User talk:Dispenser

General, AltEdit, Checklinks, Dab solver, Dablinks, Dabfix, and Reflinks I'm available in ##dispenser (webchat) typically between 15:00 and 4:00 UTC Afraid's DNS is down. Use http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/view/Main_Page in the meantime.

This user may have left Wikipedia. Dispenser has not edited Wikipedia since March 2020. As a result, any requests made here may not receive a response. If you are seeking assistance, you may need to approach someone else.

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Hi Dispenser! Just as a quick heads up, according to WP:BLP we can't rely on public documents, such as police reports, to source content such as full names. With Quinn, she seems to want to keep her birth name private, and as it hasn't been widely published, it isn't something we can add. - Bilby (talk) 21:20, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I was a bit hesitant in posting it, but didn't see anything on the talk page nor history about it and the redirect... Anyway, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) should at least link to WP:BLPPRIMARY. — Dispenser 21:43, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good point - I'll look into updating it. The talk page situation is difficult - there was discussion in the past, but portions have been redacted, making it difficult to find in the archives. - Bilby (talk) 22:04, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok I see them now. That talk page header is an mess, repeated 2x "Not a forum", incorrect box order, and repeated information. Maybe we should just delete {{talk header}}? It being used consistently incorrectly that it might be better to. — Dispenser 23:05, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Dispenser, and best wishes for 2015!

Is there any chance that the most useful redlinks.py tool will work again someday on your homenet page? Place Clichy (talk) 13:40, 15 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

	The Technical Barnstar
	Great reflinks tool! Thanks and keep up the good work! Anoopkn (talk) 15:15, 21 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser, please would it be possible to update the bookmarklets? they don't work any more as their addresses to the toolserver. Tom B (talk) 21:16, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hey I noticed the user activity tool is all sorts of broken. Are there any plans for it to be fixed, or are there any good alternatives? Thanks! Error. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 01:30, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@EoRdE6: Should mention that the tools been back for a while. It still missing features like the timeline graph and watcher status between 10-30. And is slower since it has to use the API. — Dispenser 22:07, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there!

I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of expanding upon and formalizing the language of your idea at the Idea Lab in the hopes of preventing some contributors from turning away from your idea. If you don't like the changes, feel free to revert or amend them. - SweetNightmares 15:46, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think the idea has been quietly removed from the list for whatever reason. Maybe I'll make one along the lines of yours with some more neutral language and better structure if I can get to it in what little free time I have this week. - SweetNightmares 02:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

   I've noticed Rdcheck for probably a few years, and occasionally used it instead of the native facility, without noticing much reason for having a preference. But today i fixed the broken within-article link in the lead sent of Fluoxetine, and noticed the "No anchor or section" language that Rdcheck produced (not to mention your minimalist -- and IMO respect- and attention-worthy -- bitcoin solicitation). My guess is that your tool is telling me "no problem", but my casual attention to the difference between the 1000s from the native tool and yours's "36", "99", and (is that a count of something, or a condition code?) "372" left me curious and vaguely uneasy. Fixing any other links to the section is probably far less valuable than my fixing of the internal one, but i'm left pretty vague about whether there are lks to it from other articles.
--Jerzy•t 21:56, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Jerzy: The numbers at the bottom were the number of anchor points on the target page. Ultimately, uninteresting for most editors so I've removed them. 23:53, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

   Thanks for the reply; i still rely more on yr fine utility than the native one, and re-reading my query feels so familiar that i wonder if i didn't think about it again in the last month, tho i can't put my finger on my most recent usage. (Especially since "generic Prozac" sounds much less "fresh" to my mind than the absence of the count does. [shrug!]) And thanks again (more explicitly) for your tool work!
--Jerzy•t 04:23, 11 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser! I'm so glad that you've gotten Reflinks (and your other tools) back online! When I use Reflinks, I try to weed out the incorrect values before saving my edits, but other users aren't as meticulous. I have several bots that remove bad values in author and language parameters to clean these up. I would be happy to work with you to identify issues if you would be willing to update your tool. Please let me know if you're interested. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:20, 15 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dispenser, I'd certainly concur with GoingBatty in this instance, as it would be much more preferable to help improve the code causing insertion of the weirdly-formated cites at the source. Or even perhaps just to internally highlight suspect-looking reflines in the user-interface somehow. Is there anything I/we can do to help in this case? I particularly have in mind the ones resulting in insertion of eg. "author=Posted by $abc on $date $time" (partial examples: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]…). —Sladen (talk) 00:57, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The tool listed from Special:WhatLinksHere is broken. It's linking to rdcheck.py . Will you make it work, or should we retire it? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:52, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The server crashed as I was shuffling a few hundred gigabytes around and trying to use the spare partition on the Linux VM.  :-( — Dispenser 02:10, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the code for the notify feature and here's the code for publishing. Before you do any work, though, I may have misrepresented the direness of the situation; Jarry fixed a minor bug 17 days ago, maybe he'll have time in the near future to restore it to working order...? I've queried Ed about the status of the script, hopefully we can get a clear answer on that topic, I just don't want you to have to go duck hunting if it ultimately proves unnecessary.

