User talk:ForteTuba

Hey- I saw your edit at Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee, and was surprised to see that you had never been welcomed yourself! Please accept my welcome below. :o) Also, it's great to see a fellow tuba player on the project- assuming I'm not extrapolating too much from your user name, of course.

---

Hello ForteTuba! My name is Eric, and it is my pleasure to be the first to welcome you to Wikipedia! I hope you will decide to stay a long time and help us continue to make this one of the greatest sites on the world wide web. Here are a few useful links for you to explore:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

In addition to that great wealth of knowledge, let me offer you this advice: do what you enjoy! If you enjoy contributing to sports articles, do so! If you like to correct typoes (...), write new articles, find better ways to organize articles, make useful templates, work on projects with others, or even welcome new members, do so! A happy member of our community is a productive member of our community. You can read all of the above links to the last word, or you can jump right into editing. Be bold!

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have the need to sign a page without the time and date, you can use three tildes (~~~). If you have any questions that aren't easily found with the above links, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question. Once again, welcome to Wikipedia and enjoy!

EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 17:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.- If you'd like to introduce yourself to the community and perhaps get a question or two answered in the process, drop us a line at the new user log.

Hi ForteTuba, thanks for the note of encouragement left on my talk page, and sorry for the slow reply. I do keep my finger on the pulse and I do intend to work on more articles, its just that at present I am just too darn busy on non-Wikipedia work. Regards Phaedrus86 12:05, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi ForteTuba, Thanks for lefting a note on User:Da Vinci talk page, actually this's my account which I created when I forgot the password for my first account here, Mido then forgot also Mido ar :S, then finally I managed to find out Mido ar's pass and it was better for me to choose this one to use, as for the articles, I won't make much work here indeed but I'll concentrate on Egyptian related articles, I'm currently a sysop on the Arabic wikipedia which needs alot of work now. any further comments, I'd be happy to receive it on my talk page --Mido 01:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, thanks. The bunnies were mostly absent this year, it's a pretty busy time for everyone around the house, but thanks for the well-wishes. -- ForteTuba 12:46, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestions, they are pretty accurate! I had an idea for a helpful tool and you seemed like just the guy to help me figure out if its feasible. Wikipedia has 40,000+ articles without categories, adding the categories is a slow manual process. I was thinking that by examining the links on the page a "reccomended categories" list could be built that would then allow a human user to simply pick the best ones. What do you think, is it feasible, and if so think it would be fast enough to be usefull? -Ravedave 17:48, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet that they're useful. As for the categories: yes, I think it would not be hard to come up with at least reasonable candidate categories. The DB keeps a list of page links and of category links that would be pretty handy. No idea on speed; things are pretty slow on our copy here and I haven't been able to get access to the toolserver.

Here's a little something-something that appears to suggest reasonable categories for Agder. The basic idea is to find all the pages that Agder links to, count the categories that _those_ pages link to, and present a list of the most common categories. You can add a limit clause to the query to only show, say, the top 5 or 10 categories for a page. You might also want to look at pages that link _to_ the page in question, but I don't have a jiffy query for that.

mysql>  select cl_to, count(cl_to) c from categorylinks, pagelinks, page p1, page p2 where
cl_from=p1.page_id and p1.page_title=pl_title and p1.page_namespace=0 and p2.page_namespace=0 and
pl_from=p2.page_id and p2.page_title="Agder" group by cl_to order by c desc;
+-----------------------------+---+
| cl_to                       | c |
+-----------------------------+---+
| Counties_of_Norway          | 2 |
| Districts_of_Norway         | 2 |
| Marshall_County,_Minnesota  | 1 |
| Townships_in_Minnesota      | 1 |
| Districts                   | 1 |
| Minnesota                   | 1 |
| States_of_the_United_States | 1 |
| Regions_of_Norway           | 1 |
+-----------------------------+---+

And for "Bathtub curve"

mysql>  select cl_to, count(cl_to) c from categorylinks, pagelinks, page p1, page p2 where
cl_from=p1.page_id and p1.page_title=pl_title and p1.page_namespace=0 and p2.page_namespace=0 and
cl_from=p2.page_id and p2.page_title="Bathtub_curve" group by cl_to order by c desc;
+-------------------------+---+
| cl_to                   | c |
+-------------------------+---+
| Failure                 | 1 |
| Reliability_engineering | 1 |
+-------------------------+---+

That ran reasonably fast. There are a few bots listed on the bots page that appear to do some kinds of category work; I'd say this is closer to Nickj's LinkBot that puts suggested links on an article's talk page. Posting a list of suggested categories on talk pages could maybe get a lot of them done fast.

I think your idea is good and feasible. My wikipedia dump is going on 3 months old (they fail a lot) so I'd hesitate to run it myself. (I'm also trying to finish a dissertation, so I'm not looking for new projects.) Maybe you might put a copy/pointer to this on the bot requests page and see if someone who has access and a little free time bites. -- ForteTuba 21:32, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome,Thanks! I think I can write the bot/tool. I just needed to know how to go about figuring out which categories to present. Maybe I can work something out with Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser to make a nice front end. I think if I downloaded the DB dump and ran this query on page missing categories and then presented text files for the AWB tool it just might work-Ravedave 22:15, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, I hope you make use of it. If you do, and you remember, let me know how it works. AWB looks kind of neat, thanks for the pointer. -- ForteTuba 23:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rich Farmbrough suggested that your bot might solicit interested parties to provide references for this article which has none, save the one I added last night. Thanks.--Beth Wellington 00:35, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alas, not quite. If the article is tagged with the unreferenced or Primarysources tags, then next time the bot updates its lists of articles needing work, it will become willing to suggest it to users. However, it will only do so if a user comes along and requests suggestions, and the article comes up as one of the ones they're most likely to be willing to edit.

It would be interesting to write something that could suggest the most likely people to edit a given article, especially with a reasonable social mechanism for asking people. (Suggestbot works on-demand only these days; pushing suggestions out unsolicited didn't work very well.) But, it would be reasonably hard to modify it to do this and I've got other fish frying, so it seems unlikely I'll make those changes soon.

