User talk:Nickj/archive01

First entry!

• Summer Hill

Whoa!

My friend, that work on Summer Hill is possibly some of the finest work on a Sydney suburb I have ever seen! Time for a barnstar methinks :) Ta bu shi da yu 13:36, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you! Also, now I know what a barnstart is! ;-) I want to address any objections raised, but one question I have is how to find "a rough location map" that is under the GFDL? Won't they all be copyrighted to the mapping company that made them? Nickj 00:22, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Ney Nick! Like he said, fantastic work! A couple of questions for you, though, about that AusStats reference from the Australian Bureau of Statistics you had in there: I see that it costs $10.00 for the info-packet, but that unis, libraries etc. may be able to get it for free for research purposes. Were you able to get it free? And was it useful? What sort of info did you get out of there for Summer Hill? —Stormie 23:29, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
  • I have a friend who goes to a Uni, and they were able to download it for free - they ('my silent collaborator') just clicked the link, and it worked straight away for them, so it must detect based on requesting IP address. The file you get is a zipped XLS file, with around 33 worksheets, breaking down the demographics of the postcode in all sorts of ways (by age, by gender, by income, by languages spoken, by country of birth, etc, etc). All you really need though is one figure from the first sheet (which gives the total population), but the ABS web site is very frustrating in that it doesn't seem to make that basic information easily available to the general public! Nickj 00:22, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

---

Hey, was wondering how we could flesh out the lead section a bit. Perhaps we could get the most interesting info and very briefly summarise it? - Ta bu shi da yu 04:12, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• No problem - I've added two extra sentences to the lead-in - is that enough? If not, I'm not too sure what else to say... Nickj 05:32, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • It's very good. Also, I see the first image was made bigger - excellent! Out of interest, where did you get that Satellite photograph? - Ta bu shi da yu 09:25, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • The satellite photo is from here - I got the 2 meg JPEG, drew on the borders (I recognised the landmarks and roads that form the boundary of the suburb), and then resized it down to half width and half height (so that the file size wouldn't be too large). Maybe the Sydney page could include the full original satellite image somewhere on it? The current space image on that page is OK, but this one has a lot more detail on it. - Nickj 00:33, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Admin nomination

Hey mat, thanks for your support of my nomination for admin! Once you get a few more edits under your belt I reckon I'll put you forward also (assuming I get to become an admin, of course). - Ta bu shi da yu 03:06, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Link tester

I like it but not sure where to leave general feedback. Perhaps we could handle disabmiguation pages better? Also, does it link to stubs? Should it? Otherwise - cool idea! - Ta bu shi da yu 07:37, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Thanks for the feedback, and here's good for general feedback. At the moment it does not distinguish disambiguation pages or stub pages - basically it'll try to make most links it can of two words or more, and I'm try to add exceptions for things that it doesn't do well. It stuffs up on are commas though (so for example Parramatta Road in the Strathfield article can be linked, but it did not detect that because it had a comma after it). Also Liverpool road can be linked to Hume Highway, but they've got different names, so the link suggester won't detect that. -- Nickj 07:48, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Photos

Interested in helping me out with some picture taking? I live in the Strathfield area but have no digital camera. Needs some assistance! - Ta bu shi da yu 07:38, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Sure, no problem - Do you know what you want photographed? -- Nickj 07:46, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Yep. I can't do it during weekdays though as I work. I'd like to get one of Strathfield council chambers, another of Strathfield station, and there's another one I want to take of the "plaque marking the location of 'Strathfield Saye" can be found in the footpath of Strathfield Avenue, marking the approximate location of the original house." [1] Reckon your up to it? You get another barnstar if you get them, and I'll nominate you for adminship and rally the Australians to vote for you :P - Ta bu shi da yu 13:40, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

My archive

Nick, thanks for your comments on my archive, and for spotting that error. Adam 04:09, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wiki Syntax

Have you considered moving your Wiki Syntax project to a Wikipedia:WikiProject page? - [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 08:15, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

Hey, i just thought id let you know that the data for the ones like Ireland: 1980-1989 has moved and is difficult to find now. i imagine you wrote the scripts to do this, nice job. the only times i have found errors was in math points such as 2 <= x < 4 is written as [2,4) which is correct and the artices on ascii chariters where they really meant to say [. Also i came up to some articles about the languages of africa where they make click noises and appeantly [ and [[ are common ways to spell the clicks (so are \ \\ and a few other symbols). In any case, well done, hope you continue after this run. Cavebear42 22:55, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• I guess you have point with the no wiki tags. Sorry that I know i deleted some of them from your list without adding the tags as that they were rendering correctly. When they come up again on your next scan, we can add the no wiki tags then i suppose. take care Cavebear42 16:51, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bots

Why don't you sort these with a bot? Dunc|☺ 15:18, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Clever

Encouraging people to put a link to your needs-fixing page in the Edit summary is very clever indeed. Got me to fix one set in exchange for one fix. :-) Elf | Talk 17:27, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Unbalanced wiki-ness project

Great idea, and I've done my 5 (I may tackle more groups later--anytime realtime search is working, I mostly work on User:SirJective/tmp b). At least one of the articles I worked on also had unbalanced parens--maybe you could add those cases as well, so people editing the articles would be more likely to fix them at the same time. Niteowlneils 18:16, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Be careful with the notation [a,b) or (a,b]. While it may seem unbalaced brackets, it is valid mathematic notation. --AstroNomer 06:19, Oct 31, 2004 (UTC)

A link suggester request

Could you please run it over Lake Burley Griffin? Someone commented that there's a bunch of things that could be wikilinked there, and I thought immediately of your tool. Ambi 05:06, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! :) Ambi 06:21, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Section link

Really cool projects you got going, Nick!

