User talk:Ram-Man
Bot Information
See User:rambot and the FAQ for current bot running information such as tasks and IP address. Before notifying me about any problems, please see the list of known problems on that page. Feel free to post any other important bugs and information below.
Talk
It was a great idea to set-up a separate user account for the bot. Now it is easy to tell you two apart. ;-) It is unfortunate, however, that this wasn't done to begin with since the bot's previous edits are mixed-in with yours and it is therefore impossible to have accurate statistics of your edits vs the bot's edits. Oh well, no biggie. --mav
- Well it would be in the many many thousands anyway. Also, the active wikipedians page has only been updated twice since I joined Wikipedia, so it doesn't appear to matter too much. And besides, I think I deserve the credit for that ;-) -- RM
- Of course you deserve credit silly. :-) But it still would be nice if human edits and bot edits could be distinguised. Even though the result is often the same, the process, time and effort per edit is very different. --mav
- Is anyone ever going to update the Wikipedia:Most active Wikipedians page? I found that page to be quite informative when it was up to date. I actually would love to know how much work the bot has done, but alas it is too late now. I had no idea I was going to get this involved in this project when I started. I just got sucked in. -- RM
- I guess I should have warned you about getting sucked in. I agree that the most active list needs to be updated (alas, you will most definitely have at least 30,000 more edits than me but at least people will stop saying that I have no life outside of Wikipedia due to the large gap between me and the next most active user ;). --mav
I think I've found the problem with the number of articles counter; until the counter update code gets rewritten, be sure you're sending the field 'wpCountable=1' with the form submit; otherwise it thinks you've changed the page from one that is not countable to one that is, and increments the article count. Uggh... I'll reset the counter manually once the update code's fixed. --Brion 04:52 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC)
- Okay, you shouldn't have to change anything in the bot -- I've removed the need for the wpCountable field; it checks the actual text instead, which is more reliable. (Also, the count now goes down if a countable page is deleted -- a longstanding cause of smaller drift.) The count's been recalculated, and should track correctly from here out. --Brion 05:56 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC)
- I think that this bug may have earlier caused the counter to include a few hundred redirect pages that it shouldn't have. Maybe not, but I am glad it is fixed now. -- RM
Ram-Man -- I hate to tell you this, but the 'bot's throwing up garbage. Some of the so-called towns aren't towns. They may be recognized suburbs, and the census bureau may be dividing areas by them, but just from looking at places I've lived, I can tell that they aren't real. For example, Toro Canyon, in Santa Barbara county, is a long canyon filled with prvate roads, just of the intersection of Foothill and Mission Canyon. The people who live there will tell locals they live in Toro Canyon for the cachet of living in a private neighborhood, but if you asked them, or addressed mail to them, it would be to Santa Barbara, CA. Isla Vista may now be recognized as its own place (but I doubt it), but I think it's still technically administratively part of unincorporated SB County and has a Goleta zip.
In Georgia, Decatur is a city. Druid Hills, North Druid Hills, and North Decature are not -- they are neighborhoods, some of which actually encompass parts of both Atlanta and Decatur. Could you please check into it? THanks! JHK
- Obviously, the bot is only going on the info available -- and from what you're saying, that info (the census info) is inaccurate and perhaps misleading. This will require a manual fix, but that's not really a problem since these articles are intended to be raw data-type articles anyway. It's gonna be a lot of work, but it always was going to be a big job. -- Sam
These issues are well known. A friend of mine lives in the town of Neffsville, Pennsylvania, which is a part of Lancaster Township, Pennsylvania. The locals, including my friend, refer to the place as "Neffsville" even though it has a Lancaster, Pennsylvania address. One important thing to note is that the Postal Service uses its own way of naming that is totally separate from what anyone else uses. The Postal service has been known to give addresses for one county when the actual location is legally in another county (which can cause headaches for auto insurance premiums). The fact is that *somebody* calls these by this name, otherwise they wouldn't be there. The benefit is that each little village/suburb/neighborhood that is recognized (at least by the census bureau) has its own little article with information about it. That way people who live in these no name places can actually find or add information on these places. The other issue is that inevitably people from places like Neffsville are going to want articles and they are going to make them, even if they are not postal names or even legal names (they may be one of them, both, or none). I see great benefit in starting the articles with unique data so that there is consistency. I am sure some people will disagree with me, but I think even the small areas are useful to know about (for some people). -- RM