Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 19

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Bot requests. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page.

Archive 15

←

Archive 17

→

Bot or code to cross-post a text between several pages

Some discussions/arguments/wars cover more than one article. For example, the question could be "Should these two article be merged?". Another example would be a discussion about an image; ideally, it should be held simultaneously in the talk pages of the image and of all the articles that use it. It would be nice to have a bot or HTML command to cross-post a segment of text between several pages.

This code could also be useful in the articles themselves. For example, the summary of a main article could be its lead paragraph cross-posted at the appropriate place in the summary article. Another example would be a lexicon to clarify several closely-related concepts, cross-posted in all the corresponding articles.

Is there a bot or code to cross-post a segment of text between two pages? If not, could it be created? Emmanuelm (talk) 17:32, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot to create a list of pages

To aid in the dicussion here could a bot be used to make a list of all the pages whose titles are full dates (e.g. January 1, 2000)? Additionally, could it identify which are redirects? -- Mufka ^(u) ^(t) ^(c) 23:58, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Working on this, are non-redirects only OK, or, do you really need the redirects, too? SQL ^{Query me!} 10:58, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

(Output will be at User:SQL/Months) SQL ^{Query me!} 10:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Done SQL ^{Query me!} 11:18, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

(Tweak)Also, I added redirects at the bottom, in case you needed them. That's a lot smaller of a list than I expected. SQL ^{Query me!} 11:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

bot to regularly update {{Vandalism information}}

Or, if not {{Vandalism information}}, then a new template? My idea is this: I use huggle and it, as well as various antivandal bots, are well aware of edits per minute and reverts per minute. Would it not be too difficult to create a bot that monitors recent changes, specifically vandalism warning templates issued to vandal's talk pages by users and Cluebot like bots?. This bot could update a template in real time from real statistics concerning the levels of vandalism (rather than the somewhat subjective updates made irregularly to {{Vandalism information}}. It could also issue regular updates on various irc channels that focus on countervandalism. Just a thought... If I am talking about something already in place, could you let me know? κaτaʟaveno^T_C 13:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Assess stubs in WP:CANADA

Can someone please set up a bot to go through the 1190 pages in Category:Unassessed Canada-related articles and for any pages whose corresponding article has a stub template ~~(most of them)~~, add |stub=yes|autostub=yes to the {{WikiProject Canada}} or {{WPCANADA}} template. Note that many of them already have an importance assessment, so if you could leave that alone while making the change I would appreciate it. I wonder if it would also be possible to tag them as stubs based on their length; many of them are about electoral districts and have just one line followed by a small table, but are missing stub templates. Thanks a lot! --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 18:22, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I did the your first request for the 250 some pages that already had stub templates. Someone else will have to do the stub tagging based on length though.--Dycedarg ж 00:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Dycedarg! For whoever is willing to do the ones without stub templates, those tables at the bottom of all these electoral districts articles take up a lot of space, so I would recommend a fairly high threshold for stub-labelling. Many of them are over 5Kb without yet having enough content to be called Start-class. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Update wikilinks for HP Pavilion at San Jose

This arena and the article about it has had a few name changes. I would like to update the following links as follows:

[[San Jose Arena]] becomes [[HP Pavilion at San Jose|San Jose Arena]]
[[Compaq Center at San Jose]] becomes [[HP Pavilion at San Jose|Compaq Center at San Jose]]
[[Compaq Center at San Jose|Compaq Center]] becomes [[HP Pavilion at San Jose|Compaq Center]]
[[HP Pavilion (sports arena)]] becomes [[HP Pavilion at San Jose|HP Pavilion]]
[[HP Pavilion (sports arena)|HP Pavilion]] becomes [[HP Pavilion at San Jose|HP Pavilion]]

--76.205.25.141 (talk) 22:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the logic of creating piped links. Why not just flat-out replace former links to San Jose Arena with new links to HP Pavilion at San Jose? It's not as though preserving the old name has any value for the future. EdJohnston (talk) 01:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

The piped links preserve the history of the articles the links are contained within. For instance, when the arena of the Golden State Warriors was being renovated, they played temporarily at San Jose Arena (because that is what it was called at the time). The Golden State Warriors never played at HP Pavilion at San Jose. The same can be said of several other sports teams and countless entertainment tours that have come through the arena at different points. Piping these links will ensure that these articles remain accurate. If the authors of these articles want to make reference to the current name of the arena, then they can do so (i.e. "the Warriors played 20 "home games" each in the San Jose Arena (now HP Pavilion) in San Jose, California for the 1997-98 and 1998-99 NBA seasons")--76.205.25.141 (talk) 01:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Just redirect the old pages to the new ones, this should happen automatically when the page is moved. Performing the above changes is a waste of resources. -- maelgwn - talk 02:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

news.yahoo.com linkrot.

