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bot deletion question

Just a question on how the Bot read discussions...or does it? It has been the norm, when there is only a few "keep" and/or "delete" in either direction to close a deletion discussion with a "no-consensus" however I notice the bot was doing sweeping deletions on discussions where there was a "keep" voiced. Likewise they are called "discussions" so I don't see how an automated bot can "read" what is being said. Soundvisions1 (talk) 06:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I guess you must be talking about either WP:FFD or WP:PUF. You are most likely misunderstanding the situation, but without specific examples I can't go into detail. AnomieBOT does not (and cannot) delete any files. AnomieBOT just checks the files listed at WP:FFD and WP:PUF, and if it sees that the file has been deleted by an admin then it closes the discussion. If you read AnomieBOT's closing message, it will say something along the lines of "deleted by NAME". The named administrator is who you need to talk to. Anomie⚔ 14:21, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Ahhh - I gothca. I see that now. My bad, it was late and all I saw as a lot of "AnomieBOT" tags all over - in the words of Emily Litella Oh, well that's entirely different. Never mind. Soundvisions1 (talk) 16:58, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Another bot question

Ok - so the "bot" left a message on my IfD/Pui that I "assume" was automated because a real person would have read the text thats says: NOTE: This discussion was placed at IFD/PUI using Twinkle, due to concerns by Doc9871 that PUI was not the correct location it has been relocated to Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2010_August_22#File:Jim_In_Miami_w-Hat.jpg. So I am also "assuming" that the bot's message of the listing will be closed by an administrator and the image kept. is not valid and the bot will retract it's comments with its' own version of Emily Litella: Oh, well that's entirely different...never mind. :) (PS - I updated the Pui tag so it reads ifd now) Soundvisions1 (talk) 01:52, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

AnomieBOT won't do anything else there, unless an admin deletes the image. Is there any reason to keep the PUI discussion there at all? Anomie⚔ 03:38, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
The actual discussion is not there - that is what the note is there for. The link and note were left there in case anyone followed a link from somewhere, and in case the closing admin needed to verify that it was, indeed, placed into a deletion discussion on August 22 - and as my "PS" above said, the image itself now points to the Ifd and not the Pui. Soundvisions1 (talk) 12:39, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Not closing discussions at PUF

AnomieBOT hasn't closed any of the discussions at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2010 August 15, which were deleted over 20 hours ago. Any idea why? — ξxplicit 21:33, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like someone put {{puf top}} before the section header instead of after, which confuses the bot. I fixed it (we'll see in a few minutes if the bot now closes the discussions on that page) and added code to have the bot complain here when that happens again. Anomie⚔ 12:56, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
You may want to talk to User:Magog the Ogre about it, all the closes causing problems were his. Anomie⚔ 15:11, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, how odd. I would've never thought something like that would've stalled the bot. Thanks for looking into this. — ξxplicit 17:49, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
The bot is coded that way. With the closing box above the header, it can't really tell whether it is "closing box above the header" or "someone forgot {{puf bottom}} on the previous section"; for {{ffd top}} it can tell in some simple cases, but {{puf top}} is done differently so it can't guess at all. The bot will also choke if there is anything between the header and the {{puf top}} output for the same reason. Anomie⚔ 18:49, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

One use of reference

In Voestalpine I removed the reference name because I wasn't paying attention and used it for several different references. Once I got everything straightened out, I discovered the named reference was only used once, so I deleted that. I think I had planned to use it in multiple sections and changed my mind.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:15, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Radio Stations

Hi Anomie. Could you run Autoassessor2 for WikiProject Radio Stations, please? --Bsherr (talk) 18:21, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Link to the discussion showing consensus? Anomie⚔ 03:33, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
I think the best I can show is consensus to permit me to clear the unassessed backlog, but nothing specific to using a bot to do so. If you need more to proceed, I'll have to get back to you. --Bsherr (talk) 03:37, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
I think I have as much consensus now as I'm likely to get. It's been crickets over on my talk page with technical matters. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Radio_Stations, bottom of the page. --Bsherr (talk) 00:11, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Ok, Doing... Anomie⚔ 03:19, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Task

Hello AnomieBOT, I have an extremely tedious task that you like very much: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gastropods/Archive 3#Data for 4256 marine species. Thank you for cooperation. --Snek01 (talk) 14:10, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Bug: Mistaking dates for "reasons"

See issue here. AnomieBOT nicely corrected my improperly formatted "citation needed" tag but failed to recognize the date as a "date". Instead it mistook it for a "reason". Hence its update with Citation needed|reason=04 September 2010, which I subsequently corrected manually. 24.79.73.9 (talk) 00:22, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, it does recognize dates as appropriate for the template's |date=, that being "Month Year". If I get a chance later, I'll look at handling "Day Month Year", "Month Day, Year", and a bazillion odder formats people seem to use. Anomie⚔ 03:24, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

date = September (not september)

Ok.[citation needed] would be better than[citation needed] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wcrosbie (talk • contribs) 09:08, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Err, yeah. Anomie⚔ 21:21, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Bot assist?

Hi. User:Xeno has passed the buck recommended you as somebody who might be able to help get several thousand spammed links to oocities (now blacklisted) converted to wayback links. See User talk:Xeno#Bot question. Long story short, the webmaster of Oocities, which snagged the contents of Geocities, used unauthorized bots to change thousands of Geocities links to Oocities, continuing in spite of all protests until the site was blacklisted. There is now a task force assembling at Wikipedia:WikiProject External links/Geocities to check Geocities links to make sure they meet WP:RS and WP:ELN, where used. But we need to get those Oocities links back to Geocities. I'm wondering if it would be possible to get a bot to help by converting Oocities links to Geocities (a simple matter of converting "oocities" to "geocities" in the url, I'm told) and also, to aid in the Geocities check, to append http://web.archive.org/web/* to the front. (It may be possible to get it to automatically link to a specific archive, rather than the general. User:Amalthea completed some kind of magic script that does this. I have the technological skills of fairly well educated hamster, though, so wouldn't know. It might require a deal with the devil. :/) Does this sound like something you could do and might have time to help with? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Where the geocities link is called within "cite web" the archiveurl= param should ideally be used (while still changing oocities back to geocities) . –xenotalk 14:51, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
For "archivedate=", you can use 2009-10-26. It is generally correct. -Colfer2 (talk) 01:13, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Looking into this. Having a little trouble with checking whether an archive actually exists on archive.org. Anomie⚔ 02:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
They don't have an API, right? As far as I can tell you don't need to look into the page content though: just need to go to http://web.archive.org/[PAGE], and if it redirects you to a archive page with a date older than today (acceptable heuristic for geocities pages I think) the archive exists.
E.g., http://web.archive.org/http://de.geocities.com/heinrich_kreissl/ redirects to the latest archived version from 2009-10-26, http://web.archive.org/web/20091026200800/de.geocities.com/heinrich_kreissl/, thus exists.
http://web.archive.org/http://us.1.p10.geocities.com/regimentvonknyphausen/page2.html redirects to http://web.archive.org/web/20100921095640/us.1.p10.geocities.com/regimentvonknyphausen/page2.html with a date of right now, thus doesn't exist.
Where it's getting difficult is with pages like http://web.archive.org/http://hk.geocities.com/chanyiulun_7/: That one exists, however it's a framed page, and none of the subpages were archived. No idea how many will be affected by that, but I don't think you want to go down that road.
Amalthea 10:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
It turns out they use HTTP status code 404 when an archive page does not exist, so it's even easier to check for. Anomie⚔ 17:17, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Figured out the flakiness: According to http://web.archive.org/collections/web/advanced.html you can specify a truncated date in the URL and it will return "an archived page that most closely matches the average value of the date specified". What it doesn't mention is that it only considers archived pages that match that truncated date (e.g. if you specify 2009 but the page was not archived in 2009, it won't return the archive from 2008 even though that's the closest match). So much for trying to find an archive from a date close to the accessdate.

What I have now: The bot will scan all mainspace pages linking to Special:LinkSearch/*.oocities.com, then all mainspace pages linking to Special:LinkSearch/*.geocities.com. To each page, it will do the following:

  1. Globally replace ".oocities.com" and "/oocities.com" with ".geocities.com" and "/geocities.com".
  2. Check citation templates for instances with url being a geocities.com link and no archiveurl. For each found, it will query the "most recent" archive from archive.org and fill in archiveurl and archivedate. If archive.org returns a 404, it will fill archiveurl with http://web.archive.org/[PAGE] and archivedate with today's date, and add {{dead link}} after the citation template. If archive.org returns any other failure code, it will retry a few times before treating it as a 404.
  3. Check for geocities.com external links (bracketed or bare) where the text "archive" or "Archive" or "webcitation.org" does not appear in the rest of the line of wikitext (this catches cases where something like this was done), and do the same replacement of the URL and possible addition of {{dead link}}.

