User talk:Tom.Reding: Difference between revisions

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This...should...do it!

Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		This barnstar is awarded to everyone who - whatever their opinion - contributed to the discussion about Wikipedia and SOPA. Thank you for being a part of the discussion. Presented by the Wikimedia Foundation, January 21, 2012.

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	Congratulations, Tom.Reding, you've recently made your 1,000th edit to articles on English Wikipedia! Thank you for all the great DAB work you've been doing recently, and for all your contributions to the encyclopedia. Keep it up! :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
	For your incredible WikiGnoming over the past few months. I am in awe. A2soup (talk) 23:25, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! :)   ~ Tom.Reding & his 200-some-odd lines of regex (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  02:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	You have nearly single-handedly eliminated the minor planet notability problem, which had stood for seven years before you decided to tackle it, because nobody wanted to do the massive amount of work required. If this doesn't deserve a barnstar, I'm not sure what does. StringTheory11 (t • c) 17:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	For dealing with the minor planet clusterfuck as efficiently as you have! Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

There's nothing quite like cleaning up a good, 'ol-fashioned clusterfuck. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:17, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

BTW, this isn't just for the recent banner tagging, but for the shear amount of effort involved in cleaning up the mess for the past year or so. Possibly longer. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	thanks for helping me with the search codes! Jennica✿ / talk 20:10, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!

please help translate this message into your local language via meta

The 2016 Cure Award

In 2016 you were one of the top ~200 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.

Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 18:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Barnstar awarded

		The Redirect Barnstar
		Your diligent work in the area of redirect categorization and improvement is duly recognized and greatly appreciated. You are truly one of the unsung heroes of Wikipedia, and we hope you continue to enjoy your improvement of this awesome encyclopedia! On behalf of your fellow editors—and the millions of readers of our work—I sincerely thank you for your contributions that have improved the encyclopedia for everyone. Senator2029 “Talk” 08:33, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Request

Moved from #Value of taxonbar template

 – (more like copied from)

One thing I find valuable about taxonbars is the absence of expected databases. If I see that the taxonbar for a plant species doesn't display a link to The Plant List, it's likely that TPL treats that species as a synonym, or at best, unresolved, and Wikipedia should perhaps not have an article on that species. Absence of a taxonbar IUCN link is a real problem for anything that has an IUCN status. When I editd Taraxacum farinosum, it had an IUCN status, but it's not actually listed in IUCN. In my experience, this situation is usually the result of somebody copy-pasting a taxobox from a related species and neglecting to remove IUCN status parameters. Any chance you could filter for species with an IUCN status that aren't actually listed in IUCN? Plantdrew (talk) 04:28, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely. I'm about to go through and add {{taxonbar}} to all pages under Category:Species by IUCN Red List category whose WD IUCN ID matches their actual IUCN ID. While I'm doing this I filter out many error cases, of which this is one. I've simply deleted the page from my work-list, though, instead of storing them. Kukumai, for example, gives a species name not found! error from the IUCN. Does that match what you're looking for?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:30, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Not quite. I've since realized what I wanted to find probably isn't possible. Taxoboxes are typically generated by copy-pasting from a related species into a new article. Not infrequently, I find conservation statuses that have been inappropriately copy-pasted to a species where they don't apply. I was hoping to filter for articles that had an IUCN status (inappropriately), but which weren't actually in the IUCN database. But I don't think these cases can readily be separated from cases where the species is in the IUCN database, but under a synonymous scientific name. Plantdrew (talk) 15:29, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

This is doable and worthwhile. I think I can search IUCN for synonyms/aliases (need to double check that). Then I'll just need your help with refining what not/to filter. For example, how is Kukumai not what you're looking for (it seems to have an erroneous LC, that's for Chrysichthys grandis instead of Bathybagrus grandis)?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:40, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Chrysichythys grandis is a synonym of Bathybagrus grandis. I understand you are being cautious and avoiding any cases where the scientific name used by the IUCN doesn't match the name used by Wikipedia, and taxonomic synonyms fall into that area. Gonialoe variegata aside, I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with including IUCN status for cases where Wikipedia treats the name used by IUCN as a synonym. We definitely need to have a reference that establishes that synonymy though. I'm not sure if possible to easily separate the IUCN synonym cases from the copy-paste error cases I'm concerned about. Plantdrew (talk) 15:58, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

It wouldn't make any sense not to include IUCN assessments just because Wikipedia uses a different synonym. As you say, we just need a proper reference to verify the synonym. In many cases the IUCN assessment will provide that.

The IUCN API does provide searches for synonyms (/api/v3/species/synonyms/Chrysichthys grandis) and common names (/api/v3/species/common_names/Chrysichthys grandis). In this case it returns the common name Kukumai, but not the synonym Bathybagrus grandis. One thing to be wary of is a common name used for more than one species. Unfortunately, you have to know the name used by the IUCN, you can't use a synonym for find the relevant IUCN article. The new combination Bathybagrus grandis is the valid name according to Fishbase, which cites the Catalog of Fishes. However, Catalog of Fishes currently has Chrysichthys grandis as the valid name, as does FishwisePro. Fortunately, the wikipedia article uses the common name.   Jts1882 | talk  08:29, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

I have a list of ~800 pages which produced a "species not found!" errors from a little over half of the pages with a red list category. I'll remove the ones with a valid synonym to decrease the false-positive rate and post the results here.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:15, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Of those 800, I was only able to straight-forwardly use the IUCN API to find the synonym for 1 page, Syncope bassleri. Very disappointing! Jts1882, I now see why you grab the redirects to a particular page. I suppose the only other alternative is to parse the text in the |synonyms= parameter, but that would get messy and presumably less reliable. (WP:ASTRO has a similar #R-structure for their oft-renamed meteors, but there is a preference for the most up-to-date name)

Plantdrew, this is still doable though. I could iterate through each of the redirects to each of the 800 pages, and remove one of the 800 if at least one of its #Rs has an IUCN match. If no IUCN match, via API and via #R-enumeration, that would qualify as a true-positive, yes? Jts1882, what would you say the false-synonym-rate is in this #R structure?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:03, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Jts1882, any thoughts on this? Since you work with these #Rs, I'd like to get a "it'll probably work" from you before I invest more time.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:10, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused about exactly what you are asking. I assume #R means redirects. I didn't do anything explicitly with redirects as the wikipedia and wikidata API calls can be used with a redirect flag. I started with the IUCN scientific name (lists of a order or family) and the redirects find the appropriate wikipedia page when different names are used. This mostly helped with subspecies assessments by the IUCN. For instance, the 340 IUCN assessments in Carnivora returned 267 matches to wikidata. The redirect helped in 14 matches, four for species synonyms and ten involving subspecies. My understanding is that you are starting from wikipedia pages so I'm not sure this helps.   Jts1882 | talk  16:57, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm about to start cycling through the #Rs (shorthand for redirects) to find relevant synonyms, as using the synonym API (and starting from the wikipedia pages) for these cases was essentially useless.

