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Wild thang

What would you say to semi protection of the m01, 03, and 04 and /halt subpages? Also, I think the text on User:WildBot/m01 should insert "may" before "need" since it's not always necessary. I figured I'd ask first but these seem like good ideas. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 14:23, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Its "need" because you shouldn't be linking to disambiguation pages and if you did then you should be very clear about that. Semi-protection sounds reasonable due to the 12,000+ transclusion count on m1 and m3, but not on /halt. — Dispenser 22:39, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
What he said - explict linking to disambiguation pages via a (disambiguation) in the title is not reported by WildBot. Also User:WildBot/smallprint and User:WildBot/e083. And yes, do m04 too. Thanks Amory, proactive is good! Josh Parris 23:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done ~ Amory (u • t • c) 06:29, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Wildbot posting report on the book, and not book talk!

See [1]. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:36, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

The weirdness is that there are two checks in the code to prevent this kind of thing happening. I'll keep looking. Josh Parris 08:14, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
I can't offer an explanation. In spite of it happening - "it can't happen". I'm a little freaked out. Specifically, at the start of article_queue.__init__() the code detects if it's working on a talk_page and corrects for that. Later, article_queue._put_talkpage() and article_queue._put_page() both test for (and exit if) the "page" is a talk page. The changes you showed me both go through these two paths before being written to the wiki. I've arranged a little jiggling to article_queue.__init__() but I don't think it will affect this situation.
Post if you see this happen again. Josh Parris 11:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Well it's not like it happened every two seconds, so if there's an occasional misfiring, it's not the end of the world. I'm watching these books like a hawk anyway. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
It occurred to me that I wasn't checking that what the bot thought was the talk page was the talk page - it just checked the article-page/book-page was not a talk page (and inferred that the talk page must be if the article page wasn't). So I've added that check... but still... weird. Josh Parris 01:21, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

WildBot blocked

Per Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#WildBot and the bot's failure to stop after altering User:WildBot/Halt, I have blocked your bot. --auburnpilot talk 13:45, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, I will correct both problems and report back. This may take a little time. Josh Parris 00:12, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
The problem did not affect books as far as I'm aware. Would it be possible to re-enable that portion of the bot? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:53, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I've changed the startup code so that if anyone other than me alters the halt page, the bot won't restart; currently it's being continuously restarted by a supervising script. The effect of this is that edits to the halt page will halt the bot until I tell it to go again. I need the bot unblocked to test this.
As for the original problem, I think it may have been due to two bots running simultaneously with different datasets - creating dueling bots. I'll create a blackboard that the bot checks to see what version of the datasets other bots are running with; if it's different, the bot won't start, forcing the operator to kill the other instances so that they're all running the same dataset. Josh Parris 11:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm willing to unblock the bot to give this a test. I've been looking forward to you being ready to have the bot unblocked. :) Just give me the word... - UtherSRG (talk) 11:46, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Bird.
Gedit? Josh Parris 11:49, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
LOL! Got it. Unblocked. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, it doesn't run when I wasn't the last editor of the halt page; that much is good. Josh Parris 12:20, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I've run up WildBot for books (I think I can trust it there), but left the rest down for the moment. I'm off to bed. Josh Parris 12:20, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Ah... I never look at Books. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:43, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm now going to run up the bot to process recent new pages. Josh Parris 01:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Printing a book

BTW Josh, did you get my email? I sent you one about two days ago I think. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:54, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I almost wet myself with excitement; then I went into paralysis when I thought about what's needed to bring the composite pages of User:Josh Parris/Books/Stone Age Tech up to scratch. I'm currently oscillating between these two emotions. Josh Parris 01:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

7SeriesBot

Continuing from Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/7SeriesBOT 2

