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The Signpost: 10 January 2011

The Signpost: 17 January 2011

Highland View Academy listed for deletion

I have listed Highland View Academy for deletion. Because of your previous edits, I thought you might be interested in participating. The discussion is located at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Highland View Academy. WikiManOne (talk) 05:50, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 24 January 2011

The Signpost: 31 January 2011

a task for CydeBot?

On CFDW, there are these two categories:

CydeBot can't move the contents, because Template:reqphoto is what causes the category to be put on these articles. So for the former, {{reqphoto|field hockey personnel}} needs to become {{reqphoto|field hockey people}}, and for the latter, {{reqphoto|ice hockey personnel}} needs to become {{reqphoto|ice hockey people}}. Is that something CydeBot can do, or do we need another bot to come to the rescue?--Mike Selinker (talk) 03:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All done with the help of AWB. — ξxplicit 21:14, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for handling it Explicit. It is something that Cydebot (specifically PyWikipediaBot) *could* do, but it would definitely be a manual run (probably using replace.py, and passing in the pages to edit from a categorized page editor). I'm really busy with other things right now in general, though, so manual runs are best handled by others (like Explicit). Now if there's core Cydebot functionality that needs fixing, then I'm definitely on it. --Cyde Weys 21:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 7 February 2011

Cydebot deletion log summaries

Hi Cyde,

When Cydebot deletes a category that was renamed or merged, could it link to the target category in the deletion log summary?

For example, if Category:Foo is renamed to Category:Bar per a discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 January 1, could Cydebot use the following summary when deleting Category:Foo:

Robot - Moving category to Bar per CFD at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 January 1

For speedy renaming:

Robot - Speedily moving category to Bar per CFDS

I realize that linking to the target category adds extra characters to the text of the log summary, which may become a problem with long category names, and that is why I've suggested dropping the name of the category being deleted. If necessary, perhaps extra characters could be saved by unlinking "CFD" or piped-linking "Speedily moving".

If Cydebot could do this, it would be a help to editors wanting to follow the history of a category (e.g., to update incoming links to a category that was renamed). Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 23:56, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know that you are working on a few tweaks to Cydebot, so please don't think that I'm trying to rush you on this request, but I just wanted to ping you on this. Best, -- Black Falcon (talk) 07:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've made a preliminary change. Let's keep our eyes on Cydebot as it processes new CFDW entries and see how well the new format works. My main worry is that we might overflow the edit summary limit and thus lose part of the date limit. It may be worth it to check the link of the proposed edit summary inside the bot and then use a shortened form of the message so that we can maintain the important links and lose the unimportant info. E.g. a shortened form might be:

Robot - Moved LONG CATEGORY NAME to Category:ANOTHER LONG CATEGORY NAME per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 January 1

Note that we're going to get an extraneous "Category:" in the link text, but that can't really be helped. Piping the link name to remove that is going to use up a lot more source characters (characters that we really don't have to spare). --Cyde Weys 22:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! It seems to be working well, though admittedly there have not (so far) been any changes from one long name to another.
Your suggestions—changing "Moving" to "Moved" and omitting "category" before the OLDNAME and "CFD at"—make sense, and they would shorten the summary by 28 characters without removing any really critical information. The most effective initial change would appear to be dropping "[[WP:CFD|CFD]] at " (18 characters, counting the space after "at"), which would immediately compensate for the 13 characters added by the act of linking the category's new name: [[Category:Foo]].
I will continue to watch WP:CFD/W for any changes from one long name to another, and check Cydebot's summaries related to such changes. Thanks again, -- Black Falcon (talk) 04:54, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 14 February 2011

The Signpost: 21 February 2011

The Signpost: 28 February 2011

Cydebot not removing spaces

I noticed a quirk in Cydebot's editing today. When the bot removes a category, it leaves behind an extra line (see [1][2][3]). Do you know what could be causing this? Thanks, -- Black Falcon (talk) 00:45, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, again, for fixing this issue so quickly. :) -- Black Falcon (talk) 16:38, 14 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cydebot