Yahoo! News links die after a week or two and are not archived by the Wayback Machine. Since cite templates are rarely used by people who use Yahho as a news source it's hard to find other versions of the sources. Can a bot please post a user_talk message to users who add news.yahoo.com links, asking them for a better source? Please put a prominent mention of wp:v in the message which states that unverifiable info may be remoevd by anyone. -- Jeandré, 2008-03-30t19:59z

Or, why not have a bot that specifically focuses on putting some sort of additional information (like extracting the article title and date) from those links? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Newsletter delivery Bot needed - Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels

Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Outreach/Newsletter April 2008 needs delivery now that User:KevinalewisBot by User:Kevinalewis (he's semi-retired from WP) is inactive. Please see also Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Outreach#Newsletter for options on delivery.

Delivery to all user talk pages on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels/Members, see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels/Outreach#Instructions. Please contact if something remains unclear. feydey (talk) 18:45, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I got this. β^{_{command 2}} 18:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. feydey (talk) 19:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Done β^_command 23:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

URGENT : Newsletter delivery BOT help needed -Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity

I am from Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity. We need automatic delivery of the newsletter to our members , every month with a BOT . Is this possible ? Kindly let me know on my talkpage at the earliest.
To do: {{subst:WikiProject Christianity/Outreach/April 2008}} to all user talk pages on Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Members . Please contact me before delivery to avoid mutiple deliveries by different bots . Thanks in advance. - Tinucherian (talk) 06:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Ill take care of this. β^{_{command 2}} 17:46, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Done β^_command 23:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - Tinucherian (talk) 09:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Categorisation for WP:GEOLOGY

Hi,

I wonder whether it would be possible to tag the talk pages of all articles marked as {{paleo-stub}}, {{geol-stub}} and redirects to these with {{WikiProject Geology|class=stub|importance=|auto=yes}}? This would assist us greatly in working out where to focus our attention.

Many thanks, Verisimilus T 09:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure! User:John Bot is waiting for work :). CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 00:52, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Doing... CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 00:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Splendid, thanks a bunch! Verisimilus T 10:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. any chance they could all be rated as "stub-class"? Thanks. Verisimilus T 12:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Will do this for the rest (I'm about 1/2 done) CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 21:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Done CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 23:16, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Rugby league colours

Last year, Many rugby league free images of logos such as were made .svg files from the original .png files. Some of those .png files are still in use where they would be better used by the .svg version. Because this is a long and tedious task, I request that a bot to the task. To change all instances (of the images in the table below) from the .png version to the .svg version of the image.

I have noticed that Betacommand has done a few of these already. (proof) The images that Betacommand changes have been deleted (.png versions), so once there are no versions of the .png image left, it could be deleted.

There are many that need doing as the full list below examples.

