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Listasbot watchlist glitch

Hi, I have noticed the work your listasbot is doing, which seems worthwhile. The problem is that when I hit hide bots on my (huge) watchlist, edits by your bot don't get hidden, which leaves my watchlist a little congested. I assume you were unaware of this glitch and also assume that you have a better idea of where to ask why it is happening and how it can be fixed. Regards King of the North East 23:13, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

ILUG Bengaluru hangon

I left a message on the ILUG-bengaluru talk page but just wanted to mention that : ILUG_Bengluru is a new LUG in the garden city in India and the page was created to reflect this. It consists of a group of volunteers who collaborate online and try to support and increase the use of Linux within India. svaksha (talk) 07:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)Svaksha —Preceding unsigned comment added by Svaksha (talk • contribs)

You may wish to have a look at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Need wider community input as I believe if this issue is corrected in MediaWiki's code it would address many of the issues raised in User:Mikaey/Request for Input/ListasBot 3.
Btw, I have your talk page watchlisted so in the interest of keeping the discussion organized I'll look for replies here instead of my talk page.
--Tothwolf (talk) 01:21, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I would like to see that fixed in the MediaWiki code. I'll add a note in the discussion. Matt (talk) 03:52, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to see it fixed too. I've moved talk page content by hand when redirecting pages and this would make that tedious task completely unnecessary. I've also added a link to a bugzilla report about this exact issue to the AN discussion. Tothwolf (talk) 06:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

All Is Well & Just Got Much Better

That is great news! The backlog seems to be getting smaller. Getting it to zero seems possible. Thank you!

JimCubb (talk) 19:23, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Questions:

  • Are the bots merely working their way through the list that was 334,000 pages longs and is now barely over 107,000 pages long? What I mean by that is that there are a ton of pages in the "Ab"s and wondered if the bots had not gotten to them or would they have to be done manually?
  • If the former, when will be bots get to them?
  • If the latter I think that experts in Arabic naming conventions need to be recruited. I read the article and am only slightly less confused than before.
  • Do you have any way to tell which letters are down to almost insignificant numbers?
  • All the pages after "Z" were done, again, and there are no pages before "A" so I have been checking there first to catch the alligators that have been thrown into the swamp.
  • There were very few pages in the "X" section so I am doing them by hand so that there will be another empty section that I can monitor.
  • After "X" is empty I am going to move to "Q" unless you can tell me that there is a letter that has fewer pages.
  • If you really want a ton of manual edits for your next RfA (I cannot imagine anyone with a life having time to learn all that is needed to be an Admin.), do you realize how much editing experience you can get by opening the Talk Page of a typical page that does not have a listas parameter, swithching to the article and fixing all that you can see that needs to be fixed in the article, info-boxes, person-data, copy edits, and so forth? Then when you go back to the talk page and paste in the listas parameter there are such things as verifying the stub rating of pages that were rated automatically: if there are fewer than three banners on the page putting the WP Biog on top if the person is living and add the living parameter if it is not there; applying the WPBS if it is warranted and collapsing it if that is warrented. The category will be get emptied but you will certainly know more about editing that most people do. You will also know more about some very obscure people in history than almost anyone.

(That last is somewhat facetious but only somewhat. As is obvious by the first page of the category someone is going to have to go through the list manually after the bots are through. It is extremely tedious work.)

JimCubb (talk) 21:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Hey Jim,

To answer your question, the bot is basically working its way sequentially through the list. This means that it's going through the list in alphabetical order. As I'm writing this, it's towards the beginning of the M's. As for the stuff all the way back at the "Ab"'s, there's two factors at work here:

  1. The bot skipped them the first time around because there wasn't anything for it to go off of.
  2. New articles have popped up since the bot went through that part of the list.

I agree that we need to get some experts in Arabic naming conventions involved on these articles. They may be hard at work already, I don't know. At this point, 99% of the bot's hits are coming from the article's {{DEFAULTSORT}} tag, so that's where the fixup work needs to be taking place.

Do I have any statistics on which letters have the fewest numbers? No, not really. Not something I've been keeping track of. I can tell you that the bot spent almost two days just on the J's, so it probably eliminated a significant number from that section.

