Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 73

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Make more use of external link templates

{{Anarchist Library text}}, for example, has just three transclusions; yet we currently have 222 links to the site which it represents. A number of similar examples have been uncovered, with the help of User:Frietjes and others, in recent days, at the daily Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log sub-pages. I've made {{Underused external link template}} to track these; it adds templates to Category:External link templates with potential for greater use.

Using external links templates aids tracking, facilitates quick updates when a site's link structure changes, and makes it easy to export the data into Wikidata.

Is anyone interested in running a bot to convert such links to use the templates, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:58, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: This is possible, but I need an example to follow off of. I also noticed that many of the articles that link to the domain but don't transclude the template are links in the references, does {{Anarchist Library text}} still fit in that case? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 05:20, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: - this thread is old and archived, but are you aware of any general discussions on how to handle dead links in external link templates? On average links die after 7 years, so eventually all these templates are just dead links. Do we replace the template with {{webarchive}}, or add a {{webarchive}} after the template, or replace the URL within the template with an archive URL, or should every template have a mechanism for dead links, or ? And how does that work with Wikidata. -- GreenC 16:54, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Non-notable article finder bot

Almost 1000+ pages get created everyday. Our New page patrollers work hard. Still some articles which are clearly non-notable survive deletion. In Special:NewPages we can see only one month old articles, if we click the "oldest".

Some pages can only be deleted only through AFD. Users tag them with speedy deletion, administrators remove speedy deletion tag with edit summary suggesting "that the article has no notability but can be deleted in AFD". In some cases the article is not taken to AFD, as the user who tagged for speedy moves on to other new pages, or he is busy with his personal life (they are volunteers). And as the AFD template stays for two/three days before being removed by administrators, other new page patrollers who focus on pages two days old sees the speedy deletion tag. But sometimes, they don't notice that administrator removed the speedy deletion tag with a suggestion of AFD. Luckily a few of these articles pass one month limit and survives on English Wikipedia.

Some articles are prodded for deletion, the prod is removed after two/three days. If anybody notices that the article is not notable, then it will be taken to AFD.

And some articles where the PROd is removed survives if the article is long, well written, has paragraphs, infobox template, categories, seemingly reliable sources, good English,(But only doing extra research can show that the article is not-notable). Means spend our internet bandwidth.

As there is a proverb "finding needle in a haystack". Finding these articles from five million articles is a nightmare. We don't have the time, energy and eternal life, nor any other editor.

I am damn sure that there are thousands of such article among five million articles. Only a bot can find these articles.

This is what the bot will do. In Wikimedia commons they have flickr Bot.

This Bot will check articles, which are more than six months old. If any article which was speedily deleted before and recreated by the same user, but was not deleted after recreation by the same user, this bot will put a notice on the talk page of the article. Volunteers will check the deletion log and see whether the article was speedily deleted before.

Those article which are minimum six month old, has less than 50 edits in edit history and edited by less than 15 editors. This bot will google news search with "article name" inside quotation marks"_____". The bot will also google book search the article name. If both the results are not satisfactory, then the bot will put a notice on the talk page of the article (If google news results show that the article is not notable, but google book search shows good result, then the bot won't tag the article's talk page). Then volunteers will check the notability of the article. The bot will not make more than 30 edits everyday.

The problem is that many good articles are unsourced and badly written, After checking on the internet, editors decide that the article is notable. While some articles which doesn't have any notability are wonderfully written. Thank you. Marvellous Spider-Man 13:13, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

User:Marvellous Spider-Man, for something like this, could you apply the above rules to a set of articles manually, and see what happens - pretend your a bot. Then experiment with other rules and refine and gain experience with the data. Once an algo is established that works (not many false positives), then codifying it becomes a lot less uncertain because there is evidence the algo will work and datasets to compare with and test against. You could use the "view random article" feature and keep track of results in columns and see what washes out to the end: Column 1: Is six months old? Column 2: Is 50 edits? etc.. -- GreenC 13:56, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I think Green Cardamom's suggestion is great. With a bot where the algorithm isn't immediately obvious, the proposed algorithm should definitely be tested manually first. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:45, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

We need to be very careful about deletion bots, especially ones that look for borderline cases such as articles that didn't meet the speedy deletion criteria but do merit deletion. We need to treasure the people who actually write Wikipedia content and try to reduce the number of incorrect deletion tags that they have to contend with. Anything that speeds up sloppy deletion tagging and reduces the accuracy threshold for deletion tags is making the problem worse.

More specifically, we have lots of very notable articles that 15 or fewer editors have edited. I'd be loathe to see "number of editors" become a metric that starts to be used in our deletion processes. Aside from the temptation on article creators to leave in a typo to attract an edit from gnomes like me; and put in a high level category to attract an edit from one of our categorisers; we'd then expect a new type of gaming the system from spammers and particular enthusiasts as groups of accounts start editing each others articles. You do however have a point that some newpage patrollers will incorrectly tag articles for speedy deletion where AFD might have resulted in deletion. But I think the solution to that is better training for newpage patrol taggers and a userright that can be taken away from ones that make too many errors. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:21, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Here's an anecdotal example of testing your proposed criteria. I have created about 11 articles. I tend to create articles for people and things that are notable but not famous. All of my articles have fewer than 50 edits and fewer than 15 editors, so they would all fail the proposed test, but all of the articles are likely to survive notability tests.* That's a 100% false positive rate for the initial filter. I haven't tested the Google search results, but searching for most of the names of articles I have created would lead to ambiguous search results that do not hit the person or thing that the article is about.

I think it would be better to focus on a category of article that is known to have many AfD candidates, like music singles or articles about people that have no references.

* (Except perhaps the articles for music albums, which the music project holds to a different standard from WP:GNG for some reason.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:33, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

There exists a hand-picked set of articles that specifically address a perceived lack of notability that no one has bothered to take to AfD yet: articles tagged with {{Notability}} in category Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability. Someone (a bot perhaps) should systematically take these items to AfD. The metric here is far more reliable than anything suggested above: it's not guesswork based on who has edited how much and when, but actual human editors tagging the articles because they seem to lack notability and prompting (but overwhelmingly not resulting in) an AfD nomination. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:43, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Other good places to look for deletion candidates are Category:All unreferenced BLPs and Category:Articles lacking sources. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:03, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Even if you ignored all articles tagged for notability that have subsequently been edited, you would risk swamping AFD with low quality deletion requests. Better to go through such articles manually, remove notability tags that are no longer correct, do at least a google search to see if there are sources out there and prod or AFD articles if that is appropriate. Ϣere SpielChequers 16:34, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Birmingham City Council, England

Birmingham City Council have changed their website, and all URLs in the format:

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=Member-Services%2FPageLayout&cid=1223092734682&pagename=BCC%2FCommon%2FWrapper%2FWrapper

are dead, and, if in references, need to be either marked {{Dead link}} on converted to archived versions.

Many short URLs, in the format:

http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/libsubs

are also not working, but should be checked on a case-by-case basis. *sigh* Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:54, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: I believe Cyberpower678's InternetArchiveBot already handles archiving dead URLs and thus no new bot is needed. Pppery (talk) 15:03, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

One month on, this doesn't seem to have happened; we still have over 200 dead links, beginning http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/ alone. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:33, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Did all pages get moved to the new URL format, or did they create an entirely new site and dump the old content? If the former, it may be helpful to first make a list of all the old URLs on Wikipedia, and then try to find the new locations for a few of them. That may help make the bot job easier if a good pattern can be found. Having the new URL format is helpful, but having real examples of the before and after for multiple pages should make it easier. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:23, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

The page for the first, long, URL I gave above, like many others I've looked for, appears not to have been recreated on the new site.

The page that was at:

http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=Parks-Ranger-Service%2FPageLayout&cid=1223092737719&pagename=BCC%2FCommon%2FWrapper%2FWrapper

(archived here) is now, with rewritten content, at:

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/20089/parks/405/sutton_park

and clearly there is no common identifier in the two URLs. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:05, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Auto-revert bot

A auto-revert bot is required if Twinkle users are not active, reverting vandalism. GXXF T • C 17:38, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

What? Do you mean User:ClueBot NG? Well, if not this probably won't be made. You might like to go to WP:EF/R. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 17:47, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Match Bandcamp links to articles

Please can someone do this:

For all the results in [1] which have the format http[s]://[www.]XXX.bandcamp.com, match the ID ("XXX") to the corresponding article title's PAGENAMEBASE.

Example matches include:

http://20minuteloop.bandcamp.com = 20minuteloop -> 20 Minute Loop
http://aaronkent.bandcamp.com/album/winter-coats-summer-shorts = aaronkent -> Aaron Kent
http://anagram.bandcamp.com = anagram -> Anagram (band)
http://andremarques.bandcamp.com/ = andremarques -> André Marques (filmmaker)
http://www.alvinpurple.bandcamp.com = alvinpurple -> Alvin Purple (band)

matches may be individual people, bands, or record companies.

These are not matches:

http://bennytipene.bandcamp.com/album/room-demo-live-complete = bennytipene != Benny Tipene discography
http://beastwars.bandcamp.com/ = beastwars != Beastwars (album)
http://battlecircus.bandcamp.com/album/battle-circus = battlecircus != File:Battle Circus (album).jpg

Then, discard any duplicates, and for each match, fetch the Wikidata ID for the article.

If I could have the results in a spreadsheet, CSV or Wiki table, with four columns (URL, ID, article name, Wikidata ID), that would be great.

I have proposed a corresponding property on Wikidata, and will upload the values there if and when it is created. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:49, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

The requirement for only people, bands, or record companies is tricky. I guess with people look for certain categories like "YYYY births" or "living persons" though not precise. Are there similar universal categories for bands and record companies, or other methods like common infoboxes that would identify an article as likely being a band or record company? -- GreenC 21:39, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks; I wouldn't go about it that way (if anyone wants to, then Wikidata's "instance of" would be the way to go), but by eliminating negative matches such as pages with "discography" "(album)" or "(song)" in the title; or files. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:44, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Hatnote templates

Could a bot potentially modify articles and their sections which begin with indents and italicized text (i.e. ^\:+''([^\n'][^\n]+)''\n) to use {{Hatnote}} (or one of the more specific hatnote templates, if the article's message matches)? Beginning articles like that without the hatnote template tends to mess up Hovercards, which are currently a Beta feature. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:38, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Nihiltres has been doing hatnote cleanup of late. Maybe he's already doing this? --Izno (talk) 11:50, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I've done a fair amount of cleanup, but I'm only one person. I mostly use the search functionality to pick out obvious cases with regex by hand. Here's a list of handy searches I've used, copied from my sandbox:

I've avoided doing broad conversion to {{hatnote}} because there's more work than I can handle just with the cases that should use more specific templates like {{about}} or {{redirect}}. {{Hatnote}} itself ought to only be used as a fallback when there aren't any more-specific templates appropriate. Doing broad conversion would be relatively quick, but more work in the long run: most instances would still need conversion to more specific templates from the general one, and it'd be harder to isolate the "real" custom cases from those that were just mindlessly converted from manual markup to {{hatnote}}. Moreover, a bot would need to avoid at least one obvious false positive: proper use of definition list markup and italics together ought not to be converted … probably easy enough to avoid with a check for the previous line starting with a semicolon? Either way I'll encourage people to join me in fixing cases such as the ones listed in the searches mentioned. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 23:09, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Fixing hundreds of broken URLs - updating links to different server with the same reference number

I edit hundreds/thousands of wp articles relating to Somerset. Recently (for at least a week) all links to the Somerset Historic Environment Records have been giving a 404. I contacted the web team who's server hosts the database & they said: "as you may be aware what is now the ‘South West Heritage Trust’ is independent from Somerset County Council – some of their systems eg. HER have been residing on our servers since their move – and as part of our internal processes these servers are now being decommissioned. Their main website is now at http://www.swheritage.org.uk/ with the HER available at http://www.somersetheritage.org.uk/ . There are redirects in place on our servers that should be temporarily forwarding visitors to the correct website eg: http://webapp1.somerset.gov.uk/her/details.asp?prn=11000 should be forwarding you to http://www.somersetheritage.org.uk/record/11000 - this appears to be working for me, so unsure why it isn’t working for you".

According to this search there are 1,546 wp articles which include links to the database. Is there any quick/automated way to find & replace all of the links (currently http://webapp1.somerset.gov.uk ) to the new server name ( http://www.somersetheritage.org.uk/record/ ) but keep the identical record number at the end? A complication is that two different formats of the url previously work ie both formats for the URL ie /record/XXXXX & /her/details.asp?prn=XXXXXX.

I don't really fancy manually going through this many articles & wondered if there was a bot or other technique to achieve this?— Rod ^talk 14:52, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

There are approximately 800 links in some 300 articles. The way I would recommend doing this is a find/replace in WP:AWB. --Izno (talk) 15:24, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I have never got AWB to work in any sensible way. Would you (or anyone else) be able to do this?— Rod ^talk 15:29, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

@Rodw: I'll take a look at this and see what I can do when I get home tonight. It seems like it would be pretty easy to fix with AWB. Omni Flames (talk) 22:16, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

@Omni Flames: Thanks for all help & advice - the broken links are now fixed.— Rod ^talk 07:11, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Missing WP:lead detection

I would like to see a bot that would flag up articles probably in need of a lead - articles with either (a) no text between the header templates and the first section header, or (b) no section headers at all and over say 10kB of text. The bot would place the articles in Category:Pages missing lead section, and possibly also tag them with {{lead missing}}: Noyster (talk), 13:22, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me, at least in case (a). I think it should tag them with the template (the template adds them to the category). At least one theoretical objection comes to my mind: it's technically possible to template the entire lead text from elsewhere, making it appear as a header template in wikitext but as a verbose lead in the actual text (in practice I've never seen this and it doesn't sound like a smart thing to do anyhow). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:59, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I thought, that this resulted in some script, but not. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 07:39, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Edgars2007 for linking to that discussion from last year. The main participants there Hazard-SJ, Casliber, Finnusertop, and Nyttend may have a view. If "tag-bombing" is objectionable then it may be less controversial to just add the articles to the category, so anyone wanting to supply missing leads can find material to choose from. Other topics to decide upon are minimum article size, and whether to include list articles: Noyster (talk), 15:44, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

I'd be worried in this tagging a huge number of articles - I'd say excluding lists and maybe doing a trial run with sizable articles only (?6kb of prose?) might be a start and see what comes up...? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 18:22, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

As I noted in that previous discussion, lists need to be carefully excluded. We have absolutely no business listening to anyone who says It's just that this is one of those things that has never been enforced much and the community has developed bad practices — aside from provisions required by WMF, community practice is the basis for all our policies and guidelines, and MOS must bow to community practice; people who insist on imposing the will of a few MOS editors on the community need to be shown the door. On the technical aspects of this proposal, I'm strongly opposed to having a bot add any visible templates; this is a CONTEXTBOT situation, and we shouldn't run the risk of messing up some perfectly fine articles because the bot's algorithm mistakenly thought they needed fuller intros. However, a hidden category would be fine, simply because it won't be visible to readers and won't impact anything; humans could then go through the bot-added category and make appropriate changes, including adding {{lead missing}} if applicable. Nyttend (talk) 21:31, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

OK thanks commenters. Revised proposal: Bot to detect and categorise articles NOT having "List" as first word of the title AND either (a) no text between the header templates and the first section header, or (b) no section headers at all and over 6kB of text. The bot would place the articles in Category:Pages missing lead section : Noyster (talk), 18:43, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

G4 XFD deletion discussion locator bot

Would it be possible to build a bot that could hone in on CSD-G4 tagged articles and determine if in the template the alleged link to the XFD in question is actually there? So many times people tag an article as G4 but the recreated article is located in a new article space name, and its aggravating when on CSD patrol to have manually look through XFD logs to ensure that the article does in fact have an XFD and therefore does in fact qualify as a CSD-G4 deletion. For example, if Example was afd'd, then recreated at Example (Wikipedia article) an alert user would deduce that this was a recreation of Example, but due to the way the G4 template works the article's afd would not show at Example (Wikipedia article) because that wasn't where it was when the afd closed as delete. Under this proposal, a bot that was programed to monitor the G4 tags would notice then and automatically update the G4 template to link to the afd at Example so that the admin arriving at Example (Wikipedia article) would have the proof required to act on the G4 template in a timely manner. Owing to their role in managing the affairs of an estate I would propose the name for this bot - if it is decided to move forward with writing one - be ExecutorBot. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:16, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

aeiou.at

We have around 380 links to http://www.aeiou.at/ using the format like http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.encyclop.b/b942796.htm

Both the domain name and URL structure have changed. The above page includes a search link (the last word in "Starten Sie eine Suche nach dieser Seite im neuen AEIOU durch einen Klick hier") and when that link is clicked the user is usually taken to the new page; in my example this is: http://austria-forum.org/af/AEIOU/B%C3%BCrg%2C_Johann_Tobias

To complicate matters, 84 of the links are made using {{Aeiou}}.

Some pages may already have a separate link to the http://austria-forum.org/ page, and some of those may use {{Austriaforum}}.

Can anyone help to clear this up, please?

Ideally the end result will be the orphaning of {{Aeiou}} and all links using {{Austriaforum}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:56, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: To make sure I understand

First subtask: for each invocation of {{Aeiou}}

Construct the Fully qualified URL
Get the content of the page
Search through the content for the "hier" hyperlink
Extract the URL from the hyperlink
Parse out the new Article suffixing
Replace the original invocation with the new invocation

Second subtask: For each instance of the string http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou/encyclop. in articlespace

Construct the Fully qualified URL
Get the content of the page
Search through the content for the "hier" hyperlink
Extract the URL from the hyperlink
Parse out the new Article suffixing
Replace the original string with the the austriaforum template invocation

Do I have this correct? Also can you please link the discussion that ensorses this replacement? Hasteur (talk) 13:33, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

All correct, with the provisos - first for clarity - that in the first subtask, "new invocation" means "new invocation of {{Austriaforum}}"; and that if {{Austriaforum}} is already present, a second is not needed. The current target page says "You are now in the "old" (no longer maintained version) of the AEIOU. The maintained version can be found at..." To the best of my knowledge, we don't need a special discussion, other than this one, to endorse fixing 380 such links. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:36, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Ecozone moved to Biogeographic realm

The article Ecozone was moved to Biogeographic realm, in a standardisation of biogeographic terminology in WP. Now, the next step is change some pages that are currently using the term "ecozone" instead of "biogeographic realm". Can a boot do it, please? The pages are:

Template:Infobox ecoregion (and its articles);
Category:Ecozones (with its subcategories, except subcategory Category: Ecozones of Canada‎ and article Ecozones of Canada, in which the usage of "ecozone" must be maintained). Zorahia (talk) 01:08, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot. There's very little hope of gaining consensus for a bot changing article text. There's too many edge cases for this to work well. For instance, it's beyond the capability of a bot to avoid editing articles in these categories which discuss the history of the term, etc. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 19:14, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

A bot in Simple Wikipedia

Hey i request for a personal bot in my Simple Wikipedia account. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trunzep (talk • contribs) 09:41, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

@Trunzep: This appears to be the page you want. It's not part of English Wikipedia: Simple English Wikipedia is separate and has its own project structure, and you will need to find your way around it if you are a regular editor there. If you request a bot anywhere, please state clearly what it would do and how it would be of benefit to that Wikipedia: Noyster (talk), 10:38, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Not done per the above. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:13, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Update NYTtopic IDs

{{NYTtopic}} currently stores values like people/r/susan_e_rice/index.html, for the URL http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/susan_e_rice/index.html; these have been updated, and redirect to URLs like http://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/susan-rice; and so the value stored should be person/susan-rice.

This applies to other patterns, like:

organizations/t/taylor_paul_dance_co -> organization/paul-taylor-dance-company

We have around 640 of these IDs in templates, and many more as external wiki links or in citations.

