This is anarchive of past discussions withUser:Fritzpoll.Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on thecurrent talk page.

Hello, Fritzpoll/Archive 1 and thank you for your contributions on articles related toThe Apprentice UK. I'd like to invite you to become a part ofWikiProject The Apprentice UK, a WikiProject aiming to improve coverage ofThe Apprentice UK and related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out and participate, please come over and visit ushere for more information. Thanks!Dalejenkins18:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Regardingthis edit, it doesn't spoil the "suprise" at all. Read the spoilers template-

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Dalejenkins16:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey, just a quick message to say a big well done on this section - you've done a great job! You've managed to turn quite a dustbin of a section into something very readable. :)Seaserpent8521:52, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

As title. :-DDalejenkins23:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks forthis edit - well spotted - it was indeed inadvertently removed. Cheers_└ ^UkPaolo/_talk^┐10:27, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Just wanted to say "nice one" on the removal of the trivia section in theTerry Wogan article. It was gone a matter of hours after I tagged it, so that was some fast work. The article is starting to look much more professional now. If only more editors were as efficient as yourself, we'd have finished the encyclopaedia by now! :)Martin02:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The article you nominated for assessment has been assessed. I gave it a B rating and you can see my full comments there. Good work on the article, you might consider nominating it for GA status if you make some minor edits. It's definitely better thansome GA articles.—The precedingunsigned comment was added byThe Psychless (talk •contribs)22:26, 14 May 2007 (UTC).

Title says it all :). --Psychless00:07, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I will be doing a full review, asPsychless should have done. If you look on my user page, you'll see a list of reviews I've done. I am thorough, so trust that it will either be GA quality after you address my concerns, or very near GA quality. I'll be working on that review later today. If I don't finish it tonight, you can check on progress atUser:LaraLove/GA draft. Once completed, I will move it from my draft page to the article talk page.

Regards,LaraLove^T/_C17:04, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Just wanted to say nice work on the references - I think we can get GA status for this one. Alas, Terry Wogan actually got delisted: I was surprised the nomination was successful - I was mostly hoping for feedback on it. Oh well, fortunately a detailed review will be on my desk soon! --Fritzpoll 18:32, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Cheers mate - think I need some away time after doing all that! It beats revision though, hey. If you need a hand with the Terry Wogan article, just give me a shout - to me it looks like it's near enough GA, just needs a bit of a polish. :)Seaserpent8519:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Casting your eye over the Terry Wogan article when you have a chance would be great - I need to get back to revising for my finals myself! --Fritzpoll 19:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

PS: Laralove, who delisted the Wogan article seems to think there's a whole lot wrong with it :( Just the start of her draft...[1] --Fritzpoll 22:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, that seemsvery thorough for GA - from the looks of it though, she could have condensed what she's saying into 3 or so bullet points (and 3 or so very picky bullet points at that!). I'm trying to getList of tallest buildings and structures in London to featured list and don't seem to be getting anywhere near that amount of criticism. On a side note, I'll try and finish up referencing The Apprentice later - think we're nearly there with that one!Seaserpent8522:40, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments & guidance. I (& possibly others) will do some work on the points you've highlighted. Can I be really cheeky as you are local & ask you to look atBuildings and architecture of Bristol which I've put up for peer review at the wikiproject architecture - but not had any responses?—Rod^talk18:54, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello, this is an invitation to joinWikiProject Bristol.

You may be interested in joiningWikiProject Bristol. This WikiProject aims to improve the standard of all articles relating toBristol, which includes all subdivisions of the city, major buildings, roads and other related articles.

You can help by:

• Creating new articles.
• Expanding stubs.
• Adding photographs.
• Referencing articles.
• Research topics.
• Anything else really...

For more information, seethe project page, and if you have any questions you can leave them atWikipedia talk:WikiProject Bristol and someone will get back to you. —Addbot (talk)02:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

& thanks for the comments on the building & architecture article—Rod^talk20:29, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello! You look like someone who might be interested in joining theBiography WikiProject and so I thought I'd drop you a line and invite you! We'd love to have you help us :-)Psychless^{Type words orread things!}04:39, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Ask for an A-class review in WikiProject Biography for Terry Wogan when/if the article becomes GA. LaraLove's review should make the article quite good if you fix all the "errors". I might fix a few of the things myself.

		The Editor's Barnstar
		I have awarded you this Barnstar for all your recent edits toThe Apprentice (UK). The article has completely transformed since January-keep up the good work!Dalejenkins18:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I hope you haven't forgotten about this article and the GA review of it! LaraLove is still reviewing it... but is almost done. I've done most of the suggestions but still many remain, mostly on citations that are needed. You would do a much better job on citation needed fixing than I could (I wouldn't even know where to begin) so I hope you haven't lost interest in it. On the talk page you said you were preparing for some finals so good luck on those. --Psychless^{Type words orread things!}04:22, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi there mate, hope you're doing well. I remember you saying that you were getting into GA reviewing and I was wondering if maybe you could look over a rewrite of an article I'm doing? It's along way from being finished and I'm not intending it to be GA standard at all, I just needs an outside opinion on how the article reads so far and if I need to change the style at all. Cheers dude.Seaserpent8521:15, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Sure, mate - not a problem. Just point me in the right direction, and let me know if there's anything particular you want to look at. Also, allow for delays for about 24 hours!Fritzpoll21:47, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks a million! And time's not an issue, no hurry whatsoever - as I say, it's an work in progress and far from being finished! So, the article in question isUser:Seaserpent85/B&Mdraft which is a rewrite of the existing article,Bolliger & Mabillard. The red wikilinks in the sections will ultimately link to the list found here:User:Seaserpent85/B&MListdraft. The history section isn't quite finished, and I haven't started some of the subsections. Any feedback would be hugely appreciated! Thanks again :)Seaserpent8522:09, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Noted. Have requested the help of wikipedians withinWikiProject:Comics. Will let you know as soon as I get a response. If there is no satisfactory improvement by the end of this week or the next, then feel free to fail the article. Thank you for your help till now.Zuracech lordum09:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all your comments onBristol Harbour GA review, I've addressed many as shown on thetalk page, but still have a few queries:

• "Floating Harbour" as this is an accepted name (see Google search) I think it should probably be capitalised.
• Shipshape and Bristol fashion is a link to an article with that specific capitalisation.

Hope these edits are OK and thanks again for your comments.—Rod^talk15:37, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again for all your efforts on theBristol Harbour GA review. Your help and guidance has been invaluable.—Rod^talk22:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your response,

Then is it possible to submit two papers for your peer review section, that once they are approved by your knowledgeable panels then you can bring the matter into the right site.

One paper is titled “The seed of the earth”[1]

The second is “The creation of gravity”.[2]

Thank youKeshe Theory07:40, 30 May 2007 (UTC) keshe

Thank you for your response, it is constructive .

As you said your are a physicist, and I am an engineer, may be as the first input you could guide how to do it in accordance to the way it has to be done.

I have no connection with any universities, may be this is done different through academic world.

I would be grateful if you could advise or even change them on the user page as you see appropriate.

The reality is that the principle is correct and technology works and we have demonstrated it to different governments and the use of language or glassy work for presentation is secondary.

I hope you can help to present this in a appropriate manner as you have experience.

Thank you for your time in respondingKeshe Theory20:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)keshe

Hey, Fritzpoll. Thanks for taking the time to review the article. Being failed is better than it being stagnated and in limbo as it was for the last few months.

Anyways, there are just two things for which I would like further clarification. Why do you oppose the reliability of the references? They're extensive and properly in line with the Harvard standard. While the material are from primary sources i.e. comic books, I can't really see how else I can get information regarding the character. The official Marvel bio is also user-written (it's also a wiki) and hence getting info from there is not really an option.

Also, why do you believe that the non-free images do not have afair use rationale? The article failed the last time due to this issue and hence I have gone and meticulously documented each image.

Overall, I agree with your review. The article is not ready for GA class and I will attempt to make it more focused, neutral, better-written and generally of a higher standard than it is now. Thanks again for your assistance so far.Zuracech lordum16:42, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I had a fair idea that it was going to fail, but I nominated it so that I could get more feedback about it. I have now, and I thank you for this. I shall make it my aim to better the article until it is of perfect GA standard. How would you like to be the reviewer when I resubmit it? Considering that you have now reviewed it, it would make sense if you were to review it again when I do resubmit. If you are interested in looking at it again when I think it is ready, please let me know on my talk page. Thanks again,Anonymous Dissident^Utter18:58, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Will do.Anonymous Dissident^Utter19:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I've decided to work on one problem at a time. I've tried to fix your concern about the prose of 'Discovery of Kilimanjaro and Mt. kenya' and 'The Slug Map', but before I move on to the next problem, I would be very grateful to know whether you think that I have actually fixed the problem or not (also, what did you mean 'properly referenced'?). Thanks,Anonymous Dissident^Utter23:30, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I still haven't heard a reply to the last posts (which is understandable; you're probably asleep), but it doesnt matter: I've done alot to the article - 1. Added tonnes more citations and four more major reference points, 2. Tried to fix up grammar and prose as best I can, 3. Done some rewording, 4. Added some more content and 5. Generally spriuked the article up.

Take a look, and then please let me know of further improvements to be made on my talk. If there are none, then I can nominate it, and you can re-review it. Thanks!Anonymous Dissident^Utter03:25, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

You see, some things in this world are not straight forward. If you take a look at my contributions in the past, you will realize that all those now BIG pages, i started them with a single sentence. Same withNeshuro, it is a work in progress. Information about these places, is found nowhere else but from those who have been there...i'm putting it together right now. You will realize over the next days that that page will grow. But....if you have already intercepted it by putting a speedy deletion thing on it, it kinda discourages me....—Precedingunsigned comment added byMacvivo (talk •contribs)18:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

OnUser talk:Macvivo it appears TWhas not made a complete edit (for the CSD you have nominated) so I have reverted the edit.<3 bunny18:07, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Neshuro Business Center Hope you find it. sorry about the confusion. Peace. Samwise Gamgee 18:10, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Responded on user's talk pageFritzpoll (talk)11:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi there, I declined your speedy deletion request here because at least one reference does attest to the company'snotability. (Possibly added after your tag, in which case the tagging improved the article!)Kim Dent-Brown^(Talk)14:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Responded on user's talk pageFritzpoll (talk)11:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello please take a look at my two edits,[3][4], I hope this is ok for you. You can answer onUser talk:Markmentzel, if you like, in order to keep the discussion together. --Cyfal (talk)15:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Responded on user's talk pageFritzpoll (talk)11:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Next time you go on WikiBreak, try this: {{WikiBreak}}.B110_{communicate (that means talk)}23:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure, anytime.B110_{communicate (that means talk)}23:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Come on! - this is aBooker Prize for Fiction shortlisted author. Also work in progress. Give an article a break.!. ::Kevinalewis :^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk)12:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

In fairness, you added the evidence to make the article notableafter I placed the tag. The first job of an article when being created is to assert notability - I do not think it is fair to imply overzealousness on my part for not being able to predict your subsequent edits. Nonetheless, I am happy for the tag to be removed, but suggest that you begin future articles by making sure that you define why the article is notable. Best wishes -Fritzpoll (talk)12:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't as prominent but itwas there. No you can't be expected to know what I was going to write, or for that matter what I wasn't going to write. Tagging minutes into the articles existence israther zealous. No harm done though. ::Kevinalewis :^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk)12:28, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi.

You tagged my articleUpshift Strikeracer for speedy deletion. I have read the guidelines, and I didn't found any errors.

Please note, this is my first article, and I'm quite sure I did something wrong, but can I know why it doesn't meet the notability guidelines?

Spdaniel91 (talk)00:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Responded on user's talk pageFritzpoll (talk)11:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I think I added a bit more info and more sources. Is it ok now?Spdaniel91 (talk)12:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Removed the answers.com reference and replaced it with another one.Spdaniel91 (talk)13:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

No, or at least not yet. I'd first put a notability tag (it's already there), then put it on my watchlist and wait to see if it gets references to demonstrate notability. Later on, I'd spend a few minutes with Google looking for references myself. If I didn't find any, I'd put a Prod tag for non-notability. That might "prod" other editors to find references. If someone removes the prod tag, I'd go to AFD, if I were convinced that the subject is not-notable. There is a chance that this could turn into a usable article.Sbowers3 (talk)13:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you give me more details on what you want on my article now that you've tagged it for deletion? I've looked at all the articles underWi-Fi providers and don't see how WiFiFee is less significant or notable then these (of course, T-Mobile is a huge brand). What would you like added?Davewardny (talk)13:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Fritzpoll. I noticed you recently movedHastings micropolitan area toHastings Micropolitan Statistical Area, saying, "Correcting title per guidelines". Which guidelines are these? And shouldGrand Island micropolitan area be likewise moved toGrand Island Micropolitan Statistical Area? —Bkell (talk)14:34, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Fritzpoll,Why did you tag my article for deletion?It's just an artical about an online MMORPG.Honestly don't see the problem...If you look for other games like this, you'll find a lot here.

Regards,

N—Precedingunsigned comment added byPerandoria (talk •contribs)23:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

This seems to me a pure dictatorship, pure and simple. Goodby.BSixt (talk)10:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

• not sure exactly what you mean here - I tagged the article, because I believe it did not meet the criteria. I did not perform any unilateral action as regards deletion, since I am not an administrator, and so cannot delete articles myself. Thus a consensus between myself and the administrator emerged indirectly, that this article violated community consensus regarding notability. Such consensus explicitly excludes the possibility of "dictatorship" as you suggest. - Fritzpoll (talk) 13:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

To tell you the truth I was a little confused meself! The obvious vandalism in his article is easy to deal with, trouble is, the more you start to think about stuff like "Live inSun City"This Was Your Life and the like, you realise that some vandals are more subtle than what first meets the eye :) Cheers!Vera, Chuck & Dave (talk)21:54, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

No hard feelings. I am sure that you were trying your best, but the solution to bad artiles is usually to try to improve them, not to delete them. If there was a copy-vio problem (and there probably was not), it would be cured by altering it, so that it was no longer a copy. WP needs lots of good editors, so keep up the good work.Peterkingiron (talk)17:37, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi there, thanks for your contributions. Although I do see that you're marking good articles as patrolled, articles you tag for speedy deletion should also be mark as patrolled so other editors don't waste their time re-reviewing it. (seepatrolled pages for further info). ThanksShootthedevgru (talk)00:44, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

You have previously expressed an interest in undergoing theAdmin coaching program. We're currently engaged in a program reset to help things move more smoothly in the future. If you are still interested in the program, please go toWikipedia:Admin coaching/Requests for Coaching and re-list yourself under Current requests, deleting your entry from Older requests. Also, double-check to make sure coaching is right for you at theCoachee checklist;WP:Adoption orWP:Editor review may be more appropriate depending on your situation and aspirations. We should get back to you within a day or so, once a coaching relationship has been identified. Thank you.MBisanz^talk07:06, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I am pleased to announce that you have been paired withUser:Jehochman as an admin coachee. You now have two important tasks to complete:

1. Introduce yourself toJehochman and explain to them why you want to be an admin.

2. Once they has confirmed the relationship to you, editWikipedia:Admin coaching/Requests for Coaching to move your name toWikipedia:Admin coaching/Status to record the match.

Given the limited coaching resources of the Admin Coaching project, if you plan to take aWikibreak of more than 30 days, please notify your coach or myself so that we will know not to tag you asretired and give your spot to another user. Remember that adminship isnot a big deal and that it may take multipleRfAs before one becomes a sysop, even for a highly qualified, coached, editor. Also, remember that while admin coaching will help you prepare for themop, there is no guarantee that completing this program will ensure passage of an RfA.

Congratulations again, and happy editing.MBisanz^talk20:29, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you. This person is a notable person and Wikipedia should have something for him by now. His name has been referenced in Wikipedia in few places.

I'm unable to write more about him because I do not have more facts about him. I hope someone will find this and add additional stuff down the road. I ask you to wait for few days (May be a month) before you decide to delete it. It is your call (You are the member of the cleanup task force). Pavate's big statue is there in front of Karnatak University. He was a Cambridge Mathematical Tripos.—Precedingunsigned comment added byTangi-tamma (talk •contribs)02:03, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I thought that this article would be ok, especially as he is a contender for the Olympics in 2012--Mattwinston (talk)22:03, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I noticed you were involved in adding a "prod" template to said article. This is a note out of courtesy to inform you that I've listed this under afdhere in case you are interested.Asian Parents, Western Upbringing (talk)01:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, i got your notes, it is not an advertisements, its a educational tool and reporting system used in schools, how can i make it more wiki compliant? Please let me know

Thanks—Precedingunsigned comment added byTropicawebdesign (talk •contribs)15:18, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

You've missed outstep one of the deletion nomination. This needs to be fixed. --Sturm12:23, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out - an abberation on the part of TW - should have checked the output! -Fritzpoll (talk)12:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. I did wonder whether it was a technical hitch. I would've fixed it myself, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to take over someone's nomination like that. Cheers. --Sturm13:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I do not understand why my entry got deleted. Can you please tell me what I did wrong or how I can correct this?—Precedingunsigned comment added byDigitalretna (talk •contribs)04:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

How have things been going? If you would like to gain experience on sysop related work, please tryWP:COIN orWP:SSP. Any editor can help by investigating complaints and posting opinions or new evidence. It's dinner time here. Have a cheeseburger.Hopes you are not a vegetarian.Jehochman^Talk23:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

By a curious coincidence, I was eating a cheeseburger when I logged in! I've had a look around but need to do some more reading on it before I'll feel confident about jumping in with comments...perhaps I should be a bit more bold about it?Fritzpoll (talk)15:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the worst that happens is you get nominated for a ban. It was once suggested that I be banned. Unfortunately, that administrator has since been desysopped.Jehochman^Talk18:24, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your interest in VandalProof, Fritzpoll! You have now been added to the list of authorized users, so if you haven't already, simplydownload and install VandalProof from our main page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or any othermoderator, or you can post a message onthe discussion page.