Other stuff, other stuff... See also: APerson, who was at the event and I hope can code up some other necessary bot tasks. Mr. Stradivarius is working on the index code, you can see it here: Module:Signpost. The index draft is here. The to-do for that particular initiative is at the bottom. ResMar 04:17, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We still haven't heard back from him so you can go right on ahead! ResMar 16:26, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

	The Technical Barnstar
	Can I use the code for the sig reminder now? If so, where do I copy it? Atsme☯Consult 00:02, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's very crude and mostly untested, but copy it into your common.js. I'd like the discussion to move towards implementing it site wide, since a common WMFer complain is that we don't have a autosigning system thus they get to reinvent the bulletin board (their 4th try). — Dispenser 00:15, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I added the exact code you had up at the VP Tech, and it didn't work for me. It actually disabled my reviewer "Rater" and the symbol for my "online/offline status". So I deleted it from there, and added it to my vector.js and nothing happened there. It's supposed to give me a no sig message first, right? Atsme☯^Consult 02:46, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The ~~~~ expanded into your signature because I forgot the parser did that. :-( — Dispenser 04:12, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Can it be fixed? Atsme☯^Consult 04:26, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think so — Dispenser 05:37, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It works, it works!! One tiny caveat (that I don't mind giving up) is the status top code doesn't work anymore, but it probably doesn't have anything to do with the sig reminder. It already reminded me to sign twice now. It's a big time saver/edit saver for those of us with partsteimers.  :-) Atsme☯^Consult 17:41, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question - it did not remind me to sign over on VP Tech, but it does on TP. Also, do I have to do a show preview first? Does it work just as good in vector.js as it would common.js? I think a show preview is needed first. Atsme☯^Consult 18:50, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, one more time going through the steps - first show preview - now I add an edit summary...and now I save without sig. I'm back - it saved without the reminder. What could be causing the random hit and miss? Atsme☯^Consult 18:52, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One last time because I'm probably a crappy best beta tester. I moved code back to common.js, did a test on my TP and It worked. I will now try it here. Finished my post - do a show preview....now add edit summary...darn it, it saved without the sig. Why did it work fine on my TP, but not here?

I have a query on my talkpage (last post) which someone thinks you might be useful in resolving. Thanks :) Mattsnow81 (Talk) 06:02, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please see "Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#when Dabsolver shows "There are no disambiguation links", but there are some". I was posing a question to monthly competition participants. But at the end, I ask for a possible Dabsolver feature request, an extra report to be given, when Dabsolver finds no dablinks. Could you please take a look at it? (BTW, the Dabsolver tool remains awesome. In conjunction with the "Dablink" tool (by JaGa?) and the monthly and daily reports (by R'n'B ?), it is even more awesome.) cheers, --doncram 18:14, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I wonder why PDFbot is not working anymore. Did you move it to WMFlabs servers? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:59, 25 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I m suhel khan786 Suhel khan786 01:07, 18 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Latvian Wikipedia

Ext	Articles	Images	Alts
tiff	33	53	0.0%
svg	10,604	33,343	0.5%
png	9,701	18,416	0.2%
jpg	33,442	59,346	0.3%
gif	1,727	2,988	0.1%
[null]	20,196

Hi! Somehow retaled to this one. Would it be possible to get those articles at Latvian Wikipedia, which don't have images at all? OK, by image I don't mean all those stub template's images, country flags' images etc. 99% of them are transluded from templates, so according to your post there (excluding indirect transcluded images), these wouldn't be counted. At Latvian Wikipedia, we have 62tk+ articles, so we are quite small. I suppose, it won't take way too much of your resources to list somewhere 30tk page titles (if we follow other Wikipedias, which have ≈50% articles without images). It would be nice, if you could use the latest available DB dump. If you decide to create such list, you can paste it here (simply the list). Wanted to write a DB report about it, but then understood, that I would have to take in consideration too much files. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:39, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You can actually do this yourself with AWB's Database scanner. Download AWB and your desired dump (decompress with 7Zip). Open it in the database scanner, check Regex in the Text tab and put \.(gif|jpe?g|png|svg|tiff?)\s*[<|}\]] into "Not contains:". The regex is simplified (trouble with LRMs) and leaving out DjVu, xcf, PDF, and videos formats. — Dispenser 19:33, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Works fine :) Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 21:14, 1 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Dispenser! I hope you had a good summer.

