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I'd just like to leave a note of appreciation for SmackBot. The number of minor corrections it's made for me is really great. i kan reed 18:56, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's good to be appreciated. Rich Farmbrough, 12:14 28 March 2007 (GMT).

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TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 00:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC) [reply]

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Might you consider using SmackBot to convert 1 April 1963 format birth dates, in info boxes, to {{birth date and age |1963|04|01}} format (output: (1963-04-01) April 1, 1963 (age 61) - see {{birth date and age}})?

You can use {{birth date|1963|04|01}} if the subject is dead and if there is consensus to keep that template (last discussed August '06; its talk page) (output: (1963-04-01)April 1, 1963 - see{{birth date}}).

I'm a big fan of templating data, for semantic reasons, and in this case for future use in hCard microformats (see also WP:UF). Thank you. Andy Mabbett 23:06, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No problems with this in principle. How do you tel if someone is dead? Rich Farmbrough, 10:33 11 April 2007 (GMT).

Could you please tell Smackbot to not put stub tags below the categories. They belong above them, which is where they are on the page and where they are easily visible to someone editing. Categories, on the other hand, are more like meta-data on the order of inter-wiki links. —Centrx→talk • 20:47, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's an archived discussion here. The salient points seem to be

• There's not a mandated place.
• Stubs are an editor feature (and a form of sef-reference) so belong at the end after user features.
• Stubs include a category, so they should definately come after any "real" categories, so that the category listing makes more sense. Before or after interwiki is debateable, perhaps it doesn't matter much. Rich Farmbrough, 10:32 11 April 2007 (GMT).

Hello Rich. I notice this template has been created, perhaps by people who didn't know that ISBN magic would work with ISBN-13. In the past, counter-productive ISBN templates have been deleted with fair regularity, after the issue was explained. Do you have any strong views on this one? I assume that, since subst may not be used, your off-line ISBN-checker, which reads wiki text, would face an additional hurdle in checking {{ISBN-13|9780123456789}} for validity that it wouldn't face if the ISBN were entered in the normal way. The claimed benefit, from the entry for {{ISBN-13}}, is that this allows a where-used function for usage of ISBN-13 within Wikipedia. So what do you say? Replying here on your Talk page is fine. EdJohnston 19:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIC it can go. In fairness, though, ISBN has only supported 13 digits relatively recently. Rich Farmbrough, 10:15 11 April 2007 (GMT).

For Smackbot:

	Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago/Chicago Collaboration of the Week
Chicago Tonight is the current Chicago COTW You were a contributing editor to Chicago Board of Trade Building during its tenure as CHICOTW. It has successfully achieved Good article status thanks in part to your efforts. See its GA review and help us raise it towards the featured article classification level. Recall that during its tenure as CHICOTW we built this page from scratch. See our CHICOTW Improvement History. Note our good articles.
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	Good Article

TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

teh bot parsed {{Check}} and turned it into {{|Verify source|date=April 2007}} in which the super script text don't appear but spills out the broken text. Getonyourfeet 17:47, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which article? Rich Farmbrough, 18:49 11 April 2007 (GMT).

Barrel man but i fixed it...check the history Getonyourfeet 18:50, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, there were several of these, but the cause of the problem is fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 18:59 11 April 2007 (GMT).

The SmackBot added a link to a global warming site in this article about Internet marketing: [3]. Am I missing something? Panfakes 17:03, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes two things:

1. The site relates to a SEO competition.
2. I (SB) did not add it.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 11:44 12 April 2007 (GMT).

your bot removed all the _ for one of the articles i've been working on... i've tried to preach to always put the _ in for any article, so i'll be reverting it back to the previous one prior to it editing, but i'll leave the date added to one of the tags... here is the edit summary, if ya have any problems with my revert then message me and change it back... peace, Ancientanubis, talk 19:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, but most people (and robots) preach against those underscores. Rich Farmbrough, 11:34 12 April 2007 (GMT).

really??? i've always been under the impression that the _ were consitered more o the norm then no _... hmmmm Ancientanubis, talk 13:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

I noticed that you disapproved of the tone of the article on the Nuss procedure, without adding any suggestions on how to improve the article on the talk page. I started this article, and I keep an eye on it to maintain it. Please either explain the designation on the talk page, remove this designation because it is unexplained, or fix the article as you see fit, and remove the designation. If you just want to explain your objection, I would be glad to make the corrections myself.

