User talk:scs

Keeping threads together: If you post here, I'll reply here. If I post on your talk page, I'll look for your reply there.

Archives

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Peace award

I, Dweller, award thee, Ummitt, ye dove of peace in glorious recognition of peacemaking in the midst of yea we the savages of the Ref Desk.

Congratulations. --Dweller 12:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Did you see this? --Dweller 09:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Pastafarian Award

[[:Image:Touched by His Noodly Appendage.jpg|thumb|right|This Pastafarian award goes to Steve Summit in recognition of his elaborations on building a spaghetti bridge. Unceremoniously presented by Sluzzelin ]] Hello Steve Summit. I found your insightful elaborations on building a spaghetti bridge interesting and appetizing. I prepared myself some pasta and decided to award you one Flying Spaghetti Monster for your answer at the Science Reference Desk. ---Sluzzelin 23:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Heh, this gave you away. :) ---Sluzzelin 20:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Image name fix

If you want to revive the image: its name changed from “Touched by His Noodly Appendage” to “Touched by His Noodly Appendage HD”. --CiaPan (talk) 13:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Scsbot

Here is a little reward for creating the ever-so-great archival bot for both the help desk and reference desk. — E ^talk_bots 06:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Why, thank you! —Steve Summit (talk) 11:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		For creating the ever-so-great archival bot for both the help desk and reference desk. — E talkbots 06:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

The Butterfly Effect

		Have a Pie!
		You are hereby awarded ONE PIE for having the line of the day on the Science Desk!

Arakunem^Talk 19:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Yum! Thanks! :-) —Steve Summit (talk) 19:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Help desk again

Hi! For the last few days, Scsbot has been adding the daily headings to Wikipedia:Help desk, but hasn't done any archiving. Worth a look? -- John of Reading (talk) 15:22, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Archiving caught up. (I'm traveling, and for all sorts of mundane reasons this complicates the archiving task, not least because where I am now 00:00 UTC isn't nearly as convenient a time as when I'm at home. Also my traveling computer had a couple of glitches which ended up affecting archiving but not date header adding. Finally got those fixed today.) --Steve Summit (talk) 18:47, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Error in RD/Entertainment archiving - March 26

Bot must have lost its senses for a moment and it grabbed the March 26 thread as a part of the March 30 contents. For the actions, see Special:Diff/835179617 (RD), Special:Diff/835179698 (archive index). Strangely, it left the March 26 header in RD. I've fixed archives manually, but I leave this message just in case you'd like to investigate what went wrong. --CiaPan (talk) 19:25, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

P.S.
For details, please see my today's contributions: [1]. --CiaPan (talk)

@CiaPan: Thanks. It did indeed "lose its senses", and I haven't figured out why. Thanks for fixing. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:54, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Greedy bot moved two days from RefDesk into one archive page

When archiving June 2 from Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing the bot grabbed one June 1 thread, too:

Special:Diff/845320055

and pasted everything together into a single archive page:

Special:PermanentLink/845320063

Fixed already:

removed the thread from archive June 2 Special:Diff/845352687

and created June 1: Special:PermanentLink/845352683.

CiaPan (talk) 06:53, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

P.S.
I'm very sorry I forgot to switch to the operator's talk page, so I've posted the above message at User talk:Scsbot and probably stopped the bot... --CiaPan (talk)

@CiaPan: Thanks. (And -- shhh -- no worries about stopping the bot; that feature's been broken for some time anyway.) —Steve Summit (talk) 10:46, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

It did it again: June 7's thread at WP:RD/Misc got archived together with June 8: special:diff/846072778
Fixed (moved to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 June 7, updated the index Special:diff/846362635). --CiaPan (talk) 08:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Sigh. That's now at least three that you've fixed; I guess I'd better look into this as something other than a fluke. —Steve Summit (talk) 11:15, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Similar example with Language RefDesk June 13 thread archived within June 14.
Another case reported by IP user at my talk page (and fixed already, too) was Miscellaneous, November 30, 2017 archived withind Dec 1 '17.
As far as I noticed, all those cases were a single thread within a date, but IMHO that's too weak coincidence to take it seriously. --CiaPan (talk) 06:39, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

