User talk:Rick Block/Archive2009

Clinton vs. Obama's age

Hi - I see you've reverted your change at Barack Obama. I'm not sure why you did this, but Obama is actually older than Clinton was (Clinton was 46 when he was inaugurated - Obama is currently 47). -- Rick Block (talk) 00:58, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I'm not sure why you are asking since I immediately reverted it. I caught my mistake almost as soon as I had made it. It was confused math which I clearly got wrong.--Woodwynlane (talk) 07:39, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

RE: Canvassing

Hello. Not wanting to clutter up User talk:Maralia when the confusion is mine alone, I am instead going to reply here. If my response on that page [1] was interpreted as "buzz off," I sincerely apologize; my intent was to express confusion along with a dash of incredulity. However I still do not understand why you left a friendly reminder for Maralia, when 76.66.198.171 (talk · contribs) is the editor who posted [2] the notification message at WT:SHIPS, as well as participated ([3], [4], [5]) in both the rename discussion at Talk:Corvette and the CfD ([6], [7]). Yes, I will agree that 76.66.198.171 did an excellent job of avoiding any appearance of canvassing by posting identical notifications to WP:AUTOS, WP:SCR, and WP:SHIPS ([8], [9], [10]).

However, from my perspective, it appears that you are critiquing Maralia for responding [11] to a message at WT:SHIPS (a project where she is an active member) and then neglecting to post that same information at WT:AUTOS and WT:SCR (where she is not a member). Can you understand how I could be confused and a little incredulous that she would receive a gentle rebuke about canvassing because she did not reply to messages she did not know about on project pages she had never been to? Please pardon my continued confusion; perhaps you could "spell it out" for me again [12], but with smaller words this time. Thanks, Kralizec! (talk) 15:58, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

At this point I think we may be in danger of making an entire mountain range out of a molehill, but I'll try again (hopefully we can all get on the same page). Maralia clearly had read the thread she was replying to at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships, had seen the CFD, and understood these were related matters because she replied in the same thread. She let WikiProject Ships know about the CFD but not the other side of the related dispute identified in the very thread she replied to (I was thinking talk:Corvette or talk:Chevrolet Corvette, not WT:AUTOS or WT:SCR). Does this not look just a little bit like it might be canvassing?

I don't understand where the defensiveness is coming from here. I was expecting a response like "I see your point. I'll be more careful next time", not (paraphrased) "Thanks. But I didn't do anything wrong." followed up by your (paraphrased) "She didn't do anything wrong, what's your beef?" (which are both much more polite than "buzz off" - I apologize if this mischaracterizes your message).

I'm perfectly willing to assume good faith on all sides here. Can we get back to editing now? -- Rick Block (talk) 03:18, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

WBFTN count

Hey, just noting that I co-nom'd Wikipedia:Featured topics/Nobel Laureates with User:Scorpion0422 (see the nom) and wasn't credited for it on WP:WBFTN. Cheers, — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 11:47, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Co-noms for WBFTN have to be manually added to the appropriate by-year summary file, e.g. Wikipedia:Featured topics promoted in 2009. The bot creates the entries in these files and credits the creator of the nom file as the one and only nom. Any fixes to the by-year file (like manually adding co-noms) will show up at WBFTN the next time it's re-generated (typically once a day). -- Rick Block (talk) 16:53, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I see. I'll take that into account in the future. Thanks a bunch. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 19:26, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Monty Hall

Hello. I appreciate your complaint was originally elsewhere. As to MH: people are used to this generating vast amounts of ill-informed dicussion, which they will ignore (rather like cantor's diagonal proof). Only edits to the page matter. If you end up in an edit war on the page then do please discuss, and bring it to my attention. But until then I suggest you just drop the discussion William M. Connolley (talk) 08:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I understand this (and watchlist the article). However, there are two kinds of comments generally made on the talk page. One kind is from folks who clearly have no intention of changing the article but just want to point out that the solution is wrong. The other kind is from folks who are actually interested in changing the article. Call me crazy, but I typically respond to BOTH kinds of comments on the talk page, which I treat sort of like a help desk - i.e. I engage in a dialog assuming the role of someone who understands the problem. I think I have successfully moved fairly many "it must be 50-50" folks to at least a basic understanding of the 2/3 solution. There's a current crowd (Glkanter is one of them) unhappy with the Morgan et al. approach who want it removed, commenting on the talk page to gain consensus for their desired change. I guess rather than convince them I could just let them know they will never gain consensus for this change. -- Rick Block (talk) 12:23, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello Rick, I will ask you to look at my talk page. Nijdam (talk) 21:21, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