I'd say the most direct approach would be to add it to Template:Opentask but there's no category listed there for articles that need sources. If the article could have another tag added, you could list the article under that tag. The lists on that template are rebuilt by a different bot every 24 hours or so but it would be a way for you to get your request in front of a bunch of eyes on the Community Portal. More info about Opentask is available on its page.

Sorry I can't be direct help with the bot, good luck in your quest. -- ForteTuba 04:06, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was aware this was the opposite direction to the bot's normal way of working - that's why I described it as a "challenge" to Beth... Re the tags looked for, would it be a good idea to look for the {{fact}} template as well? Rich Farmbrough 17:53 19 April 2006 (UTC).

It uses the code from the Pearle bot to download categories, so whatever templates are attached to a given category page are included in the list. So, for example, the Merge category includes any articles tagged with the tags listed at the top of the category page. -- ForteTuba 20:12, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at my list of suggested articles, I noticed that a lot of them weren't actually that relevant to me. My guess it's mostly because I don't focus in one specific area, and I've done a lot of vandalism reversion, maintenance work, etc. Might it be possible for the bot to ignore certain edits based on edit summaries? For example, any edit done with the rollback tool, or any edit with the phrase "reverted", "rv", or "rvv" should probably be ignored. Also, it might ignore edits if many of them contain the exact same edit summary; when doing maintenance work, I cut-and-paste edit summaries to each article. Thanks a lot for your work, in any event- it's not perfect, but it's a great tool. Ral315 (talk) 17:29, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, one other thing; before posting, you might check whether pages have become redlinks or (possibly) redirects since the last database dump. Ral315 (talk) 17:35, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's stupid about redirects and only updates which pages are in which categories twice a month. In a perfect world this would be better. rv edits are ignored -- I hadn't thought about the looking for repetitive tasks as a way to eliminate irrelevant edits, that's a pretty good idea that I'll have to ponder on. As you say, people who do a lot of vandalism reversion look like they're interested in everything, especially controversial stuff. Thanks for the feedback. -- ForteTuba 17:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I tried to send you an email at cosley at umn.edu and it bounced? How do i just send you a message instead of editing this page? JohnLeonard

It's cosley at cs.umn.edu -- try that and see if it works for you. -- ForteTuba 02:12, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

nice work on suggest bot- Moondisaster 18:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC) Hi Thanks for sending the SuggestBot stuff - Yes, it was fun. I've prepared some feedback for you, in case it's helpful. Please visit User:Ballista/SuggestBot. I would be grateful for feedback on the feedback, if you have time - just stick it on User talk:Ballista or on the User:Ballista/SuggestBotpage. Good health and fortune. Ballista 06:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC) Just came back to correct misprint & to say 'Hi!'. Ballista 17:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

hi well it would be nice if we could start our own clubs on wikipedia so can u make a template bot like an animation that you choose an image or upload one. Then choose the backround and what it says. thanks please make this bot- Moondisaster 18:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC) Hello! I'm a Persian Wikipedian and I wanna build a robot, but I like to build a one in English Wikipedia. So Can you help to make a bot step by step??? Thanks a lot! --MehranVB 17:07, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to be able to help you out very much, unfortunately, because I am short on time. You might start with |software on the WP:B page, which has some links out to other projects. I used Pearle for some guidance and functionality. Sorry I can't be more specific/helpful. -- ForteTuba 00:16, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for the note :) I'm abroad for a while so I cannot contribute much right no, but I'll do my best after I come back. --Windom 07:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A great idea, but how often does it get updated? I'm waiting to get my stuff! --Quentin Smith 18:07, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's grinding through the most recent dump right now. I'm hoping it's done tonight or tomorrow, and that I can post some suggestions on the weekend. -- ForteTuba 18:19, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done, finally, at least enough to use. Tonight when things are slower on WP I'll post some. -- ForteTuba 14:01, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Must say I appreciated the suggestions. A great contribution. Cheers -- Samir धर्म 02:09, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, glad you liked them, and thanks for the note. -- ForteTuba 14:00, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of a automated service which gives you ideas on what to improve and edit. I can never think of anything, so I'm always editing the exact same articles, and things have been slow in those articles. I haven't even gotten the suggestions yet and I already think this service is brilliant, that it should be fully approved and upgraded as a Wikipedia Tool, and that you ForteTuba, should get the Brilliant Idea Barnstar! Unfortunately I'm not an admistrator, you you'll have to settle for my good-will. But hey, that's worth... something... User:Radman622 17:05, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I notice from a random Google search that you wrote on Doownyl32's talk page in February asking "Could you make some new contributions soon to help make Wikipedia better?".

I suggest you read this Cherwell article:

http://www.cherwell.org/st_annes_student_killed_by_train

The only first-year (as of December) PPE student here to have a particular interest in trains was the Wikipedia described in the Cherwell article.