Thanks,--Seth Goldin 22:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Seth, I made some style changes at the time, I have made a few more, can you check that I have not introduced any inaccurcies? Rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 23:56 11 April 2007 (GMT).

Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what you changed, as I haven't monitored all of the edits lately, but the article looks good as it is now. Thanks.--Seth Goldin 04:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please remind me what this edit adds. I'm curious since I've been warned in the past to not make what appear as trivial edits to articles with AWB. Thanks for your thoughts. Keesiewonder ^talk 14:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a bug, as it doesn't seem to add anything of any value? --kingboyk 16:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi I noticed a message in my archives that I had not replied to about this edit. (Kingboyk had said it was probably a bug.) The answer is that the template was transitioning from default parameter to a named parameter, all the dated clean up tags now use "date=". Rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 09:15 28 August 2007 (GMT).

Why does SmackBot seperate a meta-template like {{DEFAULTSORT}} from the categories? As soon as it's not near the categories, people will wonder about the strange sorting. --32X 19:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This was standard AWB behaviour, has now been changed - see [4]. Rich Farmbrough, 08:11 16 April 2007 (GMT).

Hope I'm not becoming a pain. Here Smackbot corrected the capitalisation of the template (!) but left it wrongly formated (it doesn't take the "article" argument, giving rise to a category error). --Mel Etitis (Talk) 14:01, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Smackbot is only attempting (hee) to deal with date arguments and a few ancillary issues. The use of the default template argument leads to many problems, which can only be fully dealt with by AI... <grin> (E.G. cleanup|Fev 2007, cleanup|2007 etc. etc.) That's one of the reasons that I encourage the use of date= format for all cleanup templates, and in due course hope we can phase out the use of the default parameter (possibly adding a standard "reason="). Ideally we could add parameter parsing to the template as well to detect invalid values of date parameter. This also answers some of the points below. Rich Farmbrough, 08:26 16 April 2007 (GMT).

Hi Rich, you might want to look at edit, where SmackBot's edit summary said "Date/fix the maintenance tags", but all it did was a trivial formatting edit. The maintenance template was removed by me in the edit prior to that. HTH. --kingboyk 16:24, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. It is an inaccurate summary, I suppose I should check for presence of cleanup template. Rich Farmbrough, 08:27 16 April 2007 (GMT). 08:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could you update the bot to understand implied dates in templates? See this edit for an example of broken behavior. /Blaxthos 21:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is actually not bad at doing that, however that template was already broken as there is no implied date behaviour for default parameter 2. Rich Farmbrough, 08:29 16 April 2007 (GMT).

Here Smackbot moved a graffito, presumably mistaking it for a stub — I don't suppose there's anything that can be done anout that, but I've often wondered why it moves stubs from the bottom of articles to part way up. At the bottom makes more sense for them, because they're temporary additions. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 09:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AWB puts stubs after categories but before interwikis. Personally I woul like to see all stubs and other maint. templates right at the end, but for stubs that's good enough. What you saw with the graffito was the cats being moved to the end. Rich Farmbrough, 11:36 12 April 2007 (GMT).

Ah [smacks head] — not A being moved before B, but B being moved after A. Obvious now you explain it. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 11:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. Your SmackBot edited tags over at Orks (Warhammer 40,000) and turned them into partial tags. An Example was changing a tag around sexual to have sex tagged followed by ual. Its a messy error and I do not know how many other pages it commited the error on. Thanks. SanchiTachi 17:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have in the past sighted the reference in question, and it was changed by another user perhaps for grammatical reasons. Nevertheless, I have updated my revision to reflect your request. Could you please delete the > "Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since April 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements"

Thank you in advance. User:Milliot 10:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 08:45 17 April 2007 (GMT).