Q: On the wiki syntax correction pages, is it possible to link directly to the area in context such as the section anchors? just a thought... --Rj 21:01, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

bots fixing [[] []], etc

I think it should be possible to configure a script to do this automatically that gives you the section of text concerned and then asks you whether you want to fix it and how. The point is anyway to ask one of the better skilled programmers around here to see what they can do. Dunc|☺ 11:23, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Latest syntax project

Thanks for the update. I don't know if this comes up enuf to be worth coding for, nor if it's even practical/possible to code for, but Eight queens puzzle, for example, turned out to be a 'false positive' because it contains C source code. Anyways, great work--one cool side effect of this project is that articles with the problems you look for also, from what I've seen, have a fair number of other things to clean up, EG[2]. Niteowlneils 22:17, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I just wanted to throw another one out there (much like the c code error). Voulez-vous coucher avec moi contains poetry and a line has a br tag so the ) lands ona new line. Cavebear42 18:26, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wiki Syntax

You haven't convinced me, primarily bcz although the goal is identical with that of WP:CU, the means is completely different. This difference has 2 sides to it:

1. Putting it on C/U (admittedly only twice (or so i presume), even if you reject my reasoning):
   • further extends the overcrowded page. It already needs more maintenance than it's getting, bcz (i guess) of people wanting their entries to get more exposure by staying on the main page for longer than 4-9 days. That pushes it above 32kB, where some WPians can't fully edit it; this probably including those edit-conflicts that turn a section edit into a full-page edit; those probably (if the editors don't give up and start over, but try to resolve the section edit with the facilities provided for that) doubling or butchering the page.
   • distracts from the purpose people presumably come to C/U for, namely tackling a specific article that catches their eye.
   • does so without realizing any benefit from the format and mindset that C/U is designed for: interaction of editors in the process of deciding what kind of subject-matter background is helpful, and what kind of editing is called for.
   • muddies the waters, leaving readers less clear about what the (main) function of C/U is.
2. Not putting it somewhere else deprives it of the wider audience of people who, for instance, just find C/U too irritating for words and never look it. Yes, its being on C/U will make those working on it more quickly think of putting a deep-fix article onto C/U after doing the shallow fix. But something i'd expect to be very effective is a 'graph about "BTW, be alert to any need for additional, non-syntactic, cleanup of the article. Many WPians regularly go to WP:CU looking for chances to do work that someone else didn't want to be distracted by, and ...."

As to not signing, i most often do sign what i add to C/U, but you may have noticed that it's one of the few (or perhaps the only) non-article page where the option of not signing is specifically mentioned. I think that is to encourage people to make quick suggestions without fearing they may be launching into an extended dialogue that they don't have time for. (And, like the specific request not to date-stamp, to save space, as i mentioned early on.) This seemed to me an especially good occasion for an anonymous suggestion, an idea per se rather than someone weighing in with their view (throwing their weight of reputation onto the scales). I put the idea out there, and would have preferred to let the idea fend for itself without my trying to be the advocate for it. Since you went to the trouble to ask, i don't resent the effort of responding to you, but my question was actually intended as a question, not a rhetorical question, and my plan was to let the process of editors answering it settle the question of whether a lot of people see C/U as i do or i'm just quirky about that, as i am with so many things.

It sounds like a great, valuable, project, and i'll be pleased if our unexpected dialogue about it turns out to further it rather than just waste your time. Thanks for your interest in my view of it. --Jerzy(t) 04:16, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Not a resources-template expert, but, yeah, sure sounds like a good long-term place, and i'd be surprised if anyone finds that presumptuous in any way. But don't rule out a one-time Wikipedia:Announcements or WP:VP description. --Jerzy(t) 07:07, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

I meant to say, "Don't rule out doing both the template (for long term) and Announcements or VP (for immediate attention even more intensive than C/U). (But maybe that was clear anyway.) [Smile] --Jerzy(t) 15:08, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Very cool. A good reminder to me that the genius of WP is the unplanned collaboration, such as the discussion with you that i tried to avoid having! And i think it's about time that i took yr IMO-very-clever "return the favor" summaries to heart, & visit your list. (Who knows what it might lead me to. [smile]) --Jerzy(t) 13:58, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)

Finding old style taxoboxes

Do you think that the proram you wrote to find broken syntax, could also be used to find taxoboxes that don't use the template but use the much scarier table wiki code? --nixie 01:05, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You're right about just looking for pages that link to the old taxonomy template. I'll direct the tree of life people there if they're interested in updating all the taxoboxes. Thanks--nixie 02:39, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

MacGyverMagic for adminship

I've decided to take the plunge and self-nominate for adminship to make the work I do a lot easier. Please head over to Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship#MacGyverMagic and let your voice be heard. There's no hard feelings if you oppose, just make sure you let me know how I can improve. -- [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 10:29, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

LinkBot

Hi Nick, LinkBot is now marked as a bot. If you change the task of the bot to do something other than what was approved at Wikipedia talk:bots, or need the bot flag removed for any other reason, please ask at m:requests for permissions. Angela. 23:57, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps you should get approval at Wikipedia talk:bots before running it on a larger scale, although if there are no objections to what it is doing, I'm not sure why there would be objections to just doing more of that. You don't need to ask at m:requests for permissions again since now LinkBot has a bot flag, its edits are hidden from recent changes and running it on a larger scale makes no difference in terms of which access level is set since there is only bot level. Angela. 01:00, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

for cleaning up the embarrassing remains of my cut and paste creation of brokens redirects. older≠wiser 20:03, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)

