User talk:AllyUnion/Archive6

Votes for deletion

Sorry. It can be explained by my desperation. Cmapm 15:43, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Meta-templates considered harmful

Quite frankly I am a little confused. From your comments at Wikipedia talk:Meta-templates considered harmful#Scope creep it looks like you are endorsing User:Netoholic's overwrought and distorted description of the stub creation process. So instead of getting a substantive response to my comments, Netoholic just adds a "me, too" post, and then accuses me of trolling and deception as well. BlankVerse ∅ 20:27, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I specifically added in the suggestion to use "subst:" at Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful#Alternatives, but User:Netoholic deleted that. Personally, I also think that his suggested alternative of using lists instead of the topic stub is completely unworkable and that should be deleted from the page. If I either add back in the suggestion to use "subst:" or delete the suggestion to use lists, however, I am sure that Netoholic will just revert and then heap more abuse on me, since calling anyone who disagrees with him a troll seems to be a standard tactic with him (he accuses User:Itai of trolling on the same talk page, for example).

I also believe that there are significant problems with the direct use of meta-templates, but I found Netaholic's description of the topic stub creation process was so exaggerated that I found it difficult to believe or trust anything that he said. It was User:Jamesday's careful description that gave the details for the problems with meta-templates that convinced me. (I also think that it is highly hypocritical for Netoholic to be worrying about the possibility of DOS attacks using meta-templates when his edit warring over templates and meta-templates has the same effect.) BlankVerse ∅ 22:59, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Vfd bot not working?

Hi. Your bot seems not to have worked on the vfd tonight. It worked on vfd/old though. Preisler 05:34, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm looking into it. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:22, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I was mucking about

Just going through the VfDs now as I see there's quite a backlog. Sheesh, things have changed somewhat! - Ta bu shi da yu 05:43, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Do you want to do Feb8th? - Ta bu shi da yu 05:44, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

More on VfD

Concerning the cartoon character list VfD, isn't 9 of 15 votes for deletion (60%) less than the required 70% for consensus? I'm not especially concerned about this list (even though I voted to keep it), and won't miss it now that it's gone, but this strikes me as encouraging the "simple majority consensus" argument that I've seen misused elsewhere. — Jeff Q 07:16, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

My judgement calls are based on how far apart the delete and keep votes are. If they are even, one vote apart, I tend to call it no consensus. If it is 2 votes apart, it depends on the situation. If it is 3 or more, then I consider it as consensus to whatever is leading. The deletion process doesn't mention any set percentage of how much a vote is necessary in order to delete it. If there were a percentage, we might have a lot of junk articles around... because then a strong consensus would be required to delete any article... -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:32, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for the quick reply! I'm not sure I agree with such slim margins, but I'm certain I don't have your experience with such judgment calls, and I'm a believer in not being straitjacketed by numbers and immutable policies. I bow to your greater wisdom. ☺ — Jeff Q 07:39, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No problem. You'd have to consider that the English Wikipedia is very large, and we try to keep junk out of the system. If you were unhappy with the decision, there is always WP:VFU. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:44, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You'd also have to consider, if we didn't have slim margins, a lot of articles would have to go through renomination process, especially when you can clearly see a need for deletion. Although I disagree with your particular list, I didn't vote on it, therefore I have to be non-biased when going through these deletions. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:48, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

VFD/OLD

I'd love to help out, but I'm a little pressed for time. Maybe I'll drop by later in the day. :) Mgm|^(talk) 09:38, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

I noticed. I'm off to work right now, but I can help when I get back home this afternoon. Joyous 11:58, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

Copyright Problems

What do you do to get rid of the back log here? I can't find a procedure on what to do. Mgm|^(talk) 13:57, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

Not sure. I don't know the process either. Infrogmation and rbrwr seem to know the process better than I do. I would assume that the new requests need to be confirmed with the url that has been placed in the copyvio notice, and if a temp article has been written and that isn't a copyvio, then it can be merged/moved back into the main article space. If a url hasn't been specified, then I suppose you message the user who placed the copyvio notice, and if they don't respond, then I suppose you can remove the copyvio notice and revert the article back. -- AllyUnion (talk) 14:48, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

VFD/Old bot assistant

How would you like to have a copy of my VFD/Old cleanup bot assistant? It does a lot of grunt work, just not the counting of the votes. -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:03, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes please. Also, the link you gave me above, [1], didn't work when I noticed it just now. dbenbenn | talk 22:13, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Italians in the wrong country

Hi AllyUnion: You wrote: I wish to assist you with your bot request. Could clarify the problem for me? Below is what I understand. Please correct me if I'm incorrect.