Stannered 12:04, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh, thanks for the note. -- ForteTuba 14:00, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea by the way, but I'm just wondering how long it takes for the bot to give me a suggestion, it processed my request nearly half a month ago... Thanks again for the service :) Bronzey 08:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it just doesn't like redirects of talk pages. Thanks for the note, I posted some suggestions manually. -- ForteTuba 01:49, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whee, great. Thanks for the suggestions, and yeah, I knew when I changed username this sorta stuff was gonna happen... Thanks again. Bronzey 04:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am glad you created suggestbot. I was just thinking of creating the same thing recently, but did not think it would turn out to work very well, so I am glad you've done it. Great idea. It is great to see other Minnesotans on Wikipedia. False Prophet 03:20, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, not Minnesotan for long -- moving on to Cornell it looks like. It only works okay, it could use better algorithms that I hope to work on after finishing a dissertation, but I'm glad you think it's a good idea. -- ForteTuba 01:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just got my recommendations thanks. !! I did not think about the potential problems associated with the redirect of my talk page from User talk:Daycd. Thanks for going manual :-) David D. (Talk) 17:34, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, not a problem. Someday SuggestBot will get smarter about things like redirects -- it's not at all obvious it's your responsibility to think about how talk redirects break other people's stuff. Hope they turn out to be useful. -- ForteTuba 19:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much, it looks like I'll be having some fun with Irish politics for a while! :) Snoutwood (talk) 01:53, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And, who wouldn't? Glad they're useful. -- ForteTuba 19:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly, you have my permission to use my userpage. I try to just keep it simple and with items of utility. I don't see it as a big deal, but you are certainly free to use it. --DanielCD 03:21, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet, thanks for the permission -- ForteTuba 13:00, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah! :D That would be cool! I don't mind it at all. What is it on, out of interest? Let me know. Cheers -- Garykirk | ^talk! 08:38, 22 June 2006 08:38, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've been working on how community software can encourage people to contribute more to the maintenance and upkeep of communities. "Upkeep" = building community-specific databases, doing moderation, welcoming new folks, etc., though most of what I've actually studies has been the first: building up a movie database at movielens.umn.edu and working on articles here in WP. Part of the thesis deals with studying how and why editorial review works, and why open review like Wikipedia still produces good results; the other part is about matching people with maintenance tasks they'd like to do (a la SuggestBot). I'm really looking forward to being done with the thesis process and having more time to poke at SuggestBot. It's been a lot of fun working on it (and hearing from people who contribute on WP.) Thanks for the permission, I'll send a link or something when done if you're interested. -- ForteTuba 13:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How do I get SuggestBot to give me suggestion of articles that I may be able to edit?--Sean gorter 10:34, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Go to User:SuggestBot/Requests. -- ForteTuba 00:34, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dan! I just wanted to let you know that your work here is greatly appreciated. On that note, it is my honor to award you this barnstar. The da Vinci Barnstar (named of course after the inventor, etc., Leonardo da Vinci) is awarded to those who have enhanced Wikipedia through their technical work, especially exceptional work in programming and bot building. Feel free to copy/move this barnstar to your user page to show it off (you deserve it). Congratulations! EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 20:38, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, thanks for that. It's been fun, hopefully will continue to be fun. -- ForteTuba 17:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just ran across a SuggestBot edit to a user talk page on my watchlist, and I read the "user" page for it. I have an idea that I've been kicking around in the back of my head for a while now, and I think you might be an appropriate person to mention it to.

I'm a software engineer specializing in automated processing of digital images, primarily bitonal document images, and as such, I use a lot of simple, heuristic based AI to analyze images looking for certain features. A big part of this is coming up with confidence measures, so the algorithm can provide some indication of how much data it had to work with, and how consistent and reliable the result is likely to be.

It occurred to me a while back that a similar technique could be used to analyze Wikipedia articles to generate a "goodness" factor. What I would consider to be "good" would be:

• Stability. Not a lot of large edits in the recent past, and a certain minimum age.
• Wide contribution base. A larger number of contributors--even if most were minor edits, those editors correcting typos implicitly approved of the page content.
• Reliability of editors. Look for at least some editors with significant edit counts, over a long period of time--this should indicate a fairly accepted user and someone whose judgement is more likely to be good.

Those things can be seen just by looking at the article history, and the contribution history of editors, both of which are globally available. If admin priveleges are available, there's more:

• Watchlist count. A page on a large number of watchlists will be fixed quickly if vandalized.
• Block logs. If a page is stable because it's blocked, that indicates that the content is still subject to debate and might not be in a good state, even though it would show as widely contributed to and stable.

Obviously, being heuristic based it would mark some "good" articles as not good--articles about current events, for example, are going to change significantly on a day-by-day basis. Also, it might mark some bogus or POV articles as good, if they are obscure and only edited by a small group of creators (or one creator and his collection of sock puppets). I realize there are wetware committees to do just this sort of thing, but the ones I have seen are topic oriented, and so will only cover a small number of articles. A software 'bot could always be backed by a committee--heck, combine it with the SuggestBot to pass out the good/bad ratings to likely experts who could verify the ratings.

Let me know what you think. I've not had any experience writing Wikibots, so I have no idea if this is practical or not, but the SuggestBot certainly makes it seem like it a "rater-bot" could be done. scot 21:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like an interesting thing to do in general. There has been some research on this: see the Lih and Stvilia articles at meta:Wiki_Research_Bibliography. Lih is more like your idea; Stvilia uses a lot of article features. Using the ratings to help decide what needs work (and what might be a candidate for a featured article) as you say could be cool. -- ForteTuba 12:26, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Lih's approach is similar (meta-data based), and one assumes a bit better researched :). I've not really had any dealings with featured articles, but you're right, anything that a "rater-bot" rates highly would be a good FAC. So where does one go to find details on implementing a bot? Maybe I should look into that, and see what it would take.

Actually, I wasn't that excited about the Lih article, but your idea reminded me enough of it to mention it. As for starting a bot, for this particular one you might not even need a bot. You could probably download the full dump file from http://download.wikipedia.org/enwiki/20060702/ and get started with that -- it has edit histories, etc. See meta:Data_dumps for info about dumps and processing them. We have a (slow) program that processes the dump file to pull out information about who has edited what. That program is a hog, and you might have more luck using the mwdumper program from the data dumps page, and customizing its output to give you exactly what you want.

Once you have the data you could have the program spit out a list of possibly interesting articles and manually post it to an appropriate place like whoever nominated featured articles. If you didn't want to deal with dump processing, you could probably write a little script to grab an article's text and its edit history, and use that to get started. You might still want the dump, though---it could be cool to compute a score not just for articles, but for editors, and use the editor score to weight their contributions to an article's quality.

Finally, you might want to check the bots page and articles linked from it to see if anyone is working on a similar project and get together with them. I don't know off the top of my head, I'm just doing my own thing here.

And, BTW, I got my first list of suggestions from the SuggestBot; I've already filled out one stub article (riot gun) and I was already in the process of gathering references for a re-write of teflon coated bullet, which was also recommended (teflon is actually peripheral to the issue, it's the core material that matters). scot 16:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet, glad it was able to do some useful work for you. -- ForteTuba 16:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The headline means that your bot is not ready for trophy yet. Just a teeny question, what is the meaning of Wikify?

