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Bots Newsletter, January 2022

Bots Newsletter, January 2022
BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.

Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.

Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Green checkmarkY 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with Dark red X symbolN2 8 denied, Blue question mark? 2 withdrawn, and Expired 2 expired).

January 2020

A python
A python
A python
0.4 pythons
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.

February 2020

Speaking of WikiProject Molecular Biology, Listeria went wild in February

March 2020

April 2020

Listeria being examined

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots

June 2020

A partial block averted at the eleventh hour for the robot that makes Legos

Conclusion

  • What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?
  • Will Citation bot ever be set free to roam the project?
  • What's the deal with all those book links that InternetArchiveBot is adding to articles?
  • Should we keep using Gerrit for MediaWiki?
  • What if we had a day for bots to make cosmetic edits?

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the February 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Appeal

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Arbitration enforcement action appeal by FDW777. FDW777 (talk) 17:46, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Please see my suggestion here. FDW777 (talk) 18:53, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Vacated. --TheSandDoctor Talk 15:45, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Protected edit request

Het TSD, hope all is well. Category:Million Award was recently renamed at CfD, here; would you mind editing your protected user subpage User:TheSandDoctor/userpage/stuff to reflect that change, so that your userpage no longer shows the deleted category and it no longer appears on the Wanted categories report? Thanks in advance, UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:46, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

@UnitedStatesian: Done --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:18, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
  • The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "All RFCs" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 03:30, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Question from Redsea178561 (05:57, 5 February 2022)

How do I edit a page with semi protected page? --Redsea178561 (talk) 05:57, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

@Redsea178561: Which page are you attempting to edit? You can read more about protection here and here. --TheSandDoctor Talk 06:41, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-06

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • English Wikipedia recently set up a gadget for dark mode. You can enable it there, or request help from an interface administrator to set it up on your wiki (instructions and screenshot).
  • Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month. [1]

Problems

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 February. It will be on all wikis from 10 February (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:15, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-07

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Purging a category page with fewer than 5,000 members will now recount it completely. This will allow editors to fix incorrect counts when it is wrong. [2]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 February. It will be on all wikis from 17 February (calendar).
  • Advanced item In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function has been updated so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [3]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

WP:AFC Helper News

Hello! I wanted to drop a quick note for all of our AFC participants; nothing huge and fancy like a newsletter, but a few points of interest.

  • AFCH will now show live previews of the comment to be left on a decline.
  • The template {{db-afc-move}} has been created - this template is similar to {{db-move}} when there is a redirect in the way of an acceptance, but specifically tells the patrolling admin to let you (the draft reviewer) take care of the actual move.

Short and sweet, but there's always more to discuss at WT:AFC. Stop on by, maybe review a draft on the way? Whether you're one of our top reviewers, or haven't reviewed in a while, I want to thank you for helping out in the past and in the future. Cheers, Primefac, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

TweetCiteBot activity

Hi The Sand Doctor

Hope you are keeping well.

I see that TweetCiteBot hasn't run since 9 January, which is 5 weeks ago. That leaves a backlog building up, which amounted to 1,107 pages in the 20220201 database dump, and probably closer to 2,000 by by now. Those articles are clogging up the worklist of other tools which fix bare URls, and it seems that a significant minority of them are now being filled in less helpful ways, such as with {{cite web}}.

Would it be possible to run TweetCiteBot more often, say every week or two? If it helps, I can send you the lists I create from the database dumps, to save you from making your own worklists. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:17, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl: Running it again now and will have to set it up as a chron job. What sort of hits do you include in your list? I would love to compare it to see if it is cleaner than mine, which is just a wiki search. --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:49, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
Great that it's running again!
I have emailed you my latest set of database scans, with subject line "Database scans 20220201".
I do two separate searches:
  1. Articles with untagged Twitter bare links including brackets: <ref\b[^>]*?>\s*\[?\s*https?:\/\/([a-z]+\.)?twitter\.com\/[^>< \|\[\]]+\s*\]?\s*<\s*/\s*ref\b
  2. Articles with tagged Twitter bare links including brackets: <ref\b[^>]*?>\s*\[?\s*https?:\/\/([a-z]+\.)?twitter\.com\/[^>< \|\[\]]+\s*\]?\s*\{\{Bare +URL +inline\s*(\|[^\]]*)?\}\}\s*<\s*/\s*ref\b
In the 20220201 dump, those gave me 1,107 and 12 pages respectively.
I find that wiki search is a bit of a nuisance for this sort of task because a) when used via the API it is limited to 1,000 pages at a time; b) it is prone to timeouts, which limits the complexity of the the search.
Hope this helps. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:45, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: Thank you! Your query is definitely more efficient. Both searches are coming up empty for me when running on insource on wiki. Can you confirm they are on your end too? Did we get the latest batch? --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:15, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
If they are run on wiki, they need to have the follow characters escaped: <>
I will test them with that fix. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:18, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
I got timeouts or no results until I trimmed the wikisearch massively, but I suspect that's mostly due to the weirdnesses of the wiki implementation of regex. It gets upset by a lot of fairly std regexes, so I usually find that wiki searches need an insane mount of trial-and-error, and are rarely more than a crude subset of what I am after.
This search for insource:/\<ref[^\>]*?\>\s*https?:\/\/([a-z]+\.)?twitter\.com\/./i gave me 215 hits before timing out. A lot of those look like they should be fixable by TweetCiteBot.
Did you get the lists which I emailed you? I think that if you feed them to the bot, it will probably find work to do on them. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:31, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
PS this search for insource:/\<ref[^\>]*?\>\s*\[\s*https?:\/\/([a-z]+\.)?twitter\.com\/[^ \<\>\]\[\}\{]* +([a-z ]+ on +)Twitter\]/i gives me 107 hits which the bot could safely fill, e.g. [https://twitter.com/mikethemiz/status/1012850732188553216 Miz on Twitter] BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:37, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
  • @BrownHairedGirl: Apologies for the delay, things have been a touch hectic lately. Rewrote how the bot collects its list to run off of a text file and ran it over your list you emailed me. It picked up 214 for edits (those are now done). I think that this works well, you running the report and sending it so that I can run the bot over it. Do you think that you could continue doing this or update it on a git or something? --TheSandDoctor Talk 06:07, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
    Hey no prob. I hope that things get less hectic for you.
    Glad that list helped. 214 extra fixes all helps.
    I am v happy to send you my scans as they happen. Today is a dump day, and the usual schedule is that after a humungous amount of processing the dump becomes available late on the following day at https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/, and I complete my scans on the day after that. So the email will usually be sent on dumpDay+2, i.e. on the 3rd or 22nd of the month. Sometimes it may be a day or two late.
    The ZIP files I make of my scans of each dump include a plain text file listing the regexes used. So if I get run over by a bus, you can re-create the job BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:03, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-08