I'm most concerned about the thoroughness of the synonym #Rs, and if all (or most) pages have all (or most) of their synonyms as #Rs. I.e., if only 50%ish of pages have all of their synonyms #R'd, I probably wouldn't bother. It seems implied though, from what you've said on the matter, that this % is higher.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:22, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Across all organisms, the number of synonym redirects is pretty low. Generally speaking, |synonym= in taxoboxes gets filled in before any redirects are created, and there are only 81,469 of 268,999 taxoboxes with |synonym= (granted, there are some species, mostly recently described, that simply don't have any synonyms). However, for species with IUCN assessments, I'd expect that the number of synonym redirects will be relatively high (~47k articles with manual taxoboxes have a {{para|status} and ~27k have both |status= and |synonyms=). Plantdrew (talk) 18:02, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

WL Sources

Hi Tom, could you please stop making edits like this one? It's not required to have such links within citations, and on some articles we've established a consistent citation style that eg. links only on first appearance. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:37, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I page is still internally consistent, yes? I've gotten some thanks on these edits too, so I'll halt editing but defer to WT:Canada for guidance (all of the WLs I'm adding are related to Canada).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:45, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't be internally consistent, as you're not doing this for all sources but only selected ones - other sources would not follow that model. And even if it were, that's verging on a WP:CITEVAR issue. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:53, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I see; ok. Perhaps I can restrict my edits to stub, start, and C class articles only?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:56, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

That would be less problematic but it's still possible for articles at those levels to have an established citation style. Why do you want to do this in the first place? Nikkimaria (talk) 16:04, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

To add interconnection between articles, and provide more information in references/sources/notes to readers.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:08, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I do a lot of reference-gnoming and, while doing so, noticed many well-formatted and consistent authors/editors/publishers/work/agencies on Canadian-related pages. Figured I'd take it a step further.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:13, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay. Previous discussions around this issue have not reached a consensus in favour of this type of linking, certainly not to the level you'd need to do it via AWB (which requires that the change be non-controversial). See for example 1, 2. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:57, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

That is some excellent archive-diving there. Are we in agreement then that I can continue as long as I restrict WLs to the first appearance only, and only for stub, start, and C class articles? Perhaps later to > C class articles, if no further objections at that point?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:09, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Hm. I wouldn't object to that, but I'm not convinced this is something you could or should be doing via AWB without an established consensus for it. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:23, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Tom.Reding. I see that you've been spending a lot of time adding wikilinks to publisher names in citations. Such links are really not very useful. A reader looking at a citaition in an article is rarely going to want or need to see the article on the publisher of the cited work. Wikilinks to citation publishers aren't really harmful, but they are pretty much a waste of time, and they clutter the references with unnecessary links that distract from the actual useful links to the cited content.--Srleffler (talk) 02:40, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

I believe your WP:Overlinking concern is satisfied by my WLing the first occurrence only. Further, I'm only applying WLs to pages with <= 25 references, <= C class, and so far only on articles in the WP:Astronomy hierarchy to a depth of 5. Whether or not it's "a waste of my time", however, is of no one's concern but mine.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:15, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

WP:CLEAN

	Hello Tom.Reding: You are invited to join WikiProject Cleanup, a WikiProject and resource for Wikipedia cleanup listings, information and discussion. To join the project, just add your name to the member list. North America1000 05:12, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

When updating IUCN status, update the citation too

It is great too see somebody doing IUCN status updates. But please pay attention to updating the citations too, as needed. Like here for Aquiloeurycea praecellens, you updated the status to PE (from the 2016 assessment), but the citation given is for the 2010 assessment, which was CR. Facts should be consistent with the corresponding citations. Micromesistius (talk) 18:21, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Will do. The only time this can't be (quickly) done automatically is when the reference given in |status_ref= is used elsewhere on the page. I might be able to code for this too, but it will take some time.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:29, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

That exception has now been accounted for; ~160 pages to go. There are some other minor exceptions, but this will cover the bulk of them. Will update here when done back-updating |status_ref=s.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:10, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

 Done back-updating!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:26, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Add my thanks for the updating! --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:55, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Retrieved date

Hi Tom, I've seen several edits on pages like here where you've coded the |access-date= in a reference with {{CURRENTDAY}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}. Won't that make the date retrieved always be the current date? So it would appear that the reference had been checked and updated, if needed, every day? I don't think that's what I'd intend if I were doing it. Am I understanding this right?  SchreiberBike | ⌨  07:08, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Tom, you need to subst those references to the current date, e.g. {{subst:CURRENTDAY}}. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:58, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Ahh, damn it. I tried subst'ing at first but it doesn't work. I thought I was just using the wrong syntax, but it might be because it's doubly nested in an infobox and citation? Will have to hard code. I was going to go through them again with my author parser anyway, so will make the access-date change concurrently.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:13, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I think you are right with the reason. You probably need safesubst:, but this is always a bit of trial-and-error so far as I am concerned. :-) Peter coxhead (talk) 16:16, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

 Done, and yes, {{safesubst}} does the trick!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:36, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Ehhh, maybe not. I'll just use C#'s DateTime structure instead; much less clumsy.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:25, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Page mover granted

Hello, Tom.Reding. Your account has been granted the "extendedmover" user right, either following a request for it or demonstrating familiarity with working with article names and moving pages. You are now able to rename pages without leaving behind a redirect, and move subpages when moving the parent page(s).

Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Page mover for more information on this user right, especially the criteria for moving pages without leaving redirect. Please remember to follow post-move cleanup procedures and make link corrections where necessary, including broken double-redirects when suppressredirect is used. This can be done using Special:WhatLinksHere. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password. As with all user rights, be aware that if abused, or used in controversial ways without consensus, your page mover status can be revoked.

Useful links:

• Wikipedia:Requested moves
• Category:Articles to be moved, for article renaming requests awaiting action.

If you do not want the page mover right anymore, just let me know, and I'll remove it. Thank you, and happy editing! Alex Shih (talk) 20:48, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much! :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:49, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Case moves

Tom, thanks again for all your help on the Jr. fixing. I could use similar help in automating a bunch of case fixes. See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RFC on Chinese railway station title/style conventions and User:Certes/Railway station. Can you help set this up via bot? Dicklyon (talk) 05:25, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Dicklyon, thanks for thinking of me! Unfortunately, I don't have the permissions to semi/automate page moves in AWB, nor any experience using PyWikiBot, so this has to be either a WP:BOTREQ like the Jr/Sr fixes, or ping the bot-op who performed that request (found them). It will go a lot faster this time though, since you've already taken care of the VPP part.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:00, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

When the moves are done, I can go through and change "Railway Station" in the body to lowercase, as appropriate.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:11, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I meant I could use your help setting up a bot request; whatever you did last time. I did the centralized discussion for approval after you had it ready to go, iirc, and maybe won't have to do that again as you say. Or I can ask him myself if that's your preference. Was there any data preparation needed, or did you just point him at the page that Certes made? Dicklyon (talk) 03:41, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not really invested in the Station moves, so it would be best for you to do it (plus it'll be good practice :). All I did (after properly vetting the Jr/Sr pages for false positives) was submit this bot request by clicking the "Make a new request" button at the top of the page. Use it as a starting point, and include a link to the VPP discussion. The request then got picked up by a willing & able bot operator. The bot operator then has to go through their own process, WP:BRFA, which may or may not need your input (i.e. if the request has any flaws/caveats/exceptions; you'll be notified if so). I already watch those pages and will help if I can.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:33, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: I can run the bot for User:Certes/Railway station#Probably incorrect. Anything that has a page with history in the way will need to be dealt with before or after the bot run. — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:21, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

