether citing positive or negative, are just not good sites to be used per our external links or reliable sources guidelines. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:49, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

AIV

The bot made a report to AIV, and then most of its comments were removed. I can't find where they were even deleted. [9] I don't even see the edit in the history. Enigma<sup>msg</sup> 20:04, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't think it was XLinkBot, then - these are the edits on the 10th (when you reported it): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrator_intervention_against_vandalism/TB2&offset=20140311000000&action=history .. can you point out in which revid things were wrong? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:54, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

HR College Article

I have mentioned something that is factual. What is the problem with the paragraph that I have added. It can be verified that HR College is using the portal for their alumni network. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pareen7 (talk • contribs) 14:52, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Factual? Probably, but there are no independent sources showing that, and I think that the whole section you added is utterly not-notable - there is no need to have it in the article. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 04:58, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Highway Thru Hell

Why is the Facebook page for the TV show on the spamlist? www.facebook.com/hwythruhell triggered the spambot. It's listed on the official website http://highwaythruhell as their official facebook page (hence listed at ELs as links usable because they are the official page) If Facebook itself is blacklisted, it would be helpful if the bot left a message saying that the domain is blacklisted, in addition to the specific URL, so that we can determine that all links to that domain would be reverted. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 04:21, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your question. You've given the answer to your question yourself, please see WP:ELOFFICIAL. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:48, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Occasionally, a notable subject will have a web presence on some marginal site. I recall one barely-there My Network TV station (presumably an affiliate, not an O&O) had MySpace as their website (News Corporation owned both at the time, but still...). I also remember, when Geocities shut down, links to it being put *back* into articles as knee-jerk reverts because someone (or some obnoxious robot) didn't like whatever other rubbish free host the content had moved to. This 'bot needs to be running under manual supervision, quite simply. WP:BITE anyone? K7L (talk) 13:30, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

'Occasionally' - that is indeed the case, occasionally. And I still need to see statistics or numbers for 'biting', that argument is used over and over, but I want to see it. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 07:36, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

By the way, I removed the twitter and facebook from My Network TV per our external links guideline. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 07:47, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

False postive on "(http://userbase.kde.org/KJots [\buserbase\.kde\.org\b]))"

Hello, I edited the Kontact page and added a link to the kde userbase (http://userbase.kde.org/), which was reverted by the bot. I undo-ed the bot edit, so it should be fine now. But please refine the scripts int that matter. Wikiinger (talk) 14:08, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Meh, I don't think those links should be there. This is a wiki, not the official site of the software. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:51, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Thinking further of this, you are probably right. Maybe the links (homepages) can be put in the reference list and just be refered to in the text. But where? Wikiinger (talk) 13:32, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Reverting entire string of edits when only one link was bad?

I noticed on Louisiana IceGators that the bot rolled back a string of edits made by an IP, because it contained a bad link. Most of the edits were just fine; this seems like a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I know it's probably not as easy, but would it be possible to have this bot only remove the offending link instead of rolling back everything? Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 22:46, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

That is the whole problem, indeed. It is practically impossible to 'just' remove the external links (and the spam might stay in statements like 'our spammy company delivers you with teh best spam, and you can order it all online [http://www.spammycompany.com here]', removing only one edit has also been tried, but it was found that regularly newbies need 2-3 attempts to 'get it right', leaving the 2 wrong attempt-edits stand often broke the page (resulting in the bot de-facto vandalising the page ..). Also, whether an editor does one edit with a lot of information and one 'offending' link, or does 10 edits with one edit with an offending link, in both cases one has to revert the bot-edit and consider to remove the offending link by hand (which is also what the bot suggests). I see the problem, but there is not really a good solution for it. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 04:56, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I seem to recall having raised this issue before... there was that one Packard museum on U.S. Route 66 where this obnoxious 'bot ripped out a year's worth of edits just because it didn't like one link to the museum owner's personal blog. The rest of the contributions were legit, but happened to be contributed by one sole user. K7L (talk) 13:26, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

"I seem to recall" .. that shows about the frequency of how often this goes wrong. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 07:41, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

....................................................... Thanks{{User:MiszaBot/ for the Corrections. I appreciate your rectification and hope for more colaborations. (NASA USA (talk) 19:42, 10 April 2014 (UTC))

reverted wiki page of Shannon Tweed

I attemped to add Shannons official facebook page to the links section, her twitter is on it so i wanted to add the facebook page. I am her website administrator as well as fan club operator. I have also corrected personal information as it said she has 4 sisters she onlyy has 3 and the 3 are named. Are facebook links not allowed is my actual question

See this part of the guideline. Facebooks, twitters, etc. are generally not necessary, or even suitable as external links. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 09:51, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Link problems

Hey there. I fixed Deadly Friend wikipedia site. I removed link but i kept rest of the info. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scott Deveraux (talk • contribs) 19:52, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I see you reverted and then removed the link to the petition. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 09:53, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Removal of external link

Hi,

You've recently removed some links I posted on Wikipedia to an external website. May I ask if you visited the site first before removing it? I appreciate that it could fall under the of being a 'blog', as it is a Wordpress site. However, it is not a blog; it is a site which intends to disseminate research materials and further information on E.D. Morel, the Congo Free State, King Leopold II, the Congo Free State, the Congo Reform Association, and all those involved.

Wikipedia also states that 'Some acceptable links include those that contain further research that is accurate and on-topic'. This would fall into both of those categories. I appreciate Wikipedia has rules and that they must be followed. However, it would be a great shame for anyone interested in the Congo Free State and the Congo reform movement, to not be made aware, and have full use of, this website and its resources.

Regards,

Dean — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deanbean7 (talk • contribs) 10:12, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

That link is utterly unsuitable, as is the tone of the addition. Please do not add that link again, we are not writing a soapbox here. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 09:55, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Ghost of Christmas Eve]]

Hi There,

You had written: "Your edit here to The Ghosts of Christmas Eve was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (http://musicandartinterviews.blogspot.com/2013/09/tommy-farese.html) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia."

That link is to an interview with one of the performers in The Ghosts of Christmas Eve and he discusses his involvement and filming of that movie within the interview. That is why I linked it, since it contained relevant information to the The Ghosts of Christmas Eve. I guess you removed it because it is a BlogSpot address? There is actually no blog there - just a series of interviews with musicians and artists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.57.209.235 (talk) 21:49, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it was removed because it is on blogspot. Blogspots hardly even are suitable per our external links guidelines - we are not writing a linkfarm with all reasonable connectable links on the subject, moreover, this one is indirect, and interviews with the subject do not necessarily add encyclopedic information to the article (.. that could not be included itself anyway). I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 09:57, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Jean Ter-Merguerian

• Jean Ter-Merguerian --- Thank you for your suggestions concerning links to external audio files.

All of them, posted on my vimeo channel, and strictly related to Jean Ter-Merguerian, violinist. All are non commercial, "public domain" live recordings, given me directly from artist's family. May I leave those links on wikipedia? Thank you, EP — Preceding unsigned comment added by Epessina (talk • contribs) 02:12, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

That depends. We are not writing a linkfarm here, do they comply with all of our external links guideline. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:32, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Campaign Hats

I have struggled to add things, but cannot seem to get things in the proper format. Currently, I would like to add to your article on campaign hats as it is sadly limited. The process is confusing and the links go all kinds of places, but nowhere helpful. I am astounded that people wade through this in order to contribute. Nevertheless, I am a sucker and would like to give the correct answer for the development of this hat prior to the Montana Crease era. (Yes, I know that you are the solution and not the problem, but I have tried this a few times and it is frustrating.)

{{Help me}}

Rabby Tat (talk) 01:27, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Rabby Tat: I am sorry, I do not see edits of you to Campaign hats (Campaign Hats?). Furthermore, I do see some of your edits stuck, others were re-formatted, and yes, some removed. But it is unclear to me what you are now referring to. Could you please specify which page you want to edit, etc.? Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:16, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I was hoping to find an understandable tutorial, but there are just endless strings of confusing links which do not go to anything helpful. Must just be me, but I have no idea how any of this works.

As to the campaign hats, I know that most people think of the later model lemon squeezer/Montana crease, but the originals were similar to cattleman crease and the soldiers custom creased. They were nutria and rabbit and quite durable hats of a dark tan color. Look up the specs for 1883, 1886 and various 1890s campaign hats which predate the straight brim lemon squeezers. Even before that time there were black varieties during and just after the American Civil War.

But this is just so confusing. I wonder that anyone contributes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rabby Tat (talk • contribs) 00:56, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a rather steep learning curve here, that is true, User:Rabby Tat. However, most of it is just boldly edit. As long as you are responsive to people commenting to you (e.g. asking you questions) and not insisting nothing goes wrong with you. You may see some early edits reverted and people (or bots) telling you why, but just take it easy and considerate then.

I am sorry, I still don't know what you are really talking about - if you have specific questions, I would go to the talkpage of the relevant Wikipage (if you go to the Wikipage itself, the linked talkpage is another tab) and discuss/ask/suggest.

As I said, take it slow and easy - it may seem confusing in the beginning but it will come, we welcome newcomers regularly. Hope to see you around! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:02, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

My Wiki link

Why shouldn't my wiki link be allowed? Young Justice has a wiki link. I'm the admin to the Teen Titans Go! Wiki. What makes that wiki special? Skar9797 (talk) 09:34, 28 April 2014 (UTC)Skar9797

That link fails our external links guideline, there is no need for it - we are not writing a linkfarm here but an encyclopedia. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 21:01, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Expected behaviour or bug?

Hi, is the behaviour at Rangeview_Library_District where it rolled back all changes by the user who inserted a "bad" link intended behaviour or a bug? I can imagine either being true, so I figured it was best to report it. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:34, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Hoi Martijn. It is even worse: it is a feature!

# Revert all edits by a user (0), or only the last one (1)?

revertoneedit=0

(from the settings, see link in orange box at the top). Generally, it is found that newbies sometimes need 2-3 attempts to 'get the url right', reverting one edit only reverts the one that made the link work, and leaves a page with a broken link or even a broken page. Also, spammers sometimes first add 'OURCOMPANY is a great company', and then in a second edit figure out that it actually makes sense to link OURCOMPANY with a link to their site. Similarly there, reverting one edit leaves the spam. Also the spammer who first edits in the top to add some text-only spam, and then in the end decides to add their link to the external links section gives the effect that not all spam would be reverted if only one edit is reverted.

Downside is, that sometimes an editor is doing 10 good edits, only accidentally adding a not-so-good-link in the 10th edit, and all gets reverted. One could regard that reverting one edit is less bitey than all 10, though I think that the general feeling would practically be the same, and difficult to gauge (and the bot tries to explain what happened on the talkpage and what the editor can do).

Well .. since it is a setting (which have immediate effect), we could consider switching the other behaviour and see what the damage/gain ratio is.

Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 18:59, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Intended behaviour then, which is fine really. I guess in most of the cases that is indeed what we want. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Graham Cawte

Hi,

Please note that on the Categories on the Graham Cawte Page, when you click on any category, you find Graham Cawte in the list of actors with surnames beginning with G, instead of the list of actors with the surname C, please can you am end this.

Thank You — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gossie1961 (talk • contribs) 16:55, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

I've solved it, I've included a {{defaultsort}}. See you around! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:31, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Johnevella

Sorry about the two external links I inserted. I had not yet read the guidelines which should have been obvious to me anyway. Johnevella (talk) 17:09, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:38, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Laird Barron article

My recent edits to the Laird Barron article were reverted. I obtained the information relevant to Laird Barron's biographical information directly from his online journal's biography. I'm (obviously) new to editing and didn't see it as a promotional aspect to cite the Laird Barron online journal biography as a source for relevant data. Was I in error? Lillie Thundercloud (talk) 16:30, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I think you are right here. Note that this is not just about promotional aspects, but also about other links which just generally (but not always) fail inclusion standards. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:42, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Malakia

With regard to this undoing of the bot edit, perhaps it would be good to have a look at the RfC on Talk:Malakia regarding an article that was/is supposed to be about the Greek word. Esoglou (talk) 06:52, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

The bot did not 'know' about the RfC - it just got triggered by the wordpress. I see other bots also had problems with these edits, not sure what was going on there. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:45, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Wilma F. - May 2014

I have just received this message from you:

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page Schiano Bikes has been reverted. Your edit here to Schiano Bikes was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (http://www.facebook.com/schianobikes/) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 12:40, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I am truly sad and sorry about what happened. I just wanted to save all the information to not to lose them. I didn't know that by clicking button´save´they will automatically appear on the Wikipedia page. Today I was supposed to make necessary changes (e.g. deleting dispensable links as to the Facebook page), but sadly I found out that my page had already been deleted. I can assure you that I am familiarized with all the relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. According to this situation, I would be extremely grateful if you could reconsider your decision and bring back my article, so I could reedit it (according to all the terms of using Wikipedia). However, if this is not possible, I would like to write it one more time, but without any errors or inaccuracies which could disturb Wikipedia policy.