'Hier ben ik weer'. Hello, I made some changes to the article. I.e. I moved the 'simple non-solution' further down after the right explanation, which I changed a bit, as to really cover the conditional situation. Please look into it. 'Groeten', Nijdam (talk) 23:34, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I read your message, and for the moment I leave the situation, but, besides of textual things, I 'm not very willing to accept another way of presenting the problem and the (real) solution as I did. BTW: the "discussion" really gets out of hand, what a mess. Nijdam (talk) 17:31, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I think we've come to a point, where we are more teaching probability theory, than motivating why the article needs revision. I suggest we start to think about how this is to be done. For a start I strongly suggest the simple solution as presented quite immediately after the intrduction will be removed. Further it seems superfluous to me that the problem statement is literally repeated. Nijdam (talk) 20:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

On the German Wikipedia I'm involved in a simular almost endless discussion, but at least have reached a point where some of the discussiants came as far as to agree on the conditionality. The point one of them is making, and there may be some sense in it, is that the 'simple solution' may be presented as a simple, but incomplete way of understanding the 2/3 chance by switching, especially directed towards the laymen 50/50-fans (is this still English?). What do you think? Nijdam (talk) 23:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I could have guessed you would have a look at the German Wikipedia. The proposed changes have not been implemented yet. The suggestion was made to add a sentence to the simple solution like: "Anyway this is not a complete proof for the solution of the problem. Therefore one has to consider conditional probabilities, as it is done in the next section(s)." Nijdam (talk) 09:32, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Please look at my talk page for your other question. Nijdam (talk) 09:42, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Once again. Nijdam (talk) 15:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Rick bot has a bug

It can't properly integrate a page link, which has led to the distortion of the" List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations. Serendi^podous 12:02, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not exactly a bug, just something it doesn't expect to encounter. The assumption is the by-year tables are highly structured. This edit is my fix for the issue. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:25, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of administrators

Hello, the bot gets the recent updates wrong. It counts now only 724 active admins which would be frightening. See Wikipedia_talk:List_of_administrators#current_number_is_certainly_wrong. And thanks for taking the trouble to maintain this in the first place..--Tikiwont (talk) 20:22, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Responded there. And thanks. I noticed the drop but didn't look hard enough. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:54, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

TFA

Is there anything going on with the comment at Wikipedia_talk:List_of_Wikipedians_by_featured_article_nominations#TFA_nom_count?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:44, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

CFD archives

• WT:CFD

We're discussing the archiving of a type of CFD discussion. Your thoughts/help would be most welcome. - jc37 20:54, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

After discussion there and with Happy-melon on their talk page, they all think that adding something to the closure template for your bot to spot would likely be the best way to go.

So essentially, if the bot spots a something in template:ucfd top, then it would copy that discussion to the corresponding subpage of the ucfd archives. (per the month of the nomination.) And place a link to the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/User/Archive/Topical index/Unsorted.

Is this possible (would this work) for your bot, and if not, what else might you propose? (Any and all help would be most welcome : ) - jc37 02:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The bit about copying the discussion to the monthly archive of user category discussions will be kind of a pain. Do you care of they're in forward (rather than reverse) chronological order? This would be easier. Easier yet would be to just add the link (to the regular archive file) to the unsorted page. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

In order of priority: the unsorted page, then the archives.

And the "order" chronologically doesn't really matter, as long as it's consistent : )

Also, if copying the discussion to the archives is a pain, perhaps starting with April, we can just post the links (to the CfD log pages) there too.

My only concern with that is that it may "break" other bots which are set up to link to the UCFD archives. But if their bot directs there, and the user finds a link waiting, that should be enough for the average user to figure out : )

How does this sound to you? - jc37 21:28, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Question about your bot

See User talk:Rick Bot#Co-noms on FLCs?. Dabomb87 (talk) 20:12, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Rick Bot temporarily offline

My bot machine is having hardware problems again. It will be offline for a least a week. Sorry for the inconvenience. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:10, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know and good luck ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:15, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Soooo, back yet? : ) - jc37 08:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Category:Villages in Shizuoka Prefecture

I notice that this category you created is unpopulated (empty). In other words, no Wikipedia pages belong to it. If it remains unpopulated for four days, it may be deleted without discussion, in accordance with Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#C1. I'm notifying you in case you wish to (re-)populate it by adding [[Category:Villages in Shizuoka Prefecture]] to pages that belong in it.

