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You so totally rock, dude!

WildBot seriously rocks. Keep it up. Hesperian 08:03, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I concur. It's doing good things for the project. Tisane (talk) 07:25, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks guys, the support is appreciated. I'll keep tweaking and improving. Josh Parris 07:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Me too. The most efficient bot on Wikipedia I reckon. Keresaspa (talk) 02:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Wildbot use of bot flag

I have recently seen the message left by WildBot at the talk page of a page I created, and I fixed the links that pointed to disambiguation pages. It's a useful feature, but there's a potencial drawback: I noticed it because I checked back the article, and found the talk page to have a blue link. Having bot flag, the creation of the banner didnot appear at my watchlist. Is it possible to make the bot remain hidden for the other actions, but act as unflagged (and so appear at the watchlist) when they left the banner for the first time? Or is the bot flag something that is turned on or off in a permanent manner? MBelgrano (talk) 22:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I can turn the bot flag on and off. I'll have a think about how and when. Josh Parris 23:49, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Simpler, you can simply click on "Show bot edits" and you will see the edits made by WildBot.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 23:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that most bot edits are trivial and not worthy of an editor's attention - so it's not unusual to ignore their activities. The problems WildBot flags are specifically for a human editor's attention, so it should, at times, not flag it's actions as bot actions. Josh Parris 00:13, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
The editing rate of the bot is not so fast that it would need to flag its edits. I would say - do not flag when notifying, flag when blanking. –xenotalk 15:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
page.put(new_text, botflag=False) see mw:Manual:Recentchanges table#rc bot. — Dispenser 22:42, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Recently you removed the link Purpurin (glass) from the Purpurin disamb page, with the comment "removing non-disamb links". Presumably the link was a redlink at the time. (I created that page but the redlink was added by someone else.)

Whatever the "rules" may say, redlinks in disambs (as in any other kind of article) are an important feature of Wikipedia: they serve to inform editors (and potential editors) of articles that are needed but do not yet exist. Adding a redlink to a disamb (or "see also" section) is usually a positive contribution to Wikipedia, which often cost the editor a nontrivial amount of work or used nontrivial expert knowledge (as it clearly was the case of Purpurin glass.) So please do *not* remove redlinks from disambs (or from anywhere else) unless it is quite clear that the referenced article will never exist

Moreover, I see that someone did create the Purpurin (glass), article shortly after the link was added. So, the deletion was not only inappropriate, but also far too quick.