In the article, Communes_of_the_province_of_Brescia, there are links to several articles in a list format of: * [[Article]] or *[[Article]]. You want each article in this to make sure that all articles in the taxobox is linked correctly as: [[Regions of Italy|Region]]

That's right, although - looking at a few at random - it may have been fixed. When I made the request, the taxobox was linked to [[Regions of Germany|Region]] for quite a large number of the articles.

Also, do want to change the list to a category or leave it as a list for now?

Not for now, although it does look like the sort of thing that might be better as a category... perhaps I should list it on vfd. Thanks, Grutness|^hello? 05:26, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Your advice on the VfD page

Thank you for your advice:

"Simply copy the title from the page you created, and link it like so:

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was REDIRECT. dbenbenn | talk 23:07, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pestszentlőrinc

This article obviously has an incorrect character in its title, so it should be deleted. (There is an article with a well-formed title on the same topic, Pestszentlorinc, it contains all the information mentioned in the previous article.) --Adam78 00:54, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• No, the article obviously has the correct spelling of the place; it's Pestszentlőrinc, not Pestszentlorinc. The Wikipedia software has trouble displaying Unicode article titles, but people will be searching using the Unicode characters just the same. Therefore Pestszentlőrinc should be redirected to the ASCII rendering Pestszentlorinc, and the latter article should have one of those "The title of this article is incorrect due to technical limitations" notices. Psychonaut 02:27, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

---

Hey, this template doesn't work!
* Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Pestszentlőrinc
I wanted to link to the above, but the deletion template doesn't work. Are these characters really so nasty? At least I can link (above) to the article with the faulty title, and from that page you can reach its "Votes for deletion" entry. The problem is more than obvious... --Adam78 01:26, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it's easier if I copy the appropriate "Votes for deletion" message:

This article obviously has an incorrect character in its title, so it should be deleted. (There is an article with a well-formed title on the same topic, Pestszentlorinc, it contains all the information mentioned in the previous article.) --Adam78 00:54, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Note: redirect would also be possible, and this way users perhaps wouldn't feel necessary to create a new article with a "more precise" name. --Adam78 01:35, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:24, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

---

• Redirect -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:24, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Redirect completed --Adam78 15:27, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.

."

and for your help, but that's what I had done (as I read in the VfD instructions), and it didn't work for me -- that's why I asked for help. It still doesn't work really well for me: the template itself works though, but its link is red and it links to a new, non-existent page: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Pestszentlőrinc whose title is even worse than the title in question. (BTW, I use Opera 7.54u1. I wonder if the fixed link works well for you.) Anyway, I hope that whoever wants to visit the page, will be able to do so sooner or later...

--Adam78 12:07, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I happen to be using Firefox. Maybe your encoding is incorrect? If not, you should submit this as a bug at Bugzilla. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:14, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia Policy Reminder

Thanks for the reminder. Like what I have mentioned at a time of crisis, the recent discussion involves understanding of the complicated political and legal statuses of the entities. I found the introduction inadequate to provide voters information, and therefore the need to tell more when contributors are giving comments. — Instantnood 12:27 Feb 24 2005 (UTC)

Technical question about subst and VFD

Please see my question here (it really needs proper context). --Phil | Talk 12:39, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Spellbot

(moved to WP:AN) -- AllyUnion (talk) 22:36, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Didn't mean to jump on you, just sick of (you're not the first) stuff like this being talked about on user pages. Perhaps I'm just deluded in thinking that everyone should care about spelling.  :) --ssd 00:50, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

NEED HELP to deal with continuous acts of vandalism

Hi AllyUnion,

I wanted to ask you for help. I have posted reports on continuous and extremely malicious acts of vandalism by anon user 84.154.xx.xx in Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress but unfortunately and rather surprisingly to me, received no feedback from admins and no reaction and punishment followed against the vandal. Could you please help me with this issue? For details please, see Wikipedia:Vandalism_in_progress#84.154.104.16 Thanks! --Tabib 14:23, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