Once I finish testing to make sure there aren't any bugs, I'll file the BRFA at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 44. Anomie⚔ 13:36, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Why fill in an archive url if the archive.org doesn't have the page? Amalthea 13:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
That does make more sense. I guess I did it that way originally was because I added on the "check if it even exists on archive.org" bit later. Anomie⚔ 16:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
I can't really weigh in on the "what if this?" questions because even well-educated hamsters don't grasp such things, but I wanted to thank you so much for your willingness to help out here. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:10, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

BRFA filed Anomie⚔ 17:13, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I should have mentioned this earlier, but the alternative archive is Webcite. The URL format for us to use would be "http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://[geocities link]". (Webcite also uses a tinyurl-like hashed URL format, but I would skip that.) Wikipedia apparently approves of using Webcite, from previous discussions. In other words, Webcite and Wayback/Archive.org both have reliable policies for handling removing material, etc., and are not spammers. The advantage of Webcite is that it is much faster than Wayback. The disadvantage is that on the archived pages the internal links are still geocities, and hence dead. Summary: when Wayback fails, use Webcite. The author claims to have archived every geocities link used by English Wikipedia, though I have found some gaps. (I have fixed about 200 articles with oocities links, so have an idea of the variety of issues.) -Colfer2 (talk) 17:35, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Citation Needed template fix that wasn't quite a fix

Hi!

I added a citation needed tag to an article, using this format [[citationneeded|September 2010|reason=[reason text] ]] The bot came along and did this, which is not quite right. I was wrong not to write date= in my first edit, and have gone back and fixed it, but the bot should surely get it right, right?! Thanks for the great work, Bigger digger (talk) 15:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I changed the code so it shouldn't do that again. Anomie⚔ 18:24, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
The next time I mess up the template I'll let you know ;-) Bigger digger (talk) 22:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

OrphanReferenceFixer: Blacklisted orphaned reference in Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder controversies - Fixed

When trying to fix orphaned refs in Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder controversies, MediaWiki's spam blacklist complained about http://www.freedommag.org. This probably means someone didn't properly clean up after themselves when blacklisting the link and removing existing uses, but a human needs to double-check it. The attempted changes were:

You might also use {{User:Anomie/uw-orphans|1=rm diff|2=fix diff}} to let the remover know, if their edit summary indicates they were specifically removing the blacklisted ref. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 13:08, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

"Attention-deficit disorder – AnomieBOT wants human assistance". Heh, cute.
I helped the bot out. Amalthea 13:51, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for rescuing orphaned refs. Kavas (talk) 20:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Might like to add a stale date exclusion

Hi; I just noticed this. I appreciate your bot, but is it really a good use of server CPU cycles and database table rows to reconfigure talk-page posts that are more than three months old? If it's not overly difficult to implement, I think it might be a good idea to ignore such less-than-perfectly formatted posts when they're older than a few days to maybe a week. Thanks,  – OhioStandard (talk) 08:23, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

File:File-WikiProject_Medicine_-_Dermatology_task_force_-_Articles_created.svg

The update occurred and now the x-axis has no hashes/dates. ---kilbad (talk) 14:23, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

geocities errors

Please stop replacing the archived oocities.com sites with the invalid geocities.com sites. I realize that Wikipedia has blacklisted oocities.com, but it's wrong.

Example: This archived site is no longer valid. Whereas the one that was replaced, {imagine oocities here--can't even add it because of the blacklisting} is valid.

Thanks! Spacini (talk) 01:06, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi. Oocities was blacklisted for copyright concerns (they are not OCILLA compliant; Wayback is) and for spam concerns. They are advertiser supported, and the webmaster or website owner himself placed thousands of links here using an unauthorized bot, and continuing to do so even after promising he would not. He also promised they would remove ads for Wikipedia's users...and those ads came back. Because of his unauthorized bot, it is not practical to manually restore the originals. If there is a specific link that for some reason should be retained in spite of these concerns (and the copyright concerns are a biggie--in order to remove their content, Geocities sites original owners must contact them from the e-mail address published on their site at the time), you can request that that particular link be added to MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:45, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the thorough explanation! Given the reasons, I concur with the blacklist decision. Wayback must have been overwhelmed yesterday, as I could not get any of the archived pages I needed to see to load. Today those pages appear to be loading just fine. Spacini (talk) 13:08, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear it. :) Sadly, Wayback experiences that occasionally, but on the whole it's fairly reliable, and, even better, it complies with copyright law. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:17, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

As a follow-up, I would like to ask whether it even makes sense to restore the geocities links. The bot is currently marking them as dead links, but unlike with other dead links, there's no hope of geocities coming back. On top of that, geocities pages are lousy references in the first place—perhaps it'd make sense to replace them with the {{fact}} tags instead?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 8, 2010; 13:20 (UTC)

I'm in total agreement with you there, but the problem is that Geocities sometimes (if very rarely) was a reliable source. Some organizations used it as their official sites, for instance. There's a project task force that has been created to review these (Wikipedia:WikiProject External links/Geocities), but only a human can determine when a link was appropriate and when not. It's a big job. :/ Hopefully, the regular editors of the articles may notice the Geocities link when the bot updates and can determine when they should be removed. Certainly, as a member of that task force, I'd be happy to see the workload diminish! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:24, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, OK, didn't know that. I'll keep this in mind—the article that popped up in my watchlist today sure could use a source other than geocities. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 8, 2010; 13:32 (UTC)
I had understood that all these Geocities links would be gone through by the task force, and having the archive link allows reviewers to see what was there before so they might have better luck searching for a replacement. The point to marking the non-archived Geocities links with {{dead link}} is just because we want to revert all the oocities spam, and the bot may as well add {{dead link}} at the same time. Anomie⚔ 18:01, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I can't make the bot's new links on Sarah Doudney work. What's to do? Bmcln1 (talk) 16:42, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

How so? If you're seeing a page from archive.org saying "We're sorry. Your request failed to connect to our servers. This may be due to temporary problems in our data center, or difficulty serving a higher-than-usual volume of traffic.", the link is fine and it's just that archive.org is chronically overloaded. Anomie⚔ 18:01, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

santana discography

can you tell me please what you did? i will reverse that.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 08:01, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

AnomieBOT noticed that 99.63.185.195 removed the content for the reference "NOR", orphaning the other use of that reference and leaving a big red error in the article.[1] Since no one fixed it after 2 hours, AnomieBOT copied the content for that ref back into the article, removing the error.[2] Since you undid the IP's edit, you could undo the bot's edit too if you want (as it won't reintroduce the big red error). Anomie⚔ 15:06, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

What makes a reference "orphaned"? How can I remove flawed references without the bot restoring them?

I'm trying to fix up articles that were recently subject to an ArbCom case, cleaning up POV-pushing that took the form of inserting lousy references contrary to WP:RS or good references that were fudged (that is, that didn't support the statements in article text). Sometimes when I remove a passage that included misuse of references, the next thing that happens is that AnomieBOT restores the flawed section of article text, on the ground that references were removed. I can't expect a bot to actually read the sources to see if they fit WP:RS or support the statements in the article text in an honest manner, so I get why the bot might do that, but then how can I avoid triggering such bot edits, and how can I make sure the edits removing the flawed sources will stand after I, a human being, have read the sources and the Wikipedia policies. Any guidance you can provide would be much appreciated. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 03:42, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

A feature of the cite.php system is that a page can contain "<ref name="foo">{{some content}}</ref>" just once, and further uses of that same citation can be written much shorter as "<ref name="foo" />". If you remove the former but leave the latter, that leaves those latter as "orphaned" references because they now have nothing to refer to, and you end up with a big red error in the article.
AnomieBOT will replace one of those orphans with the "parent" from the history, but that's it. It will not put any removed text back into the article, and it will not restore the removed parent reference to wherever it was removed from. To prevent the bot having to do this, make sure you also remove all of the orphans when removing the parent; you can easily check this by seeing if the page ends up in the hidden category Category:Pages with broken reference names after your edit (you can turn on display of hidden categories in your preferences in the Appearance tab). Anomie⚔ 13:28, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for the clear explanation of the bot's operation. I'll keep an eye out for that issue as I do further clean-up edits. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:23, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

This is just a short thank you note. I find your bot extremely helpful in reinstating orphaned references. Johnfos (talk) 05:14, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I really appreciate your fixing/resurrecting a reference in this edit. THANK YOU. Spidey104contribs 20:52, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

List of Games for Windows titles

Hi! Could you make your bot to sort titles in this article by release date? Piotrek54321 (talk) 16:40, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be easier to do it manually. Anomie⚔ 19:49, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Run-on sentence

As seen here: [3]

It would appear that AnomieBOT is making posts that include a run-on sentence. The sentence in question is: "The file is on Commons, please nominate it for deletion there if you still feel it should be deleted." Should read: "The file is on Commons. Please nominate it for deletion there if you still feel it should be deleted."