It seems that the very useful redlinks.py works for the English Wikipedia, however, it returns an error when using other versions of Wikipedia (I tried this and that). Do you plan to open other languages? Place Clichy (talk) 17:03, 1 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It took six weeks to partially import pagelinks, unless somebody is donating a 500 GB SSD I'm not doing it again. WMF may be reversing my Labs ban, so it might come at some future date. — Dispenser 19:29, 1 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser, I saw your comments about use of javascript to implement autosigning on talkpages, and would really appreciate your input at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback#Please_reconsider_enabling_VE_in_Wikipedia_space, apparently the WMF thinks autosigning difficult. ϢereSpielChequers 16:21, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. Thanks for all your hard work on corrections. Here's one false positive that you might want to ponder. I don't think it's a huge problem because the formulation isn't that common, but if AWB generates logs or something then I guess it might be worth a look just to make sure it didn't catch any others like this. Hope this helps, best wishes DBaK (talk) 08:45, 5 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page watcher) @DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered: AWB should not make spelling corrections to words in italics. I made this edit (but forgot to change the automatically-generated edit summary) so AWB will not make that mistake again. GoingBatty (talk) 15:52, 5 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, thank you very much! Cheers DBaK (talk) 22:01, 5 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that. I missed it when reviewing the diff, probably should load the red-green/yellow diff style sheet into AWB next time. — Dispenser 22:25, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I was pointed in your direction when I was searching for ways to have my bot accurately detect a dead link. I created a new bot task for Cyberbot II which functions to preserve sources. One of the goals is to detect dead links and replace them with an archived version. It's currently disabled because it's not reliable enough, but I have heard high marks about this tool and was wondering if I could adapt the source for my bot.—^cyberpower_Chat:Offline 04:42, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised its so well regarded. The 2.0 rewrite which stores page text will significantly decrease the error rate over the 1.x URL keyword matching method. I'm not releasing source code since it was my first large scale project, messy, and might have copyvios. However, I did contribute my knowledge to pywikibot's reflinks for the soft-404s logic. — Dispenser 22:11, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Would you perhaps consider constructing an API for my bot to access. It would be a vital asset to the project and the bot for the job it's doing.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 02:36, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for not catching the weird errors I left on The Flintstones' 25th Anniversary Celebration. PKT(alk) 02:37, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

		The Original Barnstar
		Thanks for all your efforts in getting Dabfix back up and running. I always found it an excellent script and I'm looking forward to using it again. Tassedethe (talk) 15:12, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser, the WikiMiniAtlas information page notes that the textual labels for the map are generated from a database by you. I was wondering, how often are they updated? Over the past 10 months or so since I started editing again, I have created several articles for physical features and places, and updated erroneous coordinates for several others. When might those new pages and updates be reflected in WMA? Not really a big deal, just curious. Thanks! Antepenultimate (talk) 20:47, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Dschwen: The data hasn't been updated since 2015-01-11 and make me a project member. — Dispenser 21:46, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yay! Yes, of course. You are added to the wikiminiatlas service group on tools and the maps project. Let me know if you need anything else! --Dschwen 23:32, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

None of your tools are working at the moment, as the server is presently inaccessible. Tvx1 13:08, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible for this this to be done with "10. 2015." instead of "October 2015" (with both dots: "07. 2014.") since category itself should be in Serbian, not English? And is it possible for your tool to make the category (with __HIDDEN__ tag) after adding dead link template?--Obsuser (talk) 00:26, 11 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for attending WikiconUSA and for your involvement with our 404 links session. Good to meet the person behind the tools. -- 173.79.35.199 (talk) 12:31, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think you could provide a description of the heuristic you use to detect a dead site? It doesn't necessarily have to be code, you could give me an explanation of what it does. I'm asking you because you are well known for this type of checking.—^cyberpower_{Trick or Treat:Limited Access} 02:45, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser. Are you involved with the databases that get line and area features from WIWOSM into WikiMiniAtlas? As far as I can tell they have not been updated since early this year, but I can't find a status report to say if anyone is working on it, or if it is a failed/lapsed project that will never be done again. Thanks. --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:31, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser!

People who use User:Dispenser/Reflinks make edits like this one. The problem is that:

• "Connecting to the iTunes Store" should be "iTunes Store".
• "publisher=Itunes.apple.com" should be "publisher=itunes.apple.com" (the i in itunes should not be capitalized)

I have fixed a few of em but I am unable to change the script to avoid this problem from happening. Do you know what to do?