And thanks for the advice. I'm sure I'm going to need all I can get. Matt (talk) 22:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh yeah, to answer your question, yes, the bot will go back to the beginning of the list eventually. The plan is to restart the bot at the beginning of the list once it gets to the end of the list. My guess is that it might be another week before it gets to the end of the list, though. Matt (talk) 23:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

The "J" pages are still overwhelming. The bot probably took as long as it did because they were much worse but had a DEFAULTSORT value.

My method for cleaning up the pages in "X" is to look for a DEFAULTSORT, create one if it does not exist, copy it as a listas value to the Talk Page, paste it and fix everything else that needs fixing above the comments. After I zero out the "X" pages I will try to drum up some support from everyone who was involved in the Arabic Naming Convention page, both the article and the talk page. By the time I have finished that probably futile exercise the bot will be through the "Q" pages and I can work on the few that are left. (There were only 392 the last time I looked. There are few than 40 left in "X".)

Don't be too surprised when the bot takes no time on "X". There wasn't much to work with anyway. (Lazy "Three Kingdoms" gamers but I was no more ambitious as I did not tag any of them for notability.) I suspect the same is true for "Q".

JimCubb (talk) 01:08, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
LOL.
Well, the bot could work a little bit quicker, if it weren't for the "bots are only allowed to edit once every 10 seconds" rule. Oh well. Matt (talk) 02:02, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, lazy amateur Sinologists in general. I haven't the courage to see how many articles for last name "Qi" have listas parameters.

I got the most active editor on the Arabic Naming Conventions article and Talk Page to put as many DEFAULTSORT values as he can. The next time you go through "A", June or early July, your bot will be wanting a vacation and almost all that will be left will be bands.

What letter are you on now?

JimCubb (talk) 22:02, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Looks like it's starting on the P's now. Matt (talk) 03:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I will not go to Q when I finish X but I may go to Z.

Heartiest congratulations on your success so far.

JimCubb (talk) 03:53, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of Open Hearts (2011 film)

This film has generate a lot of interest and there are thousand of Zach Braff fans who will want to know about it, so why not make wikipedia the place to come? This is somewhere they can find a balance of many other sources, and many people will want this page to be up. The fact that you alone don't want it to be up means nothing when several hundred people will want to find this page in the future. I have not broken any laws, done anything worng, I have not advertised, written poorly, or done anything that grants this page deletion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by R013 (talk • contribs) 10:06, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but we have a guideline about future films, because the film could end up being derailed for any number of reasons before filming actually begins. Generally speaking, films that haven't started filming aren't notable. If you can find multiple reliable sources saying that the film is notable, then you can probably get away with keeping the article. However, since an AfD has been opened for it, you might want to take your argument there: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Open Hearts (2011 film). Thanks, Matt (talk) 10:11, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

The Wikipedia Bot Builder Award
I offer my congratulations for your efforts to sort biography talk pages using ListasBot, which may be credited in significant part for the considerable shrinkage of Category:Biography articles without listas parameter. Erik9 (talk) 23:27, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Rez Bomb

Thanks for the quick fix (redirect) on that one. I mistakenly db-tagged it. AeonicOmega talk 06:41, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

hehe, no problem. I just happened to see the new page pop up on Special:Newpages. Matt (talk) 06:42, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Appetizer (software)

Please do not move pages to nonsensical titles. It is considered vandalism. If you would like to learn more about moving pages, please see the guidelines on this subject. If you would like to experiment with page titles and moving, please use the test Wikipedia. Thank you.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. Laurent (talk) 08:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi, sorry about the warning above, I think I didn't use the right CSD tag for this page. I'm obviously not implying that your page move was vandalism but rather than the article that was at Appetizer (software) should not have been there in the first place. Regards, Laurent (talk) 08:25, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
PS: The template above was automatically added by Twinkle.
lol, no problem. Matt (talk) 08:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I have nominated you for adminship

Neutralle would like to nominate you to become an administrator. Please visit Wikipedia:Requests for adminship to see what this process entails, and then contact Neutralle to accept or decline the nomination. A page has been created for your nomination at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Mikaey . If you accept the nomination, you must state and sign your acceptance. You may also choose to make a statement and/or answer the optional questions to supplement the information your nominator has given. Once you are satisfied with the page, you may post your nomination for discussion, or request that your nominator do so.