In this college president nomination, which received no comments at all, a rather unfortunate thing occurred. Every individual president was moved from a category that made sense (Category:American university and college presidents) to one that doesn't (Category:Presidents by university or college in the United States). The closer may have believed that only subcategories were moving, rather than individuals. User:Orlady appears to be manually moving all 855 members back, but I wonder if there's a way for Cydebot to revert all its edits for the individuals but not the subcategories. Can it be done?--Mike Selinker (talk) 05:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So just to be crystal clear: Get all namespace 0 (i.e. article) pages in Category:Presidents by university or college in the United States and move them to Category:Presidents by university or college in the United States. Does that capture the correct logic? Before doing this I want to make sure that this is correct, that there won't be any collateral damage, and that it will fully fix the issue. And yes, owing to the master rollback JS plugin I was using no longer working correctly (I assume it died a nasty death during the Vector skin transition), it is going to be easier to do this by making new edits through the bot than by rolling back edits. --Cyde Weys 05:03, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'll get to it soon. I'm really busy until Saturday. --Cyde Weys 05:04, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm doing it now. There are four lists that may need to be in the "Presidents by university..." category after all. Let me know what you think (and then do it if it's obvious). The bot is reverting them along with everything else in namespace 0, though I think ultimately they will need to be in the new category name along with the subcategories.

--Cyde Weys 21:39, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 7 March 2011

The Signpost: 14 March 2011

Hi. Please rename categories: Metalist Kharkiv footballers to FC Metalist Kharkiv players, Metalurh Zaporizhya players to FC Metalurh Zaporizhya players, FSC Prykarpattya Ivano-Frankivsk players to FC Prykarpattya Ivano-Frankivsk players. Bogic (talk) 22:33, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 21 March 2011

The Signpost: 28 March 2011

Cydebot down

Cydebot hasn't made a routine edit in nearly six hours. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:54, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notice. Yeah, I'm aware that that server went down, though the implication that that would also take down Cydebot didn't occur to me. I was remotely logged into it, and it froze hard upon trying to decompress a 4 GB lzop file. I have no idea what in the hell happened. It should be back up later tonight when I travel to the server and physically restart it. --Cyde Weys 21:17, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, so the server was really messed up. It was just spewing lots of dmesg output to the console. After a reboot it's back up and running. I'm moving that lzo file to a different system before attempting to decompress it again. Go figure. --Cyde Weys 03:30, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 April 2011

The Signpost: 11 April 2011

How do you fix broken navboxes?

Hello, I was visiting The Vampire's Assistant and found a bit of broken code that I'm unable to fix. And its apparently on other pages about that series of books. There is a navbox template at the bottom. Look for {{Sagaofshan}} and you'll see it. Apparently whoever wrote the template didn't close the parentheses. Could you direct me to instructions on how to fix these things, since they don't show up on the editing page? Thanks. Trilobitealive (talk) 22:03, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 18 April 2011

South Tyrol

Could you chip in and discuss category renaming at Talk:South Tyrol#Communes category. Your input would be appreciated, thank you.  Andreas  (T) 18:33, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 25 April 2011

Cascader

I agree with your tagging of Cascader for deletion but could not find any link to a page where I could express this view. Derek farn (talk) 17:15, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 2 May 2011

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of films with unexposed contents

Having participated (on 29 January 2006) in the above-linked AfD, you may wish to express an opinion on this entry's ultimate fate at its revived AfD vote: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of films with unexposed contents (2nd nomination), which began on 1 May.—Roman Spinner (talk) 20:22, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

disallow your bot from creating pages with a double category prefix

I don't know if you've implemented this already, but please make sure your bot, when handling CFDW, won't create pages like Category:Category:1973–74 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. You can probably count on the fact that when such entries are added to CFDW, as they were here, it was done by mistake. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to be looking into this one next. The changes will probably go into cfd.py, not the base framework classes. --Cyde Weys 14:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep/no consensus categories