By the way, robots stink: they are one of the main calamities that are destroying Wikipedia. They are extremely unfair, because the opinion of a robot-wielding editor is automatically worth more than that of a hundred regular ones. Since robots are necessarily dumb, the result is that Wikipedia is now the rule of the dumb. Please do not be part of them. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 18:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Erm, a disambig page is to disambiguate between similar-named pages that exist on Wikipedia ... as such, a disambig page should not have a redlink. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 19:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Bigger erm, "glass" was unlinked, nothing was removed. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 19:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, sorry, sorry — I must have clicked the wrong entry in the history diffs. Shame on me. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:18, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Redlinks are encouraged in dab pages, but only insofar as those redlinks are linked from another article, and another article is included as a bluelink on the same line, and that article gives the reader some idea what the redlink will eventually contain. Details at MOS:DABRL. The reason I came to Purpurin to remove the now redundant glass link was because Purpurin (glass) was flagged as having been recently created in the bot report User:WildBot/red to blue, and the bot detected that there were now two bluelinks on that line of the disambiguation page. Josh Parris 06:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Jorge, don't be too hard on the bots; often they're designed to take drudge work away and ensure consistency so editors can concentrate on politics creating articles. If you're concerned about their activities, keep a close eye on WP:BRfA and prevent stupid ideas from coming to fruition. Josh Parris 06:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry again for the Purpurin mistake. As for robots, one problem with them is that the "consistency" implemented with their help is merely the opinion of the robot-driving editors. So robots create two classes of editors with vastly different powers, and the most powerful class is a small minority that is not representative of the whole body of editors (who largely ignore what a robot is). Another problem is that robots are necessarily "dumb", so the "consistent" state that they produce is necessarily a rather dumb one. For example, tagging and deleting unreferenced BLPs are "negative" actions that demonstrably harm Wikipedia, while adding sources to them is a positive one. But the latter cannot be automated, while tagging and deleting can. So the negative actions got to prevail over the positive one, thanks to robots.
Moreover robots actually *increase* the amount of drudgey work. Consider for example the {{orphan}} template. The task of orphan-tagging all articles with less than N links exists only because robots made it viable. If robots did not exist, that task would not exist either. Ditto for the {{unreferenced}} tag, for the task of replacing simple dashes by en-dashes, or inserting " " in "100 m", and many, many other examples. (Right now there seems to be a robot on the loose which is merely removing the spaces in section titles like "== History ==" --> "==History==". That "cleanup" has absolutely no effect on the visible output, but forces thousands of editors to needlessly scan the history diffs on hundreds of articles.)
As for taking part in the BfA discussions: first, that is another "drudgery task" that would not exist if there were no robots. Second, I got quite tired of policy discussions, because the final decision invariably is the viewpoint of a minority of the editors — often a minority within a minority.
Wikipedia "consensus mechanism" was developed to handle disputes among two editors who disagree on content edits to one article. It basically says that when agreeement seems impossible, one of the sides should walk away from the fight, and let the the most persistent editor win. That principle will often let the worst choice prevail; but this is not a serious problem, because the damage is confined to only one article, and because the damage will probably be repaired by other editors at a later time. Unfortunately that "consensus mechanism" is being used also to decide policies and guidelines; and there its shortcomings are much more damaging.
Indeed, practically every page in the Wikipedia:* namespace is the "consensus" a small minority of those who helped write that pge, who are naturally its stauch defenders. Even in the rare cases where opposing editors are brought into the discussion (as in the recent BLP RfC), the final "consensus" is reached when the opposers get tired and walk away from the discussion. Now, while in theory a bad rule can be changed (as any other kind of edit), in practice that never happens: indeed many editors will oppose changes to an existing rule simply because they assume that the contents of Wikipedia:* are "the law of the land" and reflect the majority opinion. Moreover a guildeline may affect millions of articles; so again we have the problem of a small minority imposing their opinions on a mich larger and mosrly silent majority.
A few months ago I found a poll in the talk archives of the {{unreferenced}} template, about the proper placement of that tag. The three alternatives on ballot were "top of article", "bottom of article", and "talk page". (Needless to say, the fourth obvious possibility "nowhere" was not even on the ballot.) There were about 30 votes, largely by people who had taken part on the design of that template, which were split roughly evenly among the three alternatives. The most voted one was "talk page"; the least voted was "top of article". Well, you know which one was declared "consensus". Should I expect the BfA decision process to be any different?
All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:34, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I just have to reply. For {{unreferenced}}, these people would do it by hand with copy & paste, if their weren't a bot. The forth choice "nowhere" would likely lead toward deletionism, similar to German Wikipedia. You have identified a workflow issue with {{orphan}}, how do we get people to link to these articles? The template would be unnecessary if there wasn't a hatred of red links (just ask WP:FLC).
Also, the argument for dis-proportionality is not limited to bot owners but also any editors with too much time. For example, we have to repeatedly explain to people that "Fixing redirects" is not a good thing. Doing it is perceived to have some value and is a mentally easy thing to do. That last bit the most important part as I've discovered with my tools, tools which assist in performing a task quickly. People wont bother with quality if its too much work and outside their core interest. — Dispenser 22:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Link to dab page on another dab page

Hi, on the disambiguation page Neate, WildBot flagged a "See also" link to another dab page. Since this is a very common and correct use of a link to a dab page, I'm guessing that WildBot handles this situation correctly in general, but maybe doesn't recognize pages with {{surname}} as a dab page?

BTW, thanks for creating WildBot. It's very useful and I frequently take care of links which it has found to be in need of fixing. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Update. After looking into the matter further, I've discovered that {{surname}} is not technically a dab template. However, that is how it's often used, so I still think that WildBot should treat it as such. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
When a {{surname}} is used as a disambiguation page, you could throw {{hndis}} on it. WildBot runs off the category the page is in, specifically Category:All disambiguation pages - and it acts very differently for those pages. Josh Parris 03:36, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Oh, you could also have used [[page (disambiguation)]], WildBot thinks those links are fine. Josh Parris 00:52, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I ended up replacing {{surname}} with {{disambig|surname}}. But I still think that bots and scripts should treat it as a dab page. For example, when using Popups for help with disambiguation, I discovered that it didn't recognize pages with {{given name}} or {{surname}} as dab pages. So I started using my own version which does. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 01:32, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:Research last call for cleanup before an RFC

