User talk:Termininja

Archives:

Scientific name => common name

Termininja, simply beening curious: Why did you change enwiki labels this way? --Succu (talk) 21:59, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Because the label is multilingual, in other cases the label has to be the same for all languages. I saw it from other items, like animal (Q729). Is it wrong this? --Termininja (talk) 22:09, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

What changes exactly did you saw on animal (Q729)? The label is language specific. So move related article at enwiki or let the label alone. A Scientific name choosen by a community should not be replaced with common name by an outstander. --Succu (talk) 22:30, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand you, give me example with some item which is changed in a way you mentioned above. I changed the labels like in Q729 so if Q729 is ok and the other my changes have to be ok. --Termininja (talk) 22:41, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Mind to inspect your contributions starting with this one? What did you changed here (animal (Q729))? --Succu (talk) 23:05, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

I didn't change anything in animal, I just gave you as example that my changes are like in it. In Q25326 we have label molluscs with alias Mollusca (as taxon name), which is the same as in Q729 where we have label animal with alias Animalia (again as taxon name). So explain me why animal is ok, and molluscs not. --Termininja (talk) 23:15, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Please don't give examples where something might be wrong. Please give a reaseon for your replacement Scientific name => common name. That's all. --Succu (talk) 23:29, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

I already answered you, the scientific name is not language specific. So you want to say that the label of Q729 has to be changed to Animalia? --Termininja (talk) 01:03, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree mostly with Temininja here. @Succu, Brya:, when common and taxonomic entity in 1 item I'd expect to have common name labels. --Infovarius (talk) 17:46, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

See below. - Brya (talk) 18:05, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Items are used in statements, like parent taxon, basionym, taxon synonym, and this only makes sense if the label is a scientific name. On the other hand for a handful of very wellknown organisms, items are also used in statements like "depicted in painting", "used as an ingredient in soup", so in those cases there is a conflict. But this is only a handful of cases, and it is never wrong to use the scientific name. - Brya (talk) 03:58, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Whatever, I reverted my 21 edits, so now the labels are in their previous state. But for me is still unclear how is possible trilobite to be more "wellknown" than mollusc. By the way the animal, plant, trilobite, etc. are just examples, there are a lot of other items in such state... And why insects, prokaryotes, etc. are plural and mammal, bird, etc. - singular. --Termininja (talk) 09:34, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Whether or not "trilobite" is better known than "mollusc", you might be suprised: trilobites are companions of dinosaurs and enjoy some of their fame. Personally, I am rather concerned that, apparently, many feel that dinosaurs and trilobites are creatures living today. The singular in labels is caused by enwiki, where they have a believe that "bird" is the right label. So where there is a strong enwiki influence labels tend to be singular. - Brya (talk) 11:49, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

The names in enwiki are singular also for the items with label insects and prokaryotes. Is that means that they have to be corrected. --Termininja (talk) 12:20, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

No, this is Wikidata, not enwiki. - Brya (talk) 12:26, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

back to labels

I suppose, en-labels have strong correlation with enwiki. --Infovarius (talk) 17:46, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Why assume that? It makes much more sense to use the English labels to serve the English-speaking users of Wikidata. Anyway, enwiki is not stable, and in general is migrating towards scientific names. - Brya (talk) 18:05, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Edit problems

Hi Termininja! Actually, NOW it's everything alright, but at the time I reverted your edit, it was clear causing a code break. Probably someone edit some template around that broke it up your edition; then reverted and everything turn ok again. Regards, Sturm (talk) 04:21, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

"code break"?, the link was tested and work, I don't see any problems with it. And please, always continue the conversation on the place where it has started. --Termininja (talk) 09:21, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Bulgarian labels

Hello once again. I found an example: [1]. --Infovarius (talk) 04:35, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi, before I thought that only the properties have to be in lowercase and the item labels have to be as their corresponding site links. I'll correct them. What about disambiguation items? --Termininja (talk) 22:33, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, correct please. If you are saying about description "Пояснителна страница" then it should also be minusculed to "пояснителна страница". --Infovarius (talk) 20:40, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Not only about item's description, I asked also for the English label in Q424995. --Termininja (talk) 11:46, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

