Wikipedia talk:Help desk/Archive 3

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Video Wikipedia talk:Help desk/Archive 3

Archiving

Old talk has been archived. Isopropyl 05:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Maps Wikipedia talk:Help desk/Archive 3

Help

Hello this is John Smith an IT student at Onkaparinga TAFE Mount Barker, Australia. What I was looking for was to interview a Help Desk Manager at an organisation of my choice. This will be the basis of my assessment task.

I would really appreciate it if anyone could answer any of the following questions:

a. How fault details are collected (what are the sources)?

b. How are network changes identified in the organisation?

c. How are network changes reviewed against current and future business requirements?

d. How is training organised to meet the training needs of clients in using the changes?

e. How are the changes implemented?

f. How is the effectiveness of the changes evaluated?

g. What are the standard and procedures for logging the change request?

h. What are the Change Categories?

Thank you very much for your time.--143.92.1.33 06:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia is probably not the sort of organisation you should be asking at, for a couple of reasons: (1) Your TAFE lecturer is probably thinking more of a commercial organisation, not a free online community like Wikipedia, (2) the Wikipedia Help Desk is staffed (if that's even the right word) by any user who wants to help, whenever they want to, and as such there is no manager. I'd suggest finding a local company that uses a Help Desk, such as a bank or a technological company (eg. Optus, Microsoft, etc.) Confusing Manifestation 11:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Alirght, i've done the assignment now anyway.--203.39.81.10 04:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

src: divinityoriginalsin2.wiki.fextralife.com

Name change

I some ideas for what we could change page name to:

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Help
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Help Forum
• Wikipedia:Help with Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Something that has the word "Wikipedia" in it so that there can be no ambiguity--Max Talk (add) 15:02, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

For reference, there was some discussion about this at Wikipedia_talk:Help_desk/Archive_2#Time_for_a_name_change.3F -- Natalya 15:59, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

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Another duplicate page

I stumbled across Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance) and saw that it apparently serves the same purpose as this page. The only difference is there were no Reference Desk questions.--Max Talk (add) 22:53, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not really a duplicate page, the village pump is for more technical questions, such as how to fix a glitch, add special article features, JavaScript, CSS, and other concerns often relating more to the development side of contributing to the encyclopedia. The Help Desk is for questions relating directly to reading or editing the encyclopedia, and generally deals with more basic questions. While I suppose the questions actually asked on these pages often overlap, the difference in purpose is there. --Hetar 23:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Some Standardization Needed?

1. Seems like this page needs to differentiate itself from Wikipedia:New_contributors'_help_page, by including the link to that at the top prominently. Presumably, this page is more for those of us who have been around a while.
2. Strikes me that having the link Wikipedia:FAQ would be another good idea.

Best regards, FrankB 15:34, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

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Another FAQ needed?

It seems like almost every second question to the help desk is "I made an article, and it doesn't show up on search! Why?" Should we add this to make a 4th most common question, or bump off one of the others, or something else? Confusing Manifestation 23:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that there should be more than three most commonly asked questions as there are many other ones that get the same response tieme and time again. Some of these include the one above and how to create a new page. I'd reword it to say "some of the most common questions of newcomers include:" of something like that. Harryboyles 07:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• Whilst I completely agree that this has become an FAQ, the problem with FAQ lists is that people rarely read them before asking anyway -- on a site this large and complex it's even worse, as they're not even likely to find it. Simply put, many people are lazy, and FAQs need to be somehow right in their face for them to read them. Only a very few people will spend an hour reading FAQs before they spend 30 seconds asking a question. Many people can't even be bothered with prepositions or complete sentences... what hope do we have? I'm not trying to be down here, just realistic. I welcome a suggestion to make the FAQs more obvious on the page, I think that would be the most effective solution. -- Estarriol ^talk 08:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I have created Wikipedia:Very Frequently Asked Questions, perhaps we should link to it in the header.--Commander Keane 19:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

That's awesome - it should be easy to add anything else to it if more common questions come up. I could see it going right under the "Where to ask other kinds of questions" part - any thoughts? -- Natalya 19:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

There's a short bulleted list of very, very frequently asked questions visible (but not very prominent) right there at the top of this page. I think updating it and making it more prominent might be a good idea. · rodii · 20:28, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