If you would do that, and collect a list of which ones moved and which ones didn't, I'll work on the leftovers (I think there won't be a lot), and AWB users like Tom can help with the case cleanup in the articles. Thanks! Dicklyon (talk) 17:59, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed. — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:15, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

The bot run is done. I took care of most of the cases that that bot didn't. The outstanding cases are mostly where two articles exist (e.g. Avondale Railway Station, Auckland → Avondale railway station, Queensland). — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:53, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Let me know if you have suggestions for areas I should look at or work on. Dicklyon (talk) 00:16, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! I'll have a closer look at Avondale. Ntitle=o howls of protest, so I've started the page edits to fix titles etc. I'm working alphabetically and have paused at Beijing in case there is a reaction. Would you be able to shift Baltiysky Railway station to small r manually for me please? There's a redirect with history in the way. Courtesy ping: Dicklyon. Certes (talk) 01:30, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I requested it be moved, at WP:RMTR. Dicklyon (talk) 02:11, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Moved. Avondale was just one example. There are others in the list. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:13, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: Please can you move Minsk Railway station (note small s) → Minsk railway station, Muri Railway Station → Muri railway station and Warsaw Railway Station (a dab) → Warsaw railway station? Those should be the last of the pages that failed to move.

@Dicklyon: I've sorted out ambiguities in Avondale, Grafton, Huntly and Linden. There are still a few to go: Kingland, Marton, Morningside, Panmure, Penrose and Stoke. Unfortunately this is a very slow process: keeping all the links working involves a lot of intricate edits to templates in non-obvious locations. (Example: Warsaw breaks Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof until you edit {{Nederlandse Spoorwegen stations}}.) I am unable to fix all of the breakage in New Zealand, because {{NZR sl}} only recognises "Railway Station" as specified in WP:WikiProject NZR/Manual of style. Has anyone spoken with the NZ people yet? Certes (talk) 16:04, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Certes, sure.  Done (I was even at Warszawa Centralna not too long ago)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:14, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

As for going through the text of these semi-automatically, I'm afraid I'm buried pretty deep (mentally & emotionally) in reference/citation syntax with my IUCN efforts. Perhaps after I climb out.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:10, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

That's problematic when people embed style so deep that it's hard to change. I'll see what I can figure out. Dicklyon (talk) 16:31, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

I guess I don't see what the template does, as it doesn't seem broken to me. Redirects working as intended? Dicklyon (talk) 03:07, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

On Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof, search for 447. The right end goes "toward Warsaw", which links to Warszawa Wschodnia Osobowa railway station. That only happens because of this edit; otherwise it would link to Warsaw railway station which is now a dab. A trivial example, but one of hundreds of links affected in complex ways. Certes (talk) 11:04, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

That does look pretty horrible; essentially unmaintainable code. If something changes, which breaks the template's expected behavior, and someone notices the problem, it's still very difficult for them to figure out how to fix it, or where to ask to find someone who can fix it, right? Or is it not as bad as it seems to me? Dicklyon (talk) 04:35, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

I think I've sorted out all the complex cases (most required more moves and a dab page) so I've resumed the bulk edit (A-C done). Do we want to edit the 496 templates too? That would tie up the loose ends but might have unintended consequences. I've already changed several templates manually where safe, especially in New Zealand, and an IP editor has helped. (New Zealand was using upper case to distinguish their Panmure Railway Station from an Australian namesake Panmure railway station. Both now link to a new dab. There were several other similar cases.) Certes (talk) 18:13, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: As Tom completed his part of this task some time ago, let's put any further discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains#Lower case railway station in templates. I've added a progress report there. Certes (talk) 12:17, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Heh, actually this is still on my to-do list, just farther down (after IUCN conversion, but before all the remaining Jr/Sr fixes still out there). I don't mind discussion here, but if there's a more appropriate venue, go with that.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:23, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

The end?

@Dicklyon: It's been a while but I think we're finally there, or as close as we're likely to get. Changes have been particularly extensive in China, New Zealand and Thailand. The one area outstanding is Malaysia and Singapore. I've done as much as I can, especially with the lines around Kuala Lumpur, but I'm going to declare the rest out of scope as it uses Station rather than Railway Station. An old discussion at Template talk:LRT Station suggests firm support for keeping the naming inconsistent, so I doubt there's much chance of improving pages such as {{Rapid Rail network}} and {{Kelana Jaya Line}}. Thanks to Tom, Dick and any other helpers who may be following this thread. Certes (talk) 21:32, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

We just had a bunch moved in Singapore, by multi-RM discussion at Talk:Aljunied_MRT_station#Requested_move_7_January_2018. Station, not railway station. I'll keep working on such clusters. This RM was about the MRT stations, but mentioned that LRT stations need to be done, too. Similar in some other countries. That quarry tool is awesome. It shows we have about 15,000 "%_Station" and 26,000 "%_station". Progress. Dicklyon (talk) 23:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: what query tool is that? And are those the # of article titles or the number of in-text results? Either way, at least "s" > "S"!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:33, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Quarry. See my searches at https://quarry.wmflabs.org/Dicklyon e.g. https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/24347 – Dicklyon (talk) 01:11, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Ooh, nice!^{I thought it was a typo...}   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  02:29, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, fun. Do you have good AWB magic for the post-move cleanup? Like downcase all the "MRT Station" in Category:Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore) stations except where it's in a filename or DEFAULTSORT, fer-instance? Dicklyon (talk) 03:56, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm disappointed that you can't Quarry articletext though, or so it seems from the documentation. Not as powerful as I originally thought, but still useful.

I've touched up the redirects from here, adding {{R from miscapitalisation}} & {{R unprintworthy}} to all that needed them (all but ~15).

Sure, I'll try to do all the articles in Category:Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore) stations today.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:29, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

@Dicklyon:  Done. I only allowed decapitalization for the list of stations in the RfC (with or w/o the intervening "MRT/LRT"). The only exception I found was on Chinatown MRT station @ "Chinatown MRT Station Exit E." I wasn't sure if this was in titlecase or if Exit should be capitalized or not.

I also made 2 redirects, Punggol MRT station & Bukit Panjang MRT station, but don't know how to classify them ({{R from alternative name}}? {{R from incorrect name}}? something else?).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:38, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I've used a mixture of {{R from}} templates. My default is {{R from alternative name}} but I've also used {{R from former name}}, {{R from modification}}, {{R from other capitalisation}}, {{R from subtopic}}, {{R from alternative spelling}}, {{R from title without diacritics}}, {{R from other language|zh|en}}, {{R from long name}}, {{R from short name}} or even {{Rcatshell|1={{R from subtopic}} {{R with possibilities}} {{R printworthy}}}}. Certes (talk) 15:42, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

You're right to add page_is_redirect = 0 but we also need to do something (different) with redirects. I've created a couple of hundred duplicates like Manuyo Uno LRT station so that pages that link to "Manuyo Uno LRT Station" retain their links when the S in the text of {{LRT Station}} changes to an s. I think I've done everything necessary for "railway station" but more duplicate redirects are needed for "station". I don't have a full list as I was only aiming to compelete "railway station" but Malaysia, Singapore and the Beijing Subway stand out as incomplete. Certes (talk) 12:09, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

You guys are awesome; thanks! Next, LRT stations... Dicklyon (talk) 01:44, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I think there are still a smattering of over-capped Exit and Customer Service Center and fan types. But at least they're not in titles and links, so easier to clean up. Dicklyon (talk) 01:46, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