What's the question about English label? --Infovarius (talk) 13:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Is it ok to start with uppercase letter? --Termininja (talk) 13:51, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

If you are saying about "Wikipedia disambiguation page", it starts with uppercase letter because "Wikipedia" is proper name. As for labels in disambiguation items, I have no strong opinion, but I usually tend to capitalize them. May be better not to change labels in Q424995-type items. --Infovarius (talk) 16:30, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

So? --Infovarius (talk) 20:58, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

This is too old. My bot now start to correct taxon bg labels. --Termininja (talk) 17:13, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

България

Hi Termininja. Can you take a look at this discussion related to Bulgarian geo articles >> https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Innocent_bystander&oldid=301934594#Merges.3F ? --XXN, 20:10, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I am not competent in the subject, but asked for assistance and opinion in our wiki. --Termininja (talk) 18:40, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Fossil taxon

Hi Termininja,

There has been a question of how to distinguish fossil taxa, and the solution we came up with is to replace "instance of taxon" by "instance of fossil taxon". You probably know better than me how to track what taxa are fossil, but any taxon with "(fossil)" in the description or with a value for temporal range end (P524) should be a fossil taxon. Is this a job you would be interested in? - Brya (talk) 09:40, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know for fossil taxon (Q23038290), and now I see that it is already in use. I think it will be very easy to move all fossils in this new instance, but first I'll have to update my bot code because there are some changes in MediaWiki API. I'll do it in the next some days... --Termininja (talk) 16:05, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. And yes, we first tried it out in some cases to see how it would fit. It quickly became apparent that doing it by hand was going to take a long time ... So a few days would be very quick. There could easily be several tens of thousands of fossil taxa.

You may have noticed that "ichnotaxon" is a subclass of "fossil taxon"; items that use "ichnotaxon" should stay as they are (this likely will remain a matter to be dealt with by hand). - Brya (talk) 05:29, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Hm, but if ichnotaxon (Q2568288) is subclass of fossil taxon, obviously all items that are ichnotaxon should be also and fossil taxon..., but ok, it is not problem to miss them. Is this means that all subitems of some ichnotaxon item should not be moved to fossil taxon also? --Termininja (talk) 08:02, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, any item that has a parent taxon that is an ichnotaxon should be an ichnotaxon also. All in all, ichnotaxon is a pretty weird phenomenon, not hierarchical (very shallow hierarchy). Just ignore it, and leave any problems to be sorted by hand. - Brya (talk) 10:35, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

• I made one replacement for test. I hope there aren't any important references or qualifiers under taxon (Q16521) because they will be lost. --Termininja (talk) 20:20, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Why? Technically this is simply a replacement of the property value. --Succu (talk) 20:37, 28 March 2016 (UTC) PS: Ignore qualifiers (they are wrongly placed) and values referenced by stated in (P248). But give us a log for the latter. --Succu (talk) 21:04, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

This "instance of taxon" should not have references or qualifiers. It just means that "taxon name" is present in the item. Here and there, there will be an "imported from ... Wikipedia" but this should not be there (holds no information). - Brya (talk) 05:35, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

• Instance of taxon was replaced with fossil taxon in 3190 items, and only 1 reference was removed. Also 36 monotypic fossil taxon items was found. --Termininja (talk) 16:49, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Once you started, this was quickly done! I would have expected the number to be higher, but it is hard to judge such things. A relief that it is done. - Brya (talk) 17:06, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

I think also that their number is higher. I didn't update the descriptions from half year so maybe later will find more. --Termininja (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes, without looking hard I found a few you had missed, so there should be more. Did you see the suggestion by Succu of using Fossilworks? - Brya (talk) 18:51, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