The URL in the template will need to be changed at the same time - whether that's done first or last, there will be a period when the links don't work.

I've made the template capable of calling values from Wikidata; so another alternative would be to remove these values and add the new ones to Wikidata at the same time; otherwise, I'll copy them across later.

Non-templated links should also be updated; or better still converted to use the template. Can someone help, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:50, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: How do you suggest a bot predict the correct pattern? It seems to vary quite a bit. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 19:25, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: A bot should not "predict", but follow the current link and note the URL to which it redirects. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:37, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: If the URLs are redirecting properly, what's the point of this change? Is there a reason to believe the redirects will go away? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 19:50, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

There is no reason to suppose that they will be maintained indefinitely; however, the reason for the change is so that the template can be updated, to accept new values; and for compatibility with Wikidata, from where the values should ultimately be fetched. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:58, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Needs wider discussion. Please obtain a consensus for this. It would be kicked back at BRFA as close enough to a cosmetic edit that consensus is needed. Try a relevant village pump, possibly. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:20, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

BSBot

This bot will automically give barnstars to users. "BS" means "BarnStar. GXXF T • C 15:37, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

On what basis would they be given? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:11, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot in general IMO -FASTILY 23:12, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Uh is this a joke/hoax?? --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 06:13, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Not done --Izno (talk) 13:00, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Filling out values in a table?

Would a bot be able to handle the following request: use the hexadecimal value in column eight in order to look up (using any database) the corresponding RGB and HSV values for each of the colors, then replace the values in each of those cells with the correct values? I have a larger table that needs to be filled, but this is a small sample of what I have. Evan.oltmanns (talk) 23:00, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Color	H	S	V	R	G	B	Hexadecimal
Golden Yellow 67104	346	96	93	252	76	2	#FFCD00
Scarlet 67111	346	96	93	252	76	2	#BA0C2F
Purple 67115	346	96	93	252	76	2	#5F259F
Bluebird 67117	346	96	93	252	76	2	#7BAFD4

@Evan.oltmanns: I created a script that can be run through a browser's Javascript console, which converts all of the HSV and RGB values to the correct values, and copies the new table code to your clipboard - would you like the script, or would you like me to copy the new table directly to your sandbox? Alex|The|Whovian^? 00:43, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@AlexTheWhovian: If you could run the script for me and replace the existing (full) table on my sandbox, that would be greatly appreciated. The full table can be found on my sandbox here: User:Evan.oltmanns/sandbox#Department_of_Defense_Standard_Shades_for_Heraldic_Yarns Thank you. Evan.oltmanns (talk) 01:45, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Done Alex|The|Whovian^? 01:48, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@AlexTheWhovian: Thank you! You saved me from enduring many hours of manual editing. Evan.oltmanns (talk) 01:53, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Glad to help! I use JavaScript a lot for automatic editing, and when I saw this post, I thought that it was very similar to some other content I've edited, since I used the RGBtoHSV and HEXtoRGB functions from my script here. Alex|The|Whovian^? 02:07, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Bot to remove external link to MySpace?

Following the TfD discussion here: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2015_January_15#Template:Myspace, I think we should remove all external links to MySpace as unreliable. They keep poping up. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:05, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

We have over 3400 links to MySpace. I'd want to see a much wider discussion before these were removed. [And its deplorable that a template for a site we link to so many times was deleted] Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:43, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

They are often in the external links section. See 120 Days. It is the band's homepage. Is there reason to delete primary sources? Also don't understand the template deletion. -- GreenC 13:21, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Apparently the links were added after the template was deleted. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:41, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Looks like they were converted? [2] -- GreenC 14:16, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I've posted a proposal to recreate the template. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:16, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Green Cardamom and Pigsonthewing thanks for the heads up. I would expect that according to the deletion reason of the template that the links were removed. Otherwise, the template is a valuable shortcut that helps against linkrot. - Magioladitis (talk) 15:23, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I see no problem with this idea so i whole-heartedly endorse the idea, i see no problem with removing links that lead to a no longer used/nearly dead website/service where there are much better alternatives to link to. --RuleTheWiki (talk) 11:01, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Helping to expand (blacklisted) url-shortened links by suggesting to user

I see many editors trying to add shortened or otherwise redirected urls (typically bit.ly, goo.gl, youtu.be, or google.com/url? ..) to pages, and them fail continuously since they fail to expand/replace the link with the proper link (shortening services are routinely globally blacklisted). Some try repeatedly, likely becoming frustrated at their inability to save the page.

I think it would be of great help to editors that when they would hit the blacklist with a shortened url, that a bot would pick up and post a message on their talkpage along the lines of "hi, I saw that you tried to add bit.ly/abcd and that you were blocked by the blacklist. URL shorteners are routinely blacklisted and hence cannot be added to any page in Wikipedia. You should therefore use the expanded url 'http://aaa.bc/adsfsdf/index.htm' instead. (sig etc.)" (the bot should take into account that the original link is blacklisted, but also the target may be blacklisted - so if it fails saving the expanded link with http, it may try again without the http. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:02, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps a edit filter set to warn would be better? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 15:12, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

@DatGuy: Sorry, that does not work. These links are standard globally blacklisted, and the blacklist hits before the EditFilter. And in any case, the EditFilter cannot expand the links for the editor, they would get the same message as the spam blacklist is providing - expand your links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:51, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

The user gets both MediaWiki:Spamprotectiontext and MediaWiki:Spamprotectionmatch. The first includes in our customized version:

Note that if you used a redirection link or URL shortener (like e.g. 'goo.gl', 't.co', 'youtu.be', 'bit.ly'), you may still be able to save your changes by using the direct, non-shortened link - you generally obtain the non-shortened link by following the link, and copying the contents of the address bar of your web-browser after the page has loaded.

The second shows the url, e.g.

The following link has triggered a protection filter: bit.ly/xxx

MediaWiki:Spamprotectiontext does not know the url but MediaWiki:Spamprotectionmatch gets it as $1. It would be possible to customize the message for some url's, e.g by testing whether $1 starts with goo.gl, t.co, youtu.be, bit.ly. In such cases the message could display it as a clickable link with instructions. MediaWiki:Spamprotectiontext also has instructions but there the same long text is shown for all url's. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:32, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Although it is probably still true if the editor got an extensive explanation on their talkpage - this editor (and many others) simply do not read what the message is saying (and I see many of those). With a talkpage message they at least get the message twice

There is a second side to the request - whereas many of the redirect insertions are in good faith (especially the youtu.be and google.com/url? ones), some of them are bad faith attempts to circumvent the blacklist (Special:Log/spamblacklist/148.251.234.14 is a spammer). It would be great to be able to track these spammers with this trick as well. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:43, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Template:China line

Could someone help substitute all transclusions of {{China line}}, which has been in the TfD holding cell for more than a year? (In addition, could instances of

{{China line|…}}{{China line|…}}

where two or more transclusions are not separated by anything (or by just a space in parameter |lines= of {{Infobox station}}), be replaced with

{{Plainlist|1=
* {{China line|…}}
* {{China line|…}}
}}

since this format seems to be heavily used in some infoboxes?)

Thanks, Jc86035 (talk • contribs) Use {{re|Jc86035}} to reply to me 16:04, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

If no-one else picks this task up, ping me in like two weeks and I'll do it. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:17, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

The first part of your request can already be handled by AnomieBOT if Template:China line is put in Category:Wikipedia templates to be automatically substituted. Pppery (talk) 22:09, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

@Pppery and BU Rob13: So maybe just do №2 with a bot through AWB and then put the template into AnomieBOT's category? Jc86035 (talk • contribs) Use {{re|Jc86035}} to reply to me 16:04, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

(Pinging BU Rob13 and Pppery again, because that might not have gone through Echo. Jc86035 (talk • contribs) Use {{re|Jc86035}} to reply to me 16:05, 23 August 2016 (UTC))

Wait, Jc86035, I missed something in my previous comment. AnomieBOT will only substitute templates with many transclusions if they are listed on the template-protected User:AnomieBOT/TemplateSubster force. Note that this process of wrapper-then subst has been done before with Template:Scite. (I did get the above ping, by the way) Pppery (talk) 16:07, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

@Pppery: Thanks for the clarification; although since BU Rob13 is an administrator, that's not necessarily going to be much of a problem. Jc86035 (talk • contribs) Use {{re|Jc86035}} to reply to me 16:12, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

@Jc86035: Note that pings only work if you do nothing but add a comment (not also move content around in the same edit), and thus neither me nor Bu Rob13 got the ping above. Pppery (talk) 16:19, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

(neither do pings work if I misspell the username, BU Rob13) Pppery (talk) 16:20, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

I can probably still handle this, but I currently have a few other bot tasks on the back burner and I'm running low on time. I'll get to it if no-one else does, but it's up for grabs. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 20:39, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Bumping to prevent this from getting archived. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 08:30, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I've gotten quite busy, so I probably can't handle this. Up for grabs if anyone else wants to do it; it's a very simple AWB task. Alternatively, we could just do the substitution and not worry about formatting for the sake of getting this done quickly. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 11:13, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, I might start working on this. Basically, what you want Jc86035 is to subst {{China Line}}, and if there are two China Line templates on the same line, to convert it to plainlist? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 11:19, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

@DatGuy: Yeah, basically. (The reason why this situation exists is because the template was standardised to use {{RouteBox}} and {{Rail color box}}; before this, the template had whitespace padding and someone just didn't bother to add   tags or anything.) Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:47, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and just a caveat: for multiple instances in the same row with parameter |style=box or =b, they should only be separated by a space (like in the {{Beijing Subway Station}} navbox). Thanks for your help! Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:52, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jc86035: Could you give me examples of what you'd like it to do on your talk page? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 14:49, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

@DatGuy, BU Rob13, and Pppery: The template appears to have been substituted entirely by Primefac; not sure if {{Plainlist}} has been added to infoboxes. Might be easier to just do a search for {{Rail color box}} and replace semi-automatically with AWB. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 09:35, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Jc86035, didn't know this thread existed, so other than the replacement (it wasn't a true subst) I didn't change anything. I checked a handful of the latter ones (which I seem to recall I had some issues with because they were next to each other) and it looks like they mostly were separated by . You're welcome to look yourself, though; my edits replacing this template are here. Primefac (talk) 15:02, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Would something like find:

(\{\{[cC]hina [lL]ine\|[^<][^\n])

Replace with:

*$1

work? (I probably have a mistake, but the general idea?)

Actually, since the template has been deleted, do we need to do something else? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 16:00, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Unless you wanted to go through every instance of {{rail color box}} and {{rint}}, going through my edit history would probably be easier (and fewer false positives in unrelated articles). I would bet, though, that the number of side-by-sides without (maybe 10?) is going to not really be worth all that hassle. Primefac (talk) 16:13, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

@Primefac: You also seem to have substituted the template incorrectly (not sure how that happened); the parameter |inline=yes is usually used for subway/metro lines for {{Rail color box}} in infoboxes (e.g. in New York, Hong Kong and others). Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 08:16, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Primefac: And you seem to have neglected to replace "HZ" with "HZM" (example), and "NB" with "NingboRT" (example). Wouldn't it have been easier to substitute the template normally? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 16:24, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, so I fucked up. I'm working on fixing the lines that I didn't translate properly. Primefac (talk) 22:20, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

And for the record, lest you think I'm completely incompetent and managed to screw up a simple subst: I didn't subst because I didn't realize the template was already a wrapper. Honestly not sure how I made that mistake, but there you go. Primefac (talk) 22:55, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Primefac: Oh well. I guess AWB edits can always be fixed by more AWB edits. (Thanks for the quick response.) Though I'd still prefer going through all of them to add |inline=, because I'd already substituted some instances before you replaced the rest. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 04:20, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Jc86035, probably the easiest way to make that list would be to find what transcludes the templates in Category:China rail transport color templates. Be a bit of a big list, but it might be simpler than trying to mess around with pulling out the specific edits I made to replace everything. Primefac (talk) 04:26, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Update all refs from sound.westhost.com to sound.whsites.net

This site has changed domains so there's link rot on probably a lot of audio articles 71.167.62.21 (talk) 11:50, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Couldn't you just use AWB? 76.218.105.99 (talk) 03:14, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Same message as the below - provide me with a list of affected articles and I can go through and fix this. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:18, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Y Done - 78 articles edited. Example. -- GreenC 15:48, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

A bot that will replace "colwidth=30" in reflist to just reflist|30

Hello. Upon reading that the "reflist|colwidth=30em" is depreciated [See: Template:Reflist#Obsolete], I was going to go through and manually change this but was pointed to this page. Requesting a bot that will change it to reflist|30em And also maybe one to change reflist|3 to reflist|30em --Jennica✿^{talk / contribs} 06:40, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

The term is "deprecated", not "depreciated" - the meanings are very different. In particular, "deprecated" does not mean "you must get rid of this at the earliest opportunity", it means "please don't use this in future, preferable alternatives exist".

However, changing {{reflist|colwidth=30em}} to {{reflist|30em}} is a straight

Not done per WP:COSMETICBOT. Regarding changing {{reflist|3}} to {{reflist|30em}}, that has been discussed before, IIRC the consensus was that since different people have different setups (particularly where screen width is concerned), what is a suitable conversion on one article is not necessarily suitable for all, so that each one needs consideration on a case by case basis. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:40, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Archive bot

Resolved

Now and then references added to pages becomes dead links so I think there should be a bot which could archive the references cited on a particular page using "web.archive.org" upon request. --Saqib (talk) 06:51, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

You may be looking for User:InternetArchiveBot. --Izno (talk) 21:04, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Update URL for New South Wales 2015 election results.

I've just edited Electoral district of Ballina because the link to the New South Wales electoral commisison's site for results changed from

http://pastvtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/SGE2015/la/ballina/cc/fp_summary/ to http://pastvtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/SGE2015/la/ballina/cc/fp_summary/

My edit is at

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electoral_district_of_Ballina&oldid=752858012

I've checked the first few districts in the alphabetical list of NSW electoral districts (see Electoral districts of New South Wales and they all have links to the vtr... site.

Could a bot update all these links?

Thanks, Newystats (talk) 01:52, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

There's also the URL http://pastvtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/SGE2015/la/albury/dop/dop which changed to http://pastvtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/SGE2015/la/albury/dop/dop

Yeah I can do this working on it. -- GreenC 02:35, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Done, 186 articles edited. Newystats, could you check the remaining 4, they need manual help which I'm not sure how to fix. -- GreenC 04:33, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! 2 of those did need the new URL & I've done them manually - 2 did not need an update. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Newystats (talk • contribs) 05:05, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Automatic change of typographical quotation marks to typewriter quotation marks

Could a bot be written, or could a task be added to an existing bot, to automatically change typographical ("curly") quotation marks to typewriter ("straight") quotation marks per the MoS? Chickadee46 (talk|contribs) 00:16, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

I think this is done by AWB already. In citations AWB does it for sure. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:25, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Potentially this could be done, but is it really that big an issue that it needs fixing? It seems like a very minor change that doesn't have any real effect at all on the encyclopedia. Omni Flames (talk) 11:14, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

This is a "general fix" that can be done while other editing is being done. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:10, 13 August 2016 (UTC).

Magioladitis, AWB may be doing it but I don't feel it's keeping up. Of my last 500 edits, 15% of those pages had curlies, and I similarly found 7 pages with curlies in a sample of 50 random pages. So that's what, potentially ~~4 million~~ (correction: 700k) articles effected? Omni Flames, one big problem is that not all browsers and search engines treat straight and curly quotes and apostrophes the same so that a search for Alzheimer's disease will fail to find Alzheimer’s disease. Also, curly quotes don't render properly on all platforms, and can't be easily typed on many platforms. If content is to be easily accessible and open for reuse, we should be able to move it cross-platform without no-such-character glyphs appearing. There was a huge MOS discussion on this in 2005 (archived here and here) which is occasionally revisited with consensus always supporting straight quotes and apostrophes, as does MOS:CURLY.

~~If it's really 4 million articles,~~ that might break the record for bot-edits to fix, so perhaps not practical. What about editor awareness? Would it be feasible to set up a bot to check recent edits for curlies and, when detected, post a notice on that editor's talk page (similar to DPL bot when an editor links to a disambiguation page) alerting them and linking them to a page with instructions for disabling curlies in popular software packages? If we can head-off new curlies working into the system, then AWB-editors may have a better chance of eventually purging the existing ones. Thoughts? (BTW: I'm inexperienced with bots but would happily volunteer my time to help.) - Reidgreg (talk) 22:38, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

If I have time I'll try to see if this is a good estimate. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:51, 19 October 2016 (UTC).

@Reidgreg: 15% of mainspace is ~700k articles, not 4m. And whether we use it outside mainspace is mostly irrelevant, since curlies don't usually break a page. --Izno (talk) 22:46, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Reidgreg if there is consensus for such a change I can perform the task. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:45, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick replies! (And thanks for correcting me, Izno. I see you took part in the last discussion at MoS, revisiting curly quotes.) I'll have to check on consensus, I replied quickly when I noticed this because I didn't want it to be archived. The proposals I've found at MoS have been the other way around, to see if curlies could be permitted or recommended and the decision has always been "no". Will have to see if there is support for a mass change of curlies to straights, or possibly for MoS reminders. - Reidgreg (talk) 17:18, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

While there is general support for MOS:CURLY, there is a feeling that curlies tend to be from copy-and-paste edits and may be a valuable indicators of copyright violation. So there's a preference for human editors to examine such instances (and possible copyvio) rather than a bot making the changes. - Reidgreg (talk) 16:53, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

@Chickadee46: @Omni Flames: @Rich Farmbrough: @Magioladitis: @Izno: Hi, I'm Philroc. If you know me already, great. I've been over at the talk page for the MOS for a while talking about what the bot this discussion is about should do. I've decided that it will put in {{Copypaste}} with a parameter which changes the notice to talk about how the bot found curlies and changed them, and it will also say that curlies are the sign that what the template says happened. See its sandbox and its testcases. Phil roc^{My contribs} 13:49, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

@Philroc: I appreciate the enthusiasm and I'm sorry if I'm being blunt, but from the MOS discussion there is no consensus for having automated changes of curly to straight quotes & apostrophes, nor for the automatic placing of this template. I'm in the middle of another project right now but hope to explore this further next week. - Reidgreg (talk) 14:46, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

@Reidgreg: We can get consensus from this discussion, can't we?

@Reidgreg: Wait, we're talking about the number of articles affected by curlies on the MoS. After we're done with that, we will talk about consensus. Phil roc^{My contribs} 23:18, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

I reviewed a small number of articles with curlies and found copyvio issues and typographical issues which would not be easily resolved by a bot. (More at MOS discussion.) I hope to return to this at some point in the future. – Reidgreg (talk) 19:24, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Help with anniversary calendar at Portal:Speculative fiction

In order to more easily update the anniversary section of the calendar, I would like a bot that:

Runs once per week
Makes a list at Portal:Speculative fiction/Anniversaries/Working of mainspace articles listed within Category:Speculative fiction and its subcategories (the categories in the "Subcategories" section on the category page).
Updates Portal:Speculative fiction/Anniversaries/Current with all mainspace articles currently linked from the anniversaries pages (there are pages for every day of the year in the format Portal:Speculative fiction/Anniversaries/January/January 1).
Checks Portal:Speculative fiction/Anniversaries/Ignore for a list of articles marked to be ignored (this page will be updated manually unless we can figure out a good system where the bot can do the listing).
Updates Portal:Speculative fiction/Anniversaries/Todo with all mainspace articles from step 2 that are not in the list in step 3 and not listed to be ignored in step 4.