Thanking you in advance. If I can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you very soon.

Yours sincerely, Wilma.franzese (talk)Wilma

I see that the page is now in your userspace, and that you can work on it there. Sorry for the late reply. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:48, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Question about a link

Would my article "The Daily Newspaper and Urban Popular Culture" (http://walterfox.wordpress.com/the-daily-newspaper-and-urban-popular-culture/) be an appropriate addition to Wikipedia's list of urban urban studies articles? It was originally presented as a paper at the Popular Culture Association Convention. Although it is hosted on Wordpress, it is not part of a blog.

Wjfoxjr (talk) 22:02, 8 May 2014 (UTC) Wjfoxjr (talk) 17:58, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

As you have a conflict of interest here, I would suggest that you suggest the link on the talkpage of the page where you want to add it, and wait for an uninvolved editor to perform the edit if needed. See Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest for more info. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:49, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

A link I placed was removed

I placed links on two Kenya rugby union sites for * Malindi RFC website

was disappointed to see they were removed, apparently because the link was to a blog. The link for the team is in Africa, where information is hard to come by. This is the only source of information for the North Coast and I feel that it is warranted as an essential source of information, it does not infringe on any of the other rules, I would say that it is used as an authority for many and is often sited in news articles: http://voiceofsport.net/rugby/1918/malindi-high-pushed-to-the-limit-in-battle-for-regions-schools-rugby-supremacy — Preceding unsigned comment added by JemusiMalindi (talk • contribs) 10:37, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

You mean this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mombasa_Sports_Club&diff=prev&oldid=607609686 .. you say that it is a similar club, so the page you link to is not about the subject, and therefore fails our inclusion standards. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:53, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Bug -error

Bot removed an entire section [10] because it didn't like the last edit [11]

There was no need and it was counterproductive for it to revert every previous edit I made.83.100.174.82 (talk) 00:50, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

(Also why is it removing what seemed like a valid youtube link ?) 83.100.174.82 (talk) 00:52, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

The reason for this is explained in the FAQ, linked from the top of this page, and in the section just above this one.

The question for inclusion of a YouTube link is not only whether it is relevant, the question is whether it adds anything that is necessary for better understanding of the subject. If so, you can revert the edit by the bot. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:57, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Marnie Blewitt article

My recent edits to the Marnie Blewitt article was reverted a little bit ago. The link in question was to a YouTube video where she was commenting on her L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science award. I had assumed it would serve as additional documentation. Can someone advise me as to whether I should undo this or accept the bot's reversion? Thanks in advance.

PEGLEG3 (talk) 22:56, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I guess the question that you should ask is, whether after seeing the video you would gain some information that is not already included and which can not be included, that is necessary for the understanding of the subject, or whether it is just extra information. If in doubt, the talkpage of the page is likely a better place to ask. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:35, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I would say that the video contains mostly extra information and is thus probably not needed. Thank you again for advising me in this matter. PEGLEG3 (talk) 12:23, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

i would like to add a picture to the oage but am having trouble understanding how to do it

File:C:\Users\Valued Customer\Pictures\Berlin

2016 Games Host to be announced

— Preceding unsigned comment added by TRUTHWINSTHROUGH (talk • contribs) 04:05, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

You would need to upload it, see Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard for information about that. I am sorry, I can't help you further, I've never gone through that procedure. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:23, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello

I am the owner of the copyrights of the video locked in the external links section. (It is also taken from my youtube account). I think the link is relevant and very significant to the subject and I am happy to donate it to Wikipedia...Thanks - (Elbow made (talk) 17:19, 7 June 2014 (UTC)).

I would try to open a discussion on the talkpage - you do seem to have a bit of a conflict of interest with this link. I also see that there are other problems with the article that should be solved quickly. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:28, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

/* External links */ Link to underwater video of Cerknica lake

I received message "The external link(s) you added or changed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuGMpc6s-rc)" Video is my work and therfore complies with wikipedia copyright policies and as such it can remain on page. It is unique as there are no videos of underwater wildlife in Cerknica lake. Zoran Vidrih Zoran Vidrih (talk) 12:25, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Copyright is not the only problem with YouTube. We are not writing a linkfarm. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 12:51, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

MuslimsRule11

My apologies, forgive me I'm new here on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MuslimsRule11 (talk • contribs) 18:59, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Please Accept My Apologies

To all members of Wikipedia that have been involved in this case, especially Bgwhite and XLinkBot: I'm sincerely sorry for everything: I want to apologize for always giving you guys a hard time with my edits and contributions to any articles here on Wikipedia regarding Jordanian footballers and teams and I sincerely apologize for always ignoring your rules and warnings. I admit I was being selfish, thought I could always get away with it and always have it my way, as well as being too lazy to listen to any of you by ignoring the reasons you provide me as to why some of my edits violate the rules here on this website and ignoring your warnings. I apologize for my rude and selfish behavior. I just wanted to help, and I thought I could by adding more links and references to such articles, but I seriously did not know that using double brackets and this | in the links and references I add was a violation, I thought it wouldn't matter. With all due respect, what's the big deal with that exactly, what harm could be done? Is it only because it's totally unnecessary or what? And what's wrong with providing Arabic links and references here on Wikipedia? I mean, there are lots of articles here on Wikipedia, besides ones regarding Jordanian footballers, that include Arabic links and references. The only reason why I like to provide Arabic links and references to articles of Jordanian footballers here on Wikipedia is because they are the only ones that back up the information of these footballers and make a lot of sense, and there are hardly any English ones out there that help back up the info. Trust me, the Arabic ones are much better because they contain much more, or better yet, all sources of the info I provide. So I provide these links and references as sources to back up the info I provide. And as for all the Facebook links I've been trying to provide for the past few months, which I have also just removed myself for the past few days after I found out why providing certain Facebook links is inappropriate here on Wikipedia, I thought it was completely fine to do that after I saw Lionel Messi's Facebook page provided as a link on an article of him here on Wikipedia, so I thought I could help by doing the same to articles of Jordanian footballers here on Wikipedia, and I thought it wouldn't matter, in fact I thought the same was allowed to be done for any article here on Wikipedia of a footballer. So if it's really the links and references you guys have a problem with, just remove them yourselves from now on without having to revert my recent edits, like manually. As for me, I promise to never ever do this again. I really didn't mean to cause you guys any trouble with all I've been doing, I just wanted to help because I enjoy doing this, and I've been doing all this because I'm the one who created most articles/pages here on Wikipedia of Jordanian footballers, national teams, and clubs and improved all others created by other people. You see, I used to be the only one here on Wikipedia who had access to all the information of Jordanian footballers and teams until I tried to help everyone else here on Wikipedia, like readers and members, giving them access to this information by providing it here on Wikipedia.

So as of for now and from now on, please accept and leave my recent edits and contributions that I have made for the past few days because they are all now totally accurate and I tried to make it easier for you guys by removing Facebook links and the | symbols from the references I've been providing. Will you guys please forgive me, not get me into anymore trouble and not try to stop me from contributing by blocking me. Please let's just forget about all this and allow me to continue contributing because I want to help, is that so wrong? :(

Thank you for your cooperation :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Everyoneis1 (talk • contribs)

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	For reverting external links by yourself! Keep it up! The Lightning Strikes! Try me! 10:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Carolanyc

Hi, Bot! I just redid my edits that you had Undone, leaving out any direct link to the Youtube video that I think was the offending trigger, and adding to my Username profile. I hope this takes care of any problems and that you won't undo any of my future edits. Carolanyc (talk) 01:59, 30 June 2014 (UTC) Carolanyc

Thanks! I have cleaned it up a bit further, the language about YouTube that you left is inappropriate for an encyclopedia, we are not writing a manual either. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:49, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Malfunctioning bot: Please stop/Change settings

[12] is NOT spam.

Can i just revert it?

How could it be stopped / this page WHITELISTED? 77.12.77.171 (talk) 19:34, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

in case this bot reverts his own talk:

ausbt c om.au/airbus-reveals-new-a320neo-layout is NOT spam.

Can i just revert it?

How could it be stopped / this page WHITELISTED? 77.12.77.171 (talk) 19:34, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that is what the bot suggested on your talkpage. And no, it does not revert its own talkspace. Let me have a look at the link. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:11, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

That youtube link was to 4AD the music publishers OWN channel (hence no copyright problem)

Welp, Wikipedia is fucked - have a nice day. I'm done submitting as is most other people last I heard on NPR. Enjoy the silence.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.3.146.57 (talk • contribs)

Copyright is not the only reason we might not be wanting to link to YouTube movies. Please see WP:EL. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 09:51, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Some YouTube videos are legit; a prime example a year ago was video of citizens fleeing the Lac-Mégantic derailment and fire, shot by an actual eyewitness. That was cited by everyone from CBS News to Radio-Canada, but this obnoxious bot removed the link to the original from Wikipedia. K7L (talk) 00:24, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

True. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:09, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

However, the existence of a few exceptions does not change the consensus as described in WP:EL and WP:NOT - YouTube links are, generally, still discouraged, with few exceptions (which are easy to revert, as described). --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:26, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Please to support the publication of article about Ramil Garifullin on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garifullin_Ramil_Ramzievich Look : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Irek_Minnullin Sorry for mistakes in English/ The article «Garifullin Ramil RamzIevich» has got in a contradictory situation, and had the following stages:1. After the publication of this article was edited by me in accordance with the requirements of administrators and users and was supported by the administrator (he removed the template modification). 2. After I started to post links to this article in Russian Wikipedia ancient my opponents Duo Akim Dubrow-Fedor Babkin immediately began to remove these links, and there was a conflict (dialogue presents the Akim Dubrow on the website). 3.Fedor Babkin then immediately put the template for deletion of the article "Garifullin Ramil Ramzievich" in connection with the advertisement and previous deletion of this article in Russian Wikipedia. 4. You have deleted an article in connection with copying and copyright infringement. He appeared right after the discussion appeared remark about punishments Akim Dubrow rude and inadequate removal in Russian Wikipedia and the long-standing conflict Duo Akim Dubrow-Fedor Babkin with participants, writing about Garifullin, and insults Akim Dubrow towards Garifullin. Although it was stated that there are seven days to fix the bugs. They look suspiciously was done quickly and without discussion. Why? Ramil Garifullin known personality in Russia thanks to extensive publications in the major media and a variety of books.Earlier article about Ramil Garifullina in Russian Wikipedia has been removed due to political motives, because of the publication of negative article about Edward Snowdon (in RBC)-This was proven when discussing article (Ramil Garifullin) in Russian Wikipedia. Article about Garifullin (Russian Wikipedia), which was in Russian Wikipedia four years has been deleted on the day of publication of the article about Snowden 16.07.2014. Information can be found in the discussion of removed Article. Duo Fedor Babkin -Akim Dubrow is a longtime opponents of Ramil Garifullin. Akim Dubrow repeatedly insulted Ramil Garifullina online, although he apologized for them. Publication of article about Ramil Garifullina - a political issue. By importance in the Russian Wikipedia Ramil Garifullin adequate, but was removed from - for political reasons and arbitrariness administrator. All links will present later. Duo Fedor Babkin -Akim Dubrow opinion is subjectively.The Duo Akim Dubrow-Fedor Babkin has repeatedly initiated destruction of famous Russian people from Wikipedia. Akim Dubrow been punished by blocking for insults and arbitrary behavior on the Wiki. Please administrators and authors to support the publication of article about Ramil Garifullin on Wikipedia.--Irek Minnullin (talk) 11:09, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

WTF

This happened before - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malton_and_Driffield_Junction_Railway&diff=615525982&oldid=615525736

Bot reverted a ton of perfectly good edits, probably because I made a link to youtube - a link to a a relavent film in the British Pathe film archive. really this bot needs to be "not so bloody stupid" Just look at how much and what it reverted.Prof.Haddock (talk) 05:28, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

And see what the bot suggests to the editor. I have removed the YouTube link, it fails our external links guideline. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:48, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Complain

I own and Create The video on the Link i added to BET Awards, and its all about the Winners List, please can it be reverted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by IamLilCloud (talk • contribs) 18:31, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Since you own the video, and created the video, I would suggest that you start a discussion on the talkpage of the page you want the link to be added to. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:49, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

My external links to Albany Park, Auburn Gresham, Pilsen and South Chicago pages

The links are to YouTube videos that contribute information about the history and current status of these Chicago neighborhoods. They were created by community groups and community development corporations in the neighborhoods under a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Hope this helps and I hope you will decide to include these informative videos. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saduros (talk • contribs) 23:49, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I am sorry, but those links plainly fail our external links guidelines. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:50, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

removed links

I go the message:

Hello, I'm XLinkBot. I wanted to let you know that I removed one or more external links you added to the page Pedestrian, because they seemed to be...