I tagged the category. This will not, in itself, cause the category to be deleted. It serves to document (in the page history) that the category was empty at the time of tagging and also to alert other watchers that the category is in jeopardy. You are welcome to remove the tag if you wish. However, removing the tag will not prevent deletion of the category if it remains empty.

If you created the category in error, or it is no longer needed, you can speed up the deletion process by tagging it with {{db-author}}.

I am a human being, not a bot, so you can contact me if you have questions about this. Best regards, --Stepheng3 (talk) 02:55, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

That's fascinating. Thanks for the link. --Stepheng3 (talk) 04:50, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Easter

Hey Rick,

Thought I'd drop you a line to let you know that I was sorry that I couldn't get out of my family obligations on that night and thank you for the offer. I hope that you had fun in A² and that you had a pint for me. —MJCdetroit ^(yak) 19:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

User:Rick Bot's stars

Instead of using ★, could your bot just use the star itself ★? -- [[SRE.K.A.L.|L.A.K.ERS]]_{call me Keith} 04:53, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea why you aren't replying, but I really do want to know if the bot could use ★ instead of the code, ★. This will actually save some load time for the pages, and well, there's no disadvantage for not using the code. -- [[SRE.K.A.L.|L.A.K.ERS]]_{call me Keith} 09:37, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying sooner - I've been kind of distracted, The bot has had some serious issue (see below) related to moving to a new machine. Off hand, I can't think of reason not to use the actual characters rather than the HTML codes. I'll give a try and see what turns up. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for replying so quickly! -- [[SRE.K.A.L.|L.A.K.ERS]]_{call me Keith} 18:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The stars are now the characters themselves on WP:WBFAN. If no one squawks about this in a few days, I'll change WP:WBFTN, WP:WBFLN, and WP:WBFPC similarly. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Awesome! -- [[SRE.K.A.L.|L.A.K.ERS]]_{call me Keith} 05:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It has been a while since I commented on this, but I'm sure 2 weeks on WP:WBFAN without any concerns about it is good enough to put it on all the pages you handle. -- [[SRE.K.A.L.|L.A.K.ERS]]_{call me Keith} 07:20, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Yup. I'll update the others the next chance I get. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:33, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Monty Hall problem

Fair enough about the lead summarizing the article, however there are some specific factual statements in particular that probably could be supported. I am thinking of "most people assume" etc. Probably there are studies showing what percentage of people initially choose the wrong answer.83.5.174.32 (talk) 07:54, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Bot keeps adding the same nomination to WP:FT2009

It keeps adding this: here, here, and here. That topic doesn't exist, though (well, it exists under a different name, which I keep fixing but the bot keeps reverting). Gary King (talk) 16:13, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know about this. The bot expects the nom file name to be the same as the topic title. I've created a redirect so this will be the case (the bot is currently running on a machine that's quite flakey - I'll be moving it to a new machine soon and will put this on the list of things to fix). -- Rick Block (talk) 18:50, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

FLC nom problem

In this edit, none of the nominators were added. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:55, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Also here, in the FT update. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:58, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The bot is running on a new machine and some of the tools it uses are slightly different. I'm still chasing down various bugs. Please bear with me. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:15, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

No problem; I just wanted to let you know. Thanks for all that you've done. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:29, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

At WP:FL2009, the new FLs don't have any nominators, also. Gary King (talk) 20:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The bot's doing something crazy with the recent promotions. See also this. Dabomb87 (talk) 12:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

MHP

Hello Rick, I hope you don't mind I used your concept page to streamline the discussion about our proposals. In the mean time I have a question about a sentence I would like to add. It is in the beginning of the solution section, where it reads: ... is a conditional probability (ref's), (and I would like to add here something like) with the sole meaning a probability concerning the new situation. I think my English somehow fails here to exactly express what I mean. Firstly, do you also think such an addition is helpful and if so, will you help me to find the right wording?Nijdam (talk) 18:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The draft page is meant for, well, drafts so no I don't mind at all. I think I understand what you're trying to get at, but given "conditional probability" is linked to an article explaining it I don't think there's a need to further explain it inline. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:18, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Favour regarding MHP