Signing this section so that it gets automatically archived. Matt (talk) 22:29, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

RE: Crown Point

I know, I was just dicking around with my friend, and then I bitched at you cause I enjoy pissing people off. I mean come on though, you couldn't have just left it? My family really is a pretty prominent family in crown point. It was kind of just a joke that only crown point citizens would get. It's not like anyone goes around looking up crown point anyway. Except for I guess you. What drew your attention to that article anyway? Do you have a little random town fetish? :D

Signing this section so that it gets automatically archived. Matt (talk) 22:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

A shiny

The Biography Barnstar
This shiny star is for all the great changes your bot makes to the various parameter options that help the Wiki to all run together smoothly. Great work! – Quadell (talk) 01:07, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Awesome! Thank you very much! Matt (talk) 07:28, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

No problem!

Just give me a day or two to check your contributions in details. Mainly I am interested if you have some articles that you significantly improved. Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 07:47, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Lifetime vs YOB and YOD categories

Please don't replace well established categories with lifetime as you did here and in several other cases. There is no consensus for that action. Please read instructions in Template:Lifetime very carefully where it reads "Please, do not edit war by replacing DEFAULTSORT, xxxx births, yyyy deaths with this template".Moreover, you can check a list of problems caused by Lifetime and more discussion about it in Template talk:Lifetime. Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 08:25, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I read that after I did a few of those. I have since stopped. Matt (talk) 08:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
You touched one of my sensitive points. I am dealing a lot with yob/yod categories. If you are to become an admin you really haver to be careful with this stuff. Remember, for a while your actions will be under the microscope. I now am checking your edits a bit. I think you ll receive an email from me soon. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:45, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
I sent you an email. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:59, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
(As did I. Did you receive it?) – Quadell (talk) 01:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Oh, hey Quadell...I was wondering why you were being so quiet. No, I'm not getting them. I'm getting emails I sent to myself though. Hrm. Perhaps we could hook up on AIM/MSN Messenger/Yahoo Messenger/IRC? Matt (talk) 01:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
I really only use gchat, through Google. Can you maybe try e-mailing me? – Quadell (talk) 01:27, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Email sent. Matt (talk) 01:28, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm having the damndest time here. Are you getting my emails and have you responded? Matt (talk) 01:57, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
I got your e-mail, and I responded. – Quadell (talk) 13:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

ANI Thread

Wanted to let you know that there is an ANI thread started about DefaultsortBot. You can find it here. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 07:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

DefaultsortBot and noincludes

Hi Matt. The page Andrews (surname) transcludes a bunch of other pages, each of which had been prepared with appropriate <noinclude> sections. DefaultsortBot added a DEFAULTSORT at the end of each of those files, outside of the <noinclude>, causing multiple DEFAULTSORT conflicts in Andrews (surname). I've corrected the files: Barry Andrews, Bill Andrews, Keith Andrews, Kevin Andrews, Mark Andrews (disambiguation), Michael Andrews, Paul Andrews, Peter Andrews, Simon Andrews, Thomas Andrews, and William Andrews. There's probably no easy way for a bot to anticipate and correctly handle a unique situation like this, but I thought you might want to know about it.

Additionally, edits like this one to Thomas Andrews bring up another minor formatting issue. When there are no categories on a page, the DEFAULTSORT should traditionally go above any stubs and interwikis. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 09:45, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Traditionally by... WP:LAYOUT. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
Ok, we can do this...we can check Special:Whatlinkshere (or rather, its API equivelant) for transclusions. If there's any transclusions at all, then the {{DEFAULTSORT}} tag will be put inside <noinclude> tags. Sound good? Matt (talk) 18:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
If you've already done that, it's okay, but I've decided that your bot was not responsible for this problem, and bots in general should not be expected to anticipate every mistake that human editors may make. The problem with those files is that, instead of <noinclude>ing certain sections, the other sections should have been <onlyinclude>d. In checking those files, I discovered that at least four bot and three human edits had added interwiki links outside the <noinclude> areas, which means that those links were incorrectly transcluded onto the other page. When I originally fixed those pages, I took the quick and easy route of just moving stuff into the existing <noinclude> areas. But I've gone back and fixed them the proper way, also taking care of some messy "See also" sections which had also been improperly transcluded. You and your "rogue" bots (hehe) are doing a fine job. Keep up the good work. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 18:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