Let me clarify that the link was already there. However, it was going to go dead later this summer, so I changed it to a version that will still be good after September. I did not think Wikipedia wanted to have dead links.

I find it difficult to interpret all your standards. If the person who put the link there originally was in violation of your linking policy, I apologize for updating it rather than removing it. However, I do feel it is a valuable resource.

Thank you.

John Z Wetmore (talk) 15:01, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I have removed all the links altogether. The page is about Pedestrians, not about their advocacy or their advocacy groups, local projects, etc. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:53, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

pedestrian and pedestrian advocacy

Good point that the page is about Pedestrian and not Pedestrian Advocacy. There is no page for Pedestrian Advocacy, but there is one for Cycling Advocacy. Perhaps there is need for a new entry for Pedestrian Advocacy. I can't create it because I would get flagged for writing about too many things I am associated with.

John Z Wetmore (talk) 15:48, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I do however think that you can create it as a draft and submit it for articles for creation. WP:COI does not forbid you to write about your subjects, it mainly encourages you to be cautious and neutral about the subject. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:27, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Markup

Take a look at this:

# Setting reverting_on to 0 will stop reverting of the bot.  In this case it will still revert [[user:Beetstra/Sandbox]], which can then be used for testing.
reverting_on=1

(from User:XLinkBot/Settings)

Is it nessesary to [[bracket]]? It creats a link, but the pre tags stop formatting. Regards, The Lightning Strikes! <sup>Try me!</sup> 16:48, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

No, one could remove those (but in this case it is clear that we're talking about a Wikipage, not plain text. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:27, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

XLinkBod adding links?

Hi. I think this might have been an error edit as the bot *added* a link. Also, the edit seems to have messed up the infobox. Could the bot owner please have a look at this? Thanks! - tucoxn\<sup>talk</sup> 10:55, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Funny. this edit 'unbreaks' an infobox formatting, which results in the addition of an email address, which XLinkBot reverted. The url it added seems to be correct and appropriate. Page was still broken on both ends though. That is why I hope RC patrollers do check behind XLinkBot - sometimes there are additional problems with the edits. Thanks for noting this! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:32, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

How to upload image

I have an image to upload that i posted on wikipedia. I tried lot but unable to upload image. Can some body help me out. --Ojhaplus (talk) 10:19, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Your account needs a certain 'age' / number of edits - It will work after some time. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 08:52, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Claude Delvincourt

O.K. I understand the deletion of the external link to the association "Les Amis de Claude Delvincourt", but I restored the list of works of Delvincourt, which is of course very useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.243.236.99 (talk) 19:49, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I think indeed that the external link does not belong, the rest is fine. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 08:54, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

BLP Gerard Newcombe

Hi XLinkBot, We've added fair few number of references to the article. Could you please let me know if we meet the requirements now? Thanking you in advance. deepdat— Preceding unsigned comment added by Deepdag (talk • contribs)

They still do not link to the statements in the article that they should support. I have changed this list to an external links-list, I do think that there is quite some information available to expand the article. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 08:57, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Social links

No problem, I thought the official social links were allowed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Krbmedia (talk • contribs) 15:51, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

They are highly discouraged, also the official ones. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:20, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Lake Eustis Museum of Art

I am the director of Lake Eustis Museum of Art, a 501(3)c nonprofit art museum.

After the first edit/removal of my edits, I removed the Facebook link, as it is a commercial entity -- although a necessary part of every nonprofit these days. I don't understand which of my other edits are objectionable. The link to our .org webpage is not advertising, and in fact was present before my edits.

Richard D. Colvin — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rcolvin352 (talk • contribs) 17:04, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

The bot will revert everything when it detects links that it finds objectable. As the bot suggests, please revert it (with removal of the links it objected against if you agree that these indeed fail our guidelines), reinstating the good parts of the edit. I'll have a look. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:23, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Stop your shitty bot from blindly reverting youtube links

There are plenty of good reasons to add those. JMP EAX (talk) 12:57, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

There are. There are also plenty of good reasons to remove them, as almost all which are relevant to an encyclopedia are copyright violations. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:42, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

The good reasons for that were already laid out in the section, there was a template warning for extreme linkfarming, and a 'no more links'-transclusion. The article is quite big, has 50+ references, and links to various information sources outside. Most of the links in that external link section, including the one that triggered the revert of the bot, were plainly superfluous. Also some of the other links fail our inclusion standards. I have therefore cleaned out the linkfarm. Please see the external links guideline and 'What Wikipedia is not' for more info. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:20, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

HTTP to HTTPS

This change is valid because HTTPS should be preferred for non-Wikipedia links. 77.56.53.183 (talk) 16:55, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Not that there is a preference, but the bot should not have tripped over this change, indeed. I'll keep this in mind as a 'bug', making the bot strip protocols. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 04:52, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Deleted wrong link

It looks like the bot screwed up on this edit. It deleted the only link that was NOT facebook. —teb728 t c 23:39, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, the 'references' can all be removed (and I have). It tripped over an earlier edit, but got confused in the process I think. Funny 'bug'. Have to think about this. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:06, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Encoding error

See this edit: XLinkBot got the encoding wrong in the page title Ila Bêka, producing "Ila Bêka" instead. The output conforms to an interpretation of the UTF-8 form as Unicode code points (Python 2.x example):

>>> 'Ila Bêka'
'Ila B\xc3\xaaka'
>>> print(u'Ila B\xc3\xaaka'.encode('utf-8'))
Ila Bêka

QVVERTYVS (hm?) 10:53, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, a known, somewhat annoying bug that I still have to work on. It seems to lose the encoding somewhere between the procedures. I have been trying to track the problem but failed until now (I know how to solve the bug, if I know where it is ..). I'll try to make some time for this. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:05, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for info.

Thanks for info and guide. I'll ty my best next time. --Lamanchik (talk) 09:41, 31 August 2014 (UTC)Lamanchik

Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 12:46, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

"Welcome to Wikipedia."

XLinkBot starts its - or at least some - messages with "Welcome to Wikipedia." even if the editor it's addressing does not have an empty Talk page && made more than 200 edits && has been on Wikipedia for more than four months. I'm guessing the statement is an attempt to create a welcoming atmosphere, but welcoming someone who has been around for a while may come across as condescending; it's like the bot is saying 'Noob, you made an error, because/but you're new.' Is it always including that welcome message, or? --82.136.210.153 (talk) 12:07, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Can you give me examples, it is supposed to only do that according to the criteria (with some difference between IPs and logged-in editors) that you state, actually .. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 12:26, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any cases here where XLinkBot did not create a new user talkpage and did leave a welcomemessage, so the first of your remarks is already not there. Some IPs may have more than 200 edits and 'be here for more than 4 months', but are you sure it is a static user or someone else now there? Anyway, if their talkpage did not exist ...

Note that other parts of the welcome message come from the standard templates {{uw-spam1}}, {{uw-spam2}}, {{uw-spam3}} and {{uw-spam4}} - the bot has no effect on those. Maybe that is what you are referring to? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 12:32, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

example --82.136.210.153 (talk) 13:11, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

You indeed meant the 'welcome' in the standard template. And that is indeed for an IP. For most IPs, which are not static, that would anyway be appropriate.

I see that the bot tripped on [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Simple_and_Fast_Multimedia_Library&diff=prev&oldid=620496664 this[ edit. You went on and reverted, and removed the wordpress, but that was not the way forward, the whole list like that is inappropriate per our guidelines. Items in that list should only be there if they are worth mentioning (notable in itself), and they should all be accompanied by, preferably independent, sources so it can be verified that the information is true. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:27, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I hope you agree that the entries do not need to meet WP:N; that even though most entries do not warrant their own articles, they can still be notable in the context of this article. Of course they should be "accompanied by, preferably independent, sources". Thanks for just tagging them with {{Cn}} instead of removing the section. I do however disagree with your position that the welcome message of the bot was appropriate for that particular IP editor - that's me, by the way - given the combination of the factors I mentioned in my first post. In my opinion your 'it is an IP editor so it is usually appropriate' stance is too dismissive. If more than 200 edits were made from an IP address in the last half year, with the first edit made more than four months ago, and the Talk page already has content, then the bot should not say "Welcome to Wikipedia." --82.136.210.153 (talk) 09:25, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with the latter sentiment. However, how do you want to separate a true 'static' IP from a heavily shared IP, both with several hundreds of edits. Or the static IP that was used by a very static, prolific editor, but that last week was re-assigned. All in all, your problem there is not with the bot, your problem is with the level-1 template. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 10:25, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia page for artist Eileen Ivers creating confusion for information seeking audience.

Hello, the following Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_Ivers

was somehow automatically generated into the following misleading page on facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eileen-Ivers/103849409652709

Members of the world community seeking to connect with artist Eileen Ivers are therefore going to this static page instead the following correct and active facebook page which is owned, maintained and freshly updated by artist Eileen Ivers and me, her husband, Brian Mulligan:

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialEileenIvers

Please allow me to update the Wikipedia page with the correct information regarding artist Eileen Ivers.

Thank you for understanding the importance of this matter.

Brian Mulligan — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikimbi (talk • contribs) 13:50, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, facebook generates pages 'copied' from Wikipedia to inform facebook users about a subject. However, it is not Wikipedia's purpose to make sure that people arrive at the correct Facebook page of the subject. Sorry. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:27, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Kuba Ka Reinstatement of Official YouTube Link

Hi XLinkBot,

I am writing to submit justification for inclusion of a link to the subject's official YouTube channel on Kuba Ka's Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuba_Ka

https://www.youtube.com/user/KubaEntertainment

First, all of the material posted on the KUBA Ka - Official YouTube Channel does not obviously infringe any copyrights because it only includes videos created by or officially licensed by KUBA Ka Empire, including venues where he has performed.

Second, all the material on his channel is relevant to the subject himself, as it contains videos of his performances, studio sessions, background about the subject and links to expanded biographical information.

Third, even if the videos would be considered a secondary source rather than a primary one, they are irreplaceable because KUBA Ka is a performing artist and actor whose music videos and performances are best documented on video.

Based on these facts, I would like to reinstate the subject's Official YouTube Channel link to his Wikipedia page as it brings more value to the readers. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration.

Best regards, Pictoguard (talk) 02:24, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi! Thank you for your question. The problem is not that it is official, the problem is not that the videos are not violating any copyright, the problem is that we do not link to all official websites of a subject. Generally only the main official website is listed, sometimes, sometimes one can argue for a second one. That is why youtube channels, twitter accounts, facebook accounts, myspace accounts generally are inappropriate (with some exceptions, which are rarer than what most believe). Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 04:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

why revert scott harsharger ??

pls leave yr response here thanks maybe I was over line on living persons, but i had lots of good sources - why did you remove them ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.91.49.238 (talk) 21:40, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

The bot was triggered by the verizon website, it did not do anything with the other sources. I do however think that the whole section is bordering on a BLP violation, and should be properly, neutrally worded. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:40, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Removal of links

The links on articles:

• Floor slip resistance testing
• Slip and fall
• Sustainable Slip Resistance

have been removed and I think it's not right. The links especially the YouTube demonstration video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwHpsIKwAOY) is a step by step guide of performing slip resistance testing using the equipment discussed in the article. The video is one of the most popular videos on the subject on youtube and wikipedia users will benefit from the link. I am not sure as why it has been removed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.41.41.130 (talk) 14:50, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the links belong there either, that is not information that should be included or linked to - please see the external links guideline for more info. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 12:47, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Dirk Beetstra, the youtube link as mentioned above suits perfectly well with the articles discussed. The article "Floor slip resistance testing" even discusses the Pendulum skid tester, how can the demonstration video of the same device which shows how to setup and perform tests with the device be not relevant to the topic? It's well within the scope of the article. Thank you User:Zamy85 — Preceding undated comment added 13:31, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

But Wikipedia is not a manual. At best, Wikipedia should describe how the procedure of slip resistance testing works (without becoming a manual), if people want to know how to operate a piece of equipment, they should follow the user manual or Google it. It is simply not Wikipedia's purpose to do that. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:29, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

It's not a manual on a particular model or brand of equipment. The video shows how to perform the slip test according to international standards. Wikipedia is an excellent source of information & knowledge and arguably this fits its ambit. Most of all this video is not the only video demonstration youtube clip on Wikipedia, I can point you to several such videos. Remove this by all means if you want to, but then other demo videos should be removed as well.Zamy85 (talk) 10:31, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

www.manstonairport.com

Now the Airport is closed this www.manstonairport.com is no longer used and advertisers have taken it over. So I removed it and you have apparently put it back on.