PiperNigrum and myself are about to start the (poorly documented) process of submitting WP:Research for review by the community and I'm making one last call for cleanup and input. Please give the article a careful read if you have a chance. Unless major flaws are discovered, we'll be adding the {{rfc}} template to the talk page to start the process on March 2nd. That's one week from this posting. --EpochFail(talk|work) 22:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

A problem with WildBot

Could you take a look at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#WildBot_interfering_with_hangon_tag? Thanks. Woogee (talk) 00:44, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Responded there. Josh Parris 00:56, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Whitley Stokes

Your bot just reported a link to Whitley Stokes as a dab link, but it isn't! See Talk:William Jordan (writer). DuncanHill (talk) 22:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Another problem with caching; it was a dab until the 22nd of Feb. I'm still working on the solution to this. Meanwhile, I've regenerated the cache. Josh Parris 23:57, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Ahh ok, thanks. DuncanHill (talk) 23:59, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Selena template

Hey, can you please help fixing the Selena Template. What needs to be fixed are "Selena Filmography" (it shows a source to that page), and "Selena Products" (it shows a red link) but its supposed to be under "Selena Etc." as that link. Thanks AJona1992 (talk) 15:11, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

It appears that Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars has cleared it up for you. Josh Parris 23:14, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

AVBOT

Hi. Thanks for your work in the trial edits. emijrp (talk) 18:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, and a couple of suggestions

Hello Josh. Thank you very much for pointing me towards the wonderful WildBot. I'm currently clearing up some of the bad #section links it found. I've wanted to do this task for a while but never had the means to find the problems methodically before.

I've a couple of suggestions:

  1. When I fix links, WildBot usually spots the change immediately and removes the template from the talk page (or reduces it to the problems I missed). That's a very thoughtful feature. However, it doesn't always do this. Example: Talk:1959 Rose Bowl (no problem, I edited the talk page manually). There's even one where someone else removed the offending links weeks ago: Template talk:Holby City series summary. It's not excluding templates: WildBot has done a perfect job on other templates I fixed. (Added later: WildBot updated Holby after I made a dummy edit. It took a couple of hours rather than the usual few seconds but still great service.)
  2. WildBot report links to sections in missing articles (redlinks) - is this helpful? Example: Talk:2005_UEFA_Futsal_Championship reports several links to 2005 UEFA Futsal Championship qualifying#whatever.

Please don't take any of this as criticism; I think WildBot's making a great contribution with or without these features. Thanks again. Certes (talk) 21:52, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  1. That delayed update may be due to me re-running the bot over every use of the template (as a result of you noticing things weren't working properly) and may be unrelated to your dummy edit. A while back there were database issues and the database server affected was the one containing watchlists. As such, the bot 'forgot' about edits it had made, and stopped watching them. I thought I filled the watchlist with the missing pages. I should investigate further.
  2. I think so, because my logic goes something like this: that section is unlikely to exist in the article when it's (re)created.
I certainly don't take this as criticism. When you spot the bot malfunctioning, it gives me insight into what failures can occur, which leads me to try to recover from them. I need others to notice what's going on, because WildBot makes so many edits I certainly can't keep on top of it. Josh Parris 00:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you very much for the reply. That explains things. I agree with you about 2.; there are a small number of cases and it's best to know about them. Certes (talk) 23:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

FYI

See User talk:Tedder#Wikipedia:BOTREQ#Update Template Transclusions. –xenotalk 17:54, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, and a suggestion

Thanks for writing WildBot; it proved helpful in the article Green retrofit. However, I was a bit annoyed that we had an edit conflict on the talk page. The problem is that User:WildBot doesn't comply with the standard all other users follow on talk pages: When you notice a problem that you can't fix yourself, you add a new section to the talk page. It probably would be most appropriate if WildBot just left a message there like anyone else, and added something like "I will recheck this article and remove this message when the problem is fixed". Since I didn't know that, I wanted to remove the bot's post. If WildBot's posts need to have a non-standard format, then it would still be good to explain that to other users to avoid them running into unnecessary edit conflicts. — Sebastian 18:54, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

It used to say that. I've restored the teeny-tiny disclaimer text to the bottom of the box. Josh Parris 11:20, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Any update on Wildbot 5 (books) (again yes)?