Thanks! SchuminWeb (Talk) 22:43, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

It seems the comma splice should go the way of the split infinitive, but I'll adjust it anyway. Anomie⚔ 00:09, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks! SchuminWeb (Talk) 15:54, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Semi-colon would work too, no? –xenotalk 15:56, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes. Or it could have been adjusted in other ways, e.g. "Because the file is on Commons, please nominate it for deletion there if you still feel it should be deleted." or "The file is on Commons, so you must nominate it for deletion there if you still feel it should be deleted." Anomie⚔ 01:48, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:RFPP Bug

Here, the template was malformed, and the bot read the big red messages telling the placer they did the template wrong as the desired username. Allmightyduck  What did I do wrong? 02:49, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

 Fixed Actually, it just read |2= from {{Usurp2|1=Harrypotter2062|2=TARGET NAME}} and |1= from {{Usurp4|1=TARGET NAME}}, it didn't even know there were big red messages. Anomie⚔ 03:49, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Error

[4]. Adabow (talk · contribs) 09:31, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

 Fixed. Did you fix the bug in your script that changed {{ref label|date|1|a}} to <ref in the previous edit? Anomie⚔ 14:04, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Lhasa 2010-10-27

I am not quite clear about what you wish for editors to do to correct Talk:Lhasa#Orphaned references in Lhasa this?]. I can address all of these issues very quickly, so could you clarify? --HXL 何献龙 04:54, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

The article Lhasa contains "<ref name= CMA />", but there is no "<ref name= CMA>something</ref>" in the article. The bot found references named "CMA" in related articles, but it doesn't know which one it might choose so it asked for a human to decide which (if any) is correct. Anomie⚔ 11:42, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
ok I believed that it was a standardisation issue. all of the additional references given by the BOT were correct. the problem at Lhasa is that there is a separate template which uses the full citation for CMA. This issue occurs with many other city articles, you know. ok thank you for the clarification --HXL 何献龙 13:40, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

TY

TY for fixing my oops! :-) DocOfSoc (talk) 10:44, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Dobie

Hello. The first four are the same ref. The 4th is in the most correct form. Thanks. Rosser Gruffydd 12:20, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Quick question

I'll make this short a sweet: you (or rather your BOT) went through GoldenEye 007 and moved all references out of the templates and placed them inline with the text. My question is this: is there an actual policy indicating the preferred (or even mandated) location of named refs when used in both templates and inline with text? If there is no explicit rule to the contrary, I personally prefer leaving them in the templates so that they don't encroach upon and obfuscate the text. So if this is a matter of preference, I'll be reverting the edit. However, if there is a policy of which I am unaware, I'll certainly make every effort to rectify my placement of refs in the future. Thanks for your time. DKqwerty (talk) 15:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

If you really don't like refs 'encroaching' on the text, look at WP:LDR. The motivation behind the bot moving named refs out of templates is because a ref in a non-displayed field in a template will not be recognized by MediaWiki. Anomie⚔ 17:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
That's an excellent suggestion and I will certainly consider footnotes over citations. However, I'm still confused as to what you mean by a "non-displayed field in a template." Perhaps you could elaborate or give an example, since I'm not sure which fields constitute "non-displayed". Thanks. DKqwerty (talk) 19:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
See in this old revision there is an error that "no text was provided for refs named autogenerated1", because the infobox doesn't show the value of |length_ref= when |length_mi= is empty. Moving the ref out of the infobox template fixed it. Anomie⚔ 00:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

awww

your not simple dont be hard on your self —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.222.227.22 (talk) 21:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Disney Epic Mickey Reference error

The bot attempted to fix a broken link to an IGN review for Disney Epic Mickey by suppling a link to a review for a completely unrelated game. I have fixed the error. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Disney_Epic_Mickey&diff=398799581&oldid=398787240--ThomasO1989 (talk) 16:26, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing it. Unfortunately, the bot can't really tell if a reference with the same name is really for the same game or is just inexactly named. Anomie⚔ 17:25, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

ITN/C archiving shut down

See Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates. the bot added a section three times when there already was such a section. I've temporarily shut it down for you to examine. Courcelles 18:27, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that the bot uses a very simple heuristic to determine what to do with the page: it keeps 5 dated sections, and adds a section for the current date if the first dated section isn't the current date. Someone oddly went and added a section for November 25 even though it won't be that date for a few hours yet, which caused the bot to get confused.
The question is what to do about it? Anomie⚔ 20:09, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
I'll draw the attention of the person who added that section to this thread. Hopefully won't happen again. Nightw, please don't add sectins manually like this- you see the consequences. Courcelles 20:17, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I see. I apologise, I hadn't realised that the sections were regulated by a BOT. In my defence, where I am geographically, it's been the 25th for over eight hours so I'd found it odd that a new section hadn't been added. I assumed it was done by an administrator. But point taken, and noted for future. Apologies. Nightw 20:24, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Most dated things here on the English Wikipedia seem to go by UTC. Californians are in the opposite situation, it'll still be the 24th for them for 8 hours after everything on-wiki changes to the 25th. I suppose other language Wikipedia's more closely tied to a particular country may well use a timezone in that country.
As for the bot, I've adjusted the code to check if the current date is in any section heading on the page rather than just the top section, so if anyone happens to do this again the bot won't be quite so annoying. Once I've uploaded that, I'll re-enable the bot. Anomie⚔ 21:26, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Awesome! Thanks alot. Nightw 10:47, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
I've added an item to Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#Please_do_not... to discourage users from doing this. Modest Genius talk 00:17, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Bot reverting user space sandbox

I was experimenting with the {{uw-block}} template in my userspace, when this bot substed the template for no reason. Please set the bot to ignore the user space. HeyMid (contribs) 12:27, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

The bot did have a reason: {{uw-block}} is a template that is supposed to be automatically substed. I cannot exclude userspace, as there are templates that should be substituted in userspace ({{uw-block}} may in fact be one of those, if its usage on User:212.219.250.2 and User:165.234.180.59 is correct). Please use {{nobots}} if you want to keep bots out of your sandbox. Or, in this case and depending on just what you're trying to do, use |nosubst=1 or |demo=1 to prevent the bot from substing that particular instance. Anomie⚔ 14:49, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Single quote as a typo in ref names

Hi Anomie. I noticed that when a ref name is accidentally enclosed with a single quote, e.g. <ref name="blahblah' > , AnomieBOT just deletes the name parameter [5]. This doesn't fix the problem, of course, and is a useless edit that requires more human time to puzzle out what's happened to the messed up ref. It seems to me it would be easy for the bot to spot and fix this kind of typo. Diderot's dreams (talk) 18:40, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll have a look later; if I don't reply in a day or two, remind me to look. Anomie⚔ 20:11, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Just a reminder :) Diderot's dreams (talk) 19:25, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder, done now. Anomie⚔ 20:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Deleted edits bug?

According to this clerking, the requesting user has -5 deleted edits. Simple error? bibliomaniac15 02:09, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Copied the algorithm from the old bot. It assumes that the edit count returned by the API's list=users counts both deleted and undeleted edits, so you could theoretically find the number of deleted edits by subtracting the number of (visible) undeleted edits. Obviously that's not completely accurate, probably uploads show up in contribs but aren't counted in list=users or something. If you could tell me how many deleted edits that user actually has, that might help. Anomie⚔ 03:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
23 deleted eds. I probably have heard the answer for this before, but why aren't you an admin again??? –xenotalk 14:56, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
I've uploaded some new code so the counts should be more accurate in the future, although for this particular user it's wanting to say 24 deleted edits rather than 23 so something isn't quite perfect. Who knows, it's possible that extra deleted edit is where someone moved a page over a redirect he created by hand (which deletes that redirect beyond all possibility of recovery).
As for the admin question: For a good while I didn't want to be an admin. I eventually changed my mind to where I wouldn't mind being an admin, but besides not needing {{editprotected}}, protecting pages like User:AnomieBOT/CHUUClerk closer opt-in, odd cases like this, and maybe blocking a rogue bot or occasional vandal I wouldn't have a whole lot of use for it. And from what I gather I wouldn't pass RfA these days if I did try, because I don't do anti-vandal patrol, I don't hang out at AFD, I've only done major content work on 2 or 3 articles, I wouldn't plan on getting involved in any particular area requiring admin tools, and so on. Anomie⚔ 19:11, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
To be honest, I think you're one of those users everyone thinks is an admin and won't be able to find a good reason to oppose. Let me know if you'd ever like me to write a co-nom (I say co-nom, because I'm such a lazy bastard and would prefer to leave the nom itself to someone whose willing to dig and write more, but I would do the nom thing too if you asked). –xenotalk 19:31, 29 November 2010 (UTC) And on-topic: the exact edit counts aren't that important as long as they're close
And if you find a nom and wouldn't mind a co-co-nom … :)Amalthea 20:26, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, both of you. I won't turn down a nomination if someone does go ahead and do it, but I'm not going to seek it out myself at this time. Anomie⚔ 20:55, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Bot still is improperly functioning

In this edit, the bot picked up an errant ref but it formatted it as: <ref name=USAtoday>[http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-07-18-air-ambulance_x.htm Robert Davis, "Reconsidering air ambulance usage", ''USA Today'', July 18, 2005, accessed July 13, 2007]</ref> instead of: Davis, Robert. [http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-07-18-air-ambulance_x.htm "Reconsidering air ambulance usage."] ''USA Today'', July 18, 2005. Retrieved: July 13, 2007. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 16:48, 5 December 2010 (UTC).