Thanks in advance, The Quixotic Potato (talk) 14:37, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page watcher) @The Quixotic Potato: I suggest that |title= should be the actual title of the song/album/video, and |publisher= should be "iTunes Store". I hope that Dispenser can fix this, and I hope that you will inform the person who made the edit to be more careful when they use Reflinks. See also this request. GoingBatty (talk) 00:50, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Sounds like a good idea. The Reflinks tool is very useful and many people use it. I wrote that I "fixed a few of em" but that was a bit misleading, that link leads to a list of 289 edits. Informing all those people (I assume it wasn't just one person) is gonna cost a lot of time. I don't remember my Apple ID password and my browser sends me to http://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/affiliates/download/ when I click on one of those links. I hate iTunes. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 10:39, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Could you maybe add some space between the webpage title, the (info) link, and the various graphical icons in the checklinks tool? It's nearly impossible to select the text using the mouse for copying/pasting. Or better yet, list the URL and title separately. Thanks. SharkD  Talk  19:09, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

.

Hi. I used your DabFix tool in preparing this edit, the edit summary for which links your old DabFix on the old ToolServer, which is 404 but helpfully suggests the tool's current URL. Thank you for the tool, but please fix that edit summary link.   — Jeff G. ツ (talk) 20:14, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is a similar issue with the link Dab solver in Note 1 at http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/view/Dab_solver.   — Jeff G. ツ (talk) 17:45, 8 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is fault / intentional choice of Wikimedia Labs / Foundation. I've changed the warning to reflect this and added a skip checkbox. — Dispenser 02:15, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser. Thank you for the work you do on making Wikipedia a more interesting place.

My current questions relate to how the WikiMiniAtlas chooses which articles to highlight at various zoom levels. I asked at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WikiMiniAtlas#Data_priority_enquiry then realised the quote I used refers to your en: personality, so figure I should try to contact you here too.

Also, is the database updating at the moment? I found two articles that the MiniAtlas shows in the wrong place: Light Regional Council and Electoral district of Mitcham (South Australia). I fixed their coordinates last month when I noticed they were showing up in an area I was looking at, and neither of them belonged there, but they haven't moved yet.

Thanks again. --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:05, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

dschwen has responded and pointed out that WikiMiniAtlas is his work, just using your database. Thanks for your work on the underlying database, and sorry to bother you about something that isn't in your control. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:30, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent meeting you! Loved your talk :) Wanted to take you up on that offer to give me a list of the default edit summaries generated by your tools, to be used in toollabs:musikanimal/nonautomated_edits. So far I have "Dab solver", "Dabfix" and "Reflinks". There's the "please help" and then summaries like this one, and whatever else I'm missing. Many thanks for your help. — MusikAnimal ^talk 01:37, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also this one. Not sure if that was your tools — MusikAnimal ^talk 01:41, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dab solver: ^(Disambiguated: |Unlinked: |Help needed: )\[\[|^Disambiguated \d+ links. If my commonsfixes library was used then \ using \[\[(tools:~dispenser/view/Dab_solver|WP:DABSOLVER)\|Dab solver\]\] was appended. Its programmed so the edit summary is never cut off even with multi-byte characters. Issues with detection: There is no way to prevent users from changing it and the tool is translated into 15 languages.

Those other edits were manual. Also, include DisamAssist to complete the disambiguation tool roster. — Dispenser 03:18, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Got it, thank you! But what about the please help summaries? I see it has your Tag. Is that Dab solver or Dabfix? — MusikAnimal ^talk 04:10, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/view/Peer_reviewer#page:Diving_cylinder

Peer reviewer is recommending "Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 12 litre, use 12 litre, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 12 litre."

Compare this with the actual manual of style. No NBSP before unit names, only before symbols. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Unit names and symbols: "a space appears between a numeric value and a unit name or symbol. In the case of unit symbols, &nbsp (or {{nowrap}}) should be used to prevent linebreak.")