I hope that makes sense. Anyone up to the task? Thanks in advance for your time. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:18, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

@Nihonjoe: I don't think we really need a bot to do this. I can update the pages every week semi-manually if you like. Just one thing, I'm a bit confused as to what the "ignore list" is meant to do? How do you plan on getting the articles to go on it? Omni Flames (talk) 22:05, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

@Omni Flames: I figured a bot would be able to do it faster than a person. It shouldn't be too complicated a task, either, but it would be tedious (hence the bot request). I could do it manually myself, but it would take a lot of time. The ignore list would likely be updated manually, with pages determined to not be needed on the Todo list. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:10, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

@Nihonjoe: Well, when I said manually, I didn't really mean manually. I meant more that I'd create the lists using a bot each week and paste it on myself. That would mean we wouldn't even need a BRFA or anything. However, we can do it fully-automatically if that suits you better. Omni Flames (talk) 22:58, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

@Omni Flames: If that's easier, that's fine. I figured having a bot do it automatically would relieve someone of having to manually do something every week. I'm fine either way, though. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:15, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

@Omni Flames: Just following up to see if you plan to do this. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:39, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

@Nihonjoe: I'll see what I can do. I've had a lot on my plate lately. Omni Flames (talk) 08:49, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@Omni Flames: Okay, I appreciate any help. I'll follow up in a couple weeks. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:08, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@Omni Flames: Just following up as promised. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@Nihonjoe: Sorry, but I don't think I have time to do this at the moment. I've had a lot going on in real life at the moment and I haven't been very active on wiki recently. Hopefully you can find someone else to help you with this, sorry for the inconvenience. Omni Flames (talk) 09:46, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

@Omni Flames: I can understand real life taking over. Thanks, anyway. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 16:22, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Anyone else interested? It should be a pretty quick job. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 16:22, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

@Nihonjoe: I wrote some code for this, but I have run into a recursion issue when getting all the articles in the Category:Speculative fiction tree. The tree either has loops (Category:Foo in Category:Bar [in ...] in Category:Foo) or is very large. I fixed one loop (Category:Toho Monsters), but I don't have time to check the entire tree. If I increase the maximum number of recursions permitted, it will work if the tree doesn't have any loops. It has been tested on smaller, clean trees with success. — JJMC89 (T·C) 15:39, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

@JJMC89: Is there a bot that can check for loops and output a list? That will make it easier to fix. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 02:20, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Not that I am aware of. If I can find time, I might be able to come up with something. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:57, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

blocking IPs that only hit the spam blacklist

I've asked this for Procseebot (User:Slakr), but not gotten any response - maybe there are other solutions to this problem (I also am not sure whether it involves open proxies).

The spam blacklist is blocking certain sites which were spammed. One of the problems that we are currently facing is that there are, what are likely, spambots continuously hitting the spam blacklist. That involves a certain subset of attempted urls. The editors only hit the blacklist (I have yet to see even one editor having constructive edits at all on their IP), and they do that continuously (hence my suspicion that these are spambots). It is good that we see that the spam blacklist is doing it's job, the problem is that sometimes the log becomes unreadable because these IPs hit the blacklist thousands of times, flooding the log (admin-eyes-only example).

When no-one is watching, it sometimes takes a long time before the IPs get blocked. I would therefore request that when IPs without edits are hitting the blacklist for the specific set of urls, that they get blocked as soon as they hit the blacklist (lengthy, I tend to block for a month at first, a year at the second; withdraw talkpage access (see Special:Log/spamblacklist/175.44.6.189 and Special:Log/spamblacklist/175.44.5.169; admin-eyes-only, they hit their own talkpages just as happily and that is not affected by a regular block)), and subsequently tagging the talkpages with {{spamblacklistblock}}. Are there any bots that could take this task? Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:14, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

To put a bit of more context on occurrence, User:Kuru and I (who I know follow the logs) have made 14 of these blocks in the last 24 hours. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:45, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

This is a really odd spambot; I think it is just one spammer accounting for about 30% of the hits on the blacklist log. They target a small group of core articles (Builletin Board System, for example), and then a larger set of what appear to be completely random articles (usually low traffic or even deleted articles). The links are obvious predatory spam for pharma, clothing, shoes, etc. This occurs daily, and the same bot has been active at least two years. If blocked, they then often switch to attempting to add links to the IP's talk page. These all just seem to be probes to test the blacklist. Oddly, I can't seem to find any recent instance where they've been successful in avoiding the blacklist, so I don't know what would happen on success. Interesting problem. Kuru (talk) 15:55, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Filter 271 is set up to handle most cases of 'success'. It looks likely to be the same bot. The filter's worth a read if you think the articles are random. It hasn't been adjusted for a while but might need some adjustment in the NS3 department. Drop me a line if you want to discuss the filter further. Sorry, can't help with a blocking bot. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 20:34, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@Zzuuzz: The filter would indeed catch those that pass the blacklist, I'll have a look through the results whether there is anything there related to these spammers. Nonetheless, the ones that keep hitting the blacklist should be pro-actively blocked, preferably on one of the first attempts. I tried to catch them with a separate filter, but the filter only triggers after the blacklist, so no hits there. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:38, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

That's a really interesting read; certainly the same spammer in some cases. Will have to spend some time digging through there to analyze the pattern. Thanks! Kuru (talk) 17:12, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Ping. I've blocked 10 13 17 IPs this morning, that are responsible for a massive chunk (75%) of the total attempts to add blacklisted links. Can someone please pick this up? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:38, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

FWIW, I support someone making this bot. It'll need a BRFA, but I'm willing to oversee that. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:08, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

please. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:28, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

How frequently would you want the bot checking for new hits? How do you suggest the bot know which subset of links are worthy of bot-blocking? Anomie ⚔ 18:26, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie: 'Constantly' - these are about 200 attempts in one hour. I does not make sense to have an editor running around for 10 minutes and have 34 hits in the list before blocking (it would still flood), I would suggest that we attempt to get the IP gets blocked on the second hit at the latest. For that, I would suggest a quick poll of the blacklist every 1-2 minutes (last 10-20 entries or so).

Regarding the subset, I'd strongly recommend that the bot maintains a blacklist akin User:XLinkBot/RevertList where regexes can be inserted. The subset of urls is somewhat limited, and if new ones come up (which happens every now and then), the specific links, or a wider regex, can be used (e.g. for the url shorteners, the link needs to be specific, because not every url-shortener added is this spammer, for the cialis and ugg-shoes stuff the filter can be wider). (I do note that the IPs also have a strong tendency to hit pages within the pattern '*board*' and their own talkpages, but that may not be selective enough to filter on). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:34, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

I just went through my blocking log, and I see that I block up to 27 IPs A DAY (98 in <10 days; knowing that User:Kuru and User:Billinghurst also block these IPs). Still, the editor here manages to get almost 200 hits .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:43, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

If you'd want to narrow it down, one could consider to have two regex-based blacklists, one for links, one for typical pagenames - if an editor hits twice with a blacklisted link attempt to a blacklisted page, then block. And I have no problem with the bot working incremental - 3 hours; 31 hours; 1 week; 1 month; 1 year .. (the IPs do tend to return). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:31, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

@Beetstra: Please fill in User:AnomieBOT III/Spambot URI list. Anomie ⚔ 13:23, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie: I have filled in the current domains. I will work backward to fill in some more. Thanks, lets see what happens. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:47, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Comment: The ip spam hits are the same xwiki, and I am whacking moles at Commons (most), Meta, enWS and Mediawiki; other sites unknown as I don't have rights. The real primary issue is that the spambots are getting in through our captcha defences to edit in the first place. Then we have the (fortunate?) issue that we have blacklisted these addresses, and able to identify the problem addresses. Some of the penetrating spambots are on static IPs, and some are in IP ranges, mostly Russian.

As this is a very specific and limited subset of the blacklist urls, we could also consider the blocking capability of filters themselves. It should be possible to utilise the test and challenge of an abuse filter to warn and then disallow an IP edit, or variation, and then block based on subsequent hits. Plenty of means to stop false positives. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:53, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: That would mean that we would globally de-blacklist the urls, and have a global filter to check for the urls and set that filter to block. That is certainly an option, with two 'problems' - first that it is going to be heavy on the server (regex testing on urls is rather heavy for the AbuseFilter; though there is some pattern in the pages that are hit, it is far from perfect). Second problem is that the meta-spamblacklist is used also way beyond MediaWiki. Though it is not our responsibility, I am not sure if the outside sites would like that we de-blacklist (so that they all have to locally blacklist and/or set up their own AbuseFilters). I have entertained this idea on the meta blacklist, but I don't know whether de-blacklisting and using an AbuseFilter will gain much traction.

I have considered to set up a local abusefilter to catch them, but the abusefilter does not hit before the blacklist (Special:AbuseFilter/791). That would only work if I would locally whitelist the urls (which would clear the blacklist hits), and have a local filter to stop the IPs (I do not have the blocking possibility here on en.wikipedia, that action is not available .. I would just have to ignore the hits on the filter, or manually block all IPs on said filter).

Or we use a bot to block these IPs on first sight. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:20, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

That being said, I would be in favour of a global solution to this problem .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:24, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking of removing them from the blacklist. I see many examples of blacklisted urls in global logs, so it surprises me that it is the case. With regard to no blocking capability in abuse filters, that is a choice, and maybe it needs that review. The whole system is so antiquated and lacking in flexibility. :-/ — billinghurst sDrewth 23:16, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: if you can get filter 791 to work so it shows the same edits as the blacklist (or a global variety of it) so it catches before. These editors don't show up (for these edits) in filter 271 either, though they obviously are there trying to do edits with not blacklisted links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:04, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Coding... (for the record). Code is mostly done, I believe, although it'll probably need to wait for next Thursday for phab:T149235 to be deployed here before I could start a trial. Anomie ⚔ 13:57, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Why do you need to wait for the grant, I thought bot III was an adminbot, so it can see the spamblacklistlog? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:10, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

One of the pieces of security that OAuth (and BotPasswords) gives in case you want to use some tool with your admin account is that it limits which rights are actually available to the consumer, instead of it automatically getting access to all the rights your account has. The downside is that if there's not a grant for a right, you can't let the consumer use that right. It's easy enough to add grants to the configuration, as you can see in the patches on the linked task, but code deployment can take a little time. Anomie ⚔ 20:18, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie: Thanks for the answer, I wasn't aware of that .. not running admin bots does not expose you to that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 04:04, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed Anomie ⚔ 22:20, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Bot to automatically add Template:AFC submission/draft to Drafts

Let me explain my request. There are quite a few new users who decide to create an article in the mainspace, only to have it marked for deletion (not necessarily speedy). They might be given the option to move their article to the draft space, but just moving it to the draft space doesn't add the AfC submission template. Either someone familiar with the process who knows what to fill in for all the parameters (as seen in drafts created through AfC) or a bot would need to add the template, as the new user would definitely not be familiar with templates, let alone how to add one.
My proposal is this: Create a bot that searches for articles recently moved from the mainspace to the draft space and tags those articles with all the parameters that a normal AfC submission template would generate. For those who just want to move their articles to the draft space without adding an AfC submission template (as some more experienced editors would prefer, I'm sure), there could be an "opt-out" template that they could add. The bot could also search for drafts created using AfC that the editor removed the AfC submission template from and re-add it. Newer editors may blank the page to remove all the "interruptions" and accidentally delete the AfC submission template in the process, as I recently saw when helping a new editor who created a draft. Older editors could simply use the "opt-out" template I mentioned above. If possible, the bot could mention its "opt-out" template in either its edit summary or an auto-generated talk page post or (because it'll mainly be edited by one person while in the draft space) in an auto-generated user talk page post.
I realize this may take quite a bit of coding, but it could be useful in the long run and (I'm assuming) some of the code is there already in other bots (such as auto-generated talk page posts, as some "archived sources" bots do). -- Gestrid (talk) 06:55, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like a sensible idea; maybe the bot could check the move logs? Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 01:59, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in the reply, Enterprisey. I forgot to add the page to my watchlist. Anyway, I'm guessing that could work. I'm not a bot operator, so I'm not sure how it would work, but what you suggested sounds right. -- Gestrid (talk) 07:44, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't think this should be implemented at all; adding an AfC template to drafts should be opt-in, not opt-out, since drafts with the tag can be speedely deleted. A bot can't determine whether an article moved to draft comes from an AfC or some other review or deletion process. Diego (talk) 10:12, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

@Diego Moya: I'm no bot operator, but I'm pretty sure there are ways for bots to check the move log of a page. It comes up in #cvn-wp-en ^connect. CVNBot will say "User [[en:User:Example]] Move from [[en:2011 Brasileiro de Marcas season]] to [[en:2011 Brasileiro de Marcas]] URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Brasileiro_de_Marcas_season 'moved [[2011 Brasileiro de Marcas season]] to [[2011 Brasileiro de Marcas]]'". (That last part that starts "Moved on" is the edit summary.)

As a side-note, in case you don't know, #cvn-wp-en is the automated IRC channel that monitors potential vandalism for all or most namespaces on English Wikipedia, courtesy of the Countervandalism Network.

-- Gestrid (talk) 07:36, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Excuse me, but I can't see how that would help. With the move log you can't distinguish an article moved to draft space by a newcomer from an article moved by an experienced editor who never heard of this proposed bot. Diego (talk) 08:27, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

In that case, an edit like that is easily undo-able (if admittedly slightly irritating), and the bot can have a link to its "ignore template" within the edit summary, similar to how ClueBot NG has its "Report False Positive?" link in its edit summary. -- Gestrid (talk) 16:50, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

You're assuming that there will be someone there to make such review, which is not a given. But then you want to create a procedure where, by default, drafts are put on a deletion trail without human intervention after someone makes a non-deleting movement, and it requires extra hoops to avoid this automated deletion outcome. Such unsupervised procedure should never be allowed, in special when it gets to delete content that was meant to be preserved. And what was the expected benefit of such procedure again? Diego (talk) 23:37, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Before this goes any further, Gestrid have you secured a consensus for this? A place to have this discussion might be at WT:Drafts as I know there have been multiple discussions about automatic enrollment of pages in the Draft namespace into the AFC process. While I acknoledge consensus can change there have been several editors who have combatively opposed the position before. Hasteur (talk) 15:05, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

At this point, I have not secured a consensus for this. — Gestrid (talk) 17:01, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

@Diego Moya: Sorry for taking such a long time to respond. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by putting a draft on a deletion trail. I know that drafts are deleted six months after the last edit, if that's what you mean. — Gestrid (talk) 22:10, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Please allow me to correct you: some drafts are deleted six months after the last edit. Your proposal would make deleting all drafts the default, which is against the spirit of the consensus at WP:Drafts. Diego (talk) 09:14, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

I've asked for consensus over at Wikipedia talk:Drafts#Bot to automatically add Template:AFC submission/draft to Drafts per Hasteur's suggestion. — Gestrid (talk) 22:16, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

WP:U1 and WP:G6 Deleting Bot

I feel like this would take a lot of workload off of administrators. As of the time I am writing this (17:54, 5 October 2016 (UTC)), there are 25 pages and 7 media files tagged for speedy deletion under these criteria. An administrator will have to personally delete each of these pages, even though it would fairly simple for a bot to do this, as the bot would only have to look at the category of these pages, and check the edit history to make sure that the tag was added by the user. Sometimes, there are dozens of pages in this category, and they all create unnecessary work for admins. I am not an admin, or I would probably code it up myself, but because you have to be an admin in order to run an admin bot, I cannot. Thanks, Gluons12 ^talk 17:54, 5 October 2016 (UTC).

U1 would probably be a good idea (wait 10 minutes or more for the user to rethink it?). However, G6 probably will be impossible to implement as how would a bot know if it's controversial or not? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 18:17, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I'd support a U1 bot if we restricted its scope to pages tagged by unblocked users, in their own userspace. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:30, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I'd suggest they'd need to be the only author, otherwise anyone could get any page deleted by simply moving it to their userspace and adding a tag (the same principle applies to G6). This should make it a G7 bot instead. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:35, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Some kinds of G6 are probably automatable ("empty dated maintenance categories") but not all. Le Deluge (talk) 22:00, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

This tends to be suggested reasonably frequently, and typically gets shot down because there aren't backlogs in these categories and admins dealing with these categories haven't expressed any need for bot help. So your first step should be to get admins to agree that such a bot would be needed. Anomie ⚔ 18:50, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I would very strongly oppose giving a bot power to delete any article. There are too many chances to go wrong. There are almost never more than 1 or 2 day backlogs at Speedy Deletion. Getting admins to delete articles is not one of our problems. All too many of us admins enjoy it. DGG ( talk ) 02:05, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
I think he obviously means WP:G7 above, and this can easily be automated if the bot only deletes ones that have a single contributing editor. We already have bots that delete pages, DGG, although perhaps not articles. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:15, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

G7 is not always straightforward. Often there are non-substantial edits by others, and it is not easy to judge if they are truly non-subatantial, so I suppose you intend a bot which doesn't delete if there is any non-bot edit to the page. And I suppose it would check that it was actually the same editor. Even so, I have turned down G7 a few times and asked the ed. to rethink it, and once or twice I have simply decided to carry on with the article myself--after all, the license is not revocable. I asked about bots with deletion access here: they are for: broken redirects, mass deletions after XfD approval--run not as a matter of course but electively for appropriate cases, implementing CfD, &deleting files uploaded for DYK. These are procedures requiring no judgment, and suitable for bots--and necessary because of the volume. We should not extend the list unless we really need to. I don't think the 2 or 3 a day of speedys that would fall under here would be worth it. DGG ( talk ) 02:40, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Bot that can remove unnecessary code

User:Italia2006 and I have been discussing the removal of the unnecessary code present in the footballbox template for football (soccer) matches. User:SuperJew has also shown interest in this removal. In the |report= parameter usually shows [http://www.goal.com/en/match/italy-vs-romania/1042828/preview Report] however just the link without the brackets and the "Report" at the end of the link produces the same visual appearance that the unnecessary code produces. Also, the entire |stack= parameter has been phased out as it is also not needed for the footballbox as it gives the same appearance with or without. Would it be possible for a bot to remove these unnecessary code?

Example for proposed change for all footballboxes: Footballbox with unnecessary code:

17 November 2010 International friendly	Italy	1–1	Romania	Klagenfurt, Austria
20:30 CEST (UTC+02:00)	Marica 82' (o.g.)	Report	Marica 34'	Stadium: Wörthersee Stadion Attendance: 14,000 Referee: Thomas Einwaller (Austria)

Footballbox showing the same appearance as the first, minus the unnecessary code

17 November 2010 International friendly	Italy	1–1	Romania	Klagenfurt, Austria
20:30 CEST (UTC+02:00)	Marica 82' (o.g.)	Report	Marica 34'	Stadium: Wörthersee Stadion Attendance: 14,000 Referee: Thomas Einwaller (Austria)

Thanks. Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 02:15, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

The |report= change does not appear to work correctly if a reference or similar follows the link. Keith D (talk) 13:16, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Keith D: Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you mean? Can you provide an example? Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 13:46, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Vaselineeeeeeee: Generally, we don't make edits which are purely cosmetic and only change the wikitext of a page, not the page itself. See WP:COSMETICBOT. Is there any reason in particular you think this is necessary? Omni Flames (talk) 13:56, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Omni Flames: I see. Although, the appearance is the same to the reader, it makes it easier for us editors, especially those who edit football match results for consistency within the project. It also makes things more efficient for us as there is less unnecessary updating to do in regards to the parameters in question. Maybe that's not a good enough reason, I don't know. @Italia2006: @SuperJew: anything to add? Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 14:18, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Vaselineeeeeeee: regarding the report I wouldn't recommend using a bot since having the link only works only in cases of one report. In cases such as 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification – AFC Third Round which lists for each match the FIFA report and the AFC report it would have to be manually as it is now.