Please explain the rationale behind this, as it is verifiable as Wikipedia claims it needs to be.

I am not also happy that my comments about the Governments failures have been removed, as they too are verifiable!

In addition an external link to my Facebook page facilitated people seeing the Reports and decision making processes incriminating the government that is very relevant to the Airport being closed.

I have spent a great deal of time researching the background to the Airport being closed. as a national asset and you are not helping.

I would appreciate someone ringing me to guide me. (telephone number removed) Mike Barker MBE (talk) 00:23, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for your remark. The bot purely reverted based on the facebook addition, which is inappropriate. Your edits should be backed-up by reliable sources, not a facebook page. I will have a look. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:12, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I see the body of your edit is also accusing in nature, without referencing the accusations. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:16, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

It's pretty asinine to post one of those "Welcome" messages WITH A FRICKIN' BOT!

Right. Like I said, a "Welcome" message is disingenuous and not really very welcoming when it's made by a (your) stinking automaton.

100.0.217.62 (talk) 04:13, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

The "FRICKIN' BOT" was utterly correct, and I have re-reverted your reversions of the bot reverts. Those links are utterly inappropriate. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:07, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

XLinkBot revert 27 Sep 2014

I happened to notice this revert by XLinkBot. The reverted edit was not mine. Apparently the reason for the revert was that the edit added a Facebook link to External links. Fair enough, but why not simply delete the offending link instead of reverting the entire edit? In this case, the edit did a lot of other things, too. Constructive things, including the correction of several errors, which are now back in the article. Seems like pretty poor judgment on the part of the bot, or more accurately on the part of the person who created the bot. A bot should tread as gently as possible to achieve the desired goal. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 09:05, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I have reverted the bot's revert and deleted the Facebook link. You're welcome. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 09:18, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

That is extensively explained in the FAQ, and your action is what is suggested by XLinkBot to the user. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:18, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Could be, but it's a fact that the necessary action is beyond the ability of a huge number of beginning users. Many haven't a clue what an undo is, or even what View history is; except for your bot's action, there would be no urgency to learn that at such an early stage in their Wikipedia learning curve. So your bot's behavior violates the Wikipedia principle of being welcoming and benign to new editors, so as not to turn them off before they have a chance to learn. Wikipedia already seems intimidating and overwhelming to many new editors; why add to that if you don't have to? In other words, you are contributing the shortage of competent Wikipedia editors. Don't take my word for it, ask any five senior editors who give a shit about Wikipedia's future.

Let me reiterate that I'm not suggesting that we should have tolerated his Facebook link. I'm suggesting that the bot should only have removed the Facebook link. I know that's both possible and practical, since I see bots doing things just like that all the time. I see bots doing the minimum required to correct the problem, and that very rarely means a revert. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 04:45, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

"it's a fact that the necessary action is beyond the ability of a huge number of beginning users." .. fact? You'll however be surprised how many do revert the bot action without considering the warning. Whatever the bot does, either remove only the link (and often leave the rest of the rubbish), or revert all edits or one edit by the user, it will leave a message and the editor will have to consider to undo (which, according to you, they will not understand ..). This bot does exactly what all other vandalism bots do: revert the whole edit and make the user consider to re-do it. Trying to just parse out the bad stuff will either break the page, or leave other rubbish, or both. The best solution: having people monitor the additions, and though we have recent-changes patrollers, that obviously does not work as most of the edits the bot reverts were not handled by recent-changes patrollers. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:07, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

And then, how many of the reverts actually contain a substantial amount of good information? There will be some, but most of the edits are overall inappropriate. And then, of those, how many do not get reverted (I found 2 which were reverted by the editor, they certainly understood what to do ..). --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:14, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know why you brought up vandalism. I have absolutely no sympathy for a clear vandal, I think we're way too tolerant of them, and you'll definitely never see me advocating for them. But how many cases of adding a Facebook link are vandalism? Vandalism means malicious intent, or at least a blatant disregard and disrespect for others. The vast majority of things like Facebook links are out of ignorance, as was surely the case in this example.

Anyway, it appears that we're wasting time for both of us, so let's agree to disagree. If you ever decide to take this discussion to a larger audience, I'd appreciate a ping so I can be there. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 07:11, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

The bot does not only inform editors who add external links out of ignorance, it also addresses spamming (which also includes some of the additions of facebooks, myspaces, youtubes etc.) and other forms of promotion. That is malicious intent. The other edits are not malicious intent, though often in (ignorant) disregard of our policies and guidelines.

I don't think we disagree, but that we have a lack of appropriate technical means to solve the problem: The edit filter, technically, can replace a part of XLinkBot (and for the rest be complementary for the real spam), but the servers can't handle that (we tried, I hoped that it would take XLinkBot out of business, actually). New editors already ignore the suggestions about link-rules when adding new links (seen that XLinkBot 'has' to revert them) anyway; Wikicode/creativity of spammers/competence of new editors/editing competence of spammers does not really allow for other solutions; We could consider to not revert, but the fact that XLinkBot is reverting so many edits (sometimes a couple of minutes after the edit) shows that recent-changes patrollers can't keep up (and they do an effort to revert/remove such edits, as XLinkBot is often 'the second editor' at the scene). --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 10:40, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

By the way, the whole page is utterly promotional, and would need some heavy handed editing to clear out the inappropriate language that is put there by, what appears to be a WP:COI, editor. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:22, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Quite true, and quite beside the point. ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 04:45, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

That is why I said 'by the way'. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:07, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Just read your message and made updates :)

Hello! I've just read your message and made updates. Please visit the page I contributed again, and don't hesitate to let me know if it needs anything, or if I should edit anything :) Thank you so much, Tiffanychinsim (talk) 09:53, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello, thank you for your remark. I have looked at the article and have serious concerns as to the notability of the topic. I have tagged the article as such, and nominated for a discussion. Please comment there. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 10:47, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Whitelist

Hi Versageek, please whitelist my IP address. I am an IP editor, and I don't intend to create an account. Your bot does not understand (my) edit summaries (example). I am a good faith Wikipedian, have been one for months from this IP address, and from various other IP addresses for many years. Of course nobody is perfect, but I make no more mistakes than your average registered editor. Thank you in advance. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 00:14, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the remark. I see this is your first encounter with XLinkBot on this IP, so I don't think it is really a nuisance to you on this IP (your edits never tripped XLinkBot before). Were you whitelisted on (one of) your previous IPs? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 10:41, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Dirk. This was not the first encounter for this IP address. You can find another edit summary the bot did not understand here. Since March 2014, I've made more than a thousand edits from this IP address, I am a good faith Wikipedian (see my contributions), and I have no intention of ever creating an account. Nobody is perfect, but I have a ten or so year history of editing Wikipedia (from various IP addresses) and I make no more mistakes than your average (not newly) registered editor. If I do not qualify, please explain to me the requirements. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 19:01, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

done. Note that the bot does not care about edit summaries, it cares about the links that were added (otherwise you get smart spammers stating in the edit summary that their links are fine .. and yes, spammers are smart, that's how they make money). Although such additions are still under the normal scrutiny, it is not the purpose of the bot to 'harass' IP editors who are using the same IP for a long, long time, performing a lot of edits and occasionally add 'questionable'/'debatable' external links (the one on Barbie Girl is in that grey area, just as the one on Gangham style would be).

You mind informing me if your IP address changes .. so we can remove the old one and replace it with the new one (just in case the old one gets taken later by a spammer ..)? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:40, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Regarding future replacement of the IP: as I have no plans of using a user committed identity or something similar, I'm not sure if replacing the IP would be a good idea. If I'm on a week-long vacation, someone else could start IP editing, claiming to be me? Given this thread is publicly visible... ;) --82.136.210.153 (talk) 11:17, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

No, I presume you are behind a static IP .. but if that changes at some point, someone else might get this IP and you get a new one .. at that point we could update the UserWhitelist. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 12:26, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Problem with special characters?

The bot's messages seem to have a problem if the title of the reverted article has a nonstandard character – see User talk:Dmr63072#October 2014. The article is actually called 14th Street – Union Square (New York City Subway). Cheers, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:53, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I know. I hope to have time soon to resolve this. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 18:09, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Erroneous reversion

If you will examine the following, you will see an edit that consisted of a single action, the adding of a YouTube link to an article's "External Links":

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=630878808&oldid=630874078

Now please examine the following. You will see that XLinkBot, in immediately attempting to undo the above action, did not restore the article's version that had preceded the action; it restored, instead, some earlier version and thus undid many other actions as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=630879000&oldid=630878808

Had I not been working on the article when XLinkBot acted as it did, I might have edited the article a number of times before noticing the effects of the erroneous reversion by XLinkBot. Upon finally noticing the errors, I would have had a devil of a time identifying and restoring the revisions that XLinkBot had carelessly undone. As it is, I was able promptly to undo XLinkBot's undo; but then, to protect the article from XLinkBot, I had no choice but to delete the YouTube link, even though I don't know whether it involves copyright questions.

In short, XLinkBot would seem either to have malfunctioned or to be poorly engineered.173.49.197.125 (talk) 05:27, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Please read the second Q&A in the FAQ here. The bot is operating as intended and documented. Philip Trueman (talk) 09:51, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

If the bot is "operating as intended and documented," then its operation is poorly conceived; but having just quickly read the Q&A you advised me to read, I'm not persuaded the bot is operating the way it is supposed to. Please look once again at the links I posted above: the addition of the footnote with the YouTube link was the SOLE ACTION in a SINGLE EDIT, which the bot undid immediately, i.e., BEFORE THERE WERE ANY SUBSEQUENT EDITS. In other words, an undo should have taken the page to the version that immediately precedes the edit in which the footnote was added; no edit other than the footnote should have been affected.

If you think I am mistaken, please examine the four following pages, which include the two pages I posted above and which—as you will be able to confirm at the article's history page—are SEQUENTIAL pages (i.e., with no other pages anywhere among them in the article's history); tell me what I am misunderstanding.

Revision of 2:29, 24 October 2014 (Entirely-new footnote with YouTube link is added, as SOLE EDIT): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=630878808&oldid=630874078

Revision of 2:32, 24 October 2014 (Bot reverts not to the version that immediately preceded the above but to an earlier version, with the result that, among other things, four out of five paragraphs of one section are obliterated, while the fifth paragraph itself is significantly modified): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=630879000&oldid=630878808

Revision of 2:51, 24 October 2014 (Bot's "undo" undone by me, with result that page reverts to the 2:29 version above, with the YouTube link back in place and all the carelessly-reverted edits restored): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=630880656&oldid=630879000

Revision of 3:12, 24 October 2014 (YouTube link is removed by me, in bot-avoidance action): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=630882490&oldid=630880656

I'll say it one more time: The footnote with the YouTube link was added—in its entirety—as the SOLE EDIT of a SINGLE REVISION and was undone by the bot in a reversion that took place BEFORE THERE WERE ANY SUBSEQUENT EDITS. There was nothing, as far as I understand, to complicate the bot's elimination of the footnote.173.49.197.125 (talk) 18:17, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

I have returned to the article’s history page, to try to determine what happened here. The following includes, I think, the relevant facts.

1—My own first edit was added to the article at 5:06, 15 October 2014. I added a single sentence, about the death of the article’s subject (Major Tony Hibbert). The sentence included a linked footnote. The page, with my said sentence added, is at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=629672232&oldid=629446034

2—At the time I made my first edit, as described above, the article was fairly brief and, in fact, borderline slapdash. Shortly after I made my first edit, as described above, I took the article in hand.

3—Between the time I made my first edit, as described in paragraph 1 above, and the time the XLinkBot reverted the article, I edited the article about sixty-six times. I’m going to emphasize that: SIXTY-SIX TIMES.