This wasted a lot of my time yesterday, please fix so other people don't also waste their time. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:27, 21 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Pbsouthwood, I merely run the front-end and cannot alter the code, you'll need to contact an admin to remove the code. I'd very much like to find a new maintainer for Peer Reviewer with a good grasp on the Manual of Style and coding. Its a lot of work and in 5 years nobody's stepped up to the plate. — Dispenser 15:51, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That is unfortunate. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:58, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dispenser, I am a software developer in RL and could possibly take it on. I would need to look at it first. Would you like to send me an email with a method for me to view it? Prhartcom (talk) 23:21, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When I run Reflinks on List of pipeline accidents in the United States in the 21st century, it appears to work on 21 references, but then it does not get saved, and the history shows no changes at all. Why not? Is volume the problem? (there are 537 inline citations on this article.--DThomsen8 (talk) 14:32, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, this edit made by Tassedethe using Dabfix shouldn't have messed with the VIAF link. Graham87 10:03, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reduced It'll look a lot more like a year range and include a hyphen before changing it. — Dispenser 13:33, 20 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser, can you fix your pages (http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/view/File_viewer) for coord-dewiki.log and region check-dewiki.log again? So they can be re-WORKED regularly. Cheers --2003:4D:2C35:70A3:19E9:E8FF:6921:251D (talk) 08:08, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, please can you activate the File viewer for dewiki? --80.145.214.246 (talk) 08:11, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It works thanks --2003:4D:2C66:D643:7C45:9937:B74E:B794 (talk) 19:29, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Probably this one needs your attention. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:26, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The links on the Dispenser site to Wikipedia pages should be https rather than http. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 01:56, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done. HTTPS available. — Dispenser 19:42, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It was nice meeting you last week in NYC. Just today I realized you wrote the reflinks tool. I use it all the time (as an editor). I also wanted to say thank you to the other gentlemen we were chatting with. He shared the work of Evan Amos and his excellent video game photography. Do you know his username? CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@CKoerner (WMF): He goes under his real name, Evan-Amos, and posts updates to his Twitter — Dispenser 22:16, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Beautiful, thank you. You don't by chance know the person who was talking about Evan, do you? I believe he was also a local NYC Wikipedian. I'd like to say thanks to him as well. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh sorry, unfortunately not. No memory for people and everything's been a blur this past month (lots of non-wiki stuff). — Dispenser 21:38, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The dispenser.homenet.org server seems to be down today. All requests time out. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:11, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I called the ISP and remotely reset the modem and gave me its IPv6 address (No IPv4!). Since I'm out of the country until 10th, it'll be down until then. — Dispenser 18:28, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Back up. Their was brief (<1 sec) power failure which crashed the router. — Dispenser 13:06, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Novendi55 Novendi55 (talk) 03:41, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For some reason, the DAB Challenge isn't updating. Example: Where Was I was all disambiguated but the dablink list still has it as 5 links. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:34, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Known issue, see T134203: enwiki_p replica on s1 is corrupted. — Dispenser 23:22, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've just been complained at because of this edit which changed a section link to a redirect. Is there a way to stop this from happening without having to go through afterwards and unpick the unwanted changes? Is there some tweak that can be made to the software? I wasn't aware this was a problem, but Mlpearc seems to be quite bothered by it. This is Paul (talk) 23:24, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

	The Technical Barnstar
	Hi, Dispenser. Congratulations on the approval of a $14,000 Individual Engagement Grant (IEG) for your proposed tools: Alt Text for Images. (side ping to Graham87, Corinne, Art Frick and Natalie.Desautels) {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 22:10, 18 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations, Dispenser!  – Corinne (talk) 13:29, 19 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

At least I think it has anyway. I'm getting a "This site can’t be reached" notice when I try to run it. This is Paul (talk) 20:34, 25 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

   Per my experience tonite (and every now and then) with your wonderful tool, you of course may have already thot this thru wikt:six ways from Sunday -- in which case i wouldn't think of looking for a reply! But FWIW, i find the alphabetical presentation quite helpful, and wonder if you've ever considered inserting into the list of Rdrs the canonical (i.e., article rather than Rdr) title, in alpha order but in a different style or color to clarify the difference? The advantage i conceive is that in using it, i almost never know or care which is the article name vs. just another Rdr, until it comes time to create the corresponding "missing" Rdr, at which point i paste it in from the top of the screen. In fact, i often look at the pattern of names and consider whether alternative names no one has (yet) used seem so natural in light of the existing ones that someone is bound create them. Distressingly often, i decide "yes", and break off to create a new one, which turns out to be especially appealing bcz, well, it's already the title of the article, and absent from the list of Rdrs to the article for the simple reason that we don't permit a name to redirect to itself, duh. The dummy copy of the Rdr's title neatly in its alpha order would nicely steer me away from (sometimes repeatedly) starting to create a Rdr from article's name to (itself) the article, which name looks like a neglected but perfectly logical variant spelling.
   In any case, many thanks for your tool, which is so much better than the built-in facility.
--Jerzy•t 10:22, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Jerzy: Took a while to understand, but I've added the page tile as a bold grayed out item when the main list is 6+ redirects. — Dispenser 19:56, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser,

I am interested in the Spanish translation of your tool, Altviewer. I am working on that but I would like to know where I have to send the translation or where I have to upload it. Very useful tool that everyone should have in its language, congratulations.

I await your answer. Thanks in advance!

