Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 August 13

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August 13

List of country-name etymologies use 'main article' wikilink to point at redirects

I noticed this phenomenon because (I guess) etymologies of country-names are unusual, in so many aspects. On the Danish Wikipedia we have an unsolvable/not resolved possesive construction, i.e. "Danmarks etymologi", but in English the "Etymology of A_Country" makes plain sense, albeit the topic is usually not excessively studied.

Concretely, in the List of country-name etymologies there are many, and more than 100, uses of {{Main article}}. I have not checked all occurences, but of the 6 first, 5 link to redirects. I think a botrequest would be the logical solution, and on Wikipedia:Bot requests I found a reference to this helpdesk.

Pseudocode: 1. Parse for {{Main article}} 2. Lookup wikilink and detect redirect 3. Use real pagename+section instead of redirect

I think there is already a bot doing this routine, without the restriction to only {{Main article}} wikilinks Sechinsic (talk) 08:01, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

A) You have not asked a question

B) The reference desk is not for help using Wikipedia. Unless the answer is very simple, questioners should be referred to the Wikipedia:Help desk. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.20.193.222 (talk) 08:27, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

The lead of the bot request page does in fact point people with requests like Sechinsic's at this page. Maybe it shouldn't; a brief archive search for "bot" just shows people being sent back to the bot request page. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 17:46, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Multiple copies of Microsoft Visual C++ on computer

My laptop computer (HP running Windows 10) has nine copies of Microsoft Visual C++ on it. The dates range from 2005 to 2013. Some are marked x86; some are x64. Do I need to keep all of these? Eddie Blick (talk) 13:56, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Are you sure it's not Visual C++ Redistributable (a component used in many Windows programs), and not the actual compiler itself? -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 14:25, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

(EC) Are you sure you have nine copies of Microsoft Visual C++ on your computer? I'm not really sure how you'd end up with that many especially if you don't know if you need them. It seems to me much more likely you simply have the redist/runtimes. In which case yes you should keep them all unless you're sure you have no software which requires the one you're removing. DLL Hell is not generally a problem nowadays and unless you have a really tiny SSD, the space taken should not be a concern. You should make sure you keep your Windows up to date although you should always do that anyway. (There are obviously slightly more vectors for attack the more runtimes you have.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:28, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

You're right; the files are the redistributable versions. I do keep Windows up to date (although version 10 pretty well takes care of that on its own). I'll just leave things as they are. Thanks for your help! Eddie Blick (talk) 15:09, 13 August 2016 (UTC)