Hi Rick! I wonder, whether you have an electronic copy of Morgan's original paper that you could share. So far I've seen the conditional solution in plenty of other sources (henze,behrens,Snell/Grinstead,lectures, various internet sides), but i don't have any easy access to Morgan's paper himself.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I purchased a copy from JSTOR which comes with an agreement that I won't share it. Here's the link [13]. If you don't want to spend the $14 to purchase it yourself, I would think pretty much any university's math library would have a paper copy of the journal as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Editing survey

Hi Rick Block. My name is Mike Lyons and I am a doctoral student at Indiana University. I am conducting research on the writing and editing of high traffic “current events” articles on Wikipedia. I have noticed in the talk page archives at Barack Obama that you have contributed to the editing or maintenance of the article. I was hoping you would agree to fill out a brief survey about your experience. This study aims to help expand our thinking about collaborative knowledge production. Believe me I share your likely disdain for surveys but your participation would be immensely helpful in making the study a success. A link to the survey is included below.

Link to the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=P6r2MmP9rbFMuDigYielAQ_3d_3d

Thanks and best regards, Mike Lyons lyonspen | (talk) 19:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Bot problem!

Just wanted to let you know I left a note for you here :) — Deon555^talk_{I'm BACK!} 11:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Speed of light

Rick, I wonder if you can help me, I am having the same problem with another editor that you were having with me! Actually it is not the same thing at all. Despite my continued disagreement and argument with you about Morgan and conditional probability I have never resorted to disruptive editing of the article. I still do not agree with you and I will continue to fight my corner, but in a proper manner.

I am trying to get the article 'Speed of light' back to being a FA. There is another editor, Brews ohare, who continually makes series of rapid-fire edits to the article which do not reflect either the current scientific opinion on the subject (as stated by reliable secondary sources) or a consensus of editors. He also makes points in the article itself, mainly in the form of prominently displayed quotations from sources that he believes supports his point of view.

Would you be able to have a look at the history of the article and the talk page and make some suggestions as to the best way forwards. Martin Hogbin (talk) 21:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Before looking at the article history, I started wading through the talk page which will take some time. In the meantime, my suggestion is to try to defuse any disputes by focusing on what the sources say rather than what he (or you) thinks. You might review WP:DR. Soliciting help at Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics might be useful as well. I am somewhat amused that you're asking for my help given our longstanding difference of opinion regarding MHP. I guess I should take it as a compliment. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:12, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Reading through the talk page and looking at some of the article history I think one of the main issues seems to be one of editing style. You clearly prefer a more deliberate approach with changes being made only after discussion on the talk page while Brews dives right in - and in addition makes bursts of edits. Given WP:BOLD it's hard to fault him for this. Regarding bursts of edits, this is simply an editing style (rather than examine his edits individually you might select the starting and ending points in the history to look at diffs). I haven't analyzed the history in detail, but haven't noticed that he's edit warring. If he is repeatedly making the same changes without gaining consensus on the talk page then this would be bad behavior worthy of a warning. He's clearly engaged on the talk page, so I'd actually be surprised if he is edit warring (if he is, please provide diffs).

Another issue is his preference for online sources vs. sources not available online. He's correct that all things being equal online sources are preferred, however he should not be replacing or deleting sources without reading them (without reading them he can't really claim all things were equal). For featured articles, if there are "standard" or "original" sources (e.g. vos Savant's Parade columns or, ahem, Morgan et al. for MHP) these sources are definitely preferred (whether they're available online or not) - WP:FACR #1b essentially requires such sources be cited.

I haven't noticed any edits contrary to consensus. Diffs would help. Edits that make points in the article by prominently highlighting quotes are arguably simply a stylistic difference (you seem to be assuming bad faith here).

I notice he's approached you on your talk page and you've suggested using the article talk page instead. Per WP:DR it is often extremely helpful to directly discuss things with an editor you're having issues with. Holding such discussions in "public" on an article talk page is much less effective than a direct discussion with the other party. I also notice David Tombe is attempting to mediate between you and Brews. I suggest you take him up on this offer. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:43, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Bot edit

[14]. The removal seems wrong; the article was on TFA on that date. Gimmetrow 14:23, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

My bot doesn't automatically track FA/FFA name changes with regard to TFA dates, so any time there's a name change the association with the TFA date is broken until I update the TFA database (which happens when I run the bot by hand rather than when it runs automatically every day). Fixing this (so it never removes a TFA date) is on my list of things to get to someday - it's never seemed very urgent. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:44, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

This should be fixed now. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:49, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Listify category based on activity levels

Hi Rick,

You may remember me from such threads as Wikipedia talk:List of administrator hopefuls. I was wondering if you could create a similar list for Category:WikiProject Video games members?