Regards, Ivanhercaz | Discusión 01:21, 24 August 2016 (UTC)Please, ping me if you answer here.[reply]

Hi, I'm NgYShung. I wanted to let you know that I saw the page you reviewed, Thai Student Association in Malaysia, and have un-reviewed it again. If you have any questions, please ask them on my talk page. Thank you. NgYShung ^huh? 09:36, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser. I'm in discussion with a user, Derek R Bullamore, over script-assisted edits that, as well as filling out bare urls, removes data from other urls, converting them into bare urls. He's taking the attitude that Reflinks causes him to do this, so it must be all right, or at least not his fault, and that it is unreasonable to ask him to clean up after himself. I would like if you could comment at User talk:Derek R Bullamore#Your script-assisted edits. Thanks in advance. Scolaire (talk) 16:22, 4 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused by this edit you made to {{R template index}}. Why would that template ever be used in an article? nyuszika7h (talk) 13:26, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When I type {{R from }} and click "Show preview below" (in WikEd), the template list is hidden. The entire reason why I created the template. — Dispenser 13:30, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dispenser You are doing a whole lot of improvements of templates and stuff for WM NYC . Would you be interested in emailing off Wikipedia about some of the changes? I would like to be in the loop on these if possible, since I'm one of the people setting up and maintaining the event pages.... Let me know... My email is wpDOTusernameAT gm-- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 01:15, 18 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm only trying to setup my event and realized we were duplicating text so I made a few Template:Meetup/directions/. I also tried improving {{Meetup/signup}}. I'm pretty bad with email, so its best to reach me via IRC. — Dispenser 02:58, 18 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Dispenser: I understand. There could be a lot of this type of stuff for some of the repeat venues. I am on IRC, will try to ping you. I'm on there as BrillLyle. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 03:16, 18 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, could you please acknowledge my posts here: User_talk:Dispenser/Checklinks. -- GreenC 15:47, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post, but I keep getting the "WebCite IOError" when attempting to use the tool to archive. - Scarpy (talk) 22:04, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Is there any way to program Rdcheck so that it ignores links in redirect categories? The sheer number of some of them make it impossible to see other redirects (like shortcuts) to project pages. (Example) Thanks. — Gorthian (talk) 19:12, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Rewritten to use the database, simplified message text, and improved Unicode support. — Dispenser 18:05, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. That was quick, and useful. Thank you. (Side question: how could one use the regexp it now provides?) — Gorthian (talk) 21:46, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It now says, "Get regex for AutoWikiBrowser". Better than before, hidden in an HTML comment. — Dispenser 20:00, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Dispenser and Gorthian: I'm not sure whether you've answered the other question so I'll ask again. How does one use the regex? — Wumbolo (talk) 11:05, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Wumbolo: You need to be more specific, but you'll have to enclose it with () like so: \{\{\s*([Ww]ikipedia:Disa...)(\s*\|[^{|}]*)*\s*\}\} — Dispenser 16:40, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've made some changes so it groups namespaces, but uses the perl non-capturing group (?:. — Dispenser 17:03, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We still have many toolserver links through the wikis, and some would appear to use your old toolsever urls. From my checks they are using the interwiki map tools:. I have a ticket at phab:T150598 to which you may wish to express an opinion about managing the old redirect.

FWIW enWP is an absolute mess for toolserver links. :-/ — billinghurst sDrewth 04:22, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have subsequently found that you have a working redirect from toolserver, the first that I have found. Can we look to fix up any templates to use toollabs. Thanks, though the mess for toolserver still exists. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:37, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Responded at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Plethora of Toolserver links exist; interwiki map cleanup, I don't use ToolLabs. — Dispenser 20:04, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

	The Technical Barnstar
	Thank you Dispenser for creating and maintaining some of the best tools in the Wikiverse. Marek.69 talk 18:18, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Useractivity works great, but it doesn't know how to deal with a list of users using the template {{Mailing list member}} when it comes to removing the inactive. If this tool could be made to do that, that would make it useful for winnowing down mass mailing lists. Thank you for your consideration. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 11:09, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I ran it on an article and I don't understand the results. Could you respond here on your user talkpage and explain the results to me? I ran it on Girls' Generation and the results were: this. I looked at the results and the Girls' Generation disambig link isn't incorrect, it actually makes sense so I am leaving that alone but then the second result...I can't figure that one out at all. If you could explain to me here what that result means it would be a big help. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 07:17, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Map data acquired in mainland China is often subject to certain distortions (Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China#Coordinate_systems; GCJ-02, BD-09, etc.) done for national security, yielding data with little usability on Wikipedia. Given that the reverse transformation methods are well-documented and are relatively easy to implement, what would be the best interface for providing such "to-WGS84" method to zhwiki users in mainland China? I have considered the following possibilities, but is not sure about which exactly to settle on.