Finally, I'd like to appologise for any delay, and wish you luck with VandalProof!Ale_Jrb^talk19:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I read your argument with interest this morning, that there is a problem in determining the correct course of action for articles of this type. In many respects both sides' (non-emotive) arguments regarding notability have valid points, and there seems a confusion as to how policy is applied in this case. The result is a free-for-all where both sides quote policy without reaching a resolution. This is only the second AfD where I have seen this happen, but if you know of a few more examples, perhaps we could take this forward for some kind of policy discussion? -Fritzpoll (talk)10:35, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I was so intrigued, that I have posted a policy-related discussion at the Village Pump -[5]Fritzpoll (talk)10:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I had no access to my computer today. I just got in and saw your message. Thank you. It is almost 4 AM here --- so I will reply very quickly for now. I will message you back tomorrow, more fully. But, first of all -- thanks for the message. This whole situation is a real mess ... it's reinventing the wheel over and over, every single time. It's so much wasted time, energy, etc. --- it is hard to believe, for me. Off the top of my head, I know that I participated in this near identical debate when there was an AFD on theJessie Davis article. I don't know if you recall. She was a murder victim ... Canton, Ohio ... was missing for a few weeks ... her boyfriend Bobby Cutts killed her. Anyway, that article had the same exact debate (she's notable, no she's not, yes she is, no she's not ... back and forth) as the Eve Carson one. The Jessie Davis AFD debate is here --->Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance and murder of Jessie Davis. Also, by the way ...I just noticed a day or two ago. WhenEve Carson (young college female) was murdered in North Carolina, another young college girl was murdered in Alabama. Her name wasLauren Burk. I stumbled across her article, quite by chance, and I saw the very same AFD debate going on there! Take a look here --->Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lauren Burk. Quite frustrating for both sides. Both sides have some good points. But, ultimately, it really is the same argument each time ... when a person makes the news due to their death/murder ... is this notable or not for Wikipedia purposes? The debates usually have strong advocates on both sides ... hence, no consensus can be reached ... hence, the articles do not get deleted. This is my brief reply for now. Please respond back at my Talk Page ... and I will reply more fully in the next day or so. Thanks again. I'd like to see this wheel-spinning stop for once and for all, one way or the other. Thanks. I will wait to hear from you at my Talk Page. If you get a chance, look over the AFD debates for Jessie Davis and Lauren Burk. I am sure there are countless others, but those two are at the tip of my memory right now. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk)07:50, 10 March 2008 (UTC))

I've started trying to flesh out some ideas atUser:Fritzpoll/Victims_of_crime_guideline - once we have something that a number of us can agree on, I'll pop it in the right namespace and we'll see if we can settle all this madness by obtaining consensus.Fritzpoll (talk)17:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I will take a look at it. By the way, I noticed your comment on the Talk Page of Lauren Burk. The one expressing concern about a fair trial for the suspect. I replied to it at that page. I'd be curious to see your response. Thanks. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk)17:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC))

Excellent outside-the-box thinking. I'll look at it after work.Baseball Bugs^{What's up, Doc?}17:46, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The first rule is to serve the public need. The public isn't interested in what our pedantic rules are. Wikipedia is a prominent place for information. So people come here looking for it. If they don't find it here, they'll go elsewhere and maybe assume that wikipedia is behind the curve. That risk should be your primary concern.Baseball Bugs^{What's up, Doc?}19:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't quite agree. The primary purpose of Wikipedia seems to me to be to create an encyclopaedia, and this is achieved by a collaboration of editors who edit the encyclopaedia based on a consensus. The policies and guidelines represent a consensus, and whilst it is always fair to ignore rules that prevent the creation of a better encyclopaedia, there still needs to be some form of consensus (albeit often tacit) to do so. I don't see how this article meets the standard required of information to be in an encyclopaedia, which is why I !voted the way I did. Our opinions may differ, but I can assure you that I have no other concern than making a good encyclopaedia, which I suspect is true of you as well. It is simply a case that our definitions of what constitutes such an encyclopaedia may differ - would that be a fair comment? -Fritzpoll (talk)19:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

That would appear to be the case.Baseball Bugs^{What's up, Doc?}19:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. This is why Wikipedia is hurting for money. People don't want to donate to something where they don't feel like a partner. ~Anon—Precedingunsigned comment added by71.105.210.167 (talk)17:58, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Certainly, focusing on the event would de-fuse practically all of the "she's not notable" arguments. The other complainants are those who say "newsworthy is not noteworthy", which is plainly a false statement. However, there still needs to be some biographical info. This is not a robot that was killed. The impact of the victim's death is a direct correlation to the victim's "relative" notability. That's why I say Carsonherself is more notable than Hollowayherself is. And even those arguing for deleting the Carson article seem to miss that point when they defend the Holloway article. The story is not that it was Holloway who disappeared, it's that this disappearance occurred and was massively covered by the media. Thus thestory of Holloway's disappearance is more notable, probably, than thestory of the Carson murder. But the storiesare both notable because of significant media coverage.Baseball Bugs^{What's up, Doc?}15:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Provided that there are sufficient, reliable, third-party sources, this shouldn't be a problem. The only challenge there is that in the early stages of a news story, the sources are not necessarily reliable. A lot of the measures used at AfD seem to relate to the 'staying power' of the news story, because this is implicit within policy. I'm not yet sure how this fits in with the consensus I'm trying to achieve.Fritzpoll (talk)15:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The complainants can't possibly know initially whether the story has "legs", although if they follow the news in general, they should at least have some inkling. The exclusionists simply don't want anything about it until it is somehow "proven" to meet their own ideas of what "notability" is. That viewpoint is old-fashioned, "paper" thinking. But I say that as soon as it's a front page story,it is notable. The story itself, that is. This is where the "current event" disclaimer comes in handy, and which is used frequently in established articles, and in defiance of the exclusionists' false claim that wikipedia doesn't do "news". But the same rules of verifiability still apply. And although it seems like semantics, it still comes back to what to call the article. If it's the person's name, it's automatically assumed to be a bio. If it says "murder of..." then it's about an event. So the wordingis important, especially for de-fusing complaints.Baseball Bugs^{What's up, Doc?}15:30, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I certainly agree that naming for the event is essential, and I think current news articles should have the current event tag by default -Fritzpoll (talk)19:10, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

An editor has nominatedBetween the Night and the Moon, an article on which you have worked or that you created, fordeletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments atWikipedia:Articles for deletion/Between the Night and the Moon and please be sure tosign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove thearticles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you.BJBot (talk)13:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

uhhh....no - I was the one who nominated it :) -Fritzpoll (talk)13:07, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

This is now effectively "Murders of Eve Carson and Abhijit Mahato".Baseball Bugs^{What's up, Doc?}13:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but a move will have to wait until the link is verified, in my opinion -Fritzpoll (talk)13:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

"Till the link is verified"? You mean, until you're sure it's WRAL.com that it's linked to? >:) I'm not in any hurry to move the article again. Just FYI. :)Baseball Bugs^{What's up, Doc?}13:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

lol :) No, I meant the link between the two murders. renaming the article...oh dear me, no - we've only just got it into the state it is!Fritzpoll (talk)15:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

There may be more coming, which I think some of the internet articles hint at, and which could be inferred from the ATM photo of the guy with an Astros cap, certainly on its face an odd thing to be wearing. I'm speaking of streetgangs. These two events could be the intersection of "normal" society with the "underworld" of gangs. Now we're talking serious notability. Which no one here knew when the article started. And that's why I'm not so keen on deleting stuff so hastily. Wikipedia is not paper. It has the advantage of flowing with time, just as any other internet site can.Baseball Bugs^{What's up, Doc?}17:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		You've made a valiant, civil, well-thought outguideline aimed appropriately at providing guidance for the inevitable AfDs for recent crime victims/crimes. I'm not sure at this point how the guideline will rest with the community, but your efforts have not gone unnoticed!Keeper |76 |Disclaimer16:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I blushing! Thanks very much. :-DFritzpoll (talk)16:33, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Gah, Kepper, you beat me to it. --ÐeadΣyeДrrow (Talk |Contribs)16:36, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Just please leave me alone, it's my article stop STOP redirecting it, you take away information from Wikipedia by doing that, and I have a mention about the episodeA Taste Of Freedom.Can't you just give up?????Please.Mertozoro (talk)22:19, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

It isnot your article. I'm just doing what the consensus in the community is - that this is not a notable topic for an isolated article. I understand that you may be frustrated, but perhaps, rather than creating a new article on this, you can just add your material to the episode article, which will be much less controversial? Best wishesFritzpoll (talk)23:20, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I just made a handful of changes to the "perpetrator" section ofWP:N/CA Oh, and I changed the shortcut, as you can see by the blue link...let me know what you think!Keeper |76 |Disclaimer23:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I was watching via the watchlist (which sounds very Orwellian of me), and I think the changes are good. More clarity is better, and I like things like the Litmus test idea - gives people an example to work from. My only concern with the guideline is that it isn't sufficiently publicised...but I don't know what more to do! Any thoughtsFritzpoll (talk)23:41, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I haven't looked at village pump in a while, maybe a post there and onwp:an would be in order? I realize that you've been to village pump before, but now that it is in project space, perhaps requesting folks to visit the talk page of the proposal. I will add a section to the talkpage that asks for specific "yays or nays" with reasons why/why not and suggestions for improvement...ooo, better yet, I'll make a subpage! I'll be right back....Keeper |76 |Disclaimer23:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I dropped something at the pump a few days ago. Wasn't sure WP:AN was the right forum for it though...? Good idea on the subpage. SHould I move the RfC to point there?Fritzpoll (talk)23:48, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I didn't know there was an RfC. Ack. Yes, they should point at each other. I just created a subpage for you to watchlisthere. I quick one-liner at AN would get a large swath of attention from admins anyway. VP gets you a good cross section of admins/editors as well. Maybe one more hit there wouldn't hurt with a link for depositing on opinion on the "finished product" (which of course, will never be finished, will always have exceptions, but still, it's a great guideline and needs to be part of our notability general guideline to avoid having the same debate....).Keeper |76 |Disclaimer23:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Done and done. Fingers crossed.Fritzpoll (talk)00:04, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be perfectly acceptable, and not a canvassing issue, if you were to leave a quick,neutral talkpage message for those users that were involved in the Eve/Lauren debates, and the N/CA talkpage letting them know what's up on the opinions page. similar to the one you left previously regarding the creation of the guideline in your userspace.Keeper |76 |Disclaimer00:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look at doing that in the morning - got the day off work tomorrow, so no time issue then! Thanks for the advice - seems to be workingFritzpoll (talk)00:54, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Done. With immediate results...Fritzpoll (talk)16:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for sending me that link. A lot to read and consider.--MurderWatcher1 (talk)13:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh snap, theDEA is an admin

I would like to thank you for your participation in my recent RfA, which I'm very glad to say was successful at 81/7/0. Some of the very best that Wikipedia has to offer came out to support or oppose me and the kind words from all the editors has really given me confidence to be an admin and I can't wait to start. I will take the advice of the opposes and not jump into any content disputes immediately. As well, I will try to add more content myself. Anyways, in thanks for participating in my RfA, here's your very own personalhumanoid robot. Enjoy! --ÐeadΣyeДrrow (Talk -Contribs)13:51, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering if you see a correlation between this AfD, and the examples used for the current notability guideline/policy/process. I see an enormous amount of confusion in the above AfD. Your thought are appreciated.SynergeticMaggot (talk)21:36, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Lots of media coverage being used to afford notability, so yes, I do see the correlation! My personal argument here would be that whilst the speech itself is recieving considerable press coverage, it has yet to receive sufficient independent analysis of any social impact, and as such doesn't assert the notability of, for example, Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. The material may warrant inclusion, but at this stage, probably simply withinBarack Obama presidential campaign, 2008. I will make this comment at the AfDFritzpoll (talk)22:21, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Now mind you. I came upon the current proposal only after I closed the above AfD. I never seen an actual argument like this before, and it got me thinking. Thanks for the reply. Its much appreciated.SynergeticMaggot (talk)22:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot buddy, im putting that tharr award in me userpage. I havent properly referenced them (the link just showsin the refs section) perhaps a little cleanup is required. Im not being lazy, ive simply never understood it.

XCharltonTilliDieX^Talk/_Contribs22:08, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

That's fine - getting some info down is what really mattered thereFritzpoll (talk)22:09, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I have that "swimming upstream" feeling all over again! I'm with you on the leaving things to see how they pan out, if things carry on as they are I'll probably ask for re-protection as the last one definitely wasn't long enough. What do you think?Seaserpent⁸⁵23:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

We'll see how the next few edits work out. I suggested on the article talk page that the whole "one that got away" thing might be incorporated into a summary of the episode - because I missed AYF tonight, I've missed what they're talking about! After another few IP edits adding unverified, I say definitely go for reprotection up until 10:30 next Wednesday. And yes, I definitely feel like a salmon in breeding season... :)Fritzpoll (talk)23:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi

why have you removed the information about Week 2's episode, specifically the team leaders for the episode? You state that it is unverified, however if you go onto the bbc' apprentice website, in previews, it states that both simon and jen are the team leaders. so how is this unverified? thanksDeltasquared (talk)00:19, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

If you don't include a reference, I won't know it is cited. If you can cite, using a reliable source, then it won't be removed. It isn't verifiable just because you put it in the article :)Fritzpoll (talk)10:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

That's fine, I understand that, though I didn't put it up originally ;-).

One further question, you've just reformatted a bit on week 1, but a part of your edit seems iffy:

Both teams chose to sell at a market in Islington, although Alpha made this decision more quickly and so obtained a superior stall.

This isn't cited anywhere that the stall wassuperior?.Deltasquared (talk)01:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...obviously I'm editing too late in the evening. I seem to remember Margaret/Nick making a comment to this effect in the boardroom, but I'd have to review the episode again to be sure. In the meantime, I'll remove itFritzpoll (talk)01:30, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I know what you mean about it being late :)Deltasquared (talk)01:38, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

lol, yeah - I'll head off now, but good call on the unverifiable materialFritzpoll (talk)01:41, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Just a friendly heads up onJay Bezel. I removed your prod tag because the article had a contested prod back in April, 2007, so it's not eligible to be prodded again. If you think this needs to go, you'll need to take it to AfD. --Fabrictramp (talk)00:08, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Replied at talk pageFritzpoll (talk)00:17, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes the external links are references. They are reviews of work she has done. Most of it is things she has done with the Met but others are symphonic work with the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestra. Thanks for the help.Nrswanson (talk)00:19, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

FYI, this article has been previously prodded/deprodded, so I took it to AfD procedurally:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Barratt (British author). I'm not sure either way on his notability.Jfire (talk)03:01, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the update - must have missed the prod in the historyFritzpoll (talk)17:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

They have already relesed two EP album and their their first ever self titled alum is coming out soon.Rockismorethanmusic (talk)19:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

The article didn't mention that, it simply said that their first album was being released as well. The article has now been deleted. Can I suggest recreating it in your own userspace and making sure you get all the references in first, otherwise other editors will just see it as a non-notable band. Best wishesFritzpoll (talk)19:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

alright i'm making the page over agianRockismorethanmusic (talk)20:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but you failed to make any amendments to the article, so all you've done is recreate the article that was unacceptable. I removed the copyvio material, and now it has been tagged for deletion by someone else. I strongly urge you to get some sources together before writing this article to assert their notability. Best wishesFritzpoll (talk)20:45, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I praise the work you have put in this proposal.

