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Archive 5Archive 9Archive 10Archive 11

(Copied from user talk page for record-keeping purposes only)

Question re: formatting references

Hi Mertbiol, Thank you so much for your help with the Henry Winkler article re: formatting the references (my least favorite activity on the WP!). I do have a "help" question as a follow up. If I (or other editors) add references to the article in the future, how do I maintain the formatting with the archival link? Is there a tool that I can use each time, or is there some aspect to the wiki mark-up that I'm not familiar with? Thank you again for your help with the references!! -Classicfilms (talk) 14:58, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Classicfilms: Thanks for your message. Running the archiving bot (IABot) is very straightforward, but the instructions on how to do it are well hidden. The easiest way is:
  • make sure you are logged in to your Wikipedia account;
  • click on the "View history" tab of the article that you would like to archive;
  • at the top of the page history screen, under the box that says "Filter revisions", you’ll see a list of "External tools";
  • click on "Fix dead links" on the right hand side (it's next to "Pageviews");
  • You'll be taken to iabot.toolforge.org/ and you should see a white screen with a message saying "Login required";
  • Click on the grey "Not logged in" link in the top right hand corner;
  • You are sent back to Wikipedia to authorise IABot (follow the prompts to set up OAuth if you haven't done this before) - you may need to type in your Wikipedia username and password again;
  • Click the blue "Allow" button to allow IABot to make edits on Wikipedia through your account;
  • You are sent back to IABot and you should see a white screen with the title "Analyze a page";
  • Type in the page title of the article whose links you want to archive;
  • Tick the optional check box that says "Add archives to all non-dead references";
  • Click "Analyze";
  • IABot will run and when it's finished you'll see a green horizontal banner at the top of the browser screen;
  • Go back to the article page on Wikipedia to check that IABot has correctly archived the references and that it hasn't generated any errors.
Give it a try and if you've got any questions, let me know and I'll do my best to help out!
Best wishes, Mertbiol (talk) 15:49, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
Thank you ... One more question - it looks like this bot works after the reference is already added. So that means that each time I add references, I should then run this bot?
Also, a barnstar for you!-Classicfilms (talk) 19:03, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
The Guidance Barnstar
I'd like to award this Barnstar to Mertbiol for clarifying what has often been a mysterious process (to me at least)...Thank you! Classicfilms (talk) 19:03, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Classicfilms: Thanks very much for the barnstar!!
Yes, you can only archive the reference after you've added it through the normal editing process.
The bot has a couple of quirks:

  • it seems to scan through a cached version of the article, rather than the current version, which means that new references sometimes aren't picked up. I tend to wait a couple of hours after adding a reference before I attempt to archive it.
  • it prefers you to use the |access-date parameter rather than the |accessdate parameter (i.e. without the hyphen) in the citation templates.

Hope this helps Mertbiol (talk) 19:21, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

You are most welcome... A much-deserved barnstar indeed! Ok, it's crystal clear now. I can't wait to try this out! If I run into any issues, I will let you know.-Classicfilms (talk) 19:46, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
In recognition of your relentless contribution. Dwaipayan (talk) 04:42, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Thirteen Lives, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page English.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:18, 7 August 2022 (UTC)