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Special:Nuke will now provide the standard deletion reasons (editable at MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown) to use when mass-deleting pages. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [4]
  • At Wikipedias, all new accounts now get the Growth features by default when creating an account. Communities are encouraged to update their help resources. Previously, only 80% of new accounts would get the Growth features. A few Wikipedias remain unaffected by this change. [5]
  • You can now prevent specific images that are used in a page from appearing in other locations, such as within PagePreviews or Search results. This is done with the markup class=notpageimage. For example, [[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]]. [6]
  • There has been a change to the HTML of Special:Contributions, Special:MergeHistory, and History pages, to support the grouping of changes by date in the mobile skin. While unlikely, this may affect gadgets and user scripts. A list of all the HTML changes is on Phabricator.

Events

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 February. It will be on all wikis from 24 February (calendar).

Future changes

  • The software to play videos and audio files on pages will change soon on all wikis. The old player will be removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [7][8]
  • Toolforge's underlying operating system is being updated. If you maintain any tools there, there are two options for migrating your tools into the new system. There are details, deadlines, and instructions on Wikitech. [9]
  • Administrators will soon have the option to delete/undelete the associated "talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option will also be available. This was a request from the 2021 Wishlist Survey.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:11, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Removal of unreferenced template from drafts

Hi TheSandDoctor! In an effort to help editors who wonder why their drafts are declined, I sometimes add {{unreferenced}} or {{unreferenced section}} to them. I see your bot removes these templates (e.g. this edit). I agree with removing the {{orphan}} and {{uncategorized}} templates, but could you please consider leaving {{unreferenced}} or {{unreferenced section}} alone, for the benefit of both the draft author and reviewers? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: This was approved back in 2018. The rationale behind the removals is that the templates are non-applicable to drafts, pollute the tracking categories, and could cause potential confusion because they explicitly call whatever they are placed on an "article" (latter point referring to unreferenced related templates). This was proposed by Primefac during his review of the BRFA. Categories are removed because drafts shouldn't be categorized, same with orphan etc. --TheSandDoctor Talk 04:03, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
Before your kind and quick response, I reverted your bot's edit to Draft:Landon Trail so it now contains {{unreferenced section}} again.
  • Although you state the templates are non-applicable to drafts, I believe that {{unreferenced section}} is applicable because proper referencing is essential to having drafts approved.
  • Although you state the templates pollute the tracking categories, I do not see that {{unreferenced section}} adds categories to the draft. (Even if it did, Category:All articles needing additional references states that it "contains non-article pages".)
  • Although you state the templates could cause potential confusion because they explicitly call whatever they are placed on an "article", the {{unreferenced section}} template also does not use the word "article".
Could you and Primefac please look at Draft:Landon Trail and see if I'm missing anything? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 04:30, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
I have disabled the task's automated timer for the time being so that it won't run and cause an edit war while this is addressed. --TheSandDoctor Talk 06:01, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
A draft reviewer should not need a banner to see whether a draft (or section of one) is missing or requires references. If they are, and it is enough of a burden to merit declining the draft, then it should be declined as "insufficient sources" or a comment left to that effect. I still maintain that there is little reason to have those maintenance templates in draft space. Primefac (talk) 14:11, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac: I'll concede that a draft reviewer should not need a banner. However, the Help desk and Teahouse get multiple posts a day from editors who don't understand why their drafts were declined, and I hope that adding {{citation needed}} and {{unreferenced section}} to their drafts is helpful to them. I don't see the harm in leaving {{unreferenced section}} on a draft. GoingBatty (talk) 14:16, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
In my somewhat-jaded opinion, adding more banners to a page when users refuse to read the existing ones (including the decline message that often indicates a lack of referencing, and notes left by the reviewers indicating a lack of referencing) is less than helpful. Just like at TEA and the HD, every day we see dozens of helpees in our IRC help channel with the exact same questions, and 90% of the time the answer is on the banners already placed at the top of the page. Some people just need it spelled out for them, banner or no.
Removal of these banners has generally been supported by WT:AfC project members (which is why I suggested added it in to the bot's task), but if you want to start a thread there and ask if it's worth having these specific banners stay on the page, then I will gladly revoke that section of the bot's remit. Primefac (talk) 14:36, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac: Thank you for the suggestion. I posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Using Template:Unreferenced section on drafts. GoingBatty (talk) 15:00, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Question from ImformationProvider (01:08, 23 February 2022)

Hi, how do I create my own Wikipedia page? --ImformationProvider (talk) 01:08, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@ImformationProvider: I would recommend reviewing this guide, this tutorial, and the Articles for Creation process. Please let me know if you have any other specific questions! --TheSandDoctor Talk 00:17, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
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