The stack parameter was deprecated, because it was getting rather ridiculous in appearance and editors (especially new editors or IPs) who used it often used it wrong. To change it now I suppose would be counted a cosmetic, but as Vaselineeeeeeee said it makes it easier for the editors, especially new or IPs who are unfamiliar with it. I have often seen bots make changes of things such as switching between , and (though I don't remember in what order). Isn't that a cosmetic change? --SuperJew (talk) 14:42, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Usually those cosmetic changes are done along side other, non-cosmetic changes. However, I did write this a while ago, but never really bothered to propose it to people. It's still in draft form mind you. Might be time to take a look at it again. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:19, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Example as requested

17 November 2010 International friendly	Italy	1–1	Romania	Klagenfurt, Austria
20:30 CEST (UTC+02:00)	Marica 82' (o.g.)	Report^[1]	Marica 34'	Stadium: Wörthersee Stadion Attendance: 14,000 Referee: Thomas Einwaller (Austria)

Footballbox showing the same appearance as the first, minus the unnecessary code

17 November 2010 International friendly	Italy	1–1	Romania	Klagenfurt, Austria
20:30 CEST (UTC+02:00)	Marica 82' (o.g.)	http://www.goal.com/en/match/italy-vs-romania/1042828/preview ^[2]	Marica 34'	Stadium: Wörthersee Stadion Attendance: 14,000 Referee: Thomas Einwaller (Austria)

References

^ Example ref
^ Example Ref

Keith D (talk) 17:56, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Keith D: When we update footballbox results, we never add a reference using ref tags in the report parameter as the link to the match report is the reference for the match results. Thus, this would not be an issue. But as User:SuperJew pointed out, we may have problems when encountering a footballbox with two reports in one template. The stack parameter would still be helpful though. Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 19:53, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I always add a reference to give full details of the report, as I was advised, or else you end up with a bare URL which should not be the case as per WP:ROT. Keith D (talk) 21:11, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Keith D: Odd. I've never, ever seen that on any national football team results pages or club season articles... Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 21:44, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Any news on this bot? Can we get it just for the stack parameter as a couple of us have pointed out fair reasons for why it should be removed? Thanks. Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 11:29, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

@Vaselineeeeeeee: Unfortunately, removing the stack seems purely cosmetic, so it shouldn't be done as a bot task. It needs to be done when a larger edit is made to the article. Mdann52 (talk) 21:48, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Death template parameter

We need a bot, please, to add |image=no to instances of {{WikiProject Death}} on the talk pages of articles about recent deaths (say, events in the last ten years; or biographies with a death date in that period). The parameter suppresses the display of images of skulls. The template has around 17K transclusions in all. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:46, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Who is "we", and where did they host the discussion to determine this need? Anomie ⚔ 13:52, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

There is a discussion here that has been inactive for a year, and I do not see a consensus. I didn't reread it in detail, though, so I could be wrong. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:31, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Not so; I updated that discussion only today. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:39, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

We is "Wikipedia". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:39, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

It seems you've taken it upon yourself to speak on behalf of "Wikipedia". I'd suggest you hold an actual RFC instead of pointing to an old no-consensus discussion. Anomie ⚔ 13:07, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

PR bot

This bot would likely be quite simple, basically it would act like the Legobot for RFC, if you have signed up for peer review volunteers, you get notices of new PR's in whatever area you choose, you would also set how many you are willing to receive per month. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:50, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

If your WikiProject subscribes to Article alerts you have an automatically updated page showing changes in these & many more categories: Noyster (talk), 09:14, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Bot for author removal of CSD tags

Pretty much anyone who's done a good long run of NPP has gone through the dance of:

CSD tag
Retag all removed CSD noms on watchlist
Repeat

Since there is already a Special:Tags category for removal of CSD templates, shouldn't it be too easy to make a bot that:

Checks all edits with these tags
Checks whether the person making the edit was the original page creator
Checks whether the edit was a page blank
Reverts the removal if 1 and 2 are true but 3 is false, and leave escalating {{uw-speedy}} templates on the user talk
Tag the page with {{Db-blanked}} if 1, 2, and 3 are all true

Seems like this should be easy to implement and would save a bit of time. Then again, the closest thing I have to programming is HTML from a decade ago, so I'm definitely not an expert. TimothyJosephWood 13:23, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Wasn't there a BRFA for a Lowercase Sigma Bot that expired for this? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 15:12, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Honestly no idea. I am the least bot savvy person on WP. TimothyJosephWood 15:23, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

This. Might want to email Sigma about it. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 15:26, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Removal of deprecated Infobox single Certification parameter

Resolved

Consensus was reached during a recent RfC to remove the {{{Certification}}} parameter from {{Infobox single}}. Since 3,500+ pages are involved, this seems like a good task for a bot. User:ZackBot has performed similar tasks and Zackmann08 has expressed an interest in carrying this out. It seems straightfoward, but I'll be happy to supply more info if needed. —Ojorojo (talk) 22:56, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed. Waiting to hear back... --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 23:08, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: A can't do that by COSMETICBOT because the parameter is now invisible, right? Still MusicAnimal approved the task. PS Yes, I try to make a point here but I am not good in writing long text and seems that every attempt I do to discuss COSMETICBOT does not work. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:12, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

The way I see it is this: having an approved explicit BRFA can override COSMETICBOT for the explicit change. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:50, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Replace deprecated WikiProject Yu-Gi-Oh! template

Resolved

Please replace all instances of {{WikiProject Yu-Gi-Oh!}} with {{WikiProject Anime and manga|yugioh-work-group=yes}}, preserving any class or importance parameters. If the page already has a {{WikiProject Anime and manga}} template, add "|yugioh-work-group=yes" to it rather than adding an extra copy of the template. This will need to be done on approximately 60 articles. Note that there are several redirect templates. Also note that {{WikiProject Anime and manga}} supports parameters for |yugioh-class= and |yugioh-importance=. I would like to map |importance= to |yugioh-importance=, but it doesn't make sense to have a separate class assessment for a task force, so please do not use |yugioh-class=. Pinging DatGuy since he's helped with similar requests. Kaldari (talk) 21:54, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

@DatGuy and Kaldari: I did everything manually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:10, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I also think that a bot shouldn't be coded for 60 pages, and it would be easier to do manually. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 22:12, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: A can't do that by COSMETICBOT, right? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:10, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Replacing a template that has been approved in TfD, etc is very explicit, a BRFA could be reviewed for it. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:53, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Leap years

Resolved

Please can someone add Category:Leap years, like this, to each year that was a leap year?

Unless someone offers a list, it should be possible to work from the text "was a leap year" in the lede. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:17, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Done Excel to make a list. AWB to add the lines. Ronhjones ^(Talk) 02:07, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

@Ronhjones: Thank you. FYI, at another editor's suggestion, I've moved them all to Category:Leap years in the Gregorian calendar, keeping the above as a parent category. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:21, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Fixing links in templates and placing the templates into articles

Resolved

I have recently created navboxes, they contain links to asian go players. I think many of those links link to redirects because they link to different way of writing the name than is used as article names on en.wiki.

Is it possible to fix those links so they link straight to the correct article names?
Is it possible to use bot to put the navboxes into articles they are linking to?

The templates are:

Template:Myungin, Template:Guksu, Template:Siptan, Template:Siptan, Template:Chunwon, Template:Chunwon, Template:Mingren, Template:Tianyuan, Template:Gosei, Template:Tengen, Template:Oza, Template:Judan.

Thanks for replies. --Wesalius (talk) 10:09, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

This isn't likely to need a bot, just someone to edit the handful of templates. Anomie ⚔ 12:49, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Not even the second task? --Wesalius (talk) 14:57, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Nevermind, I will proceed with the task manually... :/ --Wesalius (talk) 17:10, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Wesalius I can do them for you if you like. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:14, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Magioladitis thank you for your offer, but it is done already. --Wesalius (talk) 13:56, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Generate a list of subcategories

Resolved

Can someone please generate a list of subcategories for Category:Waterside populated places? It just got renamed, and I need a list of subcategories that should be nominated for speedy renaming. A complete list is going to be absolutely massive, and there will be tons of false positives, so I'm not asking for any actions on the part of the bot; just please generate the list. There are lots of layers of subcategories that I need, so please go, say, 10 levels below the parent. Bonus points if you can indicate whether each ten-levels-down subcategory has subcategories of its own; this will potentially help me identify any that should be explored farther down. Nyttend (talk) 16:57, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Nyttend, I'm not sure a bot is needed for this (for example, one can get the full list of subcats from AWB). ~~Also it looks like Category:Populated waterside places isn't populated, so what actually needs renaming?~~ Primefac (talk) 22:57, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Nyttend, I went five levels deep, turning up something stupid like 75k pages and 6556 categories. I've listed the latter at User:Primefac/pleaseDeleteWhenDone. Primefac (talk) 00:21, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I've never used AWB, so I haven't a clue how to get a full list of subcategories without (1) a bot, or (2) a lot of manual work. Should I have left a note at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks instead of here? Since you created it, I transferred your list into Excel, wrote a quick macro to mark all the relevant entries, and my list was completed while I got dinner ready. Thanks for the help! I'll take the pagename as an indication of G7. Nyttend (talk) 01:59, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

You're welcome! There's probably even a non-AWB way to do it (API request or something) but AWB is the only way I know how. And yes, I figured the page would disappear after you were done! Primefac (talk) 02:10, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Nyttend and Primefac: FYI, petscan is your friend in these cases. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:05, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

But Edgars2007, how do I get it to give me subcategories? Curious how it would work, I picked a large category with tons of subcategories and articles, so right now my selections are language: en, project: wikipedia, depth: 2, categories: "Towns in the United States", combination: subset, negative categories: [empty]. It returned 7,784 results, all of them articles; all six appearances of the string categor that Ctrl+F found are in the instructions. Nyttend (talk) 12:10, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

@Nyttend: You may want to look at the other tabs there, they contain pretty much options. In this case - "Page properties" tab and select "Category" there. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:17, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! I misunderstood those tabs to be searches through categories, searches through page properties, searches through templates&links, etc., rather than being different facets of the same thing. Nyttend (talk) 12:26, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Whoops. Completely forgot about petscan! Primefac (talk) 22:51, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Add WikiProject Months in the 1900s to talk pages of month articles

I have created a WikiProject called "WikiProject Months in the 1900s" intended for month articles such as January 1900. It would be a great idea to have a bot go to the talk page of each article in Category:Months in the 1900s and place {{WikiProject Months in the 1900s}} in the WikiProject banner shell, similar to Special:Diff/759589772 for Talk:January 1900. GeoffreyT2000 (talk, contribs) 02:29, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: Can you explain the side effect that happened in that edit with WikiProject Lists? Hasteur (talk) 05:08, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

@Hasteur: I think it was a manual addition and Geoffrey just added the assessment to the WPLists template at the sime time as adding the new WikiProject banner. I'd say it can safely be ignored, unless that's a feature you'd want GeoffreyT2000 Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 05:20, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Done. Pages were assessed to match the other WikiProjects with banners already on the talk page. — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:37, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

CFD daily subpages

A bot should create daily WP:CFD subpages for days in the following month at the end of each month. The ones up to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 August 1 were created by ProveIt, while the ones from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 August 2 to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 September 1 were created by BrownHairedGirl. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 01:56, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie: Could part of the script you use for AnomieBOT's TfD clerking be adopted for this easily? You wouldn't even need to worry about the transclusions and all that, just the creation of the actual subpages similar to how Special:PermaLink/732802882 looks. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:50, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it could, although for TfD it creates each page daily instead of doing a whole month at a time (is there a reason for doing a whole month at once?). Are there any other clerking tasks at CFD that could use a bot, e.g. updating the list at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Discussions awaiting closure? Looking at the history, it seems @Marcocapelle: and @Good Olfactory: do it manually at the moment. For reference, the list of things AnomieBOT does for TFD are listed at User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/TFDClerk.pm/metadata in the "Description" column. Anomie ⚔ 15:50, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie: I would suggest something very similar to the TFD task:

Create the daily CFD subpage.
Fix the headers on the daily CFD subpages, if they get removed or damaged.
Maintain the page Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Awaiting closure.
Subst {{cfd top}} and {{cfd bottom}}, when editing the page anyway.
Other tasks affecting only WP:CFD and subpages as determined by consensus at WT:CFD.

— JJMC89 (T·C) 08:18, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I created the August pages after I noticed in the early hours of one day that the current day's page didn't exist. I have done that a few tines over the years, but there appear to be other editors who do it regularly. It's a tedious job, so congrats to the regulars ... but it could easily be done by a bot.

When I did the August pages I had forgotten that some time back, I created a template which could be substed to create the new pages. This discussion reminded me of it, and I eventually found it at Template:CFD log day. It may need some tweaking, but it would be handy for a bot to use something like that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:02, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

It would be nice if this process can be automated. It would be preferable, in that case, to create daily updates. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:40, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

It is already mostly a bot, I have a program that creates a page and loads it into the paste buffer, then you just paste. It takes about 10 minutes to make a months worth of pages this way. It would be no big deal to make it fully a bot, I've written dozens of bots for a previous employer. If I had permission to run a bot I would have done so years ago, but really it only takes 10 minutes a month. I hate to think of anyone making them by hand. -- Prove It ^(talk) 15:23, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

ProveIt, would it be possible for you to make that generation code available as a GitHub Gist or something? Enterprisey (talk!) 18:24, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

No objection to sharing, but I ought to clean it up a bit... this is code I wrote for fun in 2006, I'd want to at least pep8 before showing it to anyone - Prove It ^(talk) 18:56, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

It now passes pep8 and pylint; used it for the December pages. I'll look into how to make a gist this weekend. -- Prove It ^(talk) 16:46, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Note AnomieBOT will be creating pages now, it'll do so at about 23:00 UTC the night before. Also, FYI, it's going to correct your  to  for all the ones you just created (I had it skip doing so for the ones created before the bot was approved). Anomie ⚔ 02:23, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Coding... Anomie ⚔ 23:08, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed I'll note that the bot can't easily use Template:CFD log day unless we want to give up having the bot fix the page header when someone screws it up. Anomie ⚔ 23:55, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: It appears this bot has been running for a while. Anything more you need from here? Hasteur (talk) 01:55, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Machine learning

If anyone happens to be knowledgeable in creating machine learning algorithms, please contact me via email. I have a project I'd like to discuss. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:28, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

ClueBot is actually a neural network, as is the work done by mw:Extension:ORES, last I checked. --Izno (talk) 12:56, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: ClueBot uses a data sample of reverts aside from the obvious swear words you can see in the GitHub repository. Maybe I misinterpreted your message though, since I'm not perfect in English. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 13:52, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Right, but it learns from that sample set. Review the BRFA for ClueBot. --Izno (talk) 14:45, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, test data plus machine learning is basically what I'm looking for. Discussing this with some people at the moment, but I may reach out to others. Thanks for the leads! ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 01:40, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Tropical Cyclone Bot

For several years, Wikipedians have updated current tropical cyclone information on articles. On occasion, discussions have been brought up regarding the practice, such as user errors in updating, edit conflicts, and more. However, I believe many of these issues could be addressed by creating a bot to automatically update this information. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, such a bot was actually put through a trial by Legoktm, even though the idea was eventually deferred and forgotten. I think it would definitely be a worthy endeavor, and I can confirm that this idea has received support from other WikiProject Tropical cyclone editors as well as myself. Dustin (talk) 04:34, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

The source code that Legoktm put up seems pretty complete and BRFA-ready - pinging him to see what he thinks about it. Enterprisey (talk!) 01:46, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks; I appreciate that you've responded. I had gotten to the point that I suspected this request would simply be archived without comment. Dustin (talk) 05:18, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

@Enterprisey: I don't have time to take on new bot tasks, so anyone else should feel free to take it over and re-use my code if they choose to do so. Legoktm (talk) 02:01, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Tag templates which do not use Module:Check for unknown parameters

Just a thought but what about a bot that would add templates to a maintenance category if they do not invoke Module:Check for unknown parameters? Additionally a secondary task could be tagging templates that do not have documentation? Not sure if "tagging" or "adding to a category" would be best... The basic idea would be to have a way to see what templates do NOT have documentation and/or do NOT check for unknown parameters. Could restrict to just Infoboxes. Thoughts? --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 00:49, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

This could be done by someone who likes to do database dump analysis. Maybe start with all Infobox templates with more than XXX transclusions (1,000?), listing all of them that do not invoke the module. In my experience, infoboxes with this many transclusions have at least some documentation, so that latter task could be done by editors as they visit each template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:55, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

My first thought is "where is the consensus that all templates should use this module?" Anomie ⚔ 23:59, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie: fair point. I frankly didn't think there was any reason it would be objected to. That being said, happy to open an RFC. --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 03:42, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie: also, I just want to point out, this proposed bot would NOT actually add the module... It would simply help generate a list of pages that do not use it. --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 05:07, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

We are adding the module manually in order to find errors in parameter usage. I have added the module to many infoboxes (see Category:Unknown parameters), and it has helped find many typos and errors by editors who wanted to display some information but didn't do it right (another one and another one).

All we are asking for here is a list of infoboxes that do not transclude the module yet so that we can evaluate them for addition of the module. Any editors who object to error-checking for a specific template are welcome to do so on that template's talk page. The module does not change displayed pages at all, only adding a hidden tracking category and an error message in Preview mode for parameters that would otherwise be silently ignored. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:52, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like something that could be done by an API query. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:45, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

This should get you started. It will obviously miss modules which include the module you're not looking for, but you can probably dump this to AWB and then make a list from there to 'update' as you go. --Izno (talk) 12:53, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Pending changes backlog indicator

It would be useful to have a small display box that pending changes reviewers could put on their user page, to alert them when the backlog is getting large: something along the lines of the DefCon box for level of vandalism, which is fed by APersonBot. This is particularly relevant now with Deferred changes due to come on stream and push more edits into the review queue: Noyster (talk), 10:45, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

This task would be slightly less complicated than the defcon bot, since all it has to do is count the results from the list=oldreviewedpages API call and convert the length of that list into a defcon level. So, it's definitely doable. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:38, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Enterprisey, I'm not sure even a Defcon level is needed here, a display of the plain number in the queue would do the job if flagged by a colour change at certain thresholds. If you let me know whether this is likely to go ahead, I'll call for input from other PC-reviewers: Noyster (talk), 10:28, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Sure, I'll start

Coding... this and add it to my infinite to-do list with bots. @Noyster: can you create a template similar to Template:Vandalism information? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 11:41, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you greatly Dat Guy. I'll ask on the Pending changes talk page for further input. Personally I'd favour a simple one-line display, something like User:Enterprisey/Wdefcon but showing the actual number in the queue, for example:
High pending changes backlog: 27 in queue.
The description ("High") and colour coding would vary according to defined thresholds, maybe: >30 very high, 20-29 high, 10-19 moderate, 5-9 low, <=4 very low. These thresholds could be tweaked based on a week's output from the bot: Noyster (talk), 12:54, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

What the bot does is just update the numbers. Most of the "magic" happens with template syntaxing. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 12:56, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

@DatGuy: Output from DatBot 4 is now incorporated in {{Pending Changes backlog}}: Noyster (talk), 12:47, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

DYK talk tag

Hi, I was wondering if it is possible to make a Bot to update old DYK talk tags at the article talk pages of articles that has appeared on DYK. At present time most of the older tags are using the old "hits check tool". That tool is dead, so I think it would be beneficial if a bot could change so all DYK tags at talk pages was having the new and improved hits counting tool. --BabbaQ (talk) 16:33, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Is there example talk pages showing the old (broken) and new (working)? -- GreenC 16:41, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Just my luck, today the old tool is working. But only for the page hit of that particular day, as soon as you try to search for anything of try other days it refers to internal failure. It has not worked since January before and is effectively not in use anymore. Talk:Elsa Collin shows the old tool, and Talk:Syster Sol shows the new and improved tool for hits. The old one will soon go into complete failure. In my opinion it would be wise to ask a Bot to update the old DYK talk tags with the new tool. We are talking about several thousands that have the old tool. --BabbaQ (talk) 22:53, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

In Talk:Syster Sol with a DYK of September 10 2016, the URL to tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews includes the date range 8/31/2016 -> 9/20/2016 .. that's 21 days (3 weeks) with the end date 10 days after the DYK, and the start date 11 days before the DYK. This will require more than an AWB replace, but a script to extract the DYK date and do date calculations. I know how to do it, but have other bot work before I commit, will keep it in mind. If anyone else wants to do it please go for it. -- GreenC 23:45, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't see anything to do in the example. The DYK boxes in Talk:Elsa Collin and Talk:Syster Sol don't specify any url or tool but just call {{DYK talk}} with the date the article was in DYK. Talk:Elsa Collin says:

{{DYK talk|18 July|2014|entry= ... that '''[[Elsa Collin]]''' ''(pictured)'' was the first woman at any Swedish university to be part of a student [[Spex (theatre)|spex show]]?}}

It produces:

A fact from Bot requests/Archive 73 appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 July 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Elsa Collin (pictured) was the first woman at any Swedish university to be part of a student spex show?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2014/July.