WP:RfD

Hi, I'm going around putting notices on peoples' pages about their redirects (and deleted the ones that were created by anon's) - can you hold off adding more until I get done with this batch? Thanks... Noel (talk) 03:29, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, you've just increased the number of entries we deal with in a day by about a factor of 5-8! If this were going to be the steady state, we'd have to do something, I think, but if it's just for a while, until we get it all straightened out, we can probably manage it. If they were all created by anons, no problem, I'd just nuke them on sight (redirs to NX targets can be nuked), but alas they aren't all that simple. Still, if you could kind of dribble them out so it's a manageable increase in load (say 2-3 times normal) it will be no problem. Would you mind doing them over, say, a 2-week period? Or do you want to be done with them faster than that? Noel (talk) 03:56, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'm making good progress with the ones you listed today, but it is taking a chunk of time, so a little slower would be good. Thanks! Noel (talk) 04:32, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You might also consider that some users contribute to Wikipedia on a less-than-daily basis. Redirects with missing targets may fill a purpose if covering for common misspellings or serving to avoid the creation of multiple articles on the same subject. --Johan Magnus 08:00, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Summer Hill

FYI, I've re-nominated it for featured status. Ambi 00:44, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Unification of the different Wiki fixup projects?

Might I suggest, being the nosey sod that I am, the project talk page for maximal coverage? --Phil | Talk 09:32, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Link Suggester suggestion

Have you thought about a variation on the "talk page vs list of pages" method? If you put the suggestions into a sub-page of the appropriate talk page and transclude them in, you can also transclude that sub-page into a "master page". For example, if you put the suggestions for Abraham Lincoln into talk:Abraham Lincoln/Link suggestions, you then add {{talk:Abraham Lincoln/Link suggestions}} into talk:Abraham Lincoln (under ==Link suggestions==) and into User:LinkBot/Master list (under ==Abraham Lincoln==). Then it can easily be seen how well the bot is doing, and individual page-maintainers are not overwhelmed. What do you think? --Phil | Talk 09:19, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

I have remodelled your entry at talk:Abraham Lincoln#Link suggestions as an example. I have introduced sub-sections for "Outward" and "Inward" links and moved most of the rubric to the top. What do you think? --Phil | Talk 09:25, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Oh, and I created that Master List :-) --Phil | Talk 09:37, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Unless…I just had a thought: do you want to think about linking up your link suggestions with a Wikipedia:To-do list? --Phil | Talk 09:37, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Wiki Syntax BUG

It seams that there's a small bug with your software. It seams to be realated to the MATH tag:

'''<math> \sigma_p </math>'''

There were a lot of False-positives in the Modern portfolio theory article, as pointed out by user Wiml.

Thanks. -- Marianocecowski 08:44, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Found another problem. When a [[ starts in one line and ends in another.

This is common when using the [[ A | B ]] syntax, or the more complex one for images. A good (or bad) example is Bacterium, which has an image whose alternative text is a table.

-- Marianocecowski 08:44, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your MSG in my talk. You're right, I didn't realize that the problem are actualy only images. It goes even further, as many people use recursive brackets to make a box with a picture and text (a good example is in Cyril Royston Guyton Bassett with links in the comments of an image).

The only way around this would beto you add to your parser also a "[[Image:" <-> "]]" pair, that can have [[]] inside. Thanks again, Marianocecowski 09:32, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Link suggester etc

That I was writing on the "don't like" page wasn't a general criticism, only about a special problem, you now have already fixed.

But I'm speculating, that a completely different approach would be of greater value and acceptance: Why don't make it a "Pull", rather than a "Push" service? I.e. someone working on article can request analysis by the Link Suggester and get the result? This would of course work best, when you can host it somewhere, so that it can repond without the delay and hassle of your manual intervention.

And in addition, when it is a requested service, it can even give more results of offline analysis, which would be considered spam if delivered without request. For example a category inheritance tree for the article, or doubled wikilinks, or dead external links, etc.

Pjacobi 10:35, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Updating the offline reports

Would you mind updating the myriad listings at Wikipedia:Offline_reports, Wikipedia:Deadend pages, and Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles? I know you have access to a dump of the Wikipedia database and I need your help on those listings. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 05:07, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

Syntax

Thanks for the thanks. *grins* I've actually found the redirect fixes to be the easiest. I get into a nice routine of opening up the five or so candidates into new tabs in FireFox, tabbing through each to open the redirect (if it's blue) or deleting it (if its red). then I go through and "What links here" on the ones that are left and deal with any of the problems I find. - UtherSRG 13:31, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement

Hi there, Nickj! Thanks for the encouragement. My girlfriend was out of town and since I just moved into a new place, I couldn't find a better way to spend my lonely Saturday evening :-) Actually, since I do quite a bit of HTML work by hand, I've become quite good at spotting problems in others' code (*pats back*) so it was less of a commitment than one might think :-) --David Iberri | Talk 19:01, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

The Humungous Image Tagging Project

Hi. You've helped with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax, so I thought it worth alerting you to the latest and greatest of Wikipedia fixing project, User:Yann/Untagged Images, which is seeking to put copyright tags on all of the untagged images. There are probably, oh, thirty thousand or so to do (he said, reaching into the air for a large figure). But hey: they're images ... you'll get to see lots of random pretty pictures. That must be better than looking for at at and the the, non? You know you'll love it. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)

On the image tagging project someone suggested that - it should be possible to scan database dump, extract all untagged images, and sort them by users; and then, send to each user with a large number of images a list of them and a request to tag them, so everyone could tag their own images as appropriate. Sound like something your up for? --nixie 12:54, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

disamb suggestions

A lot of the disamb suggestions are plurals that should not be created. Any way to get those delisted? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 13:50, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

User:Nickj/Redirects missing a trick

Your Easy Preview links are (arguably) missing a trick, by failing to take the opportunity to include a link back to User:Nickj/Redirects which might pull in the crowd which sits on Recent Changes waiting for inspiration.