That's sort of what I was thinking of - "Why isn't my article in the search?" seems to be the vvfaq of the month or something. Confusing Manifestation 02:29, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think [m]any people see the current "Very, very frequently asked questions" right now, and it seems easier to make a link to a page a lot more noticable than making a set of questions more noticable without the questions making things cluttered. -- Natalya 17:22, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

src: cdn.technologyreview.com

LInk to FAQ

Any reason why the link to 'Frequently Asked Questions' (Just after 'Please read the following before asking your questions') doesn't link to Wikipedia:FAQ, but to Wikipedia:Questions instead? 4u1e 07:00, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

After checking the history, the link appears to have been correct up until the FAQs were moved to their own page in March 2006. I will change the link here to point to the new FAQ page. Road Wizard 00:33, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

src: interferencearchive.org

Spoiler Options Needed

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place or I am overlooking something.

Up until now, when a spoiler is being posted, people post Spoilers Ahead or some other simplistic text. This blends in and is not easily noticed. What's worse is finding Spoilers end here (if it is even done) while trying not to read the spoiler parts of the article. It just doesn't work well. The easiest current option is for everyone to use bold colored text to indicate where thye start and end, but that may look tacky and since everyone has a different style and articles constantly change, it would not work.

If there is not already one and I just do not know about it, I would like to propose a specific type of spoiler tag to be added. The best option would be a tab that hides the text the same way some forum software hides boards inside of each category (Example URL - Click the minus image at the far right of any category header). Another option would be to put a faint shadow behind the text with a box surrounding (similar to unformatted text) and a note at the top indicating spoilers. A third option could be mouseover or highlight boxes, but I am not in favor of either because they feel clumsy with large amounts of text.

Thank you for your time. --Preceding unsigned comment added by CobraWiki (talk o contribs)

You're probably better off bringing this up at the Village pump or at Wikipedia:Spoiler warning. -- Natalya 20:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning/RfC. Be aware that as things stand the very existence of spoiler warnings is a highly controversial issue and so any proposal to make them more prominent is unlikely to get very far. --Daduzi ^talk 21:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this had been moved to another discussion, but for my two cents I would point out that those little minus things are generally controlled by javascript which not everyone has or uses. It would be fine for something to turn on in your preferences, but I don't think it would be employable on the site as a whole. --Keakealani oPoke Meocontribso 22:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

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Archive question

Crypticbot has been broken for almost half a month now, should we bring in User:Werdnabot to archive Help Desk? --WinHunter ^(talk) 16:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

As soon as possible. It is quite big, and troublesome for people like me (with slow internet connection) to access. -- Ambuj Saxena (talk) 16:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

src: psmag.com

Taking Back A Barnstar

I awarded a Barnstar to a user only to have this user behave, within a short period of time, in a terrily inappropriate manner, completely oppposite of behavior that I believed merited a barn star,and that behavior has persisted despite my several cordial attempt to warn him, etc. Can I take back a barnstar? Ptmccain 19:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

You'd be best off posting this at the Help desk, this page is for a discussion of the help desk. I've copied your question there for your convenience: Wikipedia: Help desk#Taking Back A Barnstar. -- QuantumEleven 09:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

src: upload.wikimedia.org

Header/intro

Moved here from Help desk talk page.

---

The header section of the help and reference desks feel too long in my opinion: if you were posting a question here, would you bother reading through all of the guidelines first? Obviously we need some sort of instruction set, but I feel that "streamlining" them may actually help stop the mistakes made by posters such as posting their email addresses or becoming impatient whilst waiting for a response: if there's less to read, people are more likely to read it and follow it.

Any other thoughts here?

EVOCATIVEINTRIGUE TALKTOME | EMAILME | IMPROVEME 13:50, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. I particularly hate the tip of the day, which adds a near-screenful of fairly useless information. The refdesk icons waste a lot of vertical space too. I understand the logic of making the type in the top box large, but the rest of it pushes the content way down below the fold. How about a redesign contest? · rodii · 16:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, but only to a point. Right now (I'm not sure when it changed), the header is rather massive. There used to be a smaller version of the current header, which was actually rather adventageous; it stoped many Reference Desk questions from coming here. Compared to when the header was tiny, it feels like there are fewer questions that don't belong here. Of course there are always some, but when the header changed, they seemed to lessen in number. Right now, though, it seems a bit over the top - any chance of returning the header to it's prior state? -- Natalya 22:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Follow up: If you take a look at Wikipedia:Help desk/Header, it looks like it changed recently in order to incorporate the newest Reference Desk section. If we can format it to fit like it did before, it would probably work much better. -- Natalya 22:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I also agree we should streamline the header. Do we really need links to all the various Reference desk sections? A single prominent icon/link to the reference desk should be enough to pave the way for our knowledge-seeking posters. I also believe that the tip of the day should be removed. I think there's a point where there's too much text and readers just gloss over it, looking for the "Post your question" button. If we reduce this to a fair amount of text, the vast majority will probably abide by the instructions. Cheers, Tangotango 07:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