Looking at your code, I agree (although I know almost nothing about python). Interestingly, some of the articles had been moved as well, although they were moving away from the page, does the bot only pick up on it if pages are moved to the current location? Or does it not matter if the page has just one author (it should check if the page has been moved away, since G7 only applies to the old location of the moved page if the moved edits were done by the same person (that doesn't make any sense but hey)). Do you think you could do some debugging and try to fix this? The content of one of the pages was {{db-userreq|rationale=Fixing talk page archives.}} #REDIRECT [[User talk:Hi878/Archives/2008]]. - Kingpin13 (talk) 11:49, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm yet to address this. Josh Parris 13:29, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Still no action. Josh Parris 06:38, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
I think I've identified the problem. There's an extra | at the end of the list of alternative names. Still requires testing. 210.50.36.9 (talk) 00:55, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Still requires testing. Josh Parris 11:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done that was it; change is in the Task2 codebase so should be live within the week. Josh Parris 13:18, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Glitch?

Talk:Live at the BBC (Fairport Convention album); utterly inappropriate. Rodhullandemu 23:29, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Moved from User:WildBot --Tothwolf (talk) 23:44, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
What is? Josh Parris 07:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Look at the deletion log, he repeatedly restored the deleted revisions and seconds later 7SeriesBOT deleted the page under G7. — Dispenser 15:25, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Ah.
Sometimes things can work too well. I'll figure out a solution. Josh Parris 02:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Colin S. Smith

Great bot, thanks for helping identify my ambiguous links. One problem: WildBot still reports my evangelical link as ambiguous even after I fixed it on Colin S. Smith (pastor). I could easily take WildBot's box off of the article talk page myself, but I figured you might want to look into it yourself since it is reporting an unambiguous link as ambiguous. Thanks again. dlempa (talk) 18:22, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, initially WildBot would have reported that there were 2x links to evangelical, and you fixed one. I took the liberty of fixing the other. User talk:Josh Parris/Archive 10/faq Josh Parris 08:50, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, I see it now! Sorry I missed that. Thanks. dlempa (talk) 18:49, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Redirect in a NavBox

The article Neptune contains a NavBox about planetary atmospheres. This NavBox includes a link to Atmosphere of Neptune, which is a redirect back to the Neptune article. The NavBox is used on several articles and the redirect link is valid, but the dablinks tool reports it as a problem.[1] Thanks.—RJH (talk) 17:53, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Just disregard it. The check is meant to find links which don't point to any sections. However, this cannot be done only with database queries and its inclusion is a feature parity holdover from dabfinder.py tool. — Dispenser 19:22, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
Okay thanks.—RJH (talk) 14:51, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Addition to FAQ

Hello, I have been fixing many broken anchor links over the last few months or so and have found WildBot (with FrescoBot backing it up) a great source for these. I have noticed that WildBot will re-check a page after it is edited very quickly now, and I think that is great (I'm aware WildBot was down recently, and I missed it). To get to the point, sometimes fixing the broken anchors involves editing the section headings on the target page instead of the article flagged by WildBot. For instance sometimes section headings are changed or removed as vandalism but go unnoticed for a while. I have found a dummy edit is a good way to get WildBot to look through a page when the page itself hasn't been modified, as in these edits: 1 and 2. Do you think this trick is worth adding to the When will WildBot remove/update this message box? section of the FAQ? Thanks. Winston365 (talk) 05:57, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done I've added this hint.
Mind you, that you need to do this is horrible. I'll keep in mind that I ought to change WildBot so that such a hack is no longer necessary. This will be a non-trival change, so don't hold your breath. Josh Parris 06:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
When I need to do this, I usually re-tag the article's talk page with {{user:WildBot/tag}}. Just about the same effect and effort. But, I usually pick articles that have lots of dabs and broken anchors, so if I fix the target of the anchor, and then fix the other problems, I don't have to bother. - UtherSRG (talk) 07:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

