User talk:Mikeblas/Archives/2020/December

duplicate ref

This edit and accompanying edit summary: fix duplicate refdef due to edits by User:Monkbot, operated by User:Trappist the monk apparently refer to this Monkbot task 18 edit. I do not mind being blamed for something that I did or something that my bot did, but I think that in this case, the duplicate references were present in the article before task 18 did its edit.. Are you sure that task 18 did something wrong?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure. While the duplicate references previously existed, they were precisely the same. Monkbot edited both. The edit revealed a third copy of the reference which was transcluded from a template. Since the two definitions that Monkbot edited no longer matched the definition of the same name from the template, after Monkbot's edit, the article rendered with two error messages in the "references" section. The errors weren't there before Monkbot's edits. This means that Monkbot made the article worse. Maybe it doesn't check for error messages after it makes edits and before it saves them (for example, it doesn't "preview" the results). Or maybe it does, and just ignores them. -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:46, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Right, got it. You then fixed the template which explains why I could not see the error when I looked for it.

Monkbot does not preview before saving. I don't know of any bot that does.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:02, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

That's surprising. Why is that? -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:46, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Likely because of the sheer difficulty. I'm guessing that in order to do it properly, it is necessary to first read the html of the page to be edited so that the bot has a reference; then read the wikisource and do the edit; then send that to MediaWiki for rendering; compare the html of the new rendering with the original html looking for specifically tagged errors that were not present in the original. I can see problems with this scheme because edits can be confined to sections and not the whole page so errors that show when the whole page is rendered don't show when just a section is rendered; errors are not uniquely identifiable so fixing one error and creating another can go 'unnoticed'.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:00, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Note that Monkbot caused the same problem in 2012 League of Ireland Premier Division, and the relate 2012 Irish league template. And also with the 2011 and 2014 pairs. If it's too difficult to fix, maybe it's easier to turn off this functionality so that we don't have to clean up after robots that aren't capable of knowing if they're causing errors or not. -- Mikeblas (talk) 00:31, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but doing that would defeat the purpose of the bot. If you can give me a list of articles that similarly transclude references, I can tell the bot to skip those articles. The references will still need fixing when |accessdate= is deprecated in favor of |access-date=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:57, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

What is the purpose of the bot? To harm articles? I disagree with your difficultiy appraisal. An article with errors does not have error mw-ext-cite-error in its HTML. Articles without errors do not show that text in their HTML rendering. There are many error forms, but the test I suggest will detect when your bot fucks up an article in the manner we've been describing here. -- Mikeblas (talk) 09:19, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The purpose of the bot is defined at its documentation page. Now that the conversation has turned ugly and you feel the need for profanity, I shall not continue to participate.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:53, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for the eff bomb, no reason for it. Truly regrettable that that one single word has stopped you from considering any improvement. Maybe it's just that you made the decision to not participate much earlier than your most recent response. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:23, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for adding those notes sections in those articles about Elliot Page

I wouldn't say I demanded the change though, I was just following what other editors had done. I edited maybe 30-40 pages yesterday, so I'm not surprised I missed some notes sections in trying to add it quickly. I would edit more, and make similar edits to other pages, but I'm going to wait until the RFPs are over, which I expect should be soon.--Historyday01 (talk) 16:48, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello! I don't think you have demanded the change. It's the {{efn}} template that demands a place to list the footnotes you're adding. An article can't have code to show footnotes, but not place to show them. In this usage, "demands" means "requires". -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:28, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Please clarify: "references destroyed"

Hello Mikeblas, You annotated your last edit of Chinthurst School: "fix references destroyed by User:SCHolar44".

I'm at a loss to know what I have "destroyed"; I haven't been near the article for ages.

Could you please provide some more information so I can rectify whatever I may have done in another context?

Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 01:57, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi there! Indeed, it was a while ago. In 2015, you made these edits. In the previous version, the references were fine. Your changes added several footnote templates with {{sfn}}, but those footnotes referenced no viable reference definition. That leaves the article with unresolved references. They appear as red "Harv error" messages in the references section.