Just a short question. Will the proposed WP:Notability (criminal acts) be a policy or a guideline? Thanks.Kushal01:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind comment. I am suggesting it as a guideline, since it is a clarification of existing policyFritzpoll (talk)17:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Hey there Fritzpoll, sorry for the delay (I don't edit weekends generally). I've granted your request for rollback without hesitation (actually, I'm think I thought you were an admin...why aren't you an admin?) Be sure to readthe rollback page to be sure to do it the right way. Cheers,Keeper |76 |Disclaimer14:22, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much - as to the other, noone has ever asked me to be one. But that aside, I think I need a bit more work in CSD, AfD etc. to "undo" some of my earlier errors in this area (misplaced speedy tags, etc.) Thanks for the rollback!Fritzpoll (talk)15:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, continuing with this thread, if you ever feel that you've done enough to pass an RfA, or at least found yourself with sufficient need/use of more tools than rollback, let me know! I'd be happy to dig further into your contribs and give youfriendly, informal advice as to your chances/merits. Right now, just doing a quickedit count check, with around 2K edits, it would be an unlikely chance to get throughan RfA. I would support one now because those 2K edits have beensuperb, but I'm too easy I've been told :)...keep up the solid work!Keeper |76 |Disclaimer18:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the !vote of confidence :)Fritzpoll (talk)18:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Hello there, I removed yourA7 speedy tag from the above article as it asserted significance or importance, namely the statement "the largest fully licensed and insured painting company in America". If you have any questions, feel free to ask me at my talk page. You are of course welcome to take the article to AfD. Cheers and happy editing,EJF (talk)18:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Fritzpoll,

You tagged my Faces in the Moon page. I've been working on that for a college english class. It will be finished by the 22nd. Please undo the speedy deletion.—Precedingunsigned comment added byResharp (talk •contribs)02:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The speedy deletion never took place, and I cannot delete articles anyway. When I tagged it, it had been empty for around 10 minutes apart from some headings. You removed the speedy tag yourself, which is technically a violation of policy, but in this instance perfectly justified - as I wrote on your talk pageimmediately after I tagged it, you need to include content straight off - placeholders like this will end up being speedy deleted. Best wishesFritzpoll (talk)08:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I was actually just taking information from the results table and outting the project manages into week 4. Ok?!?!?! --Mikey-is-lost (talk)09:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

the content is still unverified, so no, not really. I will check the table and remove the information as appropriATE. BEST WISHESFritzpoll (talk)13:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you....--Mikey-is-lost (talk)19:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant idea - I was thinking of something similar, actually. I'd suggest we start with the second series, as there will be more sources around for the information, but whichever you'd rather start on is fine with me :)Seaserpent⁸⁵22:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed - the second series it is. Have you got free wiki-time, or would you rather wait until we stop having to do the reverts/verifications on Series 4?Fritzpoll (talk)23:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I haven't got a huge amount of free time at all to be honest, but there's no time like the present!Seaserpent⁸⁵08:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Cool - I'll make a start at the weekend.Fritzpoll (talk)15:36, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

See[6]. PThis is an important article, and a good opportunity to help solve a difficult problem. Are you interested in trying this?Jehochman^Talk18:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Good work so far. If you run into trouble with any tendentious editors, let me know, and I will show you the best methods for resolving that sort of situation.Jehochman^Talk17:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion had been limited - partly because I was away and not around to provoke some. But fair enough. The question I have is, how did you establish no consensus? Did you look at the support/oppose !votes atWikipedia talk:Notability (criminal acts)/Opinions? Or did you just base it on the wroking discussions on the talk page?Fritzpoll (talk)12:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

More on the discussion (or the fact that the discussion seemed to have terminated), but I did take the opinions page into consideration.Stifle (talk)12:59, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It's just a little unfortunate - I really got back onto WP today, and had just asked someone a question about this guideline proposal and getting the discussion going again when I noticed it had been marked. If I can re-generate interest, would you mind if I swap the tag back to the active proposal one?Fritzpoll (talk)13:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

No problem.Stifle (talk)13:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very muchFritzpoll (talk)13:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Hey, my pleasure, and thanks for the note! Much appreciated.Cirt (talk)15:38, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

The announcement at the community portal may be having some effect:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)03:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes - well done! It was clearly the one announcement missing!  :)Fritzpoll (talk)10:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

but how exactly have you managednot to be an admin? I realize you just got rollback rights, which are silly, I think you'd fly through an RfA. I think I've stated as much before. Are you doing any admin type coaching? I could look, but I'm lazy. My general feeling is that you would make a superb admin, because you already act like one. The formality at this point would be to give you the extra-large toolbelt, that you could probably use effectively and efficiently. Are you being coached/have a coach/running for RfA anytime soon? Can I co-nom if you are? I'm thoroughly impressed by your dedication and service to Wikipedia.Keeper |76 |Disclaimer21:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Ummm...well, thanks very much. I did sign up for coaching with Jehochman, but I've not really done anything with it because our interests differ slightly. Not sure how it is I'm acting like an admin, but thanks anyway! :) I think I would have a problem in that when I started out on CSD tagging a couple of months ago, I mistagged a few articles, and I had a couple of slips recently where I tagged A7:general having missed the one-line assertion to notability. Take a look at my contribs and I'm sure you'll agree that an editor would oppose on that basis, and then everything else would be irrelevant. Such seems to be RFA, at least from my frightened perspective!Fritzpoll (talk)21:59, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Jehochman is a great editor, great admin. Do you have an admin coaching page set up with him (I didn't see anything obvious in prefixindex...Keeper |76 |Disclaimer22:03, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Not that he's told me about!Fritzpoll (talk)22:04, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

How are you (and J-man) doing "coaching"? Are you using email? Talkpages?Keeper |76 |Disclaimer22:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Some talk page stuff came up. He asked me to look atRobert F. Kennedy assassination, and it was so awful I spent several continuous hours editing it (look at the history from Friday night - hilarious). But apart from suggesting I look atWP:COI andWP:SSP that's kinda been it thus far.Fritzpoll (talk)22:16, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to discourage you as you seem like a fine editor to me but I'd wait a fair bit of time before accepting an offer to nominate, based on a quick look at your edit history using Interiot'swannabe Kate edit counter. None of the following describe any crticism whatsoever, but simply my assessment of problem flags I see if you ran for RFA right now, based on my knowledge of the RFA gauntlet, which can be a harsh process. For good or bad I can tell you that there are likely to be opposes based on the sporadic nature of your edits (seven months of almost complete inactivity), your relatively low edit count (yes 2,300 edits is a hell of a lot, all things being equal, but there are many users who want to see significantly more; the standards of those who use edit counts as a significant measure have climbed and climbed to the point where many have absurd expectations), that of your edits, there's "only" 700 in the mainspace, and your lack of using edit summaries fairly recently (some users will oppose on this basis alone; consider checking in your editing preferences "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary"). Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)22:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Meh. While I usually agree with Fuhghettaboutit, I think you'd do fine at RfA. You'd gather some editcounters, but usually they are discounted/balanced with those that actually look at the merits of your RfA. That said, I respect Fuhghettaboutit very much, and will withhold a nom at this point, especially since your in the infancy of admincoaching (thelast thing you need is opposers based on not being nominated by your coach). Keep up the good work, F-poll. I'm glad you're here, I'll leave you alone (once again) about this admin bizness. Thanks for the perspective, Fuhgh....it. Cheers,Keeper |76 |Disclaimer22:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you both - I appreciate the kind comments. As I say, I agree with Fuhghettaboutit's assessment. The only thing that ever irritates me is that when you look at some of my single edits, they change a vast amount of stuff sometimes (particularlyNonlocality andRobert F. Kennedy assassination) and for the sake of not clicking every change to every sentence I seem to be a low count editor!  :) Ho hum. Several months off was the result of a family problem but is a fair point of criticism. Check on me again in a couple of months - many thanks to you bothFritzpoll (talk)22:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words, both of you. I hope I made it very clear I was only evaluating based on my assessment of what I seeothers do at RFA. Of course looking at a person's global edits is whatshould be done; in practice it's often otherwise for some portion of !voters. To put it in perspective, I got flack at my RFA because some percentage of my edits were bot-type contributions (spelling corrections and the like) when it was clear the users who made the remarks had failed to actually look at the substance of my contributions where they would have found, for example, complete articles written offline and posted in single edits. Because RFA can be so harsh, I hate to see a very good editor put themselves out there when a few months of waiting would take care of a whole bunch of opposes I just bet are going to happen based on relatively superficial matters. If you do run for RFA, I specifically am asking you here and now to drop me a line about it, and absolve you of any canvassing charge based on the beginning of this sentence. I only drop by RFA on occasion, so I often miss the RFAs of people I know.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)00:41, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

A very good assessment, Fuhghettaboutit. If/when there is a Fritzpoll RfA, if I am in fact fortunate enough to nominate him myself, I'll post to your talkpage myself if F-poll doesn't, and cite this diff as absolution. Cheers,Keeper |76 |Disclaimer00:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the notability help. Please let me know if the references I've added meet the basic criteria.Cpceda (talk)00:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

My only concern was that the principal notability was being the candidate in an election. Ournotability guidelines indicate that this is not necessarily sufficient to warrant an article. I noticed that you removed the tag, and went to look. I believe with the other referenced material, there is a sufficient stake to notability, but the emphasis needs to remain on what Yonah is notablefor rather than whatmight happen in an election. Happy to helpFritzpoll (talk)00:27, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your moves to my EDP page.Xp54321 (talk)00:33, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem at all. Happy editing!Fritzpoll (talk)00:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

		The Editor's Barnstar
		You took a mess of an article, and in about 10 edits, with red pen in hand, NPOV in mind, and quality at heart, made a respectable article out of a disaster of an articlehereKeeper |76 |Disclaimer14:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

-) Thank you very muchFritzpoll (talk)14:52, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Please don't undo my work. I've not removed a single inline citation. My changes are completely within the guidelines. --jbmurray (talk •contribs)16:27, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you did - make the references a bit more readable. The diffs didn't make your actions clear - my apologies. I have changed the headings - I hope you don't object?Fritzpoll (talk)16:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I saw you changed the headers. And though elsewhere, you'd be right, for some reason on Wikipedia these are the section headers that are de rigeur; so I've changed them back. --jbmurray (talk •contribs)

I'm still a bit confused as to why you removed{{cite book}} templates from the text and changed the structure in this way?Fritzpoll (talk)16:34, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I didn't remove any "cite book" templates; in fact, I've added them. Take a look --jbmurray (talk •contribs)16:38, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not a criticism - but I meant, I don't see why you have extracted the citation templates (like that for Noguchi) from the text and placed them in an additional list. I am curious as to why this is preferable. As I say, not a criticism, just interestedFritzpoll (talk)16:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

With that one, it's less of a big deal, because it's only cited once; with, say, the Witcot, you only have to deal with the one reference; and all the citations can then point to it. See, say,El Señor Presidente, for how to organize these things. It's not all obligatory, but as you go through them you can also catch mistakes; I found a bunch of little ones. --jbmurray (talk •contribs)16:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, it certainly looks better, with the reflist being much less cluttered. Thanks very much for both doing the job and taking the time to answer my nagging questions! It's just that layout issues are one element of the guidelines that I'm not very familiar with, so I always try to take the time to learn! Best wishes,Fritzpoll (talk)16:48, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

(outdent:) No probs! --jbmurray (talk •contribs)16:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I note you have the RFK assassination article on Peer Review at the same time as it's on GA Review. You might want to wait until the Peer Review is over before (re)submitting to GA. On the other hand, the GA Review process is quite heavily backlogged, so it may take some time. (Feel free to help out with reviewing other GA candidates, to help get the backlog down!) --jbmurray (talk •contribs)18:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I used to do some GA reviewing, and was going to crack my knuckles and get back into it tomorrow. I popped it on GA review as well simply to "get in the queue" - I don't anticipate an overlap in reviews, just an overlap in posting requests. Hoepfully there is not a strict rule against it! About to leave another message on your talk pageFritzpoll (talk)18:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

No, as far as I'm aware there's no rule against it. (There is forWP:FAC, however.) It's fine by me, too; it was just a thought if you wanted to have the article as well-prepared as possible before the GA Review. --jbmurray (talk •contribs)18:19, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, hence the Peer Review. It's a little gamble that the GA review will take a month or so to actually occur. I'll see what I can do to help with the backlog...off toWP:WIAGA to refreshFritzpoll (talk)18:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Grand.  :) And thanks for the note on my talk page! I'm happy to help out. It's also a way of learning something: I've never been sure about the whole RFA assassination thing. --jbmurray (talk •contribs)18:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, until I started cleaning this article up, I knew bugger all about it! Isn't that the joy of Wikipedia? :)Fritzpoll (talk)18:31, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I put my reasoning undr the Suggestions part of the opinions page. After you reverted, I moved it to the proper talk page. Check out the RfC at American Criminals for more info. Sorry I posted to the wrong place.David in DC (talk)01:37, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey, no problem! I'll have a look, but it might be easier if you just explained on the talk page how the proposed guideline would affect the RfC - and do it on the talkpage ofWP:N/CA because everyone watching the page needs to see itFritzpoll (talk)12:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok. Thank you for guiding me. And in answer to your query on my talk page, please see this RfC:[7]. Thanks again.David in DC (talk)13:56, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I've seen now, thank you. Are you suggesting using N/CA as a local criteria for inclusion into a category?Fritzpoll (talk)14:09, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

		RfA: Many thanks
		Many thanks for your participation in my recentrequest for adminship. I am impressed by the amount of thought that goes into people's contribution to the RfA process, and humbled that so many have chosen to trust me with this new responsibility. I step into this new role cautiously, but will do my very best to live up to your kind words and expectations, and to further the project of the encyclopedia. Again, thank you. --jbmurray (talk •contribs)06:12, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi. If it puts things in perspective at present we have 33 articles on towns in Bangladesh and only 5 or 6 of them are of any real worth. There are over 27,000 missing articles on towns in Bangladesh alone. Its taken 7 years to cover 33/ 27,000 places in one country alone. The starter articles would look likethis. Wikipedia cannot possibly hope to achieving the "sum of all knowledge" if 90% of the planet is missing geographically. A bot is the only way we can ever hope to develop dramtically in this field in the next few years. A bot should be running daily for hours on end putting these places onto here by country. All it is is a case of reading a list of places and their region/district and google coordinates. If the geohack works I'm certain something could be done to make this a reality. I for one am willing to dedicate a lot of time towards achieving it. pLease think about doing something.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?18:37, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I've had a think about it, and I certainly think I can get something working. I'd just need a bit of help sourcing the data. As you say, it's quite shocking that this is missing, and I'd really like to help out. A bit of help with getting the data, and we'll be dandy. Can you give me the example website - I've forgotten where it was (goes to look after saving page)?Fritzpoll (talk)21:07, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Maplandia has the easiest system I have seen. If you browse through some of countries you'll see they are split into the regions and districts and it will astound you how much is missing, but you will also see how simply progrmamed the site is -check out their URL system. I'm certain something could also be retrieved from a google earth directory or something (if Maplandia is not legal to use) as all we need is the names/district/regtions of countries and the coordinates. That data is non copywrightable I am certain. Thereis also[8] a US government directory also I couldn't access this when I tried earlier. There is abound to be a way to read names of places in countries and their global coordinates and generate articles quickly in this way. Its just amatter of finding this and being able to generate thousands of articles with placing the coordinates in the infobox to create the location to start them.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?21:13, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

For instance seeBurma which indicates there are some 38,000 places yet we have barely a 1000 on here (and only after weeks of stubbing myself). Scroll down the page and then you click on a first level division e.g Kachin and this in turn is split inot second divisions and then third divisions -the townships. Its just a case of reading the place names listed in these and the coordinates.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?21:19, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Whilst you've been typing, I've looked at their webpage, and think I could probably extract the names automatically. If we run this, to what depth do we need to go? Level one administrative regions, or all the way down to level 3? Have begun knocking together some test code. Carry on discussion atUser:Fritzpoll/Geobot - I'm putting this conversation in there now.Fritzpoll (talk)21:23, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The first level divisions, even second are just the regions and district names. Most of the time we have these. What we want are the settlements at the third level which are filed in an A-Z. Often they list the places about 20 on each page and you then click the name of the place for the map. I'll find you what I mean now. Seehttp://www.maplandia.com/burma/kachin/waingmaw/ waingmaw]. This is a subdistrict of a region in the country. Scroll down and you'll see it list the complete A-Z of settlements in that sub district but split into sizeable parts. Now click on one of these and then you'll see the settlements listed under each section e,gsee settlements Aju-Hkang listed. What we want to extract the entirety of these for all of the subdistricts and places by country and get them onto here. If you browse for instance through the area that you live in you'll get to understand how it is filed. There is alsoanother directory of world places and coordinates at falling rain but isn't quite as good as maplandia. I;m certain google should have a directory too but I haven't found it yet. Whoever it is obtained from it is without a doubt public domain data -place names and coordinates obtained by NASA satellites.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?21:31, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks google-extracted. SO, would[9] be the level at which you'd want to create an article? If so, could you use the page linked to create said article in my user space - sayUser:Fritzpoll/GeoBot/Example so that I can be absolutely certain of what we wantFritzpoll (talk)21:50, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh yes of course they are google maps and google coordinates. What we would have to do is generate them but imply we used google coordinates not maplandia as the root sourc eis google coordinates which are public domain. Yes I've left the example in your link. This is exactly what I mean . Have a browse around those sites and you;ll see it is fairly straightforward. Regards♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?21:58, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

All looks good. Can you just tell me what action to take with duplicate names, such ashereFritzpoll (talk)22:00, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Thats a brilliant idea. Yes if it finds a place with the same name it should place it into a list for sorting manually perhaps. As for places with the same name within each district I myself am uncertian what to do with them. Personally I wouldn't see a problem with the coordinates in brackets in the title to distinguish the difference, but we may need to have a consensus as to whether or not this is acceptable. That source with the 900kb is excellent and was also suggested by User:Sadalmelik. This would be absolutely fine as long as all of the places ar elisted as in maplnadia. For certain countries like Burma though we may need to use a different source if they have sub districts. But absolutely yes Nangarha district is obviously missing from Afghanistan so this should be red linked. I've between trying to fill in as many districts as I can (having done kazakhstan, Krrgzstan, Laos, Eritrea and countless others) but there are many missing by country. As long as the details can be written into the infobox along with the coordinates to create the map locator as in the example. I am fully aware that often the district isn't avialbale for many countries (e.g Tajikistan etc etc) and it is just by region. This is absolutely fine -whatever is available for that specific country. As for town or village, mmm most of my decisions are made by examining the map of the place, the larger towns can usually be distinguished from the villages. Either way I wouldn't object to the word "settlement" or "inhabited settlement" which would seem to solve this problem, But naturally most world locations are villages rather than towns. Also if we plan on generating several thousands articles for each country the bot would need to be written so that it tags the talk pages automatically for the relative wikipojects accordingly. Also if we are planning to add this quanitity of places from each region of the country we will have to enhance the category structures and split regionally -e.g with Burma I have already done this such asCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Kachin State.