@CiaPan: Actually, it turns out that is part of it. The archiving bot was written back in much higher-traffic days, and it considers a 1-message day anomalous, a sign it might have made a mistake, or might need to do something different. (And then as I've just discovered, the "something different" has been breaking down, for other reasons.) I think I've fixed at least one aspect of the bug; we'll see if it works better tonight. —Steve Summit (talk) 19:35, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Bot a bit too bold in reducing HTML character entities

While archiving the Computing RD, your bot replaced some " entities with literal " characters (Special:Diff/862543672), which broke a URL to Google's search (please compare Special:Diff/862543672#will there be 256-bit computers? with its older version e.g. at Special:PermaLink/862523684#will there be 256-bit computers?). --CiaPan (talk) 06:07, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

It did it again (Special:Diff/863327161), I fixed again (Special:Diff/863349556). --CiaPan (talk) 06:40, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

...and again, when moving the thread to WP:RD/A/Computing/2018_October_3: special:PermaLink/863485978#will there be 256-bit computers? .
Fixed in Special:Diff/863515597. --CiaPan (talk) 08:41, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

@CiaPan: Do you get the impression it's been doing this, regularly, forever (but you just started noticing), or that it only just started happening? —Steve Summit (talk) 15:19, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

I have no idea. I have never noticed such behavior, but I also have never had a reason to watch external links in RefDesks for such modification. It's not that common case to post a URL with quotation marks in it after all. And I have no hope to find any examples (or counteraxamples) in archives, either – searching for " character is not very promising. CiaPan (talk) 20:18, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Scsbot feature request

Hello, please see this edit by a human. Would it be possible to adjust the bot's programming so that it removes an unused header in this fashion? [I assume you'll need BAG approval, but I also assume that would be simple for this kind of thing.] Since it adds the header after midnight, it could check to see whether the previous date's header is immediately before the new one (i.e. there's nothing in between), and if so, it could just remove the old header. Nyttend (talk) 02:38, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

@Nyttend: Are you talking about the same issue as discussed at Bot requests#Removing date headers? I was under the impression that had been taken care of. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:42, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I am; I wasn't aware of that request. Does the bot check to see whether the page is included in Category:Wikpedia Help pages with dated sections? If so, I'm kind-of the reason for its failure to run: after checking with Ronhjones, I moved it to a typo-free title, Category:Wikipedia help pages with dated sections (note "Wikpedia" as well as the capitalisation change), not being aware that anyone other than Ron was paying attention to the category. Nyttend (talk) 22:52, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

This is also an issue at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, which should not belong to that category. Thanks, ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 05:33, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Archiving status for AfC help desk

Under normal operating conditions, Scsbot archives Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk daily. It has continued to add date headers daily, but hasn't archived since November 17, when it archived questions from November 12. Yesterday I archived a week of questions manually, but that isn't a long term solution. Please do whatever you can to get Scsbot to resume archiving of the AfC help desk. Thanks. --Worldbruce (talk) 15:05, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

@Worldbruce: The archiving bot is partially broken, and I have been doing the archiving semimanually for the past week or so. To be honest, I forget that AFCHD needed archiving. I'm sorry about that. Thanks for doing it manually, and I'll include it in my semimanual schedule until I get the automated mechanism fixed. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:54, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Help Desk archiving problem

Trying to fix it manually turned out to be more complicated than I thought. I've done it and I could keep doing it, but better to get this fixed now. — Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:16, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

It was just a problem for February 1 and 2 and I think I fixed it.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:29, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. The bot was having trouble on those days, and I thought I'd fixed it, but I didn't realize my workaround left the headers off. (The bot was confused about whether the page existed or not, whether it should create a new page with a new header or append text to an existing page, because of the text "Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact title" in this question.) But, yes, trying to retroactively add the headers manually is a royal pain. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:55, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Your talk archive index

Hi, just out of curiosity: your talk archive index seems to have stopped on 2017 – is it intentional or something went wrong? --CiaPan (talk) 10:38, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Help Desk archiving problem

I've never seen anything quite like this.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:35, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: Nor I. Thanks for noticing. Will fix.

