If you're here to respond to a comment I posted on your talk page, feel free to reply on your talk page (so the question and answer are together). I ALWAYS watch talk pages I've posted comments to for a while. If you , I'll respond here unless you ask me not to.
Archives: 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008 • 2007 • 2006 • 2005 • 2004
Contents
- 1 Not mentioned as nominator
- 2 Strikeout?
- 3 Problem with old FLC set
- 4 List of admins
- 5 MfD nomination of Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls
- 6 User:Rick Bot and Wikipedia:List of administrators
- 7 Rick_Bot down
- 8 Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2015 January index
- 9 Rick Bot question
- 10 List of Wikipedians by number of Featured list nominations
- 11 Wikipedia:List of administrators and Rick Bot
- 12 Request
- 13 Missing FAs
- 14 ArbCom elections are now open!
- 15 Animal birth days and deaths days
- 16 Editing of articles
- 17 Category:Cricket deliveries has been nominated for discussion
- 18 Precious anniversary
- 19 Rick Bot - List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations error
- 20 wp:wbfan option to skip usernames
- 21 Nomination of Erin Dolgan for deletion
- 22 Extended confirmed protection
- 23 Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins
- 24 A new user right for New Page Patrollers
- 25 Problem or issues with editing
- 26 ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
- 27 ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
- 28 Administrators' newsletter - February 2017
- 29 QuestionPro
- 30 Category:Singaporean people has been nominated for discussion
- 31 Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls
- 32 Rick Bot
- 33 Nomination for deletion of Template:Footer Olympic Champions 4x100 m Men/year
- 34 ArbCom 2017 election voter message
- 35 Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations
- 36 Wrong coding in FL update
- 37 ArbCom 2018 election voter message
- 38 Indexing CFDs
Not mentioned as nominator
Hello Rick Block! Could you please help? I only just noticed that the feature article Tintin in Tibet that I nominated and ensured promoted has not shown anyone as the nominator here Wikipedia:Featured articles promoted in 2014#Promoted in September 2014, even though I am the primary nominator and I also invited my fellow editor Midnightblueowl to share the credit. Can you help us both receive our additional star for this article on Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations? Maybe I messed things up by adding a second person as nominator. Thanks so much! Cheers. Prhartcom (talk) 17:02, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
- This edit will do the trick. The bot didn't know how to deal with {{usert}} (it should know now). -- Rick Block (talk) 05:29, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
Strikeout?
Was there a reason the bot did this? Thanks - SchroCat (talk) 09:01, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
- The list was deleted from WP:FL, here. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:23, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
Problem with old FLC set
Hi. Hope you're well. There was an old set of universities of Canada series which were separately named based on their province or area which now all redirect to universities of Canada. I changed the names of the lists back to their original names when promoted so we wouldn't have the nonsense of five or so former featured lists all called "universities of Canada" but was reverted by the bot. [[1]] Any way of rectifying it? Cowlibob (talk) 19:48, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
List of admins
This edit by Rick Bot broke the list of admins page. Guettarda (talk) 19:54, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
MfD nomination of Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls
Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Snowager-Talk to Me! 23:34, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
User:Rick Bot and Wikipedia:List of administrators
Rick Bot seems to have gotten confused somehow. Yesterday, it reported 596 active admins [2]. Today, it's reporting 447 active admins [3]. That's an enormous, unprecedented (by more than one order of magnitude) drop. Something's not working right... --Hammersoft (talk) 16:23, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
- The bot fetches the current list of admins every time it runs. Today it only got a partial list (apparently only the first 1000). My guess is it will be fine tomorrow but I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks for letting me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:01, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Rick_Bot down
user:Rick_Bot is not currently working. I'm attempting to figure out why and will fix it as soon as I can. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:01, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
- It's working again. If anyone notices any problems, please let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:39, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates/2015 January index
Is it possible to run Rick Bot to index January 2015 CFD discussions? I'm not sure of the proper procedure I just noticed that December, February and March were indexed but not January. Liz Read! Talk! 10:02, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