ALso if that source has other data e.g altitude or even population this naturally is a must. Whatever is obtainable.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?09:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The GNS data gives some population data (possibly a bit out of date) and some elvation data where relevant as well as the coordinates of the place, because the file documents natural features as well as populated places. My look at the Burma data suggests that we can get to the first administrative level beyond the country (so, what state is it in) but generally lower-level data is missing. I'll see if this is common to all of them. One option is also to perform this in a two-step manner: upload a wikilinked list of extracted data to check the district names, etc. where a quick inspection and find/replace can be performed. The second step can then simply be to convert this list into articles. It wouldn't be as fast, but it might be more accurate that way. What do you think?Fritzpoll (talk)10:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Mmm it would take a great deal of time to check them all like that unless you could provide an exampe of what you mean. WHat I had considered doing was generating a full list of locations by country. E.g seeList of cities, towns and villages in Burma Then once they were red linked I had intended starting them, this was until I discovered maplandia where I realised it would be useful to add the list of settlements in the small areas instead -e.gChipwi Township. My gut feeling is that the population is unreliable as this was listed on falling rain before, although altitude/timezone should be correct. But with Burma I am certian if the articles where created, we would be able to figure out which townships they are later and create templates likeTemplate:Chipwi Township. I just figured it was more straightforward to use maplandia♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:34, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

At the end of the day, if we spot a recurring error, we can run short bot tasks to fix them. So I shall proceed using maplandia, and what I'll produce is a summary list of all articles created that we'll place somewhere in Userspace so that visual checks can be made. How does that sound?Fritzpoll (talk)13:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like a perfect idea. Thanks. What would be best I think is if we could compile a full directory of places in the wikipedia work space by country by using a bot and red link them and then sort out what we discussed first. It may take few days or weeks but once that is done I think this would be a good step?

I would suggest something likeWikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places/Libya,Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places/Burma, etc

♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000? 13:29, 19 May 2008 (UTC)♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

What I'll get it to do is write out the single sentence that would appear in the new article on its own line. I'll tack the coordinates in as well, but they won't use the standard template for them at this stage to stop the page being scraped as a location. Give me a few days, and bear in mind that I will probably need a couple more days to seek BAG approval. But yes, let's be cautious and make sure we don't have to go and edit every article by hand anyway!Fritzpoll (talk)13:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure you are getting an idea of how it would done so I'll leave you to it. If we could somewho combine that 900kb geo site with maplandia this would be useful but whatever you think is best. One thing as you said is I don't want to have to edit every article afterward and add an infobox and map etc, I tried doing this to several Algerian articles earlier and it is a very daunting one! Best of luck, Blofeld♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:57, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

List first, I'll sort the graphics in phase 2... ;)Fritzpoll (talk)13:59, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Um. Well I would be think (USA, UK, France for certain) , Netherlands and Germany, Slovakia and possibly Italy have a pretty good coverage already as I know I was one of the editors who ensured this for these. Australia also may have a good coverage but I'd imagine there are thousand sof villages missing. Not certain about Poland either as I know a bot created many village articles on that country in the past. Those are the best covered countrues I believe. With Italy and Spain I know we have most of the municipalities but I am uncertain as to how many villages aremissing, It might be good to compare the article numbers we have with the maplandia totals but they aren't a priority really. The emphasis really is on those countries not considered to be a leading "western" power which is most of the planet with emphasis on africa, asia, latin america, the Pacific Island countries and north/eastern/central europe aside from those countries i mentioned above. Even countries like Norway and Sweden which you'd think had developed well have a frightening number of articles missing.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:14, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

You know, if we use the population data from the GNS material, it might be possible to determine a village or town...can we apply some criteria to the numbers?Fritzpoll (talk)16:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes indeed good point. E.g population over 1000 =town (if the figures are accurate at the time). I would however exercise caution with the figures in that in developing countries a reading ten years ago is likely to become out of date very quickly and would need to know whether they are estimated figures or have some legitimacy from census data or whatever. Estimated or not, I think the 1000 would be a very good boundary point♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?16:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

For the draft list, that's what I'll do thenFritzpoll (talk)16:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The account is created (but inactive) asUser:FritzpollBot and I have requested approval. Wait and see, I guess, but I can tell you that the code for creating the checkable lists seems to work really wellFritzpoll (talk)19:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm friggin amazed (and a bit intimidated...)at how fast you seemed to be able to write a bot, and a working one at that.  :) Best of luck with BAG...Keeper |76 |Disclaimer20:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Been programming since I was 6, and I scribbled on 4 sheets of A4 paper first to get it right! Bear in mind that I work in a very technical discipline, so I code all day! Wikipedia is normally light relief....speaking of which, I'm coming to your talk pageFritzpoll (talk)20:12, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I've been coding since I was....never. Which is why I like Wikipedia. From what I understand, it is definitely designed to be user friendly for friendly users. I'm in awe still of the technical side of this place. It is so far out of my grasp, I would need years of people hitting me with books to get it.Keeper |76 |Disclaimer20:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Don't worry about town or village. Populated place or settlement is fine♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?20:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I can probably make that distinction! Thank you, by the way for the !vote of confidence - I haven't decided yet to accept, and that means that the page is not transcluded. Wouldn't want to inadvertently present people with a fait accompli - but I do appreciate it.Fritzpoll (talk)20:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Well if you do decide to accept you are likely to get a lot of support. One thing though. Is it possible to generate the articles using decimal coordinates and writing them in as DMS??♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?20:56, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

If you mean can I drag both representations out of the GNS dataset, then yes, I just have to add a few lines to the code. Once we're happy with the list, can you tell me how you want some of this info used - I was going to use the example you gave me as a template and just copy and substitute. Sound good?Fritzpoll (talk)21:04, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes exactly. Note the example again. The altitude in metres can be written into the infobox and it will display both measurements.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?21:46, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you - strawberry is actually my favourite ice cream, by a happy coincidence :)Fritzpoll (talk)23:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

There is no hurry, this isn't live. Take a coupla days/weeks and think about it. Right now, your busy botting (busybody-ing?), but I thought this should be bluelinked. Take a stab at the questions. Anybody offer a co-nom? Again, no hurry, it isn't live. No one can !vote yet. You'll pass though, and swimmingly. Let me know when you've answered the questions, give me a "go" date (when you have 7 days where you'll be online semi-regularly or regularly to address additional questions)...Keeper |76 |Disclaimer20:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It's all....shiny and blue..... Well, I'm naturally flattered but...well, as you've gone to the trouble of writing something, I'll sleep on it for a few days. I'll be interested to see if anyone volunteers to co-nom. Thanks again, Keeper - you irrepressible hassler, you :)Fritzpoll (talk)20:34, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Just saw the answer to question two. It's actually rather amazing to me that you're not already an admin. You act like one, you talk like one. Looking forward to A1. I'll add my nom after that, go see Gwynand to add his co-nom, then we're off! (I'll transclude it if you want, or you certainly can yourself. Wait for my actual nom statement though :-)Keeper |76 |Disclaimer23:24, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not going to lie, I'm not good at processing compliments! Although in front of a computer most of the day, I would probably agonise over the transclusion. Look at Q1 - it's your last chance to back out, both of you :PFritzpoll (talk)23:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem. S/He seems to be creating a new account each time then using it for one identical act of vandalism. I guess some people have a high boredom threshold :) --Karenjc22:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks but you'll find that the blue links aren't the actual articles they just need to be dabbed. There is only one article we have out of that list. All but one now are red linked. If you could upload them all then they can be dabbed.

I've startedAb Gach as an example. You'll probably want to examine the syntax ofthis. If you could find a way of including the maplanid and MSN encarta links this would be great. The bot would need to use subst:PAGENAME in the infobox, in the main highlighted title and in the MSN link. For the maplanid link the name is always in lower casing.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:06, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Also is there anyway we could get a bot to create navigation templates likeTemplate:Chipwi Township for districts/provinces which have a managable number of articles in?

Here is what I use. The bot would need to find a way of including the external link in lower casing for maplandia. Also if it is two words in the maplandia link it is split by a - with no spaces
{{Infobox Settlement<!--See the Table at Infobox Settlement for all fields and descriptions of usage--><!-- Basic info ---------------->|official_name = {{subst:PAGENAME}}|other_name =|native_name = <!-- for cities whose native name is not in English -->|nickname = |settlement_type = <!--For Town or Village (Leave blank for the default City)-->|motto =<!-- images and maps ----------->|image_skyline = |imagesize = |image_caption = |image_flag = |flag_size =|image_seal = |seal_size =|image_shield = |shield_size =|image_blank_emblem =|blank_emblem_type =|blank_emblem_size =|image_map = |mapsize = |map_caption = |image_map1 = |mapsize1 = |map_caption1 = |image_dot_map =|dot_mapsize =|dot_map_caption =|dot_x = |dot_y =|pushpin_map = Afghanistan <!-- the name of a location map as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Location_map -->|pushpin_label_position =bottom|pushpin_map_caption =Location in Afghanistan<!-- Location ------------------>|subdivision_type = Country|subdivision_name = [[Image:Flag of Afghanistan.svg|25px]] [[Afghanistan]]|subdivision_type1 = [[Provinces of Afghanistan|Province]]|subdivision_name1 = [[Badakhshan Province]]|subdivision_type2 = |subdivision_name2 = |subdivision_type3 = |subdivision_name3 = |subdivision_type4 = |subdivision_name4 =<!-- Politics ----------------->|government_footnotes =|government_type =|leader_title =|leader_name =|leader_title1 = <!-- for places with, say, both a mayor and a city manager -->|leader_name1 =|leader_title2 =|leader_name2 =|leader_title3 =|leader_name3 =|leader_title4 =|leader_name4 =|established_title = <!-- Settled -->|established_date = |established_title2 = <!-- Incorporated (town) -->|established_date2 = |established_title3 = <!-- Incorporated (city) -->|established_date3 =<!-- Area --------------------->|area_magnitude = |unit_pref =Imperial <!--Enter: Imperial, if Imperial (metric) is desired-->|area_footnotes =|area_total_km2 = <!-- ALL fields dealing with a measurements are subject to automatic unit conversion-->|area_land_km2 = <!--See table @ Template:Infobox Settlement for details on automatic unit conversion-->|area_water_km2 =|area_total_sq_mi =|area_land_sq_mi =|area_water_sq_mi =|area_water_percent =|area_urban_km2 =|area_urban_sq_mi =|area_metro_km2 =|area_metro_sq_mi =|area_blank1_title =|area_blank1_km2 =|area_blank1_sq_mi =<!-- Population ----------------------->|population_as_of =|population_footnotes =|population_note =|population_total =|population_density_km2 =|population_density_sq_mi =|population_metro =|population_density_metro_km2 =|population_density_metro_sq_mi =|population_urban =|population_density_urban_km2 =|population_density_urban_sq_mi =|population_blank1_title =Ethnicities|population_blank1 =|population_blank2_title =Religions|population_blank2 =|population_density_blank1_km2 = |population_density_blank1_sq_mi =<!-- General information --------------->|timezone = + 4.30|utc_offset = |timezone_DST = |utc_offset_DST = |latd=36 |latm=59|lats=0 |latNS=N|longd=72|longm=42|longs=0|longEW=E|elevation_footnotes = <!--for references: use <ref> </ref> tags-->|elevation_m = |elevation_ft =<!-- Area/postal codes & others -------->|postal_code_type = <!-- enter ZIP code, Postcode, Post code, Postal code... -->|postal_code =|area_code =|blank_name =|blank_info =|blank1_name =|blank1_info =|website = |footnotes = }} '''{{subst:PAGENAME}}''' is a [[village]] in [[Badakhshan Province]] in north-eastern [[Afghanistan]].<ref>[[National Geospatial Intelligence Agency]]</ref>== External links ==*[http://www.maplandia.com/afghanistan/badakhshan/ab-gach/ Satellite map at Maplandia.com]*[http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/mapcenter/map.aspx Search for {{subst:PAGENAME}} in the MSN Encarta atlas]{{Afghanistan-geo-stub}}[[Category:Cities, towns and villages in Afghanistan]][[Category:Badakhshan Province]]

Thank you for this - I can easily adapt the above to create pages. We can work on the navigation template afterwards. What I'll do is add a few lines to the bot to save the name of the page by country to a local file on my computer. That way, we'll have a list of navigatable articles to create these templates. I think this will be easy enough to do, but I'll apply to perform that task seperately once this bot has been proven and approved. At work at the moment, so articles will be created around 9.30pm British timeFritzpoll (talk)11:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Yep thats great. What we would need to do afterward is acreate a series of district/regionla templates by country like I have been doing e.g with Burkina FasoWikipedia:WikiProject Burkina Faso/Provincial templates (although virtually all of these are far from completed and look nothing like they will eventually.Template:Chipwi Township is a better example. We'd need to also create pages like this for every country to house the templates that will afterwards be applied to the articles. What I am aiming to do is to have every district in every country of the world connected by the articles within them which initially is the towns and villages in the given district or province. Ocassionally there are way too many settlements for a nav box but I try to create them as much as I can to affirm our "knowledge" over a given area. As the encyclopedia develops I would hope others features such as landmarks etc can be added to them too like I have done withTemplate:Ljubljana etc, so ventually we have detailed coverage and connection in every district or provincial area of every country in the world. Not a small task but one I am certain will be of major benefit to this project♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:45, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely, and where automation can help, I'm happy to assistFritzpoll (talk)12:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Before we start drilling through a country we may need to discuss categorical change first. Maplandia shows that at present there are 3,600 places in Afghanistan. Now we could consider creating individual categories for each of the provinces likeCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Badakhshan Province but this depends largely on how many provinces there are and indeed how many settlements within them. My feeling is that as there are 34 seperate provinces and a relatively small number of places 3,600 we should just stick to one categoryCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Afghanistan which is manageable. For most countries however I would almost certainly recommoned creating split regional categories likeCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Ethiopia etc. In fact working on Bangladesh the other night I not only split into its provinces but into its districts in categorization beginning withCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Barisal District. There are huge number of places within each of its districts seehere so a]it was feasible to have district categories within the provinces and b]the district is too large to have a navigation template for. But each country will have to be discussed before it is worked upon♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:00, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am only going to operate the bot country by country in any case, so some minor tweaking in between is fine. You tell me what category to append to these pages, and I will get the bot to do it for youFritzpoll (talk)13:03, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Well over the last few months I have gradually been changing the category structures for settlements, SeeCategory:Cities by country. Cities, towns and villages are new categorical changes I have added. Any regional categorical splitting will also be done under the same convention in ....Province. I fyou like I can beginning assessing countries and whether or not they will need a further categorical change by examining the number of settlements and how their provinces/districts are. Something likeUser:Fritzpoll/Geo categorical assessments where we can list the changes that will need to be made and use a bot to evne help out changing them♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:07, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure, create whatever you need to in my userspace - just let me know you've done it so that I can watchlist it. May as well get the articles right at creation time. But Afghanistan can proceed as-is?Fritzpoll (talk)13:10, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes I've decided its fine as it is for Afghanistan♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000? 13:18, 20 May 2008 (UTC)I've begun assessing them inUser:Fritzpoll/Geo categorical assessments perahps this could go on your watchlist. It can be done gradually but is very good to highlight what categories will need changing and how many articles etc♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Watchlisted. For each country, Imight be able to get the bot to count how many articles there are in each district, and append the tally to the intermediate page that it generates (so at the end of /Places/afghanistan for example) allowing us to make a quantitative judgement. Would this be helpful?Fritzpoll (talk)13:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but generally it is pretty straightforward to mak a decision by just seeing how many settlements there are in total and how the country is split administratively. I take it you would like to work through the A-Z of countries starting with Afghanistan? I think this would be good also♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking A-Z by continent, starting with the least well represented continents (Asia and Africa), as these will provide us with huge initial gains for the least effort, since better represented areas will require more blue-link removal, etc. Thoughts?Fritzpoll (talk)13:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh great I was hoping you would say that. I was thinking A-Z by continent would be ideal too. Japan and India however might be difficult to sort out categories with as the members of these projects are very stubborn towards change on wikipedia. I tried to change the Japanese cats before but the WP:Japan members started attacking me with samurai swords so I gave up. I believe they have it split into three categories e.g Cities in Honshu, Towns in Honshu and Villages in Honshu for each region. I had suggested merging them into one cat by region but they were having none of it. Overhauling the Indian category system would be a huge task and would also be likely to cause an upset. Oh its almost been sorted already seeCategory:Cities and towns in India by state. It will just need renaming first to include villages which shouldn't be a problem. I'm just thinking ahead .♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