src: www.typewriterstudio.com

"From the Horse's Mouth" information

When writing about an artist, are public speeches by that artists considered sourced to them, or are they "original research" by the wiki writer? For example, I've twice heard Tom Stoppard speak about his own plays, and would like to include his remarks about his writing process into articles on the plays he was discussing. But is that original research since I can't source it except to say "I was there, I know"? What if I give references to the occasion of the speeches, which were heard by a large audience? Dybryd 22:44, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

This would be an unpublished primary source and should not be used, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources. If there were a published account of one of these speeches in a newpaper or magazine that would be fine. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Curses! Oh well, thanks!

Dybryd 01:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

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Searchable Wikipedia FAQ

I've made a searchable repository of questions (and answers) frequently asked by newcomers to Wikipedia. It's available at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/nubio/. It currently has 70 entries (many of the entries have been scraped off WP:FAQ and the various related pages, and some answers to the Help desk). If possible, I'd like to receive some feedback on the project, and see what people think. I'm open to suggestions on how to improve it and where to link to it. Cheers, Tangotango 09:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

That could be very handy. You should put it somewhere visible. Viridae^Talk 09:56, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

That's really, really lovely! *applaudes* -- Natalya 12:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

This is a great repository. But I am not clear on how this will work. If we want to guide a newbie, should we tell him to search the above link or is it for our own referencing or is the link going to be displayed at the top of the help desk? -- Lost^(talk) 12:56, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Both, actually. I'm hoping that we can include a link to this somewhere, maybe the Help desk header, so that newcomers can search it, and after that ask any questions if they didn't find an answer to their query. If a question covered by the FAQ does come up, we can copy and paste the answer from the relevant entry (the light green box on each entry contains the wiki-text). Cheers, Tangotango 13:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I just tried it. Its really cool. I anyway copy and paste many times from the FAQ page. This goes a step ahead. It gives me readymade text and links to copy and paste. Great stuff. The link to it should go right at the top. -- Lost^(talk) 13:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Tangotango, can you add a question about disambiguation guidelines to the searchable FAQs please? I couldnt find one there -- Lost^(talk) 19:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation is added now.--Commander Keane 02:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Commander Keane -- Lost^(talk) 04:24, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

src: lornamcampbell.org

Header

For some reason the Daily header doesn't seem to be put in for the past few days. Harryboyles 07:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean the Tip of the day? I removed that a few days ago, given the discussion above about the unnecessary length of the header. You can read the daily Tip of the day at Help:Contents.--Commander Keane 08:05, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

No, I mean that the date header (August 7, August 9, etc) for some dates are missing. Harryboyles 10:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The date headers are currently being added manually. Please feel free to add any that are missing. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:05, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

src: divinityoriginalsin2.wiki.fextralife.com

Talk Pages

Is it OK to erase comments on talk pages that are unsigned? When people don't sign their comments I find it causes a lot of confusion. Plus, I find it annoying when I click on talk pages only to find that they are cluttered up with unsigned comments. SilentWind 20:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)SilentWind

No, it is not ok to erase unsigned messages. (See WP:TPG). Instead, you should use the {{unsigned}} template to append their user name after their comments. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 20:17, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget to subst the {{unsigned}} template. =) Powers ^T 15:30, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it ok to erase comments one your ~OWN~ talk page? SilentWind 02:26, 16 September 2006 (UTC)SilentWind

Per WP:TPG, it is best not to erase or edit other people's comments on your talk page, with the exception of vandalism or personal attacks. If your talk page is getting too long, consider archiving it (but none of this seems to be the case with your talk page). -ZimZalaBim (talk) 02:38, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

One last question. Is it OK to erase very nasty comments? SilentWind 21:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)SilentWind

It depends what you mean by very nasty comments. If it is simply an insult then it's probably OK to delete it but if it's criticism of something you've done (however nasty) you generally shouldn't. --Cherry blossom tree 23:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

help

is this the proper place to ask for help? - Patrickjsanford 00:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

No. The best place for your question depends on what kind of help you want. --Tamfang 03:37, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

For general questions about using and editing Wikipedia, ask on the help desk itself. For other questions, see Wikipedia:Where to ask a question.--24.20.69.240 00:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Archive?