I think I did what had to be done and found a possible reason. When I edited the Help Desk in the last edit before the history said the archiving took place, I copied everything from April 13 and put it in the proper place. I got a big pink box telling me a URL was blacklisted. I removed said URL in just one instance and that worked. I put the URL back and the edit was still saved.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:54, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I figured out how to tell if I had done everything right. See this diff. It appears the only change is white space.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:24, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

A hint on using the 'Reply to' template

When you want to ping several users as you did in this edit Special:Diff/896214062 you can put multiple usernames as parameters to a single {{re}} template:

{{re|Scs|Example|CiaPan}}

results in:

@Scs, Example, and CiaPan:

Best regards - and many thanks for your continuous efforts in archiving community pages. --CiaPan (talk) 09:45, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

@CiaPan: I meant to say at the time: Thanks! (I never knew that about {{re}}.) —Steve Summit (talk) 11:16, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

North River (Albemarle Sound) moved to draftspace

An article you recently created, North River (Albemarle Sound), does not have enough sources and citations as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 10:05, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

@CASSIOPEIA: Are there exceptions to the policy you're enforcing? The article I created was a mechanical split of an existing article. The existing article was in need of references, true, but it had existed for years. Moreover, the article I created covers, inadvertently, the older and more relevant (in the sense of more inlinked) of the two topics which had been covered by the article I split. (See Talk:North River (North Carolina)).

There is just about no chance that I am going to be able to find "proper" references for any of these articles. So if you're saying there's no exception to this rule that as of today articles can't be created without more references, I shall have no choice but to restore North River (North Carolina) so that it talks about the river, delete all information at North River (North Carolina) referring to the town, and revert all the links I changed as part of the split. (This has the side effect of leaving Wikipedia with no data about the town.) —Steve Summit (talk) 10:23, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Scs. Good day. For a page to be merit in Wikipedia mainspace, the subject needs to be notable and the content needs to be supported by multiple independent, reliable sources. Sources can be digital or print version and can be in any languages. Sources from major newspapers and books are the best sources. There are many article in Wikipedia mainspace failed to meet the notability requirements, either no interest editors come along to notice of such article as all of us are volunteers - see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXIST. The draft page will be in Wikipedia system for 6 months before it will be nominated for deletion under G13. Try to find the sources if possible and check Google books if you would find any. Let me know anything else I could help. Cheers. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 10:35, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @CASSIOPEIA: So, as long as any stuff just exists, it's okay. But just touch it, and you become responsible for sourcing it or else it gets deleted. Right? --CiaPan (talk) 10:58, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

@CiaPan: It's mostly to do with grandfathering, I think.

I'm going to restore North River (North Carolina) to more or less its state as of [2] (compare the more recent [3], which is hideous), fix links and wikidata references, and be done with it.

Done. 03:05, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

(And if now that attention's been drawn to North River (North Carolina), it gets deleted, too, that's fine. I could go and find some references for these articles, but it's simply not worth it -- they're not that notable; there are plenty of other articles far more worthy of attention.) —Steve Summit (talk) 11:11, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

CiaPan Hi Greetings. Not to say that the "stuff exists" is ok. I just pointed out that (1) we the editors are all volunteers, there are thousands of article which no interested editors to either improve the article or AfD them. (2) we the reviewers, would accept articles as per guidelines. Some of the reveiwers are new and accepted pages which fails the notability guidelines or reviewers would accept a page is not quite pass the nobility guidelines and in hope other editors would help to improve them or we have only a limited reviewers and the backlog of articles waiting to review is huge and some article slip through the system (We have currently 10K backlog (2+months) of articles in the "waiting for review pool") that are some of the reasons why Otherstuffexist. (3) content and info added need to supported by sources which is the WP:BURDEN of the editors who added the content as the content claimed to be verified. The page is not deleted but moved to draft space for the editor to look for sources. Any articles in mainspace could be nominated the article for deletion by any editor if they deem the article fails notability requirement even the article has been in Wikipedia for 10+ years. Articles that truly pass the notability requirements will permanently stay in Wikipedia mainspace. Cheers. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 11:24, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Some new RefDesk dates mistakes

'August 19' header added above the 'August 18' at RD/Math – Special:Diff/911465734.

Then 'August 21' didn't appear at a proper time, so an 'August 21' question has been added in 'August 20' section – Special:Diff/911816375. Luckily an IP editor fixed that in Special:Diff/911818588.

And finally the bot went wrong on archiving 'August 17': the section was previously collapsed by User:Guy Macon on 18 August and the bot archived the contents as August 18 Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Mathematics/2019_August_18. I suppose it was misled by Guy Macon's signature inside the collapsing template {{collapse top}}. Due to the same error, it didn't remove the 'August 17' section title, which remained there till 26 August, when User Double sharp removed it manually – Special:Diff/912587334.

Best regards,
CiaPan (talk) 17:06, 26 August 2019 (UTC).