No problem. Ping me with the LRTs.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  01:57, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

You're way ahead of me. Thanks again. Dicklyon (talk) 06:06, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Is this change sensible for the transition? Dicklyon (talk) 06:17, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I've undone that and made the {{#switch}} ignore case. — JJMC89 (T·C) 07:32, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, in my infinite OCDness I decided to scan the latest dump for page titles matching \b[ML]RT(.[LM]RT)? [Ss]tation and look for stragglers. I found ~1000 total pages: 380 articles & the rest #Rs. I couldn't find any "Station" articles, except for one of the #Rs which lead to Central Station (a dab), so it looks like all the moves are done! I'm going to create all of the missing #Rs like Tao Poon station in that list of 380 (~half are missing), since I found myself leaving a small wake of redlinks while doing the followup case fixes. I'll also check to make sure that all the appropriate "MRT/LRT Station" #Rs exist pointing to their "station" counterpart (unlikely that I'll find m/any, but still worth the small effort to check). Then, I'll feel much more comfortable going through the articles themselves and making the case changes. Phew.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:09, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! I did a similar exercise for "X Railway Station" a few weeks ago and identified 777 missing redirects. I found that I only needed to create about 200, as the rest weren't plausible even after proposed template changes, but it may be quicker just to create them all. The time-consuming bit was sorting out the few dozen cases where "X Railway Station" and "X railway station" redirected to different pages and the incoming links needed to be checked, creating new dabs where necessary. Certes (talk) 14:36, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I fixed most (I think; at least a lot) of the overcapitalization issues on all of the 380 "MRT/LRT station" pages. The notable remaining exceptions are: Bang Son Station (cap "S", found while correcting Bang Son MRT station), and Cochrane MRT station & Merdeka MRT station (for their excessive (but consistent!) capitalization).

Dicklyon, would you be able to Quarry those 380 articles (here) for redlinks? I'm pretty sure I got all the weird ones, but it wouldn't hurt to double check.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:45, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

I have no idea how to do what you're asking. Dicklyon (talk) 05:14, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Straw poll for missing "Station" #Rs

To my surprise, I found 193 missing "MRT/LRT Station" #Rs... Here I thought I'd only be patching up a few holes, but 50% are missing(!), so I'd like to get everyone's opinion on whether or not these should be created (@Certes, Dicklyon, and JJMC89:). My thoughts are that if they're left as redlinks, they would serve as an extra step to help prevent people propagating "Station" usage. I could go either way on this, though, since they could also be considered convenient/useful.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:10, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Can't forget Paine...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:37, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I wouldn't create any redirects from titles ending in uppercase Station unless there are incoming links which we don't intend to change. I hope we will eventually have all pages titled and linked as X station, with X Station as redirects to them used only by the bits we didn't bother to fix. Certes (talk) 18:15, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi Tom, thanks for the ping. Whoever said that cleanup after moving ~150 pages would go quickly and that "post-move cleanup edits are less than a minute each, so we're looking at a few hours of work" just has no idea what needs to be done. If you really don't want re-creations of the uppercase, then you have to go through each article and make ALL the case changes from S → s and from L → l in "line". Else readers will see an uppercase "l" or "s" and think the article needs to be moved (back). Then there are the template names to be changed and their redirects bypassed, the Wikipedia and Commons categories to be renamed, the Commons galleries to be renamed, and all these pages have Wikidata pages to be updated. I'm still working on the cleanup of the twelve pages I moved under Talk:Disneyland Resort line#Requested move 6 January 2018. It takes several hours for each page and I'm still less than halfway done. It's okay to leave redirects as long as they're tagged with {{R from miscapitalisation}} (not "other capitalization"). Cheap stuff and also helps to curtail move reverts if they have more than one edit. After having said all that, it's important also to let you all know how grateful I am that you're working on all this. Thank you so much!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  21:59, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't know who said that, but I am curious now.

Good point about the 2-edit thing. That might just be a net positive, even with the gross negatives. Will wait for others to chime in.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:55, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

I said it only takes a minute per article to clean up; I guess I do less cleanup than some, and intended to minimize the effort at that point. I'd like to see a clear checklist of the kind of cleanup that Paine is talking about. I don't usually bother with commons cats, but I do the case changes in the article text. And wikidata I have no idea about. Dicklyon (talk) 05:16, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

To complete the job properly, we'd need more cleanups like this example. I'm not sure how many more articles we'd have to check; my search timed out after finding 144,000. Fortunately, Wikidata should take care of itself. Wikipedia page moves automatically edit the attached Wikidata item, though it's polite to check. Certes (talk) 11:18, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, those who move pages are usually reminded on the successful-page-move screen to update the Wikidata item, and there are similar reminders at Commons. But not to worry, because there are Wikidata and Commons editors who help look after things there, thank goodness. The automation at Wikidata seems to kick in for identifiers and such; however, the page titles (labels) still seem to need manual updates. As for a fairly good list of cleanup needs, it can be found at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions#Cleaning up after the move. It doesn't mention category renaming or Commons category and gallery renaming because those are usually very rare cleanup needs. Thanks again, you extraordinary people!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  12:56, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

I've followed the instructions but usually find Wikidata has updated itself if I wait a couple of minutes then refresh the Wikidata page. But as you say, it's best to check and fix if necessary. Certes (talk) 13:08, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

My experience has been a little different. I've actually come across WD pages that sported different labels many days after their respective pages were renamed on Wikipedia or Commons. Maybe it has to do with "server load" and "how many things are in the queue" and all that great dev-talk stuff? Anyway, it's all good!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  13:59, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Just came across an interesting example, Certes, at this WD history page. You'll note first that the editor renamed the Commonscat from "commonswiki:Category:Tung Chung Line" to "commonswiki:Category:Tung Chung line" (beat me to it), and then I renamed the WD label to "Category:Tung Chung line". However, the label was still "Category:MTR Tung Chung Line" when I changed it. The category name on Commons had been changed from "Category:MTR Tung Chung Line" to "Category:Tung Chung Line" back on 7 June 2016 (it's there on that history page), but the WD page title (label) still hadn't dropped the "MTR". So the page title/label still seems to be in need of manual editing either by the page mover or eventually by a WD editor (or by someone else who happens across it like I did).  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  15:01, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. I've never renamed a Commons category. Perhaps Commons isn't as good as Wikipedia about updating Wikidata, or maybe things have improved since that edit. (Wikidata was less mature in 2016.) But I think we're agreed: check, and fix if necessary. Certes (talk) 15:08, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, Commons is definitely more fragile than WD. Back when I was helping with the WP:JR/SR fixes, I purposely avoided changing the {{Commonscat}} entries until I had the time/desire to update it (since it's more tedious than a simple visual check in AWB, and might include moving dozens or hundreds of files). There's probably some left, come to think of it... If all I did was remove the errant "," in WP then the link to Commons would be broken and the user wouldn't be able to see any additional content there (at least not immediately, without doing additional searching), and might even be so bold as to remove the template entirely...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:27, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, here's a more recent example from Wikipedia: I moved the West Rail line article on 20 January 2018, and I just checked the WD page to find that it still had not updated. Notice my two recent edits in the history – about eight days apart from each other. It recorded when I moved the page on Wikipedia, but it didn't update the label at all. I just did that today. And Tom, when you want to rename categories of any size, Cat-a-lot is your best friend. (Works on Wikipedia, too!)  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  18:29, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Ligature "fi"?