Wikipedia

Talk:Syster Sol says:

{{DYK talk|10 September|2016|entry= ... that singer '''[[Syster Sol]]''' ''(pictured)'' won the award for Best Reggae/Dancehall at the 2014 [[Kingsizegala]]?|nompage=Template:Did you know nominations/Syster Sol}}

It produces:

A fact from Bot requests/Archive 73 appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 September 2016 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that singer Syster Sol (pictured) won the award for Best Reggae/Dancehall at the 2014 Kingsizegala?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2016/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Syster Sol.

Wikipedia

{{DYK talk}} uses the date to choose which tool to link on "check views". Both links currently work for me. https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews doesn't allow dates before 1 July 2015 so http://stats.grok.se is chosen for 18 July 2014. No tool is linked for dates before 10 December 2007 where the data at http://stats.grok.se starts. If the site dies completely then it can just be removed from {{DYK talk}}. @BabbaQ: Can you give an example page where an edit should be made to the page? Please check the wikitext of the page to see whether there is actually something to change. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:45, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

BabbaQ, is this still a task you're interested in having a bot do? Enterprisey (talk!) 18:26, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Enterprisey. Yes. Mostly because it would be easier for anyone wanting to see more data from the DYK at the articles talk pages. And since the old template for DYK for the talk pages does include the old Stats tool it would be good if a bot could update all the old DYKs so the new tool is available at every separate DYK. I am not sure if I can be more specific, and if it is possible to make it happen.BabbaQ (talk) 19:43, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

[3], just to give an example, here is a link to a DYK stats for a old DYK. It goes to the old tool and then collapses to internal server error. I think the Wiki project would benefit from the tool being updated at every DYK template at the article talk pages from the old to the new one. BabbaQ (talk) 19:48, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

In Chinese Wikipedia, zh:Liangent-bot and zh:Liangent-adminbot can update the work of DYK.--小躍 (talk) 23:02, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

GA/FA bot

Acting much the same as my previous proposal, basically you would be able to sign up, and give both a maximum number to receive per month, and a subject area, in which to receive notices, again much like Legobot. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:52, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

If your WikiProject subscribes to Article alerts you have an automatically updated page showing changes in these & many more categories: Noyster (talk), 09:14, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

I can automatically count the votes of GA/FA,but the vote template of GA/FA must be joined.--小躍 (talk) 23:07, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Broken fpf.pt external links (English version)

Apparently, FPF.pt's English version was removed and, as a result, many external links are now broken. The good news is that it is easy to fix them by replacing, for example:

* [http://www.fpf.pt/en/Players/Search-international-players/Player/playerId/931970 National team data]

with

* [http://www.fpf.pt/pt/Jogadores/Pesquisar-Jogadores-Internacionais/Jogador/playerId/931970 National team data] {{pt icon}}

Notice the addition of {{pt icon}}. SLBedit (talk) 22:35, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

No one? This is important because these external links are used as source for national team appearances and goals in BLP articles. SLBedit (talk) 19:58, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Okay.... SLBedit (talk) 20:27, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

I've migrated about 70 of these. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:54, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

@SLBedit: I could handle this either as an AWB or bot task if you (or someone else) can provide me with a list of affected articles on-wiki. I hate, hate, hate working with database dumps, so I'm not going to use that to generate a list. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:18, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

@JJMC89: Thank you. @BU Rob13: Possible pages are under Category:Portugal youth international footballers, Category:Portugal under-21 international footballers and Category:Portugal international footballers. Some pages I have found: Raphaël Guerreiro, Rafa Silva and Eliseu. These, however, only had "en/Players/Search-international-players" in the link, no player id number, and were easily rescued. Many other pages have dead links, but those must be replaced manually, although they present a player id. SLBedit (talk) 22:49, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

@SLBedit: Would it be helpful or not to send a bot through and just replace the string "en/Players/Search-international-players/Player" with "pt/Jogadores/Pesquisar-Jogadores-Internacionais/Jogador"? Would the bot need to actually check that the page is live? I can only handle this if it doesn't require querying their site. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 00:32, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it would be helpful. No, the links work without player id, e.g., [4]. SLBedit (talk) 17:40, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

User:BU Rob13 and SLBedit, 28 pages containing "www.fpf.pt/en" per API:Exturlusage -- GreenC 05:04, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Extended content

I misunderstood and thought the text before player ID was static. It is not, so a simple find and replace won't work. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:18, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Replace deprecated WikiProject Chinese-language entertainment template

Resolved

Please replace all instances of {{WikiProject Chinese-language entertainment}} with {{WikiProject China|entertainment=yes}}, preserving any class or importance parameters. If the page already has a {{WikiProject China}} template, add "|entertainment=yes" to it rather than adding an extra copy of the template. This will need to be done on approximately 2083 articles. Kaldari (talk) 00:48, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Doing.... I've already done a similar task. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 06:39, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Bot proposal: convert archive.org djvu.txt links

This is for a bot I have mostly already written for other things, wanted to pass it by here before BRFA.

Regarding links that look like this:

https://archive.org/stream/britishcolumbiaf00schouoft/britishcolumbiaf00schouoft_djvu.txt

It would be better pointed to the main work page:

https://archive.org/details/britishcolumbiaf00schouoft

There are multiple formats available at Internet Archive and linking to the main work page is better than the djvu.txt file which is raw OCR output with considerable error rate. The djvu.txt is available from the main work page along with other formats such as PDF and a GUI interface to the scanned book ("flip book"). I think the reason most editors use the djvu.txt is because it was found in a Google search then copy-paste the URL into Wikipedia.

A database search shows about 8200 articles contain the "_djvu.txt" suffix (about 9500 links), and doing the conversion would be simple and mostly error free (other than unforeseen gigo). -- GreenC 18:22, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Go for it, mate ProgrammingGeek (Page! • Talk! • Contribs!) 19:56, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Lt. Ayala

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Resolved

See discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Star Trek#Lt. Ayala. At some point, someone decided that this "named extra" who is in the background of almost every single episode of Star Trek:Voyager is actually a "guest appearance" despite the fact that they are never listed as such in the opening credits. As such they are listed as a guest appearance in the infobox for nearly every single episode of this program. Removing all these erroneous mentions would be extremely tedious, if a bot could do a sweep and remove them all that would be great. Beeblebrox (talk) 10:14, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, just to check, you're talking about removing * [[Tarik Ergin]] - Lt. [[Ayala (Star Trek)|Ayala]] (and similar) from all pages listed in Category:Star Trek: Voyager episodes? If so, this should be manageable. Primefac (talk) 19:28, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that's the idea. thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:41, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Cool. I'll work up some regex and hopefully have something to submit in the next day or three. Primefac (talk) 03:21, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed Primefac (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Doing... -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:40, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Appox. 100 pages to fix. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:45, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Done 93 pages. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:47, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

[5][6][7][8]. You're basically running an unattended process on your main account while making other edits simultaneously. 100 pages isn't exactly a lot, but you're basically ignoring BOTPOL/MEATBOT. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 19:40, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Hellknowz you mean I should have changed the edit summaries for those... There were 160 pages. I skipped mot of them. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:42, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

No, I mean that you clearly ran an automated task on your main account ignoring BOTPOL. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 23:34, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Hellknowz please read the BRFA where it was in fact rejected because the number of edits was too low for a bot. There was a clear suggestion to do the edits manually Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/PrimeBOT 11. Note also that the request was for a max of 161 edits while I did 93 i.e. 43% fewer edits. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:47, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

It was clearly not a manual run, regardless of the actual task. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 00:19, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I do find it mildly amusing that "I did less than required" is their defence. Primefac (talk) 03:24, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Hellknowz I even missed one fix in my run. Perhaps I undid my accidentally hitting the mouse. [9]. See also that here I removed a deleted image but later I got more lazy. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:24, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

You've been berated and even taken to ArbCom for doing cosmetic/bot-like edits, and here you are clearly breaking protocol. I'm failing to understand how "skip if only genfixes performed" is so difficult for you to enable. Primefac (talk) 03:22, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The above discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Corrections to usages of Template:Infobox television episode

Resolved

Many occurrences of {{Infobox television episode}} use the uppercase form of parameters rather than lowercase, and spaces in parameters rather than underscores (for example, |Series no= instead of |series_no=). This should be updated to use the lowercase/underscore format to match the usages of {{Infobox television}} and {{Infobox television season}}, so that the uppercase/spaced formats can be deprecated in the episode infobox template. This can be done with AWB with two regex search-and-replaces:

Find: \n(\s*\|\s*)([A-Z])([a-z\s_]*)(\s*=) Replace: \n$1{{subst:lc:$2}}$3$4
Find: \n(\s*\|\s*)([^\s]+)\s([^\s=]+)(\s*=) Replace: \n$1$2_$3$4

Given that there are over 8,000 articles using {{Infobox television episode}}, I thought that this would be best for a bot. I attempted one article as an example here and the search-and-replace works as expected. Alex|The|Whovian^? 09:09, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Since the appearance of the articles using this infobox won't be altered, this seems like a straight "not done" per WP:COSMETICBOT to me. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:21, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

So, I'd need to update 8,000 articles manually? Great. Alex|The|Whovian^? 10:29, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

If a discussion at the template's talk page chooses to deprecate and replace the upper-case parameters and then remove them from the template's code, you should be able to get a bot run approved. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:40, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I'll just get it done manually with an automatic clicker over the save button overnight. Saves the drama of approvals, and it'll get done quicker. Alex|The|Whovian^? 01:58, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: On what are you basing the fact that a deprecated parameter should be able to be removed with a bot? I'm trying to get multiple bots approved to do EXACTLY that and am getting hit with WP:COSMETICBOT... See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ZackBot 4 & Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ZackBot 5. --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 06:17, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

WP:COSMETICBOT does not apply to this discussion or to those two discussions. Removing deprecated parameters from template transclusions so that the template can be modernized and updated by removing those parameters is a substantive change, and when you are doing it to thousands of articles, a bot is the best way to do it. User:Monkbot, for example, has replaced deprecated parameters in thousands of articles. If you want to apply cosmetic fixes like AWB's general fixes at the same time as that substantive change, that's up to you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:44, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: if you'd be willing to chime in on those BRFAs I would greatly appreciate it. (This isn't WP:CANVASSING right?). I agree with you! --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 07:26, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Cool, so, I'm confused. Is this a request that would be able to be approved and run by a bot, or not? Alex|The|Whovian^? 07:42, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: My point is that the parameters concerned don't seem to be deprecated: the only discussion that I can find was started yesterday, and has only two participants. Without deprecation, these are merely aliases, and changing one valid form of a parameter to another valid form is a cosmetic change. Using AWB (instead of a bot) to do this would fall foul of WP:AWB#Rules of use item 4 for the same reason. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:34, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Redrose64 makes a good point that there does need to be firm consensus before the bot can be approved. That being said, I think it is good to talk about it before one writes the code and then finds out "no, this STILL would be a cosmetic change". So redrose (can I call you Rudolph? ), let us assume for a moment that Jonesey95 does get a good consensus over the next week. Multiple participants all agreeing that the uppercase params should be removed, not just aliased, but 100% removed. IFF that happens, would this be a worthwhile bot to pursue creating at that time? --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 21:49, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Iff there is consensus on the templates's talk page to deprecate and remove, then go ahead. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:20, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

@Redrose64: copy that! --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 22:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I was saying above: "If a discussion at the template's talk page ...." – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:53, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Even if there is only one post agreeing, there seems to have been no opposition to it since I posted the discussion a week ago. Does this mean that approval for a bot could be gained now? Alex|The|Whovian^? 08:42, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Over three weeks ago; any further comments? Alex|The|Whovian^? 09:23, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Did you try asking for feedback at WP:TV? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:39, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Posted at WP:TV, and there now seems to be a stronger support for this at Template talk:Infobox television episode § Deprecating uppercase parameters. Alex|The|Whovian^? 01:52, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Another bump. This appears to be clear for a go-ahead. Almost two months later, and so many have been approved after this. I might as well do it manually with an auto-clicker. Alex|The|Whovian^? 09:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I am not keen on part of this. In my opinion spaces are preferable to underscores and dashes. This is the sort of text that non-programmers are used to using, and which we use for article names, file names, headings, tables and text. It has been a long and painful road to reduce the amount of camel case in Wikipedia, replacing it with spine case is not a good step.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC).

Fair enough. However, this would match the usages of {{Infobox television}} and {{Infobox television season}}, neither of have seem to have had issues with the underscores rather than the spaces. Alex|The|Whovian^? 23:54, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

AlexTheWhovian, if you're looking for a bot to run this (once consensus and blah blah blah), I'm happy to run PrimeBOT for you after the BRFA is accepted. Primefac (talk) 00:57, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac: That would be greatly appreciated, thanks. It appears that there is consensus - no-one has disagreed with replacing the parameters (bar the occurrence of an editor disagreeing with underscores, but this is required for conformity, and they haven't replied since). Alex|The|Whovian^? 01:15, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed Primefac (talk) 19:31, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Done Thank you, Primefac! Alex|The|Whovian^? 01:32, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Always happy to help :) Primefac (talk) 01:39, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Angiosperms

Resolved

That is a redirect page, and the version Angiosperm at the singular exists. Could an automated process edit the links to the plural version to that of the singular one, and remove Angiosperms ? --Jerome Potts (talk) 12:43, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jerome Charles Potts: Please review WP:NOTBROKEN. --Izno (talk) 14:49, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, the standard practice is to create redirects like this; see WP:R#KEEP #2. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:52, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for the indications. --Jerome Potts (talk) 21:56, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Require a list of articles

As per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports#Request for comments on the Airlines and destinations tables there is a push to replace the "Terminals" with "References" in {{Airport destination list}} where it is used in airport articles. I'd like a bot to make a list of airport articles that contain "3rdcoltitle" and a separate list of articles containing "4thcoltitle". Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 10:55, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@CambridgeBayWeather:

Doing... Should get this done by tonight. Phil roc^{My contribs} 14:18, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

@CambridgeBayWeather: I have made code for the bot, which is visible here. Phil roc^{My contribs} 14:59, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Philroc. That's great. Thanks very much. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 17:09, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

@CambridgeBayWeather: Before I can file a BRFA, I need your approval. Just want to make sure that the BRFA won't be rejected for too little consensus. Phil roc^{My contribs} 17:38, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Philroc. I think it's fine but then I'm a bit biased eh? What exactly is it you would like me to do? CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 17:42, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

~~@CambridgeBayWeather: Just say that you want a BRFA to happen or that you don't want one to happen. Phil roc^{My contribs} 17:47, 2 February 2017 (UTC)~~

~~@CambridgeBayWeather: Actually, you already gave your approval. Will make a BRFA later today. Phil roc^{My contribs} 17:50, 2 February 2017 (UTC)~~

@CambridgeBayWeather: Just found that the bot doesn't need a BRFA because the lists will be in my userpage. Will run the bot later today. Phil roc^{My contribs} 21:00, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

@CambridgeBayWeather:

Still doing... This is taking longer than I thought. I will contiune working to getting the bot ready to run. I will tell you when I am finished. Phil roc^{My contribs} 01:30, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

No worries. I'm not in any rush. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 06:12, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

@CambridgeBayWeather: list for 3rdcoltitle is here. I found no instances of 4thcoltitle. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:22, 13 February 2017 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough. Thanks. That's a lot less than I expected. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 04:08, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

A bot that can fix typos

I think someone should make a bot that automatically checks for typos and fixes them 198.52.13.15 (talk) 01:22, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

This is on the list of frequently denied bots. --AntiCompositeNumber (Leave a message) 01:24, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot. — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:26, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Local Route □ (South Korea)

Please replace these lists below to "[[Local Route □ (South Korea)|Local Route □]]". Read Talk:Local highways of South Korea for the reason.

[[Provincial Route □ (South Korea)|Provincial Route □]]
[[Jibangdo □]]
[[Gukjido □]]
[[Korea Provincial Route □|Provincial Route □]]
[[South Korea Provincial Route □|Provincial Route □]]
[[South Korean Provincial Route □|Provincial Route □]]
[[Korean Provincial Route □|Provincial Route □]]
[[Provincial Route □ (Korea)|Provincial Route □]]
[[Local Road □ (South Korea)|Local Road □]]
[[National Support Provincial Route □|Provincial Route □]]
[[National Support Provincial Route □]]

--ㅂㄱㅇ (talk) (Bieup Giyeok Ieung) 08:02, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

@ㅂㄱㅇ: Can you provide an example edit to show the type of change you want made? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 08:37, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: This is an example. --ㅂㄱㅇ (talk) (Bieup Giyeok Ieung) 03:22, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't see any consensus on the talk page you pointed me to requiring that these are presented in this way. Is there a discussion associated with this? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 03:34, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: The main page(Local highways of South Korea) was moved by talk, so subpages(Local Route □ (South Korea)) have to moved, too. -- ㅂㄱㅇ (talk) (Bieup Giyeok Ieung) 01:13, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean changing all wikilinks. The other terms could also be acceptable. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 01:27, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

What are all the little squares for? They're not explained anywhere here. Are they part of the route coding system? When I try removing a nowiki, as with Provincial Route □, all I get is a redlink - no actual valid page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:02, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: That's number. Example: [[Provincial Route 13 (South Korea)|Provincial Route 13]]. That pages are not exist yet. I'm going to create some of that. --ㅂㄱㅇ (talk) (Bieup Giyeok Ieung) 12:31, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Needs wider discussion. as noted above. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:14, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Tidy taxonomy templates

Explanation

"Taxonomy templates" are those with titles like "Template:Taxonomy/..."; they are all listed in Category:Taxonomy templates and its subcategories. They form the "database" of the automated taxobox system.

Most of the taxonomy templates begin {{Don't edit this line {{machine code|}}|{{{1}}}. For a long time parameter 1 has been redundant to the parameter machine code. Consider finding the rank of a taxon. What used to happen was that setting |1=rank caused a switch statement in {{Don't edit this line}} to return the rank of the taxon. Following an update around 2012/13, setting |machine code=rank causes {{Don't edit this line rank}} to return the rank of the taxon.

A few instances of the earlier kind of call lingered in the underlying code of the system until recently. I've now removed them all, and also the switch statement from {{Don't edit this line}}, so giving a value to parameter 1 has no effect whatsoever.

New taxonomy templates and those edited recently don't contain "|{{{1}}}", but the great majority still do. This makes the code processing taxonomy templates slightly more complicated, since there can be a following unnamed parameter (the link target) which will be parameter 2 if "|{{{1}}}" is present, or parameter 1 if not. Having to remember to allow for this makes maintenance more difficult and increases the likelihood of future errors.

Bot action requested

For all templates in Category:Taxonomy templates and its subcategories, replace {{Don't edit this line {{machine code|}}|{{{1}}} by {{Don't edit this line {{machine code|}} leaving everything else (including line breaks) untouched.