Added <nowiki> for clarity
That's exactly how it was formatted in the article in the revision before you removed it. The bot doesn't do any formatting of references, it just copies and pastes from the article history. Anomie⚔ 01:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, couldn't figure out why the bot would re-format the ref incorrectly, now I see that it was a previous editor. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 15:06, 6 December 2010 (UTC).

Check redirects for WP physics

I was wondering if AnomieBOT could do the following task for WP physics:

For every article tagged with {{physics}} (or any of its synonyms), check if the article is redirected. If the target to which it is redirected is also tagged with {{physics}}, set the assessment parameter to |class=redirect |importance=NA. If the target is not tagged with {{physics}} then remove the {{physics}} template and log the name of the redirect and the target page name.

If possible within the scope of the bot, I would like a more general task to be performed:

For all articles tagged with {{physics}}, tag all of the pages that redirect to that page AND whose talk page exists and is not itself a redirect with {{physics|class=redirect|importance=na}}.

Thanks so much, in advance.TimothyRias (talk) 09:37, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Added {{tlx}} to avoid having my talk page tagged with {{physics}}
Has this been discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics at all? Anomie⚔ 11:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Yes, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Quality Control/Archive 1#Assessment sweep (bot request). Although, as you can see, there was no too much interest in the discussion. At the very least there was no opposition. (Note that points 2 and 3 are no necessary, since I found different ways of achieving the same thing.) TimothyRias (talk) 12:12, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Ah, ok. I see no discussion of part about tagging all redirects to physics articles, though, which is the more controversial part (but much less so than if it didn't include "whose talk page exists"). One possible issue with that is if a non-physics topic redirects to a larger article that is (in part) about physics, for example Einstein on socialism. Anomie⚔ 15:20, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I see your point. I agree, that the tagging of all redirects might be more controversial. It should probably be discussed more thoroughly. Could you just do the first thing (checking the currently tagged articles for redirects)?TimothyRias (talk) 15:30, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Sure. Anomie⚔ 17:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
BTW, I've asked this to you plenty of times before Anomie :p. It never was a problem in the past and won't be now. Our practice is to tag redirects, just so stuff isn't lost after merges, redirects, etc... This way, when something is unredirected, or brought to RfD, we still have our tag on it (and is picked up by the Article Alerts, assuming they would be working, or by bots such as this one when they need a new assessment). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:37, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Previous message refers to tagging all redirects withing categories, or with existing talk pages. All redirects (indiscriminately) to physics article has never been done in the past and could be a problem. That would warrant discussion at WT:PHYS. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:40, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I also note that removing the templates from pages which don't redirect to physics articles is not something that was discussed in the thread... that too would need discussion. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Bot stopped, although I think it was done by now anyway. The pages it removed the banner from are:

Extended content

Anomie⚔ 19:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorry, for the mistake on my part. (I thought I had proposed exactly this before on the project talk page.) I'll go through the list to see if any redirects were remove erroneously. This needed to be done anyway (which is why I asked these actions to be logged) because it indicates that the redirect target should have been tagged with the physics template and wasn't.TimothyRias (talk) 11:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Revert vandalism

This bot is awful. At best misguided. I've seen this bot "rescue orphan refs" but I'm yet to see a case where it didn't do more harm than good. What is needed is to tell editors to revert the vandalism not "sweep the rubbish under the carpet" or "plaster over the cracks". It an achievement to have programmed this bot and very clever that you can identify and repair orphan refs but unfortuntiley it misses the point. It is a terrible piece of premature optimastion and it is far better for a page to fail early and for an editor to fix it properly than to have AnomieBOT fix it badly and to allow a page to continue on with editors failing to notice that sections have been blanked or vandalised. Please stop. Please seriously reconsider. I've no doubt that anyone smart enough to write this is smart enough to understand this bot is creating worse problems than it is trying to solve. -- Horkana (talk) 01:10, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Many other editors seem to disagree with you. Anomie⚔ 03:59, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm sure there are many editors who are glad to see the small fix the bot provides but fail see from the history that other information has been lost due to vandalism.
Maybe some of those who praise your bot do in fact understand what is going on and are have made the effort to check agianst oldver versions. For me is only useful in that it acts as a flag to a more subtle form of vandalism and work that needs fixing, which is not a bad thing exactly just not as simple as "rescue orphan refs" suggests.
Also if you expect people to read the notes at the top of this page it is not wise to have them hidden/collapsed by default. -- Horkana (talk) 17:15, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

OrphanReferenceFixer suggestion

Hi, AnomieBOT is wonderful. When a page has a missing reference not in history, it checks all pages the page links to, correct? Now if one of those pages is a redirect, could you make the bot follow the redirect, in case it's not too hard? That would catch a greater number of missing references, I think. Just a thought, Shreevatsa (talk) 10:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done I thought it did that already, but apparently not. Thanks for the suggestion. Anomie⚔ 16:44, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

CHUUClerk: Cannot find info for username in WP:CHUU#Marianpetre → Marian_Petre - Fixed

In WP:CHUU#Marianpetre → Marian_Petre, I cannot load information for the target username. Please fix me. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 13:30, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Should probably treat underscores as spaces. –xenotalk 14:47, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, that was it. D'oh. Anomie⚔ 16:41, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Covering up vandalism

Don't know exactly what should be done about this, but it seems like rescuing references often has the effect of covering up large deletions of sourced material, often vandalism. Sometimes references get legitimately removed in the course of editing, but often its just blanking. Even some blankings are OK, but I think this bot should consider, if technically feasible, some red flags that prevent it from acting. For example, when an anon removes large amounts of sourced text without an edit summary. Admittedly that would not have worked here where the deceptive edit summary of "minor" was used, but it would be a start. Savidan 18:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It is a hard problem. The bot currently waits 2 hours after edits by IPs or "new" editors in the hope that anti-vandal bots or human editors will revert vandalism beforehand; at one point, an informal study indicated that most vandalism that was going to be reverted in a timely manner was reverted within 5 minutes, but I've bumped up the time limit a few times anyway. That particular revision, however, I wouldn't even class as vandalism. It looks more like POV-pushing to me, which no bot is likely to be able to catch. Anomie⚔ 19:14, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

This bot works very well. I am impressed how it rescues refs. Cool programming that goes right over my head. Thanks for putting it together. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 06:56, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

How fast should a BOT expand/cleanup article tags? Less fast than AnomieBOT is doing it, methinks.

I wonder if it might be good design to put a bit of a "human-delay" into how soon AnomieBOT ought to edit a page and add, say, a date to an article improvement tag.

Today, AnomieBOT hit me twice while I was still editing an article: once at about 7 minutes after my last edit, and once at only ten seconds after I had made an edit. The article is VTVL so you can look at the edit log.

I think that a BOT ought to wait, maybe 30 minutes or more, before making small little cleanup fixes like adding dates to tags, simply because the edit conflicts created by doing it faster decrease human editor efficiency, and may even tick some of them off. N2e (talk) 15:42, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

That reminds me, I need to add in code to honor {{in use}} for this task too. Do you know if SmackBot implemented any particular delay? Anomie⚔ 16:35, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Y Done I set the delay to 30 minutes for now, at least until someone answers the above question. Anomie⚔ 17:13, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the change. I don't know what SmackBot might have done, but usually don't find it updating the dates on article tags for one to three days. That's not a totally bad idea. Why? Well, no change by a BOT for a day or so is kind of like allowing a day to pass (kind of like waiting for one "news cycle") where folks who have a page on their watch list might catch a "most recent" edit for human review before a BOT grabs it, and then of course, will leave only a BOT userID as the user who last changed the article. Moreover, it doesn't really matter if, say, an {{citation needed}} tag gets added on 30 Nov 2010 and the date gets set by the BOT that later finds it to date=December 2010; at least I don't think so. That's my two cents. Cheers. N2e (talk) 21:30, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

SmackBot skips inuse altogether. Rich Farmbrough, 16:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

I'd like to see AnomieBOT use that logic, too; that's part of why the {{inuse}} tag exists, after all: to keep bots from creating edit conflicts for editors working offline. I imagine ignoring that tag could create rather a lot of extra server load in the middle of a GOCE backlog drive, for instance... // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 02:24, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
I put in the code to honor the 2-hour limit declared in the {{inuse}} documentation about 5 and a half days ago. I see no reason to ignore articles with the template indefinitely. Anomie⚔ 04:09, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I guess recent edits answer my question above about how long SmackBot waits after the last edit before dating maintenance tags: AnomieBOT has hardly dated any tags since yesterday, since SmackBot has been dating them immediately after they're added. Anomie⚔ 17:48, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Do they honor GOCEinuse, or just inuse?TCO (talk) 20:10, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

AnomieBOT actually uses Category:Pages actively undergoing a major edit to determine whether to consider the page "in use". I've edited {{GOCEinuse}} to add that category, so it should be good now. I can't say how SmackBot or any other bot might work. Anomie⚔ 21:20, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

April 11, 2005 listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect April 11, 2005. Since you had some involvement with the April 11, 2005 redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Mhiji (talk) 01:16, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

cool!