I can use Fossilworks and WoRMS to add more. ;) --Succu (talk) 19:25, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Ok --Termininja (talk) 05:10, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Looks like that the use of Fossilworks is a little bit problematic. We now have more than 13.000 taxa marked as fossil. I fixed some obvious issues, but I fear there are more. --Succu (talk) 19:57, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

As a first step I added fossil Foraminifera with the help of WoRMS. --Succu (talk) 15:25, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

monotypic taxon

How to proceed when the instance of is monotypic taxon - Zhuchengosaurus (Q18915680)? Maybe we need monotypic fossil taxon... or better if fossil is used as qualifier in instance of taxon and monotypic taxon? --Termininja (talk) 03:30, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Using qualifiers looks dangerous to me. Maybe a monotypic fossil taxon would work. The problem is that monotypic is dependent on taxonomic point of view (it really needs a solid reference) and thus is transient and relative. Perhaps better start by using both "fossil taxon" and "monotypic taxon", side by side: this certainly makes it easier to add separate references. - Brya (talk) 04:13, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Replacing meaningful labels by generic ones

Please stop removing meaningful labels to put generic ones, like here or here... --NicoV (talk) 04:17, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

I think you mean descriptions, not labels. The item for WP Cleaner is Q4796484, not Q6420476. Sometimes it can't be avoided to repeat the label in the description, but generally it's not needed (note Help:Description#Punctuation last part).

Anyways, not sure why I comment on this. Probably because the heading worried me. Maybe Termininja wants to answer instead.
--- Jura 05:08, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, descriptions, not label. But what is the point of putting meaningless description when there's already one with meaning ? Is there any interest of putting the same description in thousands of items ? --NicoV (talk) 05:32, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

I think it's fairly important that all disambiguation items have the same description. Makes it easier to ignore them.

I don't see an advantage of your description at Q6420476 over the existing one. It's potentially misleading as the relevant item is elsewhere.
--- Jura 05:48, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Jura. Descriptions are there for the purpose of disambiguation, not for details. - Brya (talk) 05:58, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

According to me description is useful only when the labels are the same. But its not problem, I disabled the changes for English descriptions in my bot. --Termininja (talk) 06:00, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

• I also disagree with you, User:NicoV. Description in Q6420476 was simply wrong. This item is template, not the tool. --Infovarius (talk) 17:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes User:Jura1 and Infovarius, description for Q6420476 was incorrect, but everyone here clearly avoids talking about the other one I was talking about Q6420363, where the description seemed correct... Still, if the "description is useful only when the labels are the same", in what way putting the same meaningless description in thousands of items helps in any way ? If it's only useful in a specific case, why add it automatically and in a way that's not useful at all for the specific case. --NicoV (talk) 17:19, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Putting one and the same description in thousands of items can be quite useful since Wikidata holds millions of items, and a group of thousands may be a useful unit. - Brya (talk) 17:48, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

For categories I use sometimes non-standard descriptions but I feel the need very rarely. --Infovarius (talk) 18:21, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I think this edit ("description:species of tree" --> "description:species of plant") is a case were replacing a meaningful description with a generic one is a bad thing.

Hi, I reverted the edit above because you didn't react. Now your bot has made the same edit again. Please reply. Quercus mortus (talk) 19:25, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

• Once one starts by adopting more detailed descriptions, there is no end to it. One can add the size of the tree, its provenance, whether or not it is deciduous, the color of its flowers, etc, etc.
• Actually, "tree" is not all that useful a descriptor. There are many differing definitions of "tree", so that using it as a desriptor may cause confusion. Also, plants are not required to follow any definition: some species can be a liana, shrub or tree, depending on where they grow.
• The purpose of the description is not to describe the item, it is there to disambiguate the label. The aim is to put it in the right ballpark, for example making it clear the item is not a single by a popgroup. The description should be as short as possible. Generic and standardized descriptions are very useful for all kinds of purposes. - Brya (talk) 05:23, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