Check out Category:Articles_that_need_to_be_wikified for more information, but basically it means to convert an article from, say, HTML, to wiki markup, including things like adding links to other articles. -- ForteTuba 12:14, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can't wait for my first set of SuggestBot ideas :) I've looked at a bunch of bots people have done and they seem like highly useful things as well as being fun to work on. I have not, however, had any luck at all finding information on how one goes about creating them. Can you point me to some good references on how to create a bot? I have done some programming in a variety of languages including perl. Thanks (and good luck on your dissertation!) (PS Can you cc your reply to my Talk page? Thanks!) Bookgrrl 18:27, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Replied on talk page. -- ForteTuba 12:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the welcome and encouragement to contribute. Appreciated! Rickety 03:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing. There's a whole world of people underneath the articles and it goes pretty well with the contributing. Enjoy. -- ForteTuba 12:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello & thanks for taking a look at my feedback on my two forays into SuggestBot (I'm sorry I've been very slow dealing with the latest list). I assume you found my sub-page: User:Ballista/SuggestBot. As for more detailed feedback, I'm not sure. I don't know why some articles are suggested at all or, do I remember, does it throw in the odd 'random' one for fun? I don't know how to provide 'higher-level' feedback, as I'm not quite sure what you mean. One thing I could ask, though, is is there any way in which a User's stated interests (from User page if stated) could be incorporated, in the selection parameters? To say that I'm frustrated at the POV going on is an understatement. I believe WP needs these articles but needs the POV like a rampant software virus in its main server! What's with these guys? Anything that breaks out of the mainstream mould appears to generate rampant opposition from those who like the security of the establishment umbrella. Some of the Che CAM folk appear to be unable to write in such a way that makes no claims or implied claims. I've offered to do a 'strictly neutral' article on homeopathy, on several occasions, but I've been told 'not necessary'. - Ballista 03:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have updated this page, on several occasions, during the interim. - Ballista 19:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for creating SuggestBot!

Thanks, and you're welcome. It was fun (and useful to me too, so, all good). -- ForteTuba 12:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I just found an edit from User:SuggestBot on a user's talk page, and I read up on this for the first time. I think it's a really cool idea! I'd offer help if I knew perl, but I don't. Anyways, great idea! BigNate37_(T) 02:14, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, suggestbot is a really cool tool. It is esspecially useful when you are out of ideas, and dont know what to edit. Thanks for this awsome tool. Great work, ForteTuba!-- thunderboltz^{a.k.a.Deepu Joseph |TALK}14:38, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the support. Hopefully I keep pushing it and it gets better, but I'm glad some people find it useful as-is. -- ForteTuba 12:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ForteTuba: I saw that your "SuggestBot" makes sophisticated use of databases on other computers and other tricks. I am doing an article on thermodynamic temperature. Note the first animation. I am currently working with Davidson College to develop a GIF-based animation that has greater frame rate that what you currently see. However, the source for the animation is actually an applet. You can see that applet in operation, here. Do you know how to make an applet run on Wikipedia? Please respond at my user page. Greg L 22:31, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you decide to become a more active contributor again. Feel free to drop me a line on my talk page. -- ForteTuba 03:05, 25 February 2006 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dev_Bhikar"

I am unlikely to further contribute to Wikipedia until I see reasons to trust its independence. For further explantion see my comments 2 September 2006 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Prem_Rawat

Dev Bhikar

Hey, this is Free-encyclopedia. A few days ago, I put my name on the SuggestBot list. I got it for the first time today, and it is great! A really superb WikiInvention you have here. Hey, I just created a word! WikiInvention! Anyway, can you just leave a message on my talk page to show you got the message? I would also enjoy hearing how you invented SuggestBot.Free-encyclopedia 22:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Something broke or did my name get removed? -- Ipstenu (talk|contribs) 18:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what happened. It normally only makes one set of suggestions per request. I'll put your name on the list, since it sounds like you want suggestions. If that's wrong, then sorry for the suggestions you're about to receive. :)

Very impressive work on Suggestbot, the suggestions it gave me were good. --Tom 10:47, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nice, glad that you were able to use them. Feel free to come back and get more sometime. -- ForteTuba 12:38, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dan, thanks for dropping me a line. I haven't been more active lately because I've been deployed to Iraq since January.

I've noticed that "Suggestbot" was located on the community portal, and it had this neat little link going to your userpage. Now, I was wondering in grief why the word "spiffy" (NOT the artist or whatever) is not in wikipedia. I thought that someone would have added it by now, so is there a particular reason for this? Thanks, --Fudgegirl1995 21:33, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, thanks for the implication that SB is spiffy. It's a nice and underused adjective that apparently lives over in wiktionary. -- ForteTuba 00:54, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello ForteTuba,

I need your help in resolving this matter. User:Power_level_(Dragon_Ball) is being uncivil on his talk page toward User:Someguy0830. I have added a warning, and he wants me to remove it (User_talk:Yuser31415). Could you please look into this and say what you think? Yuser31415 ^{talk|contribs} 21:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Already resoluted now :) Yuser31415 ^{talk|contribs} 00:28, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. Sorry I didn't reply -- I don't actually log on and check things out that much except to keep SuggestBot running. -- ForteTuba 00:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm interested in your suggestbot function. Could you perhaps run the bot on me to see what comes up. I'm always looking for new opportunities to contribute to wikipedia. JE.at.UWO^U|_T 23:12, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just drop your name at User:SuggestBot/Requests and you'll get some next time I run it. -- ForteTuba 13:28, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where the ll3H did suggest Bot get those articles? I do not have a clue as to what was in its brain. None of those articles I have a clue about what to do with them. Please help me out here!--Ælfwine 19:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the only main namespace edit you have listed is the article [Veni, vidi, vici] -- not a lot of data for it to go on, so it spewed garbage. It might be cleverer if it said "oh, by the way, this was based on just one article edited," so thanks for letting me know just how bad it was. -- ForteTuba 19:11, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wish you a very merry Thanksgiving! Hope you and your family have a magnificent day! So, what are you thankful for? Hooray and happy gormandiziŋ! --Randfan please talk talk to me!

Have a great day! Please respond on my talk page (the red "fan" link in my signature). Cheers! :) —Randfan!!