4—In all the time that I was making those sixty-six edits, the edits made by other parties seem to have totaled four, one of which was a bot action; two of which were mere category changes (at least one of which was prompted by my correction of Major Hibbert’s birth year); and the other of which was a mere birth-year-tag change, prompted, apparently, by my own provision of Major Hibbert's birth date. In other words, the revision of the article since I began working on it has been, in essence, solely my work.

5—The XLinkBot seems to have undone not only my edit that included the YouTube footnote—and nothing else—but every one of my edits back to the most-recent edit by another party. That would be an edit by “Landingdude13” at 18:38, 22 October 14: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=630685178&oldid=630623371 On the basis of the information I’d added to the article, “LandingDude13” had merely changed a year-of-birth info-tag from 1918 to 1917.

6—It seems, in other words, that, had it not been for the incidental appearance of the trivial edits by “LandingDude13” and the other three parties in the course of my sixty-six edit revision of the article, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY SIXTY-SIX EDITS would have been undone by XLinkBot.

7—To restate that: XLinkBot didn’t merely undo the revision with the YouTube footlink; neither did it undo "all" of my edits. It arbitrarily undid every one of my edits back to the most-recent edit by another party.

8—I have no idea whether that is how XLinkBot is "intended and documented" to operate, but I suggest you look at the two following pages, which are the article before I made my very-first edit of it and the article as it existed, with the YouTube link, at the moment XLinkBot operated on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=629446034&oldid=613861055

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hibbert_(British_Army_officer)&diff=630878808&oldid=630874078

9—As I said above: The only reason I noticed what XLinkBot had done is that I happen to have been working on the article when XLinkBot operated. Had I not been working on the article at that moment—and had I never returned to the article—I would never have been aware of what XLinkBot had done. Indeed, if there had not happened to have been some trivial edits by other editors in the course of my work on the article, XLinkBot would apparently have undone EVERY SINGLE CHANGE I’d made to the article. Without my having been aware of it—and without anyone’s having realized what had been lost (completely undone)—the article would have been completely reverted to what it was in the link above (the link that shows the article before I began working on same).

10—To repeat: I have no idea whether XLinkBot, in acting as it did in this case, operated as it is "intended and documented" to operate; but if it did, it should be deactivated and, in fact, destroyed.173.49.197.125 (talk) 02:12, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

PS I'll modify my Paragraph 9 above. Apparently, the bot does not have something called a "bot flag" and thus the reversion it carried out on the article would have been noticed by persons who have the article on their watchlists. So, what? That means a proper response to the bot's reversion would have depended on the initiative and carefulness of those persons. I well remember the scores of footnotes I once added to a Wikipedia article, footnotes that another editor chose to reformat and thus ruined. I remember the talk-page exchange in which a third editor pointed out, subsequently, that one of the footnotes was inaccurate, and I remember my reply to the effect that I could no longer vouch for the accuracy of the footnotes, which I had spent, probably, weeks placing in the article. In my observation, the average Wikipedia editor is about as careful as whoever conceived this bot, which is to say, not very.173.49.197.125 (talk) 07:42, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd raised the same issue a year ago in connection with this edit which re-introduced some serious factual errors (such as "museum owner's name wrong") which a user had removed in good faith. The user in question was relatively new (edits to just one other Oklahoma article) and taking a WP:BITE out of him this way ensured he hasn't contributed to Wikipedia since. Nice going. Nothing was done about the issue then and I half-suspect nothing will be done now, as the problem is not new and has been raised before. K7L (talk) 16:20, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, including your link to the reversion at the Packard Museum article. Do you happen to know whether there's a notice-board or something like that for Wikipedia editors and administrators who focus on bot-questions? I'd like to bring the present talk-page section to the attention of such persons. I know very little about the workings of Wikipedia.173.49.197.125 (talk) 17:10, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots should have a list of notice boards and policy pages for robot scripts; Wikipedia:Village Pump would have links to general discussion for technical and policy issues. K7L (talk) 18:56, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the very helpful information. At the moment, as you know, Dirk Beetstra is in our conversation, so I'll take up this question with him. I'm very pleased to have familiarized myself with the pages you linked.

By the way, sources linked in the footnotes of the Packard Museum article contain conflicting information about the origin of the town's name, Afton. The Complete Route 66 Lost & Found (presently linked as the article's footnote 13) says the surveyor named it after his daughter. The Road Wanderer website (presently linked as footnote 14) says—as does the Wikipedia article itself—that the town was named after the River Afton in Scotland. Just click on the footnote-links; the information is in the first sentence in each case.

Well, I'll now take up the bot question with Dirk Beetstra, below.173.49.197.125 (talk) 02:31, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the bot reverts ALL edits in one go, and you responded correctly to revert the edit of the bot. Although that in some cases indeed 'destroys' (well, that is not the case, it is there, in the history, simple to repair by a single revert) sometimes a lot of good information (and the bot tries to duly explain that to you), the alternative (which is also a possibility of the bot) is, sometimes, way more damaging to pages then this option (this generally restores a 'stable version' from another editor, just reverting the last edit sometimes results in the reversion to a 'broken' version where the new editor did not properly format the added information - and in both cases, sometimes the editor has to revert the bot when the bot made a mistake).

Regarding the bot flag and "So, what? That means a proper response to the bot's reversion would have depended on the initiative and carefulness of those persons." - if it has a bot flag, the initiative and carefulness of those persons is not even a factor - they simply would not have seen it, you are however right, that it is dependent on the initiative and carefulness of those persons, at least there is a chance that that happens.

By the way, I think that in this case the youtube link was fine, and that following the bot's suggestion was enough: just revert.

K7L, I think I asked you before, and I'll ask you again: show me proof that the messages left by the bot have that effect, you have not presented any proof, nor that when a human editor would have removed the links added by the editor (or wholesale reverted the whole edit) and left him a friendly message that they would have continued editing. I still do not see why a bot is more biting than an editor doing the same - good faith new editors sometimes do add rubbish, and their edits then get reverted and messages are left on talkpages - are you suggesting we should leave that and not talk to the editor at all. Hey, if I see a good edit and I leave the editor a friendly message thanking him for that, that also raises the message flag and the editor may feel 'bitten' because someone is talking to him. Some of those may also never return. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 18:29, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. Let's focus for a moment on the two cases that have been raised here, namely, the Tony Hibbert article, on which I was working, and the Packard Museum article, of which editor K7L has spoken. In each of those cases, the reversion executed by XLinkBot was the very-first edit carried out on the Wikipedia article after the edit with the link that drew the bot's attention; and in fact, XLinkBot responded promptly—to put it mildly—to the posting of the link, in each case. The timing was as follows:

02:29, 24 October 2014: I posted the YouTube link—and nothing else—in the Tony Hibbert article

02:32, 24 October 2014: XLinkBot removed the YouTube link (and maybe a quarter of the article to boot) by undoing ten of my edits, all the way back to the most-recent edit by another party

23:07, 17 September 2013: Editor RonMcCoy66 posted the blog link—and other information—in the Packard Museum article

23:08, 17 September 2013: XLinkBot removed not only the blog link but every other bit of information placed in the article by RonMcCoy66; it undid every one of his four edits

Did XLinkBot not know it was the first editor to operate on each of those articles since the posting of the links that had drawn its attention? Even if it didn't, how many other edits are likely to have been posted in the very-short interval between the posting of the problematic link and the arrival of XLinkBot? Let's note what the info above reveals: the interval was three minutes in the case of the Tony Hibbert article, one minute in the case of the Packard Museum article.

What am I not understanding? Please—tell me: what am I not understanding? How likely is it that, in the very-short time XLinkBot took to act, either of those articles could have undergone editing so substantial that elimination solely of the edit that included the problematic link would have resulted in a "broken" article?

In the case of the Packard Museum article, of course, even a mere reversion of the edit that included the problematic link would have eliminated the other information that RonMcCoy66 included in that edit—but at least, it would not have undone the information in his three edits that preceded that one.173.49.197.125 (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

No, you misunderstand. In most cases we are looking at new editors (some of them not knowing Wiki formatting - in good faith 'making mistakes' in a first edit that needs repair - there is a steep learning curve there), and we see things happen like:

• addition of '* [www.blah.com grmbl]' - a realisation that that does not work, and a 'repair' to '* [http://www.blah.com grmbl]'. Only reverting the last edit results in a revert to the 'broken' '[www.blah.com grmbl]'-version
• A (real) spammer adding 'My company MyCompany is the best' .. and then thinking "wait, if I make my company a link, it is even better!" - next edit: update to 'My company [http://mycompany.com '''MyCompany'''] is the best' - a single revert leaves the actual spam.

Generally, the version before the editor started editing is a stable version, edited by others. Reverting only the 'offending' edit also generally is fine, but some cases do really result in 'broken' pages or where plain spam is still there. The 'revert-one-edit setting' has been tested in the beginning, and resulted in complaints like 'Your bot is reverting spam/bad links, but left a horribly broken page/but you left the spam there! Why do you not revert back to the last stable version?'. In other words, it is a loose-loose situation. Note, that that is in line with what the 'rollback' does, in line with antivandalism bots do.

Now, the other scenario: You do all those 66 edits in ONE go, the bot might have reverted you as well (you would then likely have tripped one of the 'safety mechanisms', so it would not have), would thát have made any difference to you?

In either case, reverting one edit or reverting 66, or edit 15 out of 66, or the last 5 of 66 - you will have to consider to revert the edit of the bot, or revert-minus-offending-link. That happens also with editors who add a paragraph of text with one offending link being a minor part of that, they 'have' to revert and remove the 'offending' link (I hope that you understand that with all the different ways of having external links, it is impossible to remove only the 'offending' link and leave the rest of the edit - also because that may result in just the same problem as described for single-edit-revert vs. revert-all-edits).

Adding to the mix - the bot makes a rough 50 reverts a day .. and we now have 2 examples, 13 months apart, where it goes (horribly) wrong. Now I am sure that there are more, but in 13 months we have 20.000 reverts? Do we even get to a 1-in-100 of these mistakes (that would be about 200), and how difficult to solve is it (and yes, there are recent-edits-pattrollers that come and check after the bot, revert the bot and report here, as well as spammers/new editors re-adding the 'bad link' after XLinkBot reverted them)? And consider that if we would not revert but tell the editor 'hey, your link is inappropriate' (in a nice manner), how 'biting' would that be, and/or how many would go back and remove said link (or how many recent-changes-pattrollers would follow up). Or how many 'bad' links would stay if we would warn using the AbuseFilter but allow the edit (I did a quick check over a year ago on 10 YouTube reversions - 2 were likely copyvio links, a more elaborate analysis on 30 MySpace reverts some years ago showed that that 29 were inappropriate and one where I said 'I would not have added it, but OK'), there is a lot that simply fails our inclusion standards, or, plainly, should never be linked to, and although that new editors are informed of those rules before when save the edit (I believe there is still a Captcha, and the appropriate links to the relevant policies and guidelines, upon adding a new external link), many chose to ignore that (2 out of 10 likely copyvio YouTube links ..). --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:07, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I tested, I did get the captcha when trying to add a new external link as an IP. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:25, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I had a bit of a look, and encountered these 7 edits, which are very minor in information, and major in 'promotion' (links in inappropriate places, links which are not needed). (I was considering to make a setting "if an editor makes more than # consecutive edits, don't revert" or "if an editor makes more than # consecutive edits, only revert to the version before the link was inserted" - considering that if it is more than 3 or 4, it might actually be an editor doing good work and 'accidentally' adding an 'offending' link). --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 07:01, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your detailed response, Mr. Beetstra. You've made your case. Thank you, too, for restoring the external link to the article about Major Hibbert.

As the present discussion was unfolding, I began realizing that, if I were charged with designing a device that does the job XLinkBot does, I would probably discover very quickly all sorts of possibilities that had never occurred to me—possibilities the device would have to be designed to meet. Even without knowing the details of XLinkBot's performance to date, I can believe that it has ably defended Wikipedia from parties who—intentionally or not—would have made the encyclopedia a mess.

What had bothered me when XLinkBot executed the reversion at the article about Major Hibbert was the possibility that I'd never have been aware of the reversion at all, i.e., that I'd have thought my editing of the page complete, left the page, and then, upon a return to the page, say, six months from now, discovered that all my work had been struck from it (and not restored) three minutes after I'd left it. As your response makes clear, the only reasonable thought I can have about that is "Well, fortunately, no reversion of which I did not immediately become aware took place."

Please accept my apology for the insults I directed toward the bot's designers and operators. Thank you again for your response, for the time and energy you have expended in replying to my complaint here (including the time and energy you expended to check for the captcha). I won't be surprised if editor K7L finds your response persuasive, too. Maybe he, too, will say, "Well, fortunately, I caught the bot's action at the Packard Museum article, and I undid it."