It should reside at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Members and break it down as follows:

• Users with at least 30 edits in the last 2 months
• Users with fewer than 30 edits in the last 2 months
• Users with no edits in the last 2 months

Updated at your convenience? (Maybe fortnightly or monthly) Thanks! –xeno^talk 14:59, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Xeno, I'd be happy to make the source available for the bot that updates WP:LA and WP:HOPEFUL, but I think I'd rather not add this task to it. It determines a user's activity level by doing a special:contributions and limits the query rate, so doing this takes a fair amount of clock time. I'm not sure I see the value of maintaining activity status of a more or less random WikiProject (if this one, then why not all of them?). In any event, if you're interested in the source just let me know (it's basically a unix shell script using awk for text processing and meta:pyWikipediaBot and mw:api for interacting with en.wikipedia). -- Rick Block (talk) 23:32, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Could you perhaps do a one-time run? The reason is because of a recent thread that wants to find out what the "biggest wikiproject" was, and WP VG was put up as a possibility, but our membership list includes inactive members. Else, just send it over to xenowiki at gmail.com and I'll try to figure it out. (I can use pywikipediabot but I haven't used any *nix since my teens =) –xeno^talk 23:37, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I really can't spare the time at the moment (real world has been quite intrusive lately). The main script for WP:HOPEFUL is at User:Rick_Bot/scripts/gethopefuls. It uses User:Rick_Bot/scripts/listcat. If all you want is an activity list it would take some ripping and hacking, but those two scripts would be a good start. You wouldn't even need a bot account to run them (just a machine that can run bash - I run them on a Mac, no guarantee they'd run unmodified on any particular flavor of Linux). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:18, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - I'll take a look and see what I can do. –xeno^talk 04:05, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

About my "Re-verification" section in the "Japan mergers/dissolutions" article

Prior to March 31 1999, there were the following numbers:

1. - Tōhoku - 67 districts; 400 municipalities (63 cities, 252 towns and 85 villages)

• 1.1 - Akita - 9 districts; 69 municipalities (9 cities, 50 towns and 10 villages)
• 1.2 - Aomori - 8 districts; 67 municipalities (8 cities, 34 towns and 25 villages)
• 1.3 - Fukushima - 14 districts; 90 municipalities (10 cities, 52 towns and 28 villages)
• 1.4 - Iwate - 12 districts; 59 municipalities (13 cities, 30 towns and 16 villages)
• 1.5 - Miyagi - 15 districts; 71 municipalities (10 cities, 59 towns and 2 villages)
• 1.6 - Yamagata - 9 districts; 44 municipalities (13 cities, 27 towns and 4 villages)

2. - Kantō - 64 districts; 453 municipalities (163 cities, 220 towns and 70 villages)

• 2.1 - Chiba - 10 districts; 80 municipalities (31 cities, 44 towns and 5 villages)
• 2.2 - Gunma - 12 districts; 70 municipalities (11 cities, 33 towns and 26 villages)
• 2.3 - Ibaraki - 14 districts; 85 municipalities (20 cities, 48 towns and 17 villages)
• 2.4 - Kanagawa - 7 districts; 37 municipalities (19 cities, 17 towns and 1 village)
• 2.5 - Saitama - 9 districts; 92 municipalities (43 cities, 38 towns and 11 villages)
• 2.6 - Tochigi - 7 districts; 49 municipalities (12 cities, 35 towns and 2 villages)
• 2.7 - Tokyo - 5 districts; 40 municipalities (27 cities, 5 towns and 8 villages)

3. - Chūbu - 110 districts; 668 municipalities (134 cities, 348 towns and 186 villages)