It's been approved for trial to see if the world will end if it edits in the book namespace. Sorry to come here every two three days, but I'm rather eager for this bot to be unleashed. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:40, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

The code has to be written first. That last change requires a bit of re-jigging and I just haven't had the time so far. Don't be concerned, I have every intention of doing it, preferably soon. Josh Parris 04:01, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Wildbot overwriting talk pages

This edit seems very broken. It overwrote the entire talk page, and added a template that appears to be intended for the book page rather than the talk page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:36, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm in the process of fixing that. Josh Parris 12:39, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Latest hiccup

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C:\pywiki\g7bot.py", line 196, in <module>
bot.run()
File "C:\pywiki\g7bot.py", line 171, in run
self.log(page, u'deleted')
File "C:\pywiki\g7bot.py", line 137, in log
print u"%s %s" % (page.title(), text)
File "C:\PYTHON26\LIB\encodings\cp437.py", line 12, in encode
return codecs.charmap_encode(input,errors,encoding_map)

UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character u'\u2013' in position 50: character maps to <undefined>

7SeriesBOT (talk) 21:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

There was some kind of naughty character - ߝ - in the page title, which when the bot tried to log what it was doing, caused the bot to blow up. I've checked a hideous patch in. Josh Parris 23:27, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

PediaPress and Wildbot

I created an entry for Wildbot on the PediaPress wiki, giving you credit for creating it. Is this OK with you? Anything I should change? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess it won't kill me. Josh Parris 02:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I doubt you'll be flooded with questions about it anytime soon. I just wanted to make sure it was OK with you. Not everyone would be. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:00, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Approved

Hi there Josh. The template for this page are:

  • for bot needing flag {{BRFA}} not substed, with "Approved" parameter.
  • for flagged bot {{BRFAA}} substed, with "Flagged" parameter.

Hope that helps :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 13:20, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Mutter mutter mutter Josh Parris 13:24, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Oh no, that's just the background. Next we'll move onto the different template depending on the bot's language, which user notifications templates to use depending on the time the BRFA has been open for, and the 16 different types of bot flags - Kingpin13 (talk) 13:30, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Laws of Bot Ownership

I read your Laws of Bot Ownership... lol! You are absolutely right. :) -- Basilicofresco (msg) 00:41, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

WildBot: blank talk pages

There's nothing wrong with blank talk pages. Can't you just do that rather than tagging them all for deletion, it an unnecessary work for administrators. Gurch (talk) 14:12, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I take it 7SeriesBOT is down again. I'll poke Bwiklens. Josh Parris 14:18, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
A blue link should typically lead to content, which is why WildBot is requesting deletion where they are the only editor. –xenotalk 14:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&limit=10&user=7SeriesBOT shows the bot's been down for a couple of hours. Josh Parris 14:26, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
I've updated the FAQ: User:WildBot#Why does WildBot want my article deleted? Josh Parris 14:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

WOW

The Wikipedia Bot Builder Award
Very Cool Bot, Thanks Mlpearc MESSAGE 16:37, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
The da Vinci Barnstar
For coding WildBot 5, and thus immensely helping with the cleaning up and maintaining of books.Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:49, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

See Template talk:Wikipedia ads/sandbox. The #top section leads one to the top of a specific page. It's common in the default signature if you write on your own talk page, see MediaWiki:Signature. --The Evil IP address (talk) 16:06, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll alter WildBot. Josh Parris 16:51, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Any mistaken tags should be removed within the hour Josh Parris 17:00, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Wildbot mistagging

Wildbot is incorrectly tagging article pages as G7: [1]. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:04, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

WildBot has done the same tagging to several other articles so I have halted your bot using the shut off page until you can fix the problem. Just wanted to note that I originally blocked the account, but then noticed the shut off option, and then unblocked the account. Sorry about the block thing. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 19:06, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
WildBot was not following its on-wiki shut off option, so I have blocked the account for 24 hours. Hopefully you will notice this message before then and can fix the error. Contact any admin to unblock before the 24 hours have expired. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 19:24, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank-you for blocking the bot. I've found the problem; it was associated with re-enabling code that worked just fine before WildBot started editing article-pages for book-checking. The code is meant to make admin's lives easier: when a page is tagged for CSD, WildBot tags the talkpage G7 if appropriate. 7SeriesBOT then deletes said talkpages. As the article isn't a talkpage, and as WildBot wasn't the only contributor, 7SeriesBOT would not have deleted it.
Once unblocked, I'll test to find out why the manual shutoff failed.
How embarrassing; with an unclean block record I don't think Wildbot will ever pass an RfA now. Josh Parris 00:07, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
The stop page is in user-space. A while back I added filtering to the watchlist code so that user-space wouldn't be watched, so any user-space pages that made their way onto the watchlist accidentally wouldn't be processed. Downside: can't stop the bot. Fixed. Josh Parris 01:09, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, no RfA for the bot! =) Not a problem on the incorrect tagging. It wasn't widespread. I've deleted many of the bot's tagged talk page articles, so I know what it does. As for the stop page not working, I know how new features sometimes produce unexpected results. No worries about that either. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 03:50, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

How goes it?