Whatever my salute may be worth to you, you have it.173.49.197.125 (talk) 07:47, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, you have a point there - what if an editor considers his work finished, and leaves - they might never see the reversion! Especially if they are on a changing IP, they might return on another IP (or, decide to make an account), and never get the message (meant literally here :-) ). They also might not re-instate their edits that were worthy of staying. Or they might really be bitten .. or change IP and edit again .. or think that it was not important after all and just leave it. All that we can do is hope that someone else notices these edits.

And, as you suggest, the situation is complex. Unfortunately there are a lot of Facebooks, MySpaces, YouTubes, Blogspots, Wordpresses and what else that are simply inappropriately added (after ignoring the remarks) to Wikipedia. We can of course just hope that editors will come and clean them up, but that also has proven futile in the past (even true spam is unnoticed sometimes for years!). Either we live with the rubbish, or run the risk that we make mistakes sometimes.

By the way, I whitelisted your IP - the bot should ignore you from now. And don't worry, I did not even register the insults (I will have a look and read them; guess what insults true spammers sometimes throw around, you have to have a thick skin). --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 08:13, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I can believe that, too—about the thick skin, I mean. Thanks for the whitelisting. Cheers.173.49.197.125 (talk) 09:05, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

hi

hi how do we send pvt message on here? thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Modelagents (talk • contribs) 10:53, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean Special:EmailUser to send an email?? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:05, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Picturehouse Industrial Dispute

Dear XLinkBot

Re: Picturehouse Cinemas

There is currently a dispute at one their cinemas - the Ritzy at Brixton. It concerns the Living Wage. It is a very significant part of Picturehouse's history. It is also significant history for working people who believe they deserve a living wage

On your page, the External Links are providing the company with the opportunity to advertise their films and portray themselves as socially progressive. I have no problem with that but the strikers, of course, beg to differ

I think it only fair, therefore, that there should also be an External link to the strikers' page, to provide balance. When I put it in, a bot deleted it

I am going to revert the changes, although I fear that the bot will just 're-bot' me. I would like this reviewed by a human editor, please

Thanks, Dave Dat Cryspal (talk) 04:23, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

The bot suggests you to undo, so that means that the bot will not re-revert you on that edit - an editor however will likely have a second look afterwards as it will trigger alerts.

I however ask you not to add that link - the link that is there is not there to provide an opportunity to advertise, it is the official link. If you think that the issue is encyclopedic, then it could be written into the article, with proper independent and reliable references - the facebook link does not have a place on the article. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:03, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

IKA-Works

Talk:IKA-Works - hi, I updated the page with information on the company. can you share with me why the article is slated for deletion? thank you. WPIKA (talk) 01:08, 15 November 2014 (UTC)WPIKA

That should be in the applied tags. I'll have a look. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:44, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Bhatra Page

Hello, I made a Wikpedia edit of the Bhatra Sikh page included a link to a blog with just history of Bhatras but this was deleted by the xbot. Can this link be re-implemented. The Blog is completely independent and actually contains most articles from Wikpedia itself. the blog address is - http://www.roudh.blog.com/ note all the main articles on the blog come from wikpedia hence it is very reliable and accurate.

Thank You

Yours Sincerely

Mr J Singh— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gabroo22 (talk • contribs)

I wouldn't advise citing Wikipedia (or sites which crib the answers from Wikipedia) in Wikipedia. See WP:CIRCULAR. K7L (talk) 03:10, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Marvi Memon

Kindly maintain the editing done by me for Marvi Memon wikipage. the external links & references given are all official and authentic. the page is being trolled by political opposition party's trolls. Can u please somehow revert the changes made to it by others except me? I am staff of Marvi Memon— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahira Rafique (talk • contribs)

If you are staff, you may want to look at WP:COI as allowing one person affiliated with the subject to control an article in the manner you propose represents a huge conflict-of-interest problem which would certainly violate WP:NEUTRAL. K7L (talk) 15:21, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

3news.co.nz

• 3news.co.nz: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

This New Zealand television news website was added to the blacklist because of an editor who did nothing but update articles using this as a source, presumably in an attempt to promote the website. I recognise that their actions were spammy, but am of mixed mind because they were actually improving the articles. In any case, this is a legitimate news website, and other editors making good faith edits and using this as a source are being reverted by the bot and warned about the link. Eg User talk:Sorrowawaits. I think this is doing more harm than good and suggest the site be removed from the blacklist. If the spammy editor returns, a better strategy might be to log edits which link to this source and an administrator can note if a particular editor gets very frequently listed in that log.-gadfium 20:58, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

This is something on User:MER-C's 'private' revertlist. MER-C, can you comment on this? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

That won't work -- see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2013 Archive Nov 1#www.3news.co.nz and [13]. There were 20 sockpuppets before we stopped counting. MER-C 07:13, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I've just unwittingly fallen into referencing this domain while searching for references to support an article marked as being in need of cleanup and additional citations (NZ_Rail_150). Since that article is trying to document an event that happened in New Zealand, it seemed reasonable to me that a TV news station in New Zealand would have covered it. Does the fact that spammers have spammed it as a source in the past disqualify us from using it at all? If so, I think NZ_Rail_150 might not qualify for notability. Which is totally fine with me. Just trying to help out! Benchun (talk) 20:41, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

No, it never disqualifies a source. Even if the links would be blacklisted (and hence, can not be added at all) there is still the possibility to ask for whitelisting. For this link, there is a high incidence that new editors / IPs are actually spammers (although there will be a small number of non-related new editors or IPs who may use the link, most of them are spammers), and that is what we try to keep at bay.

With these cases, I am always wondering whether it tells something about the quality of the source, if people feel the need to spam it - is the reputation itself not enough? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:19, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Timmbits

Bot incorrectly removed an edit I made. Citation: "Hello, I'm XLinkBot. I wanted to let you know that I removed an external link you added to the page Modulation transfer function (infrared imaging), because it seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links." So yes, definitely a mistake! Please correct and reinstate edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timmbits (talk • contribs) 21:28, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

You mean this edit? That is most definitely not a mistake, the comments and linkfarm you put there should be on the talkpage with a discussion of why and how. Pages may be wrong at the moment, but it is no form to tell editors what to do and how to do it. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:53, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Abdul Haseeb

I want to creat page of Abdul Haseeb , which is real personality http://www.twitter.com/AbdulHaseebPTI — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chaudharyarslan (talk • contribs) 15:08, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the remark, but being a real person is not enough to 'earn' a Wikipedia page. The person has to be notable enough for a page, so you will need to provide independent references (articles written by others in established newspapers with a history of fact-checking, which are about the subject (and not a mere mention of the subject)). I would suggest to go through an Wikipedia:Articles for creation, where you can work on the article in peace, and others will give feedback for what you will need to improve. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 21:11, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Norayr Mnatsakanyan

Hello, I am the biographer of this Armenian singer and updated the links section with new updated links. Thank you! Please, let me know if you may have any questions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noki (talk • contribs) 22:07, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Those are all links to youtube movies with this singer, none of those are references, and none of those are appropriate. Please give the article proper references, this is not the way (see the tags left on the page). --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 22:13, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Michael Breen

thats really useful information - thanks for that. Will spend time looking through the tutorials to understand what are acceptable and unacceptable refs. Cheers! --Parsonsc1 (talk) 00:52, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

@Parsonsc1: Just as a note on this - blogs and similar are not very good sources, they are often self published and not independently reviewed before publishing - on a BLP (if I see it correctly, Michael Breen is a living person, see the Wikipedia policy on the biographies of living people) those sources are not to be used for information, especially not for negative information. Please be careful there when re-inserting that information. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 08:42, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Special characters in article titles

I just noticed XLinkBot screw up the title of the article "Peter Sørensen (diplomat)" in its edit summary and talk page message due to the "ø". That should be fixed. Huon (talk) 18:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Is on my to-do list for the next couple of weeks. Thanks for the heads up! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 21:07, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Waiting for it to happen again ... :-D ... --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 15:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

'The article'

Thank you.......please help us retain the article

Manvi Puttur (talk) 03:33, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

I am sorry, which article? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 14:04, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Notable Latino Repubilcans- Henry Colón www.henrycolon2014.com

www.henrycolon2014.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.1.7.176 (talk) 04:45, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I am sorry, I don't know what you mean. What article or what revert are you referring to? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:41, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

The use of links in Wikipedia articles

I got the following message from XLinkBot:

"November 2014[edit] Information icon Hello, I'm XLinkBot. I wanted to let you know that I removed one or more external links you added to the page Statsraad Lehmkuhl, because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links."

I do think these links are of significant relevance for the Wikipedia article "Statsraad Lehmkuhl". The links refer to videos of this proud ship under sail. One of the links shows how the sails are managed when this ship is doing a tack. This adds basic knowledge on how these ships are sailed and the life onboard where all sail operations are managed by hand and entirely by manpower. By adding the links, this important knowledge may be shared with the Wikipedia users or community. Both links refer to videos under the Standard You-Tube license, and no copyright should prevent them from being linked to at Wikipedia. They do not refer to any business or marketing operation, but rather to encourage people to come on board and experience the old seamanship themselves. It is therefore my opinion that these links should be put back on the Statsraad Lehmkuhl page on Wikipedia.

Matsopp (talk) 12:35, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

But do they convey significant information beyond what is in the article. And copyright is not the only concern, YouTube links do tick quite a number of the points under WP:ELNO (I, for example, can not access a significant part of YouTube ..). 'to encourage people to come on board and experience the old seamanship themselves' .. is also beyond Wikipedia's goal. But I'll have a look. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 13:01, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Looking at the homepage of the ship, I am still not convinced that the video's do add so much beyond that. But you can bring it up on the talkpage and achieve consensus there. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 13:27, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Regarding Social Links - CU

I got this message

Hello, I'm XLinkBot. I wanted to let you know that I removed one or more external links you added to the page Chandigarh University, because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links.  

Your edit here to Chandigarh University was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (https://www.facebook.com/chandigarhuniversitygharuan) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Wikipedia's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 09:07, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

External links added here are our WIKI page was just for more user friendliness as these are our official social pages

• Official Facebook Page
• Google Plus
• Youtube
• Twitter
• Pinterest

Kindly allow us to insert these links as all other Universities like Chitkara and LPU are already allowed/ approved by Wiki. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.248.99.146 (talk) 09:23, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

The bot generally removes those per WP:ELOFFICIAL - we only list the main official site, not all official sites belonging to the subject. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 16:48, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Revert of Julian Pettifer edit

Dear XLinkBot, Thank you very much for your assistance and policing of this wikipedia page. No offence taken by your initial revert and your efforts much appreciated. Any further advice or guidance you have as to getting the YouTube film archive viewed, reviewed or commented on would be much appreciated. Best wishes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JulianPettifer (talk • contribs) 16:36, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

I see that this was also already explained to you by someone besides the bot on your talkpage. Please review our external links guideline. Also be aware that we are not here to advertise your work or person. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 16:50, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Ernesto Amantegui

A bit overkill no? I apologize for adding a potentially harmful link, but all the rest was 100% fine (storyline additions, corrections of redirects, etc). I have reinstated my version, without the "dangerous" link of course.

Sorry for any inconvenience, happy editing --84.90.219.128 (talk) 17:45, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the remark, overkill - maybe, but the technical possibilities with Wiki code is somewhat limited, and unfortunately (though your link is not an example of that per sé) some mitigation of link additions is unfortunately needed. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 18:53, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for the reply as well, nice teamwork overall I wager! --84.90.219.128 (talk) 19:35, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Hirkani Awards

Hey these Hirkani Awards are very important, please do not speedily delete these, as they are an honor to the Indian Women, given by Mukesh Kumar and Doordarshan, India's nation broad-casters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pratikshakankriya31 (talk • contribs) 06:04, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the remark. Please show that using reliable, independent sources, otherwise the pages will be deleted and the information removed. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 21:29, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Trisha Baptie

Nothing I added is vandalism. Maybe XLinkBot made a mistake? --173.162.252.241 (talk) 23:42, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

The reason for the revert may indeed be a mistake, two wide rule. Good work in reverting, thanks! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 16:11, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Doug Duffey

MY NAME IS Doug Duffey AND I AM THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE Doug Duffey page. however my user name for my account is- for some reason Doug duffey -no capital D- i don't seem to have administrator rights, for some other reason. Can you fix this? i also was trying to upload PROOF to validate things written- certificates of my hall of fame inductions, etc. can you please remove anz blocking so that i can add images etc. this is not easy. DOUG DUFFEY — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doug duffey (talk • contribs) 21:03, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for your remark. First, no-one is an administrator for a certain page, this is a collaborative effort. The account name is a typo at the time of account creation, you can ask to get it changed at Wikipedia:Changing username, and new accounts do not get administrator rights, that is granted through a community process.