What is with all these 'Rep typographic ligature "fi" with plain text' edits? I don't see any ligatures, just plain text "fi" being replaced with ... plain text "fi". ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:02, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

They're there. Search this diff for the ligature symbol "fi", for example.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:08, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

At Seattle Fault and Columbia River Basalt Group I see you have indeed removed a ligature (having looked at the previous version in edit mode). Which is all the more puzzling, as in both cases it was text that I originally typed in, and my keyboard doesn't do ligatures. Any idea of where they come from? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:30, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting... I can confirm that on all of my browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and IE, all for Windows 7) the symbols were replace by their 2 component characters. Could you perhaps be using a font package which splits these, or otherwise makes them transparent to casual searches?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:42, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I misunderstood. Could you have cut/copy & pasted that text, or used an external text editor, instead of typing it directly into the edit window? The same comment though, that there are font packages which produce the ligature, and perhaps insert it while you're typing. It would be worth a test. Although I only found about 500 pages with "fi" on them via insource:/fi/, and I suspect it'd be higher if "simply typing" was the culprit. Based on my searching of fringe cases, it seems to most frequently be a copy/paste phenomena.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:52, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Just did a database search since insource was only giving me 30ish pages at a time after the first 500, and found ~2000 more. So I suspect some combination of browser/text editor interaction and copy/paste. If that isn't the problem, then the only other source I could think of are some the WP editing aids themselves, though I'd assume that they go through some strict vetting so are more likely not to be the cause.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:01, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

As a matter of fact – yes, I did copy-and-paste. I didn't believe that made any changes. And as I do that routinely for article text (and much Talk text) why haven't I seen massive problems? So is there an intermittent problem? Time for some tests. By the way, I am using Ubuntu with xfce. Sometimes I copy from a text file opened in the vi editor, sometimes I dump text to the terminal window and suck it up with the mouse. My mouse uses the standard Linux "psmouse" driver. And I doubt any of that does any ocr-like processing that might generate a ligature.

• So here is ligature: "fi" (bolded for clarity), which the cursor jumps over as a single character.
• Here is a sample copied from a vi window: Pacific1. "fi" are two characters, okay.
• Here is a sample copied from the command line: Pacific2. ditto

What I see on preview is what I expect. I'll do an interim save on this, and see how they look. And after saving and reopening this text, they still appear as expected.

So the next step is check my source files. Unfortunately, the text for the files where you found ligatures is not at hand. However, on a small sample (Siletzia, Puget Sound faults, and Earthquake prediction) I have found the ligature in the article, and in my text files. Notably, they all seem to be in article titles, or quotations, which I often scrape from pdfs. And (again on a very small sample) I have found the ligature in the pdf text. I doubt the original authors put those in, and suspect it might be a characteristic of how the pdf was generated. When I get time enough to collect more samples I will explore that further. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:46, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

I think the PDF is a likely source. I often copy text from PDFs and some characters don't get transcribed properly, mostly non-alphanumeric characters (e.g. > ~ ) and accents but also sometimes fi and ff (it might be more common when the pdfs are created via OCR from scanned documents). Thanks to your discussion I now know this involves "ligatures" and can search for an explanation, which might be helpful (e.g. in here).   Jts1882 | talk  08:20, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Useful link - I'll expand my search.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:34, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't believe anyone spells "Pacific" as "P a c fi c", so a problem in the pdf creation process is highly likely. And I suspect an OCR problem, in most cases. But (given that link) can it also be a (e.g.) latex problem? With a sufficiently large, and diverse, collection of pdfs it would be useful to see if any processes are more prone to this problem than others. Another consideraton is the pdf reader: some will do an OCR scan themselves, which must be carefully checked. (The one I use, Foxit, likes to pop-in a lot of unicode codes, which at least have the advantage of being obvious. I have not previously considered there might be less ovbvious errors.) One consideration out of all this is whether we should have some kind of script or function editors can use to check individual articles (or text) for these kinds of errors. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:18, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Update

Mostly done. I found ~2661 between the Oct 20 and Nov 20 database dumps and fixed most of them. AWB skipped some pages where this was the only change, even though the relevant skip settings were off. Will try to complete after the next dump. Exceptions found so far (for my, or anyone else's, reference): Ashik, Cyrillization of German, Latin script in Unicode, List of Latin-script letters, List of precomposed Latin characters in Unicode, ST, Sütterlin, Typographic ligature.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:38, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewing

Hello, Tom.Reding. I've seen you editing recently and you seem knowledgeable about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Would you please consider becoming a New Page Reviewer? Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; currently Wikipedia needs experienced users at this task. (After gaining the flag, patrolling is not mandatory. One can do it at their convenience). But kindly read the tutorial before making your decision. Thanks. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 09:47, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Your signature

Please be aware that your signature uses deprecated <font> tags, which are causing Obsolete HTML tags lint errors.

You are encouraged to change

  <b>~</b> <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:16px;">[[User:Tom.Reding|Tom.Reding]] ([[User talk:Tom.Reding|talk]] ⋅[[WP:DGAF|dgaf]])</font>  →   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 

to

  <b>~</b> <span style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:16px;">[[User:Tom.Reding|Tom.Reding]] ([[User talk:Tom.Reding|talk]] ⋅[[WP:DGAF|dgaf]])</span>  →   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 

Respectfully, —Anomalocaris (talk) 23:54, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, it's now corrected. I've seen 1 or 2 people correcting their old signatures. Perhaps I should do the same, or is there a bot for that?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:36, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! FYI, the final &nbsp; in your sig got dropped, which is maybe what you wanted. Yes, I encourage you to de-lint old signatures, and there is a discussion about this at User talk:BD2412#Your signature. Perhaps you can collaborate to enhance the capabilities of BD2412's bot. —Anomalocaris (talk) 17:27, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

WP:Bots/Requests for approval/TomBot 2, for reference.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:40, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Jstor

It seems to me the edit summary of edits such as this one are essentially false because the jstor links in citation templates are automatically a url to the source, so an accessdate is quite appropriate. Maybe jstor links should be excluded from Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL. Do you agree? If so how do we eliminate this issue? ww2censor (talk) 11:41, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Ww2censor, there is no issue: |jstor= produces a stable URL via the CS1/2 module, similar to many other parameters, such as |pmid=. If JSTOR's/PMID's URL translation were to change, it would be reflected in the CS1/2 module. Because of this behavior, |access-date= only applies to |url=, as written.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:26, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

December 2017

Hello, I'm Gaarmyvet. I noticed that you recently removed content from Band of Brothers (book) without adequately explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an accurate edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry; the removed content has been restored. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. I reverted your edit to BoB (book) because you did not explain you reason. A url not being present does mean an editor did not access the book. Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 15:23, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Gaarmyvet, I'm confused - you agree with me that there is no |url= present, nor required, in the citation, yet you revert the logical consequences of that fact (namely, removal of |access-date=).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:39, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Since you couldn't be bothered to read Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL on 2 occasions, the relevant passage is: When the online resource has a publication or other fixed date associated with it, |access-date= is of limited value though may be useful in identifying an appropriate archived version of the resource. Without |url=, |access-date= is not considered useful.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:03, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