Isnt Werdnabot running any more? The last it ran was three days ago. We have more than 220 questions already -- Lost^(talk) 10:48, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Reporting vandalism

Is there a mechanism for reporting Users who have engaged in vandalism? Ordinary Person 16:27, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

It depends what you mean. There is no central register of all users who have ever vandalised but if a user continues to vandalise despite being repeatedly warned then you can post at Administrator intervention against vandalism, which will notify administrators to intervene against the vandalism, generally by blocking. --Cherry blossom tree 16:36, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Factual questions

I believe it is by now apparent that any effort to prevent people from asking factual questions here is futile. I also believe that anyone who can't be bothered with the 2 seconds required to read the "How to use Wikipedia" part at the top, does not deserve our 20 seconds it takes to refer them to correct places. Adding to that the fact that about 95% of people asking improper questions here have no idea where they are and don't check back for answers anyway, how about getting in the habit of simply deleting factual questions from this page? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:41, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'd be more lenient with users who tried to create accounts and are trying to find their way around. For IPs that never contributed before, and whose questions are really irrelevant, we could do this, though the RD1 etc templates dont require much of our time to redirect -- Lost^(talk) 11:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

They take more time then what said people invested in asking the question (especially in cases where it requires some thought to decide where to refer to), and they add clutter to the page. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:19, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

"95% of people asking improper questions here have no idea where they are and don't check back for answers anyway" This is unverifiable and a strawman. Further, I don't think we need to start deleting mis-placed questions due to page aesthetics. Feel free to ignore them, and others will spend the "20 seconds it takes to refer them to correct places". We watch this page to help people... --ZimZalaBim (talk) 12:30, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

We can always take a sample of people asking factual questions at the help desk and being referred to the refdesk, and check the percentage that actually go to ask the question at the reference desk. I firmly believe that you will be unpleasently surprised if you do that. This is the point - We are indeed here to help people, but replying to junk questions does not help anyone (if anything, it hampers others from receiving help by making their questions harder to find). Additionally, I believe that receiving help is an earned right. One must never expect others to put more effort in helping him solve his problem than he puts in solving his own problem. People who post junk questions generally do not fall into the category of those who have earned the right to receive help.

By the way, recommended reading is Wikipedia talk:Help desk/Archive_1#A theory of why there is so much junk on this page. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:02, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

This is your claim, so feel free to run the experiment and provide me the data supporting your claim. Until then, it remains a straw man argument. User questions are separated by headings (we create them if users don't) to aid in navigation. Deleting mis-placed questions increases the likelihood that they'd simply be re-posted, helping no one. If you really think that "receiving help is an earned right," then perhaps this just isn't the page for you. I'm happy to take 20 seconds to point someone in the right direction, and I think that helps everyone in the long run. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 13:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

My philosophies haven't stopped me from being active here so far, as I am happy to offer help to those who honestly need it. It will come as no surprise to you that I disagree with the "that helps everyone in the long run" part. I'll try to gather some data. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 14:06, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

i don't think deleteing them will do anything. People will go "gee...i wonder why that dissapeared" and repost or (if they check the history) "hey...why'd you delete my question for? Isn't this meant to be a *help* desk?" and re-post. is the time taken to delete questions and write a "factual question" edit summary every time a factual question pops up really owrth it?

If you find it a bother, then just don't bother to answer factual questions. Maybe we should place a note in the "where to ask other kinds of questions" box telling people to ignore factual questions here because this just isn't the place for them. Encourage people who ask questions to ask at the reference desk and people who answer questions to not answer them.

Sure, factual questions may still clog up the page and some will still be answered, but i think being a help desk...this is the most obvious place for newbies to get help with anything. which is why I think it's important to leave this page as welcoming as possible. Yaksha 12:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

In the (IMO) extremely rare case where the person actually notices that his question was deleted, he is more likely to go "Gee... I wonder why that disappeared. Wait a minute... This help desk is for questions about Wikipedia! How silly it was of me to ask that question here. I'll go ask it at the reference desk. I should read instructions more carefully from now on.", learning from the experience in a way that will serve him for the rest of his life.