1. Modify the module itself to add extra parameters. This approach itself brings concerns over e.g. original research, and it breaks down into two further possibilities:
   1. Handle everything in the module itself.
   2. PR geohack to add conversion methods, so the module essentially is only running its own conversion for display purposes.
2. Writing a gadget to do the conversion. But gadgets are not friendly to mobile editors. [update 02:49, 8 February 2017 (UTC): The prototype gadget is ready!]

The first idea was my initial idea on zhwiki, but back then it looked stunted by cwek's (well...) reply so I moved on to writing a quick gadget for a prototype. Since in retrospect it appears that many of cwek's objections are not as reasonable as they sounded (and I am getting tired of writing JS), I decided to step here to check how you think this issue should be handled.

--Artoria2e5 emits crap 20:07, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why the GCJ-02 or BD-09 is special? Why it need a conversion function in the Template:Coord? Template:Coord need a pure standard for coordinate,not a mess. All thing like this can been done on the webtool of toollab. --Cwek (talk) 00:52, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Cwek: please re-read solution 1.2. With a toollab change, the module still need to be modified to recognize this parameter, and to display sane (WGS-84-ish) coordinates. Without a conversion for sane display, your template output would be inconsistent as it may indicate either PRC-screwed or sane coordinates. Given that the module will be changed anyway, why not go for the quick and easy path that does not require a toolab hack? --Artoria2e5 contrib 02:46, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "specialness": these two coordinate systems are worthy of special consideration due to their widespread use for "legit" Chinese geographic data, and a lack of correction in "legit" sources. Their intentional screwedness (read the article!) also adds to their technical specialness. --Artoria2e5 contrib 02:54, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, why are you stressing so much on input consistency? If you want bot-parsable data from coord, try that hidden span.geo-nondefault > span > span.geo part in the rendered DOM tree. --Artoria2e5 contrib 02:59, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You can provide a tool web service or a javascript gadget to fix that. Then Should we modify the core? And the users need to be teached, not be indulged. --Cwek (talk) 03:08, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have already written a JS gadget, but as mentioned in solution #2 it would be inaccessible to mobile users and "VE-friendly" editor users (solvable, but not now). And there is a JS Bin web version available too. The problem here is that I still can't agree with your "core" argument, as doing dirty heavylifting in Lua modules is a pretty common thing around. In the context of geohack, the Lua module is more like a middleman, a smarter replacement for various parser functions as opposed to the "core" of things. Regarding educating newcomers, let me remind you that the "Restriction" article does not have a Chinese version yet. --Artoria2e5 contrib 05:06, 9 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

When Checklinks is run against the article Spray-and-vac cleaning, it reports 6 dead links, but fails to automatically flag them into the Wikisource, for some unknown reason. I first encountered this glitch last month, and hoped it was a temporary problem that would be resolved. I just tried it again, with the same puzzling result. Somebody, please look into this odd behavior. If there is a better place to reprt this problem, please let me know. Reify-tech (talk) 19:59, 16 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

done, will be deployed next week (train) :) --Yurik (talk) 06:30, 17 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dispenser, it may be time to consider retiring Checklinks, at least until development can be restarted. The {{wayback}} has been merged to {{webarchive}} and Checklinks is not recognizing the new template and adding many dead links where they don't belong. This is disruptive and it's a lot harder to remove false-positive dead link tags then it is to add them. It's also adding dead links when links are not actually dead. My bot WaybackMedic is keeping logs of clean up work (that it can find) and it's fairly extensive. -- GreenC 14:11, 20 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• 73 added, 16 in error.
• 36 added, 18 in error
• 6 added, 4 in error.
• 56 added, 56 in error.
• 14 added, 9 in error.
• 15 added, 11 in error.
• 147 added, 147 in error