Hey, I had you use suggestbot. It suggested axpansion on the Prince (musician) page. The page for Prince, however, is already overly, and stupidly, long. I don't know how you program it, but I'm pretty sure it didn't warrant expansion at all.

Most likely it found a tag on the page that said that someone wanted it to be expanded -- it uses the tags people mark articles with to decide what needs work. It might have just been a section that wanted expanding. -- ForteTuba 01:04, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, i'm contacting you as operator of SuggestBot. I was just wondering, is SuggestBot opt-in? Has it passed approval? Just a warning that my second bot ran some test during its bot approval process and performed a similar function to yours - it was not opt-in and some users left surprisingly vehement feedback about the fact they considered such bots to be "spam". Just a warning that if this bot is not opt-in you might be laying yourself open to attack. Cheers - PocklingtonDan 18:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is opt-in, too bad some folks weren't so excited. At first I picked who got suggestions and that didn't work so well. -- ForteTuba 01:07, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestions from the Bot - they were really good and in line with my interests, so it seems to work fine. --Screensaver 20:22, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet, glad it was able to do you some good. -- ForteTuba 18:59, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SuggestBot is wonderful. Thank you. --Meno25 04:40, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Me too, I'm very happy with the list I got - even the subjects I hadn't heard of! Totnesmartin 19:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'm a fan of praise and helping people out too. -- ForteTuba 19:00, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From SuggestBots talkpage:

I signed up for SuggestBot and it worked. My name is still on the list. Is that ok and will I keep getting suggestions? WikiMan53 T/C e@ 21:19, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Respond on my talk page please

Responded on talk page. -- ForteTuba 18:59, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi ForteTube: please resubmit your bot request with the proper formatting (and a new subpage) as is detailed at WP:BRFA. This helps with recordkeeping so we ask that all users follow the procedure. Your original requested is below. Thanks! —Mets501 (talk) 22:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:SuggestBot currently helps people find articles they might want to edit, based on their previous edits. I'm looking to go in and do a substantial rewrite to fix some known flaws, and while I do this I would also like to expand its scope of recommendations to include categories, WikiProjects, and other Wikipedians that a person might wish to interact with. SuggestBot would continue to run semi-manually. New features run on a limited, experimental basis at first to judge their effects on people's behavior, and to make sure bad things (like it only recommending a few people to everybody) don't happen. -- ForteTuba 16:25, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok. -- ForteTuba 14:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please activate the bot to complete the requests at: User:SuggestBot/Requests. Thnx. --Foundby 18:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can your bot make a list of all Judaism/Israel related articles tagged for for cleanup? Best frummer 02:52, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

perhaps you're also interested in our research into new user trends. Check out Category:WelcomeBotResearch Cheers. frummer 02:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could Suggestbot be modified to suggest articles for tagging(stubs,starts, etc.)? We could use it in the military history project and among our task forces. Wandalstouring 17:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SuggestBot itself, no, because you would need some way to decide whether articles need work. This could be done -- look at measurable characteristics of articles that already have work tags, and then train some machine learning algorithm to predict whether new articles should have those tags -- but it's not SuggestBot's thing. It would be an interesting coding project, though, for someone who is more into AI and has a little more time than I do. -- ForteTuba 19:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi ForteTube; I was just curious: how's this task coming along? —Mets501 (talk) 18:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Slowly. I recruited a couple of students to help with re-coding it but it's going to be one of those long grinding processes it looks like. Thanks for checking up. -- ForteTuba 19:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that other users may have asked you this before but could you please make a separate list for users who would like to receive suggested articles they might like to edit from SuggestBot periodically? --Meno25 02:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I will do this. I was hoping to do it as part of a grand rebuilding, but that's going slow. Look for it in a week or so. -- ForteTuba 19:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A reply has been posted. Regards, Navou ^banter 14:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

hey, congrats on the bot work, i really like it! --'•Tbone55•^{(Talk) (Contribs) (UBX) (autographbook)} 03:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet, always nice to hear from folks who get something out of what I do. -- ForteTuba 19:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some people from the spanish wikipedia are interested about your bot. How feasible would it be to get it there? Is the code available? Would it be difficult to run a copy or localize it? Can you ping me back? -- Drini 17:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

please? a yes or no? -- Drini 22:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I've been sick and travelling. Right now it would be pretty much a disaster to try to run; it's not good at extended alphabets and has been cobbled together from a million parts and is partly manual. So the short-term answer is no. I have some students working on reimplementing, and I will ask them to do a better job with unicode than I did, but it will take some time. -- ForteTuba 19:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Your paper (in Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies) in really is not "Available at the ACM digital library", since I don't have password to read papers in this library. -- AKA MBG 13:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'll be putting up a preprint that's more accessible soon. Here's a temporary link. -- ForteTuba 16:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much AKA MBG 11:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet, thank you for that. It's always nice to be recognized... just wish I had more time to make it even better, but I'm glad you're a fan. -- ForteTuba 18:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How do I sign up for your SuggestBot? I can't find anything on there saying how to get it's messages. Thanks. --ASDFGHJKL=Greatest Person Ever+Coolest Person Ever 18:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Go to User:SuggestBot/Requests; you can sign up there. -- ForteTuba 18:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just got my first SuggestBot recommendations. Not Bad at all! Congratulations on a great tool!Muchris 14:06, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Recently, Suggestbot listed in my talk page a couple of articles related to some German-British Royal families. It is very weird to me, I never expressed any interests in this old-fashioned topic before (apart from adding few info today to a Rick Wakeman's record):

Could it be becouse of my recent posts at Talk:Tangerine Dream]? Nah...Doktor Who 20:42, 12 April 2007 (UTC) (originally posted on 18:06, 10 April 2007)[reply]

Hi ForteTuba
Here is a barnstar, you really earned it. You did an amazing job on developing and implementing the profiling algorithm
Best regards and happy editing
Mads Angelbo ^{Talk / Contribs} 07:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you aren't annoyed by this, but, I put a request for suggestions on your bot talk, and nothing has happed yet. So I am requesting suggestions here. Sir intellegent - smartr tahn eaver!!!! 16:08, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations! —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 22:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You could put SuggestBot on other wikis, for example we could use one here.Drahcir^{my talk}_{get my skin} 01:16, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this username would be SuggestBot's worst nightnare, since it has trouble handling usernames with non-latin characters. ~ Magnus animuM ^{Brain Freeze!} 16:34, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! you and your bot are doing great!Arnon Chaffin ^{Got a message?} 14:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