• I didn't propose adding a 20 word description, I just wanted to use a less broad term.
• I could argue the opposite, most people think of a woodless piece of vegetation when they hear the word plant and not the taxonomic definition.
• Arguing that descriptions don't matter that much anyway right after debating a one-word-change doesn't do any good to both arguments. btw tree is sorter than plant ;) Quercus mortus (talk) 13:41, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

• The reasons you give for the change you propose would (if consistently executed) automatically lead to lengthy descriptions.
• No doubt there will be people who will think of a plant firstly as being herbaceous, or who will think of a plant firstly as something in the window sill (houseplants), or, for that matter, who will think of a plant as being a factory, or an undercover agent, etc, but the general meaning is not contested. See also here.
• Trying to twist arguments is not going to make a good impression. I was perfectly clear that "descriptions" do matter, but that they serve for disambiguation. They are not there to describe anything, that is what Wikipedia pages are for. - Brya (talk) 05:19, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi, it is normal the bot to make the same edit, because it is a bot :) It is configured to use only descriptions from this list (without these in white color: #FFFFFF). How you see 99% of taxons already used some of these descriptions. If you want to suggest some new description, please do it on Wikidata talk:WikiProject Taxonomy. You can't manually search and change description, for example for all "tree" items, because this description has to be used on each taxon where it is applicable, this means that we need some rule which says unambiguously which plants are trees, which are flowers, etc. You can check also some of the previous discussions here --Termininja (talk) 06:41, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that bots make mistakes and that that's better than having no descriptions, I just think that your bot shouldn't overwrite human input. Quercus mortus (talk) 13:41, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

fossil, the other way round

Hi Termininja,

We now have some thirty thousand items with "instance of fossil taxon", I think it would be nice if the English descriptions could follow that. Could you alter these, so that, for example, if "fossil taxon" is present, a description "genus of mammals" would become "genus of mammals (fossil)"? - Brya (talk) 04:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

~28,000 are done, most of the others fossil taxons are without description at all because of missing parent item's rank or description. --Termininja (talk) 13:00, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I am a bit surprised to hear that there are so many items without a parent taxon. I would have expected some, but not many. - Brya (talk) 13:13, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

I'll check it to be sure... --Termininja (talk) 13:17, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

We are now up to almost thirty-six thousand cases of "instance of fossil taxon", so that leaves some eight thousand unaccounted for ... - Brya (talk) 13:56, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, this what I mean is that the description or the rank of the parents is missing. For example Clavatorella bermudezi (Q23798807) has parent Clavatorella without description because his parent Globorotaliidae is with no description, etc. to Foraminifera with description "phylum of amoeboid protists" which is unknown for my bot. So, all items which include instance of fossil taxon are 36,117. From them there are 37 without parent, 27,754 which are with "correct" description (in format: "rank of group (fossil)") and 812 with description in different format (for example: "a marginocephalian dinosaur", my bot does not change item descriptions in unknown format). Finally left 7,513 without description but all they are with parent with unknown description (as Q133276), so my bot doesn't know from what group are they (insects, mammals, birds, etc.). --Termininja (talk) 14:15, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

So you would need to do another bot run first to put in descriptions? - Brya (talk) 15:56, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

I can do it but I don't know what description to put, for example to Q6412376. My bot know only for these groups of taxons. I have to add another group, for example forams, then Clavatorella will be "genus of forams (fossil)". So see this list and tell me what missing, then my bot can add it as description where is applicable... --Termininja (talk) 16:09, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, there are some murky groups. I would be inclined to describe Q6412376 as "genus of protists (fossil)" (although I have sometimes put in "genus of foraminifers (fossil)"). I am not sure what you mean by your list? - Brya (talk) 16:26, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