Nice how it rescued the orphaned references! Thought I would have to do that manually.TCO (talk) 20:30, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Question

Why did the Bot rescue dead lnks in the Glenn beck article? DocOfSoc (talk) 06:47, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess you are talking about this edit? The article originally contained, for example, both <ref name="LKamb092609">...</ref> and one or more <ref name="LKamb092609"/> referring to it. You then removed the <ref name="LKamb092609">...</ref> but left the <ref name="LKamb092609"/>, which results in a big red error in the article (see here). AnomieBOT replaced one of the remaining <ref name="LKamb092609"/> with a copy of the <ref name="LKamb092609">...</ref>; it did not re-insert the reference to where it was deleted, it just replaced one of the remaining instances. What you need to do to fix it is to make sure you remove all instances of the named reference so as to not leave any big red error. Anomie⚔ 15:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Bot error?

Although this is a somewhat outdated edit (which means it may have been fixed since), this edit removed a redirect transclusion without archiving the review. HeyMid (contribs) 14:31, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Undo Your Edits to Prince Rashed Al-Khuzai Article

Dear AnomieBOT

Hope you are doing well.

i have undo some edits that you have made at the article of Prince Rashed Al-Khuzai and i have did that to clarify that this article is not an orphan article and many articles are related to it and it include many references at the same time. another reason for undo your edits is that I would like to state that i have edit a well known reference that is: Neinawa News not Encyclopedia as i stated before.

Regards,

thank you.

Khalid Al-Saud Khalid Al-Saud (talk) 20:07, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Dating of {{coord missing}} tags

Could you please adjust your bot so that it does not add dates to {{coord missing}} tags, as it did in this edit? Doing so interferes with my own bot's activities. Thanks, -- The Anome (talk) 21:45, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

AnomieBOT uses the list at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates for the majority of its dating (it also does {{multiple issues}}, {{as of}}, and {{update after}}, which aren't listed there). Someone already removed {{coord missing}} from that list on 2010-12-21, and according to its log AnomieBOT hasn't dated a {{coord missing}} since that date. Anomie⚔ 23:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Thank you! -- The Anome (talk) 20:20, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


Edit war on article Pavao SkalicHi Chazz

Hi AnomieBOT,

I see that there's problem with article Pavao Skalic, resources, reliability etc... I've have read contributors ( 88... and something) comments and i must agree he's right. Instead of insisting on citations, resources, and other stuff for some constatations, I think this article should be cleared of any constatations ( even ones with regular citations) and leave only pure facts. If you ask me why, there's one simple answer - editing history on this page show us that obviously there's to much conflict about his nationality... and will be in future, so that could be avoided by removing any interpretation and leaving text with simple facts which cannot be disputed. What's your thoughts on this issue?

Words of user 88... :

Compromise ? How about to leave only facts such as, he was born in, ... lived in countries,... etc... and leave disputed infos. about his nationality behind... ? And leave anyone who read it to decide for himself... isn't that more than reasonable?


Although he is acting like vandal, he has a point with this conclusion, what do you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.152.245.18 (talk) 12:29, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you are misunderstanding the situation. AnomieBOT is not adding any tags, it is just adding |date=January 2011 to tags that other people add so that articles with problems can be correctly organized by date the problem was identified. AnomieBOT, being a computer program, lacks the capacity to care about your dispute. Anomie⚔ 13:05, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

2011 Egyptian protests

can you run the bot to find /rescue 2 refs on that page? thanks.Lihaas (talk) 02:15, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The bot will automatically check the page once it hasn't been edited for a long enough period of time. Anomie⚔ 16:04, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Ancient Chinese Coins

I do not see the need for citations in such an article, which is no more than a catalogue. All the information is in the book "Cast Chinese Coins" .

Davidhartill (talk) 18:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

ACNClerk

Was so impressed with your work with #CHUUClerk, I figured I'd give you the right of first refusal for a bot task I'm shopping around. We're looking for a bot that would keep an eye on both Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard and add a link to the archived discussion and to the archived announcement, respectively. I haven't decided if it would be best to amend the original link or add a bracketed one after it, but that's the basic idea. Any interest in picking this up? –xenotalk 20:47, 11 January 2011 (UTC) It would be even cooler if it could do this for all the stuff that's already been archived, but this may be a tall order

Sure, I can take a look. I'm not clear on what exactly it should be doing there, though. Anomie⚔ 12:28, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
I've asked for a clerk to drop by and give some more exact details on how this (was) (should be) done. Thanks =) –xenotalk 14:00, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
It shouldn't be that bad. It should simply be a matter of changing [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Sanction appeal|Original announcement]] to [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 4#Sanction appeal|Original announcement]] on WT:ACN and [[Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Sanction appeal|Discuss this]] to [[Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 3#Sanction appeal|Discuss this]] on WP:ACN. NW (Talk) 17:42, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Should "Discuss this" not be changed to "Archived discussion" or something? (Assuming we don't want people discussing by editing archives...) –xenotalk 17:44, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Could be solved just as easily be full-protecting the archives. But that wouldn't be a bad idea if you could retroactively apply it to the previous ones. NW (Talk) 17:57, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Code is almost done. There seems to be some section titles that were used more than once, though:

Wikipedia namespace
Wikipedia talk namespace

Not sure what to do about those. Anomie⚔ 04:21, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

So the bot is having trouble reconciling which should point where? –xenotalk 14:52, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
What I'll probably end up doing is correct the existing links manually before running the bot, and then tell the bot to use the most recent target (e.g. prefer Archive 12 over Archive 11, and the non-archive page over any archive) for any future cases. Anomie⚔ 17:23, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Did that. BRFA filed Anomie⚔ 04:40, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Bot Request

Hey Anomie, I was wondering if you could do an assessment job on all the articles in Category:Unassessed Albemarle County articles. They would just need to match the assessments of the already exsisting templates. Like if WP:FOO is Class C with Low Importance, WP:ALVA (the WP link for the project) would be the same. Would that be possible? - Neutralhomer • Talk • 22:38, 6 February 2011 (UTC) • Go Steelers!

Lighting this up again. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 18:38, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
If there are multiple other projects with different ratings, should it copy the highest or the lowest? Anomie⚔ 20:41, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
I always go with the highest unless you see a reason it shouldn't be. But I would go with the highest (like if WP:FOO is C and WP:BAR is Start, go C). - Neutralhomer • Talk • 20:44, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

PUICloser: Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2011 January 26 is broken - Fixed

Help! A section in Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2011 January 26 contains the "is_closed" regex but not at the beginning of the section. Probably someone put the {{puf top}} before a section header instead of after. Anyway, I can't do anything to that page until someone fixes it. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 02:03, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

BAGBot: WP:BAG cannot be processed - fixed

Row 15 in the BAG Member List table was not recognized, which means either someone changed the wikitext or someone vandalized the page. Either fix it back to the old layout, or update me to recognize the new version. Thanks. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 02:38, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Bot mishandles renamed refs

See this bot edit and my immediately preceding edit that precipitated it. Fixing the name of a ref in one section causes the bot to "rescue" the ref at its next usage, when the correct behaviour would be to recognize that the new name is still targeted at the same citation and apply the new name to the broken instance. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I've adjusted the code to detect simple renames like that. Please let me know if you see it working, or especially if you see it working incorrectly. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 02:46, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
The not-very-well-named ref name of "cite pmid|xxxxxxx" comes from the AWB logic I wrote, so I'll adjust it to derive "pmidxxxxxxx" for the next AWB release. Rjwilmsi 14:23, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

CHUUClerk

Thread retitled from "CHUUClerk: Trial complete!".

