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RfC request for an article I'm involed in

Hi there, the bot selected me to engage in RfC for an article I'm involved in. Therefore, to avoid any conflicts of interest, I have notified the editor who requested RfC as well as made a post to the talk page announcing I was withdrawing myself from consideration. I have encouraged the editor to select an editor for RfC at random but if there's any way the bot could cycle through another editor for that particular request, it may prove beneficial. Zepppep (talk) 05:11, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Withdrawing yourself seems a bit overkill. The WP:FRS system is only meant to supplement the RfC system, and while I really should fix that bug (it is on my list), in the big scheme of things this doesn't seem to warrant worrying too much about. --Chris 05:55, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

GA bot adding reviews if there's an error

As an example, Lil-unique1 took on reviews for two of Status's GAN submissions: Run the World (song) and Invading My Mind. Unfortunately, there was something not quite right about the GA nominee templates for both of these: in this case, Status had removed a note he'd inserted in each next to the |note= parameter, but unfortunately deleted the "|note=" part along with it. There followed about five hours of attempts, every ten minutes, to reassert the review, and each time, Lil-unique1's total increased by 2. A similar thing had occurred a few hours before with the Paul Ryan article Review being started over and over again thanks to a missing "|status=" parameter; reviewer The Devil's Advocate started with 7 reviews and ended with 19 two hours later.

There also another odd thing: whenever a new review is started, all the of person's other entries are relisted (reviews and nominations both) so as to display the increased number of reviews. That makes the article history less useful: it doesn't seem helpful to list otherwise unaffected articles as if there's something new happening with them when all that's involved is a review to another article entirely. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:22, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

The second problem should be fixed. The first is a bit more complex and will take a bit longer. Sorry about the delay. --Chris 05:50, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Your Bot

Your Bot is removing my RFC on the http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Talk:Ante_Paveli%C4%87 claiming it to be expired. Could you, please, take care about it. Thank you.--Juraj Budak (talk) 23:52, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Kindly please, disable your Bot!--Juraj Budak (talk) 01:32, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

fixed. The bot was parsing "--Wustenfuchs 11:57, 5 April 2012 (UTC)" as the starting date of the RfC, hence why it was removing it as expired. --Chris 05:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Signatures

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Signatures. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 15:15, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 September 2012

Please comment on Template talk:Orfur

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Template talk:Orfur. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 15:15, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Talk:List of African-American firsts

Hi, Chris. Need your help. Nearly two weeks ago, I posted at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure for an admin to close the RfC at Talk:List of African-American firsts. We're still waiting — I made a second request today — so until there's closure the RfC is still going on. Please "alert" your RfC bot. Thanks! --Tenebrae (talk) 17:02, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 September 2012

Please comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/City population templates

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/City population templates. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 12:15, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Bot down

It appears Chris G Bot 3 (talk · contribs) is down. Could you give it a boot in the behind? Thanks. MBisanz talk 03:12, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 13:15, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 September 2012

Weird One bot edit

[1] One bot (talk · contribs) moved Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Bearingsareawesome/sandbox to a subsection titled "January 1, 1970" which, I'm pretty certain, predates not only the MFD but Wikipedia by a several decades...While it's possible this was the first MFD performed on ARPANET, I thought I'd point this out in case there was a code glitch. — Scientizzle 15:24, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm...It did it again, moviing Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles containing deleted files/1 from ===September 17, 2012=== to ===January 1, 1970===. Curious. — Scientizzle 15:55, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Both of those pages were moved after being listed, so instead of reading the actual MfD page, the bot was simply reading the redirect. That should be fixed now. To answer your second question, January 1, 1970 is the beginning of all known time (at least as far the bot is concerned). --Chris 08:18, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Timing & specific RfC Mitt Romney

Hi there. Nice work with the bot.

A couple of issues, though.

Generally, when I receive notifications, it appears to be up to a week or more after the RfC notification has been placed on whatever page, making my comment seem irrelevant to whatever debate might be going on.

Withe the Mitt Romney RfC particularly, there appears to be no RfC notice on the page at all, perhaps indicating that the issue has been resolved (seems kinda quick) or that the bot notification delay has actually become even longer.

Just some feedback in case you don't already know these things.

Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 22:45, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep that in mind when I'm working on it in the future. --Chris 08:54, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

RfC bot question

Hi. Can you look into Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment#Bot_hasn.27t_listed_my_rfc? I glanced at it but couldn't find an explanation. Thanks. --Noleander (talk) 02:47, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I've responded there. --Chris 08:53, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Couple extra functions for botclasses.php

I needed to extend botclasses.php to get information about images, so here's the extra functions I've added so you could roll them into the main version. 