		The Wikipedia Bot Builder Award
		Here is an award for being the only one with the common sense to make a robot that suggests things for people to do. Powerfulmind please talk to me! look at all of my edits! 11:14, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! How do I get a fresh list from SuggestBot? Zephyrad 19:28, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can sign up again on User:SuggestBot/Requests, or if you want them on a recurring basis, on User:SuggestBot/Regulars. -- ForteTuba 13:55, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		I would like to recognize the creation of SuggestBot(Probably for the 8,000th time). Keep up the awesome work!! •Malinaccier• 22:50, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		For creating and maintaining SuggestBot, one of the most useful bots on the project, and one that actually helps improve content (rather then speedy tagging it), I award you this barnstar. Use it well! Giggy\Talk 06:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dan, Just wanted to tell that I enjoyed the talk at UIUC today. I've been an admin in English-Wikipedia for the last 2 years, and am also a bureaucrat at the Bengali wikipedia. I've been doing quantitative studies of WP articles, and if you are interested, I can share some of my findings on the readability analysis.

Thanks. --Ragib 18:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs Varsity Blues (film) Vest-Agder Triton Fountain Sørlandet Roy Eldridge Contra-alto flute Chord substitution SNDMSG Vlkolínec Ben Pollack Substitute (song) Contra-alto clarinet Clout Substitute (cricket) Constant factor rule in integration Axis system Kjotve the Rich Želary Nordmøre

Cleanup Cathedral diagram Proto-Germanic Definition of music Merge Tetrachord Crystal gazing Smash Mouth Add Sources Petty kingdom Solør Bratislava Castle Wikify Ľudovít Štúr Interior design Fenni Expand Neolithic architecture Polaris Industries Cell microprocessor

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from ForteTuba, SuggestBot's caretaker.

P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot 01:57, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that this is the right page to talk you..... I applaud you encouraging other people to contribute more. It is an excellent idea to make specific suggestions of things to work on. I think some of the new editors feel intimidated. The SuggestBot is a big help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Strafidlo (talk • contribs)

Thanks... I wish it were easier to help newer editors find it. The original goal was to target it at newer folks, but it definitely mostly gets used by old hands. -- ForteTuba (talk) 17:45, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am a somewhat new user and I have just stumbled accross your bot. I can't comment on it yet because the next cycle hasn't run but it sounds like a great idea. Also, as a new user I am noticing certian things that might make it easier to become an editor that by the time I learn how to fix them I won't remember to need them anymore. I eventually hope to start a "New User project" that will have things such as annotated indexes of list of syntax, useful tools, FAQs, and general wiki concepts presented in a reference/welcome format that can be used by the average web user, this a subpage of mine that hopefully will become the to do list for this project, contributions gladly accepted: User:Eoag/new
Eoag (talk) 22:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I removed my name from the list a while back, but am still getting messages from it. Why? Davnel03 20:57, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It was still there just now, on the User:SuggestBot/Regulars page under the once a month section. I just re-removed it, sorry about the confusion. -- ForteTuba 21:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Thank You. Davnel03 21:04, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

May I Suggest Archiving your and Suggest bot's talk page. they are very lengthy and and messy. A information can be found here. Thank you in advanced! Compwhiz II 23:28, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I know it's a norm, it's just a really low priority item for me -- my WP time is all about running SuggestBot right now. -- ForteTuba (talk) 17:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi at first thanks a lot for your cool idea. I talked about SuggestBot in de.wikipedia and some people were quite impressed. So is it possible running this bot there as well? If so, what do you need in advance (translated message strings etc...)? If not why not (so that we maybe can help solving the problem)... Cheers, Arnomane 19:38, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right now, no. It does a whole lot of really messy pre-processing of database dumps, and messes up unicode characters in the process, so it's of limited use on non-english wikipedias. I want to reimplement (actually, was contacted by some folks at Wikia) in a way that assumes direct access to the database, even if it has to do some occasional processing of that. It was sad -- at one point I had more time to work on this and kept trying to get a toolserver account. That would have been perfect for fixing up, but my request was ignored a couple of times and I gave up. Now, not so much time. -- ForteTuba (talk) 17:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Sad to hear that you had such bureaucratic troubles. This tool would be a perfect match for the toolserver (direct database access and such). I just talked to de:Benutzer:DaB. the main toolserver admin and he said that he didn't notice any request from you. Where did you try to ask for an account? At the central page on meta:Toolserver/New_accounts I couldn't find anything. So just enter some words there at meta and I am confident that DaB. will give you an account quickly. In case you need some help, let me know maybe I can organize it (for example de:Benutzer:Duesentrieb is a toolserver database wizard, although he does not have much time right now he maybe can give you some hints on tools <-> database). Keep up the good work. Arnomane (talk) 19:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't get any messages from SuggestBot! It is probably broken! Kubek15 - Talk, Userboxes, Contributions 11:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi youre Suggest bot is really cool i was just wondering if it would be possible to set it up for parisitic twins and conjoinded twins for User:Iamsocool!. Thanks.  Sunderland06  17:14, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Any ideas.  Sunderland06  22:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• I blocked SuggestBot preventatively, since it was just putting that notice on everyone's talk page that it couldn't find anything, sans header and sans signature. I only did it do it could be looked into and we wouldn't have more useless notices being posted. If the problem is fixed I have no problem unblocking. (i only did it for 24 hours anyway so it could be looked into) Wizardman 22:25, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks for doing that. I'll check it out. Sigh. -- ForteTuba (talk) 15:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs Vlkolínec Axis system History of the Arab Peoples Chord substitution Prentice Alvin Hildegard Knef Red Prophet Nordmøre Simple and compound intervals Most Apollo Clout Offspring Čachtice Castle A Bell for Adano A Light in the Attic Tempo Cornelia Funke Substitute (song) Brigitte Helm

Cleanup Crystal momentum Facial tissue Gynoid Merge Nickel-cadmium battery Humanoid robot Inbreeding Add Sources Bratislava Castle Petty kingdom Brian De Palma Wikify Alamo, California Alfred Sturtevant The Crystal Set Expand Echinoderm Jools Holland Waldensians

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from ForteTuba, SuggestBot's caretaker.