There are a number of countries between "A-" and "In-", so we have time to come to some solution. Can the articles not exist in both sets of categories? Hmm...probably inefficient. Scratch that. We'll sort it out in time. I can always start with Africa! lol at the samurai swords :)Fritzpoll (talk)

No I've run into trouble in the past when overlapping categories exist and it very confusing. Thats why I've tried hard to get a strong and consistent category structure. It might not seem important to you but it saves a lot of difficulties later in filing and organization trust me. You should be clear now for the first couple anyway.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000? 14:19, 20 May 2008 (UTC)LOL yes they ran into my Japanese volcano with a team of ninjas and attacked me with Samurai swords (reminiscent ofYou Only Live Twice (film) -naturally I eliminated them by placing them in an easily escapable and overly exotic and elaborate death situation.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:25, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Haha! I love that image. I'll run the 100 test creations tonight. We'll talk more over at requests for approval thenFritzpoll (talk)14:27, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

...added. I reviewed your history this morning and liked it as much as I thought it would (AfD work isstellar). I'm not seeing anything real to worry about in your history, your answers to Q3 were well explained. This thing could probably go live as soon as you are ready (although maybe check with Keeper first).Gwynand |Talk•Contribs14:11, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Gwyn, much appreciatedFritzpoll (talk)14:12, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Er,now it's added, not sure what happened a minute ago. Good luck!Gwynand |Talk•Contribs14:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to hellweek! The closest thing tohazing in Wikipedia land. Actually, it's not that bad. Remember, people willalways find a reason to oppose any candidate, regardless of the candidate. Itfeels personal, but it snot. (I typed that on purpose) Enjoy it for what it is, don't start flaming people :-0, and keep your eye out for added questions...Cheers!Keeper |76 |Disclaimer14:21, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh my, a sense of dread has descended on a small city in England! Thanks, Keeper - I'll just try to keep editing normally!Fritzpoll (talk)14:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, look how easy it is going forthe last candidate that Keeper nominated. Seriously though, RfA can be very tough, but you have shown previously that you can handle tough stuff thrown your way. Also... I'm not too worried in your case.Gwynand |Talk•Contribs14:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't show him that! He'll wet himself....show himthis, orthis. Also live right now. (Am I allowed to have 4 concurrent noms? Egads, Keeper. Get a life!Keeper |76 |Disclaimer

And should I be worried that 3 out of 4 of the noms are from the old side of the pond? And the one Yankee is actually aYankee. My my, so much trouble from amidwesterner....Keeper |76 |Disclaimer14:37, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Why did you remove my nomination? At least reinstall it♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?16:12, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Blofeld, he had to remove it, because the RfA wasn't live yet. Editors aren't allowed to Vote before the live time. You are more than welcome to readd your sentiments to the RfA at anytime, Fritz cannot add it for you (I'm sure you understand).Keeper |76 |Disclaimer16:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello Fritzpoll. Could you disable the FritzpollBot for Algeria? The maplandia info is incomplete and wrong so we will have to create articles manually. I'm anEditorofthewiki^{[citation needed]}19:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll make sure that's done. Are there many? I might be able to fiddle the data directly from the GNS database now that I understand the codes - it would just be a longer run. Let me knowFritzpoll (talk)19:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Its not completely wrong at all. It is missing some places which are missing from other sites also and as with several other arabic countries transliteration is often not universal and have different spellings. It has around 6,660 places and there are 1541 communes. There are places within these communes too!! A bot could be programmed to start the communes using a different source as Algeria is a tricky one so there is no problem editor of the wiki. But that will be in the future anyway. Are we ready to start those Afghan places? Let me know when you are about to start then.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?20:51, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes - I just need to answer an RfA question quickly so that I can stop refreshing the page every 15 seconds, then I will take about 10-15 minutes to check the code, and I'll then run the botFritzpoll (talk)20:53, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll be starting the run in 15 minutes - sorry for the delay: got a phonecall!Fritzpoll (talk)21:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Removed (2). A ' is perfectly acceptable for middle eastern names. Many articles have it -should be fine now♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?21:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Before you start can you make sure that the infobox reads on seperate lines when it is created. If you go into edit the one I started earlier it should be neat like that. I left you the syntax yes, but it didn't come out as it would in an article. Could you check this? E.gsee this . This is what the infobox should look like when it is created. It just makes editing it easier later♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?21:58, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, a safety feature within the framework I am using to write the bot will not allow me to create a new page in article space. So I made the bot output a single page to my userspaceUser:Fritzpoll/template/test. See what you think, and return to the bot approvals page to comment there, as I have already submitted the test run resultsFritzpoll (talk)22:57, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Whatever it takes amigo. It should be possible to sort fairly quickly though right? I;m afraid I turned down adminship. I see that page as a chance for editors to have dig at me. Lord knows there are many disagreeable editors on this site who would have a field day.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

If the bot gets flagged, it will work immediately! It's up to approvals for now. I understand about the adminship thing, although I think it is the project's loss - I'm already finding it quite stressful, and I'm not even 24 hours in! Whilst we wait for approvals to get back to us, I was thinking about looking for some census data for countries so that we could maybe add in some poulation stats. Not sure whether it exists though!Fritzpoll (talk)11:31, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

That would be great but I always thought that would be done afterwards rather than initially. I don't want to make it exceptionally difficult for you. For many "third world " countries obtaining reliable population data is often very difficult particularly on the web.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:16, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes it was formatted properly but I believe you were missing theCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Afghanistan♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:07, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I saw that last night and have adjusted the code accordingly - good work on the category links on my subpage by the way. Makes the job a little bit easier for me. Did you see my answer to the number of articles created question at approvals? I am quite...stunned...at the idea that the bot might end up creating over a million articles...Fritzpoll (talk)14:09, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh easily if we get it sorted right. Perhaps we could ask Jimbo what he would say to 1 million new articles. It is an exciting development but I will only be relieved once the FritzBot is fully into its stride. Based on estimation I would imagine the missing article content to be in the region of 1.8 million - this is taking into account the size of Europe and Russia and weighing up the high proportion of coountries which have relatively sparse coverage. There must be well over 100,000 missing settlements from lower central europe alone such as Ukraine, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:36, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, and given our checking procedure, I expect it will take at least a couple of months to complete. I may have to bring the bot to work and run it here just to keep up! I have a few minor tweaks in mind to aid the process, but I'll bring those up later. They involve allowing checking editors to indicate where in the list they have checked up to. That way I don't have to wait until an entire country is checked before creating the articlesFritzpoll (talk)14:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

With the dabbing I'll try to get a few more editors on board to help out. Naturall the WP:Dsiambiguation project could help out and editors likeUser:Markussep have proven excellent at dabbing in the past.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I can always try to lend a hand, but I think I'll just keep churning out the lists to begin with. Provided we're sufficiently organised, this job can be done relatively efficiently. Make list late at night, checked during the following day, expand into articles the following night. Roughly speaking!Fritzpoll (talk)14:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

There will be some nightmarish countries though. Some countries have at least 10 places with the same name in a given district and near 100 in the whole country. Examples I can think of would be Romania (luckily many of these are red linked in a dab already) and places in Latin America like El pueblo etc. China also will be a beast to sort out. If there are several names in a given district I would suggest we find a way to work out the nearest settlements to add the the titles e.gDouba (5km east of Tkane) andDouba (12km north of Chobui) etc.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000? 15:06, 21 May 2008 (UTC)I know I'm reporting Dynamite to ANI right now.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:14, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, it would be a good idea to wait until the peer review gets archived, since that's how its suppose to go. But, I won't get to review the article until tomorrow, since I gotta study for exams and stuff, hope that's not a problem. --  ThinkBlue (HitBLUE)00:14, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Nah, there's no rush! I just didn't want you to think I was putting off making the changes. If you want to wait for the archive, that's cool tooFritzpoll (talk)00:22, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Alright, then we'll wait when the PR gets archived and I'll review the article. ;) --  ThinkBlue (HitBLUE)00:10, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

HelloFritzpoll/Archive 1! I'd like to leave a note of appreciation for your recent support of myrequest for adminship, which ended successfully today (and to my surprise) with83 supports,4 opposes, and2 neutral. What I have taken back from my RFA is that I've perhaps beentoo robust in debate and I will endevour to improve upon that aspect of my usership. I would like to thank you again and state here that I will not let any of my fellow Wikipedian's down. Thanks again!--Jza84 | Talk 11:34, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Wish you all the best for your RFA -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} -11:51, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much!Fritzpoll (talk)11:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Your bot should make edits likethis in one write instead of numerous writes. I don't know what language it is, but if it is python I can help you ;-).Monobi (talk)20:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

That's fine, I can easily adjust the while loop to compensate and insert it in one go if that is preferable. (runs to fix it!)Fritzpoll (talk)21:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes that Dymanite guy reverted two of my edits in quick succession. He seems to be mixing up vandalsim with the good stuff. Yes, Albert and I have been sorting out the categroies for a while. It will make the task easier but many of the existing city articles in countries will need adding infoboxes/maps too which have already been started. Hopefully as you are botting through the other countries I will have ensured that the eixsiting articles across the world have the infoboxes too.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:28, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

This little bot project sounds better and better to me each day! I guess there are a couple of organisational things to consider (assuming final approval comes down):

• Should the bot run the list of one country, wait for corrections, run article creation, repeat. Or should it create a number of lists all in one go (say X countries at a time) and then wait for each one to be marked finished and create the articles whilst other people correct the other lists. The latter may be more efficient...
• Should we allow parts of lists to be created? The lists for a country are in some cases going to be very long, and it will take some time to check them. We could come up with a predefined "tag" that can be placed by checkers of the list to indicate how far along has been checked. The bot could then create articles up to the point where it finds the tagFritzpoll (talk)12:38, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Well this depends on how many settlements of course. Personally I would feel happier if you downloaded an entire country at a time. However if there are 87,000 odd places like China etc, I would suggest downloaded a region/province at a time,. But for most cases I would much prefer you to downloaded the entire country missing articles. Then they can be surveyed and dabbed befor emaking the run. It would be much more efficient this way! IN regards to categorization, what constitutes a town, city or village seems to be different in many central european countries, I know it is far in the future but we would need to discuss that with some of the more active country projects on here as having categories with cities, towns and villages in one will likely to not be advisable for certain european countries and would require some thought as to writing in a town or a village. Asia, Africa and Latin America should be fine though . E.g if you downloaded all of afghanistan now or later, I or we could begin dabbing them while we wait for approval♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000? 14:01, 22 May 2008 (UTC)Could you begin downloading more settlements? Even if in the extremely unlikely event the bot was never approved, having pages of red linked missing articles would be of major benefit.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:10, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I would do, but the bot was only approved for 100 edits (which I have made), and I haven't heard anything back from BAG about an extension or full approval yet. On the bright side, once it is approved, everything will be very quick indeed! I'm a bit busy today/tomorrow, but if we haven't heard back by then, I can automate the process locally to my computer and manually copy the text myselfFritzpoll (talk)14:14, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll take your word for it on speed, it would be good if they could approve it asap given its importance. I've been going through existing articles and adding infoboxes likeSousse and beautifying with pretty pictures nearly done Tunisia now, Any idea just how many articles it is capable of creating a minute? I've seen some create 10. This would create more than 5 or minute, right?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:53, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

10 is the recommended maximum limit for non-urgent tasks. In terms of creating articles, this would equate to 60 an hour which given the number of articles needing creating, would mean we'd be running this bot for quite a long time. We'll see how it's running, and then perhaps get other volunteers to use the code I've written to run their own bot accounts so that we can attack the problem at multiple points.Fritzpoll (talk)15:06, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

60 an hour? With 10 a minute? Wouldn't it be 600?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?15:41, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I have a degree in physics with a strong theoretical component, wherein I learned to utilise mathematics to fully describe the beauty, wonder and fullness of the universe. And yet I couldn't multiply 60 by 10. Good callFritzpoll (talk)15:43, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Heeheee. LOL. The old mad scientist scenario. Genius in quantum and astrophysics and could calculate the distance from over a thousands stars by memory recall but can't boil an egg or make a cup of tea!! LOL just kidding. 600 an hour sounds like we would be very much in business!♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?15:46, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi. How are you dealing with the RFA? Gruelling?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?19:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I use a PC, so my F5 key to refresh the page is wearing out. It's a little stressful, mostly because of the microscopic examination of contributions and interactions, and it also seems to be absorbing a lot of my editing time, which kind of sucks, as I had high hopes of starting a cleanup onRobert F. Kennedy - might still do that over the weekend while the bot runs. I plan for the moment to run the bot to output a file on my PC for each country it processes. The file will contain the wikified text, and I will just upload the result so that we can get a headstart on cleaning up the title names. How many countries should I process to begin with? If you think this will be useful even without the bot being available, then I'm willing to do the work a little by hand. Consider yourself my boss in these matters and direct me to do what you need - maybe I can be an Oddjob-type character to fit your wiki-persona? :)Fritzpoll (talk)21:35, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

LOL. Upload as many as you can my friend!!! Start!!! Hopefully it will be approved before long. Regards♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?18:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Processing Afghaninstan fully as we speak. Because of the inherent lag with servers and file access, it takes a little time. I guess I shouldn't complain - there is still China to come!Fritzpoll (talk)19:18, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Awesome! I wonder what the 1.8 million red links will look like eventually!♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000? 10:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)One thing though. Can you split the page into headers for eahc province like I have done to the first afghan list. You may have to remove them afterwards for the bot but it helps making the dab each in sizeable chunks. Thanks♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:05, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem - I'll do my best to replicate itFritzpoll (talk)11:28, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I've begun dabbing a few and just filling in the articles in places where the town has been redirected to a district. One trivial thing though can you move the pages to a capital letter in the title. Afghanistan rather than afghanistan etc♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000? 11:49, 24 May 2008 (UTC)This is also for wikiproject purposes as I will be linking these pages in the relative wikiproject main pages to build up awareness of them♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:50, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Not a trivial task - can't we just adjust the case by dabbing the wikilink? I can make the moves if needed, but they're pretty hefty pages and I'd need to redo all the content pages linksFritzpoll (talk)11:53, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh OK don't worry about it, its not important. We would need to create the directory of lists atWikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places though from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. I'm certain you would find this useful also to keep things together as you upload♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:55, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

That's what I'll do, and after I've uploaded Bangladesh (which I'm in the middle of doing) I will capitalise all the other names that followFritzpoll (talk)11:56, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Great. You know I may be able to complete Bahrain manually later it shouldn't take more than half an hour -that would be one less country to worry about♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:58, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

That's up to you, my friend.  :) All I'd day is, don't try to do Bangladesh by hand - I'm up to page 5 just uploading, and only a fifth of the way throughFritzpoll (talk)12:00, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't dream of it! And we only have about 33 articles out of the 27,000 too. As you upload these I would imagine like myself you increasingly see what a huge gigantic gaping hole is missing in this encyclopedia and increasingly see how important this bot run will be. Well first priority now is dabbing afghanistan, and then going through existing articles and adding infoboxes/maps.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:13, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Its a shame wikipedia hasn't got a decent atlas. The mini wiki atlas it useful but it isn't a proper atlas. The links to MSN encarta atlas are very important I think. E.g seeAmurn at MSN atlas. Zoom in and you'll see the details. I don't know about you but I think its high time wikipedia got a fixed decent atlas like this♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:32, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this bot is an excellent idea! The thought of 1.8 million extra articles is just staggering! After the bot is finished with the trial period how will it work in terms of article creation? Obviously there won't be 500,000 articles added in one go but will it be in increments of 100 articles a day? 200? 500? Really amazing. Also in terms of the article discussion pages of those articles, is it possible to add in (via the bot) the wikiproject tag page for each city/town you make? For example, when the bot covers all of the 4 pages worth of cities and towns from Afghanistan is it possible to add {{WikiProjects Afghanistan|class=stub|importance= just so it saves on from people having to manually add in the tag themselves (which is another whole set of things people are trying to do...i.e. make all of the articles taged by a wiki project). Cheers!Calaka (talk)13:42, 24 May 2008 (UTC).

Yes that will be done hopefully so it tags the wikiproject accordingly. I'd imagine it would be possible to approve 600 an hour but that would need to be validated.

I'm talking about place names within the same district. E.g Bago in Sonoma District of Guinea. (this is just an example)Imagine there are 5 settlements with the name Bago in this district and there is no other way to distinguish the difference between them. Obviously you cant have 5 articles with the same name Bago, Sonoma. So what would you do. Would you have e,gBago, Sonoma (36 N 4 15 23 E) or what?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:20, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is quite...worrying in a way. If I am told in advance of a bot run what tags to place on an article's talk page, I will ask BAG if I can do it as part of the proposed task. Currently, we're just doing the checks which can be automated, but as I'm at the end of the trial limit and can't use the bot, I'm currently acting as a manual intermediary between the code and Wikipedia!

When it gets around to article creation, it depends on what restrictions, if any, BAG places on the bot. The maximum allowed edit rate for non-urgent tasks in 10/min, or 600/hr. Assuming I could run the bot continuously, It would take around 20weeks for this to process 1.8million articles. So all we have to do now is wait for the request to be approved further...which eems to be taking some time :)Fritzpoll (talk)13:51, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah most countries have their own project and you basically organize each country with their respective project. If the country doesn't happen to have a wikiproject the continent can be used instead (for example {{WikiProjects Africa|class=stub|importance=}} for a country in Africa that doesn't have a wikiproject). I am not sure how much work this will need in your behalf but if it becomes too much effort then don't worry about it :). If however it can be done easily, (with a simple code addition or whatever-I dont know much about coding) then by all means go for it. So if it takes too much work then don't worry about it ;).