Just a thought but is it possible to set Cydebot to help with the detagging (and even posting the notices to talk pages) when a large group nomination ends without change? We've had some large noms lately that are a pain to manually do. Timrollpickering (talk) 00:00, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give me a rundown on what this entails? I'm assuming it involves going to a list of categories and removing the substed {{cfd}} templates. Where does that list of categories come from? Just the CFD nomination? Or can there be more categories that were templated than were listed in the original nomination? --Cyde Weys 14:14, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Primarily just the ones listed in the CFD nomination. Each will need the CFD notice removed and, possibly, the Cfdend notice added to their talkpages. Timrollpickering (talk) 16:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How are you envisioning this working, some kind of separate working page (or separate section on the current working page) where CFD nominations that were unsuccessful are listed? And then the bot would go through the nominations and remove the substed CFD template on each linked category page? One potential issue I can think of is that the nominations are a lot more free-form than the CFD working page, and might require more work to parse (and more error handling). I was thinking of potentially using Whatlinkshere, but that only works at the page level, whereas the CFD nominations are at the section level. --Cyde Weys 18:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty much as you describe. A separate working page is probably best for starters. I think listing the actual categories would be best - usually they can be C&Ped onto the list from the noms. What sort of errors can you foresee? Timrollpickering (talk) 18:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the event of a CFD that doesn't have any glitches and goes perfectly normally, none. But then there are the bigger CFDs, where the list is potentially added to in discontinuous sections as the debate continues, or someone goes back and puts strike-throughs through some of the proposed changes or marks them up in various other ways that may make them harder to automatically parse, potentially even by using {{cl}} or similar. And then there's always going to be a chance that someone links other categories in the course of discussion (e.g. "look at how it was handled in this area"), which I'd need to take account of.

Basically, the simplest way to do it would be to just examine every linked category in a discussion section and remove every CFD template in it. However, at the very least I know I'm going to have to actually parse the template somewhat and make sure that it's actually pointing back to the discussion at hand. --Cyde Weys 19:27, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just as an example in practice, the main current backlog is on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 February 10#Former pupils by school in the United Kingdom (warning the discussion is INCREDIBLY long so best avoid getting sucked into reading it) with categories such as Category:Ackworth Old Scholars still to be detagged. There's a few other big noms on the horizon that will be similar cases. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think, for now, I'm just going to go the route of having a separate working page where the user lists the categories. The bot then touches each category and removes the CFD template from it. Sounds very simple, and I can pretty much recycle most of the code from what's already written anyway (as you probably know, Cydebot already knows how to detect and remove CFD templates because it needs to do it when copying the page text from the old category name to the new category name). I should start making progress on this very soon. Do you have any suggestions for the name of the new working page? --Cyde Weys 14:56, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Something like "Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Retain" may be best to make it clear that the categories themselves will be staying put. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:39, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And just to talk to myself in the open, I'm also considering eventually having the bot go through and then remove items from the list that it has removed the CFD templates on. I haven't done this for CFDW yet because it's quite obvious when the bot has finished its work; in the event of a delete, the link turns red; in the event of a move, the source category turns red and the destination category turns blue. For this, there'd be no obvious way to look at the list and figure out which ones had been processed already because they would always be blue, so it would be convenient to have the bot itself manage the list. But that would be in the "Phase 2", Phase 1 being just reading the list and then removing the templates from all of the categories in that list. --Cyde Weys 21:21, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for the delay. The last month has been very busy for me, but things are finally settling down. I've completed phase 1 of the Retain CFD bot. It reads the list at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Retain every 5 minutes and removes the CFD templates from anything listed there. It does not as of yet process the list itself, so list entries will need to be manually removed by humans (probably after verifying that the CFD templates have indeed been removed, at least during the initial testing phase). That will be phase 2. Let me know if anything goes wrong, or if everything goes right, let me know that too. --Cyde Weys 21:52, 5 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just tried this out for the first time; it's worked brilliantly. Many thanks. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. I'll get around to phase 2 soon. In the mean time maybe we should integrate this tool more tightly into the process? (I.e. let all of the usual CFD closers know about it, and link it on the instructions page.) --Cyde Weys 14:13, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 9 May 2011