These are all names (insects, birds, fungi, reptiles, etc.) which I use as descriptions in the taxon Items, so my bot works only with them. Tell me if you want my bot to use some other name as "foraminifers", or something else for some group of taxons. --Termininja (talk) 16:36, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Well, as I said, I like "protists" for a lot of taxa. There seems to be no close agreement on groups within the protists. I dislike "trilobites", which should rather be "arthropods (fossil)". - Brya (talk) 16:42, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I'll add this in the next bot run. Write me if remember something else. --Termininja (talk) 16:49, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

instance of list article

It would be nice if the bot only adds this when "instance of list article" is the only statement. I daily find items with statements like that, which I have not been able to confirm as list articles. When there is more P31-statements, that may imply that statement is wrong and we should not add descriptions based on them. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 09:37, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

My bot always checks if the instance of contains only one statement. --Termininja (talk) 14:59, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

removal of "duplicated" alias

Hi, if I underestand correctly, your bot removes aliases that are equal to the label. I don't really get the point. If anything, that makes data a bit worse, since when someone changes the label, it totally disappears instead of remaining as an alias. --Zolo (talk) 06:14, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi, the Label is the main (best known) name of some item, and the Aliases are how the item is also known, so, the label has to be different and not included in the aliases. If someone changes the label, there are 3 possibilities: the 1^st - the current label is wrong, then it is wrong to be in the aliases also, the 2^nd - the new label is more known, so in this case the user has to change the label to better one and also his responsibility is to move the old one as alias, and the 3^rd - vandalism, then the edit has to be reverted.

By the way you know probably how works the Merge Item Wikidata tool..., when two items are merged the tool checks their labels and if they are different, the one is moved as alias (only if it missing there), but if they are the same no one is moved as alias. --Termininja (talk) 07:07, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

I have not often come across a wrong label that was also present in the aliases. It just sometime happens that we change a label (remove complement / parentheses) and don't want to bother about checking the aliases. Still, it may useful if the old label is not completely lost. Obviously, in most cases the label is not present in the alias, so that leaves out the vast majority of items, but still I don't think there is any issue if an alias is equal to the label. Aliases are just an unsorted pile of strings that help finding an item. -Zolo (talk) 10:16, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

I think this kind of bot-support is good. I have myself had the ambition to remove aliases that has become the same as the label, but since I was occupied with 15 open windows at the same time, my hands was busy with other things. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 11:39, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Number of edits

Hi, please throttle your bot a little and use the API's maxlag parameter, you are causing ongoing database lag right now. If you don't adopt to this soon, your bot will probably be blocked in order to resolve the immediate issues. Cheers, Hoo man (talk) 22:00, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi, my bot always checks (on each 60 sec) median lag to be less than 1 min, now I added also maxlag=5. --Termininja (talk) 01:57, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Great, thanks, that should fix the problems in question. Cheers, Hoo man (talk) 11:00, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

No, it didn't. I am proposing a ban right now on the link on the right. --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 09:02, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T135471#2300359

@JCrespo (WMF), Hoo man, Termininja: I have blocked the bot. Let us know at WD:AN when you think this is resolved and the block can be revoked. -- Innocent bystander (talk) 09:08, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, I will. Please Termininja, talk to me on the phab task to solve the issues. --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 09:12, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

@JCrespo (WMF): what was the problem?! --Termininja (talk) 09:26, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

This is an infrastructure issue, not an wiki-specific issue, please follow the link on the right where I comment the problems and the solutions. --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 09:32, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

author standard form

Hi Termininja,

There is another job you could do. We have botanist author abbreviation (P428), but in practice this is hard to use. The literature commonly uses the standard form (say "L."), but at present one has to type in the full name in a "taxon author" field. It would be convenient if all items that hold a botanist author abbreviation (P428) could have the standard form (say "L.") as an alias ("also known as"). Then one could just copy-and-paste the standard form into the "taxon author" field and the system would make the link. It should be a simple job: 1) find all items with a botanist author abbreviation (P428) and 2) copy the contents of that field to the "also known as" field. It was already done for Linnaeus/L. but not for most of the others. - Brya (talk) 11:29, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Probably the same and for author citation (zoology) (P835)? --Termininja (talk) 16:37, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

I suppose, although it is hard to say, as the structure is entirely different: zoologists go by complete surnames, not by unique standard forms. - Brya (talk) 16:48, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