I would hate to see Checklinks go away, since it is useful. Can anybody suggest alternative tools that have its capabilities? Reify-tech (talk) 21:46, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Verify every dead link tag added by Checklinks. They are often inaccurate. See examples above. Also, dead links should be monitored over a long period of time as there can be short term outages. We have bot tools designed for this work. -- GreenC 20:50, 24 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please give more info on the alternative bot tools. Reify-tech (talk) 19:03, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reify-tech. IABot. Follow login prompt then type in name of article and will process. It will check each link to see if it's dead, if dead it will replace with an archive link, or if none available replace with a {{dead link}} tag. Many other fixes. The changes are made automatically to the page using your account ID no need to cut and paste diffs. It is new as of today, any problems contact User talk:cyberpower678 or submit a bug report (one of the menu options). -- GreenC 18:13, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Green Cardamom: is the IABot working? When I go to the URL above I get the error "Failed to create a user log table to use. This table is vital for the operation of this interface. Exiting.." - Scarpy (talk) 15:41, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Dispenser, I've just inserted your link checker tool in the whole Italian Wikipedia. If you ever change the url structure or deactivate the tool, please kindly leave me a note (or to any other sysop there). :-) Thanks! --Lucas (talk) 06:38, 21 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello - something changed in Dab Solver recently such that the "This is a minor edit" checkbox is checked. It should not be - disambiguated links do not qualify as WP:Minor edits. Can somebody please change this back, to leave the minor edits box unchecked? Thanks in advance, PKT(alk) 13:37, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PKT: WP:Minor edit says "Adding or correcting wikilinks". Most editors when disambiguating default edits as minor—and forget to unset when using {{disambiguation needed}}. The current rules in Dab solver are: 1) Only update when the summary's changed 2) Mark as minor if the {{disambiguation needed}} tag has not been used. — Dispenser 13:53, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is that rules for use or internal rules of the program? Seems it would be best to have the program just know to mark tags not minor. Hyperbolick (talk) 19:46, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi dispenser. Just letting you know about this (erroneous) edit that I made using Dab solver recently, not sure if this is known about, but I can see that you made the same edit yourself today too ([9], [10] ) - not sure if these are the only examples of it happening, they probably aren't, but since it seems to be happening to more that just one person this might present itself as really quite problematic if people don't notice. Thanks in advance, — Iambic Pentameter _{(talk / contribs)} 08:27, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed Thank you very much. It was a line of code missed on Monday when splitting loading into two parts: disambiguation link boxes and the save buttons. This was missed in testing bacause a setTimeout delay for the save hook and sys.stdout.flush() was not used allowing entire page chunks to be delivered at once—thus only breaking on large pages. I will fix the 17 pages affected by this today and the code has been reworked to be less error prone. — Dispenser 13:56, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for fixing this, your work in developing these tools (especially Reflinks!) is much appreciated. Best, — Iambic Pentameter _{(talk / contribs)} 14:12, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Central China Railway, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Wuyi and Xinxing. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:33, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello and thank you for your work on the wonderful Dabfix. It's suddenly stopped working for me with error 'Page' object has no attribute 'edittoken' on line 621 of wikipedia.py in put(self=Page('wikipedia:en', u'Den'), ...). Other pages give a similar error, and I can still edit pages manually. Any hints please? There should be a full trace in /home/dispenser/public_html/cgi-bin/tracebacks/dabfix_AttributeError_3676_tLLviM.html if that helps. This isn't urgent (at least not for me). Certes (talk) 21:57, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed Sorry, left over debugging information from a bug that was hard to track down. — Dispenser 22:07, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the prompt response. I can confirm it's now working for me too. Certes (talk) 22:44, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for reverting my edit to Fear (disambiguation). I'm slightly confused how that was ever made in the first place, as I'm pretty sure I skipped to a new random DAB page for exactly that reason — that the tool's had made several mistakes, and I wasn't in the mood to trawl through them — but maybe I hit save accidentally. I shall be a little more careful in the future. TheDragonFire (talk) 00:27, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have a thought. Would it be possible to add a setting by which dabsolver can only bring up pages with links that are not tagged with {{tn}} tags? Untagged links are likely to never have been checked at all, so the typical editor may not even know they link to a disambiguation page. They will either be quicker fixes than the ones that have been checked and tagged because the editor checking them couldn't figure it out, or tagging them will alert editors in the field to which the article relates that this fix needs to be made. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:00, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There multiple tools for find disambiguation pages and Topic points already labels if the page has the {{dn}} tag. — Dispenser 05:14, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I see, thanks. bd2412 T 00:22, 25 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

On a topic of tertiary concern, I have initiated a discussion at Template talk:Disambiguation needed#Proposed addition of a parameter for topic areas. If this proposal is successful, it might be a worthwhile effort to tweak the Dabsolver so that links in a particular topic area that are tagged {{dn}} will either automatically or at the editor's initiative be tagged for the appropriate parameter, where there is one. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:03, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

At least, I hope so. :-) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:58, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@R'n'B: What's wrong with people getting paid? It means better tools getting developed and maintained. One-offs have no longevity and WMF has weird troubles (e.g. my grant payment being delayed by 3-4 months) that we should entertain other mechanisms. — Dispenser 02:36, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

nothing, really, that's why there was the question, because it was something that could be reasonably expected to happen. i, myself, thought it to be serious. the main thing, is that the tools are widely relied upon, from peer reviewers, to GAN, even FAC. while reflinks has a decent alternative, and checklinks should really be more of a bot task, i'm not aware of alternative for the dablink tools. -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 03:38, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't this page for tools that can be enabled through "Preferences?" I believe that tool has been absent from preferences for a few years now. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 01:37, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[