The fix is to unpack those to be <ref name=something" /> links back to the reference definitions. It's very easy to make mistakes in referencing, and lots of errors are made and then left behind in articles for years. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:43, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, Mike. I was fairly green in those days! Long ago I opted for ref names. Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 09:00, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Happy to help :) Indeed, it was a long time ago; myself, I was far handsomer back then. What's startling to me, though, is that the article has carried referencing errors for such a long time. Dozens of editors, dozens of edits since then. But nobody has bothered to fix them. Why do you think that is? -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:45, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks!

I was notified you repaired a citation I broke on Cars (song). That was one the last of at least 50 citations I added (fewer in that article than Gary Numan). I DID preview & proofread - alas, clearly insufficiently. Thanks for counteracting my inexperience! FireWalkWithMe27♣(talk) 00:54, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

No problem, happy to help. And don't be so hard on yourself. It's the only way to live. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:47, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank You Comment Suggestion

I have noticed you fixed a few things I have done, however, I do not appreciate your words that you use. "Damaged" "Destroyed" , etc. It would be better in this environment to just say something along the lines of "Fixed reference from previous edit". I did not damage or destroy anything and it makes it sound like it is vandalism which it is not. I missed the </ref> due to the cite before it. I will be more careful in the future so again thank you for pointing that out. SirEucalyptus (talk) 18:20, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 5

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Dean and Chapter of Westminster, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Adam Fox. Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 07:07, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! Looks like I accidentally edited an old version of the article, which I had open to do a diff. I've fixed it up and reapplied my desired edits. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:40, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Mai sister Alysha or manisha or isha mai broder sivha end mi Tanisha ol obout ha Disha Ali khan (talk) 01:57, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Ad Fontes Media

Did I do something wrong? You mentioned me in your edit summary here, but all I did was archive some links. If there's some sort of bug in the auto-archiver, that would be a good thing for me to know. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 23:34, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi! Before your edit, the article rendered fine. After your edit, the article renders with an error message in the "References" section that says "Cite error: The named reference "Methodology" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page)."

The message means what it says. In your edit, you modified one of the two definitions of the <ref name="Methodology"> reference in the article. Before your edit, the two definitions were exactly the same; character-by-character, including white space and casing. This isn't ideal, but Wikipedia considers identical redefinitions the same, and renders the article.

After your change, there were two divergent definitions of the reference and the error was generated. My change deleted one of the two definitions and converted it to a use of the reference definitoin. Tihs fixes the error message. I hope that helps! -- Mikeblas (talk) 00:01, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Demographics

Thanks for cleaning up the demographics at Glen Rose, Texas. Would you have a moment to look at this editor? There seems to be some wonky demographic additions. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 18:41, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there something specific I'm meant to notice? Usually, I just contact people on their Talk page or the talk page of the article that I'm worrying about. -- Mikeblas (talk) 00:10, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing my goof on .NET Core.

I'm still learning. It's been a few years since I've been more than a reader.

Jdphenix (talk) 16:40, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

No worries! Happy to help :) -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:44, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Bigg boss weekly summary

Hi this is just to clarify on you removing the weekly summary in Bigg Boss 13. I just want to tell you that you have kind of got a misunderstanding. This weekly summary is not a episode guide or is not a plot it is a part of the Big Brother articles look in each Big Brother article ie Celebrity Big Brother (British series 22). So please understand and if you want to know more please ask User:Alucard 16 TracyBeker0910 (talk) 19:43, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I think that the material in question is a pretty clear problem for MOS:PLOT. It's a detailed recount, not a summary. That other articles have similar problems isn't a reason to keep the problem in this article. I've again removed the material; it's probably best to continue this discussion at the at the talk page of the article. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:56, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

It’s not an episode guide the reason for why it’s long because it’s been a long season of 20 weeks it’s a weekly summary which should be kept please don’t take it off and understand TracyBeker0910 (talk) 19:46, 30 December 2020 (UTC)