I would agree with you if anywhere in the pop-up template implementation, the code explained that access-date (or accessdate) requires a url, but it doesn't. WP compounds the error by intentionally hiding the error message so a user has no opportunity to amend his or her error. If the parameter were on-line-access-date, things would be so much clearer. FYI, I'm taking this to the template talk page because I think unhiding the error message is the simplest solution.--Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 17:28, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Gaarmyvet, once again you would be best served by simply reading Category:Pages using citations with accessdate and no URL. If you want to unhide the error message, the relevant passage is:

Editors who wish to see all of the CS1|2 error messages can do so by updating their common or skin CSS stylesheet to include:

.citation-comment {display: inline !important;} /* show all Citation Style 1 error messages */}

  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:37, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Updating IUCN references on articles with list-defined references

Hello Tom.Reding, I just wanted to let you know that a few of your recent updates of IUCN references produced either a duplicate reference (old format and updated format) or a cite error, as here. I fixed some articles that were on my own watchlist. Thanks for all your hard work in updating IUCN references to the cite journal format. Declangi (talk) 10:10, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Ugh, I hate list-defined references, and forgot to compensate for them; will do so now along with back-checking. Thank you for the heads up.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:53, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

2 pages found & corrected, and reflists are now accounted for. I'll also continue to periodically crosscheck all of my updates with Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting just in case.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:43, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Hello again, you're still creating some duplicate IUCN references such as with this edit. I fixed that one and a similar one at Euonymus cochinchinensis‎. Declangi (talk) 22:23, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I was planning on looking for these after finishing the status updates, and while converting IUCNs to Cite journals, since that will require similar (but as yet unwritten) code, but I suppose I should push its creation up...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:45, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

It seems to be working now. Will start carefully back-checking.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:06, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I've omitted bare sources & bare<ref>s (not bare {{cite}}s [nor bare<ref>s]) from my search since they're of arbitrary style and thus prone to false positives/negatives. I'll get to them eventually though, as mentioned at WT:TREE#Converting IUCNs to Cite journals; and probably bare refs first, then bare sources.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:24, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I saw a few articles appear on my watchlist with duplicate references now removed. Looks good on those. Declangi (talk) 04:48, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Resuming status updates with checks for duplicate bare cites, bare refs, and bare single-line, bulleted sources.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:18, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Buggy citation changes

Not sure if you have already noticed this but some of your citation changes break Harvard style reference links - see Shyamal (talk) 13:49, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you - that bug has since been corrected.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:42, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Shyamal, this helped uncover a possible 2nd bug, which I've raised at WT:CS1#Harvnb links to mixed author/editor cites not working.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:51, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

moved Module from MfD to TfD

Hey, just as a courtesy heads up, I moved the XfD discussion for Module:IUCN status to TfD. There was a recent discussion at the TfD talk page about moving modules to TfD instead of MfD because TfD has a more technical audience than MfD. It kind of petered out without anything ever being done, and I was reminded when I saw your nom, so I went ahead and implemented the change and moved your nom over. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:20, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

PMC, ahh, thank you. I was a bit unsure of which one to do, since I could conceive of arguments for both. Also, Twinkle failed to put the MfD template on the module (maybe it would work if I hit the TfD option?). Linking to the TfD here for reference.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:19, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

No problem, it was little-advertised recent discussion, so you didn't do anything wrong. I found the same thing, Twinkle didn't put the TfD template on it either. But I looked at some other Modules that were recently MfD'd, and they never had the templates on them at all. So I assume it's a feature, not a bug. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:39, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Seasons' Greetings

...to you and yours, from Canada's Great White North! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 21:03, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

User:Tom.Reding/Sandbox

Sorry, though that timed out before actually creating (froze my browser). — xaosflux ^Talk 17:46, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm surprised it even got that far! (I have some experience with large pages & 503 errors) I could view it, but I wasn't able to blank it... The MfD tag wasn't even able to get saved.... Email (received) ftw!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:15, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Playing with APIs to check taxonomic accuracy

@Plantdrew, Tom.Reding, and Jts1882: Hi Tom, I was late to the discussion regarding IUCN APIs and Taxonbar, and still not sure how you went about compiling a list of species that matched your IUCN check criteria. How difficult would it be to create a list of plant (or animal) articles on Wikipedia that are filed under unaccepted binomial names according to catalogueoflife.org?

Ex:http://webservice.catalogueoflife.org/col/webservice?name=Gonialoe+variegata&response=terse vs http://webservice.catalogueoflife.org/col/webservice?name=Aloe+variegata&response=terse.

It would be interesting to create a template that could indicate to the reader if the current name is accepted. Thoughts?--Mellis (talk) 20:19, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

I do wish WCSP had an API. My understanding is that Catalogue of Life gets most plants from WCSP. Not sure what @Plantdrew:'s current thoughts are on Catalogue of life.--Mellis (talk) 20:28, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Mellis, congrats on the long-awaited name change.

To get my starting list, I used WP:AWB to recurse Category:Species by IUCN Red List category to a depth of ~9, returning ~49k unique main-space pages (depth=20 gives the same result). A lot of those are redirects too.

As for the WCSPCatalogue of Life, I can run through any list of pages and filter through those where ArticleTitle matches their |binomial= or |taxon= values, then run those through the catalogueoflife.org lookup, and just html-scrape for <name_status>synonym</name_status> (per the Aloe variegata example). I could do that tomorrow.

I don't know of any templates which do external html or api queries and parse them, probably for good reason (i.e. overloading/straining the non-WP server). Solutions would be to do a scan periodically, per above, to generate a list and post it to WT:TREE or elsewhere, or an AWB run that adds a cleanup template like {{Taxonomic articles using a binomial synonym}} with an embedded category. I think the choice of solution depends on how big the resulting list is, and how difficult it will be to correct the associated pages.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:41, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Tom, preforming the query would initially just be used to give us an idea of what percent of pages might have questionable taxonomy. A pie chart of articles using accepted vs synonym names would be interesting. A list of unacepted names next to their currently accepted names would also be worth looking at.

There might not be an immediate need for a template that checks if a binomial name is currently accepted, as you say it have to be based on periodic updates, perhaps by a bot. This would me more intricate but if a tracking category were created it could have good use in the long-run.

Just getting a feel for the sheer number of articles that could be off taxonomically would make for some great insight into Wikipedia.Mellis (talk) 22:15, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

I think it would be a good exercise to get an idea of the accuracy of the taxonomy. I'd imagine it is pretty good for groups using the automatic taxobox and taxonomy templates, whereas other groups could be quite dated. Some data on this would be interesting. A key issue would be what is considered the authorative source. WCSP seems a good choice for plants, as it is highly respected and regularly updated (shame about the API). On the other hand, MSW3 is used on wikipedia as the primary authorative for mammals and this is very out of date (the new version was due out in 2017, but there is still nothing on a due date in 2018). This leads of a mixture of articles where editors adhere strictly to MSW3 and others using various newer sources. Birds, amphibia and fishes have several good sources (regularly updated DBs), some with APIs.

A question on the catalogue of life. The "Aloe+variegata" search returns three results. The third identifies an infra species and the first two both indicate it is a synonyn. However, they point to two different accepted names, the first to Gonialoe variegata and the second to Aloe vera. How would this be handled?   Jts1882 | talk  08:58, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

@Jts1882: this is where simple scraping runs into difficulties. The CoL entry for Aloe variegata Forssk. crucially adds "nom. illeg.", so this should be ignored as a possible article title.