This task was in trial until 2010-10-20 16:59:32 (UTC), which has now passed. Please stop the task and report the completion of the trial at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 47. Thanks. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 17:09, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I extended the trial to indefinite, until it is formally approved. –xenotalk 17:11, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Why not just approve it? Anomie⚔ 22:32, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Over-sensitive involvement meter? –xenotalk 12:57, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
To my mind, if you're uninvolved enough to approve a trial you're probably uninvolved enough to just approve the thing. But we can go with this, it doesn't matter much. Anomie⚔ 17:29, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I dunno, I kindof always figured (we don't have any rules on this I guess?) that there should be some check/balance - the BAGger who approved the trial should generally not approve the task, etc? I must admit I usually err far on the side of caution as far as involvement rules go. I normally wouldn't have even approved the trial, but I'a'r'd because it's a critical task and I'm presently the most active 'crat on the usurp page. –xenotalk 17:48, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I almost always approve the task when I approved the trial; it seems to me that we don't usually have enough active BAGgers to do otherwise. Anomie⚔ 20:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Well met. –xenotalk 20:31, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Is it possible for the bot to detect after a request is fulfilled and change {{status}} -> {{status|done}} & append *{{done}} –[[user:xeno|<span style="font-family:verdana; color:black">'''xeno'''</span>]][[user talk:xeno|<span style="color:black"><sup>talk</sup></span>]] <!-- Autosigned by AnomieBOT --> ~~~~~ or some such? (Other bureaucrats might want to opt-in to this too at some point.) It may make sense to put it on some kind of delay or timer so the bot can do it one edit as I usually fulfill a bunch at the same time. Thanks! –xenotalk 05:58, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I think the code is ready. Please protect User:AnomieBOT/CHUUClerk closer opt-in and add your name, and I will upload the bot code (you can watch for that at User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/CHUUClerk.pm). It'll copy your sig off that page, something like ": {{done}} $sig <small>([[User:AnomieBOT/CHUUClerk closer opt-in|autosigned by AnomieBOT]])</small> ~~~~~" resulting in a notice like
 Done –xenotalk (autosigned by AnomieBOT) 00:59, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Anomie⚔ 00:59, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Hm, doesn't seem to be working? I've fulfilled two requests and left them for the bot to sign but not signed to this point and bot has done other clerking on the page. –xenotalk 16:55, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Bah, I had the tests in the wrong order, it was checking "already-clerked" before "auto-close" and so never getting to the "auto-close" check. Should be working now, let me know if you see any other problems. Anomie⚔ 18:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Works great, A++++ botop, would buy again. –xenotalk 14:42, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
  • This is probably a really rare problem, but is it possible for the bot to detect if an editor has accidentally reverted to an old revision of the page? [6]. –xenotalk 14:33, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
    Hmm, that's a tough one. I'll have to think about it. Anomie⚔ 17:13, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
    Don't worry about it too much. Another idea I was toying around with was having the bot just move simple requests to CHUS rather than complaining about them. –xenotalk 17:20, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
    Either that, or I can just process simple requests on the usurp page and the bot could archive to the CHUS archive... –xenotalk 15:19, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
    Please implement whichever solution is easier - the bot simply moving simple requests to CHUS (possible issues for this would be that the user didn't meant to make it simple and just futzed up the input) or recognizing when I fulfill a request was simple, signing " Done as CHUS"/recognizing when I sign it that way, and archiving to the simple archive. –xenotalk 23:05, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
    It would probably be less prone to error to do the latter. Anomie⚔ 03:31, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

From a wider standpoint, I am wondering if it would be a good idea to see if X! and Chris G would mind if AnomieBOT took over the whole show (as long as you're available to expand the codebase) - having three different bots for to manage the username pages seems somewhat inefficient. –xenotalk 23:05, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

If they're agreeable, I could do that. Anomie⚔ 03:31, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Maybe best to just table that for now. Quick question: does the bot only act on bureaucrat's dones and notdones? –xenotalk 16:58, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes. It's not 100% foolproof, but I believe it is ever so slightly more foolproof than what ClueBot VI did. Anomie⚔ 20:23, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
  • In order to make the by-line more accurate, could you change it to

Requests left here should be addressed on or before x.

Thanks. –xenotalk 23:05, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

BAGBot

This task was in trial until 2010-11-24 19:42:33 (UTC), which has now passed. Please stop the task and report the completion of the trial at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 48. Thanks. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 19:44, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

PUICloser: Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2011 February 17 is broken - Fixed

Help! A section in Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2011 February 17 contains the "is_closed" regex but not at the beginning of the section. Probably someone put the {{puf top}} before a section header instead of after. Anyway, I can't do anything to that page until someone fixes it. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 05:04, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

ACOTClerk

I was wondering if you might be willing to take on another arbitration-clerky-type bot project - helping maintain the {{ArbComOpenTasks}} template.

At the very least, we are looking for a process that will monitor new requests posted at WP:A/R/C, WP:A/R/A, and WP:A/R/CL and update the template accordingly. For example, it would detect there is currently an amendment request at WP:A/R/A that needs to be added to the template.

More complicated aspects of the bot might detect changes in the {{RFARcasenav}} on the pages (to drafters, for example), and update the template accordingly (cf. Kehrli). Thoughts? –xenotalk 14:15, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to find time to take a look. Anomie⚔ 16:00, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Award!

Ukraine Barnstar
I hereby award you this Ukraine Barnstar for rescuing tons of references in Ukrainian related articles the past months! — Yulia Romero • Talk to me! 22:05, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Wow that's bright. AnomieBOT thanks you. Anomie⚔ 01:27, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Creation science AnomieBOT

Does this BOT always choose the European language as seen in http://books.google.com.ph/books?id=od68ge7aF6wC&pg=PA194#v=onepage&q&f=false (reference 7)? Dan Watts (talk) 03:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to this edit. As noted in the edit summary, the bot copied the ref verbatim from revision 418323118. It didn't "choose" any language. Anomie⚔ 03:13, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Deepwater Horizon oil spill

AnomieBOT messed up the article here. All of these dates were in fact in 2010. --bender235 (talk) 16:58, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

In general, there is no way for the bot to know which year someone means when they type only "May 9". But it is true that a smarter guess would be 2010 rather than 2011 when May happens to be in the future, so I fixed that. Anomie⚔ 03:23, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Maybe instead of "fixing" (i.e. guessing) the correct date, AnomieBOT should add {{when}} or {{as of}} to ambiguous dates. --bender235 (talk) 15:19, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

"This image is currently tagged as non-free. If there is a dispute with the rationale[...]" on PUF

Can we change one of the bot's PUF templates? The full message currently reads like this:


That message comes across to me as problematic because it makes it sound like admins are definitely going to do something, when very often what the bot's message promises isn't the case. Basically, the bot shouldn't be telling people what an admin is going to do, because a bot is unable to assess copyright concerns other than reading the tag, which may have been changed to non-free as an act of desperation on someone's part rather than a result of whatever, and makes someone think that they just saved an image when they really didn't. I recently got messaged by someone complaining that a file was deleted after the bot told them it was going to be kept, and I had to tell them not to believe everything that a bot tells them.

I do, however, consider a message in a deletion discussion noting that the tag has been changed to non-free to be important, because that is a game-changer in a deletion discussion. Thus I would recommend shortening the message dramatically, to this:


What do you think? SchuminWeb (Talk) 16:33, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if that isn't too uninformative, though. Perhaps something like

Anomie⚔ 22:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Works for me! That doesn't make any assumptions about what the admin will do. SchuminWeb (Talk) 00:27, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea‎

AnomieBOT updated {{OnThisDay}} tag on Talk:Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea‎ so that it now reads the article was featured on April 13, 2011. However, according to the linked revision, the article was not listed. Looking through the edit history, the article was removed from the list on 10 April 2011. --Kusunose 03:01, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

OrphanReferenceFixer: Blacklisted orphaned reference in Silver City Casino

When trying to fix orphaned refs in Silver City Casino, MediaWiki's spam blacklist complained about http://www.lvstriphistory.com. This probably means someone didn't properly clean up after themselves when blacklisting the link and removing existing uses, but a human needs to double-check it. The attempted changes were:

You might also use {{subst:User:Anomie/uw-orphans|1=rm diff|2=fix diff}} to let the remover know, if their edit summary indicates they were specifically removing the blacklisted ref. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 22:27, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, AnomieBOT. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Files for deletion.
Message added 05:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

AnomieBOT is mentioned for potentially an additional task with FFD and PUF, and so feedback is appreciated. SchuminWeb (Talk) 05:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Architecture of cathedrals, basilicas and abbey churches

Your bot just "rescued" orphaned references in this article. It really is pointless rescuing orphaned refs, when the reason that they have become orphaned is that some idiot vandal has deleted a large chunk of the article. The problem with the reference fix is that, as a subsequent edit, it immediately buries the vandalism, instead of fixing it. Deletions that have been buried beneath subsequent edits can go unnoticed ...well, for three months, in the case of Fra Angelico, when it wasn't until I reread the entire article and realised a quarter of his life was missing. More care needed! Amandajm (talk) 16:49, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Please see the note at the top of this page. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 18:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Publication of Species Plantarum on May 1

I don't know how you included the above "fact" in the "OnThisDay" section, and when, but it contains two errors, that have been corrected on Carl Linnaeus#Publishing of Species Plantarum. First: the work was not published on May 1 but volume 1 was published somewhere in May, volume 2 followed somewhere in August. There's nothing wrong with celebrating the day May 1 for the release of Species Plantarum, but then we celebrate the fact that the International Botanical Congress in Vienna in 1905 decided to treat the two volumes as having been published simultaneously on May 1, 1753.