• 3.1 - Aichi - 16 districts; 88 municipalities (31 cities, 47 towns and 10 villages)
• 3.2 - Fukui - 10 districts; 35 municipalities (7 cities, 22 towns and 6 villages)
• 3.3 - Gifu - 17 districts; 99 municipalities (14 cities, 55 towns and 30 villages)
• 3.4 - Ishikawa - 8 districts; 41 municipalities (8 cities, 27 towns and 6 villages)
• 3.5 - Nagano - 16 districts; 120 municipalities (17 cities, 36 towns and 67 villages)
• 3.6 - Niigata - 16 districts; 112 municipalities (20 cities, 57 towns and 35 villages)
• 3.7 - Shizuoka - 12 districts; 74 municipalities (21 cities, 49 towns and 4 villages)
• 3.8 - Toyama - 7 districts; 35 municipalities (9 cities, 18 towns and 8 villages)
• 3.9 - Yamanashi - 8 districts; 64 municipalities (7 cities, 37 towns and 20 villages)

4. - Kansai - 78 districts; 395 municipalities (103 cities, 256 towns and 36 villages)

• 4.1 - Hyōgo - 20 districts; 91 municipalities (21 cities, 70 towns and 0 villages)
• 4.2 - Kyoto - 12 districts; 44 municipalities (12 cities, 31 towns and 1 village)
• 4.3 - Mie - 14 districts; 69 municipalities (13 cities, 47 towns and 9 villages)
• 4.4 - Nara - 8 districts; 47 municipalities (10 cities, 20 towns and 17 villages)
• 4.5 - Osaka - 5 districts; 44 municipalities (33 cities, 10 towns and 1 village)
• 4.6 - Shiga - 12 districts; 50 municipalities (7 cities, 42 towns and 1 village)
• 4.7 - Wakayama - 7 districts; 50 municipalities (7 cities, 36 towns and 7 villages)

5. - Chūgoku - 62 districts; 318 municipalities (49 cities, 232 towns and 37 villages)

• 5.1 - Hiroshima - 15 districts; 86 municipalities (13 cities, 67 towns and 6 villages)
• 5.2 - Okayama - 18 districts; 78 municipalities (10 cities, 56 towns and 12 villages)
• 5.3 - Shimane - 12 districts; 59 municipalities (8 cities, 41 towns and 10 villages)
• 5.4 - Tottori - 6 districts; 39 municipalities (4 cities, 31 towns and 4 villages)
• 5.5 - Yamaguchi - 11 districts; 56 municipalities (14 cities, 37 towns and 5 villages)

6. - Shikoku - 35 districts; 216 municipalities (30 cities, 145 towns and 41 villages)

• 6.1 - Ehime - 11 districts; 70 municipalities (12 cities, 44 towns and 14 villages)
• 6.2 - Kagawa - 7 districts; 43 municipalities (5 cities, 38 towns and 0 villages)
• 6.3 - Kōchi - 7 districts; 53 municipalities (9 cities, 25 towns and 19 villages)
• 6.4 - Tokushima - 10 districts; 50 municipalities (4 cities, 38 towns and 8 villages)

7. - Kyūshū - 82 districts; 570 municipalities (94 cities, 387 towns and 89 villages)

• 7.1 - Fukuoka - 17 districts; 97 municipalities (24 cities, 65 towns and 8 villages)
• 7.2 - Kagoshima - 12 districts; 96 municipalities (14 cities, 73 towns and 9 villages)
• 7.3 - Kumamoto - 11 districts; 94 municipalities (11 cities, 62 towns and 21 villages)
• 7.4 - Miyazaki - 8 districts; 44 municipalities (9 cities, 28 towns and 7 villages)
• 7.5 - Nagasaki - 9 districts; 79 municipalities (8 cities, 70 towns and 1 village)
• 7.6 - Ōita - 12 districts; 58 municipalities (11 cities, 36 towns and 11 villages)
• 7.7 - Saga - 8 districts; 49 municipalities (7 cities, 37 towns and 5 villages)
• 7.8 - Okinawa - 5 districts; 53 municipalities (10 cities, 16 towns and 27 villages)

8. - Hokkaidō - 70 districts; 212 municipalities (34 cities, 154 towns and 24 villages)