WOW 600 an hour!!! That is incredible. So if all goes well we are going to see the 3millionth article being created sometime before the start of 2009!! (This assumed other wikipedia articles will be adding on normally at their current rate of a few thousand a day of course). Cheers!Calaka (talk)14:23, 24 May 2008 (UTC).

Thanks so much for your support inmyRfA, which closedsuccessfully this morning._{TravellingCari}^{the Busy Bee}16:41, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

this has been modestly updated. Cheers - five days to go!Keeper |76 |Disclaimer20:31, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Saw you adding them. Please note, that's it from me. Too much manual work! You'll be an admin in a short amount of time anywho, so I'm all done with the copy/paste. Enjoy your new untrafficked pages!Keeper |76 |Disclaimer21:34, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Haha - well, you presume a lot from the RfA at this early stage - I currently only need an additional 13 opposes to be outright rejected, and 9 to enter the borderline zone. I remain....neutral on my chances of success. Maybe I can write you a bot to extract the page for me...just kidding. :PFritzpoll (talk)21:38, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

For every 13 opposes you receive, I'm confident you'll receive 40 supports to offset. I wouldn't have nommed you otherwise...and I don't need a bot - bots terrify me. I should watch fewer movies...Keeper |76 |Disclaimer21:58, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

In that case, I should probably never discuss the topic of my PhD thesis with you! That said, I can be a bit of a technophobe sometimes - perhaps odd given my job! I'm guessing there'll be a spike in participation over the weekend?Fritzpoll (talk)22:03, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I also watch-listed those guys, with some general remarks onWikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy. Best,Wwheaton (talk)17:00, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I changed that becauseSirhan Sirhan's own page says that he was born to Palestinian parents in Jerusalem, and makes no mention of Jordan at all. So if he wasn't born in Jordan, his parents weren't from Jordan, and he's apparently never spent any significant (worth mentioning) length of time IN Jordan, then how is he Jordanian?Godheval (talk)14:39, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow you're making good progress. Remember though occassionally there is some confusion over the province names largely due to transliteration differences . E.g Baghian refers toBaghlan Province in Afghanistan. If you have any ones you find confusing feel free to ask me to look into it, Cheers♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?16:19, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

The best thing to do is to do a mass find/replace and change the names of such places to the names they should have (to reference for the appropriate article). Do you use IE or Firefox? Either way, there should be a find/Replace All tool that you cna use while editing the page to change them all at once.Fritzpoll (talk)16:21, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey fella they don't all have to be done in one day!!! Note I can't concetrate on one task for too long either as I lose my edge. Best to work in sessions. With Bangladesh there is a lot of work there do do anyway. Just upload them whenever you feel like it thats what I do! As long as we progress on it over time it doesn't matter♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?16:56, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

There may be a small problem with Azerbaijan. I noticed before that it doesn't list theAdministrative divisions of Azerbaijan but lists them under Azerbaydzhan Territor. This will be one of the rare instrances that will need sorting as they are without the proper names. I;m not sure what would have info on the divisions they are in. Would you think it compulsory to include the division names. I mean many of them are pretty small.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?18:27, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks for this - I shall feel even more able to accept once the job is finished! Best wishesFritzpoll (talk)17:32, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Completed checkingWikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places/bangladesh/page21. Had some doubts/questions. Have asked those in its talk page. Please see. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk)18:56, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Something alarming has been identified. At present google maps recognize 28,000 places in India.The 2001 census indicates there are 638,000 settlements in India which is enormous. What would you suggest? The best we can do is fill in the missing articles that google recognises I think but we may need to see if there is a source for India. I can't think why so many places aren't covered.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?19:09, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm....I'll have a look at the GNS data and see whether something about this can be done. Problem is trying to get the administrative districts sorted. Give me a couple of days, and for the moment, I shall bypass India.Fritzpoll (talk)15:41, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

(cross posted in response to Blofeld's question on page creation).Actually, the account was created on May 19, 2008. The way the Mediawiki software works, no account can create a page without entering the CAPTCHA text until it is 4 days old and has 10 edits. By my math FritzpollBot is now 4 days old, and has 10 edits under its belt, so it should be able to create articles without needing manual intervention.MBisanz^talk19:47, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Genius - I'll try creating one page, but many more will be beyond the approved trialFritzpoll (talk)15:42, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi there! I know that you are the person in charge of offloading pages on WikiProject Astronomical objects (or something like that), and I would like to ask if you would be kind enough to let me know onmy talk page about anymore unwatched asteroid articles that you find in the process. Thanks.

My advice to you is this: I would like to recommend that you get MiszaBotIII to automatically archive this page for you. As an administrator, you will get a lot more traffic to this page, so I believe that it might be in your best interest to eliminate the hassle of manually archiving your talk page. I am not forcing you to do this. I just think that it might be a good choice.

Cheers,Razorflame01:41, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

To the first, I will. To the second, I tried, but I may have misconfigured it - and I shan't count my chickens before 15:00 on Tuesday, but thank you for the vote of confidence!Fritzpoll (talk)15:44, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Would you like me to configure it for you? Cheers,Razorflame16:07, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

If you can see how to fix what I've attempted, I would be very grateful!Fritzpoll (talk)16:09, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe that the problem with the automatic archiving of your talk page was set to too long of an archive cycle (14 days), so I changed it to a shorter archive cycle (2 days). Feel free to change it to a bit longer archive cycle if you want, but I wouldn't recommend a longer archive cycle than, maybe, 5 days. Cheers,Razorflame16:16, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much! I owe you one.Fritzpoll (talk)16:25, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem! Let me know if MiszaBotIII automatically archives it for you now! Cheers,Razorflame18:02, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Sheesh I probably get as much traffic on my talk page as anybody and I haven't a bot to archive it for me!

User:Ganeshk has provided be with an entire list of Indian settlements

• Census - List of Villages Alphabetical
• Census - List of Towns

User:Ganeshbot had already created the towns from Census 2001.User:Sumibot created some of the villages inAndhra Pradesh, but most of the places all over are missing.

What I would do is bypass India for now as it may become possible that a different bot can be set up to add all of the INdian towns and villages.

User:Sumibot createdtehsils which are administrative divisions. Perhaps we could arrange that this bot can do India♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?09:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Skipping India takes a few hours off the job at any rate. I'm not editing much today, as I have to run errands, but was just popping by to check on things. MBisanz appears to think the bot can now create pages, but I don't have sufficient trial edits to proceed without risking being blocked for an unapproved bot run. Unfortunately, no BAG member is going near the request for approval at the moment, and I don't want to harrass them unnecessarily in case they are busyFritzpoll (talk)09:37, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Your're not having second thoughts are you? I would have thought that if Bisanz says its OK to create a few that that should be sufficient a reason enough not to be blocked for any activity. I'm rather surprised that BAG has not done anything yet, but I guess we'll have to be patient♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?09:51, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

No second thoughts here! I just want to make sure everything is a-ok. Do we have a completed page yet?Fritzpoll (talk)10:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Tis OK. No. First of all I am going through the category of 188 places and adding an infobox manually. Once this is done I will begin to check each page with dabbing. I got rhough about 3/4 of the first page the other day but when I have finished adding maps to existing settlements I will start doing this. Also make a note to change the px size of the map in the infobox for Afghanistan to 300px.

just add this underneath where it says pushpin map:pushpin_mapsize=300

It makes the map look fuller I think. Regards♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?10:19, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll fiddle with the template and check. There's no rush for the dabbing - I was just thinking that if Bahrain was done (which has less than 100 articles to create), I could attempt to upload these to article space - I think the spirit of the BAG trial was to create 100 articles, but I'd rather not do partial coverage of a country, as this can cause problems later. Of course, I can do the first 100 in Afghanistan, if they happen to be nearing completion - on reflection, given that the bot skips created articles, this probably wouldn't be too much of a problem!Fritzpoll (talk)10:27, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Its hard going through all of these places and adding an infobox. I've nearly reached M. I've just thought of something. If we are going to be creating thousands of stub articles for many countries it may be best to sort out new stub categories first. E.g rather than Afghanistan-geo-stub Herat-geo-stub etc. Usually 60 is the threshold but eventually there will be 1100 for afghanistan alone. Could you contactUser:Alai and inform him of the bot plans and see whether he would consider reorganizing the stub sorting in advance. Thanks♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:23, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

What pages are you going through?Fritzpoll (talk)11:42, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm the dude putting infoboxes and maps in every articleCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Afghanistan. I've now reached N.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Good - I was making sure you weren't doing the bot's job!Fritzpoll (talk)12:53, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

This should help[10]MBisanz^talk21:13, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

That's great - thanks very much; I'll run the trial as soon as the checks for 100 articles are complete.Fritzpoll (talk)21:15, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Shall I make sure the first 100 of afghanistan are all clear? When do you intend doing the trial?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, pretty much as soon as you give me the go-ahead that the first 100 articles in Afghanistan are clear, and can confirm the categories listed in my userspace are correct. That said, if you do it right now, I won't actually run the bot until this evening as I'm presently at work on my 20 minute lunch break! :)Fritzpoll (talk)11:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

You should be clear to do the first province. I'll try to get all of the existing pages with a infbox and clear the whole of the first page by this evening. Admittedly I'm not feeling all like wikiying today but I'll be certain to keep my word♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The first province will be plenty - do what you want to do; don't feel obliged to do this! As you said to me a few days ago, you don't need all of this done in one day!Fritzpoll (talk)12:08, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Baldy. Stressed? Not me sire. Gladly I've finished adding infoboxes to all the existing Afghan articles which I could. Perhaps some day you could devise a bot to do it for me as its hard and monotonous work!!! ANy idea what time you are doing the run, as I'm off here for a few hours in a few minutes♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:27, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

HI Fritz. I was wondering if you could tell if it is possible to generate red linked links for each province/district so I can copy and paste them straight into templates likeTemplate:Chipwi Township etc. E.g the list of links but without any of the other details seperated by commas so they can be put into the templates? Of course this can be done after they are started but I need to start to think about draiwing up the bones for the templates by country too♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

SeeWikipedia:WikiProject Afghanistan/Provincial templates.

Congrats on adminship!♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Blofeld! Now, enough of adminship, and in about 4 hours, on to the testing of the bot!Fritzpoll (talk)15:00, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I wanted to beat everyone here to say congrats - congrats! See, nothing to worry about....now purge your cache, see those shiny buttons across the top -- don't break anything :-)Keeper |76 |Disclaimer14:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent...I even beat the closer....tee hee!Keeper |76 |Disclaimer14:22, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Lol. Thanks very much Keeper - the buttons are scary and new, but I'll try not to break anything before lunch! You'll get a more verbose thanks soon!Fritzpoll (talk)14:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I stayed neutral. Good luck with your tools nevertheless.Rudget(Help?)14:33, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I can see why you're here: only for the betterment of the project. If you ever need any help, you know where I am. (Not that you will need it anyway :))Rudget(Help?)14:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

You may come to regret that offer... ;-) Thanks, Rudget.Fritzpoll (talk)14:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations, I have just closed your RfA as successful and made you an administrator. Take a look at theadministrators' how-to guide and theadministrators' reading list if you haven't read those already. Also, the practice exercises at thenew admin school may be useful. If you have any questions, get in touch onmy talk page.WjBscribe14:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to the mop brigade, buddy. User your new tools, shown right, with honor. You've more than earned them!John Carter (talk)14:33, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that takes me back to the job I used to do before University. Cheers, John!Fritzpoll (talk)14:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Ugh that mop and bucket really makes the look uninviting doesn't it!! Surely Mr. Fritz would rather think of it as a position of class rather than that of a toilet cleaner!!! I'll be looking forward to the bot in action. I've startedCategory:WikiProject provincial templates by country so that the templates for eahc country can also be laid out. I'll link this on the missing places page. Whether this is done afterwards or not we'll still need to link articles together with district/provincial templates♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?15:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Toilet cleaning was part of the job I used to do before Uni, and the state of my keyboard suggests that my new-found abilities here on Wikipedia will only be slightly more hygenic...Fritzpoll (talk)15:29, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thats fine but also of course {afghanistan-geo-stub}. Yes when we get into the full run we'll need to find a way of automatically tagging the talk pages to save time later♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?15:56, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Fritzpoll. You have new messages atBalloonman's talk page.
You canremove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Congratulations!weburiedoursecretsinthegarden11:46, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I added the administrator template to your userpage (the little globe with mop in upper right corner) so that people like me could more easily identify you as an administrator. Hope you don't mind! Cheers,Razorflame16:18, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

That's fine! Anything to help. If I had any idea how, I'd like to make my user page look a little nicer and more inviting than it presently is. Any suggestions?Fritzpoll (talk)16:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

You could tryWP:UPH, there are many editors willing to offer improvements to userpages. Sorry for butting in,Keeper |76 |Disclaimer18:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, excellent! I'll head over there then! Oh, and am about to unleash FritzpollBot for 100 article creation run (hopefully en.wiki will let me run this time) so I no longer guarantee not breaking the site within 24hrs of being tooled up!Fritzpoll (talk)18:22, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there any way for all the new pages your bot made to be automatically marked patrolled? It's causing problems for usnew page patrollers. —BradV19:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Remarkable. The sooner they authorize the bot the better♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?

Remember though beofre different provinces are started that you'll need to change the names and of xourse the location e.g in north-eastern or in southern Afghanistan etc ...♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?20:32, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that as well. Shouldn't be too difficult to fix.Fritzpoll (talk)21:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I've responded on the bot approvals page. 3 coordinates icons in one article is totally unnecessary♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:08, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi!

I sawyour comment.

Your opinion please. One of the tagger's original choices were to place a query on the article's talk page, or to place a{{notability}} tag, or to use a{{prod}}.

Forgive me, but it seems to me that given the wikipedia's stated goal to reach decisions through consensus, escalations to{{afd}} can be provocative, and disruptive.

Am I missing something? Lots of people are developing their little essays. I see the nominator has one. I have one too.nothing is obvious. Personally, I really think the nominator should have tried to initiate a dialogue over their concern, not initiate an{{afd}}, which can be extremely unpleasant, particularly when they resemble a lynch mob, with no one really trying to understand the points those who disagree with them are trying to make.

What I have found it that, while the wikipedia has the stated goal of building a culture of tolerance and good faith the deletion fora have, in effect, bred a subculture of intolerance -- where violations ofWP:NPA,WP:CIV,WP:BITE andWP:AGF have become so routine they pass without notice.

So, am I missing something?

Cheers!Geo Swan (talk)22:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, in general, with your points. AfD can be frustrating, and the only reason I mentioned it at all was to point out that there was no point in re-requesting a speedy delete, or a prod, since you had contested deletion. The nominator did not have to request an AfD, nor did I instruct him to do so. I don't really see, in this particular instance, any violations of the latter policies that you refer to. I do, however, follow the sentiment that the nominator does notappear to have taken much time to seek out sources on the topic. I may, however, be incorrect in this assertionFritzpoll (talk)22:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

User:9Nak has moved movedYOLANDE DE LUSIGNAN toYolande de Lusignan and appears to have got rid of the good article and replaced it with a bad one, not sure what the procedure is thanks.BigDunc^Talk11:58, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I've had a look. The move of the article seems to fit in line with the guidelines on article titles - all caps isn't appropriate in this case. As for the content, I can't see anywhere where this user has changed the content originally on the page. Subsequent editors have made additions, however. If you have a more specific problem that I've missed, please let me know, but I think that everything is ok. If you have content issues, try raising them with the user on the article talkpage. Best wishesFritzpoll (talk)12:02, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The article was created byUser:Jeanne boleyn when there was already an article of the same name she created it with the title in capitals and it was moved but it got rid of what was on the original article before the move and now more content has been added. I sppoted it on new page patrol but on a quick look of the original it seemed more wikified and established if you understand what I am trying to say thanks.BigDunc^Talk12:10, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, are you saying that this page is the same as the pageYolanda of Lusignan (different spelling)? If so, we can fix that with redirects.Fritzpoll (talk)12:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thats it never spotted the spelling.BigDunc^Talk12:30, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Redirected the article, deleted the capitalisation per CSD:R3, and we're done. I'll notify the author and keep an eye on it over the next few days. Thanks for bringing it upFritzpoll (talk)12:32, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thats great thanks.BigDunc^Talk12:34, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I may be late here... but congratulations on your successful RFA... Keep cleaning with the new mop ... Best wishes -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} -12:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Congrats! You were my second only RFA !vote and the first that passed, woohoo!_{TravellingCari}^{the Busy Bee}13:20, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Congrats. Your spam is always welcome on my talk.SynergeticMaggot (talk)14:04, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Congrats!MalinaccierP. (talk)16:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

It just looked completely empty to me is all. It had a History section but no history. No worries, I trust you!

{{subst:REVISIONUSER}} has given you acookie! Cookies promoteWikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. You can spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. {{subst:if|||{{{message}}}||subst=subst:}}To spread the goodness of cookies, you can add {{subst:Cookie}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cookie on the giver's talk page with {{subst:munch}}!