Thus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=kilotons&wpTextbox1=%23REDIRECT+%5B%5BMegaton%5D%5D&action=edit&wpSummary=Add+redirect+to+%5B%5BMegaton%5D%5D&wpPreview=1

might as easily be

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=kilotonz&wpTextbox1=%23REDIRECT+%5B%5BMegaton%5D%5D&action=edit&wpSummary=Add+redirect+to+%5B%5BMegaton%5D%5D%20-%20%5B%5BUser:Nickj/Redirects%7CMissing%20Redirects%20-%20Join%20us%20in%20adding%20redirects%20and%20disambigs%20that%20appear%20to%20be%20missing%5D%5D&wpPreview=1

... or somesuch. Oh, excellent piece of work, btw ... the Easy Preview makes your project amongst the best/easiest of the fixup projects to date, imo. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)

Ah. some more feedback for you. Your method on missing disambiguations seems to find a maximum of two candidate destinations. Oops. Not so ... it looked like this was the case, having studied 006 & 009, but 000 has many possible matches. Apologies. Meanwhile, I went on to say: So

%27%27%27the+Duke+of+Northumberland%27%27%27+is+either%3A%0A%2A+%5B%5BJohn+Dudley%2C+1st+Duke+of+Northumberland%5D%5D%0A%2A+%5B%5BAlgernon+Percy%2C+4th+Duke+of+Northumberland%5D%5D%0A%7B%7Bdisambig%7D%7D%0A&action=edit&wpSummary=Add+disambig+to+%5B%5BJohn+Dudley%2C+1st+Duke+of+Northumberland%5D%5D%2C+%5B%5BAlgernon+Percy%2C+4th+Duke+of+Northumberland%5D%5D&wpPreview=1 Easy Preview the Duke of Northumberland is either:

• John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland 3
• Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland 3

fails to point to the other Northumberlands listed on Duke of Northumberland, or to the Duke of Northumberland page itself ... it turns out the suggested disambig page should in fact be a redirect. I'm not sure how you sort out the "disambig should in fact be a redirect" issue, but I would urge you to improve your method so that more than two possible matches are listed ... assuming that I'm right in thinking this is a current limitation. Equally, I accept I might be asking for the moon, given the size of the search space involved in finding third & successive possible destinations. --Tagishsimon (talk)

I think leave as is for this run. I've been through all of the disambig pages and dealt with all of the The Duke Of / The Earl Of suggestions, all of which I've made into redirects to the existing Duke Of / Earl Of pages ... en passant, getting quite annoyed with the number of chinless aristocrats littering the wikipedia ... but there you go. I'm not sure I understand all of your response, such as so it's very hard to avoid overwriting what people have already been done, and/or including a suggestion multiple times, but that's probably because it is 4am GMT and I should be in bed. I'd have guessed that your method would only suggest disambigs where there were a) enough piped links and b) where a page of the name which you would otherwise suggest for the disambig page did not already exist. As I say, not sure.

Ditto This has been added to the pages that haven't been touched yet (I don't want to overwrite what people have already done), so it's on all the redirects apart from 0, 1, 3, 8 and 14. Don't understand why overwriting is a problem, assuming that you remove the suggestions for redirects which now exist.

Whatever, after sampling all of the fixup projects, I'm still most impressed with the ease of use of yours; did I not have some real-world work to do, I could happily spend some more hours now working through all of the suggestions. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Plurals

Hi Nick. Thanks for your enthusiasm in adding missing articles. However I don't think it's really necessary to create a redirect from plural titles to singlular titles; e.g. Hilbert spaces to Hilbert space. Apart from the fact that this would add tens of thousands of articles to Wikipedia, it has long been policy that article titles will be singular. While not everyone who somes will know this, they all find out very quickly. There are exceptions of course, such as album and movie titles which are plural (The Invincibles to give a silly example). DJ Clayworth 04:20, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Plural redirects are OK (not required, but definitely OK). See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (pluralization)#Redirects. Noel (talk) 15:22, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Making a REDIRECT for a plural might make sense for an irregular plural which doesn't simply add an "s" (companies→company for example). These should be labelled with template:R from plural when created. --Phil | Talk 08:11, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Ooooh, good catch. Nickj, is there any way to recreate the lists you created, and filter out all entries of the form {foo}s -> {foo}; we could then use that list to have a bot add the "R from plural" tag. (I would support a bot for this application - the results will be right 99.98% of the time, if not higher). Noel (talk) 15:45, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi again. OK, I'm on board with what you are doing, but I've just found 13th centuries. There can only ever be one 13th Century. I guess technically also 13th C BC and possible others for other year numbering systems, but for practical purposes only ever one. Why do we need the plural? DJ Clayworth 06:17, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Admin?