Hey Josh, just wondering, since the successful trial of your bot, I haven't heard much (which probably means everything is going well). Am I right? I really like the concept of your bot, and hope it does well (and gets its mandate expanded some day). --JaGatalk 12:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I've certainly been busy keeping the wheels on it. It's astonishing how much extra code has gone into it to clean up after the various failures it's experienced. And I've started on User:Josh Parris/Laws of Bot Ownership based on my experiences. On other news, I've got a chunk of SQL for finding dud dab pages - want to productionize it? Josh Parris 13:01, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Sounds interesting. How could I get my hands on it? --JaGatalk 10:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Halloween (disambiguation)

Re: This edit. Although the section link as given in the bot's message (W.I.T.C.H.#Part_I.3A_The_Twelve_Portals) is broken, the actual link used on the page (W.I.T.C.H.#Part I: The Twelve Portals) is not. --ShelfSkewed Talk 06:20, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for turning that up. Intriguing, I'll investigate. Josh Parris 06:44, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I hope it's fixable, because otherwise the alerts have been right on, and I appreciate being told about those broken anchors on the dab pages I watch. Cheers!--ShelfSkewed Talk 06:53, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
It's weird. The target has two spaces in it. Internet browsers clearly collapse multiple spaces down to a single space. I'll have a fix in the next few hours. Josh Parris 10:59, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Fixed. My anchor-checking code was stuffed (that's the technical term we in the trade use), all better now. Josh Parris 13:22, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Anchors not recognised

It appears that WildBot doesn't recognise anchors as legitimate targets of piped links. After it had flagged the link Ibn al-Haytham#Astronomy as broken on the Celestial Spheres talk page, I tracked down the section of the article which was the original target of the link and added an anchor to it, thus repairing the link. But after I had removed the reference to the no longer broken link from WildBot's notice as a courtesy to other editors, it later readded it. Could you please modify the bot so that it recognises links to anchors which aren't actual section headings rather than tagging them as broken #section links.
—David Wilson (talk · cont) 12:29, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed this myself and am in the process of fixing this. Josh Parris 12:35, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Okay, for your particular article problem fixed. I'm re-processing everything tagged to date. Josh Parris 13:18, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Wow! that's pretty prompt service. Thanks.
—David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:51, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

KARR (Knight Rider)

Hi

You should find that the links on this article are now working ok? --5 albert square (talk) 13:31, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

That's great to hear. WildBot is a very busy right now, so there are delays with responsiveness to current changes; the bot should be all caught up within a few hours. Until then, your changes may not be acknowledged with the rapidity you're used to. Josh Parris 13:40, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Can I ask how do we ask the Bot to check pages? --5 albert square (talk) 14:59, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, see User:WildBot#Can WildBot check a page for me? Josh Parris 15:03, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Josh, I'll check that out later :) --5 albert square (talk) 15:09, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

missing check on bulk tags

Love WildBot! I tagged about 30 articles about an hour ago. Within 15 minutes about 10 were checked. I'm still waiting on the Bot to check the other 20. Any idea why they haven't been gotten to? - UtherSRG (talk) 15:34, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

There's a substantial backlog being worked through mainly as a result of the activities of FrescoBot, causing more than 1000 pages to be added to Category:Pages containing links with bad anchors. I'll have a poke around to ensure that nothing untoward has happened. Josh Parris 01:57, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Further information: you might not be noticing it, but Wikipedia is currently lagging by 4 seconds, so all the bots are responding by not editing (bots generally try to stay out of the way of humans). Josh Parris 02:15, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Roger all. Makes sense. Does the 'bot skip around in the list so that "bulk" adders don't get serviced to the exclusion on singleton adders? - UtherSRG (talk) 03:36, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
The processing order of articles with {{User:WildBot/tag}} is indeterminate - basically random. Josh Parris 04:34, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Minor WildBot quirk

Hi, just a minor issue about WildBot's ambiguous-links tracking: when and how often does the bot update its data about which pages are dab pages? I fixed one issue pointed out by the bot today, by removing an unnecessary dab page and turning it into a redirect to its primary meaning (sound shift, now redirecting to sound change). The bot nevertheless re-tagged links to sound shift a little while later (at Modern Greek language, [2]). I hope it won't keep doing that forever, will it?