Peter coxhead (talk) 08:05, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: I am willing to take this on. Is there consensus for the change from the relevant WikiProject(s) and/or other maintainers/users of the taxonomy templates? If not, please start a central discussion (at Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system?) with pointers to it from any relevant WikiProjects. — JJMC89 (T·C) 09:35, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

No-one other than me seems to be maintaining the system at present (unfortunately, from my point of view, since it's taken up a huge amount of my time which I'd rather have spent on articles). See, e.g. these histories: Module:Autotaxobox – history, Template:Don't edit this line – history, or Template:Automatic taxobox – history. I have posted messages saying what I have been doing in various fora, e.g. Template talk:Automatic taxobox/Archive 13#Lua coding, Template talk:Automatic taxobox, Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system#Update and move, but without any response or input from anyone on technical matters. Wikid77 initiated changes to the automated taxobox system with fixes made in mid-2016, by these have been overtaken by my conversion to Lua (which took hundreds of pages out of Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded – fixing expansion depth issue was the driver of the change to Lua).

The key change from using parameter 1 to using |machine code= was noted in an HTML comment here on 1 January 2011 by Smith609 (a slightly inaccurate comment, because it was only redundant when used with parameter 1), but this change was never followed through to fix all now redundant uses of parameter 1 and then fix the taxonomy templates. The only other editor who has worked extensively on the automated taxobox system is Bob the Wikipedian. Both are aware of what I have been doing – I have posted on their talk pages, and have had no objections, but neither is currently active in this area of work. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:09, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed. — JJMC89 (T·C) 10:55, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Peter coxhead (talk) 11:05, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Done. — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:24, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Need a red link stripper

This would be for removing red links generated by template substitution, where the template includes every potential link for a given topic type. For example, a red link stripper would be useful on city outlines created by template, where many of the links will be red for a particular city because the generated links don't apply to that city. With a red link stripper, you could create a city outline via template, then strip out the red links. That would provide a good base to which to add more topics.

Years ago, the outline department used a template to create outlines on every country in the world, and then stripped out the red links by hand. It was very time consuming and tedious, dragging on for years. Some of those still need the red links stripped. So...

What is the easiest way for a script to identify red links?

How would a script go about removing red links?

To clarify, first a page is created and a template used to add the content via substitution, resulting in a lot of red links throughout. Then the red link stripper is used to strip them out (actually, it will delete some, and delink others, with the end result of removing the red links). I look forward to your answers to the questions above. The Transhumanist 00:40, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: I highly doubt that it'll be useful for a bot, but I have a Javascript-based redlink remover script that I created last year, and it's mighty handy at keeping Category:Wikipedia red link cleanup empty (example). Might give some inspiration, what with the comments through the code. Alex|The|Whovian^? 00:48, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! I'd be lost without your help. The Transhumanist 00:34, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: Before I archive this, that tool is sufficient for what you were looking for, right? Or were you still looking for a bot operator? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 00:14, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I can adapt the script provided into what I need. If I run into problems, I'll post again. Thank you. The Transhumanist 04:17, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Bot to notify editors when they add a duplicate template parameter

Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls has recently been emptied of the 100,000+ pages that were originally in there, but editors continue to modify articles and inadvertently add duplicate parameters to templates. It would be great to have a bot, similar to ReferenceBot, to notify editors that they have caused a page to be added to that category. ReferenceBot, which notifies editors when they create certain kinds of citation template errors, has been successful in keeping the categories in Category:CS1 errors from overflowing.

Pinging A930913, the operator of ReferenceBot, in case this seems like a task that looks like fun. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:13, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

This sounds like an interesting idea; I think I'd support the creation of such a bot to keep that category from refilling. Dustin (talk) 21:16, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

I would support this if (and only if) an opt-out was included. This is mostly because of a tagging task my bot runs that occasionally results in duplicate parameters that I must review. This occurs when unexpected parameter values are included on certain talk page templates, and allowing the bug to persist is my (perhaps unorthodox) method of drawing my attention to fixing those erroneous parameter values. I'm quick about cleaning up behind my bot, and I just don't want to have my bot spammed with talk page messages while it's trying to run. Talk page messages shut off the bot until viewed, so that would be very annoying. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:16, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. I believe that ReferenceBot runs once per day at 00:00 UTC, which gives people plenty of time to clean up unless they happen to be editing around that time. Other bots appear to wait for some time after the last edit to a page before tagging the article or notifying the editor who made the erroneous edit. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:38, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

We have had at least 500 articles added to this category in the last nine days. A notification bot would be very helpful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:48, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

I would strongly support such a bot; cleaning out this category is like pulling out weeds - they just come back again. Opt-out as suggested by Rob is sensible. --NSH002 (talk) 21:11, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

How about generalising this?

Basically, the bot has a table of categories: each line of the table has (1) name of category (2) definition of polite, friendly message to be posted on the perpetrator's talk page (3) how long to wait before notifying editor.

Bot looks at the categories page was in before and after the edit. If it wasn't in the category before the edit AND it is in the category immediately after the edit AND it's still in the category when the bot is run, then post the message.

So in future, all we need to do for similar cases is to get consensus that a particular cat warrants this treatment, and if so, agreement on the message. Job done.

--NSH002 (talk) 19:28, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. We need a bot operator. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:47, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Just finished coding another bot task. I suppose I'll start {{BOTREQ|doing}} this. Any other botop can feel free to work on this however, as this may take some time. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 15:48, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

@NSH002 and Jonesey95: Could you create a page similar to User:DeltaQuad/UAA/Blacklist in your, DatBot's, or my userspace? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 20:14, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

DatGuy, thank you very much for offering to do this, very much appreciated. But I don't understand what relevance the "Blacklist" you link to has to this particular task. Could you explain, please? --NSH002 (talk) 20:24, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I was about to respond, but reread the proposal and found it very different than the original one (in the main section). Could you rephrase it in other words? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 20:47, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

The original proposal warns editors when, as the result of some oversight or mistake, they inadvertently add an article to an error-tracking category (the one specified at the top of the proposal). Note that I said the "definition" and not the "text" of the error message, since the definition would incorporate parameters that would be evaluated at run time. Apart from this subtlety, exactly the same code should be able to do the job whatever the category involved. There would simply be a separate, fully-protected file that an admin could update whenever consensus and agreement has been reached that a particular category warrants this treatment. No need to write a separate bot each time we want to do this for another category (though sometimes a new parameter may be needed for the message definition, but that should be a fairly simple job).

Note that this bot has the potential to drastically reduce the workload of fixing errors. Remember GIGO: "Garbage in, garbage out" - much better to trap errors at the earliest possible stage.

--NSH002 (talk) 22:19, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

DatGuy: The original proposal is a specific case of the more general system described in this section. In the original case:

An editor makes an edit to a page, inadvertently adding a duplicate template parameter. This adds the page to the error-tracking category for duplicate parameters.
If the error persists after a specified period of time, the editor is notified that he/she created an error and is provided a link to the diff and to the error category, or to a page that explains how to fix the error.

If you look at ReferenceBot's user page, you can see a list of error-tracking categories that are monitored by that bot. Here's a link to one of that bot's notifications. You might be able to start with that bot's source code and generalize it to a variety of categories. The "generalising" proposal would result in an admin-modifiable page that specified the error categories that should be checked and the messages (or links to messages) that should be delivered to editors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:48, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Asap, I'll start coding it for only the category referenced above. If we want to generalise it, I'm sure it will be easy. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 15:56, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm super sorry, but I won't be able to do it. The one main point in ReferenceBot is to look for a class error, which I can't understand for these errors. I don't have enough time to code a whole new bot task. Again, sorry. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 20:17, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Translation

There should be a bot that translates articles from one Wikipedia language to another. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZLEA (talk • contribs) 02:14, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Not done There is community consensus against machine translation. — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:58, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

hi, any help is appreciated (or suggestion)

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Database reports § hi, any help is appreciated (or suggestion)

– Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:23, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

from the help desk .....

I'm a member of wikiproject Medicine, basically this happened to us [10] and so we have a source code but we need someone's help to do 2016 version (of 2015[11]), I can assist in whatever is needed. ...thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:56, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa: To track down this kind of expert, try posting at Wikipedia:Request a query. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:49, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

will do, and thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:59, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

as indicated above I'm posting there(with no response)...if anyone can help here it would be greatly appreciated, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:20, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

A couple of days is nothing - so don't give up just yet. But to be honest neither here nor there is the best place for this kind of request - people here are mostly "consumers" of reports rather than report-makers. The best place to ask would be Wikipedia:Bot requests, that's where the coders are. Le Deluge (talk) 02:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Request withdrawn...~~per the above suggestion I'm posting here, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:23, 21 February 2017 (UTC)~~

template:Geographic location

Hi! I am a hungarian Wiki user. I speak english a little bit... I would like import lot of item for template:Geographic location. My bot not working, is lot of error in English Wikipedia. Please replace: Geographic Location --> Geographic location. Thank you! --B.Zsolt (talk) 20:37, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Not done Replacing a redirect with its target is cosmetic. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:31, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

@B.Zsolt: You appear to be indicating you've attempted running a bot from your main account without approval. Am I correct in assuming edits like these [12] [13] were automated? If you wish to run a bot, you must seek approval at WP:BRFA before doing so, or you'll likely be quickly blocked. It is not permitted to run a bot from your main account or to do so at all without approval. Further, per WP:COSMETICBOT, the bot you suggest would not be approved. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 02:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

It's also against WP:NOTBROKEN. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:19, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Disagree; NOTBROKEN applies only to piped links that bypass redirects. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:24, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

No, it applies to any redirect, piped or not - the very first example ([[Franklin Roosevelt]] to [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]) does not involve a pipe. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:44, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

That's a more complicated situation as changing the visible link text to match the article title is often legitimate, and too often reverted incorrectly per NOTBROKEN. The piped-link fix does not change the visible text. The two very different situations should not be addressed in the same guideline, but it appears they currently are anyway, so you're technically correct. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:00, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mandruss: I'm quite confused. How are you suggesting that replacing a template redirect with its target will improve the encyclopedia? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:49, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: I'm not. It was a tangential discussion of WP:NOTBROKEN, now resolved. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:57, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I would like not editing English wikipedia! I am only Hungarian Wiki user. I would like only import date from English wiki to Wikidata, but Pltools software does not work. Why? Pltools not like template redirect.

My plan:

Geographic Location --> Geographic location
import from Geographic location template to Wikidata, example: Washington County, Florida
And in Hungarian Wikipedia: hu:Washington megye (Florida) with four nearby county. --B.Zsolt (talk) 17:46, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

That's not going to happen based on our local policies. Instead, fix the software. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 06:16, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Harvesttemplates doesn't have problems with template redirects. If you find a bug, then please report at github or at least Wikidata. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 22:43, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Migrate from deprecated WikiProject Central America country task forces

All seven of the task forces for WikiProject Central America have graduated to full-fledged WikiProjects (for example, WikiProject Costa Rica) and the task force parameters have been deprecated. We need a bot to go through all of the existing transclusions of {{WikiProject Central America}} and perform the following changes:

If there are no country task forces assigned, leave the {{WikiProject Central America}} template.
If there are 1 or 2 country task forces assigned, replace the task force entries with full WikiProject templates for those countries (replicating any relevant assessment data) and delete the {{WikiProject Central America}} template.
If there are 3 or more country task forces assigned, leave the {{WikiProject Central America}} template and remove the task force entries (as the scope of the topic is unlikely to be country-specific).

The only parameters supported by the country-specific templates are class, importance, small, and listas, so you don't have to worry about replicating any other parameters (like attention or needs-infobox). Kaldari (talk) 00:25, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Kaldari why do you need listas? The namespace is automatically omitted. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:32, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

@Magioladitis: I was just thinking it might be good to copy it if it exists. If listas isn't migrated, that's fine with me though (same for small). Kaldari (talk) 00:54, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

AFAIK all WikiProject banner templates support |listas= - it's one of the three "universal" parameters along with |category= and |small=. I should qualify that by modifying that to "... WikiProject banner templates built upon {{WPBannerMeta}} support ...", that is to say, I don't know of any that don't support these params, apart from Mathematics and Military history, which have their own peculiar banners that are not built upon {{WPBannerMeta}}.

My recommendation would be that if {{WikiProject Central America}} has |listas= and it is non-blank, copy that to the replacement template - but if there are two or more replacement templates, copy it to just one of them, since it is not required if another WikiProject template on the same page has its own |listas= set: it not only affects categories used by the banner in which it is set, but it also affects the sortkey of all other banners and templates. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:08, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari: Could you direct me toward a list of what taskforces get what templates, etc.? Might be able to do this. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:53, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13::

Belize -> {{WikiProject Belize}}
Costa Rica -> {{WikiProject Costa Rica}}
El Salvador -> {{WikiProject El Salvador}}
Guatemala -> {{WikiProject Guatemala}}
Honduras -> {{WikiProject Honduras}}
Nicaragua -> {{WikiProject Nicaragua}}
Panama -> {{WikiProject Panama}}

Kaldari (talk) 18:16, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Doing... ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:58, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: Are you still interested in doing this task? No rush. Just wanted to check in. Kaldari (talk) 03:25, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I've just been both very busy and very low motivation recently due to some things going on. I'll get to it definitely, but might need to be a tad patient with me. I'll try to get a BRFA submitted this weekend or next week. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 04:36, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari: Written and mostly tested at Module:WikiProject Central America/convert. This will need an AWB bot run to substitute the module (including some alterations to a couple parameters going into the substitution to correct an annoying quirk of using template args in Lua modules). Note that the output from my method of implementation would be something like this: [14] with each parameter on a new line. Are you fine with that? The output of the page isn't changed at all by doing it that way instead of on one line. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:12, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: That looks fine with me. Kaldari (talk) 16:09, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari:

BRFA filed as Task 33 of BU RoBOT. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 11:08, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari: Do you want the country projects to inherit the default importance, the country-specific importance, or the country if it's available and the default if not? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:28, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: The country-specific importance if it's available and the default if not. Kaldari (talk) 17:11, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari: Thanks for the clarification. Trial results are available at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BU RoBOT 33 if you want to take a look. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:59, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Done ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 11:19, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Replace Donald Trump image with presidential portrait

Per Talk:Donald_Trump/Archive_38#Trump_Photo_2_Rfc, the image File:Donald_Trump_August_19,_2015_(cropped).jpg and variants such as File:Donald_Trump_August_19,_2015_3_by_2.jpg should be replaced with an official presidential portrait, which is at File:Donald_Trump_official_portrait.jpg. Thanks. - CHAMPION ^{(talk) (contributions) (logs)} 00:12, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

It looks like the old images linked at the top of the RFC are used in only about 200 pages, at the most, not including sandbox pages. Someone could probably do this with AWB. Make sure to wash your hands afterwards.

I read the RFC closure, and it didn't say which types of pages the closure applies to. Should User pages have the image replaced? Archive pages? Talk pages? Pinging EvergreenFir in case this might need clarification. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:45, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Another couple of notes: Some of these images are used on pages where multiple images are being discussed, like Talk:List of Presidents of the United States. Some of the images are used specifically on pages discussing the campaign for president, and illustrate Donald Trump during the campaign. Replacing those photos with a post-campaign official White House photo may not be editorially valid. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:11, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

This should be applied only to the mainspace. I'd do this with AWB, but AWB is technically part of the admin toolkit, and I'm technically involved with regard to American politics, so it's not clear that I should do so. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:18, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Doing... per discussion with Rob₁₃ over IRC. --JustBerry (talk) 20:35, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Done within mainspace for files relating to File:Donald Trump August 19, 2015.jpg. Log available upon request. --JustBerry (talk) 21:07, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@JustBerry: Appears File:Donald Trump August 19, 2015 (cropped).jpg still needs doing. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:23, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

That discussion was about the infobox portrait on that article, not the whole of Wikiepdia! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:38, 5 February 2017 (UTC).

Autoassess redirects

A bot that patrols articles and reassesses WikiProject banners when an article has been redirected. (As far as I can tell, this doesn't exist.) It's an easy place to save editor patrol time. I would suggest that such a bot remove the class/importance parameters altogether (rather than assessing as |class=Redirect) because then the template itself will (1) autoassess to redirect as necessary, and (2) autoassess to "unassessed" (needing editor attention) if/when the redirect is undone. But bot assistance in that first step should be uncontroversial maintenance. Alternatively, the bot could remove WP banners when the project doesn't assess redirects, though I think the better case would be to leave them (let the project banners autoassess as "N/A") rather than not having the page tracked. czar 14:32, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

This seems like a good idea, and I would agree with removing class/importance as the best implementation. --Izno (talk) 14:49, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, good idea. No coders for this yet? 103.6.159.72 (talk) 19:14, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I have some code for this. Czar and Izno, how do you think the bot should react when the talk page has banners with class set to redirect and importance set to some value? I think there's some value to keeping the importance parameter, but it may be unimportant in the long run. Enterprisey (talk!) 21:01, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

If the page has been redirected for a week, I'd consider it uncontroversial to wipe both quality and importance parameters, which both should be reassessed by a human if/when the article is restored. (The WikiProject template automatically recategorizes when the redirect is removed for a human to do this.) I see two cases, though, (1) updating the WikiProject templates when the redirecting editor does not, and (2) removing manual assessments as "Redirects" to let the template autoassess on its own. There could be issues with the latter, so I'd focus on the former case, which is the most urgent. I would think some kind of widespread input would be needed for the latter, considering how some project may desire manual assessments across the board and/or keeping their importance params on redirects, for whatever reason. Thanks for your work! Looking forward to the bot. czar 21:06, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps the bot could leave a comment; something like . Articles which are un-redirected would then give the editor an opportunity to review the old classification. --Izno (talk) 13:11, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm strongly, strongly opposed to wiping importance. Some projects may use that to identify targets needing creation which are currently redirects. This should be a project-level decision. As for removing classes, that's uncontroversial. Not sure how you're implementing this, but I'd suggest you want articles that have been redirects for at least 48 hours to avoid wiping classes from articles which are blanked and redirected by vandals, etc. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:01, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

At the moment, the bot skips anything that hasn't been a redirect for a week. I agree that the importance parameter shouldn't be affected by whatever the page contains, so at the moment it isn't touched. The BRFA might also be a good place to discuss this. Enterprisey (talk!) 01:57, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed Enterprisey (talk!) 02:45, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

And marking this as

Done, as I'm continuing to run the task. Enterprisey (talk!) 20:16, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Regular expression

Hi, i'm from Bengali wikipedia. Sometime i use WP:AWB. I need help with regular expression. I have a word like [[ঢাকা|ঢাকার]] and i want to replace it with [[ঢাকা]]র. How can i do it with regular expression? --Aftabuzzaman (talk) 02:08, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

This was also posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Regular expression, where a reply has been left; further discussion should be there, not here, in the interests of WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 01:23, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

MOS Bot

A bot to perform certain simple edits to make articles comply with MOS. One feature would be to italicize foreign words (the bot could have a list of words that are commonly used, but need to be italicized). And also to removing the italics from words that don't need them, but commonly are italicized. It would also add a {{nbsp}} between any integer, and AD, BC, CE, BCE. It would also capitalize AD, BC, CE, or BCE if it was next to a number. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 17:30, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

This isn't a suitable task for a bot. See WP:CONTEXTBOT for details. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:39, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

To give a concrete example, look at this article to see the phrase "2014 ad campaign", which should obviously not be changed by a bot to "2014{{nbsp}}AD campaign". The word "ad" in this context means "advertisement", not "anno domini". There is no way for a bot to tell the difference. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:13, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

However a good NLP system would realise this, because there are three glaring clues, firstly the lower, secondly the presence of the word "campaign" and thirdly AD is rarely used with years as late as 2104. The combination would disambiguate ad to "advertisement" rather than its alternative meanings. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:57, 5 February 2017 (UTC).