This bot posted a number of supposedly broken section links on Talk:Postage stamps and postal history of Mexico. These in fact were links from footnotes to the actual references cited and I think were properly done. If there is something incorrect in that formatting of if I'm not uderstanding something here, please let me know. Ecphora (talk) 18:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The article uses the <cite id=value></cite> method, which is deprecated (several reasons, partly because it's not HTML 5 compatible but also because it doesn't work with all HTML 4 browsers). There is a template {{wikicite}} which can replace this. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Aside from that, I myself have picked up a problem which is superficially similar: this edit threw several errors, only one of which is genuine: the Chiltern Railways Evergreen 3 one. All the rest are not problems, since the anchor is generated by the |ref= parameter of the {{cite book}} templates; try clicking one and see. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Doing... Ecphora's references are unusual, and in the form <cite id="Chapman"> where Chapman is the anchor (I thought this was already supported, must investigate); Redrose64's are also unusual, and in the form <a href="#refWaters"> where refWaters is the anchor (this is a new style for me). Thanks both for locating this oddness; I'll have a fix within 24 hours and will start reprocessing the entire world once the fix is in place. Josh Parris 21:48, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done keep an eye out for this kind of misleading editing; for now I'm reprocessing the world. Josh Parris 12:21, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Critical problem with books

I just discovered that lines such as 

:[[Foobar]]<!-- Comment -->

are completely ignored by the PDF. Could WildBot do some of its magic to move comments to their own line, such as: 

:[[Foobar]]
<!-- Comment -->

? Thanks. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Likewise for chapters (;Foobar<!--Comment--> The comment isn't strip, and will show in the PDF). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
That'd be a bug in the PDF generator then. As a work around, I can move them. They're going to have to get moved back too, aren't they? Josh Parris 06:37, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
You're going to need to update the b01 message box. Josh Parris 06:38, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I've filled a ticket for these. I'll update the message box in two minutes. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Are you able to guess as to a time-frame in which this will get fixed? If it's a few days, it's barely worth the trouble of me fixing. Josh Parris 06:49, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunetaly no. But at the current rhythm of closing tickets/bugs, it doesn't seem likely that it will be anytime soon. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:00, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done change in place, reprocessing. Josh Parris 08:10, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks a bunch. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:46, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Bot vandalism

WildBot has now "repaired" the same link at The Suite Life on Deck twicethreefour times today, even though there is nothing wrong with the link.[2][3][4][5] I've given up now and hopefully halted it. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:17, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

It's a glitch, to call it "vandalism" is a little harsh. You advised him of an issue, let him take care of it. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 09:48, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done bug fixed. I'll restart the bot soon. Josh Parris 11:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
@Bwilkins - If a human persisted in breaking the same link we'd call it vandalism and I don't discriminate. Bots are people too. @Josh, Thanks. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
The bot's lacking the malicious motivation of a vandal. Keep me appraised of any further negative actions; I'm restarting the bot now. You can use {{bots|deny=WildBot}} for isolated cases of misbehaviour. Josh Parris 12:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

List of census subdivisions in Ontario

Wildbot has left a message on Talk:List of census subdivisions in Ontario that indicates issues with all of the alphabetical #links on the List, but I see no problems. I left the message intact for now so that it can be checked. Please advise..........PKT(alk) 11:19, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done Looks like it's time to roll out the new version, which doesn't have any problem with that list. Josh Parris 11:21, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

WildBot shouldn't be creating talk pages when there is no article.

Take a look at this. The article and its talk page were deleted, and then WildBot. Recreated the talk page. Probably should check that the article still exists, at least if creating the talk page a second time, although I suspect that might not be easy to tell without storing a bunch of data. - UtherSRG (talk) 08:06, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

This is true. I'll consider what to do about this. Josh Parris 13:08, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
This still needs fixing. Josh Parris 06:42, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Remains on my to-do list. Josh Parris 00:59, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Still requires attention. Josh Parris 11:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've got a fix in place, requires testing. Josh Parris 10:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI - Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#WildBot going haywire.

