User talk:TheFearow

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Re:Gnome Week

	Gnomes, unite!
File:P1000744.jpg	You are invited to participate in Gnome Week, a mass article cleanup drive between June 21 and June 28, 2007.
	This week, backlogs will be cleared. Articles will be polished. Typos will be fixed. Bad prose will be edited. Unreferenced articles will be sourced. No article will be safe from our reach! The more people who participate, the better Wikipedia will become as a result.
	I would love it if you would participate! - Zacharycrimsonwolf
Edit message

DeadBot Improper Tagging

Your bot has been making mistakes when tagging articles with the {{deadend}} template. Please stop & fix these problems before continuing. In particular, dab pages, redirects, & soft redirects should not be marked.

Dab pages: A dab page will have only as many links as required to disambig the term. This template does not belong on dab pages.
Redirects: Redirects are not dead-end pages. It is inappropriate to tag them[1] and it breaks the redirection.
Soft redirects: Soft redirects consist of one and only link by purpose. They are not dead-end pages & should not be tagged[2].

In addition, I have seen the following two problems:

It has tagged at least one page that had plenty of links[3]. Something is wrong in how it is determines its threshold for a "few links".
It is not handling UTF-8 correctly and is breaking articles by converting such characters to gibberish[4].

I also don't understand why this template would be applied to stubs. If something is already tagged as a stub, that would seem to be sufficient. A stub, especially a true stub with only a couples lines of text, is not going to have a lot of links.

Thanks. -- JLaTondre 13:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Uh.... it tags {{copyvio}} pages too. Don't do that. --Alvestrand 13:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I just found that[5] to. -- JLaTondre 13:38, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is also tagging {{wi}} pages[6]. These should not be tagged either. -- JLaTondre 14:17, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've been going back through the bot's contributions log. I've made it through articles starting with N. Since it's in reverse order, that leaves M-A still to be checked for the above errors. -- JLaTondre 14:34, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

After seeing this edit, which places the tag on a page that is full of links, I have disabled the bot. --Alvestrand 15:51, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looking through the log, I also found this edit, which I don't understand at all. May be another instance of the UTF-8 bug mentioned above. --Alvestrand 15:59, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It stopped anyway, but that is a serious bug. I'll do a rollback if necessary? Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am working on this, is passed a 100 edit trial without error and it was running unattended, if this ever happens again block immediately. I'll fix up these bugs, and I apologise for this. Is any manual rollback necessary? I thought I fixed up those bugs, however apparentally not. All those fixes will be in place ASAP. I will answer some questions below:

It just tags pages on the DEP list. If they have enough links, remove them from the DEP list and the bot won't add them. It does NO checking of the page by itself.
It seems to be tagging ANY page, I put a filter in for most pages however it doesn't want to work for me - I think I missed the copyvio and wi templates.
For soft redirects, I will also make it ignore those and remote them from the DEP list.
For stubs, it is tagging pages on the DEP list, and the DEP list is generated by pages with less than 1 link, however it may have changed.

Thanks, and if you have any more queries or need me to do anything further, say so below. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the bot needs to check the page before tagging it. The DEP is generated from a database dump, and people add links to pages at lots of different times - many of these won't be aware of the DEP list. It's irritating to see a page you've just added links to get the "deadend" template slapped on. Also, I like to keep "works in progress" in the DEP - for instance, I don't remove a page I've marked with {{prod}} until the page is deleted, even if it has links on it.

If you don't know how to fix the UTF8 bug, you may have to stay away from pages with bytes > 128. --Alvestrand 22:01, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, I think i'm going to do a couple changes to the bot, first of all i'm going to make it ignore the page if it contains unusual characters, as well as if it contains more than 5 links. In my original bot proposal, I asked if it's a good idea to remove ones with more than X links, however no-one liked the idea, so I assumed there were other factors. For the pages it ignores, they will be added to a list (User:DeadBot/HumanCheckNeeded) where any user can check over the ones it believes needs the tags but I have made it ignore. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 22:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd set the limit at 1 or 2 links, but otherwise, seems good to me. Note that a LOT of articles have "unusual characters" of various types - one of the ones noted above seems to have been using shaped quotation marks, which are very hard to tell from the normal ones. --Alvestrand 17:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think i'm going to leave the tagging job for a bit, while I can refine my code. SO for now, it'll be normal bot only (some tagging, but mostly as a test). Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 20:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good. I've unblocked the bot again, so that it can get back to the task of removing redlinks. --Alvestrand 21:31, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I've gone through the Category:Dead-end pages from June 2007, and removed all the inappropriately marked pages.--Kathy A. 15:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. I am holding back on this task for now, until I can sort these out. Chances are that I won't be able to run it soon, but at least most pages that should be tagged are tagged. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 20:57, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deadbot and Unicode

Just noticed your bot seems to have rather serious issues with wide characters. Some examples: [7][8][9] Looks like it ends up decomposing some (but not all, e.g. [10][11]) into their component bytes or something? Cheers, cab 06:06, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I see there's a thread on this above. cab 06:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Image:Qxz-ad60.gif

Hi, thanks for creating this ad. I've reworked it slightly, while keeping the colours, text and animation the same:

Changed the font to Gill Sans, to match the font used on most of the other ads (it's also the font used by the Wikimedia Foundation)
Added a border
Made the green area slightly lighter to avoid clashing with the blue text
Rearranged the bottom part, so that the text is less squashed
Faded from the last frame back to the first, to make it loop a bit more nicely

Feel free to revert my changes if you disagree with them. Thanks – Gurch 11:50, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with DeadBot

I think DeadBot is having problems with some non-ASCII characters. This seems to be causing a problem in some instances. Example. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 04:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This was solved several threads up, and again slightly below that. Please read talk pages before reporting problems. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 05:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oooh, testy. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 19:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I just always get annoyed by this, as it happens alot. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 20:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Old Deletion

I just noticed this: 08:56, 11 September 2006 Deville (Talk | contribs) deleted "Windows rot" (deleting per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Berkeley of the West) Out of curiosity, was that a mistake, or did that RFA have something to do with it? Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 08:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That was definitely a typo, sorry. If you look at the deletion log for that time period (e.g. here) you will see that I deleted the article "Windows Rot" right after I deleted "Berkeley of the West" (here is the AfD page for the former) and I must have copypasted the wrong link. -- Deville (Talk) 15:40, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

		Thank you for your support and comments at my RfA
		Hi Matt, It still amazes me that otherwise "anonymous" editors take the time to place !votes and comments on RfAs. Whilst I would have normally thanked you at the time of you leaving your message, the importance of my not appearing to be canvassing prevented me from so doing. Now that everything has progressed successfully I can finally thank you. I intend to uphold a style of good adminship and will welcome your further comments at any time in the future, even if they are in the form of admonishment. I will be happy to help as an admin wherever and whenever I can --VS ^talk 23:39, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deadbot alive?

Just curious - any reason why there's been no deadbot activity in three days? CitiCat 03:09, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

RfA thanks

Hi TheFearow. Thank you for your support and kind words in my RfA, which passed with 95 support, 1 oppose, and 1 neutral !votes. It means a lot to me to have your individual support and the collective support of so many others. I truly will strive to carry myself at a level representing the trust bestowed in me as I use the mop to address the never-ending drips of discontent in need of caretaker assistance.

Jreferee ^(Talk) 08:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Planet deletion

Thank you for your message, however I feel you should have researched more into the subject of your deletion. The Planet is perhaps the largest server company in the world and a company that merged into it has a wikipedia article.

Update: Thanks for relooking and retagging the article. When I start articles on wikipedia I have a tendency to only put a small amount of data then keep coming back to it to edit the content and wording, before leaving it for others to edit. You can see an example of me starting a now large article on Fred Halliday. I should really spend more time making each article, but I usually only do so in spare moments.

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/JodyB

I formatted your comment for autonumbering. —AldeBaer (c) 22:59, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your request for adminship

I think it would be wise for you to withdraw your RFA. Despite some support, it seems unlikely to succeed, and you have received constructive criticism and assurances that a few more months of editing will enable you to enhance your user access level. If you would like to withdraw and maybe try again in a few months, I can perform the withdrawal and archiving for you. (It's actually pretty simple: just put {{subst:rfaf}} on top of the page and {{subst:rfab}} on the bottom; remove the template from [[WP:RFA]], and archive it under "Unsuccessful requests for adminship" as linked in the template at the top of [[WP:RFA]].) Alternatively, you may wish to leave the request up if you'd like to see more comments. I wish you good luck, and I must thank you for your work on Deadbot - it makes sorting the Dead-end pages easier for me. Shalom ^Hello 15:04, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My RfA

Thank you for participating in my RfA. It was successful, and I am now, may God have mercy on us all, an administrator. Look at all the new buttons! I had heard about 'protect,' 'block user,' and 'delete,' but no one told me about 'kill,' 'eject,' and 'purée.' I appreciate the trust the community has in me, and I'll try hard not to delete the main page or block Jimbo. -FisherQueen (Talk) 17:53, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Developerzeus

I'm just curious how you believe the username implies that the user is a Wikipedia figure? Jmlk 1 7 21:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, thanks for the reply. I got it figured out :). Happy editing! Jmlk 1 7 22:36, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Welcoming

Thank you again for the welcome Fearow. The links are most useful and I am learning the ropes and showing my interests. The MediaWiki link on your page is interesting also. I will have a good search there. Addisababa 03:47, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My recent RfB

Thank you so much for your participation in my recent RfB. Though it closed with 72% support (below the required 90%), I'm still quite pleased at the outpouring of support shown by a fair percentage of the community.

I'm currently tabulating and calculating all opposing and neutral arguments to help me better address the community's concerns about my abilities as a bureaucrat. If you'd like, you can follow my progress (and/or provide additional suggestions) at User:EVula/admin/RfB notes. Thanks again! EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A comment?

You say? --Iamunknown 05:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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GA Review of USB decoration

Dear TheFearow, I am sorry to inform you that I have failed USB decoration because of several issues, which are detailed on the article's talk page. If there are any comments you would like to make, or any questions you have about the failing of this article, then please forward them to my talk page. Good luck for a future candidacy. Regards, Anonymous Dissident^Talk 10:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]