• 8.1 - Abashiri - 4 districts; 26 municipalities (3 cities, 20 towns and 3 villages)
• 8.2 - Hidaka - 7 districts; 9 municipalities (0 cities, 9 towns and 0 villages)
• 8.3 - Hiyama - 5 districts; 10 municipalities (0 cities, 10 towns and 0 villages)
• 8.4 - Iburi - 4 districts; 15 municipalities (4 cities, 9 towns and 2 villages)
• 8.5 - Ishikari - 3 districts; 10 municipalities (6 cities, 1 town and 3 villages)
• 8.6 - Kamikawa - 5 districts; 24 municipalities (4 cities, 18 towns and 2 villages)
• 8.7 - Kushiro - 5 districts; 10 municipalities (1 city, 8 towns and 1 village)
• 8.8 - Nemuro - 3 districts; 5 municipalities (1 city, 4 towns and 0 villages)
• 8.9 - Ōshima - 5 districts; 17 municipalities (1 city, 15 towns and 1 village)
• 8.10 - Rumoi - 4 districts; 9 municipalities (1 city, 7 towns and 1 village)
• 8.11 - Shiribeshi - 9 districts; 20 municipalities (1 city, 13 towns and 6 villages)
• 8.12 - Sorachi - 4 districts; 27 municipalities (10 cities, 16 towns and 1 village)
• 8.13 - Sōya - 5 districts; 10 municipalities (1 city, 8 towns and 1 village)
• 8.14 - Tokachi - 7 districts; 20 municipalities (1 city, 16 towns and 3 villages)

Hey Rick, the numbers I put were found on this document, which is in PDF format:

• The Development of Municipal Mergers in Japan

The part of the problem is on page 20 entitled "Table 6 - The Progress of Mergers according to each Prefecture", which has the data that I posted earlier. But can't find those municipalities that were between April 1, 1999 and March 31, 2004. Hope that answers for you. jlog3000 (talk) 21:26, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm still not sure what you're asking. What I've been working on (not actively for a while) is described at Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan/Gappei. I'm less interested in the historical numbers than accurate current data. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:40, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

So you're saying that you suggest me to ask or tell about my issue in Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan/Gappei. But did you at least check out the link I've posted before you replied? jlog3000 (talk) 22:33, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm saying I don't understand what your question is. Is there something you want me to do? Is there a problem with some article that you'd like me to look at (if so, which article)? I have looked at the link you posted. What is your point? -- Rick Block (talk) 00:24, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Query concerning bot updates of Wikipedia:Featured articles promoted in 2009

Wikipedia:Featured articles promoted in 2009 seems to be missing quite a few articles from Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_log/September_2009. Any technical or obvious reason for this I'm missing? Just wondering, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 00:25, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Assuming these are all recently promoted articles, the issue is that articles are only added when I run the bot manually assisted (it also runs fully automated, but doesn't do this task then). I haven't done this for nearly a week, but will some time in the next 24 hours. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:45, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Should be up to date now. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:25, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Re:

That's correct. Sorry for any confusion! Cheers, iMatthew ^talk at 02:22, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Monty Hall reference section

Hi Rick, you undid revision 318535828 by David Callan citing: Reference section is for cited references. Pure research articles are often limited to cited references, but what's the rationale in general survey articles? What's the objection to a comprehensive bibliography?

The Callan ref in question is clearly relevant to the Monty Hall problem and likely to be of interest to anyone making a detailed study of the problem. How can I make it available to readers of the article?

David Callan (talk) 04:13, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Detailed response at user talk:David Callan#About references vs. further reading, and welcome. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:13, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Re: Monty Hall reference section

Hi Rick, your points are well taken, but it is hardly fair to say the item "appears to be at best self-published". It appeared in College Mathematics Journal, a respectable math journal where all contributions to the Problems and Solutions section are, of course, refereed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by David Callan (talk • contribs) 18:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

My mistake (sorry) - I was looking at the online link which points to what appears to be your homepage at wisc.edu. BTW - both Barbeau references in the article are basically literature surveys. There's a fairly recent book as well, The Monty Hall Problem: The Remarkable Story of Math's Most Contentious Brain Teaser by Jason Rosenhouse. This book (and others) should probably be mentioned in the history section. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Sean Salazar

Hello Rick, My name is Rubi Romero and I am a campaign volunteer for Sean Salazar, I would like to ask you why did you delete the information I added to Sean's information. I have Sean's full permission to use his bio information from his web page.

Thank you,

Rubi Romero —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.126.103.74 (talk) 00:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Sean Salazar

Hello Rick, thank you for your response. I have written my own version of Sean Salazar's Bio and also providing the references where I got the information from (mostly from his website/Bio), but I also used other sources as well. I just want to make sure that I did it right this time. I also moved the page from Sean Salazar to Dr. Sean Salazar U.S. Senate Candidate 2010, Washington State.