P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot (talk) 16:04, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I signed up to this on the 25th March and its been a week and a half since despite the caption saying "not too distant future etc" so I would be gratful if someone could chase it up. Thanks. Police,Mad,Jack (talk · contribs)☺ 08:31, 3 April 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Hiya. Is the code still running ? I put in a request on the 3rd June and haven't heard a thing - also, looking at the log of people it's made suggestions to, it doesn't seem to have cleared any since 10th June...a victim of its own popularity ? :-) CultureDrone (talk) 07:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I shouldn't just complain - its a great idea :-) CultureDrone (talk) 07:02, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. It's been running really sporadically because, well, mostly, I've been busy trying to get our research lab up and going this summer and have not had a lot of time to play with it. Plus, I'm really frustrated with the current version and want to recode, but... not a priority issue for the lab, so that progress is slow, too. Sorry about the delays; I hope to get it into a more self-sustaining and responsive state sometime during the summer. -- ForteTuba (talk) 19:38, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You mean you've been putting your research lab above Wikipedia ?! Shame ! ;-) CultureDrone (talk)

Yeah, I'm kind of a jackass that way. :) -- ForteTuba (talk) 15:32, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey ForteTuba. I was wondering if you could take me off the list for SuggestBot (I don't know where it is...). I'm not often at Wikipedia anymore, and it just seems to be cluttering up my talk page. Thanks! Swannie (talk) 16:26, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, I went ahead and removed. Just in case others want to self-remove, it's at User:SuggestBot/Regulars -- ForteTuba (talk) 15:34, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Too long time for waiting suggestions. From 26 August 2007 to now, about eleven months, I am not recieve any suggestions from SuggestBot, what I did something wrong? Is re-request require? (I am asked this questions on SuggestBot's talk page. Sorry for asking on your talkpage.) --Love Krittaya (talk) 06:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing what happened is that your name got marked as done even though it wasn't; I'll add you. -- ForteTuba (talk) 14:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, just wanted to say that I saw SuggestBot for the first time today and it looked really cool, but from other comments it doesn't look like it's running anymore. Anyway, I just wanted to give you some encouragement to continue the project :) Scott Ritchie (talk) 20:03, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for doing that. I'm a new prof and the semester started a couple of weeks ago, so I managed to let it fall all the way off my plate. It will continue. ForteTuba (talk) 16:43, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot of names on the page who've been patiently or impatiently waiting ages, with no communication. It might be worth posting some holding messages if they're going to be waiting longer? --Dweller (talk) 14:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just throwing another vote in here for an update. It looks like it hasn't been run since July. --Clubjuggle ^T/C 14:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to run in August, didn't get around to checking the logs (new professor, many things pulling at my time), turns out there was some database corruption on the box back at my old school. They graciously fixed it this week and I think it's going to work now; I'm going to try to churn out a small set and see what happens. What I'd like to do is find a committed student here to make it run on-demand and do smarter things, but until I find that student, it's going to be sporadic. -- ForteTuba (talk) 14:12, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the new suggestions! As usual, they're spot on. Does this mean the bot will be running more frequently now? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 23:27, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More than it was the last 3 months, for sure; there were some hardware problems back at the ranch I graduated from, which they were really kind to fix. Eventually it wants to come to my new place and do more clever things. -- ForteTuba (talk) 16:48, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to place this award on your user page, as a token of appreciation for your contributions. If you're willing to help spread the good cheer to others, please see the project page for the Random Smiley Award at: User:Elipongo/SmileyAward--Unionhawk (talk) 21:17, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How do I get SuggestBot to stop suggesting for me? I went and looked for my name in the archived lists, but couldn't find it. (I just don't have as much time to edit as I did when I signed up for it.) Thanks! WiiWillieWiki 15:39, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

None taken. There's a page for regulars that your name was on at User:SuggestBot/Regulars; I went ahead and removed it. -- ForteTuba (talk) 19:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you have SuggestBot make a stop at my talk page because I need something to do.--Iamawesome800 (talk) 15:30, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll add you to User:SuggestBot/Requests and you'll get some next time it runs. -- ForteTuba (talk) 03:55, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, nevermind, guess you got some already. -- ForteTuba (talk) 03:56, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi ForteTuba, just a note to send my thanks for your manual posting of SuggestBot results to my and many other users' talk pages. This must have taken a considerable amount of your time and I am very grateful. Thanks, Pretzels^Talk! 02:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. About 1/10 times, the server gives back something the perl mediawiki code doesn't understand so I just have to drop them in by hand. Kind of a ritual. I just hope they're useful... -- ForteTuba (talk) 03:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, great stuff. You might like to know SuggestBot's in my essay: Suggestions for wikistressed editors --Dweller (talk) 14:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet. :) The first (and maybe last) time I'll ever get the "sheer genius" tag. Messages like that make me really, really, really want to work on it more. -- ForteTuba (talk) 18:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More outstanding suggestions, thank you, with the usual quirks that make it all the more interesting. Anything I can do to prompt you to further effort is well worthwhile! --Dweller (talk) 14:01, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a little concerned. I've started looking at the suggestions, and the first two I looked at ("wikify") have both not had wikify tags on them for some time, in one case since Dec 2007. Is SuggestBot running off old data? --Dweller (talk) 11:32, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Last time I downloaded category tags, I forgot to move them to the "live" running version. I don't do it very often because it's server-intensive. -- ForteTuba (talk) 18:38, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Still is a problem. My latest batch includes a "wikify" suggestion on this article, that had its wikify tag removed nearly 1.5 years ago. --Dweller (talk) 15:33, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I had signed up almost two months ago and I still hve never received results. What is that about? The New Mikemoral (talk) 19:30, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's about traveling over the break, having the duties of a professor, and the machine room at the building that hosts the server getting flooded. -- ForteTuba (talk) 18:25, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure weather to think its Christams or feel like my front yard has just been "tissued"...O well...I didn't have anything else to do but work 3 jobs, raise 4 kids, chase my daughters lazy boyfriend off the computer, cook dinner, work on my disertation, rotate the tires on the Dodge Dart, go feed my sick mother across town, volunteer at the local library, sort my socks, etc. Just kidding , of course. Thanks to SuggestBot for the work...TC...--Buster7 (talk) 22:47, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So you now own the odious Suggestbot, yes? How do I get it to stop shitting on my talkpage? X MarX the Spot (talk) 16:54, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You take your name off the list of people who requested that it shit on their talkpages, User:SuggestBot/Regulars, or you ask someone to do so. I went ahead and removed your name. -- ForteTuba (talk) 13:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