In the meantime, if anyone is interested, I have a formatting script that I use for making MOS-related changes. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 23:20, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Trump 2016 election image by state

Can you change the images in Category:United States presidential election, 2016 by state to the cropped version File:Donald Trump official portrait (cropped).jpg so they all match as some are cropped and others aren't. It will also match the main United States presidential election, 2016. 80.235.147.186 (talk) 06:21, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Maybe JustBerry could take also this? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:28, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

See above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:56, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

That doesn't address the issues mentioned. 80.235.147.186 (talk) 15:27, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: This issue refers to change between official photos, rather than changing non-official photos to official photos. --JustBerry (talk) 18:43, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

@80.235.147.186: @Edgars2007: Has consensus been established regarding which image should be used (cropped versus non-cropped)? If so, please link to the discussion. --JustBerry (talk) 18:43, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

On hold until the proposal has achieved WP:CONSENSUS. If proposal demonstrates consensus, please link to the corresponding discussion. --JustBerry (talk) 05:21, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

I propose to change the images in Category:United States presidential election, 2016 by state to a single campaign photo, not a post-election photo. Must illustrate Donald Trump during the campaign, not after. --Frodar (talk) 04:05, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

This is not the right place for a discussion. I suggest Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Donald Trump. Once consensus has been reached there, post here with a link to the discussion's outcome. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:11, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

The proposal doesn't need a consensus and no one has disputed the changes to cropped on the other articles. It should be cropped to match the main United States presidential election, 2016 article and an admin has said here you can be WP:BOLD. 80.235.147.186 (talk) 18:20, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

BSicons

Could we have a bot that

creates a daily-updated log of uploads, re-uploads, page moves and edits in BSicons (Commons files with prefix File:BSicon_);
makes a list of Commons redirects with prefix File:BSicon_;
uses the list (as well as a list of exceptions, probably this Commons category and its children) and uses it to edit RDT code (both {{Routemap}} and {{BSrow}}/{{BS-map}}/{{BS-table}}) which uses those redirects, replacing the redirect name with the newer name (for instance, replacing (HUB83) with (HUBe) and (STRl) with (STRfq));
goes through Category:Pages using BSsplit instead of BSsrws and replaces \{\{BSsplit\|([^\|]+)\|([^\|]+)\|$1 $2 ([^\|\{\}])+\}\} with {{BSsrws|$1|$2|$3}}; and
creates a list of BSicons with file size over 1 KB.

Legend

The example diagram.

This request is primarily for #2 and #3, since there've been a lot of page moves from confusing icon names recently and CommonsDelinker doesn't work for BSicons because they don't use file syntax. The others would be nice extras, but they're not absolutely necessary if no one wants to work on them. For clarity, an example of #3 would be changing

{{Routemap
|map=
CONTg\CONTg
BHF!~HUB84\BHF!~HUB82
CONTf\CONTf
}}

to

{{Routemap
|map=
CONTg\CONTg
BHF!~HUBaq\BHF!~HUBeq
CONTf\CONTf
}}

(Pinging Useddenim, Lost on Belmont, Sameboat, AlgaeGraphix, Newfraferz87, Redrose64 and YLSS.) Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 08:59, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Point 1. should be all BSicon files, regardless of filetype, so that those (occasionally uploaded) .png files also get listed. Useddenim (talk) 10:48, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Updated request. Thanks. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:42, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

To further clarify, the regex for #3 is \n\{\{BS[^\}]+[\|\=]\s*$icon\s*\| for BS-map. I have no idea what it'd be for Routemap, but to the left of the icon ID could be one of \n (newline), ! !, !~ and \\ (escaped backslash); and to the right could be one of \n, !~, ~~, !@, __, !_ and \\. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 06:21, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

I started to do some coding for this request, but I will not have time to continue working on it until January. (I have no objections to another botop is handling this request before then.) I'm not familiar with the route diagram templates, so I will likely have questions. — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:16, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Update: I've done most of the coding for this, but I've run into a Pywikibot bug. The bug effects getting the list of redirects to exclude for #3. (If the bug is not resolved soon, I will try to work around it.) See below for example output for #1. (It will normally be replaced daily and only contain the previous day's changes.) #2 and #5 will be simple bulleted or numbered lists. Which would you prefer? Some clarification for #3, for {{routemap}} replace in |map= based on the separators above and for any template with a name starting with BS (or [Bb][Ss]?) replace entire parameter values that match, correct? Example for -BS to v-BSq on Minami-Urawa Station:

@@ -61 +61 @@
- {{BS6|dSTRq- orange|O1=dNULgq-|STRq- orange|O2=-BS|STRq- orange|O3=-BS|STRq- orange|O4=-BS|STRq- orange|O5=-BS|dSTRq-
 orange|O6=dNULgq-|5|← {{ja-stalink|Fuchūhommachi}}}}
+ {{BS6|dSTRq- orange|O1=dNULgq-|STRq- orange|O2=-BS|STRq- orange|O3=-BS|STRq- orange|O4=-BS|STRq- orange|O5=v-BS
q|dSTRq- orange|O6=dNULgq-|5|← {{ja-stalink|Fuchūhommachi}}}}

Example for #1

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+ Updated: ~~~~~
! File !! Oldid !! Date/time !! User !! Edit summary
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -3BRIDGE.svg]] || 219463995 || 2016-11-25T18:24:57Z || SchlurcherBot || Bot: Removingcategory 'Uploaded with UploadWizard' per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|discussion]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -3BRIDGEq.svg]] || 220150188 || 2016-11-26T09:13:44Z || AkBot || Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard removed per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|community decision]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -3KRZ.svg]] || 220150226 || 2016-11-26T09:13:47Z || AkBot || Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard removed per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|community decision]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -3KRZo.svg]] || 220150264 || 2016-11-26T09:13:50Z || AkBot || Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard removed per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|community decision]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -3KRZu.svg]] || 220150305 || 2016-11-26T09:13:52Z || AkBot || Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard removed per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|community decision]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -3STRq.svg]] || 220150349 || 2016-11-26T09:13:55Z || AkBot || Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard removed per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|community decision]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon l-MKRZo.svg]] || 220150391 || 2016-11-26T09:13:58Z || AkBot || Category:Uploaded withUploadWizard removed per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|community decision]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon l-MKRZo.svg]] || 203687181 || 2016-08-11T08:35:01Z || Jc86035 || Jc86035 uploaded a new version of [[File:BSicon l-MKRZo.svg]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon l-MKRZo.svg]] || 203686022 || 2016-08-11T08:21:46Z || Jc86035 || Jc86035 uploaded a new version of [[File:BSicon l-MKRZo.svg]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -BRIDGEl.svg]] || 219463892 || 2016-11-25T18:24:47Z || SchlurcherBot || Bot: Removingcategory 'Uploaded with UploadWizard' per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|discussion]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon l-MKRZu.svg]] || 219463860 || 2016-11-25T18:24:43Z || SchlurcherBot || Bot: Removingcategory 'Uploaded with UploadWizard' per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|discussion]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon l-MKRZu.svg]] || 204432312 || 2016-08-21T08:45:59Z || Jc86035 || Jc86035 uploaded a new version of [[File:BSicon l-MKRZu.svg]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -BRIDGEr.svg]] || 219463904 || 2016-11-25T18:24:48Z || SchlurcherBot || Bot: Removingcategory 'Uploaded with UploadWizard' per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|discussion]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -BRIDGEvq.svg]] || 219463868 || 2016-11-25T18:24:44Z || SchlurcherBot || Bot: Removing category 'Uploaded with UploadWizard' per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|discussion]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -PLT.svg]] || 203149593 || 2016-08-05T01:20:39Z || Tuvalkin || Tuvalkin moved page [[File:BSicon -PLT.svg]] to [[File:BSicon -PLT.svg]] over redirect: Because that’s how it should be named.
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -DSTq.svg]] || 219463968 || 2016-11-25T18:24:54Z || SchlurcherBot || Bot: Removing category 'Uploaded with UploadWizard' per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|discussion]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -GIPl.svg]] || 190769935 || 2016-03-20T19:57:19Z || Plutowiki || Lizenz
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -GIPl.svg]] || 190769739 || 2016-03-20T19:53:46Z || Plutowiki || User created page with UploadWizard
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -GRZq.svg]] || 219464007 || 2016-11-25T18:24:59Z || SchlurcherBot || Bot: Removing category 'Uploaded with UploadWizard' per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|discussion]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -KBSTl.svg]] || 220150428 || 2016-11-26T09:14:01Z || AkBot || Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard removed per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|community decision]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -KBSTr.svg]] || 220150461 || 2016-11-26T09:14:03Z || AkBot || Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard removed per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard|community decision]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -L3STRq.svg]] || 219464058 || 2016-11-25T18:25:05Z || SchlurcherBot || Bot: Removing category 'Uploaded with UploadWizard' per [[Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/08/Category:Uploaded with UploadWizard
|discussion]]
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -LSTR+l.svg]] || 228341148 || 2017-01-02T00:38:51Z || Zyxw59 || 
|-
| [[commons:File:BSicon -LSTR+l.svg]] || 228341113 || 2017-01-02T00:37:48Z || Zyxw59 || User created page with UploadWizard
|}

I haven't coded for #4 yet. Does it need to be done on a regular basis or only once? — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:14, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89: (pinging Useddenim, Sameboat and AlgaeGraphix) Many thanks, looks good. Don't think #4 is necessary in retrospect, because it would catch some links to rail lines as well and changing those might be counterintuitive. Not sure about #3 but the whole icon name should be changed, if that's what you're saying. For #3 it might be a good idea to have a blacklist of redirects which shouldn't be changed (or a whitelist), because some icons, including

(v-BSq), might have been moved to a bad/incorrect name. It might be better to use numbered lists so we could find the length of the lists easily, but I don't mind if they're bulleted. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 02:40, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

My preference would be for bulleted list, as it is easier to manipulate with a text editor (vs. stripping out all of the item numbers). If you need the total number of files, it should be trivial to add a count statement to the bot's code. AlgaeGraphix (talk) 18:40, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@AlgaeGraphix: Bullets vs numbered is * vs # as the character at the beginning of each line. @Jc86035: There will be an onwiki configuration that contains a blacklist of sorts. It will initially be excluding c:Category:Icons for railway descriptions/Exceptional permanent redirects (recursively including subcategories). Would using {{bsq}} for #1 and/or #2&5 instead of or in addition to the linked file name be beneficial? Also, if desired for #1 the table could include the last n days of changes. For the BRFA: Have there been any prior discussions for this? What pages would you like to use for #1, #2, and #5? (I'll but them in userspace if you don't have a place for them in projectspace.) Do you have an estimate of edits per day for #3? — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:50, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89: I guess #1, #2 and #5 could go on your Commons userspace, but I don't really mind. For #1 maybe log pages could be sectioned into 24-hour periods (starting 00:00 UTC), like Chumwa's Commons new file logs but in tabular format. Using {{bsq}} would be great. I'm not aware if there have been any prior discussions (Useddenim, Tuvalkin, Sameboat?), although CommonsDelinker has never worked well with BSicons and I believe the only bot that previously did this was Chrisbot for a few months in 2009. For #3, there's probably going to be a very large number of edits on the first day (possibly as many as 5,000), but very few after that. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 09:29, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035:: The bot action as requested and their suggested splitting bweteen Commons and Wikiepdias make sense in my opinion. There were several discussions concerning CommonsDelinker in the past, but the matter is as you presented it. Tuvalkin (talk) 11:09, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Commons bot request filed. I will file a BRFA here after that has run its course. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:35, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Initial redirect-changing blacklist should include all of these icons; convoluted and boring discussion under way on exactly what's wrong with them or if anything's wrong with them. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 14:03, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed. — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:22, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89: Just one thing – {{bsq|redirect}} (if it's going to be edited by the bot) should be replaced with {{bsq|new name|alt=redirect}}. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 08:51, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035: The bot is only editing {{Routemap}} and {{BS.*}} route diagram templates. {{BSicon quote}} ({{bsq}}) is a rail routemap template, so it will be ignored. — JJMC89 (T·C) 16:38, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

This is

Done at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/JJMC89 bot 9. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 11:33, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

VeblenBot

User:VeblenBot handles many of the routine chores associated with Peer Review. It was developed by User:CBM, and is currently in my care, but neither of us has the time or inclination to run it. Would someone be able to take it over? If so, please reply here. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:06, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Much of this is just a task-specific archiving job. It would be possible for someone else to rewrite this in a bot framework of their choice without too much work, instead of taking over the existing code. It's an important task for the Peer Review system, but I can't manage it any longer. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:05, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Are there details anywhere of what exactly the bot does? I'm not finding a relevant-looking BRFA for "many routine chores". Anomie ⚔ 17:27, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie: I'm also approved for this task, and I also can't maintain it, sadly. My implementation was kind of shit anyway. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/BU_RoBOT_9 for task details, though. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:13, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

One BRFA is Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/VeblenBot_5. The PR system worked by having the bot make a page that tracks category contents. This is a relatively straightforward task: given a list of categories and templates, it generates wiki pages which list the category contents using the templates. By looking at subpages of User:VeblenBot/C/, it should be possible to recreate the list of categories that need to be tracked. There is more information at Template:CF and Wikipedia:Peer_review/Tools#Peer_review_process_-_technical_details. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:41, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13:

BRFA filed Anomie ⚔ 01:21, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@Enterprisey: Didn't realize Anomie had taken this on. It wouldn't be a horrible thing to have multiple bot ops able to do this, but you may prefer to devote time elsewhere. Entirely up to you. Sorry if you've already started development. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 02:29, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks for letting me know. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:40, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

This is

Done ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 11:34, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Replacement Peer review bot - VeblenBot - URGENT

Peer review generally has 30-50 active reviews. We rely on a single bot, VeblenBot, to process new reviews and archive old reviews, otherwise the whole system crumbles. Unfortunately for the last 3 or so years we have had a large number of problems because the bot is not well supported and frequently is inactive.

We and the thousands of Wikipedians who use peer reviews would be very grateful if a functional replacement bot could be created that works consistently. I can supply more technical details about the process later, it is documented at WP:PR. Many thanks if you can solve this!! --Tom (LT) (talk) 12:57, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Tom (LT), to understand what it does. The bot takes as input Category:Arts peer reviews and produces as output User:VeblenBot/C/Arts peer reviews. Does it also remove entries? Does it retrieve data from other places? -- GreenC 19:06, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Green Cardamom, see WP:PR tab "technical details" --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:07, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I've seen that. It's called the "Tools" tab BTW. -- GreenC 00:54, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

As it's hosted on Labs, I think the easiest thing would be for User:CBM (who I think is inactive as a bot op) or User:Ruhrfisch to add another keen Perl enthusiast to their Labs project to help out from time to time. Unfortunately I don't do Perl but I know plenty of people watching this page do! - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 20:13, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

@LT910001: At one point, I had taken this on I believe, but I petered out on running the task. That was my fault. Unfortunately, I can't run the bot for the next two weeks because I'm out-of-town. I can run it when I get back, but I'm much busier these days than I used to be, so I probably can't do it long-term. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:44, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your offer, and if you could activate the bot infrequently that would be better than not at all, but we really need a longer term solution here. --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:07, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

@LT910001: Totally fell off my radar over the two weeks I was out of town, but I eventually remembered this. The bot is running now. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:11, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you BU Rob13, much appreciated!--Tom (LT) (talk) 05:43, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/VeblenBot

Can a bot operator have one of their bots fill in for what this bot above is supposed to do, because I've noticed that the peer review nomination pages haven't been updated since November. -- 1989 (talk) 23:38, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Coding... Anomie ⚔ 01:28, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

The same is true for the two GAR-related pages handled by VeblenBot: one is at User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia good article reassessment and controls the community reassessments are transcluded at WP:GAR, the main Good Article Reassessment page—we've been adding and subtracting these by hand as community GARs show up at Category:Good article reassessment nominees (which include both community and individual reassessments), or the GARs are closed and vanish from the category. The other is at User:VeblenBot/C/Good articles in need of review, and is based on the {{GAR request}} templates and their associated category, Category:Good articles in need of review. This last hasn't been updated since November either. I'm not sure what it would take to get these two VeblenBot chores up and working again, but it would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:57, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I've gotten code done to start populating those lists as subpages of User:AnomieBOT/C (since edits to the bot's own userspace don't need a BRFA). The categories to listify are configurable on-wiki if more are needed, see the instructions on that page. Going to look at the replacement for Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BU RoBOT 9 next. Anomie ⚔ 03:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@Anomie: You forgot to make this one, User:AnomieBOT/C/List peer reviews, list articles for PR. -- 1989 (talk) 03:23, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Anomie, thanks for helping them with this. It is not a hard task, but I needed to move on to other things. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:55, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Anomie, my thanks, too. Do you or CBM know why the User:AnomieBOT/C/Wikipedia good article reassessment page display omits the last several entries (the ones from 2017)? The same thing was happening on the VeblenBot page, and while it doesn't prevent the page from working correctly with WP:GAR, something doesn't seem to be working as it should. Please let me know when you consider these pages ready to be used officially—when the bot runs on a regular schedule—and I'll adjust the GAR pages accordingly. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:09, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@BlueMoonset: All 12 articles named like "Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/" in Category:Wikipedia good article reassessment are showing up on User:AnomieBOT/C/Wikipedia good article reassessment; the answer is probably that some change made the last several entries not be in that category anymore. Anomie ⚔ 19:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Also, AnomieBOT is running on a regular schedule already (it checks for updates to the lists hourly). Feel free to change things over. Anomie ⚔ 19:10, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Anomie, thanks for letting me know that AnomieBOT is now handling these pages and checking on an hourly basis. I'll update the affected GAR pages in a few minutes. As for the 2017-dated entries not displaying on the User:AnomieBOT/C/Wikipedia good article reassessment page, they're still in the category; this has been an issue since they were first manually added to the User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia good article reassessment page starting back on January 7. It doesn't affect the transclusions on the WP:GAR page, but it's odd that the AnomieBOT page, like the VeblenBot page before it, doesn't display them. This may be something down in the weeds of the CF suite workings; I didn't see that any of the peer review pages use this name-only format, so there may be a parameter somewhere that prevents post-2016 entries from displaying in this one case. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:34, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@BlueMoonset: Oh, I see what you're referring to now, they're not showing up in the rendered page. Template:CF/GAR/Default (used by Template:CF/Wikipedia good article reassessment) has logic to only show reassessments that are more than 17 days old. The first 2017 assessment, from Jan 6, should start showing up around 16 hours from now. Anomie ⚔ 20:39, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Anomie, thanks for looking in to it. Presumably there's a good historical reason for the 17 day delay; it's good to know what's causing the display to work as it does. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:57, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Adding: it looks like 1989 made the switchover at 03:30, so AnomieBOT has been on the job for over 16 hours at GAR. Thanks again. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:39, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Update WikiWork factors

Hi, per what was discussed at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index#Wikiwork factors, I'm asking that the WikiWork factors for WikiProjects be updated. I myself frequently reference them, they're pretty useful overall to scope out a project, so it would be nice to get them working again. Thanks, Icebob99 (talk) 16:16, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Hello? Is this request feasible? Icebob99 (talk) 16:17, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Just to give more context, at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index we are having a discussion regarding the WP 1.0 bot (talk · contribs). One of the functions of the bot is to update the Wikiwork factors to be displayed in the WikiProject assessment tables. However the bot stopped updating it since July 2015. REquests to the bot owner has not been answered since he/she seems to have retired. Can someone here please see what's the issue with the bot and make it run again? The bot in question which updates the Wikiwork numbers is called Theo's Little Bot (talk · contribs). It has been doing other jobs as can be seen, just skipping the Wikiwork updation. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 14:35, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Just for reference: here's the manual calculator; you can divide the score you get from that tool by the total number of articles in the project to get the relative score. Getting the bot to do this, of course, would be the ideal scenario. Icebob99 (talk) 00:52, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the URL @Icebob99:, now I can get the progression of each Wikiproject. Do I need to update the Wikiwork page to reflect this so that its assimilated in the project assessment table? —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 06:33, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@IndianBio: I went from User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Microbiology to User:WP 1.0 bot/WikiWork and found in the documentation that there are four different pages that the User:Theo's Little Bot used to update: User:WP 1.0 bot/WikiWork/ww, the overall WikiWork score; User:WP 1.0 bot/WikiWork/ar, the total number of articles in the project; User:WP 1.0 bot/WikiWork/om, the relative WikiWork score; and User:WP 1.0 bot/WikiWork/ta, the table that contains the overall and relative scores. If you look at the history of each of those pages, the bot was updating them until 2 July 2015. You can update those pages manually by inputting the numbers by hand and then inputting the score from the calculator into the overall WikiWork score page, the number of articles page, or the relative WikiWork score page. The table generator page used values from those three pages. So to answer your question, yes you do need to update one of those WikiWork pages for it to show up in the project assessment table. (Anyone who is looking at reviving User:Theo's Little Bot could also use this info). Icebob99 (talk) 16:15, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Icebob99: I can't thank you enough for guiding me in generating the score and updating them. The project templates are finally reflecting the current status. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 04:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