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#WildBot going haywire. –xenotalk 18:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The bot has been disabled. An unblock to perform tests would be appreciated. I presume the manual shutoff failed? Josh Parris 21:29, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done Cheers (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 22:36, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. It appears the bot wasn't given much time to shutdown. I need to update the instructions. Josh Parris 22:45, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

SRAG

Sorry I faced some problems getting my request on the site. I only could find your name on this page, that is why I ask you to revert my edits on Wikipedia:Subject Recruitment Approvals Group/Requests/StudyName. SORRY! Also I am not sure if the 'click here' thingy (step 2) on the main request site links correctly. Many apologies! --Jojoona (talk) 13:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Bogus warnings

The "broken" section links indicated in these edits[6][7] are actually correct.—Emil J. 14:37, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be many more of these cases, e.g. [8][9].—Emil J. 14:52, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This is probably the same problem as #local anchors on List of Kamen Rider Decade characters (Nine Worlds); I'll check your specific instance once that's solved, but I expect it will be resolved when whatever problem it is is solved. Josh Parris 00:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Talk:Flag of Germany Talk:Henri Poincaré Talk:Pythagorean theorem are fixed, but Talk:List of Toy Story characters is still broken, so I've merely made things less bad. Work continues. Josh Parris 03:49, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've checked your pages and believe all the problems have been fixed; I've restarted the bot and it's running hard. If you see edits from now on that are dodgy, please tell me. Josh Parris 08:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The WildBot template on Talk:List of science fiction films: 1990s lists a number of broken section links. However, these are not broken; they are merely links to <span id="year"> tags within a table. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 14:50, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Thanks for putting together and maintaining this bot. I like what it is doing in general.—RJH (talk)
This is probably the same problem as #local anchors on List of Kamen Rider Decade characters (Nine Worlds); I'll check your specific instance once that's solved, but I expect it will be resolved when whatever problem it is is solved. Josh Parris 00:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've checked your pages and believe all the problems have been fixed; I've restarted the bot and it's running hard. If you see edits from now on that are dodgy, please tell me. Josh Parris 08:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

local anchors on List of Kamen Rider Decade characters (Nine Worlds)

There's no such dead link on the page as its a section link to another section link on the page.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 16:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Same thing on Henri Poincaré - a good link to an anchor on the current page seems to give a false positive. (John User:Jwy talk) 16:14, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Ah, reading above - perhaps fixed today. . . (John User:Jwy talk) 16:18, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Same here List of Tales of Symphonia characters and here List of Mario series characters. DragonZero (talk · contribs) 18:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Doing... There's some sort of fault in WildBot's database caching of reference links. Investigating. Josh Parris 22:42, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
The first run over a revision of a page produces this fault - subsequent runs are ok. Josh Parris 10:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've checked your pages and believe all the problems have been fixed; I've restarted the bot and it's running hard. If you see edits from now on that are dodgy, please tell me. Josh Parris 08:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Seems to had a fit with this page....

Talk:List of NHL statistical leaders. These links all seem to work fine and are the correct caps, so not sure why the bot doesn't like them except perhaps that they don't have full page names in them and just link directly to sections. -DJSasso (talk) 17:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Here is the edit. These piped links are part of a custom table of contents. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 18:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
This is probably the same problem as #local anchors on List of Kamen Rider Decade characters (Nine Worlds); I'll check your specific instance once that's solved, but I expect it will be resolved when whatever problem it is is solved. Josh Parris 00:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've checked your pages and believe all the problems have been fixed; I've restarted the bot and it's running hard. If you see edits from now on that are dodgy, please tell me. Josh Parris 08:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The bot flagged wikilinks to references in Jiddu Krishnamurti. The links work just fine. I assume the bot can't handle WP:CITESHORT links? Thanks. 65.88.88.126 (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This is probably the same problem as #local anchors on List of Kamen Rider Decade characters (Nine Worlds); I'll check your specific instance once that's solved, but I expect it will be resolved when whatever problem it is is solved. Josh Parris 00:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've checked your pages and believe all the problems have been fixed; I've restarted the bot and it's running hard. If you see edits from now on that are dodgy, please tell me. Josh Parris 08:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I can't figure out why WildBot would have made this report, when the section links in question function fine. Any thoughts? — Huntster (t @ c) 19:23, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This is probably the same problem as #local anchors on List of Kamen Rider Decade characters (Nine Worlds); I'll check your specific instance once that's solved, but I expect it will be resolved when whatever problem it is is solved. Josh Parris 00:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
I had a suspicion it was related to them being article-internal links, but it was curious that it only caught two of the three such links. Heh. — Huntster (t @ c) 03:01, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've checked your pages and believe all the problems have been fixed; I've restarted the bot and it's running hard. If you see edits from now on that are dodgy, please tell me. Josh Parris 08:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Errors

WildBot is finding errors that do not exist: see this edit.