It is a big mistake to try to shoehorn traditional Arabic names into the European naming scheme of inherited surnames...

Your bot is generating an enormous amount of extra work. Please stop. Geo Swan (talk) 06:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC) http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ADefaultsortBot&diff=292613799&oldid=292263101

I disagree:
  1. The bot is not choosing how names should be arranged. The bot is simply copying what is in the listas parameter of the {{WPBiography}} template on the talk page.
  2. The bot is not overwriting anything else that was already there. This particular bot is designed to put {{DEFAULTSORT}} tags on articles where no equivalent exists. This means that if the page already has a {{DEFAULTSORT}}, {{Lifetime}}, or {{Persondata}}, the bot skips over the page and doesn't touch it.
I understand your frustration, but the mistakes aren't really the bot's fault, they're the fault of the people that are setting up the listas tags in the first place. I think the focus needs to be on getting them right the first time around. Matt (talk) 07:07, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Oh yeah? And the listasbot, and various other robot-assisted editing tools, are merely copying what they found in a {{DEFAULTSORT}}.
Yes, but the data has to come from somewhere. Let's think about this for a minute:
  1. Article has a {{DEFAULTSORT}}, but the talk page has nothing.
  2. Article has nothing, and the talk page has a listas tag.
  3. Article has nothing, and the talk page has nothing.
    • DefaultsortBot will never touch the page, since the page never shows up in the category that the bot works with (Category:Biography articles with listas parameter).
    • ListasBot will probably never touch the page, since there's nothing for it to go off of. Exception: ListasBot uses the title of the page when the title is a single word, or the page is a category talk page.
  4. Article has a {{DEFAULTSORT}}, and the talk page has a listas tag.
So, if you look at that for a minute, the bottom line is that, 99% of the time, if one bot touches a page, the other doesn't.
Well-meaning, but ill-advised volunteers add these parameters to articles about individuals with Arabic or Chinese names. That is a problem. Bots, like yours, that rely on the ill-advised efforts of volunteers who assumed all names have an inherited surname, compound that problem.
Bottom line -- there's a backlog. When I started, Category:Biography articles without listas parameter had over 334,000 pages in it. I can't take credit for getting rid of all of them, but I can take credit for getting rid of about 150,000 (or more) of them. I can't imagine how long it would have taken a team of editors, if you had managed to recruit any significant number of them, to work through that many pages. It's a daunting task. I think there's any number of people around here that would rather have a bot work through as many as they can, and leave the rest for the humans to take care of. The time that they don't spend on fixing things that a bot can take care of is time they can spend improving other areas of the Wiki.
Mistakes have been made, yes, but we don't expect everyone to be perfect. I strongly believe that the number of mistakes that will be left over after the bot is done is far less than the number of pages that needed to be dealt with in the first place. And in the end, my bot's actions don't override the fact that the mistakes were made by someone else, and that those mistakes still need to be dealt with.
I raised my concern on WP:ANI. Geo Swan (talk) 07:43, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I saw. Matt (talk) 08:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
As an addendum to what I said earlier, consider the following:
Let's assume for a moment that all biography pages should have a {{DEFAULTSORT}} in the article, and a {{WPBiography}} on the talk page with a valid listas parameter -- these are the goals of the bots, and this shouldn't be that far off WP's goals.
  1. ListasBot is adding listas tags to {{WPBiography}} templates based (most of the time) on data found in the article (a {{DEFAULTSORT}}, a {{Lifetime}}, or a {{Persondata}}).
    • If the data was wrong to begin with, the work required to fix it would be:
    • If the data was wrong to begin with, and the bot had never touched the page, the work required to fix it would be:
    • If the data was correct to begin with, the work required to fix it would be:
      • Nothing, because the bot would have taken care of everything
  2. DefaultsortBot is adding {{DEFAULTSORT}} tags to articles based on the value of the listas parameter of the {{WPBiography}} template on the talk page.
    • If the data was wrong to begin with, the work required to fix it would be:
    • If the data was wrong to begin with, and the bot had never touched the page, the work required to fix it would be:
    • If the data was correct to begin with, the work required to fix it would be:
      • Nothing, because the bot would have taken care of everything
Given that, I fail to see how the bot is creating more work for you. The net effect is positive. Matt (talk) 09:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
And what steps have been taken to establish that European style inherited lastname-surname style sorting should be the default. It would have been much safer, and, in my opinion, to have simple sorting, that starts at the first character of the articles name, and proceeds smoothly to the last character, be the default. Individuals who use the European style of inherited lastname-surnames should be recognized as the special case.
Various individuals have suggested that the "correct" fix is to replace the corrupt, incorrect, Europeanized value with a copy of the article's current file name. But this merely invites an additional maintenance burden. Over half of the articles on individuals with Arabic names on my watchlist have been renamed, at least once. Why, in the name of heck, should we place replacement values which are very likely to have to be manually edited in the future, possibly multiple times. Geo Swan (talk) 23:51, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