Help Desk archiving problem

See this diff for what I had to do. I also had to correct the display of the first-level heading for the date after I forgot to make sure that worked.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:20, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Also happened the next day.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:22, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: Thanks. I think I know what happened, and if it happens again, I'll catch it. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:34, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

It happened again.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:48, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:RD/C December 3 header inserted at wrong place

In the Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing, a December 3 header has been inserted before December 1: Special:Diff/929005658.
I guess that was caused by the preceding post (section 'A new computer with ISA slots!') which has been published on 2 Dec — but the next post was dated 1 Dec... --CiaPan (talk) 12:11, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@CiaPan: Yes, it looks like things were all messed up on that day; it's no wonder the bot got confused.

In other news, I see you've been manually adding date headers for the past few days. Thank you. I managed to get things with the bot patched into shape tonight, so normal automated processing should be resuming. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:49, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Superb! That's fantastic news! I'll wait with my fingers crossed! --CiaPan (talk) 08:45, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

P.S. Yes, I tried to take care in the bot's absence, but I managed just to add or update headers for two days. Alas I had not enough time to perform a manual archiving routine. Cheers to MarnetteD for keeping things going, too. --CiaPan (talk)

Good news all round. Thanks and best wishes to you both - especially as it is Friday the 13th and a full moon - shudder :-) MarnetteD|Talk 19:13, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:North River (Albemarle Sound)

Hello, Scs. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "North River".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the {{db-afc}}, {{db-draft}}, or {{db-g13}} code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia! Lapablo (talk) 09:47, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Lapablo: Please delete it at your convenience. IIRC, I didn't create it in the first place; it was created by an overzealous New Articles patroller who was concerned about some minor refactoring work I was doing and which I utterly abandoned in response. That draft was doomed from the start and need never have been created in the first place. Zap it with a clear conscience; I don't mind. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:12, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Notification from CiaPan on Nimur's proposal

Hi, I see Nimur has made a proposal to you at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#New archiving solution likely needed , but he forgot to add a little ping thing, so I thought I'll make this notification here. Just in case. --CiaPan (talk) 08:51, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

@CiaPan: Saw it, thanks. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:50, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Cheers

Damon Runyon's short story "Dancing Dan's Christmas" is a fun read if you have the time. Right from the start it extols the virtues of the hot Tom and Jerry This hot Tom and Jerry is an old-time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true. No matter what concoction is your favorite to imbibe during this festive season I would like to toast you with it and to thank you for all your work here at the 'pedia this past year. Best wishes for your 2020 as well Scs. MarnetteD|Talk 01:54, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Dates

I noticed you made an edit to Template talk:Date and then reverted yourself. You may find the following page instructive:

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Date delinking

There was a massive discussion in 2009 about trying to present dates in articles according to the reader's preferences. What I think are the two key points that came out are

• The mechanisms proposed looked at the user's preferences, but the majority of readers do not have Wikipedia accounts, so do not have preferences. Thus, articles will look nice to editors who are logged in, but most readers will see a mess that is invisible to the editors who could fix the mess.
• Because the terminal punctuation differs in the dates given in this bullet, it is not possible for any proposed mechanism to correctly render dates in all situations. Example: the first human object to reach the moon was the Luna spacecraft on September 13, 1959, and the first manned mission to the moon was Apollo 11 which landed July 20, 1969. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:44, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h: Oh, my, thank you very much! You have perfectly answered a question I hadn't even asked yet!

I thought I remembered a widely-used mechanism for what I guess is called "date linking", which is why I asked the question you saw, but then I discovered there currently isn't one, which is why I deleted that question. Later today I was going to head over to WP:VP and ask my second question, about the long-lost mechanism I thought I remembered, but now I don't have to, because you've already answered it! (And, oh dear, that was a truly epic Arbcom imbroglio back in 2009, wasn't it? I certainly have no desire whatsoever to reopen any of that!) Thanks again. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:58, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Help Desk archiving problem

I fixed what needed fixing. So far three days have needed fixing. I'm only doing it as I read each archive so the link will be purple and I will know what I've seen. — Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:21, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: Thanks. I vaguely remember the problem that would have caused that, although for whatever reason I focused on a different aspect of the problem, and didn't notice the missing headers. Thanks for fixing. If it happens again, I'll have to remember to check for that part of the problem, too. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:28, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

It happened again. I'm about two months behind.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:40, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

RefDesk - a date header added out of order

Hi, it looks like an old error reappears... special:diff/991229694.