I don't know if you have can access to it, but if you can, please check to see if it's okay and if it is can you direct me to where can I get information on how to publish it (as Wikipedia has changed). My e-mail is rubiromero.7@gmail.com

Thank you,

Rubi —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rubiromero (talk • contribs) 06:40, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

edit conflict at Monty Hall talk page

I have refactored. Martin Hogbin (talk) 20:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

On reflection, I think that this was a mistake on my part since my proposal was intended to be a way forward acceptable to glkanter and Jeff rather than an alternative suggestion. It gives more detail on how the article might be structured. I have asked Jeff and glkanter to comment accordingly. Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

MHP

It seems the discussion is going to continue as unproductive as it has been for years or to freely translate a term the Germsn Wikipedia uses to tag such discussion - it is a "infinitely boring discussion" ("unendlich öde Diskussion"). For that reason my time is better spend elsewhere in Wikipedia, So i probably will drop out of the discussion soon. However if you need urgent help to avoid total nonsense creeping into the article, feel free to notify me (again). Regards and keep up the good work, --Kmhkmh (talk) 17:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm filing a mediation request naming you as one of the interested parties. Are you OK with that? And, BTW, danke. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes I can be around be around for that. However if the mediation itself turns into a neverending story I'd probably opt out. As far as the mediation is concerned the thing we can "give" Martin without compromising the article are imho: An article lead without Morgan and featuring the unconditional solution (carefully phrased) as an appropriate solution (with a symmetry assumption or as a reasonable heuristic) without an direct criticism in that section and morgan in a separate section. What he cannot have however is having Morgan or his criticism removed from the article (i.e. order or placement is negotionable but not content). Also framing the conditional solution as different problem or a mere variation of the "real" problem is something he cannot have either. Nor can the article in anyway define the "real" via simple editorial consent (rather than resources). regards--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Sympathy

You have my sympathy, but I'm afraid that I'm deadly busy at work over the next month or so, and any time I spend on Wikipedia I probably oughtn't. I doubt that I could approach the situation with the care and patience demanded. Best wishes, and good luck to you. I don't know how you've stuck with that article for so long. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:13, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

In the short term (before the MedCab gets up to speed, if ever) about the only thing that you probably can do is seek the informal assistance of another admin. Unfortunately, what you'll probably find is that there will be complaints that you've just brought in another teammate for 'your' side. It's a bit of a lose-lose situation, but I can't see what else you could try, short of giving up on the article outright. Ideally you'd be able to find a mutually agreed-upon admin who is respected (or at least tolerated) by most of the participants. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2009-12-06/Monty_Hall_problem

Hello, Rick Block. You have new messages at K10wnsta's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

At first glance, the volume of discussion on this issue seems immense and convoluted. As you are a bit more familiar with it, do you know off-hand if anyone has issued a third opinion in the past 6 months or so? It's not that big a deal, but if everyone agrees to informal mediation, it would be significant in reviewing the situation.
--K10wnsta (talk) 21:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

There was a recent poll of sorts that pretty much explains the opinions of most folks, see talk:Monty Hall problem#Changes suggested by JeffJor, Martin Hogbin, and Glkanter, and the subsequent "comments" sections. Pretty much everyone who has taken part in previous discussions on the talk page was requested to comment, with an open invitation at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics. This was not a third opinion request (more like an RFC), but there are roughly 6 or so folks actively commenting so it's not obvious to me a third opinion would be very useful (not obvious it wouldn't be, either). -- Rick Block (talk) 00:31, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

The FAQ

It looked like you and Glkanter were starting to carry the battle into the "FAQ" page, so I attempted to make a more neutral presentation there. I hope you agree this is better. Dicklyon (talk) 05:15, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Pink Floyd's First Album On August 5

I am writing this to ask why Pink Floyd’s first album should be removed for the August 5 page. Are you deputing the fact that The Piper at the Gates of Dawn did not come out on this day. Well check The Piper at the Gates of Dawn Wikipedia page if you want to check the facts. Also you might say that this is just trivial and of no importance to the page, I would have to disagree with that statement because it is not. On that day Pink Floyd revolutionized Psychedelic music and eventually Progressive Rock. So in short it is important and should be there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.74.208.196 (talk) 14:05, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Copied to talk:August 5 and replied there. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2009-12-06/Monty Hall problem

You are listed as an involved/interested party in a request for mediation. This message is an invitation for you to participate in the discussion here. Please join us in the conversation at your earliest convenience.
--K10wnsta (talk) 05:31, 29 December 2009 (UTC)