- Sure. It waits until it thinks all the discussions are closed. If this takes more than a few weeks after the end of the month (or if it's confused about whether discussions are closed or not), a month might get skipped. I'll run it manually to create the January index. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:12, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks, Rick! I imagine it's confusing to the bot as it did index March but there is still (4+ months later) one discussion that hasn't been closed yet. I've been working at CfD on and off for two years and this is the first time I've come across the indexes but it's nice to know all of the information is in one place. Thank you again for your bot. Liz Read! Talk! 18:25, 4 July 2015 (UTC)
Rick Bot question
Hello Rick Block! Random question here – how hard would it be to get Rick Bot to track Good articles, and update the WP:List of Wikipedians by Good Articles page, in the same way it already tracks Featured articles?... Just randomly curious. Thanks in advance! --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:37, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
- There was some discussion about this quite a while ago, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Newsletter#Automating Good Article contribution recognition. Things are somewhat different now (the WBFAN updates are now completely automated, and I've abandoned the DYK archives), but the brief answer is still that it would take more time than I have available. I don't know if anyone ever pursued this at WP:BOTREQ. You could search the archives there if you're interested. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:22, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
List of Wikipedians by number of Featured list nominations
Hi there,
You forgot to add a star by my name Birdienest81 denoting that I promoted the 73rd Academy Awards to a featured list.
- --Birdienest81 (talk) 21:24, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
- The bot has occasional glitches. This edit will do the trick. The star should show up tomorrow. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:51, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:List of administrators and Rick Bot
Yesterday, Rick Bot reported 575 active admins [4]. Today, it reports 437 [5]. Hrm. Me thinks something changed (and it wasn't a >100 drop in active admins). --Hammersoft (talk) 17:25, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
- Looks like the fetch of the current list of admins did not complete for some reason (network glitch?). I'm running it again. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:33, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
It did it again [6]. Not sure why, after a very long period of uninterrupted service. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:56, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
- Definitely looks like network glitches. The bot uses the api interface to get 500 admins at a time and continues fetching until the returned list doesn't say there are more to fetch. If this keeps happening I suppose I'll have to make the bot a little more resilient in the face network glitches (like also check to make sure the fetch succeeds). It's been doing strange things with WP:WBFLN as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:45, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
Request
Hi Rick, Can you please start this and this report for Urdu Wikipedia? We really need them, Thanks. Muhammad Shuaib (talk) 18:47, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
- Hi Muhammad, I'd be happy to share the source code (in fact, it's at User:Rick Bot/scripts), but I'd rather not take on running a bot against any of the non-English wikipedias. The source code is mostly Unix shell and awk, but also uses a custom version of one of the pywikipediabot functions. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:04, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
- Great, Thanks for sharing source codes. :) --Muhammad Shuaib (talk) 12:02, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
Missing FAs
I noticed (because one of mine is missing) that Wikipedia:Featured articles promoted in 2015 is missing the last three three articles listed on Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_log/September_2015. Could you please correct this error and investigate how it happened and make sure its not repeated elsewhere? Thanks, BollyJeff | talk 14:17, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
- I added the missing 3 from September to WP:FA2015 and checked the rest of the months in 2015 (they're complete). The bot uses cURL to fetch various pages (like the monthly FA logs). Fairly recently, these page fetches have started failing occasionally (I'm not quite sure why). I've been making the bot more resilient (retrying failed fetches) but haven't gotten everywhere yet. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks. Now would you know how long before (or if) this would get reflected in Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_featured_article_nominations? BollyJeff | talk 17:23, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
- The next time the bot runs (tomorrow). If you look at the history of WP:WBFAN you'll see the bot updates it every day. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:58, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks. Now would you know how long before (or if) this would get reflected in Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_featured_article_nominations? BollyJeff | talk 17:23, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
ArbCom elections are now open!
Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:12, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
Animal birth days and deaths days
I'm not sure if you saw the before version[7] before making this edit.[8] I'm not entirely sure how long animals have been included in the language of Wikipedia:Days of the year, but it didn't start with me. I certainly think including something like the death of the last passenger pigeon wouldn't be unreasonable; arguably that could be better fitted under the events section. I was just trying not to rock too many boats while making what I thought was a reasonable and incremental change. -- Kendrick7talk 04:03, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
Editing of articles
Hi Rick Block! I'm not sure if I should ask someone else but I am new to Wikipedia and you seem like a polite guy. Last night I was editing some of the articles for the band Underworld as they could have been otherwise misleading to readers given their state, after editing some of the articles about their albums I began to receive notifications from a user named "emotionalllama" saying that I was not stating what was factual (in fact I was, being a huge fan of the band, I am, as you could imagine, well up to date on their history and therefore know what they have and have not done). After a period of time they began to threaten me with account bans and blocks by posting Wikipedia policy quotes and started saying I was "disruptive" (perhaps I may have made some mistakes, but that is understandable I hope because I only joined Wikipedia a matter of hours ago). After finding out they were not an administrator, I searched the list of users, I found them but they're account link was in red, not a blue link. It also seems that they created this account a matter of minutes after I began editing and then deleted it (or got banned) after I responded to them on their talk page. I'm not sure, but surely there has to be some kind of rule or penalty for people pretending to be administrators and then using that to bully new editors. Whilst I may have made some mistakes, as I am a diehard fan if this band (seeing them in March) I think I know what I'm talking about when I edit any article related to them. Perhaps I may have violated policy but if that was the case, I didn't mean to. The controversy was in relation to their discography, the article lists the album "dubnobasswithmyheadman" as their third album when it is regarded by the members Karl Hyde and Rick Smith as their debut. Before this they released two other albums "Underneath The Radar" and "Change The Weather" also under the name Underworld, however these albums are regarded as being by a separate band that also happened to be called 'Underworld' due to the significant difference in their music style and genre and because the lineup was different (although Karl and Rick were part of this band). Therefore "dubnonasswithmyheadman" should be regarded as their first album, "Second Toughest In The Infants" their second album, Beaucoup Fish their third and so on, you get the idea, instead of them being listed as their third, fourth and fifth albums (the discography extends on) to avoid confusion. These edits I speak of were made by me before I decided it was better to create an account.
Many Thanks,
Underworldfan97 Underworldfan97 (talk) 10:50, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
- It looks like this issue has already been resolved. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:36, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Category:Cricket deliveries has been nominated for discussion
Category:Cricket deliveries, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Jack | talk page 09:27, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
Precious anniversary
dutiful bots and personal advice | |
---|---|
... you were recipient no. 162 of Precious, a prize of QAI! |
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:35, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Five years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 04:46, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
... and six! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:00, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Rick Bot - List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations error
Hi, the bot messed up the Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations with this edit. I have reverted it. --Bamyers99 (talk) 19:08, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks. I'll keep an eye on it. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:56, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
wp:wbfan option to skip usernames
- Hey, some people do not want their usernames on WP:WBFAN. Removing their names from the relevant "List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations" pages would be difficult if they were sole nominator. Can the bot maintain and reference a list of names to be skipped? Perhaps the logic would be: if username is a co-nominator for a given FA, skip that username but do record other con-nominators on WBFAN; if username is sole nominator, skip that entire FA. [Your suggestions also solicited] Thanks!!!! Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:22, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
- Anyone who does not want their name listed at WP:WBFAN could delete their name from the relevant "by year" nomination summary page, e.g. WP:FA2016. The bot reconstructs the WBFAN page every day based on the current content of the by-year summary pages. Would this suffice? -- Rick Block (talk) 15:49, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