Template:ASIN was nominated for deletion. You created it, so I thought you should probably know. --- RockMFR 22:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 08:45 17 April 2007 (GMT).

My user:talk page is suddenly a mess and I cannot read any of my archived dialog from respondents. How can I revert to the clean page? Dogru144 00:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seems User:RockMFR has kindly fixed it up for you. Rich Farmbrough, 08:49 17 April 2007 (GMT).

Yes, quite nice of him/her. Dogru144 08:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Thanks for the tip! Just for my own reference, which of my edits were you refering to? Thanks! Hiberniantears 18:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This one. Rich Farmbrough, 22:39 17 April 2007 (GMT).

I know it's a bit silly at this point to think that we will _ever_ have a MediaWiki that doesn't force the first letter to be capitalized, but assuming we ever did, it won't have helped things to have unnecessarily standardized to capitals. 2¢ ¦ Reisio 00:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. When I canonicalise a template name and layout, from potentially hundreds of variations (for example "unreferenced" has 16 synonyms, plus 8 variations, times a least 196 layouts, ignoring case) I have to choose first letter caps or lower case. I choose caps. Rich Farmbrough, 07:55 18 April 2007 (GMT).

	Chicago Collaboration of the Week
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TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 00:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You're just trying to confuse me, aren't you?  :) OK, I'll try to be good.  ;) Corvus cornix 18:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Resolved

Why does SmackBot add "date=" to a maintenance tag when it's not needed? For example, {{orphan|June 2006}} has the same function as {{orphan|date=June 2006}}, as far as I can tell. It seems a waste to have SmackBot making these changes. --Sable232 14:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sable. Most cleanup templates that take a date use "date=" but a significant few use (used) the default parameter, it is very hard for editors to remember which are which (I find it hard, and I work with these templates a lot). For that reason "date=" support is being added to the templates which didn't support it, such as Orphan, and over the course of time these should migrate to only using "date=". SB has traditionally added or taken away the "date=" as required, this will become simply adding "date=". The default argument then becomes unused, unless the template is re-written. I have to day fixed up several hundred articles where the default argument (which stood for the date) had been used as a "reason" field or contained "article" as other templates default arguments can do, as well as the normal crop of wikilinked dates, quoted dates, misspelled dates etc., some of these problems should go, when the transition is complete, and the syntax will be easier to remember. Hope that explains what's happening. Rich Farmbrough, 15:35 19 April 2007 (GMT).

Thanks. I got it. --Sable232 17:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

SmackBot changed the external links section of Backmasking from "== External links ==" to "==External links==", removing only the spaces. The rest of the article uses spaces in the headings, so I reverted the change. Λυδαcιτγ 23:22, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. Rich Farmbrough, 08:12 16 April 2007 (GMT).

Perhaps SmackBot should remove leading and trailing spaces from all headings? Andy Mabbett 11:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly, I believe AWB did this once upn a time, but arguments ensued.... Rich Farmbrough, 11:19 20 April 2007 (GMT).

<sigh>! Andy Mabbett 11:21, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could you have SmackBot "date/fix" this maintenance tag? See Template talk:Current#Date parameter. Obviously this will be different than other dated tags as it would be removed after a few months of no significant changes, though I'm not sure whether that part could be automated. I mean, an event can still be very current, and even ongoing, without getting much attention from us (systemic bias — the rate of editing is not always a good indicator). — CharlotteWebb 16:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, provided it's ok if everything gets bunged into April to start. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 17:03 20 April 2007 (GMT).

Resolved

Persons named Juan González use an accent over the "a" in Gonzalez. Editors have moved the page to Juan Gonzalez (journalist) without the accent several times. Please help secure that the page can remain with the accent. The system is locked against moving the page to the proper spelling. Dogru144 21:36, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]