So, I was thinking of nominating you for admin. You interested? Noel (talk) 20:55, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. If you ever decide it's something you'd find useful, please let me know. Noel (talk) 01:42, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Spam

It seems to me that the section on internal spamming only applies to user talk pages, as it says "By internal spamming, we mean cross-posting of messages to a large number of user talk pages..." anthony 警告 01:58, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Dabs and rds

Hey, thanks for making that great rd and dab project page! Have you seen this one? It's similar, but based on syntax instead of usage.

You may have already thought of this, but it would be useful to have a "Suggested additions to disambiguation pages" page. Here's how it could work, I imagine:

1. Find pages that links [[A|B]].
2. Is B a page? If not, skip it.
3. Does page B link to page A? If so, skip it.
4. Does page B link to page "B (disambiguation)", which links to A? If so, skip it.
5. For those left, you have an indication that page B ought to disambiguate to page A.

So for example, let's say the page on "John Doe" says:

John Doe lived in [[Kentucky]] his whole life. He lived in [[Henry County, Kentucky|Henry County]] and [[Bullitt County, Kentucky|Bullitt County]], before finally settling in [[McCracken County, Kentucky|McCracken County]].

Suppose further that the "Henry Country" page is already a dab page that links to "Henry County, Kentucky", so you ignore that one. Let's say the "Bullitt County" page is about Bullitt County, Texas, but it links at the top to "Bullitt County (disambiguation), which links to Bullitt County, Kentucky. You ignore that one. But the "McCracken County" page is not a dab page, or doesn't have a corresponding dab page, or else is a dab page but doesn't link to McCracken County, Kentucky. So your bot would list it.

What do you think? Is that something you'd want to set up? – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)}[[]] 13:56, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding LinkBot

The most difficult part is when the names are spelled differently in the article compared to the title pages. This is especially true for Arabic/Islamic or other foreign names that are transliterated several ways into English. If the LinkBot can guess the links even when they are spelled slightly differently, that would make it really useful bot.

Also, can the LinkBot automatically link instead of just suggesting them? This article needs to be wikified: Timeline of Islamic history. The problem in this case again is spelling differences. In any case, if the LinkBot can at least link automatically the ones that are spelled correctly, that would help fixing the rest of the article. Can you run the Linkbot on Timeline of Islamic history? (and if possible, link automatically)? OneGuy 15:09, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maybe there should be an option whether the bot checks for different spelling. It's probably not needed in most cases. However, it could be helpful with a very long article like Timeline of Islamic history where the names have several transliteration. The problem with redirects is first finding whether the article with different spelling even exists OneGuy 05:51, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Link suggester

I see another user has briefly touched on this subject, but I'd like to make it more explicit: please make the linkbot available for interactive use. I'd really like a quick way of getting suggested links to improve a freshly written article's context, without having to mull over every word myself (type, preview; type, preview...) In this fashion, the bot doesn't even have to spit out usable wiki code (and certainly not on the talk page), just give me ideas for good links. Since the bot wouldn't even be a bot in this sense, you don't have to be conservative about it. Put it up online somewhere to paste wiki in and have it suggest links (ideally, this should work for articles that don't even exist yet).

I will come to your house personally to sing "Wind Beneath My Wings" if you do this. Well, no, but it would earn you a WikiThanks. 82.92.119.11 20:28, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for finding the misplaced subpage

I went ahead and moved it to "User:Cool Hand Luke/Sandbox/pictures suppressed", and deleted the redirect. Thank you for finding that! Cool Hand Luke 00:18, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hawke Redirect

Hey Nick, I'm the one responsible for the Hawke redirect. I submitted it for deletion but was told to turn into disambig, which I did. I also left a message on User_talk:Nickj/Redirects. It's a moot point now since those particular sets are marked as completed, but for future reference, do I need to strike them (redirects with no linking page except yours) out or can I just consider it completed? Thanks--jag123 07:34, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just find that the amount of work and mainly, the amount of waiting time (for the edit page to load, to save, etc) involved to strikethrough an entry that's *only* linked from redirects-xxx.txt pages seems more trouble than it's worth. I assume that the next run won't pick up red links from your own Redirects project page and therefore shouldn't show up again in the new list, unless it gets used again.

For instance, consider the entry Geoffrey IV in User:Nickj/Redirects/redirects-027.txt. That entry isn't linked from anywhere so why bother actually considering whether a redirect is appropriate, since it's not even being used? My question is: if I were to go through the rest of that page, and either made redirects for appropriate entries, fixed ambiguous syntax in the article, or crossed off any entry that definitely should not/never be a redirect AND everything that remains "to be fixed" are entries only linked from the listing page, can I consider that page complete and cross it off on the main page? Is it really necessary for me to cross off every entry that is no longer linked from anywhere? I admit I'm a tad lazy but unless I misunderstand how your software works, I don't see why the extra work and wait (oh god, the wait!) makes a difference. Know what I mean? --jag123 23:23, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ahhhhhh. I see now. I definitely don't want the same entries that I've already looked at to reappear later. When you say you strikeout an entire section, do you mean <s>*entry 1 * entry 2 * entry 3 </s> ? That's sufficient to prevent those entries from being recompiled? If so, that's a much faster/easier way to do it. Is it possible for you to add a link similar to the Easy Preview that automatically strikeouts an entry? That way, someone could open a new window from that link and then just press "Save Page".