 Erledigt + "author citation (zoology)", they were less than 150. --Termininja (talk) 11:55, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! I tried it and it works as expected. If you have time to spare, I noticed that many of the botanists do not have a description as yet, so it would help to add "botanist" there. This would be imperfect, as some of the older were both zoologists and botanists (they were "naturalists"), while for new ones they may deal with just fungi (they are "mycologists"), or algae (they are "phycologists"); and many users would like to see a nationality ("Swiss botanist"), but still a description would help. - Brya (talk) 05:20, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Please don't "guess" taxa names

Hi Termininja, I'm trying to connect the last three thousand taxa names to their parents and find more and more odd creations by your bot. An example is Medicago denticulata (Q12371333). Your bot created the taxon name Ogaviljane lutsern and the genus Ogaviljane (=Medicago (Q21592060)), but et:Ogaviljane lutsern is about Medicago denticulata. Please check you bot code. --Succu (talk) 18:57, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Related is the creation of misspellings like Ceratitella (Q26226438) (as Ceratilella) or Dirioxa (Q26226433) (as Dirioxia). --Succu (talk) 19:16, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Invalid languages

Your bot is adding labels in invalid languages (als, no, simple etc.). Please stop it. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 16:50, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Don't worry, I only test it. By the way which language is invalid - als:Alemannic (Q131339), no:Norwegian (Q9043) oder simple:Simple English (Q21480034)? --Termininja (talk) 17:07, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

As far as I remember: simple → en, als → gsw, bh → bho, be-x-old → be-tarask, no → nb... but there are more. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 19:17, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Can you give me some link for these "more", or where it is discussed? Thank you. --Termininja (talk) 19:23, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Found some, I think these are all. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 19:34, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Labels

Labels from sitelinks

Hi Termininja.

I see your bot is taking labels from the various sitelinks. This is not a good idea. Take for example the labels your bot added to the item on Salsola stocksii. Instead of the proper Salsola stocksii the bot added Haloxylon stocksii which belong on another item. - Brya (talk) 12:37, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The problem comes from the "wrong" sitelink name. But actually this is not wrong because they are synonyms, and the idea is to can find some item by searching also by synonym. For this goal you know, we put the synonyms as alias in the item, and in case for warwiki were missing the both, so it is not big problem that Haloxylon stocksii is label and not alias... Anyway, thanks for this information, I'll skip such items, it will be very easy. --Termininja (talk) 13:01, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

We have stopped putting in synonyms as aliases quite a while ago (it proves that many users don't understand that synonyms are 'wrong' names). In the item Salsola stocksii there should not be an alias Haloxylon stocksii and certainly not a label Haloxylon stocksii. - Brya (talk) 18:00, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I didn't know for this. As alias was easy to find the item when you search it by synonym. I'm not sure that it is good idea each synonym to has separate item page. I'm agree that "synonyms are 'wrong' names", but maybe using of "instance of synonym" is not ok. I think that it will be better if all they are only mentioned in the main item in some way. Thanks again for the info. --Termininja (talk) 18:08, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Labels from GeoNames

Borrow this thread here!

Why has BotNinja added "Abborrskaer" as an English label to an item about Abborrskär (Q21975834)? The name is Swedish, and ae is not interchangeable with ä in Swedish! -- Innocent bystander (talk) 07:24, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't know how should be the right name in English, but it came as alternative name from www.geonames.org because my bot match the names by regex [A-z]. I changed it to Abborrskär but maybe have to be Abborrskar? --Termininja (talk) 09:28, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I see, that make sense! You will find many very strange names in GeoNames. Is it possible to add "source:GeoNames" to the edit-comment? -- Innocent bystander (talk) 12:48, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, No problem. --Termininja (talk) 13:09, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Population data from GeoNames