Those links do work; they are howvever, reference links and not section links. Cheers OSX (talk • contributions) 02:59, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

This is probably the same problem as #local anchors on List of Kamen Rider Decade characters (Nine Worlds); I'll check your specific instance once that's solved, but I expect it will be resolved when whatever problem it is is solved. Josh Parris 00:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've checked your pages and believe all the problems have been fixed; I've restarted the bot and it's running hard. If you see edits from now on that are dodgy, please tell me. Josh Parris 08:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

WildBot not recognising anchors produced by transcluded citation templates

The targets of the supposedly broken #section links referred to in this notice do in fact exist on a rendered page of the article. But since they are created by transcluded citation templates, I'm presuming that that's why WildBot didn't recognise them.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 02:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

This is probably the same problem as #local anchors on List of Kamen Rider Decade characters (Nine Worlds); I'll check your specific instance once that's solved, but I expect it will be resolved when whatever problem it is is solved. Josh Parris 00:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've checked your pages and believe all the problems have been fixed; I've restarted the bot and it's running hard. If you see edits from now on that are dodgy, please tell me. Josh Parris 08:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Not running on books?

It's been a few days since the bot ran on books? Is the bot blocked? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done Whoops. I disabled writing - the bot's been running, but neutered. Fixed. Josh Parris 07:45, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Talk:ANT (network)

Talk:ANT (network) is tagged for a link to isochronous however this does not appear to be a disambiguation page. Rejectwater (talk) 17:15, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done I've run WildBot over this page and it seems happy now. Josh Parris 03:02, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Inconsistent use of bot flags

See [10] vs. [11]. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 10:00, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I can see that both edits add the same text, but when I add both pages to my watchlist, only one shows up (until I realise that I'm hiding bot edits). I'll investigate. Josh Parris 01:07, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Still requires an explaination. Josh Parris 11:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Ongoing Josh Parris 10:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
I haven't forgotten about this. Josh Parris 02:32, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 Not done I've had a close look at the code that sets the bot flag and can't explain why one edit would get the flag and the other wouldn't. I've not made any changes; if you notice this happening again, feel free to poke me over it. Josh Parris 04:37, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Skype meeting before Wikimania.

It appears that a few researchers are organizing a panel discussion[12] at Wikimania about research in Wikipedia. Since (I'm pretty sure) that none of the active editors in WP:SRAG and WP:Research are planning to attend, the panel organizer would like to schedule a skype meeting to discuss what we have been doing with the proposed policies/guidelines/whatever. Would you be interested in getting in on this meeting? I know that scheduling will be a little rough because of opposing time zones (~10 hour difference), but I'm sure we can figure it out. --EpochFail(talk|work) 16:19, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd be happy to help, but I'm not sure what value I can add. I live in UTC+10, and ought to be able to fit it in; what day and time is the hookup? Josh Parris 23:01, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Drop me an email and I'll get you in on the scheduling discussion. --EpochFail(talk|work) 17:58, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Done. Josh Parris 02:12, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikimania presentations

Josh, will you be at Wikimania? If so, I'm giving talks there ([13] [14], assuming they are accepted), and it would be nice if you came since you have experience on the topics. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I won't be there, but by the looks of things your Books: talk is likely to be accepted. I'd be interested in making some observations at you, plus I can throw some stats at you too.
If your automation talk gets up I'd be interested in running over any comments you want to make about WildBot's broader impact. I've been informally keeping track of the transclusion rate of its templates and it seems that after initially strong growth rates, transclusion numbers are only growing at a middling rate now - as the number of pages on WildBot's watchlist grows (all pages that it was aware have ever had problems - 50K), the number with problems reported (15-20K) is remaining fairly constant; problems are fixed as they're identified. I infer from that that that the problems identified by WildBot are slowly becoming less widespread. As an aside, there are things you have to do if you want Special:Watchlist to even work when you have 50K articles on it. Josh Parris 02:12, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Wildbot