Also, regarding the numbers that appear beside the entries, is that the number of times that label is used to point to the same article? For instance germ cells → gamete 11. Does that mean that the label "germ cells" is used eleven times and that in every case, it points to gamete? Or does it mean that the label "germ cells" is used often, but in eleven cases, it points to gamete? --jag123 01:32, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Nick: here's a simpler parser suggestion to handle multiple line strikeouts. (I hope this works for your code, if not, just ignore it!) Have a variable with scope visible throughout the parser called "in_strikeout" or something. When you see a <s>, you increment (or set, depending on your philosophy :-); when you see the matching </s>, you clear/decrement it. The the rest of your parsing code should basically run unmodified, except that when you recognize each entry, you have to check in_strikeout, and if it's set/non-zero, then you do special "list this entry for never doing".

As for the ease of doing the strikeout, I found them quite OK, actually - I liked leaving a comment on the ones I didn't do, and it was easy to add the strikeout tags as the same time. The edit groups could be a bit bigger than 5, though; but it was good to have the lists broken up like that, the list edits went faster that way. Noel (talk) 21:17, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Redirects

Well, we seem to be making good progress! I keep a couple of windows open, and click away on them when I'm waiting for the Wiki to respond to other requests. I'll probably move to the other end and work from there, to keep from getting mixed up with you.

Also, I note a modestly high rate of rejects, which I think definitely validates those of us who were concerned about doing it totally automatically. Having said that, the system you set up is really fabulous - it makes it incredibly easy to do them manually. Great work (hence the barnstar). Noel (talk) 15:22, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sorry to be slow getting back - busy. I moved this whole section down here so you'd see my reply - my apologies if I shouldn't have.

The barnstar was more than due, so no thanks needed! Well, that first 25 pages may have been only 1/6th of them, but they sure went quickly enough! I did most of the first two pages, had to go do something else, came back to do more and they were all done! I put it down to the excellent listings format you develeoped - it made it so easy to do them.

Yes, my idea was to add the {R from plural} to redirects which were plurals. I understand your not wanting to go back and add this to pages that people already worked on, to prevent confusion. On the lists from those pages (if you still have the original lists somewhere) you might want to use a bot to add that tag to all that have the form [foos] -> [foo] - you can be pretty sure that 99.98% of that particular form are plurals, and the rest (and any errors) people will catch over time and fix. (I list only that one because that's the one that you can get that 99.9%+ assurance on.) Your idea sounds good for any new lists, though. (People can delete the tag on ones that aren't plurals but they do want to link; shouldn't be much work as there shouldn't be too many of those.)

Hats off again for the great work on this. Noel (talk) 20:45, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Unix system

moved to talk:Unix system

See my comments there.

-Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley 06:29, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)

Missing image tags

There is, I think, an issue with Wikipedia:Untagged Images, in that whoever first put together the lists of image records with no copyright tags seems to have exited stage left, never to return. It would be v.useful if some SQL hacker - you, for instance - were able to recreate series of pages with no copyright tags. I guess one pattern to look for would be the absence of {{ or }} on an image file. The other would be to look exhaustively for the absence of tags listed on Wikipedia:Image copyright tags. So, err, dunno. Would that be something that might appeal to you? The current list of images is from August 2004 ... we are already long overdue for a newer report. Yours hopefully --Tagishsimon (talk)

Late news. In the unlikely event, &c, we could do with two cuts - alpha lists as we currently have them, but also lists indexed under the name of the uplkoader, so we can point a wikipedian at all of his/her images for taagging. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Redirects Project - late reply

Hey Nick, Sorry for taking so long to reply. Regarding your Dec 21 post on my talk page, I think you do enough already and I wouldn't want to increase your workload. I asked about those "shortcuts" because I didn't fully understand how your program worked. Now that I know, I'll be sure to cross off the entries I work on. Thanks for taking the time to explain :) --jag123 20:10, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Croydon - Needs disambiguation page

I keyed burwood historical society croydon into Google and the only thing that struck my eye was your user page as the first hit! On further investigation, I soon realised that:

• the ref to Burwood Historical Society was more a note to yourself - you actually get out of the house and do paper research!
• there was a need.

So I have created it - see Talk:Croydon (disambiguation). I leave it to you to edit the articles for the Australian Croydons.

Are you sure that (to use a favourite phrase of mine) you have not opened a large can of worms here? Glancing at the map of urban and semi-urban Australia tells me that List of places in Australia named after places in other parts of the world will be a long article. and every one will need disambiguation edit/s of some sort!

My wife has half a sister: Ursula Webster in Cremorne. Have you met her?

RHaworth 14:44, 2005 Jan 24 (UTC)

Redirect suggestions project

I just wanted to make sure you're aware that your redirects project is complete. Will you be creating a new batch? – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 15:05, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

Link Suggester

Would it be possible to download a copy of the Link Suggester (not source code) for use at the Creatures Wiki? --Sgeo^TC 04:27, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

Sutton

I have just added lots of places and one person to Sutton (disambiguation). The page is completely silent about Australia - though Google tells me, as I had expected, that you have some Suttons. I will leave it to you. -- RWH 16:42, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)

LinkBot On Demand?