More generally, we must all beware of the assumption that there is an accurate taxonomy. Taxonomy is a highly disputed subject (and taxonomists have a reputation for being disputatious!) Different wikipedias and different areas of one wikipedia can legitimately chose different sourced taxonomies. Thus here "bird" and "dinosaur" editors use different and incompatible systems, both based on automated taxoboxes. (That's the major reason why we have "skip" templates.) We use APGIV for the higher taxonomy of plants, but every recent publication I've read on the taxonomy of APG's Scilloideae treats it as the family Hyacinthaceae. Even at the species level, different taxonomies are in use. The Albuca article uses WCSP species, but the references used in the article use different schemes, supported by different experts in the taxonomy of the group. We use the World Spider Catalog for genera and species, but for tarantulas, the German wikipedia uses the standard German reference book on the group. And so on... All of these variant taxonomies are "accurate" in their way. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:46, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: Where would the term "nom. illeg." appear? In the article or an addition to what you are scraping? "nom. superfl." would be an equivalent.--Mellis (talk) 18:24, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

I see now from above comments how messy the scraping can be with all the name results. Not as straightforward as hoped. Might need to filter them out based on the name's author and ignore subspecies somehow. --Mellis (talk) 18:46, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Sorry for moving your comment, but I wish to use #Scan details to keep track of what scan parameters I've already used, and discussion up here/elsewhere. That way it's easy for others to see what I've done.

Peter coxhead mentioned "nom. illeg." as appearing in a subspecies example, if I'm not mistaken (a link would be nice btw, since simply appending +Forssk to the name in the URL doesn't return the text in question). I'm using my #Revisited - Filter #3 & #Revisited - Filter #4 (both far above, in an related discussion in early November), which I'll add to the scan section (I should've added it before), so it's likely that I won't come across any subspecies, but you never know, and it's trivial to add a filter, so I'd rather be safe than wrong.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:54, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes comments are better here. This is the example with the <name_html><i>Aloe variegata</i>Forssk., nom. illeg.</name_html>, if you read all the results that come up you'll see it could be tricky to select for the correct name.:

http://webservice.catalogueoflife.org/col/webservice?name=Aloe+variegata&response=terse --Mellis (talk) 19:13, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Ahhh thank you. Yes, finding the "correct" name(s) will probably be a whole other discussion, but for now I'm happy to just make a list of possible discrepancies.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:21, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Amazing work! I just discovered the incredible Catalogue of Life list-matching-service. It was made to do this! Rather than taking 24 hours to scrape and process, it only takes a few minutes to processes your list of scientific names (with or without the authors?) and then it spits out a list of statuses by the thousands. I could definitely see this helping us tremendously to visualize taxonomic quality per taxonomic groups like plants. ~ Mellis (talk) 07:07, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Seems I was a bit too eager to scan. I also assumed, from the first example, that only 1 <name_status> exists on each page, which isn't necessarily true. I'll have to rerun my scan, but it doesn't seem worth it now...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:24, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

It would be worth running your 38,925 names through the list-matching-service to see how the results compare. Yes the multiple <name_status> results per search likely impacted the results. The list-matching-service doesn't seem to accept Author citation input in the search, and returns two results for Aloe variegata:

• Aloe variegata Forssk., nom. illeg. – synonym
• Aloe variegata L. – synonym

Would need to scrape for the matching Author citations to determine synonymy. ~ Mellis (talk) 16:52, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

I decided to run it again with some code tweaks (it's faster & easier for me to run it again than write/debug a script that goes through the output of the list-matching service). I'm storing each taxon's entire list of name_statuses now — sometimes it's 10 identical instances of <one of the 6 available name_statuses>, and sometimes there's at least 1 deviant/interloper thrown in. So I'm thinking that I'll only list those taxons which have all-identical non-"accepted name" name_statuses (especially if "synonym"). Then, depending on how many multi-name_statuses there are, I could list them for anyone wishing to dig further, or just give a count of how many there are.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:17, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

The list matching may allow author citation checks if the appropriate header and separators are used. The Taxon Comparison Tool on the ITIS website (which might be the same or similar to the CoL tool) uses pipes and requires a comma between authority name and date as described here.   Jts1882 | talk  13:20, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Scan details

I'll update this section as I go.

I'm starting from a list of 75,944 unique main-space pages compiled from:

1. All 48,833 unique main-space pages in Category:Species by IUCN Red List category
2. The first 25,000 pages which transclude {{Taxobox}} (total transclusions = 264k; need an admin if we want to check them all)
3. The first 25,000 pages which transclude {{Speciesbox}} (total transclusions = 72k; same deal)

When I get to the scraping part (the above will take several hrs), I'll treat "nom. illeg." (and try to look for equivalent wording) the same as <name_status>synonym</name_status>. Please let me know of any other exclusions I should use, even if seemingly trivial from those already mentioned, above this section (I want to keep a compact log here).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:18, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

From this list of 75,944, I'm removing pages which don't pass my #Revisited - Filter #3 & #Revisited - Filter #4. Then, I attempt to construct the binomial from the infobox (see #Revisited - Binomial Construction; if I can't, then I skip the page) and only keep those pages whose binomial matches their ArticleTitle.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:10, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

38,925 binomial pages found using the above criteria. Querying catalogueoflife.org should take ~24 hrs. I'm throttling requests to one every 2 seconds, so as not to raise many(?) eyebrows. If anyone can recommend a faster or slower rate, please let me know (and why) above.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:15, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

A local 1-1.2 second throttle was good. I seemed to experience some server-side throttling the closer I got to 1 second.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:58, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

@Mellis, Plantdrew, Jts1882, Peter coxhead: results from my second run, this time accounting for multiple <name_status>es. Page counts are quite similar to the first run.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:42, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Catalogue of Life breakdown (corrected per below)	WP Page Count
<name_status> == only accepted name	30,349
<name_status> == only synonym	2,277
<name_status> == only ambiguous synonym	36
<name_status> == only provisionally accepted name	24
<name_status> == only misapplied name	3
<name_status> == multiple tags, including accepted name	2,305
<name_status> == multiple tags, NOT including accepted name	13
<name> field != WP taxon/page title	246
error_message="No names found"	3,665
Total (38,925 - 71, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)	38,918

@Tom.Reding: I don't think I quite understand what your categories mean. Consider "only synonym". I looked at species I recognized in this category, and they all seemed to me to be at the clearly accepted name. Dipsacus fullonum is in this list, for example, but it's the accepted name in the Plant List (and in all the recent Floras I have on my shelves). Peter coxhead (talk) 15:07, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm, I'm not sure how that happened. Will check...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:13, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead and Tom.Reding: The Dipsacus fullonum entry on The Plant List is from 2012. CoL, WorldPlants, and GBIF consider it to be a synonym of Dipsacus sativus. This wasn't an issue with Tom's scan, but a disparity in taxonomic acceptance depending on the authority.

