ListasBot

Adding an empty parameter

What's with this edit? --MZMcBride (talk) 17:27, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

ListasBot 2.4: If the template does not have a 'class' parameter, add a blank one (as requested by User:Magioladitis). Mikaey, Devil's advocate 20:45, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think these little minor zero-sum changes (add empty param, remove empty param) should be done on their own. Only when there is a substantive edit being done. –xeno^talk 20:46, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe so, but this is a feature that was requested by another user, and I don't fully understand the reason for it (past that it was supposed to be an encouragement for people to assign a class), so I'm hesitant to remove it without knowing whether or not it's still a desired behavior. Let me ask Magioladitis for his input. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 06:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It is for uniformation reasons. KingbtoK adds it too. The idea behind it was that this will encourage people to clasify WPBiography articles. I think xeno disagrees of the empty parameter to be solely added without further action. Since Mikaey is an excellent programmer I ll make a full proposal in the following days of how to deal with WPBiography banners. This will offer a way out of minor edits for both ListasBot and Yobot. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:05, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Fact is, the unassessed biography articles for the most-part are entirely ignored by the project. Having a bot go through and add an empty class parameter for the convenience of a future assessor is holding a torch for an assessor that may never show up. It should not be just done on its own. It is an insignificant edit that will simply clog watchlists and drain resources. Individuals who are assessing will not be slowed down much by a missing "class=" parameter and will know how to add it manually or are probably using semi-automatic tools in the first place. By all means, if ListasBot is already passing through, go ahead and add the empty parameter, but do not commit an edit for that reason alone. –xeno^talk 13:12, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Fine, it's been fixed. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 13:17, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks kindly! –xeno^talk 13:22, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Synchronizing

I've been fixing ListasBot errors ever since it began synchronizing listas with DEFAULTSORT. I would say that more than half of such edits which I've examined have been wrong. I've only looked at the ones which show up on my Watchlist or in Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts. I haven't mentioned anything until now because, although the bot's been making mistakes, it's been valuable in that it pointed out existing incorrect DEFAULTSORTs. But I do wonder if it's appropriate for a bot to be making so many incorrect edits. Maybe it would be better to create a page similar to User:ListasBot/Reported biography pages which would list the pages and display both the listas and the DEFAULTSORT; then a human could quickly determine which was correct and which was in need of fixing. The human could either manually fix the incorrect one, or optionally, sort the entries in such a way that the bot could come back and properly process them. Just a suggestion. In general, you and your bots are doing a great job. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 20:30, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm...well, the pages the bot is editing shouldn't be showing up on Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts, because the bot updates listas tags in any other templates that are using it. If you have examples of this happening, it might be helpful to provide them. And I don't know that a list would be all that helpful, because in my experience, lists tend to be ignored. Honestly, I think it's better to have some consistency between listas/DEFAULTSORT values, and it seems like DEFAULTSORTs are maintained more than listas values are. Throwing these edits into a list would only make more work for the rest of us. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 06:53, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Here are two examples in which ListasBot created a sort conflict. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 08:00, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Gyah...ok, I see what caused it, I wasn't expecting the space after "listas" and before the equals sign. That should be fixed now. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 13:06, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I have a suggestion for an improvement - if this is technically possible. Before the bot makes a change, can you have it compare the name of the article, the DEFAULTSORT, and the LISTAS parameter? In this case the bot copied over a correct LISTAS because I screwed up with the DEFAULTSORT. Maybe you could have the bot make an entry in a separate log for a situation where LISTAS and article name agree for you to manually check. I hope this helps. These changes are valuable - the bot have fixed a few of my other errors. Royalbroil 13:23, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I apologize if my last edit caused the bot to stop. I did read the page's edit notice and didn't see anything about it in there. Please change the edit notice - I would have added to your talk page, Mikaey. Royalbroil 13:27, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

That's okay. The problem is that there's no consistently good correlation between the article name and the {{DEFAULTSORT}}/|listas= values. The main problem is that there's not a good way to tell the bot where a first name ends and a last name begins. Even if there were, cultures like Arabic, Japanese, etc., generally have the family name first (as opposed to most Western names, which are family name last), and the bot wouldn't be able to tell which order it's supposed to use -- unfortunately, it's just not that smart. There's even more special situations involving suffixes (Jr., Sr., II, III, Duke of Earl, etc). That being said, I generally find that {{DEFAULTSORT}}'s are maintained more than |listas='s are, and there's no reason for the two to be out of sync, so I find that getting them in sync, on the whole, does more good than harm. Also, I'm aversed to making up lists, because (as I stated above), they tend to be forgotten about and not worked. Thanks, Mikaey, Devil's advocate 18:51, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I wanted to point out that I had to revert every single edit by this bot which showed up on my watchlist, because it was the defaultsort that needed to be fixed, not the listas parameters, which were correct to begin with. Kind of does not confirm your theory that defaultsorts are better maintained :) I would also like to note that a list of problems would have been more useful (especially if affected WikiProjects are notified after the lists are compiled).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 3, 2010; 14:18 (UTC)