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:Spotlight

Wikipedia:Spotlight, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Spotlight (2nd nomination) and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Spotlight during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. JJ98 (Talk) 02:26, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion involving the functionality of Cydebot

Please keep an eye on Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#Possible solution for the attribution problem with category renames?, and depending on how the discussion goes - consider inmplementing it in Cydebot. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:07, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 16 May 2011

User:Cidebot

Is this actually you? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:35, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Doubtful, I don't think Cyde would have screwed up the formatting. However, if it is feel free to unblock it yourself Cyde. ;) Syrthiss (talk) 16:45, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Didn't think so either, but I've made the mistake of jumping to conclusions before; I have to remind myself of what Lemony Snicket said about the dangers of that. Just making sure; the bad formatting is what raised my suspicions. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:48, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bwahaha, nope, definitely not me. You can tell because Cide is spelled with an I instead of a Y, and I would never use Cide for anything. Cide just looks silly. --Cyde Weys 16:49, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still waiting for my first impostor; it's almost a badge of honor. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:54, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
After the first hundred or so the novelty wears off. --Cyde Weys 17:02, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, you have the wrong uName for obvious imposters, Blade - too long, like mine. My favorite was not an impostor, but an account created to mock me: User:Gentle Rotweiler. KillerChihuahua?!?Advice 17:58, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe I should start using my alternate account more often, then. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:53, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 23 May 2011

The Signpost: 30 May 2011

The Signpost: 6 June 2011

June 11, did the bot stop

The bot looks like it is running, but may not be processing Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, the bot got really stopped up. Every one of its tasks had a stopped up python process associated with it. Some weird form of deadlock? Anyway, I killed them all and the bot is handling the backlog now. Thanks for the notice. --Cyde Weys 03:07, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 13 June 2011

Moving churches

What on earth is going on?

These categories "9th century church" etc are completely artificial and extraordinarily confusing! The implication is that the actual church, i.e. the building, dates from that time. That is very rarely the case, except with 19th century foundations.

The previous category "Churches of 9th century foundation" (or however it was worded) was meaningful. The current categorisation doesn't work As a major contributor to church and architectural articles, I am totally oppose to it, but I didn't know it was happening.

Amandajm (talk) 15:33, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no. It's even worse than I thought! It actually states "9th century church building" ! Do you realise how utterly ridiculous that is? It means that Lincoln Cathedral one of the greatest Gothic cathedrals in the world, with only a few remnants of it 11th century work left in the facade (the rest was burnt down) is labelled "11th century church building". This is too stupid and has to stop! Amandajm (talk) 15:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Basilica of St. Severin. Here's another case that makes the problem very obvious:
St. Severin was established in the late 4th century[2] as a memorial chapel and extended several times. The oldest parts of today's building date back to the 10th century. It was designated a Basilica Minor by Pope Pius XII in 1953.
So with this information clearly stated in the text of the article, it has been transferred from being categorised as a building of "4th century foundation" to a "4th century church building"! There is a gap of five or six hundred years between the original church and the present building!
The other problem we run into here is that while many churches in Europe tend to have a fairly consistent building style, those in the UK rarely do. Even among parish churches (if they are not of Victorian foundation) the majority of churches show a variety of dates and sometimes span 1,000 years. This is particularly the case with English cathedrals where the norm is that the building will have taken not less than 400 years to construct.
Canterbury Cathedral has been labelled as a 7th century church building, because it was founded by Augustine of Canterbury in the 7th century, and regardless of the fact that the text of the article says that it was entirely rebuilt in the 11th century. It was then almost entirely rebuilt again, piecemeal, in subsequent centuries so that only the crypt and a couple of small towers remain from the 11th century. In other words, it can't be simp[y classified as an 11th century church building either. It is an 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 19th century church building, having important parts of its vast and varied structure dating from all those centuries. What it is not is a "7th century building".
The Cathedral of Cordoba is another very difficult one. There is probably not a remnant of the 7th century Christian church which was overbuilt with a mosque. During the Gothic period (can't remember the exact date) a Christian cathedral building was inserted bang in the middle of the mosque. But the mosque that surrounds it is considered to be "part of the cathedral building". It certainly cannot be described as a "7th century church building".
There is no simple way of doing this. You can't just transfer the churches from one list to another. If they are going to be categorised as building of a particular century then it is going to require researching every single building to find out which category it belongs to. And then, in the case of a building like Canterbury Cathedral (most English cathedrals) it will have to be categorised under several different centuries.
I would prefer "Church buildings of ?th century construction".
Amandajm (talk) 00:40, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 20 June 2011