--CiaPan (talk) 18:04, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Possible disambiguation?

Hey! I just saw your username and thought, "I think it might be a good idea that they state that they have no association with the company SCS Software". So I'm just throwing this idea to you to consider. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 01:43, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

September 24 Help Desk archives

Not sure how this could have happened but there was no table of contents. I use that to link to a section when I tell someone there was a response. I'm a month behind but slowly I'm catching up. I let people know if I can find no evidence they know how to go back to the Help desk to read their responses.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:19, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) The missing TOC was probably an unrelated software glitch; see phab:T295187 and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Missing TOC?. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:43, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:44, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee and John of Reading: I've been traveling and missed this exchange until now. Looks like the bug has been fixed? Any further difficulties? —scs (talk) 02:40, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I'll let you know. We manually fixed the problem but it's better if it doesn't happen in the first place.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:52, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Question about User:Scsbot and Template:AfC help desk archive header

Hey, I was wondering why User:Scsbot is substing Template:AfC help desk archive header instead of actually transcluding it (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/Archives/2022 February 16)? Gonnym (talk) 06:19, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Gonnym: My memory is — but this is only a memory — that the archive headers were specifically designed to be substed. Certainly, that was the way the Reference Desk header had always been handled. I don't know if the same consideration(s) (whatever they might have been) truly applied to the Help Desk header, but the bot has always applied the same strategy for all desks.

In summary: there was a good reason, but I don't remember what it was. :-\

If you think it's wrong, or if it's causing some problem, we can investigate changing it. —scs (talk) 12:27, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Regardless if it should be subst or not, my main concern is that it isn't setup correctly for being subst as it's leaving much of the background code inside (all the ifs, ifeqs, switches, etc). If its subst then the only thing that should appear on the pages is the actual end result header. Gonnym (talk) 14:48, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Gonnym: I see your point, but I had nothing to do with the design of that template. Would you like to bring this issue up at WT:HD? —scs (talk) 02:13, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Scsbot didn't create archive page?

Hi, it seems like the bot removed the March 28 section from Wikipedia:Help desk with this edit but didn't create the corresponding archive page afterwards. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 16:34, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

@Wqnvlz: The bot ran into an error last night, and I was careless in not properly investigating and determining the impact. Fixed now. Thanks very much for letting me know. —scs (talk) 16:54, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Discussions updated very recently were archived

In this edit, User:Scsbot archived Help desk discussions such as § Multiple PD notice template, updated as recently as 19:09 8 January. I would have wished to respond to User:Scope creep's recent message (diff), but was prevented from doing so because it disappeared a mere 2 1/2 hours after it was written. Can you explain? Aren't bots supposed to base archiving decisions based on timestamp of the most recent comment in the discussion? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:14, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

See also User talk:Scsbot § Hasty archiving.  --Lambiam 17:30, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

See also WT:Help desk#Proposal to change archiving at Help Desk to stale + <interval>. Mathglot (talk) 18:23, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

@Mathglot: A bot, like any computer program, is supposed to do what it's designed to do. Some Wikipedia archiving bots, it's true, are designed to look for recent activity, but scsbot was never intended to work that way, because when it was designed (back in 2007 or so) to archive the reference desks, a fixed archiving interval was what was desired.

scsbot won't be rewritten to behave differently, partly because it would be too much work, but more importantly because there's no reason to: there are other bots that are designed to look for recent activity. Starting a discussion to consider switching a desk to a different archiving bot and strategy (as you've done) is the right thing to do. —scs (talk) 04:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Understood, thanks. We'll continue pursuing that, and see what develops. Thanks for weighing in! Mathglot (talk) 06:29, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:RD/MA archiving

The archiving function at WP:RD/MA seems to have fallen behind. New date headers are being added, but old topics are there, the oldest one being 12 days old. I thought one week was the time limit, so has there been a change? RDBury (talk) 23:24, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

@RDBury: Yes, there has been a change. See Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Suggestion for Time Increase. —scs (talk) 01:19, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

That explains it, thanks. I think 14 days will work better, at least for WP:RD/MA. Sometimes during the holiday season or over the summer there are no active questions and the pages are left empty, and I assume it's a bit discouraging to a potential poster to see a blank page. RDBury (talk) 03:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)