I was spouting some ideas on linking in #wikipedia and JRM asked me to write them up. So I did ... but in being bold, I putting them on the LinkBot FAQ Page. -- Dbroadwell 02:12, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm reading up on php and already have a list on my hands of stuff to do. But we have the outline, If we flesh out to psudocode can the mailing list help? IE; Some of the X'Bot on Demand' I think I might be able to do, but mostly not. (without using python) I am interested, but an green at PHP with no one up the line really should I get stuck. Plus i have a bit of a handicap from BASIC being my first language in that I'm a very procedural coder. I realise it's still going to have to have a dump to compare a aginst and therefore won't see newly created articles to link against, but that can be fixed by updating and a old one will do for now. I see the time geting linkbot running well as equal to the time I'll spend manually searching for every link over the articles I write in. And not meaning to complain, but my PHP development environment is missing things ... like being able to run the code.

How long does it take to generate a 'linked' example for one article? -- Dbroadwell 14:28, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've been brainstorming and chatting, there are a few minor changes to the flow of my suggestion. As User:r3m0t pointed out to me, putting the template in the main namespace is unnecessary and suggested soemthing like {{User:Linkbot/linkthis}} instead, which is far more explicit than just {{linkthis}} and still yields a parseable list of articles to do. So the first step for me is parsing that list. Yeah I'm interested, and have found PHP to be grokable ... at least on a basic loopy level. No jumping through code hoops for me, more like beating on walls with code hammer untill hole achieved. But consider me working on; $\downarrow$

'The other aspects of the suggestion would need to be implemented (clear the linkthis tag from target page, add note to user's talk page, Log page was parsed by linkbot, and move old entries from /todaylog to /archivelog).' Nickj (t) 00:03, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The further things about memory and cvs will adress later. I'm going to skip the 'nice' logging to the requesters page, and am looking at just swapping templates from a todo to a done. But I do have som questions. Implied in what you have said so far, and correct my if I'm wrong, is that you are loading and parsing the 800mb database bump in that first 30 minutes. Can you give me an algorithm overview? What format does linkbot need the 'todo list' in? I gues I'm geting close to needing to see the code to patch it ... which i am trying to avoid needing as of yet. (I have a wiki to test on from a friend of mine, which has a very small DB as of yet ... so i can run test cases faster than a wikipedian one.) -- Dbroadwell 15:57, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

After more reading, I get why it takes as long as it does. As you've stated though, that's a bit heavyweight to process anywhere but at the cluster. Given you'r permission, i'd like to redesign the link suggester into an outward links only schema. For one reason, speed. Parsing the words in an article against just the non-redirect articles in the current table in the more on demand motive will allow it so slowly walk the database. Your design, is vastly superior with it's completeness. While mine is only suggsting outward links as you process through looking at just outward link, you will find the backlinks of an article, in time. No problem with stale articles here, the current version of an article via the Specia:export and some code to save those changes via php and the web editing. To generate the index of articles the current database export is still needed, but parsing out the non-redirect articles and coming up with suggestions based on that should take minimal resources to load. I've centralised all of the talk at User_talk:dbroadwell/php ... I see the perfect niche for this lightweight version for watching the 'new pages' and getting them out of being a deadend fster. -- Dbroadwell 17:40, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I greatly appreciate the code, it's a different perspective, which is good for learning. Unfortunately I hadn't updated that page with my current status. Though I have some comments. You made the assumtion (because I didn't say otherwise) that I was trying to get ONLY edit pages. I have the XML parser for Special:export, which saves all of the anti html mangling you had to do. And I have routines for edit (get and save) and handling summaries. I am working on getting the html text out of special pages themselves between and ... and your code has that algoritm and more, thank you. I am extracting Special:whatlinkshere into a list of articles that have that template in for flow control on a link(b)ot (lightweight).

For your own refernce;

function gettext($title) {
    // returns article wikiml from SERVER via [[Special:export]]
    // top article layer only // Next line wrapped in three
    xml_parse_into_struct(xml_parser_create('UTF-8'),
        file_get_contents(SERVER . '/wiki/Special:Export/'
        . $title), $val, $ind);
    $text = $val[$ind['TEXT'][0]]['value'];
    if (SITECHARSET != 'UTF-8') {
        $text = utf8_decode($text);
    }
    return $text;
}

I have been using a CURL external executable to actually do the reads and writes. Which was to be able to use an account to log in for edit credits. I will say this, your source was VERY legeible and unassuming on the state of the data. Thank you ... when I update this (in the next week) do you want me to email you a copy? -- Dbroadwell 03:12, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, you seem to catch my ponderings from between classes, yet from before I get back home. I'm also very close to my alpha test for this implementation. -- Dbroadwell 23:33, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

While I don't need the fullon linkbot source for this, I will certianly like to look through it. I'm quite certian you have the function for cleaning up the link lists ... ect. -- Dbroadwell 02:28, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fun with redirects

Hi Nickj! Did you see my post at the pump on this matter? Carnildo recommended to me to report this incident, which I'd be inclined to let you do, since you've got a little more clout than I. :) --Fbriere 05:31, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Never mind: already done --Fbriere 06:30, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

BTW, I've added a notice on the talk page, and have put up a copy of the page that can be used in the interim. --Fbriere 08:23, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just so you know, I marked redirect-target-000.txt as completed, even though it's not really done. All the entries there are waiting for a stub, a reply or a decision though, so there's nothing there for volunteers to help with. I figured it'd be less confusing to just move it out of the way. --Fbriere 08:12, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Wiki Syntax subpages

I added many subpages of Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Some of the higher-numbered ones, I assume won't ever be needed again, since the first-ever run was likely to have found more mistakes than any subsequent runs. But I assume that there's no harm done if some are deleted for now and re-created later? I assume you use a bot to do that? User:Burgundavia wanted me to check with you before he deleted them. -- Beland 06:07, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

LCA

Hey Nick, I'm glad you enjoyed the talk! You should have come up and interrupted me, I was probably just checking mail or something similarly unimportant anyway :) It would be nice to meet some other Sydney Wikipedians. Anyway, thanks for your note. Cheers, Neilc 14:49, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

New batch

Thanks! Unfortunately, I'm up to my eyeballs at fr, and I've already put up more time than I should've on WP, given my backlog at work, and...