Is Wildbot running? I summoned it a couple of times in the last 24 hours and it is not responding... -- RP459 Talk/Contributions 03:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

WildBot's currently under repair. Once some odd behaviour is sorted out, I'll restart it. Hopefully that will be in the next couple of days. Josh Parris 07:45, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! It is an awesome bot that I use all the time. -- RP459 Talk/Contributions 16:36, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've checked your pages and believe all the problems have been fixed; I've restarted the bot and it's running hard. If you see edits from now on that are dodgy, please tell me. Josh Parris 08:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


The da Vinci Barnstar
For the awesome bot User:WildBot which has helped so much with disambiguation. -- RP459 Talk/Contributions 16:57, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


Ideas to the templates

Hello, I really like your bot :-) I have two ideas for the templates. The boot is often down or under repair so I thought it could be an good idea to have "Check" and "Fix" links on the template {{User:WildBot/tag}}. And for pages with really many dabs (like Talk:Lists of ethnic groups) its very diffucult to spot the "Check" and "Fix" (if you dont know them already), so I think it would be a good idea to have them in the bottom too together with "For help fixing these links".) --Christian75 (talk) 13:31, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I actually took out the second Dab solver link since I thought it detracted from the instructions on how to properly fix disambiguation pages. I've gone ahead now and plastered a link to Dab solver at the bottom of WP:DABPAGEFIX; and Dablinks on {{User:WildBot/tag}} since most Wikipedians like to check an entire category or pages containing a navbox. — Dispenser 21:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
All comers are welcome to improve the templates placed by WildBot. If you look at their history, many an editor has been bold and improved them since they were first constructed.
I take the same attitude with WildBot's source code; if you see something wrong, holler and I'll fix it (for various obvious reasons I don't allow public editing of this code). Josh Parris 05:06, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Re: Build it and they will come

I just started a topic @ WP:SRAG that includes a summary of what I've done to try to get us organized and contact the applicant. --EpochFail(talk|work) 16:28, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Jojoona just got back to me. It looks like we are good to start the conversation. Is there anywhere you think we should advertise this first? --EpochFail(talk|work) 14:05, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
At BAG we ask applicants to widely advertise bot proposals we think may ruffle feathers; where that is depends on what feathers we expect to get ruffled.
At the moment the proposal is to email 8 editors; normally I'd suggest we take this a little further and perhaps run it pas WP:VPR sometime - however as this is a trial/demo of the process, mentioning it on VPR straight off the bat along with an explanation as to why the discussion is being held might help head off accusations of bureaucratic empire building. Josh Parris 05:14, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Respond

I have responded to your question CrimsonBlue (talk) 05:27, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

K, thanks Josh Parris 07:49, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Book colors

BTW, Wildbot thinks books with colors (|color= ) have invalid colors, and flags it as a problem. It's not a problem, it just uses a default color (lavender at the moment). Now tons of books are flagged as being problematic, even though they aren't. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:38, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done I noticed this bug about a half hour ago, and am already reprocessing the world. Josh Parris 14:43, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Cool beans. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:39, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

IRC

Are you on IRC per chance? The possibility of live interaction would be useful. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:44, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Normally I hang out in the BAG channel and others. Josh Parris 07:48, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

User:WildBot/m01

I came across User:WildBot/m01 on Talk:Plymouth Municipal Airport (North Carolina) and noticed that the two toolserver links did not work correctly. I took a look at this and fixed your template by updating the format of the links:

-- Zyxw (talk) 17:15, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Finally someone's figured it out! I though dispenser's tool was stuffed. Well done! Josh Parris 23:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Actually you broke it, the new links won't handle + and & characters correctly. I have successfully tested the old links with Internet Explorer 8, Firefox/3.6.3, and Google Chrome. Could you and Josh please list the browsers, anti-virus, and extensions you have installed. I suspect that you have some security package or faulty XSS protection interfering with the redirection. In Internet Explorer 8 I had to force copy & paste saving due to the XSS Filter corrupting textarea, the browser now completely disabled POSTing due to security holes created by the XSS Filter. — Dispenser 02:54, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
I run NoScript in FF3.5, which prevents XSS activity. I think I have, however, disabled it for Wikipedia and Toolserver. The link on Talk:Phantom (Russian song) works now; this is because the change in links fixed things. With the old link above, I get:
[NoScript XSS] Sanitised suspicious request. Original URL [http://toolserver.org/%7Edispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py/Plymouth_Municipal_Airport_(North_Carolina)] requested from [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Josh_Parris&action=edit&oldid=363322199]. Sanitised URL: [http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py/Plymouth_Municipal_Airport_%20North_Carolina%20#36037902140157096535].
Josh Parris 06:10, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
It's broken. They know about it. That's why they whitelistted *.wikipedia.org, I recommend you do same for toolserver.org if you want avoid using that "unsafe reload" button. I've added in a notice for NoScript user to do the same. And again the new links break on pages containing & or + characters. — Dispenser 17:10, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
One step ahead of you. Josh Parris 22:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Dispenser, would you like me to throw a parameter into the template oddchars=yes if the pagename contains & or +, allowing the template to select the best linking technique? Josh Parris 08:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

It would be more appropriate to name it noscript_workaround=no, since it's only a flaw in NoScript's XSS detection.
{{#ifeq:{{padleft:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}|254|*}})
|{{padright:|255|{{padleft:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}|255|*}}}}
|ends with ')'
|NoScript safe
}}
I've also come up with a parser function method to determine if the pagename ends with ')', since NoScript only seems to choke on _function_like_url(page). (It might not work on Geneva (town), New York) Another possibility is to detect the broken link and send users the Help page about fixing it. By the way, has anyone contacted the developer of NoScript about this? — Dispenser 06:13, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done I'm running 1.9.9.80 and it now works with both sets of links at the start of this section. NoScript seems to have fixed the bug. Josh Parris 12:58, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation Error

As stated on User:WildBot I corrected the links in List of calques to include (disambiguation), Dablinks and Dabsolver still view them as incorrect. Just thought you should know. Webhat (talk) 12:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

User talk:Josh Parris/Archive 10/faq - I forced WildBot to have a look and it seems happy now. Josh Parris 04:51, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for going WildBot a push, although I wasn't inquiring about WildBot doing this, I just noticed that Dablinks and Dabsolver viewed the page as incorrect. Thanks. Webhat (talk) 10:02, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Is Wildbot dead?

  1. there's a backlog of tagged pages
  2. WildBot's recent contributions show a few edits, but they were hours ago
  3. the bot hasn't done anything lately, apparently

The FAQ at User:WildBot is confusing me, it seems to be saying that if these things are true then everything is ok, but that doesn't make any sense. Rejectwater (talk) 23:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Not so much as dead, just very very sick. I'm in the processing of fixing some gnarly database connectivity problems, and it's taking much much longer than I would have hoped. Josh Parris 00:37, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Request

Wildbot has marked a great number of section links on Talk:List_of_Honorverse_characters, and I wonder if that was correct. Could you please have a look at it? Debresser (talk) 09:33, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

 Done No, it's terribly wrong, but I gave it a swift kick in the goolies and it's come good. Deleting the cached entry for the current revision of List_of_Honorverse_characters solved the problem. Josh Parris 12:31, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for being contientious about your bot's work. Debresser (talk) 12:32, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I try to minimize the amount of yelling people have to do at me.
Hmmm, I notice that article links to #content, which doesn't appear in the rendered HTML for the article but does for the page. I wonder what I should do about that? Josh Parris 12:40, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Check the page again, please. I think I solved the problems. The link to #content should be to the top of the artcile. I decided to remove it altogether. I also fixed all ambiguous links in this article.Debresser (talk) 12:56, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
WildBot agrees with you. No more problems. User talk:Josh Parris/Archive 10/faq Josh Parris 13:49, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
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