The Signpost: 27 June 2011

Category removal

Hy Cyde, thanks for operating the Cydebot. Just want to make sure you won't forget deleting Category:Musical groups by time period as well; it is now an empty category since all of its sub categories have been deleted by Cydebot per CFD. Take care! --Eddyspeeder (talk) 12:21, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 4 July 2011

Category:Redirects from pseudonym

Hello. Your bot deleted Category:Redirects from pseudonym with the edit summary "Robot - Removing category Redirects from pseudonym per CFD at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 July 3." I don't oppose the deletion but it was never discussed in a CFD in the link provided. I skimmed over a few other days and couldn't find it there either. Do you know what went wrong? McLerristarr | Mclay1 03:21, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you nominated it for speedy renaming and then it was processed by Cydebot, but the admin who activated the bot put in the wrong section for deletion based on July 3's discussions. I would point out this error to User:Timrollpickering, the admin who made the error—he could probably sort this out for you and get it renamed instead of deleted. (Pardon my intrusion but I know Cyde doesn't monitor inquiries about Cydebot too closely since only other admins use it.) Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:55, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. It was renamed before today so the category still exists under its new name. Normally, when they're speedily renamed, they old name is left deleted so I was just confused why this one was different. McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, OK. He probably just saw that the old category needed to be deleted and tried to have the bot do it, which assigned the wrong date to it. Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:18, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The category was primarily populated by a template so a large chunk of the renaming was done manually. At the end the old category was put on the list for deletion along with several others and the bot processed them again. Not sure why the bot added the date it did. Timrollpickering (talk) 09:23, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 11 July 2011

Lake Steinhude category deleted

Hi Cyde,

I am trying to understand why the category for Lake Steinhude was deleted in favour its German name - Steinhuder Meer, but cannot find the logic. Can you help? --Bermicourt (talk) 17:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Smithsonian Archives of American Art Backstage Pass

Archives of American Art Backstage Pass! - You are invited!
The Smithsonian is hosting its first Backstage Pass at the Archives of American Art on Friday, July 29. 10 Wikimedians will experience the behind the scenes aspects of archiving the world's largest collection of documents and photographs related to American art. After a complimentary lunch, an edit-a-thon will take place and prizes will be awarded. Followed by an evening happy hour. We hope you'll participate! SarahStierch (talk) 14:15, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 18 July 2011

The WikiProject National Archives Newsletter

The first ever WikiProject National Archives newsletter has been published. Please read on to find out what we're up to and how to help out! There are many opportunities for getting more involved. Dominic·t 21:19, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

DC Meetup, July 29

DC Meetup 21 - Who should come? You should. Really.
DC MEETUP 21 is July 29! This meet up will involve Wikipedians from the area as well as Wiki-loving GLAM professionals. See you Friday! SarahStierch (talk) 16:32, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]