Other than that, thanks a lot for this bot, that's some very useful work it does. :-) Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:33, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

The cache is reset whenever I manually clear it, which I've been doing every few days and last did yesterday. I'll clear it again, and in a few hours this problem will be addressed. Josh Parris 02:12, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Josh Parris. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Sticky Prod workshop.
Message added 19:29, 7 March 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

NW (Talk) 19:29, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll be chipping in several hours from now; I'm busy IRL. Josh Parris 04:35, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

WildBot lists only some ambiguants?

It appears that Wildbot reports some but not all of the disambiguation candidates on a page.

On the page for Space (punctuation), I saw this message: "Links from this article which need disambiguation: Whitespace." But the "check" and "fix" links each presented me with two ambiguous links: "Ancient Hebrew" and "Whitespace." Seeing just "Ancient Hebrew" within the first screenful of the Dab Solver was confusing, I thought that the bot had gone haywire and brought me to the wrong page, or that somehow "Ancient Hebrew" was involved in the "Whitespace" issue.

Since clicking on "fix" will give me a page highlighting all the ambiguous links, I think it would make sense for Wildbot to list all of these, so I know what I'm getting into. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ezrakilty (talk • contribs) 00:39, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

All my normal explanations have come up dry. I'll investigate further. Josh Parris 02:23, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
How do you like that, some really basic functionality in WildBot was properly broken. Fixed, reprocessing the world. Josh Parris 04:32, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

David McNeill (Chicago psychologist)

Hi, your bot found a link needing disambiguation in David McNeill (Chicago psychologist). The link it queried is David McNeill, which is a disambiguation page (and marked as a disambiguation page).

As far as I can see, the only link to this is in a dab link at the top of the article: "This article is about the Chicago psychologist and writer. For other uses, see David McNeill"

Have I done something wrong? Thanks. Esowteric+Talk 09:30, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Will try piping with the word "(disambiguation)" in the link ... and read your documentation. Esowteric+Talk 09:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I've added User:WildBot#This article is about ... to the FAQ. Josh Parris 10:48, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. That makes sense. Esowteric+Talk 10:50, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

WildBot's talk page messages

Would it be possible for WildBot's talk page messages to be added at the bottom of page under a level 2 header, like a person's, rather than in a box at the top of the page like a WikiProject banner? Doing this would also obviate the need for the bot to go back and remove the box again; instead, when a user fixes the problem, they could just mark it  Done. +Angr 09:52, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

See User:WildBot#Why a banner? Why not tag the article text, or leave a message on the talk page? Josh Parris 10:24, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Verrry interresting

I've run across WildBot on a couple of pages (one of them I created, so I was a bit concerned!) & find the tagging useful, but the notice a bit unclear. A more explicit pointer to the "dab solver" to identify which links are at issue might help. (I missed it the first time, & had to search for the links to fix.) Or am I being lazy? (Very possible. ;D) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 10:07, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't have any problem with lazy. I'll try to make it more obvious. Josh Parris 10:18, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
;D ;D Thank you, sir. And quick service. ;D TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 10:33, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

WildBot anchor bug

WildBot is reporting problems with List of recurring characters in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody#Arwin Hawkhauser and Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana#Double-Crossed at Talk:List of The Suite Life on Deck episodes. Both of these are functional links so this appears to be an error. The targets of both links use {{anchor}}. Is it possible that WildBot is having a problem with {{anchor}}? --AussieLegend (talk) 13:33, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

It certainly seems like it. I'll investigate. Josh Parris 13:36, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Ok, that's the existing bug that the bot is struggling to work through. It's running hard and will catch up... eventually. That's a pretty solid timeframe, isn't it? Josh Parris 13:43, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I worked in the government for 22 years. It seems solid to me. ;) On another issue, I notice that WildBot isn't marking its edits as a bot edit. Is there a reason for this? --AussieLegend (talk) 14:03, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
It's so that people notice the edit. It's marked as a bot edit when stuff's taken away, but not when it's added. Josh Parris 14:09, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi. How do I get WildBot to stop tagging an article I wrote, Safe in Hell. I've got a link in there, to Tortuga, that is deliberately ambiguous. The film takes place on an island with that name, without being specific which of the various "Tortugas" it's referring to, if any, so I'd like the reader to be sent to the disambuation page when clicking on the link. I've put the {{bots|deny=WildBot}} tag on the article, and just now on the talk page, but it doesn't seem to be stopping the bot. Am I missing something? Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:23, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