AllyUnion, just wanted to quickly thank you for introducing a temporary vandalism protection in Safavids page. This anon user 84.154.xx.xx. now started to vandalize and insult me in my userpage, but this again shows his lack of civility combined with feeble helplessness. I actually do not get angry at this person, I just pity him for what he is. --Tabib 10:40, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please, HELP to stop this mad man

Hi AllyUnion. Now, when you put page protection to the Safavids page, this anon 84.154.xx.xx switched on to my userpage and simply terrorizes me with his stupid insults. Today he vandalized my userpage (see page history) 3 (THREE-!) times, this time operating under IP # 84.154.50.175. Before that he also vandalized my user page several times. He not only vandalizes the page, but writes explicit personal insults. He even dared to insult me publicly again in Wikipedia vandalism in progress. Please, take appropriate measures to punish this mad man. I very much hope you can help me to get rid of this importunate fly.--Tabib 19:20, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

SandBot

• No, no one is currently running the sandBot; the box is being cleaned out manually. -Litefantastic 14:54, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • The plan as worked out in on the Bots talk page (with Ram-man) was: wait six hours and then wait for a lull (five minutes appears to be about right) in updates, and then clear the sandbox out.

Bot for updating and tabulating CIA Factbook Data

I would like to assist you in creating this bot. I will need some specifications in what exactly you intent for it to do and I assist in designing one for you to operate. -- AllyUnion (talk) 04:46, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The bot will take data from the CIA World Factbook and insert the values into Template:Military, which will then be applied to the individual "military of..." articles. For example, the template at Military of Afghanistan contains data from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html#Military. I've never used a bot before and don't know the technical limitations and the specifics of operating one. Presumably, it will just generate the template wikicode and I'll insert them manually? I would like to have the template applied, with fresh CIA data, to all the military of articles. This could be expanded to other articles in wikiproject countries like demographics. --Jiang 06:43, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It can either one of two things:

1. Use, for example, based on the Afghanistan data, {{subst:military|age=22 years of age (2004 est.)|availability=6,785,414 (2004 est.)|service=3,642,659 (2004 est.)|reaching age=263,406 (2004 est.)|dollar figure= $61 million (2003)|percent GDP= 1% (2003)}}. This means that the taxobox is hardcoded into the page, rather than including the template into the page.
2. Use it without the subst: tag, meaning it uses the template on the page with the facts and information based on the CIA page.

The specifics of operating one is that you must get it approved at Wikipedia talk:Bots first before using it. However, because this is a yearly thing, I don't think you necessarily need it approved.

Regarding the technical limitations... There is two I can forsee. The bot would need a list of the article names with cooresponding URLs. We're not certain for 100% that the URLs will stay static year to year. The second one is the color issue.

However, I have solutions for this:

1. The bot is actually manually run and manually assisted
2. The article and URL is entered manually (prompted part of the program)
3. The color number is also requested by the bot
4. Any additional text to be added.

There is one requirement on your part. You must have Python 2.3 installed on your system, as it will be using the pyWikipediaBot framework. I will assist you in the details of how to set up the framework for your needs.

Also, it can update and replace existing taxoboxes / templates / insert in the top of the article. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:19, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Technical question about subst and VFD

Please see my question here (it really needs proper context). --Phil | Talk 12:39, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

bot for adding BBC on this day

My guess is that it would be best to add to the bottom of the articles (but before the four dashes, the previous and next days and the {{months:

== External links ==
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/$month/$date BBC On This Day]

Dunc|☺ 21:33, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

List of comic and cartoon characters

List of comic and cartoon characters, which recently failed VfD, has been recreated by an anon user who has a history of anti-social behavior. Can you help? —tregoweth 03:01, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! —tregoweth 00:01, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Grammarbot (R3b0t)

Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Bot_for_removing_spaces_before_commas? Do I have permission to run a bot, and at what intervals between updates? Will the bot flag be set? Will I have to keep the list updated online? etc. r3m0t 15:17, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)