- The question of whether that would suffice would need to be answered by several editors separately and individually, at different points in the future. All I know is that it would be a burdensome task for those who have more than five or six FAs, and would be especially so if they are the sole nominator, because they'd have to delete an entire FA entry rather than merely removing their own username from a field of co-nominators... I dunno what language bots use, but in Python etc. this is an easy fix that has the added virtue of being reversible: Just manually create/maintain a separate page with a list of usernames to be skipped; then bot skips those usernames when writing out wp:wbfan. It's reversible in the sense that a person can later *remove* their username from that list. Then the bot simply doesn't find that name on the skip list during next run, so the name is not skipped, but instead is simply re-added to wbfan. Ta da. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:28, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
- Are you suggesting this because you do not want your username listed at WBFAN? Would deleting the relevant entries from the by-year nomination summary page(s) suffice for you? I'm suggesting this approach on the assumption that someone who does not want their username listed at WBFAN would also not want their username listed at, say, WP:FA2016. It's also reversible (albeit not as easily). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:44, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
- I personally like WBVANITY (I mean WBFAN). But I am deeply familiar with the phenomenon that some people do not like such things. I am a teacher, and once in my first or second year of teaching I made the mistake of casually mentioning (during class) the name of the top student in the class. That girl came to me in tears (I was stunned) and asked me never to "make a public announcement" again...I don't think anyone cares about WP:FA2016 or similar pages, because those pages are obscure. It also probably isn't an issue that credit can be retrieved by searching, since everyone knows that contribs are ultimately public by licensing policy anyhow. I think it's the fact that WBFAN is the beacon (it's the vanity page, the "public announcement") that some people find off-putting (I like to use that word whenever I can :-)). Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:10, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
- Are you suggesting this because you do not want your username listed at WBFAN? Would deleting the relevant entries from the by-year nomination summary page(s) suffice for you? I'm suggesting this approach on the assumption that someone who does not want their username listed at WBFAN would also not want their username listed at, say, WP:FA2016. It's also reversible (albeit not as easily). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:44, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
- The question of whether that would suffice would need to be answered by several editors separately and individually, at different points in the future. All I know is that it would be a burdensome task for those who have more than five or six FAs, and would be especially so if they are the sole nominator, because they'd have to delete an entire FA entry rather than merely removing their own username from a field of co-nominators... I dunno what language bots use, but in Python etc. this is an easy fix that has the added virtue of being reversible: Just manually create/maintain a separate page with a list of usernames to be skipped; then bot skips those usernames when writing out wp:wbfan. It's reversible in the sense that a person can later *remove* their username from that list. Then the bot simply doesn't find that name on the skip list during next run, so the name is not skipped, but instead is simply re-added to wbfan. Ta da. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 22:28, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Nomination of Erin Dolgan for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Erin Dolgan is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Erin Dolgan until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. BethNaught (talk) 08:12, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
Extended confirmed protection
Two-Factor Authentication now available for admins
Hello,
Please note that TOTP based two-factor authentication is now available for all administrators. In light of the recent compromised accounts, you are encouraged to add this additional layer of security to your account. It may be enabled on your preferences page in the "User profile" tab under the "Basic information" section. For basic instructions on how to enable two-factor authentication, please see the developing help page for additional information. Important: Be sure to record the two-factor authentication key and the single use keys. If you lose your two factor authentication and do not have the keys, it's possible that your account will not be recoverable. Furthermore, you are encouraged to utilize a unique password and two-factor authentication for the email account associated with your Wikimedia account. This measure will assist in safeguarding your account from malicious password resets. Comments, questions, and concerns may be directed to the thread on the administrators' noticeboard. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
A new user right for New Page Patrollers
Hi Rick Block.
A new user group, New Page Reviewer, has been created in a move to greatly improve the standard of new page patrolling. The user right can be granted by any admin at PERM. It is highly recommended that admins look beyond the simple numerical threshold and satisfy themselves that the candidates have the required skills of communication and an advanced knowledge of notability and deletion. Admins are automatically included in this user right.
It is anticipated that this user right will significantly reduce the work load of admins who patrol the performance of the patrollers. However,due to the complexity of the rollout, some rights may have been accorded that may later need to be withdrawn, so some help will still be needed to some extent when discovering wrongly applied deletion tags or inappropriate pages that escape the attention of less experienced reviewers, and above all, hasty and bitey tagging for maintenance. User warnings are available here but very often a friendly custom message works best.