This isn't me being overly harsh, cynnical or anything. It's just me being realistic and attempting to improve the help desk's ability to provide actual help, instead of "make believe" help. The same goes for the reference desk, where HW questions are justly frowned upon, and "helping" by solving the problems does not actually help the questioner. Some of you may disagree with my preliminary assumptions; Since they are difficult to prove, I guess there isn't much hope for my proposal to be accepted. The compromise you suggest, unfortunately, seems to me to combine the worst of both views. So I'll just continue with the {{RD}} templates. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately your "preliminary assumptions" are both merely preliminary and assumptions. I think the best policy is to not bite the newbies. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 13:54, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I respect your opinion. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 14:17, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Language policy for talk pages?

<<oops, moved to the actual help desk, my bad>>

• clears throat* Fastnaturedude 04:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Vfaq

I think the header should link to WP:VFAQ and not to Nubio. A typical user with a short attention span is much more likely to look for an answer in the VFAQ (which is short, and the answers appear immediately in the page) than in Nubio (which is excellent for more serious users, but for many users it will be confusing because it is an external page, and cumbersome because it contains much more information and the answers don't appear right before their eyes). -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

But it does link to VFAQ right at the top and then again just below. Are we looking at different places? -- Lost^(talk) 16:47, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

You're right, I didn't provide sufficient context. See here and here. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:43, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about that. If the VFAQ is the most prominent link in the header, people with questions not covered by the VFAQ but still common enough to be in Nubio will likely ask these questions on the Help desk. While this is not inherently a bad thing, it means less time spent answering questions that actually require thought, rather than a template answer. I do, however, agree with your belief that the question-answer format of the VFAQ is easier to read than a full-blown FAQ interface. If there's anything I can do to improve the Nubio interface, please feel free to contact me, and I will do my best to incorporate any changes. Cheers, Tangotango 16:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

It's hard to know which one is better without some hard data about the questions asked (which can be collected) and the actions users take before asking them (which is extremely difficult). I believe a person with a VFAQ question will be much more likely to find the answer in the VFAQ than in Nubio. Since the VFAQ are, like the name implies, much more frequently asked than "just" FAQ, the total effort saved by linking to WP:VFAQ is greater. This is hard to prove, though.

About improving Nubio, it's not that there is necessarily something wrong with it - It's just that I think only the minority of askers will be dedicated enough to actually use it. However, I believe having the VFAQ answered in its front page, below the search mechanism, will be a big help. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 18:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Archiving more frequently?

The Help Desk as a whole is an extremely bulky page, and nearly every time I run into an edit conflict (which gives the whole page and not just a section to edit) my browser crashes or freezes. I don't know if this is happening to anyone else, but I don't really know why we need to have such a long backlog of questions that haven't been archived yet. Is it possible to modify the archiving bot to archive more frequently (i.e. only leaving questions from the past day or so in the Help Desk) so that the page isn't so huge? It's not a huge deal, but it is quite an inconvenience to run into an edit conflict and have a crashed browser. Let me know if this is totally implausible! --Keakealani 04:50, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I second this suggestion; it's quite unwieldy at the moment. --ais523 12:24, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Awesome...I guess a couple more responses couldn't hurt, but we'll see. As it were, I don't know how to change the archiving system technically, since I think it's being done automatically by a bot. So, if anyone knows how to fiddle with that aspect, that would also be good. Thanks for your response! --Keakealani 18:35, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I've sped up Werdnabot by a factor of 1/4 with regards to the help desk: [1]. Feel free to make it even faster (I don't think we should go any faster than 2-day-old messages being archived). --ais523 07:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

No, I think that's a lot better - I agree that archiving too frequently is also a bad thing, but this really does help speed things up and prevent browser crashes. Thank you so much! --Keakealani 20:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Date headers and archiving

I've added date headers for the last few days and deleted some old empty sections that only had wikilinked date headers (no content). These empty sections had been bot archived but the header remained. There were a few other sections that had been partially archived which I removed and will sort out and properly archive in the next day or so. --hydnjo talk 15:45, 15 October 2006 (UTC) addendum: I'll continue to add the date headers (non-wikilinked) at about midnight (UTC) until a bot can be got. Got a bot? --hydnjo talk 16:29, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Archival Bot