It's my pleasure just as much as yours! Although, it would be nice to have the bot do it rather than individual WikiProject editors... Icebob99 (talk) 04:39, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@1989:, I see that you are active on this page, may I ask you to please look through this request once? —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 07:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@IndianBio and Icebob99: The source code is available, and I might be able to take over, especially because of the recent m:Requests for comment/Abandoned Labs tools discussion. Would that be useful? Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 17:26, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@DatGuy: That would be great! I'm not too knowledgeable in the world of bots, but I think that this is one of those where it gets running and goes on for a long time. Thanks! Icebob99 (talk) 18:01, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@DatGuy: thanks for your response, did you have any progress with the bot's functionality? Sorry for asking. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 16:11, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

No problem at all. The "committee" that should oversee the take-overs isn't actually created yet. I'll try and test it on my own computer and fix any minor bugs related to new updates before I start a BRFA. However, the code will still be private to respect Theo's wishes. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 10:45, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, is there any progress? I'm not familiar with how long bots take to fix (you folks do some arcane sorcery), so I might be asking preemptively. Icebob99 (talk) 03:27, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Coding.... Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 11:41, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 17:09, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! WikiWork works again! Icebob99 (talk) 14:19, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Apply editnotice to talk pages of pages in Category:Wikipedia information pages

Apply editnotice {{Wikipedia information pages talk page editnotice}} to talk pages of pages in Category:Wikipedia information pages, Per unopposed proposal here. (A change to common.js to produce this edit notice was suggested but rejected; a bot task was suggested as the best approach.) Thanks! —swpb^T 16:15, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

(The other route for placing the edit notice is a default-on gadget, which hasn't been put to a discussion yet; bot ops considering doing this task may want to wait until that route has been considered and rejected as well.) Enterprisey (talk!) 18:58, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm very hesitant to start applying edit notices en masse without some stronger consensus, especially with a bot. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 04:58, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

To editor BU Rob13: Let another bot operator do it then. The proposal has sat in the appropriate location for 19 days, and the edit notice has appeared on every page currently in the category for 10 days, without a single voice of opposition. "Insufficient consensus" is simply not a valid reason to withhold action in this case. —swpb^T 13:18, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

As these are project pages, and the common.js route has been practically killed going forward with this as a one-off bot run shouldn't be to bad. If someone files a BRFA it should be able to go to trial quickly. NOTE: The OPERATOR will need to be an admin or template editor. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:00, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

This is not meant to be a one-off run – the pages currently in the category are already tagged with the edit notice. The request is for a bot to continuously put the notice on pages that are newly added to the category. —swpb^T 15:10, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Why does the operator need to be an admin or template editor? Everybody can edit Wikipedia information pages, right? Phil roc^{My contribs} 16:13, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

To edit the info page itself, yes, but to create editnotices in any namepsace besides User/User talk requires the template editor right. —swpb^T 18:41, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@Swpb: I have made a request to be a template editor. Phil roc^{My contribs} 19:29, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it is just for the editnotices, the bot's edits are the responsibility of the operator and will need this extra access to make these notices, so the operator will need to be trusted for that access as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:17, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: @Swpb: @BU Rob13: If the bot gets approved, how often should it run? It can't run continously because to my knowledge, AWB can't check if new pages are added to a category. Yes, I want to use AWB. Anyway, how often should the bot run? Phil roc^{My contribs} 16:02, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

AWB is not a good option for a bot that should be run automatically on a schedule. — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:41, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89: I have now decided to use DotNetWikiBot instead of AWB. Phil roc^{My contribs} 20:41, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: @Swpb: @BU Rob13: @JJMC89: I have now made code for the bot which is viewable here. Phil roc^{My contribs} 22:27, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

That code is missing namespace restrictions (should only be for Wikipedia and Help pages in the category) and is creating the notice for the subject page instead of the talk page. Does input.text add text to any existing text? The bot needs to do this, not replace anything that is currently there. Also it should only add the editnotice if it is not already there. — JJMC89 (T·C) 22:50, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89: I figured that since most of the pages in the category are Wikipedia and Help already, there was no need for any restrictions. Also, the code checks if each page has a corresponding {{Editnotices}} page. If that page exists, it checks if it is empty (which might happen). If it is, it adds the notice. If not, it goes to the next page. If the page doesn't exist in the first place, it creates the page by adding the editnotice. If you had looked at the code more thoroughly, I wouldn't have to explain this to you. Please look at the if statement inside the foreach if you want proof. Phil roc^{My contribs} 23:15, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Your attempted ping did not work. Assuming there no need for any restrictions is not a good idea. It is looking at the wrong editnotice page. It should be the editnoitce page for the talk page of each page in the category. It shouldn't just skip editnotices that exist. It should append the one in this task if it is not present. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:58, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89: I have made a new paste. Phil roc^{My contribs} 16:51, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, the TE request failed. Guess I can't do the bot. Another admin or TE can make this proposal a reality if they want to. Phil roc^{My contribs} 16:17, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:47, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! —swpb^T 15:08, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Category:Non-free images for NFUR review

This backlog is really crowded (it is near 200K). Legobot used to tag images that have rationales, but they have not edited in the File namespace since May 2014 [15] . Is there a way that someone could set up their bot to take over this bot's previous responsibility? Thanks. -- 1989 (talk) 23:32, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

@1989: See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/BU_RoBOT_32. I filed a BRFA to help address this a few days ago. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 01:55, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

@Legoktm: May I ask why your bot has stopped performing this task? -- 1989 (talk) 13:48, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
No idea why it stopped, but it didn't look trivial to restart when I glanced at the code just now - it relied on a hard coded list of template redirects and stuff. I could fix it up to run again but if someone else is willing to take the task over, I'd much prefer and encourage that. Legoktm (talk) 20:32, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
A lot of bots stopped working around that time; Toolserver was becoming more and more flaky, and was taken down permanently on 1 July 2014. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:35, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

@1989: This is more-or-less

Done. I'm still expanding the task to hit as many files as possible while minimizing false positives. The bot's managed to successfully tag 90k files so far, so the backlog is cut in half. See Category:Non-free images with NFUR stated (bot-assessed). ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 11:32, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Create a simple TemplateData for all Infoboxes

Request: Check if the /doc file in all templates contained in WP:List of infoboxes contains <templatedata> or <templatedata /> or <templatedata/> :

If none exists add to the bottom:

<templatedata>
{
	"params": {},
	"paramOrder": [],
	"format": "block"
}
</templatedata>

— አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 17:05, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Why? How is the editor's or reader's experience improved if this is done? – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:15, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

It is only step one of a series of bot operations I have in mind to systematical create a base-line TemplateData for all Biography Infoboxes by importing data from Infobox person. Maybe, it is too small of a step. Sorry this is my first bot request. The next step would be to check if the template contains a "honorific_prefix" parameter and if so add between {}:

"honorific_prefix": {"description": "To appear on the line above the person's name","label": "Honorific prefix","aliases": ["honorific prefix"]},

and

"honorific_prefix",

inside []. Step by step we could accomplish the goals set out by this daunting task. The same idea could be used to create TemplateData to other infoboxes or even many other templates by inheriting the data from their parents.— አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 17:05, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like this idea needs more development. I suggest having a discussion at that TemplateData talk page, coming up with a plan that could be executed by a bot, and then coming back here with that plan. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:31, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

This discussion is proof that discussing things accomplishes nothing. Nevermind, I will just learn how to build a bot myself and get it approved. — አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 23:10, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to disappoint you. So that you don't waste your time and get more frustrated, here's one more piece of information: you will find that when you make a bot request, you will also be asked for a link to the same sort of discussion. If you take a look at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, you will see these instructions: If your task could be controversial (e.g. most bots making non-maintenance edits to articles and most bots posting messages on user talk pages), seek consensus for the task in the appropriate forums. Common places to start include WP:Village pump (proposals) and the talk pages of the relevant policies, guidelines, templates, and/or WikiProjects. Link to this discussion from your request for approval. This is how things work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:51, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I was rude. You were kind. — አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 13:46, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Addition of tl:Authority control

There are very many biographies - tens of thousands - for which wikidata has authority control data - example Petscan, and where such data is not displayed in the article. {{Authority control}}, with no parameters, displays authority control data from wikidata. It is conventionally placed immediately before the list of categories at the foot of an article. It is used on 510,000+ articles and appears to be the de facto standard for handling authority control data on wikipedia.

Would this make a good bot task: use the petscan lists, like the above, to identify articles for which {{Authority control}} can be placed at the foot of the article? --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:51, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I think there is already a bot doing this. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:48, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Tagishsimon User:KasparBot adds Authority Control. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:24, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Magioladitis. I've added to User talk:T.seppelt. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:34, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Doing... I'm taking care of it. --19:01, 12 February 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by T.seppelt (talk • contribs)

Repetitive article

If an article is repetitive, such as when the article states the same thing three times in one paragraph, a bot should be able to change that so the article only states what is needed to be stated. This would make articles on this website much more uniform. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.166.73.34 (talk • contribs)
- Impossible A task like this cannot be reliably performed by a bot, because it requires understanding of the context, i.e. WP:CONTEXTBOT. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 18:36, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Bot to move files to Commons

Certainly files that a trusted user like Sfan00 IMG has reviewed and marked as suitable for move to Commons, can be moved without any further review using bot? All these files are tagged with {{Copy to Commons|human=Sfan00 IMG}} and appear in Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons reviewed by Sfan00 IMG. There are over 11,000 files. I have personally no experience in dealing with files and so can't talk about the details, but I reckon something like CommonsHelper would be useful? I have asked Sfan about this but they have been inactive for 3 days.

If the process is likely to be error-free, I suppose that instead of marking the transferred files as {{NowCommons}} (which creates more work for admins in deleting the local copy), the bot could outright delete them under CSD F8. 103.6.159.65 (talk) 05:14, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Technical details: such a bot would need to operate on a user-who-tagged-the-file basis; I'd envision using a parameter with the tagging user's username, combined with some setup comparable to {{db-u1}} to detect if the last user to edit the page was someone other than the user whose name appears in the parameter. On eligibility for specific user participation, I'm hesitant with Sfan00 IMG, basically because it's a semiautomated script account, and I'd like to ensure that every such file be checked manually first; of course, if ShakespeareFan00 is checking all these images beforehand and then tagging the checked images with the script, that's perfectly fine. Since you asked my perspective as a dual-site admin: on the en:wp side, the idea sounds workable, and bot-deleting the files sounds fine as long as we're programming it properly. On the Commons side, I hesitate. We already have several bots that do the Commons side of things, and they tend to do a rather poor-quality job; they can accurately copy the license and description, but they often mess up with the date and sometimes have problems with copying template transclusion properly, and they're horrendous with categories (which are critical for Commons images) — basically the only options with such bots are leaving the images entirely uncategorised, or ending up with absolute junk, e.g. "Companies of [place]" on portraits because the subject was associated with a company from that place; you can see one bad example in this revision of File:Blason Imbert Bourdillon de la Platiere.svg. If we deem it a good idea, adding another Commons bot would be fine; the issue is whether having a bot do this at all is a good idea on the Commons side. Nyttend (talk) 05:55, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

phew, there are 200k files in Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons (bot-assessed)‎ which need further review. But what is surprising is that there are over 12,000 in Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons maincat, which must all have been tagged by humans (because the bot-tagged ones are in the former cat). I wonder whether it would be a good idea to have a bot identify the tagger from the page history and add the |human= parameter. I also note that there are some files like File:Ambyun official.jpg that were tagged by Sfan without the human parameter. 103.6.159.65 (talk) 15:17, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I've written a tool, Wikipedia:MTC!, which does have an option for mass-transfer. While it is reasonably accurate, I still think it is important for human to review each file before and after transfer. -FASTILY 00:10, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

I would echo Nyttend's concerns, especially as a few I'd tagged in good faith were subsquently found to have copyright concerns despite my best efforts.

There also a category that I created for inline-assessed based on a PD licence.

Those might also be amenable for semi-automated transfer with the above caveats. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 10:50, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot. Mostly because this would require approval at Commons as well, and the Commons community would eat anyone who suggested this alive. These really need manual review before transfer. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 11:28, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

The admins at Commons are known to block users for persistently uploading copyrighted images. Just imagine what would happen if we were to mass-tranfer images without performing a thorough copyright check. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:31, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

MarkAdmin.js

Hello.

I would like to transfer the following script to Wikipedia so users such as myself could identify which users are the following:

Administrators (by default)
Bureaucrats (by default)
Checkusers (by default)
Oversighters (by default)
ARBCOM Members (optional)
OTRS Members (optional)
Edit Filter Managers (optional)
Stewards (optional)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-markAdmins.js

I would like a bot to frequently update the list to make the information accurate.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-markAdmins-data.js 1989 (talk) 19:30, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

On hold See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#MarkAdmin.js. 1989 (talk) 21:10, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Add importScript('User:Amalthea/userhighlighter.js'); to your "skin".js file to show admins Ronhjones ^(Talk) 21:27, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Archiving, as this would need consensus. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:53, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Add protection templates to recently protected articles

We have bots that remove protection templates from pages (DumbBOT and MusikBot), but we don't have a bot right now that adds protection templates to recently protected articles. Lowercase sigmabot used to do this until it stopped working about two years ago. I generally think it's a good idea to add protection templates to protected articles, so people know (especially if you're logged in and autoconfirmed, because then you would have no idea it would be semi-protected). —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 13:06, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

We need those bots because the expiration of protection is usually an automatic process. However, placing on the protection has to be done by an admin - and in this process as part of the instructions, a template that they use places that little padlock. Thus, any protected page will have the little padlock, I don't think many admins forget to do this. For it to be worth a bot to do this, there would have to be a substantial problem - can you show us any? If you can, then I will code and take this on. TheMagikCow (talk) 18:01, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@TheMagikCow: Sorry for the late reply, but it's not really a problem, it's just that some administrators don't add protection templates when protecting the page (example), so a logged-in autoconfirmed user would have no idea it's semi-protected or extended-protected unless they clicked "edit" and saw the notice about the page being semi-protected or extended-protected. I ended up adding {{pp-30-500}} to seven articles ([16]). This has nothing to do with removing protection templates (something DumbBOT and MusikBot already do). The adding of {{pp}} templates was previously performed by lowercase sigmabot. —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 00:34, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@MRD2014: Ok, those examples make me feel that a bot is needed for this - and it would relieve the admins of the task of manually adding them. I think I will get

Coding... and try to take this one on! TheMagikCow (talk) 10:39, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@TheMagikCow: Thanks! —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 14:41, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Or possibly a bot who sends the admin a notice that "It looks like during your protection action on X you may have forgotten to add the lock icon. Please check and add the appropriate lock icon. Thank you" Hasteur (talk) 02:07, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Hasteur's suggestion should probably be incorporated into the bot since it has the clear benefit of diminishing future instances of mismatched protection levels and protection templates by reminding admins for the future. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

OK - Will try to add that - would it be easier if that was a template? TheMagikCow (talk) 11:53, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Some admins have {{nobots}} on their talk pages (Materialscientist for example) so the bot couldn't message those users. Also, lowercase sigmabot (the last bot to add protection templates) would correct protection templates too. —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 17:20, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

In some cases, there is no need to add a prot padlock, such as when the page already bears either {{collapsible option}} or {{documentation}}; mostly these are pages in Template: space. Also, redirects should never be given a prot padlock - if done like this, for example, it breaks the redirection. Insread, redirects have a special set of templates which categorise the redir - they may be tagged with {{r fully protected}} or equivalent ({{r semi-protected}}, etc.), but it is often easier to ensure that either {{redirect category shell}} or the older {{this is a redirect}} is present, both of which determine the protection automatically, in a similar fashion to {{documentation}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:11, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

About the notifying admins thing, MediaWiki:Protect-text says "Please update the protection templates on the page after changing the protection level." in the instructions section. Also, the bot should not tag redirects with pp templates per Redrose64. If it tags articles that aren't redirects, it shouldn't have any major issues. —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 19:26, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

This would be better as a mediawiki feature - see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Use_CSS_for_lock_icons_on_protected_pages.3F, meta:2016_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Categories/Admins_and_stewards#Make_the_display_of_protection_templates_automatic, phab:T12347. Two main benefits: not depending on bots to run, and not spamming the edit history (protections are already displayed, no need to double up). As RedRose has pointed out, we already have working Lua code. Samsara 03:48, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

TheMagikCow has filed a BRFA for this request (see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheMagikBOT 2). —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 18:29, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

IP-WHOIS bot

During vandal hunting I've noticed that IP vandals usually stop in their tracks the moment you add the 'Shared IP' template (with WHOIS info) to their Talk page. I assume they then realise they're not as anonymous as they thought. A bot that would automatically add that WHOIS template to an IP vandal's Talk page, let's say once they've reached warning level 2, would prevent further vandalism in a lot of cases. I don't know if this needs to be a new bot or if it could be added to ClueBot's tasks. I think ClueBot would be the best option since it already leaves warnings on those Talk pages, so adding the Shared/WHOIS template as well would probably be the fastest option. Any thoughts? Mind you, I'm not a programmer so there's no way I could code this thing myself. Yintan 20:27, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

This would be fairly easy to do.

Coding... Tom29739 ^[talk] 17:32, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Nice idea, Tom29739 what's the status on this? 103.6.159.67 (talk) 08:04, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

This is still being coded, development has slowed unfortunately due to being very busy in real life. Tom29739 ^[talk] 22:40, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Move GA reviews to the standard location

There are about 3000 Category:Good articles that do not have a GA review at the standard location of Talk:<article title>/GA1. This is standing in the way of creating a list of GAs that genuinely do not have a GA review. Many of these pages have a pointer to the actual review location in the article milestones on the talk page, and these are the ones that could potentially be moved by bot.

There are two cases, the easier one is pages that have a /GA1 page but the substantive page has been renamed. An example is 108 St Georges Terrace whose review is at Talk:BankWest Tower/GA1. This just requires a page move and the milestones template updated. Note that there may be more than one review for a page (sometimes there are several failed reviews before a pass). GA reviews are identified in the milestones template with the field actionn=GAN and the corresponding review page is found at actionnlink=<review>. Multiple GA reviews are named /GA1, /GA2 etc but note that there is no guarantee that the review number corresponds to the n number in actionn.

The other case (older reviews, example 100,000-year problem) is where the review took place on the article talk page rather than a dedicated page. This needs a cut and paste to a /GA1 page and the review transcluding back on to the talk page. This probably needs to be semi-automatic with some sanity checks by human, at least for a test run (has the bot actually captured a review, is it a review of the target article, did it capture all of the review). SpinningSpark 08:30, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 14#Article incorrectly listed as GA here? and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 152#GA reviews SpinningSpark 08:37, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

[test-1] Example ref

[Test1-2] Example Ref

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