User talk:The Rooster

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CONTRIB WATCHING

You probably already know this, but you've been added onto the contribution monitoring service. --DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION-- 14:49, 24 August 2009 (BST)

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If you're not wanting it overwritten by teh newbs you can get it protected. I've just tested it out and you can't overwrite a protected image as a regular user. -- C h e e s e 21:58, 25 August 2009 (BST)

Most excellent! To A/PT! --

Rooster Dragon

22:03, 25 August 2009 (BST)

Crazy EMRP idea

I'm sure you've been asked something along these lines before, but what are the odds you could create a bot that could analyze external military reports and update danger reports accordingly? So if say, Johnny posts a EMRP to be filed for Yagoton, and the bot sees the words "The Whatmore Building", it could use that section of the report (bounded by the ellipsis's on both sides) to update the building's Danger Report?--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 23:21, 28 August 2009 (BST)

I had been working on just such functionality a good while back, but then a bunch of users started recording manually (and they still are) so I focused on some other stuff instead. Guess I should probably think about finishing that off. --

Rooster Dragon

23:46, 28 August 2009 (BST)

That "bunch of users" is, for the most part, Kittithaj and myself =P all considered, a bot would be a real time saver, and would be less mistake prone.

Also, a bit more complicated, would it be possible to program a bot that can use the "serious collateral damage", "infrastructure intact", "only one building with power". etc. blurbs to infer status reports (on the multitude of 'unknown' buildings)?--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 23:54, 28 August 2009 (BST)

Is there enough information for that? I don't think you'd have enough to nail down a specific status for these buildings with any degree of certainty. Unlike named buildings which get a general status indicator and a horde (or lack thereof) report. --

Rooster Dragon

00:22, 29 August 2009 (BST)

My idea was for something that could just ball-park guess unknown staus reports off of the military.It would use the extreme infrastructure and power reports (and zombie counts) to make a logical guess at what the unknown, really-out-of-date reports were (i.e. EMRP states the suburb is "wrecked" and without power; therefore St. Phony Hospital, which has an unknown status and hasn't been updated in well over a month, is likely ruined). If this were to work, it would just replace reports marked 'unknown', since such a system would be a little too inaccurate to replace real reports. The way I see it, inferred reports, while far from ideal, would be better than a wall of unknowns. Am I making any sense?--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 01:10, 29 August 2009 (BST)

I guess you could get away with it for extremes. You'd need blanket ruined/intact though, otherwise you wouldn't have enough information about individual buildings. --

Rooster Dragon

01:23, 29 August 2009 (BST)

Yeah, I'll admit the idea's a bit of a stretch. All the same, the more extreme reports aren't particularily uncommon.--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 01:30, 29 August 2009 (BST)

Well, I'll see what I can come up with. Gotta get it working before we can consider having it guess at stuff, after all :P. --

Rooster Dragon

01:36, 29 August 2009 (BST)

Ok, just ran the thing on the backlog of reports. A good thing too, it seems the manual updating suddenly became much more patchy. Talk about timing. Anyway, I noticed a few minor errors I was able to patch on the fly. If you notice anything odd over the next few days and updates please shout. See the bot's log for a comprehensive list of changes.

One thing I spotted was that when logging reports, the bot posts a timestamp sans the timezone. It's actually always done this. Should I add the timestamp back in? I'd probably have to fix a lot of logs retroactively but guessing the timezone won't be a problem at least. On the bot's log I've already noticed the red links. The bot would update the disambiguated page but didn't record that name properly. I've fixed it so that fix should show up in the next record.

Also, I'm still working on the "horde building" functionality. That's when you get a report "maybe 20 zombies outside the Specific Building" which happens so rarely I didn't worry much about it. That and it requires a lot of extra code because it can be any building whereas the general building reports are limited to strategic buildings. I did make it so that if this building is also reported on again in general status, the reports would be combined, but this failed :P

All that said, things look pretty good. -- Rooster Dragon 22:35, 3 September 2009 (BST)

Well, so far, so good. From my experience the "horde building" reports are for the most part limited to hospitals and police departments, and generally say "a dozen" or "twenty". Considering that a lot of these buldings share the same name, I could see how it could become a problem.

Not sure if you noticed this or if it would even help, but I noticed specific buildings appear to have specific messages (A is reported "being held" when safe, B "power's on"). I might be wrong, but if this is the case it could come in handy.--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 02:18, 5 September 2009 (BST)

The reason I edit more recently is because Rat of Steel keeps editing a lot of bot-doable edits. And he make mistakes more than once, including a deletion of important suburb data. Despite the fact that I warned him twice about leaving those tiresome edits to our EMR bot and focusing on quality mistake-free edits, he ignores me and continues to add more of them, making mistakes along the way. I even suspect he is another bot himself, because his edit pattern is very repetitive, and he never replies back any comments and criticisms. So, to prevent more damage, I take the matter in my own hands and edit those things before he does.

Anyway, the new bot feature is good. So it lessen my and Red Hawk One's works updating those buildings manually. Things that can be automated furthermore are blanket reports like "infrastructure looks intact" and "the whole suburb is wrecked." Even "only Specific Building with power" can still be automated (for the said building, but not anywhere else.) The same thing can be done for "being held", "lights are on." Even just the word "definitely..." can be added as ruined (because it always follows by "...fallen.") Still, many fuzzy details need human ingenuity to deal with.

For the horde building, as far as I can remember, all of them are important strategic buildings. So, no need to worry about unimportant buildings that have no danger reports (you've removed them all, right?) And even if such a case comes up, can't you just order the bot to skip it? And the duplicate names aren't going to be a problem. Because the name of the suburb is always right there at the beginning of the report. It won't be too hard to add it to make a specific report on said suburb's building.

And, this is a very minor detail, but malls don't use "ruined" in their danger reports, but the bot reports fallen mall that way. I do understand that "in zombie hands" needs visual confirmation of the zombie number inside. And people sometimes add wrong tags as well. So, if it's to much of a bother, you don't need to fix it. -- Kittithaj 11:20, 5 September 2009 (BST)

a/sd category usage

I was watching you tag some templates with template:speedydelete, I was wondering, any way to template that category category:Speedy Deletion Candidates onto the Speedy Deletion Queue permanently so pages with speedydelete template can be reviewed through a/sd? --DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION-- 16:50, 29 August 2009 (BST)

Transplant A/SD onto the category page. Then the listing appears at the end. I know of no method to directly transclude category members. See what the other wiki has to say on the matter. --

Rooster Dragon

16:56, 29 August 2009 (BST)