Second: the work is considered the beginning of modern botanical nomenclature. So it is not with his earlier work Systema Naturae that the work is considered the beginning of nomenclature. In that case, the earlier work would have been the beginning. The confusing is in the fact that the tenth edition of Systema Naturae (1758) was later chosen as the starting point of zoological nomenclature. Systema Naturae has nothing to do with the starting point of botanical nomenclature: not the earlier editions, nor the tenth edition.

Can you tell me how you choose those "facts" and how you make them appear in the OnThisDay section? Because once they are displayed, they can no longer be edited (by me at least). Cheers. - Wikiklaas (talk) 13:41, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

You're talking to an automated process. AnomieBOT is just a computer program that, among other things, updates the talk pages of the articles that others list in OTD. You should ask your question at WT:OTD, where people who actually can answer your question are likely to see it. Anomie⚔ 02:29, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for answering. The link that was visible next to the edit-summary on the history of the Linnaeus Talkpage directed me to your page; that's why I asked you. - Wikiklaas (talk) 03:37, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

BAGbot

Is missing that I opted out of operator assistance needed notifications since 11:19, 2 January 2011. Rich Farmbrough, 12:07, 10 May 2011 (UTC).

Your penchant for capitalizing templates that no one else capitalizes was causing your problem. Anomie⚔ 23:34, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Some AfDs not getting archived from deletion sorting pages

In this edit, AnomieBOT archived two closed AfDs from Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators, but it left eight other older closed AfDs untouched. I've tried eyeballing the wikicode of the AfDs to see if there was anything obvious that distinguished the ones that got archived from the ones that didn't (e.g. unsubstituted closure templates) and didn't see anything. Any idea what's wrong here and what needs to be done to those AfDs to get them archived? Or is manual archiving needed here? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:20, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

This edit to Template:Afd top confused the bot, as the bot looks for "<div class="boilerplate metadata" to detect a closed discussion. I've adjusted the bot so the discussions closed during the 3.375 days that change was active will be archived. Anomie⚔ 03:26, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! I wondered whether it was something like that. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi, re this edit - please note that ELs go before persondata and categories, per WP:FOOTERS. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:54, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Note that the bot handles it correctly when the categories and junk actually are at the end of the page. But when the page has other content after the categories and junk (e.g. a "[" in that page), the bot will happily put its additions after that other content. Anomie⚔ 21:09, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Plain English, please. Thank you.

It wouldn't take much, I think, for this to be put into plain English. As it is, I have absolutely no idea what it means: "Moving refs out of templates and rescuing orphaned refs ("2006Estimate" from rev 429082685))" Sincerely, your friend, GeorgeLouis (talk) 23:13, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Hello, hello? Is anybody there? I would like a response if at all possible. Thank you so much. Your pal, GeorgeLouis (talk) 14:49, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
It seems fairly clear to me. The named reference "2006Estimate" was orphaned by a deletion after revision 429082685. The bot looked back to that revision to find the details of that reference and re-added them to the current version so that the ref would no longer be orphaned. If that isn't clear enough, it might help to say what article you refer to, so that others may see the problem for themselves. Better yet, provide a wp:DIFF. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:22, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) OK then. I am assuming that you refer to this edit. There are two main actions here; both concern the sort of reference described at WP:NAMEDREFS.
  • "Moving refs out of templates" - if the same ref is used both in prose and inside a template (such as an infobox), it's preferable to put the main ref in the prose, with the template containing the simpler form. So, the <ref name="inc">{{cite news |title=City History |work=City of Inglewood |url=http://www.cityofinglewood.org/about/city_history.asp }}</ref> which was in the infobox, and the <ref name="inc" /> which was in the lead section, have been exchanged.
  • "rescuing orphaned refs ("2006Estimate" from rev 429082685)" - this edit had removed a named reference, <ref name=2006Estimate>[http://www.factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ACSSAFFFacts?_event=&geo_id=16000US0636546&_geoContext=01000US%7C04000US06%7C16000US0636546&_street=&_county=Inglewood&_cityTown=Inglewood&_state=04000US06&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&ActiveGeoDiv=&_useEV=&pctxt=fph&pgsl=160&_submenuId=factsheet_1&ds_name=DEC_2000_SAFF&_ci_nbr=null&qr_name=null&reg=null%3Anull&_keyword=&_industry= "2006 American Community Survey," ''American Fact Finder,'' U.S. Census Bureau]</ref>; unfortunately there remained a <ref name=2006Estimate /> elsewhere - which had the same name. This has caused the references section to contain an error message, see here, ref 22. "rev 429082685" refers to this, the last version which contained the full ref in question. The bot has replaced the <ref name=2006Estimate /> with the full version from that revision.
--Redrose64 (talk) 15:40, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

A simple "thank you" from me. I still don't understand much, but I appreciate your taking the time. I assume it is all for the good, but I must admit that I try to fight jargon, abbreviations and other such as much as I can. Thanks again for putting up with this question, or remark, or whatever it was that I wrote. I would send you a barnstar, but the barn, I think, is closed for the evening. Cheers. GeorgeLouis (talk) 01:41, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

You are an awesome bot

Thank you for finding a citation that I orphaned. Very helpful. Have a botsnack. --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:16, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Usurpation held up

I see that the bot is broken, but please, can I do the clerking manually, or can someone else do it? Thanks, and have a nice day. --Jeffwang16 (Talk) (Contributions) (Email me!) 22:31, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Bot should be functional now, for the moment anyway. Anomie⚔ 23:41, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

"Fixing Ref errors" causing a ref error

Hello! I've been finding a few instances where User:Citation bot 1 has combined named refs, renaming them with extra quotemarks, and AnomieBOT comes along to sweep up after it - and removes the ref names.

Example: this edit

What's happening is, Citation bot 1 inexplicably adds extra quotemarks, changing <ref name="Playfair90"/> to be <ref name=" "Playfair90""/>. Then AnomieBOT fixes the error to be <ref name=" "/>. While this is somewhat appropriate, it breaks the ref, and a human has to go fix it. Can the Bot be programmed to check differently, and remove the extra quotemarks? I'm going to see if the other bot can be made to stop doing the error in the first place, too. Thanks for any help. - Salamurai (talk) 06:15, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

AnomieBOT adjusted to specifically detect and correctly fix Citation bot's error. Anomie⚔ 10:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Closing of renamed images at IFD

Hi. FYI, I noticed today that your bot closed Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2011_June_11#File:IMG_0047.JPG as a non-existent file. Actually, it does exist, but I had renamed it to a better name. In this case, it doesn't especially matter - the reason for the nomination was that it was an orphaned image of an unknown subject and I have resolved the issue and added it to an article. But it's obviously conceivable that someone might rename an image that actually needs to be discussed and the bot will close it without anyone noticing the error. Would it be possible for the bot to either ignore all redirects or (better) update the nomination to point to the new name for the image? Thanks. --B (talk) 02:41, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

The bot already does the later, actually, but it had a bug where it would skip checking for redirect status on files that have any deletion log entries.  Fixed Anomie⚔ 13:10, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Encouragement

You're the best bot I've ever met. Thank you for being so patient and understanding of human error that you pick up the pieces after us. You're so much nicer than your bouncer-like family members. Keep up the good work! --Eddyspeeder (talk) 21:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I actually came here to say the same thing. Do bots like hugs? 2birds1stone (talk) 10:57, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
ditto: took me three attempts to include a cite, and still got it wrong. Thanks for your help Bot, and Bot creator. IdreamofJeanie (talk) 16:55, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Battle of Rafa

Hi, Just wondering why you made the following edits - (Moving refs out of templates and rescuing orphaned refs ("Pugsley135-6" from rev 436460532)). Its just that they look to be ok grouped refs. --Rskp (talk) 02:23, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

If you look at the "References" section of the version prior to the bot edit, there's a red error message. The bot edit has fixed this. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:44, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Back online?

I'm very sorry to hear that your server is down after a power outage. Welcome back to Wikipedia! StormContent (talk) 02:02, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

OnThisDayTagger: {{Template:OnThisDay}} needs more parameters - fixed

It appears that {{OnThisDay}} only supports parameters up to {{{date0}}} and {{{oldid0}}}, and I have seen at least one page that needs 75. Please edit the template to include more calls to {{OnThisDay/link}}. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 11:41, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough has moved Template:OnThisDay to Template:On this day, which does allow 75 dates. Clearly the bot can't see through a redirect. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:22, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, the arbitrary and pointless renaming of templates to have spaces strikes again. Anomie⚔ 10:45, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Jagoda Kaloper

The facts about Jagoda Kaloper are credible, if you trust me. I've added some references. Inoslav Bešker (talk) 11:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Note that the {{BLP IMDb refimprove}} was added to that article by GregorB (talk · contribs).[8] AnomieBOT just added the date so it would be categorized correctly into Category:BLP articles lacking sources from May 2011, Category:Articles lacking reliable references from May 2011, and Category:Articles sourced by IMDb from May 2011 instead of Category:BLP articles lacking sources, Category:Articles lacking reliable references, and Category:Articles sourced by IMDb. Anomie⚔ 10:59, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
Your autofixes for orphaned refs are fabulous! Keep up the great work. Jokestress (talk) 21:43, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
AnomieBOT thanks you. Anomie⚔ 22:20, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Why again ?

