For my gnoming work,

• I am responsible for writing and maintaining the following scripts:
  1. User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates – aligns dates to a single format throughout the article;
  2. User:Ohconfucius/dashes – fixes dashes in accordance with WP:MOSDASH (fork of User:GregU/dashes.js)
  3. User:Ohconfucius/script/formatgeneral – fixes some general formatting
  4. User:Ohconfucius/script/Common Terms – unlinks common terms that usually don't need linking in the majority of articles
  5. User:Ohconfucius/script/Sources – fixes specific formatting of various parameters within <ref></ref> and within ((citation)) templates
  6. User:Ohconfucius/EngvarB – aligns spelling in articles of British, British Commonwealth/Irish etc to British English spelling or Canadian English spelling. Please note that ((EngvarB)) is now independent of any British English templating. Its own categorisation also independent of British (or indeed any other) English variant categorisation.
  7. User:Ohconfucius/script/flagcruft.js – can be useful to attenuate the overuse of flag icons on some pages.

Most of the work of this account is done by a combination of non-production versions of the above, and the results obtained from the production version may vary. I also frequently make manual tweaks in the course of my script runs.

My philosophy[edit]

Strange though it may seem, I actually quite dislike ENGVAR and other rules that institutionalise or tolerate too many competing styles and formats. Wikipedia ought to determine what's right for it and its readers, and try not to borrow styles from various different sources just because they exist. We need to adopt a single überstyle that embrace greater commonality. I find tolerance of competing styles and language variants is terribly divisive because we dig a metaphorical cultural trench to replace a large geographical feature, creating many "wikighettoes" that may frighten and intimidate editors of another nationality. I would love for styles to be unified, but I just work with what we have.

Although I would prefer British and dmy, and have chosen to first attack dmy articles for reasons of productivity, I would be happy to apply my work to chasing US spelling and mdy dates should WP decide that's the way it has to be.

Aligning dates, even by script, is donkey work. What I find infinitely more enjoyable and rewarding is the writing of the script which I and others can use, but I cannot develop without being the prime user. Therefore, I welcome comments, criticism and bug reports that all contribute to the improvement of the script and therefore the 'pedia as a whole.

It's only a digression. I know WP is editor-driven and readers take second place; format unification isn't going to happen any time soon.

Work lists[edit]

• Work list 1
• Work list 2

Scripting resources[edit]

• API:Main_page
• Manual:Interface/JavaScript

• CatScan 2.0 – build list, for example, for AWB based on categories
• meta:User:Pathoschild/Scripts/TemplateScript (successor of Regex menu framework) created by Pathoschild.
• WikEd created by Cacycle
• mw:Extension:WikiEditor/Toolbar customization and mw:Extension:WikiEditor/Toolbar customization/Library
• User:Cameltrader/Advisor

• JS tutorial
• C# Programming Guide (for AWB module)
• .Net framework regular expressions

External resources[edit]

• http://regular-expressions.info documentation about regular expressions (regexes)
• http://www.rubular.com/ Regex tester
• http://www.omniglot.com/language/time/months.htm month names in many languages
• http://jshint.com a tool to detect errors and potential problems in JavaScript code (used by CodeEditor)
• http://doc.jsfiddle.net/
• http://jsbeautifier.org/
• http://jsperf.com/
• http://getfirebug.com/ Firebug (requires Firefox)