Bah, who am I kidding; I've already started fixing some redirects. I just can't pass on this -- it's too much fun. :) --Fbriere 10:11, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Airport edits

I am baffled about the edits change |} to {{Airport end frame}}. Can you explain? Burgundavia (✈ take a flight?) 04:01, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

Taxobox images

Thanks for pointing out that I was mangling images in taxoboxes. I did a check for articles where this happened and I believe I've fixed them all. Gdr 10:39, 2005 May 26 (UTC)

Redirects

Can you put together a new list of redirects? Leave me a notice then. Thanks. Actually, I have been thinking for a month or so that such a project would be usable, but unfortunately haven't had time to manage it. --Eleassar777 15:53, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Suggest links for bold text in the first paragraph?

Anything in bold text in the first paragraph is likely to be an alternative name. If the resulting rash of redirects from non-English names is felt to be a good idea, could you consider using them as input for the link suggester? This would be most effective after full Unicode article titles are enabled in MediaWiki 1.5. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 17:36, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

lots of edits, not an admin

Hi - I made a list of users who've been around long enough to have made lots of edits but aren't admins. If you're at all interested in becoming an admin, can you please add an '*' immediately before your name in this list? I've suggested folks nominating someone might want to puruse this list, although there is certainly no guarantee anyone will ever look at it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:46, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the star

That'll teach me not to check my user page for days! Anyways, I really appreciated the thought :) Jareth 02:02, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

He

I have created a new Wikiproject which aims to bring computer veterans and people who need help with software tools they use on Wikipedia together. I'm writing this to you because I saw you on the bot list and wanted to know if you would be willing to help. There is already an open case: WikiProject help desk/20050702 Dmcdevit. The Windows tool that Dmcdevit uses to perform Transwikis has broken since the software upgrade. Triddle July 6, 2005 22:32 (UTC)

Just asking when the next update of the Syntax project will be...

No hurry, but I happend acorss the page and wondered when you were planning to put out another one; I know there's been a dump since June... Thanks for all your work on the 'pedia! JesseW 05:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Australian articles

For the addition of numerous Australian stubs, particularly in the state of New South Wales, I hereby award you the Barnstar of National Merit. It seems that I can never do Newpages patrol without seeing your additions :) ral315 03:05, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

How-To?

Sir, could you tell me how I might request that LinkBot take a look at a particular page? I couldn't quite figure out how to queue it up ... is it just a simple request to you kind of a thing? — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 02:37, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

Sydney Suburbs

Hey there. I basically just followed the link to "List of suburbs or localities" for each of the local government areas, and reformatted their list of suburbs. Of course, I worked off the assumption that it was correct data - perhaps it's not? Feel free to delete any that you are pretty sure don't exist. Enochlau 10:46, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmm yes, there's quite a bit of gunk there. I'll run through the additions through that website you mentioned. Thanks again. Enochlau 10:54, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

For exemplary research.

Nick - Good job on the research for the AfD's on NSW suburbs. It looks like you really put some time and effort into not only getting it right, but documenting it so that it is verifiable by others. As a result, I have changed my vote on Cattai North. I award you this blue morpho butterfly as a token of my esteem. Cheers! --DavidConrad 05:33, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I voted delete on 4 of the phoney suburbs you put up, but I feel Burnside, New South Wales is a slightly different case. I have added a bit of information to the article - could you take a look and see what you think? JPD 09:17, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Link Request

Nickj, per your remark on my page, could you include Bedbug on LInkbot's next run? Thanks! — WCityMike ^{(T | C)} 13:13, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

Tennyson issues

I think I've got it fixed now - just yell if I've stuffed up, or if there's something else that needs fixing. Ambi 01:31, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the barnstar. I guess I'll have to expand my user page a bit more at some point, but for now I'll keep working on suburbs and other things. JPD 11:15, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

xml dump

I see your post at Wikipedia_talk:Database download#New XML database dump format. Do you already have the workaround for the problem ? Have you successfuly import those xml files ? Borgx^(talk) 00:47, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Moves

I've done Circular Quay, New South Wales and Eveleigh, New South Wales, but I've left Bankstown Airport where it was. I know it's an oddity because it's also kind of an official suburb, but it'd be the only airport article on Wikipedia to have the state suffix attached if it was moved. Ambi 09:24, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Fact checking requested for Mobbs Hill, New South Wales

Hi Nickj, I have replied to your question on my talk page. I will have to chase up the original suburb naming issue. Cheers, --Daveb 12:41, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

George Watson

See my reply to your comment on his Talk page. MulgaBill 20:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Congrats!

Just wanted to congratulate you on the fine work you've done on Summer Hill! Seeing as you're probably the right person to ask for suburbs-related articles, would you be able to check Waterfall Gully, of which I am the primary contributor for?

G 05:39, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Maine Coon pictures

I noticed your desire to post a pic of your coon. Per discussion I have created a gallery to house the extra pics at Maine Coon/Gallery. Please post your pic there and, if you want, you can nominate it for inclusion in the article. Thanks and I look forward to seeing your cat!Gator(talk) 17:05, 4 November 2005 (UTC)