Things you write require more than proof of primary sources, the information needs to be notable (which needs to be shown through independent sources).

The bot tripped on some of the links you added, not on the text, please have a look at the remark from the bot, and avoid using those links - they are likely failing our policies and guidelines regarding what should be on a page. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:39, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Tetraethyl lead

stop deleting my citied information — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.54.125.8 (talk) 04:29, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

First of all, tetraethyl lead is not in the article you site, nor does it state that it was a risk before being phased out since the seventies. The article mainly talks about paints, and lead paints and tetraethyl lead are two distinctly different things in all forms. Please stop adding that information there, it does not belong. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:43, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Please revert your edits on Young Greens

A new user at her first edithaon corrected a faulty link, which you then undid. Please revert to her correct link and other info here. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 12:31, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

You're talking to a bot. I've reverted the edit, as the bot also suggested to the editor. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 07:13, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Your User_talk:97.95.252.222 message to me today re: My edits to Desperado (song)

While sorry that you chose to remove the Seinfeld link I inserted ('seems some YouTube are OK while others NOT??), 'seems that my appending "Diana Krall on her 2015 album Wallflower" to the Cover Versions section/list is consistent therewith.

Thanks for what-all y'all WP folks do.97.95.252.222 (talk) 18:09, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

If you do that in the style of the rest of the list (which do not include links to youtube versions, and that is also not really needed), then it is fine. I don't think however that that is what the bot reverted. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 04:40, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Accurate troller

Sorry to intrude. Hi, I am a friendly troller.- Accurate Troller— Preceding unsigned comment added by Accurate Troller (talk • contribs)

No worries. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 04:41, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Samantha womack

Hi,

I changed the official website on samantha womack's profile to her own twitter which is verified, so is without a doubt 100% genuine. The twitter that you have changed it back to is an unofficial fan site who has no contact to Sam or her team and is therefore in no way official.

If you could change the website back to Sam's verified twitter that would be great, thanks.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 1327abc (talk • contribs)

That seems indeed about as official as it gets. Is there not a better official website than the twitter, no own domain or a page hosted somewhere that is more descriptive of the person (and maintained by the subject/subject's representatives), instead of a twitter feed which hardly ever gives encyclopaedic information. It is also not that the subject is primarily known by her twitter activities. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 04:45, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Comedic Links

I read on Wikipedia's policies that an external link should be from a reliable source. Is it okay to include a source that is most definitely not reliable, but to say that it is comedic? For instance, I would like to add an external link to Cats That Look Like Hitler that links to an Uncyclopdia article about the Holy Kitler, though it isn't accurate, it is relavent in the fact that it is about cats that look like Hitler.

--Alexnah (talk) 03:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Probably not - the basis for the external links guideline is the 'What Wikipedia is not'-policy - we are not writing a linkfarm. Relevancy only is not a criterion for inserting a link, it should provide information that is needed for a better understanding of the subject. For me, even the title of the article already explains the subject, and I presume that I will get a good understanding of the subject if I read the article. External links needed on that article should be of extreme quality when needed to be inserted, none will be 'official' (they simply do not exist), and by far most of the rest is failing WP:ELNO #1 (or even, the intro of the external links guideline. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 07:08, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I see that this is a website, so it has an official website - I think that that is more than sufficient as external links. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 07:10, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Alan Tunbridge

I inadvertently started a Commons page with title 'Alan tunbridge' – with a small 't'. Now I can't delete or correct that error. Please help. I als can't find the way to post an image of my book autobiography on my Wiki page – although I have managed to upload it to Commons as NoL_jacket.jpg Please help — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alan tunbridge (talk • contribs) 08:19, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

@Alan tunbridge:I've cleaned up the page a bit - language and tone were not always appropriate, as was the list of external links. I've added an image. Note first that this looks like an autobiography and you might therefore want to review the conflict of interest guideline, and our [WP:MOS|manual of style]] regarding the writing style of the article.

For repairing the error in your account-name, you can request that through Wikipedia:Changing username. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 08:37, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Please delete 'Alan tunbridge' and replace with 'Alan Tunbridge' Alan tunbridge (talk) 09:00, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

@Alan tunbridge:I can't, please go to Wikipedia:Changing username. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 13:10, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

A link on Radoje Domanovic

Hello! I added an external link to the article, but it had been reverted: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=646036484&oldid=634595555 The article is about a Serbian writer, and the link leads to the English translation of one of his works (and currently it is the only English-language text from Domanović that can be found on-line). I administer the forementioned website where the English translation is published, and although the site works like a blog, with longer texts split up into smaller sections, it only contains the actual work of Domanović, alongside historical and bibliographical information, and it is definitely not spam. If there is some reason why it should be deleted, do tell me, or, please, revert it back. Best regards, Vladimir— Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.121.54.77 (talk • contribs)

Vladimir, you say it contains the English translation of one of his works - so the subject of the page that you are linking to is the work, not the writer. Also, the wordpress you link to was already there linking to another subpage of that site (.. linking to all the works in Serbian, similar reasoning as above). I have linked to the mainpage of the domain, which allows readers to find all information on the site, not just the work or a translation. That is really more than enough. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:23, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Carolands Chateau

This information regarding Mr. Moseley was also verified by this link, but apparently you must not think it is a good reference either even though it is an archived publication. The information can be found by scrolling down to page 40 which is quite a ways down. I will remember not to try to be helpful or add anything in the future.

http://archive.org/stream/californian0809losa/californian0809losa_djvu.txt Demented Psychotic (talk) 18:50, 10 February 2015 (UTC) Me

The bot got caught up in the broken references, not recognising that you were trying to add references. Anyway, that fact, even when referenced by some wordpress blog, is not notable seen the importance of the building itself. For that fact to be notable enough it should have been reported in independent sources way beyond even a local newspaper, let alone a blog. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 04:39, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Why did you remove the official fan page link ?

Hello I added official fan page link www.facebook.com/YPG to this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Protection_Units and you remove it ?!! what is the problem this is the offical page so I needed to link it to the article

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by KurdistanaRojava (talk • contribs) 22:41, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

No, you don't need to link it to the article - These links are inappropriate, see WP:FANPAGE and WP:ELOFFICIAL. The page is aobut the subject, not about its fan's. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:02, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Edit to Wooyoungmi

Hello,

This is my first time editing a page. I gave all the information I added a reference link. I saved my edit and it appeared to be ok. But the next morning it had been deleted. How can I find out what I did wrong in the edit? Thank you for your help. (Sadhbhie (talk) 10:52, 19 February 2015 (UTC))

I've reverted the bot. Anothermag has been deemed a bad reference in the past though - you might want to find something better than that. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:06, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I am a new user and I need help

I want to know that why you reverted my changes on Wikipedia article awakening records ThanksAme123ojfish 22:48, 18 February 2015 (UTC) Help — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ame123ojfish (talk • contribs) 22:48, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Because you were adding a link to the twitter account of a person. Links to twitter accounts are hardly ever appropriate, and certainly not in the way you added it. I've remove the links. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:09, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

About every witch way

So I recently started watching every witch way and I love it! I also downloaded Amazon prime to watch it. I watched the 1st 4 seasons and they were great! But it shows that there is season 5 and 6. Is that true? Because I shows I have to buy those seasons but I'm not quite sure. Are there seasons 5&6? Let me know! Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:B89C:EE0:3CF4:6C53:C6EC:4A91 (talk) 03:08, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I have no idea. Maybe the Wikipedia:Reference desk can help you? --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:11, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Community highschool tehran

hello Xlinkbot thanks for your kind about my link to "community highschool tehran", i think it is not inappropriate because it contains historical article. i am one of the first group students which had studied after 1975 there .some of them Were martyr! a historic's article , Should show continuity.you wrote something about previous then let people knows about next. i am the first person which wrote about "community highschool[modares hichschool]" in facebook because i studied there in 1976. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hamidkhodadad (talk • contribs) 03:57, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the question. There is already a lot of historical info in the article, I don't think that it is needed to link to more of that outside of Wikipedia. Especially not on something like facebook. Information has to be more authoritative than that. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:14, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 25 February 2015

Hello Sir/Madam, I would like to add data regarding clubs (Mercantile Club) in VIT college so that people find them easily while browsing wikipedia page. The clubs are genuine and working in college.Please do the needful as soon as possible. Zak 13794 (talk) 04:30, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

There is nothing protected there, you can normally edit the page. However, language like "Follow us at :' https://www.facebook.com/mercantileclub" is utterly inappropriate for an encyclopedia, and though I agree that the club is genuine and working in collega, I do not think that the fact itself is notable (but you are free to show me wrong on that by giving independent references showing that). Until then, I have removed that information again. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:33, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Reverted change the 25 Feb 2015 on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry

Dear XLinkBot, You reverted my change of the 25 Feb 2015 on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry I read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links Please consider the following facts. I am a member of the Executive Board of the ISA (International Symmetry Association, cited in the Wiki page). I published many papers about symmetry in anonymously peer reviewed international science and maths journals. The one I mentioned is Symm. Cult. Sci. 2007,18(2-3) pp 99-119, in which I gave a unifying symmetry definition which works not only in geometry, but also for functions, distributions, matrices, strings, graphs, etc. and received applications in chemistry (see refs cited in http://petitjeanmichel.free.fr/itoweb.petitjean.html). As far as I know, nobody else provided such an unifying definition, and it is why I added a link to a free copy of the pdf of the paper, posted with permission of the Publisher (Symmetrion, cited on the Symmetry Wiki page; see also http://petitjeanmichel.free.fr/itoweb.petitjean.symmetry.html). Remark: the URL I gave does not point to the journal site because this journal is print only, and the internaut can only access to the toc (http://journal-scs.symmetry.hu/content-pages/ then click on the issue (2-3) of vol 18). Please tell me which rule(s) of the guidelines I violated, and what change should I do to let the internaut access to my paper from the symmetry wiki page. E.g. should I give two links, one to the journal toc and one to the free pdf copy? Should I give only the link to the journal toc, while the paper can't be downloadaed there? I do not intend to promote myself. If you find the citation of my paper irrelevant, please just tell me why and I shall not insist. Thank you.81.194.29.18 (talk) 09:15, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest you go to the talkpage of Symmetry (i.e. Talk:Symmetry), and suggest the link there. Please note that we do not link to all work related to symmetry on the symmetry page - instead we only link to work that is detrimental to understanding, but can not be included - I however think that the symmetry page by itself has covered most, if not all, of the subject (and the rest is linked from that page to other Wikipedia documents), and that therefore links to papers are superfluous. Moreover, since you seem to be a specialist, you may be better of improving the page itself .. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:42, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Dear XLinkBot - You reverted my links when I was fixing the "dead links" entered by your Bots

On February 27, 2015, I have been updated the WITNESS (human rights group) wikipedia page to correct the 'dead links' enter in by the wikipedia Bots.

I have also revised the general information about the organization as the current information is out dated and their mission has changed.

I work for WITNESS and wanted to make sure the information was correct. Now, this XLinkBot has reverted back to all the broken links.

Please, fix immediately by accepting changes. I can be contacted via socialmedia [at] witness [dot] org. I created an account with wikipedia - withnessmj - messages can be left there as well.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.43.163.158 (talk • contribs) and — Preceding unsigned comment added by witnessmj (talk • contribs)

I see you reinstated the edit - can you please have a look at our conflict of interest guideline and m:Terms of Use. I think you should more clearly declare who you are and where your interests are. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:25, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 1 March 2015

Stacie Te Korako 22:54, 1 March 2015 (UTC) Hi, This is Stacie Te Korako founder of Free Matt Dehart, Matt's cousin. I was told by Matt's attorney Tor Ekeland to edit the page, which I did. It booted my edits and went back to the original text which is out of date and incomplete.I would like to take the page over please as well if that is ok with you all. [Stacie Te Korako 22:54, 1 March 2015 (UTC)] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stacie Te Korako (talk • contribs)

Not done: this is the talk page for posting about the bot XLinkBot (talk · contribs). Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. — Mr. Stradivarius <sup>♪ talk ♪</sup> 02:38, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

@Stacie Te Korako: You are technically not blocked from editing the page, it is not protected. However, can you moderate the addition to the page - you are violating our m:terms of Use, our 'What Wikipedia is not'-policy and our 'Neutral point of view' policy. If you use words like 'tortured', then please do have independent references stating so. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:31, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Champahati

1. Thanks for help. Kindly also put Google map location of Champahati which is attached to Simplagarh rail station at Hooghly district of West Bengal.Editwikig (talk) 08:52, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

I think you are more knowledgeable about this subject. Please have a look at other pages how they do that. I'll have a look about external link use. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 10:30, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

I add some external links by mistake but now i removed so when my page will be in search engine?