    /**  BMcN 2012-09-16
     * Retrieve a media file's actual location.
     * @param $page The "File:" page on the wiki which the URL of is desired.
     * @return The URL pointing directly to the media file (Eg http://upload.mediawiki.org/wikipedia/en/1/1/Example.jpg)
     **/
    function getfilelocation ($page) {
        $x = $this->query('?action=query&format=php&prop=imageinfo&titles='.urlencode($page).'&iilimit=1&iiprop=url');
        foreach ($x['query']['pages'] as $ret ) {
            if (isset($ret['imageinfo'][0]['url'])) {
                return $ret['imageinfo'][0]['url'];
            } else
                return false;
        }
    }

    /**  BMcN 2012-09-16
     * Retrieve a media file's uploader.
     * @param $page The "File:" page
     * @return The user who uploaded the topmost version of the file.
     **/
    function getfileuploader ($page) {
        $x = $this->query('?action=query&format=php&prop=imageinfo&titles='.urlencode($page).'&iilimit=1&iiprop=user');
        foreach ($x['query']['pages'] as $ret ) {
            if (isset($ret['imageinfo'][0]['user'])) {
                return $ret['imageinfo'][0]['user'];
            } else
                return false;
        }
    }

No idea if they'll be any use outside the stuff I'm doing, but may as well share them. --Brian McNeil /talk 12:41, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

  • For what I'm doing, I ended up having to add a copy-upload option and combine multiple functions to reduce the number of API calls I'm making.
I've put my copy of botclasses (minus the lyricwiki stuff) here: n:User:NewsieBot/botclasses.php. --Brian McNeil /talk 13:21, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for those. It always amazes me that people actually use botclasses.php. I've updated the svn version with your contributions. --Chris 09:21, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

  • It works (most of the time). It saves creating stuff from-scratch. Having written very little PHP to-date it has prompted me to take a much closer look at classes and abstracting stuff more. I'll probably revisit it in its entirety once I've a more-complete understanding of getting into stuff like inheritance and extending classes. But, with my background being a couple of decades writing mostly procedural code, I suspect that's where the attraction lies; it gives me easily-understood functions which I can abuse in that way. --Brian McNeil /talk 13:16, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Citation needed

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Template talk:Citation needed. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 22:15, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

GAN section changes

Hello, Chris. On WT:GAN I mentioned changing the "Theatre, film and drama" to "Theatre, film and television," and subsequently changing the subsections to "Theatre," "Film," "Television," and "Other." I believe such changes would benefit that area, as many others have multiple subsections. How could I proceed without screwing up the bot? Thanks. -- Wikipedical (talk) 04:41, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Syntax differentiation in editing window

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Syntax differentiation in editing window. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! If in doubt, please see suggestions for responding. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. — RFC bot (talk) 22:15, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

RFC Bot, Wikipedia:Feedback request service, and Template:Rfc

Hi! I am unsubscribing from Wikipedia:Feedback request service. As the operator of RFC Bot, I thought you might want to know why, even though, as I explain below, the problem is with Template:Rfc and not with RFC Bot.

I believe that the current interaction between Wikipedia:Feedback request service, and Template:Rfc is fatally flawed. I also believe that there is a fix for the problem.

When I signed up, I specified that I wanted to see RfCs on maths, science, and technology.

Instead I got:

Clearly not RfCs on maths, science, and technology

I tried bringing this up at Wikipedia_talk:Requests for comment/Archive 12 (section Feedback request service)[7] and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 98 (section Miscategorized requests at feedback request service),[8] but the only responce was from an apologist -- someone who resists suggestions for improvement by excusing the present system.

Here is my suggested fix:

Right now, Template:Rfc allows for multiple topic areas. for example:

Talk:Barack Obama on Twitter: {{rfc|media|sci|pol|soc|bio|rfcid=E526B73}}

In my opinion, having Template:Rfc allow for multiple topic areas encourages topic spamming. The above-mentioned RfC was basically about whether to change "Barack Obama on Twitter" to "Barack Obama on social media" it has nothing to do with maths, science, and technology, abnd very little to do with politics.

Limiting Template:Rfc to just one topic area two topic areas would do a lot to fix this problem. Before I propose that, can you think of any downside to this? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:35, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear that you are unsubscribing (although I am glad to hear it isn't RFCbot's fault). I would expect that your proposal is going to get quite a bit of opposition, but, fwiw, I think it's a good idea (although it may be better to limit to 2 topics instead of one). Good luck, I'm interested to see how this pans out. --Chris 12:16, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
I think that a limit of 1 is not quite right ... I've initiated maybe 15 RfCs, and perhaps 3 of them used two topic areas because they were fuzzy borderline situations. A limit of 2 might be okay. Another reason to permit 2 topic areas is that we want lots of editors to respond to RfCs: the more (relevant) topic areas that are listed, the more responses. --Noleander (talk) 16:36, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
Good point. 1 is too restrictive. I have edited the above to make 2 the suggested number. What would be ideal would be for the humans who look at new RfCs looking for obvious vandalism would also fix obvious miscategorization. For example, an RfC on whether to change Barack Obama on Twitter to Barack Obama on social media is rather obviously not in the topic area of maths, science, and technology, and that should have been corrected. Alas, I have no idea where to go to even bring up the topic of making that happen.
I think that what bugs me the most is that feedback request service is a really, really good idea, and would have excellent results if only humans would stop feeding the bot that posts the feedback requests bad data.
BTW, thanks, Chris G, for letting me bounce some half-baked ideas off you. Let me know if you want me to take this somewhere else. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:55, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 September 2012

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