		The Wikipedia Bot Builder Award
		Thank you ever so much for building SuggestBot, it has helped a great deal in expanding my editorial horizon. ayrton_prost 20:11, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding SuggestBot, when will the next run be? My last request was on the 2nd and I have been waiting since. Thanks, The New Mikemoral ♪♫ 02:43, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, how's it going with fixing it?--Giants27 (c|s) 00:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Slower than I'd like. A couple of folks are nominally on a new improved version but progress is slow, so I'm trying to hack the old version back into service for at least a couple of months. It turns out when you don't look at perl code for three years, and you wrote it in a hurry, you're unhappy three years later. -- ForteTuba (talk) 19:35, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good to see the bot back and running. Well done, it's list of articles for me look great!

WVRMAD•Talk •Guestbook 08:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

		The Wikipedia Bot Builder Award
		SuggestBot is a wonderful idea that helps link editors to pages that they are needed at but are still linked to pages they're interested in. I hereby award you the Bot Builder award for this excellent tool! Ojay123 (Talk•E-Mail•Contribs•Sandbox) 02:15, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I added my name to the requests list on the 20th October. I don't mind waiting, but an answer would be nice. Is SuggestBot just going through some teething troubles or is it being dismantled? --Thejadefalcon^{Sing your song}_{The bird's seeds} 12:33, 1 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It runs really sporadically right now, because I kick it off manually and keep a little eye on it, and I am busy, so I don't do it as often as I should. Sorry about the wait... -- ForteTuba (talk) 00:03, 18 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, thanks. I like what it came up with. I'll leave my feedback in a short while. --Thejadefalcon^{Sing your song}_{The bird's seeds} 04:47, 18 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, you might be interested in User:Juliancolton/Project/Idea/RandomTaskCompetition. How much could what's already been done for SuggestBot contribute to implementing that?

Incidentally I think more work needs to go into providing help instructions/links for the different tasks. I can help with that if you like. Rd232 ^talk 09:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I mostly just link to the Wikipedia list page I think, which is not optimal (especially for new users). The current SuggestBot codebase is so fragile I'm not sure I can tweak it to much of anything, and it uses a really old version of the perl www::mediawiki client. Writing something that would suggest a random task would be pretty straightforward, I think, although I'd check with the current crop of folks writing bots to double-check that and to suggest what the latest, greatest technologies for interfacing with Wikipedia are. (And sorry for the late reply. Running SuggestBot and working with Wikipedia rarely get near the top of the priority queue these days...) -- ForteTuba (talk) 00:07, 18 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I would like to try SuggestBot! Thanks! --phauly (talk) 09:01, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just put it on the list for next time it runs, didn't catch this til after... -- ForteTuba (talk) 14:51, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm messaging you about this because you are listed as a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Research. PiperNigrum and myself are about to start the (poorly documented) process of submitting WP:Research for review by the community and I'm making one last call for cleanup and input. Please give the article a careful read if you have a chance. Unless major flaws are discovered, we'll be adding the {{rfc}} template to the talk page to start the process on March 2nd. That's one week from this posting. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 22:33, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs Nordmøre Camas Cemetery Beirut Blues Major third Toten Hornblower in the West Indies SNDMSG Barometer Rising History of the Arab Peoples Minor major seventh chord Sogn Islamic Commercial Law Namdalen Einstein's Dreams Encyclopaedia of Persian Language and Literature Jupiter Lincoln (novel) Dani Fortnight

Cleanup Golden ratio Petty kingdom Silver as an investment Merge Augmented chord Polar circle Rus' (people) Add Sources Hadeland Kjotve the Rich Enharmonic Wikify American Airlines Center Sioux language Ardaric Expand Angela Merkel Augmented sixth chord Nudity

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from ForteTuba, SuggestBot's caretaker.

P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! My name is Andreea Gorbatai and I am an Organizational Behavior graduate candidate at Harvard. I am using Wikipedia data on my dissertation and I am interested in the work you have done with SuggestBot as a recommendation tool. I would be interested in learning more about its features and hopefully writing a paper / dissertation chapter related to effects on article recommendations on Wikipedia participation behavior. Would you be interested in talking about this? Thank you for your consideration. Best - Andreea Buburuza (talk) 18:58, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We can talk a little bit, although you'll get a lot of the main story by reading the IUI 2007 paper. I can talk about the process, and stuff that felt like it did/didn't work, and recent stuff that a new student is picking up on. I don't have enormous amounts of time as it's the end of the semester... when were you hoping to chat? -- ForteTuba (talk) 20:58, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea, but how does SuggestBot choose the articles I might like to edit? Rin tin tin (talk) 13:40, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Badly, these days. In theory, it looks at articles linked tightly to those you have edited before; it looks at articles that other people who edit the same stuff you do also edit; and it used to have a text-matching algorithm that matched edited article titles to all article text. It would look for "good" matches that also had work tags. It's been slowly degrading for the last three years as Wikipedia has moved on out from under the last dump I had. But the theory is that User:Nettrom is taking it over, making it work better, and thinking about applications to new users and other Wikipedia versions (Norwegian is the test case since he's Norse). If you google SuggestBot IUI 2007 you'll find an academic paper that talks more about it. -- ForteTuba (talk) 21:04, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You have been mentioned at Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:59, 20 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]