If you have any questions about this user right, don't hesitate to join us at WT:NPR. (Sent to all admins).MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:47, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Problem or issues with editing
Hello Rick Block,
Maybe you can help me (or someone else - with moderator rights) I have some issues with a editor (User:Cplakidas) about the rules and conventions. He is making his own rules: by grouping events or reverting my edits. I think he is suffering from editcontitis. He becomes a "Page Patroller" and corrects my edits (for the sole purpose to increase his own edits). We must respect each other and must realize we all try to get along. He talks about the terms of 'first occurrences' (what terms?) and don't accept my edits with capitalizations issues. His opinion (as editor) is more important than to work together as civilized people. He says: "Capitalization of 'caliph' is just a fig leaf for what is petty tit-for-tat editing. Grow up." I don't accept this...and it 'piss me off' when people don't have respect for each other (while we are doing the same thing). We are anonymous volunteers (and I am 'proud' to be part of it). Anyone, with internet access can write his own edits (without violating the rules). I hope you can correct this inappropriate behavior. Peters01 (talk) 22:41, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
Administrators' newsletter - February 2017
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2017). This first issue is being sent out to all administrators, if you wish to keep receiving it please subscribe. Your feedback is welcomed.
- NinjaRobotPirate • Schwede66 • K6ka • Ealdgyth • Ferret • Cyberpower678 • Mz7 • Primefac • Dodger67
- Briangotts • JeremyA • BU Rob13
- A discussion to workshop proposals to amend the administrator inactivity policy at Wikipedia talk:Administrators has been in process since late December 2016.
- Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2016 closed with no consensus for implementing Pending changes level 2 with new criteria for use.
- Following an RfC, an activity requirement is now in place for bots and bot operators.
- When performing some administrative actions the reason field briefly gave suggestions as text was typed. This change has since been reverted so that issues with the implementation can be addressed. (T34950)
- Following the latest RfC concluding that Pending Changes 2 should not be used on the English Wikipedia, an RfC closed with consensus to remove the options for using it from the page protection interface, a change which has now been made. (T156448)
- The Foundation has announced a new community health initiative to combat harassment. This should bring numerous improvements to tools for admins and CheckUsers in 2017.
- The Arbitration Committee released a response to the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on paid editing and outing.
- JohnCD (John Cameron Deas) passed away on 30 December 2016. John began editing Wikipedia seriously during 2007 and became an administrator in November 2009.
13:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
QuestionPro
Hi, so there are some articles on YourStory, VentureBeat and Livemint on QuestionPro. And when I try to search for QuestionPro on Wikipedia, a number of articles show up that have this company mentioned. But it appears that this page was either deleted before or YourStory links have been blocked. I am not quite sure, can you help please? I use their software. So thought ill check once. Thanks!
- The articles on YourStory and QuestionPro have been deleted, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/YourStory and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/QuestionPro. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:37, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
Category:Singaporean people has been nominated for discussion
Category:Singaporean people, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:39, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls
why is the brot wiping me out here? BernardZ (talk)
- You don't edit the list directly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_administrator_hopefuls#Adding_yourself_to_this_list . -- Rick Block (talk) 15:22, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Rick Bot
Just a nudge to tell you that Rick Bot stopped working on the 10th. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 04:02, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
- This is going to take a bit of effort to fix. I'll get there eventually but it might take another week or so. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:27, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
- Thanks for your efforts Rick! Trying (poorly) to be patient :) --Hammersoft (talk) 20:38, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
- Sorry - real life intruded for a while. I think it's running again (doing a test run right now). -- Rick Block (talk) 17:41, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
- Oh come on! You're supposed to sacrifice yourself to the almighty wikipedia! How dare you! :) Welcome back! Looking at this, thanks for getting it back up and running again. But, could it state in the edit summary how many active admins there are, like it did before? This is quite useful for tracking active admins over time, rather than having to extract the information manually from each diff. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:03, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
- Yes - I noticed that. I'm chasing down why this is not working. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:17, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