There is one other way in which the bot is actually making things easier for editors of pages whose sort values may not be obvious or natural to some one who is trying to follow Wikipedia:Categorization of people. All the editor has to do in most instances is copy the page name into the DEFAULTSORT value or the LIVING template and listasbot will see to it that the talk page gets the same value for its listas parameter. It takes a lot of effort to paste the value on two separate pages.

JimCubb (talk) 22:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, this is the English language Wikipedia and the first of the many Wikipedias. I assume that it was created with the assumption that the articles would be in English and that most of the biographies would be of European people. I doubt that there was any consideration about the 700 people on your watchlist. Of the 685,609 biography articles, 44,696 without listas parameter and 640,913 with listas parameter, I am very confident that (1) the overwhelming majority need a DEFAULTSORT value and a listas parameter to be sorted properly; (2) more than 700 have invalid values in the listas parameter. Actually I am absolutely certain about the latter as I just looked the pages after Z.
Once again, I will go through the pages I just mentioned and fix the listas parameter. If it is appropriate I will inform the editor who set the invalid value of the nature of his/her error.
Geo, I'll make you a deal. If you find a corrupt, incorrect, Europeanized value on a page or if a page on your watchlist has been renamed let me know and as soon as I see the notice I will hasten to the relevant pages and change both the DEFAULTSORT and listas parameter values.
JimCubb (talk) 02:24, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Geo -- First, I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what you're saying, but if I'm reading it right, you're asking "when did we decide that articles should be sorted by lastname?" The answer is, when we wrote up WP:Categorization of people.
Second, I think you're asking "why should we stick a DEFAULTSORT in an article when it could be wrong, and we'd have to go through and replace half of them?" Because then you don't have to deal with the other half. Whether it be bot or human, someone, sooner or later, is going to come along and put a DEFAULTSORT into the article. Given enough time, it will happen. If the bot gets them wrong, someone will have to go in and fix them. If the human gets them wrong, someone will have to go in and fix them. If a bot doesn't deal with it at all, someone will spend the time to go and put one in. If the bot gets them right, that's one less article that a human has to deal with, and that's time saved. The bot's chances of getting them right are directly equal to the chances of the human who put the listas parameter in the talk page in the first place. Matt (talk) 02:45, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

As far as I have seen, one editor has objected to the good that your bot has done. Most of the source of this objection has been that your bot has taken a value that was placed on one of the pages on his/her watchlist that was incorrect. I do think think that a person who cannot maintain his/her watchlist is an acceptable source of complaint and certainly not a person whose lack of maintenance should influence the work of the bot.

Please restart the bot.

JimCubb (talk) 04:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
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