Drewhamilton (talk)00:05, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Haha - thanks for the cookie! The history section was indeed empty, but there was a sentence just above it that gave it context - quite easy to miss, I'll admit. Best wishesFritzpoll (talk)00:07, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for allerting me to the fact that an article existed on her. I made the mistake of typing in her French name which was why nothing came up. Anyway, I have expanded the stub into an article. I hope it looks ok. Next time, I'll check for Anglicised versions of a name before I commence writing an article. Thank you again for your help. Please let me know if the article looks ok. I left in the text that was there already-just added more info. Cheers.jeanne (talk)08:21, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

That's ok - it is an easy mistake to make, but even easier to fix. I like the expanded article so far. You might want to see if you can find some otherreliable sources to use in addition to the one you have. Good luck on the articles - if you need anything else, I'm happy to helpFritzpoll (talk)11:06, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I decided it might be tidier to split by province after all seeCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Afghanistan. Somebody will have to recategorize the main contents by province using AWB or something. They should now only go in one category e.gCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Badakhshan Province♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?22:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok. All I need to know is what categories to use, and that can be done. A fix to the existing articles would be a short bot job - presumably all the new categories already exist? I guess I could get the bot to check for this as well, and create the category if necessary.Fritzpoll (talk)22:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I created the new categories ready but they've hit the cfd athere . Perhaps you could give some input. Duplicate categories were unintentional and some of the names variate. Could you participate thanks as I set them up after the discussion and if they are filled they shouldn't be deleted♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?15:38, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I would participate, but I don't really understand what's going on. The category issue is not something I feel strongly about. Provided I know in advance where settlements from each province are meant to go, it doesn't affect the bot operation. All that seems to be going on here is a minor dispute over spellings. Maybe I've missed something?Fritzpoll (talk)11:18, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Would you mind if I do the GA review this weekend? --  ThinkBlue (HitBLUE)01:50, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Not at all - take your time. There's no rushFritzpoll (talk)07:57, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello Mr. Fritzpoll. I've dabbed the first Afghan page. At present though I don't knoe what to do with titles which have the same name in the same province so I've left it at the top. What I'd suggest doing is creating one page of all the places which have dab problems and then later we can work out how to dab them accordingly. Agreed?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:23, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed - anything which will be confusing if the bot creates them should be removed from this page, and placed on a new one. We need such a page for creation errors anyway. How about /Places/afghanistan/Problem Pages ? Did you see my comment about about the CfD? Well done for all the hard work you're doing on this. I've tagged the approval page to try to get a response to the end of the trial - hopefully this will rouse someoneFritzpoll (talk)11:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

That sounds great. Excellent news! I would however suggest putting all the problems on one page for all places-there shouldn't be too many places. The horrid one seems to beBaluch for Afghanistan! There seems to be a convention that the spelling for Bamian province is Bamyan. Perhaps you could note this. There are also severla different spellings of existing provinces names which differ from maplandia spelling such as Ghazni Province rather than Ghazn,Ghor Province rather thanGhowr etc. This will have to be cleared up first . Oh believe me I'd rather progress quickly with this, I'll be glad when Afghanistan is out of the way!!!♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:35, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

First of all we need to recategorize the articles inCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Afghanistan into the provincial categories. Is it possible to use a bot or AWB to do this? E.g articles inCategory:Badakhshan Province need placing inCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Badakhshan Province.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:48, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Post to Bot requests, there always seems to be someone willing to do these.Fritzpoll (talk)11:52, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)Well, these are fairly easy fixes. If we wanted to change "Bamian" to "Bamyan", we simply "edit this page" for the page it's on, copy the text into Notepad (if we use Windows, as I do), Edit....Replace, do it for all occurrences, and then copy the new text back as the article. A 5 minute job. That's the joy of these lists - so easy to correct minor errors :) All we need is consensus on the names. Tonight, I may well begin more uploading - I will probably finish Cambodia manually, but I will skip over China for the moment and proceed with other countries to get as big a lead on the editing as I can. Once we've signed off on given pages, I'll run the article-creation element of the bot.

I do think you're going to need more help though - my time will largely be occupied with the bot, as I have to make very minor adjustments for each country. I suggest posting to the geography projects, maybe the community noticeboard, etc. to drum up volunteers. Maybe even drop off a Wikiproject: Missing encyclopedic articles tip off to Signpost? The more hands, the faster it will go.

Centralise discussion about categories on the bot's talk page, as well as other issues with the article creation. Ummm...can't think of anything else. Thoughts?Fritzpoll (talk)11:52, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Could you take care of notifying those that you suggested. I'll also let as many people I know as possible and request that they help with dabbing. Hopefully people in recognizing that wikipedia could double in article size wil be prompted into action but I have doubts on how many people will actually help me out♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:55, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I think Editorofthewiki will once he gets back from a wikibreak. A couple of other users seemed to be helping, but now aren't...curious. I'll notify the projects once I have a few more countries listed, otherwise it looks daft. Perhaps I will add in all the redlinks of countries yet to be uploaded to show the scale of what we are doing... we just need enough eyes to check things like the province spelling. If you let me know what corrections needs making, I'll happily do them myself.Fritzpoll (talk)11:58, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi I've cross posted to a number of people who may help. COuld you bot drill members of theWP:Disambiguation project. There are over a 100 members and it would take ages manually♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:30, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Afraid not, since that is not an approved task of the bot. I will, however, make a start on it manually later on today if you like. Maybe dropping a note on their project talk page will be enough?Fritzpoll (talk)12:32, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah OK I'll post them this evening. I'll get dabbing now. It really shouldn't take that long.. hopefully I can get Afghanistan checked today and sooner or later. you'll probably want to upload some more in a few days as Bangladesh gest checked♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:35, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know though what you are going to do with Armenia and Azerbaijan as they aren't listed with the official provinces. Other countries like Tajikistan are also like this.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:37, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Do these placehave official provinces?Fritzpoll (talk)12:40, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes they do but I've noticed for only a few countries in central asia or the middle east they aren't listed officially so we may have to skirt that. Yes please change to Bamyan, but what needs doing most of all is to recateogrize the existing articles by province. There should now be no articles inCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Afghanistan♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Fine - that's a quick enough fix that seems to fall under the purview of fritzpollbot's approval. Just to confirm, they should be moved toCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Badakhshan Province? Presumably all future afghan articles should be placed in similarly titled categoriesFritzpoll (talk)13:02, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes for each until that main category is empty. But e.g theCategory:Badakhshan Province should be removed from the articles so they go into the relevant one province settlments category. P.S I've startedWikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places/Problematic naming for the names which can't be dabbed. Hopefully we can discuss how to deal with these later♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:04, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Fine - I'll dump the existing categories, and add them to the new one. Have done the change of bamian->bamyan using copy, paste and wordpad. Took 60 seconds :) Not all things are done by bots!Fritzpoll (talk)13:06, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

The afghanistan stub templates have been proposed andwere approved byWP:WSS. Here is the list:

1. {{Badakhshan-geo-stub}}
2. {{Badghis-geo-stub}}
3. {{Baghlan-geo-stub}}
4. {{Balkh-geo-stub}}
5. {{Bamyan-geo-stub}}
6. {{Daykundi-geo-stub}}
7. {{Farah-geo-stub}}
8. {{Faryab-geo-stub}}
9. {{Ghazni-geo-stub}}
10. {{Ghor-geo-stub}}
11. {{Helmand-geo-stub}}
12. {{Herat-geo-stub}}
13. {{Jowzjan-geo-stub}}
14. {{Kabul-geo-stub}}
15. {{Kandahar-geo-stub}}
16. {{Kapisa-geo-stub}}
17. {{Khost-geo-stub}}
18. {{Kunar-geo-stub}}
19. {{Kunduz-geo-stub}}
20. {{Laghman-geo-stub}}
21. {{Lowgar-geo-stub}}
22. {{Nangarhar-geo-stub}}
23. {{Nimruz-geo-stub}}
24. {{Nuristan-geo-stub}}
25. {{Oruzgan-geo-stub}}
26. {{Paktia-geo-stub}}
27. {{Paktika-geo-stub}}
28. {{Panjshir-geo-stub}}
29. {{Parwan-geo-stub}}
30. {{Samangan-geo-stub}}
31. {{SarePol-geo-stub}}
32. {{Takhar-geo-stub}}
33. {{Wardak-geo-stub}}
34. {{Zabul-geo-stub}}

Please let me know if there is a page that templates and categories should go to. Thanks,Ganeshk(talk)13:10, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for these. Work will start in the next few days, I suspect. I will tonight make a new page for such stub lists, categories, etc. in each of the subpages of the lists - I'll let you know where to find them once they're createdFritzpoll (talk)13:12, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Fritzpoll! When you get a moment, could you, please, comment onthis thread. It's regarding the bot. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?);14:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I have replied to this at the threadFritzpoll (talk)14:35, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I've vetted the list for Bhutan - I marked a few articles that simply redirect to the article about the so-named district. As I'm not sure of Bhutan's administrative structure, I didn't feel right getting in and mucking about with it.

Any blue links that remain apart from those are for settlements that already have coverage on Wikipedia. --User:AlbertHerring^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!}16:17, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Good, rapid work! I'm not sure about how the district towns within the district should be renamed. I suspect it may be something like PLACENAME (town), but I think Blofeld is the better person for a second eye on thisFritzpoll (talk)16:19, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

More good news, Two pages of afghanistan are now completely clear except those mentioned at the very top . Perhaps you may want to think about creating some more lists.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?16:24, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Still at work at the moment, but I will when I get homeFritzpoll (talk)16:28, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean? What text?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?16:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I left work immediately after posting that, and only just got home. I was responding to the comment that I would presumably fix one name to the other. I wasn't sure why it's not being fixed in flight as people spot the mistakes - because I won't notice them, and will probably assume that the lists are fine. I was detailing simply how to make such big fixes quickly: load the article page, click "edit this page", cut and paste the wiki-text (the bit you edit/add to) into Wordpad, Edit..Find/Replace, replace all occurrences of the mistake with the correct version, then copy and paste the new text back into the editing box. Then all the problems are fixed in seconds. That's how I changed Bariam to Baryam. I'm just home, so I shall start creating new lists in about a half hourFritzpoll (talk)18:34, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Cool, Afghanistan is nearly checked. I'm 6/8 through page 4, and ELF is about half way through page 3♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?18:43, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Great, once I've uploaded more for you to play with, all I need is to make a category list, and I can upload Afghanistan. Once you're sure that it is done, let me know - confer with others first: we get one shot at his per country, otherwise mass redirects and deletions will have to take place!Fritzpoll (talk)19:06, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at my user page. I "stole" it from someone else (as it usually goes) and tweaked to my liking. Feel free to take ideas from it - I like the compartmentalization of it, and especially the bottom "hideaway" parts.Tan |3922:36, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

You'll rue this day! I shall shamelessly rip off your design!! Well, probably, anyway. Thanks for the tipFritzpoll (talk)22:38, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

One more thing - the bottom "hideaway" part is a good dumping ground for barnstars and things like that. I recently just deleted all mine (they're a little silly, I think), but when I did have them, they were there.Tan |3922:42, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, barnstars are nice - irritating to store, mind you - but it'd be a shame to chuck them out. Maybe my mind'll change. Thanks for the tipFritzpoll (talk)22:45, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok I made a mistake. I still think it isn't notable in it self and it should be merged here[11]Bit Lordy (talk)10:57, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I suggest using the{{mergeto}} template and discussing this on the talkpage rather than deletionFritzpoll (talk)12:22, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Jumping in to help prepare for the bot: Three issues I have raised with Blofeld (a) the order is not the best for finding and fixing dabs - alphabetical by country, rather than by region or subregion is better so we can dab Foo in province A from Foo in province B because we see them adjacent to one another - otherwise Foo, B won't get processed once Foo, A has been; (b) we need to create dab pages when we find two Foos, and can be added to when Foos are found outside the first country of origin; and (c) is there any way to tell what portions of what files have already been reviewed so we don't re-do the same place repeatedly.Carlossuarez46 (talk)18:39, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

(a) Yep, see the problem - I'll need to add an intermediate step to get them sorted properly. They were sorted that way because that's how they come out of the process, and then I stuck to it. Not sure I can fix this retrospectively, but I will do it for the next bot runs in the next hour or so. (b) I don't have authorisation to create dab pages, strictly speaking, and if the page already exists, I can't add to it easily if the entry is not already on there. This might be a better human activity during the sweep through the list. (c) Well, this isn't a bot function. Editors are tagging pages as complete once they go through - I can only suggest looking at the history to see where they got to. As you're mostly looking for bluelinks, these should be fairly obvious. The alternative is to come up with some fixed way of organising it, but I can't impose that. Hope this helps - will definitely look at a) right now as it makes one part of my job that much easier. I shall redo Cambodia (not yet finished) to match your specFritzpoll (talk)18:47, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

When you upload new pages can you leave a notice at the top  :

for editors checking this page please indicate where you have checked until when you have finished so other editors know where to continue. Thankyou

Cheers♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?18:55, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

You do realise that by the end of this we will be responsible for over half of wikipedias articles.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?19:02, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

To the first, yep - can do. To the second, yikes! :-SFritzpoll (talk)19:04, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I know its gradually dawning on me as I see these banks of pages. It will be an awesome achievement particularly if many of them can be developed, and on a global site as huge as wikipedia used by how many millions of people? We make a fine team Mr.Fritz.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?19:16, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

That we do, boss :) Just adding a sort routine per the above, and suddenly lots will be uploadedFritzpoll (talk)19:25, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Have you thought anything more about programming the bot to tag for the wikiprojects in the talk pages for the new articles? Perhaps you could ask the operator ofUser:John Bot the best course of action?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?19:30, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Easy enough to add in provided I know what tags people want placed on the talkpages. Cambodia has uploaded - 8 pages. Enjoy! I will go process some moreFritzpoll (talk)19:39, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

60+% probably. Glad I can help. Anyway, I have been adding hat dabs and creating dabs by hand where I run into it in doing Armenia - a small country - this will take lots of people effort. :-)

By the way, using Geonet, I gather that there will be 4,000,000 settlements if that's the source. Is it? And where are the data for subregions coming from?

Carlossuarez46 (talk)19:47, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)Yep, but hopefully it will still require less effort than creating them all by hand. I have implemented your suggestions for cambodia (except the header text, which I forgot to activate, but have fixed now in the code) - you'll only have an issue if two identically named settlements are separated by the page break required for technical reasons.Fritzpoll (talk)19:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Data from the subregions is coming partly from the GNS, partly from maplandia.com, which is used to index the GNS data and get the right place.Fritzpoll (talk)19:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Yuck. Most of the places names in Cambodia have several settlements with the same name.Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places/cambodia/page7 etc. I don't know how we are gonna sort those links out. Cambodia's gonna be incredibly hard to dab. Luckily we have info on what districts they are in which is something, but when they are created they will need to be indexted by the second word rather than all until P for Phumi♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?20:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I know I dabbed the first two earlier but you reverted me!! Note three pages of Afgnistan now complete, fourth nearly done too♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?20:51, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Cool - hopefully we'll get Afghanistan "finished" by the end of tonight thenFritzpoll (talk)20:52, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Afghanistan Done. Only the few on the problems page♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?21:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic. Well, I seem to have the articles, the catgory names and the stub templates....so I guess I can make us some articles. Might do it tomorrow though, as I'm a bit knackered, and I've been in front of a machine all day. Hope that's ok - plus it'll give us some time to decide about the problem pagesFritzpoll (talk)21:44, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Remember though we really need to emptyCategory:Cities, towns and villages in Afghanistan first. It would be so much easier if it was done using AWB. Those article should now go in one category not two (not including the stub category). Tomorrow I'll set up all 64 Bangladesh categories ready♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?22:04, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes naturally tomorrow, best to start them with a clear head. I would love to Afghanistan put behind us♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?22:06, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes - I've not got AWB, but I can do it manually either later on tonight, or tomorrow afternoon. I'm concerned about the problem pages...we'll just ignore them for now, shall we?Fritzpoll (talk)22:08, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Mmm. Well it can wait until after the rest of Afghanistan is done. But we'll need to tackle the issue before we get to Cambodia. I hate seeing tons of places with the same name close to each other, why to they have to be so damn mundane!!! why can't they invent different names huh? One things for sure in browsing the articles its amazing how 13 minutes can make a strong proportion of them created by the bot, imagine how things will look by christmas. I don't know about you but already this encyclopedia feels stronger, with having the directory pages "mapped out" ready♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?22:24, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Once several countries are under the belt structually people will begin to realise that this is the best thing that has ever happened to the encyclopedia. It puts the world onto wikipedia and opens up doors for people to develop the articles.♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?22:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Let's get some more eyes looking at the problem pages - we should probably resolve this sooner rather than later. I may re-check the GNS database, and make sure that these duplicates are not the result of some coding error. I am certainly very pleased to be involved in all thisFritzpoll (talk)22:28, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

The easiest solution would be with coordinates in brackets but it really looks ugly...♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?22:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