You've prompted me to add to the FAQ: User:WildBot#I meant to link to a disambiguation page!; if that doesn't help, give me a holler. I've touched the page and WildBot didn't bite, so it seems to be honouring the {{bots|deny=WildBot}} tag on article, but if you see it touch the article again while it's still tagged, please tell me. Josh Parris 10:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks very much, I appreciate your taking the time to check this out. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:18, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

How about if the disambiguation page is the "normal" page? Eg. trap? - UtherSRG (talk) 15:31, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

See User:WildBot#I meant to link to a disambiguation page! Josh Parris 15:35, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Hrm. I don't think this is an elegant solution. The editor has to type more (the dab) and the wiki has to process more (the redirect), just so that the bot will know that the term is indeed properly used. Wouldn't it be better to have some way to tell the bot, in the banner, that the direct link to the disambiguation page is correct? *shrugs* Still, I love wildBot! :) - UtherSRG (talk) 10:17, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
It's not just the bot you need to tell; all editors who follow you need to understand the link was intentional. In particular, the disambiguation specialists prefer it when intentional links are delineated like that (without that, they don't know what to pick!). Josh Parris 13:59, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

redirect to a dab

wildBot's investigation of my tag of Talk:Recent African origin of modern humans shows monogenism as a disambiguation, however it is a redirect to a disambiguation, and the dab solver doesn't find the link. - UtherSRG (talk) 07:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll raise this with Dispenser. Josh Parris 08:33, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Dispenser's code cleverly recognises you're not going to be able to disambiguate that. WildBot is too stupid for that. See User talk:Dispenser#Recent African origin of modern humans Josh Parris 12:51, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Multiple visits?

Hi,
Wildbot found some issues on a page of mine in the past few hours.
I fixed a couple of the easy ones.
Now Wildbot has already made a return visit with a fresh update.
Is that the sort of behaviour one should expect?
Thanks, Varlaam (talk) 09:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Normally I'd expect WildBot to visit after each and every change, but things are running a bit slow at the moment, so it may seem like it's visiting sporadically. Josh Parris 09:30, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
It take it this is something new?
Thanks for the feedback. Varlaam (talk) 04:08, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

A WildBot bug?

Please take a look on the WildBot edits on Tilde. Notice that while I fixed the ambiguous link to Alt and the section anchor in Dash#en-dash, the ambiguous link to Halo CE is still left untouched in the article (cos I haven't got the slightest idea about any of these games). Nevertheless, the bot seems to have tricked itself into thinking that everything has been fixed. In particular, I fail to see the rationale for this edit: [3]. Is this behaviour expected?—Emil J. 16:23, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I can't explain this yet. I'll investigate. Josh Parris 01:59, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Deep, fundamental bug which has been fixed and now WildBot is revisiting the world. Thanks for pointing it out. Josh Parris 13:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Humphrey Warren: does WildBot have precognition?

Re Humphrey Warren, I am interested that your bot first thought (in January) that there were ambiguous links for AFC & DFC, but then decided earlier today that there weren't. As far as I can see, the links were just as ambiguous earlier today, and changed only when I edited them subsequently. David Biddulph (talk) 16:23, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Your edit changed the links from links to disambiguation pages to links to articles, thus sating the bot; if the text of the article is ambiguous, that's not necessarily a problem, because humans have the context of the whole article with which they can perform their own disambiguation (so, in a printed version, it may be reasonable for a reader to know what a DFC is within the context of the biography of a British aviator).
Hang on, the bot edited the talk page twelve minutes before you edited the article. Did you edit it in response to the bot's edit? Josh Parris 01:46, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I did. The bot said that it couldn't find the ambiguous links, so I did the disambiguation myself. I was intrigued as to why it said that there were ambiguous links in January, but yesterday *before* my edit it didn't. David Biddulph (talk) 08:51, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Okay, you found a fundamental bug that I created when fixing a fundamental bug. Thank-you! Reprocessing the entire world. Josh Parris 13:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
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