Another issue with the categories. Two fish under the ONLY ambiguous synonym category have both synonym and ambiguus synonym: Pseudotropheus heteropictus and Pseudotropheus livingstonii.   Jts1882 | talk  15:47, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

It looks like I just messed up the manual data reduction bit, condensing multiple name_statuses. Dipsacus fullonum definitely isn't an accepted name on CoL, but it definitely shouldn't be in my "only ambiguous synonym" category either. Will redo & repost (but not reping; sorry for my hasty pings) when I can (RL calls atm).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:18, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Table corrected. The most major change was that 10 pages were moved from their erroneous "only ambiguous system" cat to their correct "multiple tags, NOT including accepted name" cat. Everything else pretty much stayed the same aside from some alphabetical sorting. Let me know if you find any other discrepancies.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:58, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Editor's Barnstar
	Thank you very much for helping and editing the Joe Campos Torres article, your assistance put a BIG SMILE on my face! Vwanweb (talk) 16:53, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

My pleasure; that was a satisfying edit :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:56, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Another barnstar for you!

		The Bio-star
		In recognition of your recent contributions to the Life Sciences on en:Wikipedia, analyzing and helping to improve the quality of articles, based on scientific data. Your efforts demonstrate tremendous potential into enhancing the scientific accuracy of The Free Encyclopedia. I am tremendously appreciative of your efforts, especially on the preliminary Taxonomic analysis. ~ Mellis (talk) 23:48, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Reason for changes to National Boxing Association webpage

I am requesting further information as to why the page for the National Boxing Association was deleted. From what I can gather the reasoning is copyright violations? If it is due to the name, the National Boxing Association (NBA) is a registered Florida corporation founded on 07/18/1984. Proof can be found freely on the State of Florida's website: www.sunbiz.org. Further, the NBA is a registed non-profit 501c by the United States Government. If there were copyright violations neither the State of Florida nor the United States government would have issued these to the NBA. If Wikipedia has their own laws on copyrights, please let me know, because it is not inline with the United States government's view of the National Boxing Association. If it was a question as to the content added, it is freely available on the official website of the NBA: nbaboxing.com. Any questions can be directed to myself as Chairman of the National Boxing Association, or to current President Damon Gonzalez.

http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail?inquirytype=EntityName&directionType=Initial&searchNameOrder=NATIONALBOXINGASSOCIATION%20N042470&aggregateId=domnp-n04247-95df0024-1f42-4e80-bdaf-7554be13197d&searchTerm=national%20boxing%20association&listNameOrder=NATIONALBOXINGASSOCIATION%20N042470 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cookwireless (talk • contribs) 19:36, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

It wasn't me. Primefac, can you help?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:45, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Cookwireless, the website is © 2018 National Boxing Association. All Rights Reserved. Thus the website is copyrighted and we cannot host it on Wikipedia. Please see WP:DONATETEXT for information about copyright release. Primefac (talk) 19:53, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

email

Hello, Tom.Reding. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

--Snek01 (talk) 20:43, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi Snek01, I prefer to keep all normal (i.e. non-sensitive and not-huge) communication on-Wiki, since it's the easiest (and best) way to collaborate on WP things. To answer your question though, I'm not sure, but at least a month or 2.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:57, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Is "pączki" an English word?

Hi, thank you for your participation in the recent requested move discussion at Talk:Pączki. I've posted a follow-up question to better understand what the result of that discussion means not only for the article's title, but also for its content. I'd be very greatful, if you could reply at Talk:Pączki#Follow-up: is "pączki" an_English_word? — Kpalion^(talk) 18:03, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Progomphus: last-assessor-amp

Hi Tom, I'm trying to fix things in Category:Pages with citations using unsupported parameters and your last change to Progomphus stumped me. What's 'last-assessor-amp = yes'? It's showing as an error because it's optional in IUCN but unsupported in cite journal, but without knowing what it signifies I can't figure out what to change it to, or if it can be deleted safely. Mortee (talk) 12:43, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, that was a nested-template bug in my rules. Instances of |last-assessor-amp= should be changed to |last-author-amp=. I'll go through and correct what remains.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:05, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Brilliant, thank you! Mortee (talk) 13:08, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done; no other pages found!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:36, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Typo false positives

I've been thinking about checking typo rules for false positives on existing article titles. For example, "\b([Rr]e|[Ee])v(?:[olutin]{3,9})n+(?<!volution|Revillon)(ary|aries|ize[ds]?|s)?\b" can catch Evoluon and Revunions. Is it worth adding that sort of catch in, or does it just slow things down for little benefit? Certes (talk) 16:57, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, this isn't a very good rule - [olutin]{3,9} is just sloppy/too open-ended. It is in the "New additions" section, so it needs vetting. I think we can grow the exceptions to some extent, but if they get too long/and/or complicated, it will need to be made more specific, or possibly disabled.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:12, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Those are the only exceptions in article titles for that regex, and I can't find any English words. I've checked the rest of the newer additions and found a few other cases but I they're all pretty obscure except for the first one.

• Archology matching "Arch(a)eology"
• Camp Susque matching "Subsequent"
• Similianus matching "Simultaneous"
• Jabal `Umayyid matching "Umayyad" (plus other flavours of apostrophe)
• Dont'a Hightower matching "-n't" (plus perhaps Donté Clark and other Dontés, depending on the exact meaning of \b in the current locale)

I can have a go at fixing these if you like, but an expert would probably get better results. Certes (talk) 18:06, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Certes, up to you. I won't be free for another 2 hrs or so, but will either check your additions (if you choose to make them), or add them myself, later today (whichever ones don't seem too obscure). Either way, nice job finding them :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:57, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

This can certainly wait more than 2 hours, so I'll leave them to you then. Certes (talk) 20:37, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I just meant that it wouldn't be long before I looked at it; feel free to ping me if you want some regex assistance in the future. As for the exceptions:

• Insource search wasn't very cooperative when searching for "archology", but, just from a cost-benefit perspective, trying to find mis-corrected "archology" needles in the "archeology" haystack makes it useful to include.
• "Susque"/"Susques" show up enough
• Similianus only appears on 2 pages, only once on each, and AWB didn't catch either of them (due to {{not a typo}} & a wikilink) so not needed
• "Jabal `Umayyid" - orphaned stub...I was tempted to just {{not a typo}}-it, but when it comes to non-English words, I'm tempted to just include the exception so it doesn't get lost; it hasn't gotten deleted yet, and someone will eventually unorphan, etc.
• "Dont'a Hightower" definitely worth adding

So I added everything except "Similianus".   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:54, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, well done! I got four hits for Archology. Certes (talk) 11:01, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Editor of the Week

		Editor of the Week
		Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your constant positive demeanor. Thank you for the great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)

User:Buster7 submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week:

I am always on the lookout for potential Editor of the Week candidates, for editors that fly under the radar, whose efforts are unknown except to a few. They don't make a splash, they don't emit a 'notice me' kind of behavior; they just quietly tackle the hard jobs. Tom.Reding is that kind of editor. A while back he "thanked me" via the Thanks Notification for awarding the Editor of the Week to a fellow editor. So, I looked into him and found an editor that does many important WP improving things. He is a working editor (535,847 live and undeleted edits) that fixes, populates, corrects, standardizes, cleans, parses, tries, peruses, adds, formats, listens, expands, updates, corrects, creates, assigns and (my favorite) "consistifies". A member of Wikiproject Astronomy and Wikiproject Tree of Life, he has recently been granted the page mover user right. He provides a human eye and understanding to "bot" problems that arise. In the area of redirect categorization he willingly puts his head together with other editors to work toward solution. A deserving recipient.

You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week:

{{User:UBX/EoTWBox}}

Thanks again for your efforts! ―Buster7 ☎ 20:38, 28 January 2018 (UTC)