• One possibility worth exploring for the hard to dab ones, is whether there is an alternate name that can be parenthesized (if that's a word), likeFoo (Alt Foo) to distinguish.Carlossuarez46 (talk)03:36, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey guys. First I have to say this is so amazing. Secondly I am just a casual observer standing on the sidelines of this (as I am not able to help in more ways unfortunately as I have a lot of things going on in real life) but might I suggest something and sorry if it has already been suggested. If you want I will send a request on the talk page of the wikiprojectWikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links and ask if anyone is able to help out this bot with the Dab problems from their project? They are a very efficient bunch and their project is one that gets finished the quickest (i.e. a newer update is needed for them to fix up the dab links). Every set of eyes will help I think in making all of this work smoothly. Oh and one final concern. Is there any worry that people might view some of these articles as being too short + non-notable? Obviously they will expand in time but for the time being there might be quite a lot of uproar.... after all this is a LOT of articles that will eventuate. Cheers!Calaka (talk)03:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I made the plunge and asked the disambigious team for help. Hopefully you guys won't mind if I asked before you guys wrote a response (I got a bit excited from waiting!) Feel free to add anything to that page to further encourage anyone who wants to help along :).Calaka (talk)04:31, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi! Me again haha. Sorry to bother but I have another suggestion. I believe you and Biofeld are looking for more publicity for this task at hand correct? Might I suggest either you or Biofeld give a suggestion here:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions in order to increase awareness of the project (assuming the editor likes the story and thinks of it as newsworthy)? I don't know how others feel, but this is an extremely important event and it will add in a large number of articles (once all the disambigiouation is organized) and hence more support would be great. Hopefully it wont lead to much disagreement though :). Cheers!Calaka (talk)12:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the suggestions and for posting to the dab people. Notability shouldn't be a problem, I wouldn't have thought...though I'll quickly review the guidelines on this. Will definitely look into the Signpost thing! This process will take the best part of a year, so hopefully, your rl commitments will quieten down - if they do, I hope you will be able to join in!Fritzpoll (talk)12:24, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry been out enjoying myself in the sunshine suns gone in now. OK I'm rollin. Whats that about Cambodia begin completed?? There are about a thousand links which are the same in there!! Some of the names are linked at least ten times and many of the names direct to the districts, possibly it will take a couple of days to do, its far from done. Are you ready to run the bot?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:29, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

yeah, I think he hadn't quite understood what was needed. I've been adding pages this morning, since everyone is racing ahead of me - also becuas eit requires less of my presence. I want to upload one more load of data, then tomorrow morning I'll look at Afghanistan - I've just got so much to do here today, that I can only really let it do unattended tasksFritzpoll (talk)14:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah to be honest I'm not feeling much like active editing today. I;ll create a few categories for Bangladesh and empty the Afghan category and perhaps fix a few but its my Saturday today so things will be taken easy! I might get more energy later this evening♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Success! Someone has made the suggestion atWikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions about you guys! Go put on your interview hats Frits, Biofeld + others involved :D. Hopefully the interviewer will like what he is looking at :D.Calaka (talk)02:56, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi Fritzpoll! I was wondering when your bot would start fully functioning. I have some concerns about it, if you have time you may wish to review the discussions atWP Israel,my talk, andBlofeld of SPECTRE's talk. If you choose not to read these discussions that's fine, just please tell WP:Israel and/or myself when the bot will start working, it's pretty important. --Ynhockey^(Talk)15:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I won't respond there, as I'll have trouble keeping track of the conversations. Feel free to drag people over here though! The bot has been approved, and has begun to create lists of articles atWikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/Places. As you can see from this page, I have not yet reached the point of uploading Israel's article lists.

Concerns have been raised about the automatic nature of the bot in article creation, but sometimes these are based on the assumption that the bot simply does all steps automatically. The reason that the lists are uploaded is to allow the titles to be tweaked and changed - when I am told that the article lists are ready, and what categories to place them in I simply make some minor adjustments (not all countries have the same structure) to my code and click a button. This then reads the amended lists and makes articles based on the data. Israel will shortly be uploaded (having a slow day today, and currently running a larger country's data through) in list form, and I would encourage you to come and amend the lists as you see fit. Article creation (article-by-article) can be a long-winded and monotonous process for humans to undertake, but editors have been finding it quite quick to make adjustments to the lists.

The bot is simply a tool - it will not, and should not, substitute the human eye for errors and detail - and will simply do the grunt work of presenting lists of places and then creating articles based on the adjusted lists. I hope this satisfies some of your concerns, but naturally, I will want to answer any others that you may have. Given the concerns of your project, I will also agree to wait for approval from your group as to the content of the lists before running the bot to create the articles - but I will proceed in creating the lists, as this is a non-damaging procedure. Best wishesFritzpoll (talk)15:51, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick reply. I'm glad to know that you are creating manual lists of locations instead of directly taking them from an external gazetteer source without inspection. I will be glad to help with the Israeli list - it's likely that the list you create yourself will also help me create dozens of needed redirects (for different transliterations). Quite frankly, I was discouraged by Blofeld's insistence on preceived consistency at the cost of overriding clear consensus, and am very glad to know that you're willing to work together with WP Israel to achieve the best result. Meanwhile, your bot has already encouraged WP Israel to create 5 new locality articles and for that you have my thanks. We now have less than 10 local/regional council articles (automatically mid-importance) left to create, which is excellent. Small villages are usually less important, and I guess we can leave your bot to do the work after perfecting the list.

On a side note, I specified in the WP Israel talk linked above 2 sources which can be used forall articles for Israeli localities numbering above 1,000 residents. While they are in PDF format, I'm still wondering if it's possible for a bot to use that information. It would greatly enhance the automatic process with accurate population, jurisdiction and other information.

Good luck with the bot,Ynhockey^(Talk)16:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

"Blofeld's insistence on preceived consistency at the cost of overriding clear consensus"??? Was I to know that Israel is considered "special" in relation to other countries?? And is the "best result" a point of view or a fact?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?16:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look at the sources, and notify you and the project once the lists are uploaded. I can also tag the pages with any necessary categories, and the talk pages with any banners you want. I think Blofeld was simply being bold in his enthusiasm for the project at hand - but provided there is a category consensus, any categories can be appliedFritzpoll (talk)16:22, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Before we get too far down the path, there seems to be better data at GNS (geonet) than at maplandia for some areas: Armenia, which I have been dabbing has provinces for many more places than maplandia (dumps into Armenia x Yerevan, which isnot Yerevan province, but a catch-all). For some countries, it may be better to extract data from GNS, so that when your bot creates articles it will be able to assign provinces to the various places (links, cats, stubs). It will be much easier to do it all at one shot rather than leaving it for human clean up later.Carlossuarez46 (talk)16:18, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes some countries like Armenia, Azerbaijan and Tajikitstan haven't the official provinces. I have no idea why. Does Geonet have info on sources? From what I saw many of the pages were dated 1993, way out date♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?16:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The GNS data is not consistent in its coverage of administrative regions/districts. I do use this data for a variety of purposes. But GNS mostly tells me COUNTRYNAME, and not enough about provinces, so I need maplandia to index it.Fritzpoll (talk)16:25, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

While the bot has been approved by BAG, I think creating so many new articles needs a wider community discussion. I've started a discussion atWP:VPR, I'd request that you don't start to run the bot until the discussion there concludes.Mr.Z-man18:54, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Fine - but I will continue to upload the lists of places. Article creation can't take place unless these have been checked anyway. I'll join the discussion once I've responded to all the messages on this pageFritzpoll (talk)10:38, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to help out withWikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places, but I'm trying to make sure I know exactly what I'm supposed to do before I get started, and I had a few questions. When the bot goes through to make all these articles, is it going to insert the country name as part of the article name? Thus, do we only have to worry about places with the same name within the same country? Also, do you have an example (or more than one) of the kind of disambiguation that should happen? I looked through a few of the lists trying to find one, but wasn't able to. I think that will help with some of my understanding. Thanks --Natalya20:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

If you look at the wikitext, the bot will create an article with the text between the [[ and ]] tags. It adds nothing else on its own because it isn't smart enough. It also ignores any bluelinks. These need to be checked to make sure they point at the right place. Places within the same country with the same name can be disambiguated by region. The best person to ask, because my MOS guideline knowledge is rusty, is probably Blofeld of SPECTRE, who is coordinating most of this work. Best wishesFritzpoll (talk)11:13, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Hey guys. I managed to get in contact withUser:Steve Crossin and he is willing to place wikiproject tags on all the talk pages with his bot. Only problem is that if there is alreayd a wikiproject tag on the article, then this will cause issues. But otherwise he began to do this on the 100 articles trialed and he was cool with it (except for the tag already present - causing issues aspect). Maybe someone with more technical sense can recomend a solution to this? He is aware that the articles are still being analyzed for disambiguity etc so he is just waiting on you guys to create the articles and once he knows what wikiproject to add he will get going. Cheers!Calaka (talk)02:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll be honest. I know next to nothing about bots. After reading the discussion over at VP, I came to a conclusion. Why not just have the bot add more info than just a one-liner? This would possibly ease the concern over micro-stub creations and put it more inline withWP:STUB. Anyway, just my suggestion.SynergeticMaggot (talk)05:32, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

See the village pump page - this was always my intention when the data is availableFritzpoll (talk)11:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Why do the article links below go to a source-free stub about somewhere in India?

Aliabad,Əliabad,Azerbaydzhan Territor, Azerbaijan, 41, 28, 42,N, 46, 37, 3,E

Aliabad,Aliabad,Azerbaydzhan Territor, Azerbaijan, 39, 52, 0,N, 48, 28, 0,E

Aliabad,Aliabad,Azerbaydzhan Territor, Azerbaijan, 39, 28, 46,N, 48, 34, 35,E

Aliabad,Aliabad,Azerbaydzhan Territor, Azerbaijan, 39, 13, 0,N, 48, 25, 0,E

Aliabad,Əliabad,Azerbaydzhan Territor, Azerbaijan, 38, 50, 26,N, 48, 26, 50,E

Aliabad,Əliabad,Azerbaydzhan Territor, Azerbaijan, 38, 40, 42,N, 48, 33, 26,E

Aliagali,Aliağalı,Azerbaydzhan Territor, Azerbaijan, 40, 2, 18,N, 46, 46, 34,E

doktorb_words^deeds06:28, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

No idea - not done anything with Azerbaijan beyond uploading the lists. These articles clearly already existed on Wikipedia. I suggest you look at the history to check who created themFritzpoll (talk)10:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, interested to hear about your bot and hope it gets the go-ahead. I am interested, though, how it's going to handle disambiguations (when you get two or many places with the same name). Will it be able to use the Wikipedia conventional names for regions as disambiguation tags? I do in fact already have a similar bot,User:Kotbot, and am in the middle of a project (currently stalled, but hoping to restart this month) to create articles on all villages inPoland - the data being taken in this case from Polish Wikipedia rather than an outside source. You can see the results so far inCategory:Villages in Lower Silesian Voivodeship and its subcategories. Not all of these have coordinate data, though - would it be possible to supply coordinates for these villages from your data source? (naturally there might be problems matching up the names, since your source probably uses a different naming convention). --Kotniski (talk)10:17, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

What I might be able to do is add a routine to the bot to try to guess, for each existing Polish place, what the coordinates are, and create a subpage of this project's pages with a list of guesses for human operators to mark. As I have said many times, this bot is not fully automatic, and was never intended to be - I just wish people had read the full proposal before commenting at the village pump:(Fritzpoll (talk)11:08, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually it's probably not worth your adding a routine as yet - when you come to generate the list of coordinates for Poland in the standard way, I'll look at it and will probably be able to work out how best to combine that data with mine/other existing. Keep up the good work!--Kotniski (talk)11:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem - if it doesn't work out, we can always add a routine later. Have you commented at the Village Pump?Fritzpoll (talk)11:26, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I was about to help with Bangladesh articles, but since they're separated by districts I'm not sure what an efficient way to check for duplicates is. (i.e. there could be a town named XYZ in more than one district, but they wouldn't be next to each other on the same page where it would be obvious.) do you have a list divided by sections of the alphabet?Mangostar (talk)20:57, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, all new pages (Cambodia onwards) are being created A-Z, but there is now no easy way to "retrofit" the old articles. I ned to give some thought on how to do this. Give me some time.Fritzpoll (talk)11:14, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I've actually made it a good way through the first three pages or so, and I think a fine workaround would just be to have the bot create pages for one district at a time, and once the first one is done to check the rest for new bluelinks and disambig them sequentially. Once the bot gets approval (which hopefully it will!), I could start doing this. I need to go write a message of support on the VP, but I'm not sure whether I'm in favor of consolidated lists at a slightly higher administrative level, so I need to give that a bit more thought....Mangostar (talk)17:51, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, assuming your bot gets the green light to go ahead, I would strongly encourage you to use the standard flag templates (perWP:WikiProject Flag Template) instead of hard-coding the image. For example, onUser:Fritzpoll/GeoBot/Example you would use|subdivision_name ={{flag|Burma}} instead of|subdivision_name = [[Image:Flag of Myanmar.svg|25px]] [[Burma]]. The use of the standard templates gives users who don't like flag icons the option of disabling them from their monobook.css. Thanks —Andrwsc (talk ·contribs)06:29, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

The bot has indeed been approved, and I'm currently laying the groundwork for the uploading. Your change has been implemented - thanks for the suggestionFritzpoll (talk)10:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, great! I've updated the 99 pages your bot has already created to use{{flag|Afghanistan}} instead. Also note that we have flag templates for the second-level administrative divisions of several countries, so you can have a second flag in the infobox for those locations. SeeTemplate:Country data Brazil for one sample list (at the bottom of that template's documentation). Thanks again —Andrwsc (talk ·contribs)16:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

It has to be said, the response from certain people towards this exemplified the very reason why the world is covered from an American or British viewpoint on wikipedia. That they cannot possibly comprehend that there are towns with thousands in in places all around the world that are not "encyclopedic". It disappoints me severely that people have this kind if bias♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?10:51, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I am not entirely delighted that the conversation went this far without me trying to correct some of the misconceptions about the bot. Oh well, I have now tried at the subpageFritzpoll (talk)11:06, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I know me neither. I did suggest this last night but I logged in this morning and suddenly it was this long discussion and vote. People jump to conclusions. I've just spent the last half hour trying to state the case when we shouldn't have to♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:20, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, there seem to be a lot of assumptions about the automation of the bot, where people haven't noticed the human-input element and our efforts that will engage wikiprojects. I may upload Iraq today, but I'm not feeling that inspired right this second. :(Fritzpoll (talk)11:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I know. The thing is that people are not recognizing that the bot had to be approved in the first place and many of their "issues" have already been addressed and sorted. Such a fuss makes the BAG process look redundant♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:29, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, the community has a right to respond to the proposal. I agree, however, that arguing over the technical merits of the bot would be pointless, but it would have been better for people to actually read the initial proposal at BAGFritzpoll (talk)11:30, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Mmm I agree, but where were the "community" a week or two ago when we needed input?♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?11:32, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

(shrugs) Maybe they didn't notice. I have now had to post to doktorbuk's page as a result of his use of old pre-bot articles to argue against the bot. Have a look - have I been to harshFritzpoll (talk)11:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

No thats perfectly civil, seems to be misunderstanding like many what is actually being done♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?12:46, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Dear God chekc out the latest posting:

"I believe this stub generation is generally a good idea. It might be useful to create a list of all page names that are proposed to be created by this bot. Users with local geographical knowledge, or experience with transliteration schemes, or other interest could review the list and offer suggestions for improvement if any are identified. " Why are people not reading what is being done!!!!!!! Could you answer him 12:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I did. I may leave Wikipedia for a few hours. The conversation is starting to frazzle me, as people aren't reading how the bot operates, haven't read the approvals page, and now aren't even reading what is at thetop of the page. This is an example of stress, and per my policy as dictated at my RfA, I'm off for a cup of tea.Fritzpoll (talk)12:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, all of this is a monument to ignorance. The bot was already approved, so why do we need to have more and more discussionm? I'm anEditorofthewiki^{[citation needed]}13:33, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Urrgh I know, I wasn't expecting this today either, its exactly the sort of thing I try to avoid as it is a waste of time repeating yourself agian and again when we could be getting on with real eneyclopedia development (this is why I avoid adminship as it means being completely civil and calm in such situations which blow your mind. Bu tthis sort of thing happens on a daily basis on here and it is over reaction every time. If people amounted the weeks and months of time allocated to debates rather than getting on with actual devleopment I guantee you we'd barely have a stub articles on here♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?13:34, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I would just like to say a few things:

1: The village pump mass discussion/straw polls/disagreement/confusion/agreement was BOUND to happen sooner or later. Especially since it got posted on everyones watchlist to checkout...

2: A lot of people DO NOT READ. They act and do things before analyzing the situation/discussion/etc at hand.

3: No matter how good this idea is, it is of course expected that not everyone will agree. Even though we are right ;).

4: I would suggest that everyone remains cool and calm (yes I know it seems hard) but we do not want to make enemies here. After a bit of communication I am sure everyone (well most people) will see all the GREAT things about this project and everything will work out in the end.

So yeah I know this is all very basic but remember.... there are all kinds of people out there with just as many views and opinions. We unfortunately wont please them all (and they probably wont admit to it anyway ;) ). Do not be discouraged people. Stay at the task at hand and remain strong. Do not let a few "opposes" get you down. Cheers all!Calaka (talk)14:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Eugene has just suggested that many of the unused parameters in the infobox should be removed so it is simplified. I tend to agree as long as empty ones for population/area etc remain. Perhaps you could discuss this♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦^$1,000,000?14:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Technical fix - easy to do!Fritzpoll (talk)16:04, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

• Pages with missing files