- Tangential; but something that has been in my thoughts of late, and you being experienced in writing bots would have considerably more insight on this than I do. Your bot going down recently, plus another bot going down a few months before it, reminds me of what I see as a problem. We have many bots that do critical work around here. Those bots are run by editors who are here of their own free will. What happens when (not if; we will all leave eventually) that editor leaves? The bot stops functioning, and we lose functionality. To me, it seems reasonable that a bot known to have worked successfully within the project for a period and known to be critical to functionality should be brought on board as something operated by the community, and not just one editor. Sure, it might be possible to grab code and move forward, but it might not as well. The owner of the bot that shot down some months before gave me code, but as yet I haven't toyed with it and haven't attempted to get it running again. It'd be better though if the bot was run and supported by the community. Alas. Anyway, is there any effort like that? Having a community driven bot effort for operating and supporting them? --Hammersoft (talk) 18:50, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
- One of the things that's been on my list for a long time is to write a "meta bot" that fetches a bot's code from a wikipedia page and runs the fetched bot. With this approach,
ifwhen a person who runs a bot disappears, the bot code is still around and somebody else could easily pick it up. I don't know if there has been previous discussion about this topic. If so, I think it would be at WP:BOTN (I'm not finding a previous discussion with a quick search). I think the general rule should be that every bot's source code should be public (there are a few exceptions - like the automated vandalism bots). This is currently encouraged (per WP:BOTPOL), but not required. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:31, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
[9] Working great! Thanks! --Hammersoft (talk) 17:20, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
The bot hasn't run on WP:List of administrator hopefuls in a long while. --Izno (talk) 18:25, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
- Interesting. It's been running but has been failing to fetch the list of RFAs. It asks to fetch 500 at a shot but has not been getting 500 (which it has assumed meant that that clump was the last clump). Seems like something must have changed in the api interface on the server side. I think I've fixed it but will keep an eye on it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:22, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
Template:Footer Olympic Champions 4x100 m Men/year has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 16:38, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
ArbCom 2017 election voter message
Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations
I would like to know how Rick Bot runs Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations, so that I might do something similar in Portuguese Wikipedia. Could we talk about it? Leefeni de Karik (talk) 21:07, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
- Sure. The code is available, see user:Rick Bot/scripts (this is not just the WBFAN update, but everything the bot does). The general idea is the bot figures out the newly promoted FAs (User:Rick Bot/scripts/newnoms) and adds them to the current year's by-year page, and then updates the by-year pages (User:Rick Bot/scripts/update byyear), and then updates the WBFAN page (User:Rick Bot/scripts/update wbfan). These are shell scripts that are invoked by a section of the script that runs every day (User:Rick Bot/scripts/daily). In general, the scripts fetch existing content from Wikipedia using cURL, modify some existing page content (generally using awk), and post it back using a modified version of replace.py that supports a "replace the whole file" argument. I run these on a Mac which is fundamentally BSD Unix underneath MacOS. They'd probably run unchanged on a Linux box. I suspect they'd run on a Windows PC as well, but you'd have to install something like Cygwin first. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:55, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
Wrong coding in FL update
Hi Rick, can you fix your bot's coding when it updates the WP:FL2018 page? Starting April 2018, it makes weird edits. Thanks!--Cheetah (talk) 02:12, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
- Sorry for the slow response. I'll take a look at it. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:58, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
- Should be fixed. Thanks for letting me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:14, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
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Indexing CFDs
I was replacing one of the templates in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Archive debates and I noticed that the CFD archive indices stop after February 2018. Is there a reason the archives stopped being created? Primefac (talk) 20:51, 2 January 2019 (UTC) (please ping on reply)
- @Primefac: This is on my list to look at - I noticed a week or so ago. The way it's supposed to work is the bot waits until all the open discussions for the month are closed (one way or another), and then creates the monthly index. Without looking at it, my guess is something changed that is making the bot think there are still open discussions. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:55, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
- @Primefac: I think it's fixed and have added indices for the missing months (there's still an unclosed request from November, so the indices stop with October). -- Rick Block (talk) 18:13, 13 January 2019 (UTC)