I add some external links by mistake but now i removed so when my page will be in search engine? — Preceding unsigned comment added by FadiDev (talk • contribs) 05:02, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry - 'when my page will be in search engine' - I have blocked you for violations of WP:NOT, WP:SPAM and m:Terms of use. Wikipedia is NOT a vehicle to promote your business. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	This bot is doing great work that is much appreciated. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:56, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations

Your bot reverted a link that I edited because it was broken, replacing it with the current version of exactly the same content. So now the link is broken again. I shan't waste my time in future. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.41.128 (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

@86.139.41.128: I reiterate the apologies for the mistake of the bot, and have reverted its edit. Thank you for bringing this mistake to our attention. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:37, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

sailing is easier than editing

hello i think that La Poste website is relevant due to the history of the boat, what can i do to make things right? also: i would like to add references but after a long time tring and reading how to i didnt succed can you give me an help? thank you XLinkBot— Preceding unsigned comment added by Xkdc3528 (talk • contribs)

@Xkdc3528: I have updated the page, you could have done as the bot suggested and reverted it (this wordpress is an exception to the general rule). I have also moved some inline external links into references and added a section for it. I hope this helped. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 06:42, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the update, i wil improve the this page and other sailing too, i was afraid to revert the bot and really at the beginning i didnt know it was a bot, noob error :) it helped a lot thanks.--Xkdc3528 (talk) 17:34, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Qaleh Ostad

good day XlinkBot

                i'm sorry about that i write a blog in this article . you know i was write the language of Qaleh Ostad and you delete it
                is that have problem . 

                                         esaali110 Thanks  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Esaali110 (talk • contribs) 11:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC) 

@Esaali110: - I reverted the bot, it was a false positive. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 12:32, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Help with Carach Angren This Is no fairytale

Hi, I'm creating this wiki page for Carach Angren's new album This is no fairytale. I received permission from The Age of Metal (their review march 10, 2015) to include it on the page. Now there's a copyright investigation. Can you help me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mabdarke (talk • contribs) 22:08, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I think this has already been solved. The bot just reacted on your addition of an email address, which is not necessary, and rather unwise in mainspace. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 05:12, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Regarding previous Edit for Chocolate With Nuts

to User:XLinkbot Your removal of my edit proved you do not understand the truth. This is known around the community as true and if you watched the episode you would hear it being said that Patrick indeed said "Eat Sperm". I have seen it and if you looked around the internet or watched it on TV, you would see it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.117.125.251 (talk) 06:43, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

You need a reliable, secondary source for that (blogs, youtube, forums do not qualify). Wikipedia is not a place for original research. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:53, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Citizens Against Revenge Porn

Yes, you made a mistake. Citizens Against Revenge Porn (CARP) is a non-profit that does valuable work for victims of Internet Revenge Porn. CARP removes Internet Revenge Porn from websites like MyEx.com in as little as 1 business day (and often within the day it is posted). CARP does this free of charge. When you removed our posts (on the [page] and the [Porn page]), you undermined our valuable victim's advocacy. This would be tantamount to tearing down a 'wanted' poster for a known rapist in the neighbourhood where the rape occurred.

Kindly undo you change and restore our two posts.

Administrator

Citizens Against Revenge Porn (CARP) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Susan Alexander Kane (talk • contribs) 22:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

@Susan Alexander Kane: No, the bot did not make a mistake, the edit you made was indeed not according to our policies and guidelines. Please do not include the links in this way, and read the policies and guidelines linked from the remark left by the bot to see why this has to be different. Please, also include independent references showing notability of the facts that you are including or to confirm the statements that you make. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:25, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Youtube link

Thanks, only added the You Tube links because the listed links were dead. The You Tube links are all either site has.

Chrish65 (talk) 14:05, 29 March 2015 (UTC)chrish65

I removed the links that the bot reverted to, they also fail our external links guidelines: they are indirect and not telling about the subject of the page. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:35, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

David Strossmayer

Heullo, My contribution is perfect. Why do you cancel it ? It's the same pictures on the french page. I'm the author of flag and insignia. No pub at all. Just the facts. Friends will correct if it needs to be done. Nobody's perfect. Thank you. Leopardesneiges.

____

Hello XLinkBot

I removed Professor's Haim Shore blog, on the page of David Strossmayer as the external link like you advised me, and I will do the same with the FaceBook link of David Strossmayer. But hey are there any way that you don't interfere while I am editing this page, since it is making me lot of trouble go back and forth editing & searching what has been accepted and what not!!! Thnx in advance!

Sincerely Uzi Oz

https://www.facebook.com/Ramses4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by UziOz (talk • contribs) 01:59, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello XLinkBot

I wish to emphasize that I am improving my article about Israeli architect David Strossmayer and learning slowly but sure all tricks necessary for making it looking professionally.

Thnx 4 UR kind patience and I will do my best to complete it in a matter of week time, more or less, as we have here Pesah holidays.

The most sincerely, Uzi Oz-Pharaoh or in Hebrew עוזי אוז — Preceding unsigned comment added by UziOz (talk • contribs) 23:38, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

@UziOz: - I am not sure what to answer here - The article needs massive cleanup for readability, and for how the references are formatted. You might want to have a look at the Manual of style before continuing to make sure that you know how to format the article. Best of luck. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:17, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello XLinkBot However removed the inappropriate link (https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Concordia-Models/) on the page also deleted hours of my other hard work, I was trying to do on the page after I have been reading some of the articles in MOS, as previously advised by Beetstra. Today when I started to work on the page I realized it and made on big parts of the page copy/paste from the last saved version. This alerted your Admin Padenton which sent me the last warning such as:"This is your final warning. You may be blocked from editing without further notice the next time you vandalize a page, as you did with this edit to David Strossmayer. ― Padenton|✉ 21:46, 29 March 2015 (UTC)" Am I punished for a crime I didn't do, just because I am not very familiar with the html codes, which are BTW necessary for a building of the pages here???I accepted the invitation of Co-oP and will use mentorship, one step of the time, to make sure that everything is OK. Please forgive me if I caused any inconvenience with my speedy editing! Sincerely Uzi Oz עוזי אוז — Preceding unsigned comment added by UziOz (talk • contribs) 22:58, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

@UziOz: - Please be careful with the external links - they are to be added as references, inside the ref-tags, so they appear in the list at the bottom. Please use review before saving to make sure that your references link from there and not from the text itself. And do be careful with the links that XLinkBot now warned you about, they are on that list for a reason. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:38, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

@Dirk Beetstral Thnx 4 UR advice! I got a mentor from the CO-OP and he advised me to take whole page into the sandbox until I finish it as I wanted to be and this is how it is going to be done from now. I appreciate your input! Sincerely, Uzi Oz-Pharaoh עוזי אוז UziOz (talk) 19:44, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Thank you very much for your kindly affort. Dioraviator (talk) 19:53, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:24, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

chang dance

Good afternoon Mr. xlinkBOt this chepter "chang Dance is accepted by hindi Wikipedia, please see 'चंग नृत्य 'How it possible one accepts and other regrets . so I request to your owner to reput .thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Miss Richa choudhary (talk • contribs) 09:02, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

the subject 'chang dance' is accepted by Hindi Wikipedia ,please see 'चंग नृत्य' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Miss Richa choudhary (talk • contribs) 08:53, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I am not versed in that - the bot only reverted because of an external link you added with which it disagreed. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 07:32, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Request for SriGanganagar Rajasthan India

Hi, I have realistic & better photos of Sriganganagar. Please advise how I upload one or four photos? (Editwikig (talk) 05:29, 4 April 2015 (UTC))

@Editwikig: - You are looking for Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:26, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Inyathi High School

Dear XLinkBot, Thank you for your message to me this afternoon. I attempted to make a few revisions to the page on Inyathi High School and these are not yet visible. There are a few changes to the site that I wish to make, especially on the references and sources. I hope that I can make meaningful contributions to this very important page on the oldest school in Zimbabwe. I hope that you will be able to help me improve this page and make it a source of information for all others interested in this subjetc. Thank you Mahlabezulu (talk) 18:39, 1 April 2015 (UTC)Mahlabezulu

@Mahlabezulu: The bot reverted your youtube addition - I have reverted most of the changes back in, they should be there. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:27, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Corrupt Leaders

Please stop reverting the Corrupt Leaders article back to one where the wikipedia links do not work. Furthermore, all the external articles that were linked were written by major news outlets as a reference to the band. It would be great if this could be fixed, but I am not going to try to fix the page anymore if it is just going to get ruined again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cvltsn0b (talk • contribs) 11:50, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

@Cvltsn0b: I have removed the facebook and instagram, they did not belong in the first place - see this part of our external links guideline. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 03:37, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Nandita

Hi Mr XLinkBot. [Nandita] This page is about me and someone has added wrong information about me in this page. Now I have added my exact details including my DOB. if you want relevant proof I can provide it. And I have also updated my new movies with character names in it. My original name is Swetha and I am known as Nandita Swetha since my first character name was Nandita from the movie Nanda Loves Nandita. I am a busy actress and I dont have time to check wiki continuously. So either keep wiki with proper details or else pls delete my details from wiki. And there are people spending time for correcting the wiki pages. What is the source of information they are depending on. I can provide my email id or phone number to cross check my details mentioned here. After struggling a lot I am able to write to you. I donno the formats and systems of wiki. If my name is listed in wiki it has to be with proper details. Otherwise I will have to file case. So please help me in keeping my profile neat and clean. One person named "truesideofyou" has added wrong details in my page and when ever my friend used to correct it he used to give wrong information again and again in my details. Especially the DOB. I am 1993 April 30 born and I can give u proof for the same. You can reach me at actressnandita@gmail.com. If required can provide personal contact no to authorised person. All these I am doing for keeping my profile with proper data. Expecting justice. I dont know I am writing to correct person. Thanks in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nandita Swetha 1993 (talk • contribs) 10:56, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Nandita Swetha 1993: - Hi, the bot (this is an automated account) was reverting because of your addition of facebook (and technically, also twitter) to the page. Although they are official pages of the subject, they hardly, if ever, give substantial primary information about the subject and are hence generally discouraged (they are generally only relevant if the person is in majority known for their twitter or facebook account over others). If you do not have an official page yourself, a company profile is often a good choice (and they on themselves link often through to twitters, facebooks, myspaces, youtube channels, etc.). I see you reverted the rest of the edit, so that part has been resolved.

Be careful with 'keeping [your] profile neat and clean' - we are writing an article in an encyclopedia, not a promotional page. Please read our conflict of interest guideline for more info regarding editing about subjects that you have close connection with. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 11:17, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Re: April 2015

Hi, thanks for removing the twitter link from the Danish Sheikh wiki page. I am pretty new to Wikipedia, so I wasn't aware of that. I made a minor edit to the article. can you please cross-check it one more time. Appreciate your help and guidance. Thanks! -Sharafat — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sharafat143 (talk • contribs) 11:53, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I see the page has been deleted. Thanks for the remark anyway! --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 17:39, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

undoing an edit

I made some changes (edit) on 4/15 to the Angela Devi, which you deemed to change; even though in that same article there was and are redirected.[citation needed]. This last part you did not mind, but the truth that came from research you and others mind. I may not know how to enter references into an article, but that does not mean that I made up the stated edited fact. They came from several sources all stating nearly the same thing. Three of which you can view yourself. (the reference is found at: 1. http://www.boobpedia.com/boobs/Angela_Devi; 2. https://archive.is/udZif (scroll down about 1/3 the way); 3.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guDYBw1j5xE Exposing the Porn industry ILLUMINATI) In the future leave the truth alone, or join the Flat Earth Society, or go to some jungle and beat a drum while asking the moon god to bless you. Mr R. Miller — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.97.169.102 (talk) 05:00, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Neither of the three are reliable sources for that information - see our reliable sources guideline for more about that. I guess if you can find proper references the information could be included. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra <sup>T C</sup> 17:43, 20 April 2015 (UTC)