Perhaps {{DEFAULTSORT}}s aren't better maintained than |listas='s are, but there's no reason for the two to be out of sync with each other, and I don't know that there's a good way for the bot to determine which one is more correct. Also, it seems that people are more protective of the articles on their watchlists than they are articles in a list that are handed to the Wikiproject. Frankly, in some respect, the bot did exactly what I intended it to do -- it got your attention (i.e., it got you pissed off -- no disrespect intended) so that you fixed a problem left by someone else ({{sofixit}}). Mikaey, Devil's advocate 05:36, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Not sure what in my comment prompted you to conclude that I am complaining (or am pissed off)? Just pointing out that more work is clearly needed. While the bot got my attention (which is definitely a good thing), it's still annoying to have to do the work that the bot was built to take care of in the first place. It's like trying to fix a thing which is in reverse by putting it upside down :) Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 4, 2010; 13:03 (UTC)

Can you please use the user's page for further comments and not bot's talk page? Your comment stopped the bot. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

It's ok, it's not a big deal to resume the bot. And I guess the comment about pissing you off it was just an inference -- again, no disrespect intended. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 22:58, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Marguerite de Angeli

Reverted ListasBot for second time: Marguerite de Angeli is almost always listed by libraries, whether Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal system, as ** De Angeli, Marguerite ** and NOT as ** Angeli, Marguerite de **. This was apparently the author's own preference. Thank you. EdK (talk) 21:44, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I see you ignored the edit notice on this page. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 06:53, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I was impressed at the difference between the humility of the edit comment ("Did I get it wrong?") & the language of this talk page ("Stop . . . In almost all instances, it is another user's edits which need to be fixed"), besides the difference between the promise of the talk page ("Comments . . . will be speedily ignored") & your own speedy comment or reply. In any case, the defaultlist tag, previously edited by another, has been corrected.EdK (talk) 22:06, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

You should use the bot owner's page for comments like that. Comments in here result in bot's halt. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:18, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

And that's exactly why the bot's edit notice says that messages such as this will be speedily ignored -- because it stops the bot to notify me of something that wasn't the bot's fault in the first place. I'm not trying to be facetious, but comments such as yours were very common in ListasBot's early days, from people who didn't take the time to do the proper research and understand where the bot was pulling its information from, and the result was that I would have to take the time to write out the same explanation to everyone, that simply recapped what was already on the bot's user page. It got annoying after about the first 3 or 4 times -- hence, that's why I have the edit notice there. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 01:47, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Removing task force priority parameter

I know that the general priority parameter for {{WPBiography}} is deprecated, but the task force priority parameters are still in use, are they not; see [1]? I would appreciate your clarification. Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 01:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

It is, but in this instance, it was removed because no value was assigned to it. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 05:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it not useful to include the empty parameter to indicate that a value is desired (if, indeed, the military work group of WPBiography desires the use of priority values)? -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 16:44, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it makes a difference whether or not it's there. The people that know what priorities are will add it in if it's not there. I think that if you looked at the statistics of who saw the blank priority parameter there and added one in (versus who would have added one in even if the blank one wasn't there), the difference would be pretty insignificant. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 22:44, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

The blank parameter is not only there as a prompt to fill it in, but also as a convenience to those actually doing the filling - not having to type out the lengthy parameter name when filling in the value. –xeno^talk 22:46, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

True, but you could say the same thing for any of {{WPBiography}}'s other parameters. And while they're not being used, they're just adding unnecessary bulk to the page. Mikaey, Devil's advocate 23:05, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

But your bot is making a very insignificant edit (bypassing a redirect, removing an empty parameter) that will inconvenience future editors. In fact, some users have specifically requested I provision blank tf priority parameters in their requests to my bot. So yours coming along and removing it later is particularly unhelpful. –xeno^talk 23:09, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Skiptotoc/Talkheader vs. living=yes biography banner

Re [2] / [3] and similar, AWB currently moves skiptotoc and talkheader to the top; your bot on the other hand is moving them below the Biography banner (when living=yes is present). WP:TPL claims that skiptotoc should be first, it isn't as clear about a Biography banner with living=yes (but does mention {{blpo}} over talkheader). Thoughts? –xeno^talk 17:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I can update the WP:TPL if needed. The order should be: Skip to talk, talk header, blp/blpo. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:30, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Yea, that's what I figured... Looked kinda dated to me. –xeno^talk 17:34, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Google translations policy

I noticed you do a lot of editing on the talk page for Werner Cabrera. I just have a quick question for you. If you don't mind helping me out here a little, I was just wondering about the policy for using Google Translations as citations for an article. For obvious reasons, most of the facts on Werner Cabrera are from Spanish-language articles in newspapers and government publications. I was just wondering if there were a policy on whether I should use the Google Translations in my citations or just link to the actual websites themselves directly. Thank you for your time! DeeRD (talk) 16:52, 18 December 2010 (UTC)