"Moving refs out of templates" - if the same ref is used both in prose and inside a template (such as an infobox), it's preferable to put the main ref in the prose, with the template containing the simpler form. So, the <ref name="inc">{{cite news |title=City History |work=City of Inglewood |url=http://www.cityofinglewood.org/about/city_history.asp }}</ref> which was in the infobox, and the <ref name="inc" /> which was in the lead section, have been exchanged.

Thanks Bot. I understand that the above is one of the things you do, but I'm wondering why. Why is it preferable to have the main ref in the prose ? -Sticks66 12:28, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
If someone edits the template to remove a formerly-recognized parameter (for example, removing "blood type" from {{Infobox animanga character}}), then any refs where the main ref is in the infobox parameter are suddenly broken even though the needed ref text remains in the wikitext. Anomie⚔ 12:41, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Currentyear

Can I ask why CURRENTYEAR is being changed to 2011 in the {{inflation}} template as it is an appropriate usage so that you do not have to go round every year changing the year figure to make the information current. See this edit. Keith D (talk) 10:54, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Avalon University School of Medicine

Hi there,

If some is authorized to use copyright materials than how we can use those kind of material on wikipedia page? What is the procedure please let me know so we can use that kind of material without any problem.

Thank you Asfateh (talk) 00:15, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Thomas Jefferson

Tom thanks you...
...for fixing all those broken refs in his article. Huzzah! Shearonink (talk) 05:31, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
AnomieBOT thanks you. Anomie⚔ 12:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I just wanted...

...to compliment this bot on being so useful. Unlike most other bots out there, this one's pretty smart—color me impressed! Good job, and much appreciated.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 2, 2011; 19:03 (UTC)

CHUUClerk

Would it is be possible for the bot to make an additional note if the target user edits after the notification? (as these are most likely to be objections?) –xenotalk 15:13, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

If the target user edits anywhere, or just certain places (e.g. User talk namespace)? Anomie⚔ 15:57, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
Just edits anywhere to flag it for closer review. (If they are actively editing, they probably don't qualify for usurp.) –xenotalk 15:57, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
Y Done Anomie⚔ 17:18, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
Looks great - thank you =) –xenotalk 19:11, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Reis

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johann_Philipp_Reis&action=historysubmit&diff=449550148&oldid=449534474

I suppose the autor Samuel Kurinsky is an amateur-historian: http://www.hebrewhistory.org/samcv.html --Virtualiter (talk) 15:49, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

AnomieBOT has no idea, as it is a computer program. All it did in that edit was copy the text of the references you deleted in the previous edit to one of the other places those references were being used in the article, to fix the big red errors you left in the References section. You'd be better served by raising your concerns at the article's talk page or the talk page of the relevant WikiProject. Anomie⚔ 17:13, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
ups, I had not seen the error.
I am sure that he was not a Jew. Therefore I had transferred the text into the discussion side and had added as reference the NDB. Also 1889 he was still no Jew: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00008386/images/index.html?id=00008386&fip=193.174.98.30&no=&seite=115 --Virtualiter (talk) 22:21, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

sorry to disturb you.

sorry to disturb you, but please... this bot removing my tag like this edit [9] i hate to redo the tag about the universities once again. can u please fix the bot.

thank you.

--Ald™ ¬_¬™ 19:56, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

As the edit summary explains (Moving {{Translated}} to Talk:Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa University.), the tag was moved to the talk page, because this template is supposed to be used on the talk page. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:53, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
i just see the summary, thx... i thought it's just gone...

--Ald™ ¬_¬™ 11:50, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

BAGBot bug on notifying unapproved editing bots

Hi! I disabled BAGBot since the "notify BRFA if bot edits without approval" went a bit rogue on [10] and [11]. Thanks. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:50, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Aw, crap. Fixed now (in two different ways), will restart the bot once the new code is uploaded to the AnomieBOT server. Anomie⚔ 21:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

United we stand, divided we fall

United we stand, divided we fall
For all your hard work Lotje ツ (talk) 07:55, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
AnomieBOT thanks you. Anomie⚔ 10:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

BAGBot discussion closure detection

Hi! AnomieBOT seems to treat templates as an indication of a closed bot approval. I haven't really given this much thought, but I used a {{BotWithdrawn}} without actually closing the BRFA. I guess this would be rare and other template would only be used by BAG (as per "Administration Templates" caption). Do you think this needs special treatment or just leave it as is? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:17, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. I've changed the bot to consider just the categories for Approved/Denied/Expired/Withdrawn, and also to flag requests on WP:BAG/Status if the templates are present without the categories. Anomie⚔ 16:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Cool, thanks! —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:02, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Openbrfa.php

Hello, Anomie's robut. Your operator expressed an interest in taking over User:One bot's "Open BRFA" task as I have come to call it. Here is the line from the crontab: 

0              0       *       *       *       php $HOME/openbrfa.php > /dev/null 2>&1

and here is the bot code. It's a pretty light task, so enjoy! hare j 02:21, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but I added the code to the existing AnomieBOT task instead. Anomie⚔ 02:50, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Flag icons in infoboxes

I would like to ask if it is possible to use AnomieBOT for removing flag icons from the infoboxes and replace them with country names (in text format) per WP:MOSFLAG. More precisely, this request concerns template:Infobox company and template:Infobox power station. Also the documentation of template:Infobox company says: Do not use flag icons, as this places an unnecessary emphasis on nationality; see MOS:FLAG for a detailed rationale. If the AnomieBOT is not performing that kind of task, maybe you could advice some other bot? Thank you in advance. Beagel (talk) 11:24, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

AnomieBOT could do it, but first there would probably have to be a discussion somewhere to firmly (re-)establish consensus. I'd say hold the discussion on the talk pages of the infobox templates, and advertise it at WT:MOSFLAG, the relevant WikiProjects' talk pages, and maybe WP:VPR. From a technical standpoint, it would probably be better to have the bot make a replacement equivalent to substing the template and then removing the image, to more correctly handle {{flagicon}}, {{flag|name=...}}, and so on. Anomie⚔ 13:01, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
I started discussion at the templates' talk pages and informed WP:Companies, WP:Energy and WT:MOSFLAG. I am not sure about WP:VPR, as my request concerns only two infoboxes, not infoboxes in general. But of course, if necessary, I will notify also WP:VPR. Beagel (talk) 18:26, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
WP:VPR is just to reduce the ability for people who love their stupid little flag icons to (legitimately) claim there wasn't enough attempt to gather consensus once the bot starts work. But if enough come to the discussions from the other adverts, it might be ok. Anomie⚔ 10:53, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

BRFA filed Anomie⚔ 19:19, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Instead of a bunch of requests for different infoboxes, why not have the applicable projects come to a consensus on a project and add a field, class or id to the infobox that tells the bot that the infobox excludes flags. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 20:10, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

If we did that, someone could be disruptive by slapping the tag on infoboxes without consensus and then the bot would go removing flags it shouldn't. Anomie⚔ 20:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
  • There is also discussion for template:Infobox_dam. It seems that there is consensus although not unanimity to remove icon flags from the template fields. There is one user opposing this proposal, one user expressing general concerns but not stating clearly his/her position concerning this particular infobox, three supporting this concrete proposal (four if you add my vote as nominator) and two who are not concrete about this particular infobox but supporting the proposal on the base of MOS:FLAG. Beagel (talk) 06:56, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:ER clerking

Hi there. I've been informed at my talk page that WP:ER doesn't seem to be archived correctly anymore. According to its history no request was archive for a month. Can you please check this? If you can leave me a message once you had a look at it would be great. Regards SoWhy 20:02, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

It looks like people have been forgetting to remove the {{Not yet reviewed}} when they review a request. Anything in Category:Wikipedians on Editor review/Backlog that has a review is screwed up in that manner. Anomie⚔ 20:36, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Ah, okay, that makes sense. I'll have a look then :-) Regards SoWhy 20:42, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Reference error

Introduced a "reference" for a date of birth for another actress entirely in Meena Durairaj.[12] Fences&Windows 04:52, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

That's a tough one to solve without strong AI. How is the bot to know that Deva21Simbu (talk · contribs) added a totally bogus orphaned <ref> for no particular reason? Suggestions? Anomie⚔ 11:02, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
A solution is to not search for orphans in unrelated articles. Inadvertent reference faking is serious, you need to work out how to avoid your bot doing it. How did the bot make the decision that a reference in Asin was the missing one from that article? If decisions are fuzzy, could the bot instead post the possible reference on the talk page? Fences&Windows 23:57, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
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