(IE crashed when I'd written a huge message, so now I'm annoyed (and converted to FF) :S). Hi - I've noticed some archival issues here, and as I've just written a bot for the reference desks, I thought I'd offer it to you. It performs daily archival, using transclusion to keep messages on the page for a specified time period. Take a look at User:RefDeskBot's contribs for an idea of what it does (it's just doing sandbox edits for now, pending acceptance at WP:BRFA). It's best to look at the "Computers and Technology" edits, for a better representation of what it does (seeing as it worsk on real content there, copy and pasted to a sandbox). If you'd like the bot to archive this desk, I'll be happy to make it :) Martinp23 16:42, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello again. Pretty much everything that you're doing for the RD applies here as well. We should poll the regulars here to get some insight as to how many "live" dates to leave active which will be some balanced assessment between how long a question is actually active vs page loading time for folks with dial-up. How about date headers? I'm assuming that you're addressing that as well (I hope hope). Sorry about the IE thing, have you tried Firefox? --hydnjo talk 17:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

OK - for the number of dates, anything is fine for me, and as for date headers, the bot will produce a new archival system which puts each day into its own archival page, and then links to and lists questions from that page on a monthly archival pages - the full question content is not shown - just a list of questions (ie level 2 headings). When the day is put onto the archival page, its date header is included, and then that day's content is removed from the main page and replaced with a tranclusion to the archive. Also, the bot will put the header for the next day at the base of the desk. I hope that answers the question :) Martinp23 18:00, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

As for IE, it's the second time I've lost contributions today, so I'm moving to FireFox :)

It does indeed! When are you expecting to go prime-time at the RD? I think that shaking out the bugs there is a good idea before proposing it here so that we HD folks can see it in action. Then, we can make a decision as to how long the HD horizon should be prior to archiving. And, we understand if you're away for a bit on your Firefox honeymoon.  ;-) --hydnjo talk 18:40, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

lol :P - I'm expecting it to be flagged on the 19th or 20th, and hopefully start running soon after (the problem is that the RefDesk is undergoing major changes which may delay the implementation of the bot there). I'll bee keeping the bot doing nightly archives on a sandbox until it moves to the real desks, so I can make sure there aren't any bugs (I think most are gone now - I've just squashed another (actually, I did it last night but forgot to run the right version :S)). I'm happy to get it running here whenever it's OK with you and after I get WP:BRFA permission (you can see it in action at these diffs:

• creating daily archive for day before last
• doing its stuff on the main desk page (remove old transclusion, add new one and add new date)
• Adds to monthly archival page with header for day, link to archive of day, and list of questions (note the bug in that diff - it should be fixed now)

Also, on the third of every month it will create the new monthly archivewith the nice templates at the top (which I'd be happy to try to adapt for the HD). :) Martinp23 19:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent! Your trials seem to be going well. We're confident that everything that comes up at WP:BRFA will be addressed with your usual enthusiasm and diligence. I for one will be grateful just for the date headers (to which I have committed). One thing did come here at the HD: some of the date headers were wikilinked (I don't know why). Do you think that that (ooh, I always wanted to say that that) will be a future issue if for whatever reason the date headers need to be added manually and the editor wikilinks them? If so, let me know and we can address it at our end. --hydnjo talk 22:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it would be quite difficult to cater for, based on the different ways that such a link can be made - if the bot goes down, I'll check for wikilinked headers before restarting it, and check the dates. Thanks, Martinp23 16:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

(deindenting)Would you like RefDeskBot to start on this desk? Martinp23 10:37, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please; I suggest archiving posts more than 3 days old. (I understand that you need consensus on this page to get BRFA approval for the help desk.) --ais523 11:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

If there's a consensus here, then yes, the bot will run. I don't think it's a big WP:BRFA matter, as the request has been closed, so it's probably safe to assume that it's of for te bot to run both here and at the RefDesk, pending your approval. Martinp23 12:13, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Urgh - just saw what a load rubbish my last sentence was, above - it should have said "it's OK for the bot to run..". I'll write the bot to start archival tonight (and I'll prepare the page for archival now). Martinp23 17:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Everything up-to a couple of days ago has now been archived, and tonight the bot will start doing this every night. I done a few things to the header and made some new archival pages for ease of access. Thanks, Martinp23 19:08, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

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