In Märkischer Kreis (Q5937) your bot imported population data from geonames, but as geonames is basically also a Wiki this is not a really good source - they might even simply copied values from Wikipedia, so they look like a external source but in fact aren't. Especially the qualifier were set to wrong values - the reference date was 2012 and not 2014, and the determination method was not the census (which was done in 2011) but the combination of the census number with citizen registration data. I have fixed the data for this one item and added some more up-to-date and authoritative sourced values, but worry that a mass import of these numbers from geonames will include too much bad data. Ahoerstemeier (talk) 10:29, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

In this item for population: 419,976 is used database from 2015-05-23 with population_date: 2014-01-03. So if the data currently is changed and you updated this info in the item, it is ok. I already removed all determination method (P459) qualifiers for this claim from all bot edits. I didn't know that GeoNames is not reliable source, and actually I started to add these claims because of a lot of empty items like this, which are created with sitelinks with information from GeoNames. I think if some item is created with information from GeoNames, it is normal the item to include all possible claims with this information, in other case this item has to be deleted. The problem in items like Märkischer Kreis (Q5937) is that I didn't check for other sitelinks and sources, but I already corrected this. Thanks for the info. --Termininja (talk) 14:47, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Are you sure we are allowed to mass import data from GeoNames? GeoNames data is licensed as CC-BY which is not compatible with Wikidata's CC0. - Nikki (talk) 16:27, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

This information is already in Wikipedia, so the other variant is to use imported from Wikimedia project (P143) xxwiki. --Termininja (talk) 10:05, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Units

You bot has added to a lot of items height-values (example), but without a unit this does not make sense. It could be meter, feet or anything else. Could you please add the unit to those statements? Steak (talk) 13:35, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

They shouldn't be many. I remember, when I started to add these values I missed the units but quickly this was corrected. --Termininja (talk) 14:02, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Probably a bit less than 2000, because Wikidata:Database reports/Constraint violations/P2044 lists 2086 statements without a unit, of which not all but I think most of them were created by your bot. Steak (talk) 14:54, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

They are fixed, thanks --Termininja (talk) 19:11, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Coordinates (Geonames)

Hi. FYI, these days on Project chat was raised the issue that coordinates imported from geonames are not of the best quality and another bot stopped to import them. --XXN, 20:41, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Transliterated labels to check

Please check if these transliterated labels [2][3] are correct in Bulgarian. I suppose instead of the combination "Иа" there should be "Я". You can search also if there are more such labels for Moldovan and Romanian toponyms, since the combination "ea"/"ia" is common in Romanian language. XXN, 20:55, 19 July 2017 (UTC) P.S. I had these items in my watchlist

A related problem - Турничени for Turnicheni instead of Търничени? I'd say to skip all items where country (P17) is a Slavic country, since after a double transliteration frequently the result is wrong. --XXN, 21:05, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm agree, I'll fix them. --Termininja (talk) 03:34, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Quercus thracica Stef. & Nedjalkov

Hello Termininja,

I noticed that you added the authority to bg:Тракийски дъб. For the author Nedjalkov, there is the item Simeon Nedjalkov (Q5553230). However, in Quercus thracica (Q12296837), the author is Simeon Nedjalkov (Q30103559). The given name appears to be Simeon according to a translation, so I believe Simeon Nedjalkov (Q5553230) should be corrected? I also suspect that the dates of birth and death are wrong, as they are the same as the ones of Boris Stefanov (Q6397749). Thanks in advance, Korg (talk) 00:21, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

It is a synonym to Quercus cerris. --Termininja (talk) 18:07, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, thank you! After some search, the given name of the author in the Spanish article was wrong, so I've corrected it (sources: [4], [5]). I've also merged the Wikidata items. Kind regards, Korg (talk) 11:20, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Bot error 2015

Hello Termininja,

your bot added vandalism in 2015 [6]. I have removed it from the local Wikipedias.

Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 11:13, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Actually the vandalism was in enwiki and my bot just took the image from there. But ok, thanks :) --Termininja (talk) 20:06, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

spiders vs. arachnids

I'm curious why you changed the spider labels from "genus of spider"/"species of spider" to "genus of arachnid"/"species of arachnid"? "Spider" is both more specific and easier to understand. Kaldari (talk) 01:28, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Being specific is not necessarily desirable. The purpose of a "description" is disambiguation, to make it clear in what ballpark the item should be placed, that it is not, for example, a single by a popgroup. Being specific leads not only to many different descriptions, but also to many very poorly known ones. Using only the main groups keeps it simple, which surely is desirable. - Brya (talk) 03:55, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

In this case, I think "species of spider" is much better known than "species of arachnid". This is way we generally use descriptions like "species of bird" rather than "spceies of ornithurid". But of course whatever I suggest, you are going to disagree with. Kaldari (talk) 03:25, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Very likely, "spider" is better known than "arachnid", but that is not the point. It is the non-spider arachnids which are of concern here. It would be possible to split birds into who knows how many groups, some of which are well-known and some not so well-known. Being specific does not help the general reader, at all. - Brya (talk) 05:17, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Translation

Hello, for the translations of descriptions, your bot doesn't know the translation of "species of plant" in french. It's "espèce de plantes".

Thanks, I will let him know --Termininja (talk) 18:39, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Remove all the "fictional human" metadata descriptions, inserted by your bot, replace it by "fictional character" or manually by the "[title] character"

For example: https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q1245404&diff=prev&oldid=256400015 (where it's NOT EVEN A HUMAN AT ALL). SNAAAAKE!! (talk) 09:44, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Little problem with your bot from the past

Although a mistake has been made in the past, your bot wrote about a value that is a city in Eswatini is a "river" (see here). From here to there, I think that maybe it also occurred on other values. Please check your bot that he'll never do that mistake again. Thanks, Euro know (talk) 17:37, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

extinct species (Q237350) does not imply fossil taxon (Q23038290)

Hi Termininja,

please fix your current bot errors. --Succu (talk) 19:48, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Here your bot is removing a reference. --Succu (talk) 19:51, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

 Erledigt --Termininja (talk) 19:57, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't think this is done. --Succu (talk) 21:33, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Some example? I don't think there are some left updates with removed ref.. --Termininja (talk) 07:34, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

E.g. Jamaican monkey (Q1679834) has status extinct species (Q237350) but is not a fossil taxon (Q23038290). --Succu (talk) 11:29, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Hm, I thought that fossil taxon is used for both - fossil and extinct taxons, at least this is what is written in the item aliases. Is there some other item for extinct taxon, because when I select extinct taxon it redirects me to fossil taxon? --Termininja (talk) 13:38, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

An alias is a bad guide for actions. EN description is: „taxon described on the basis of fossil material“. The proper term is extant taxon (Q310891) „organism of taxon are still living or died out in Holocene“. Please revert your changes. --Succu (talk) 21:21, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

So, to understand that for all extinct in Holocene species the correct taxon is "extant taxon"? I'll check which of them are such and ill fix them.... But why this item is not used? --Termininja (talk) 11:10, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Maxlag

Please respect Maxlag. --Succu (talk) 22:36, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Q310890

Whether a taxon is monotypic depends on the classification used. Many taxa have changed that status repeatedly as classification systems change. It is better to describe something as instance of (P31) taxon (Q16521), because that will not change. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:15, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

User:BotNinja blocked

Your bot doesn't seem to be respecting mw:Manual:Maxlag and is editing too fast. Your bot appears to have been blocked for this already multiple times. Please fix your code and share link to the commit where you fixed your code so we can verify it. Multichill (talk) 16:34, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Multichill Can you recheck the logs again, because I even do at least 1 sec sleep between edits (how was suggested 4 years ago) --Termininja (talk) 16:44, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

That's not how it works. If the maxlag is too high your bot shouldn't be doing any edits at all. Multichill (talk) 17:02, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Just append maxlag=5 to every API request you do. If the lag is too high, you'll get an error like this one. Wait at least for the lag field (more is better) before attempting the same edit again. Multichill (talk) 17:26, 9 February 2020 (UTC)