Image:Adelaide colours.png	Image:Adelaide colours.svg
Image:Annandale colours.png	Image:Annandale colours.svg
Image:Balmain colours.png	Image:Balmain colours.svg
Image:Glebe colours.png	Image:Glebe colours.svg
Image:Gold Coast colours.png	Image:Gold Coast colours.svg
Image:Hunter colours.png	Image:Hunter colours.svg
Image:Illawarra colours.png	Image:Illawarra colours.svg
Image:Manly colours.png	Image:Manly colours.svg
Image:Melbourne colours.png	Image:Melbourne colours.svg
Image:Parramatta colours.png	Image:Parramatta colours.svg
Image:Penrith colours.png	Image:Penrith colours.svg
Image:South Sydney colours.png	Image:South Sydney colours.svg
Image:South Queensland colours.png	Image:South Queensland colours.svg
Image:St. George colours.png	Image:St. George colours.svg
Image:St. George Illawarra colours.png	Image:St. George Illawarra colours.svg
Image:University colours.png	Image:University colours.svg
Image:Western Reds colours.png	Image:Western Reds colours.svg
Image:Western Suburbs colours.png	Image:Western Suburbs colours.svg
Image:Wests Tigers colours.png	Image:Wests Tigers colours.svg
Image:Northern Eagles colours.png	Image:Northern Eagles colours.svg
Image:North Sydney colours.png	Image:North Sydney colours.svg
Image:North Queensland colours.png	Image:North Queensland colours.svg
Image:Newtown colours.png	Image:Newtown colours.svg
Image:Newcastle colours.png	Image:Newcastle colours.svg
Image:Newcastle foundation colours.png	Image:Newcastle foundation colours.svg
Image:New Zealand colours.png	Image:New Zealand colours.svg
Image:Bullscolours.png	Image:Bullscolours.svg
Image:Catalanscolours.png	Image:Catalanscolours.svg
Image:Giantscolours.png	Image:Giantscolours.svg
Image:Quinscolours.png	Image:Quinscolours.svg
Image:Hullcolours.png	Image:Hullcolours.svg
Image:HKRcolours.png	Image:HKRcolours.svg
Image:Rhinoscolours.png	Image:Rhinoscolours.svg
Image:Redscolours.png	Image:Redscolours.svg
Image:Saintscolours.png	Image:Saintscolours.svg
Image:Wcatscolours.png	Image:Wcatscolours.svg
Image:Wolvescolours.png	Image:Wolvescolours.svg
Image:Wigancolours.png	Image:Wigancolours.svg
Image:Queenslandcolours.png	Image:Queensland colours.svg
Image:NewSouthWalescolours.png	Image:New South Wales colours.svg
Image:Souths-Logan Magpies Colours.PNG	Image:Souths-Logan Magpies Colours.svg
Image:Ipswich Colours.png	Image:Ipswich Colours.svg
File:Norths Devils (rugby league) colours.png	Image:Norths Devils colours.svg
Image:Souths-Logan Magpies Colours.PNG	Image:Souths-Logan Magpies Colours.svg
Image:Wests Panthers Colours.PNG	Image:Wests Panthers Colours.svg
Image:Wynnum-Manly Colours.PNG	Image:Wynnum-Manly Colours.svg
Image:Wests Panthers Colours.PNG	Image:Wests Panthers Colours.svg

The Windler talk 03:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Im not a bot but i have used AWB to replace some more of them. E.g. [1] ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 15:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Ive been meaning to take another swipe through Category:Images made obsolete by an SVG version. Its not that hard. β^{_{command 2}} 21:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

As I've suggested, can't you get a bot to do it. Even for all those. The Windler talk 03:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Anything else? The Windler talk 05:25, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

No replies, nothing can be done?? The Windler talk 13:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I have / should now have replaced all of these .png's with the .svg's if the pages were in the lists on the image pages at the bottom. I hope this helps. This might not have got every page the images are on though!. ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 13:35, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. The Windler talk 06:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Done·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 08:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Tagging request

Request that any articles in the following categories not already so tagged be tagged with {{WkiProject Caribbean|class=|importance=|Dominican Republic=yes|Dominican Republic-importance=}}.

Also, if it would be possible to indicate which if any of these articles were ever main page DYK selections, as per the talk page, that would help a lot as well. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 22:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Misconceived links to date fragments such as Wednesday and April

Can we have a bot to address the misconceived links to date fragments such as Wednesday and April? There are tens of thousands of these and probably only a few hundred make any sense at all. It is relatively easy to identify the nonsense ones.

There are many other ridiculous ways in which people handle dates. Many are fairly easy to identify e.g. '[February 8|8 February]'. This is a known side-effect of autoformatting and must be one of the most common diseases on Wikipedia. They are difficult for human editors to identify and fix but they are ideal bot fodder. Lightmouse (talk) 20:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you give a few examples? Mønobi 22:22, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I do not understand your question. The request contains examples. Do you want examples of links to '[Wednesday]' or examples of links to '[February 8|8 February]'? Lightmouse (talk) 09:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you explain It is relatively easy to identify the nonsense ones a bit more? How would a bot pick out, from among 10,000 or so links, the hundred or two that were in fact valid and should not be de-linked? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

We do not seem to be understanding each other. I hoped that the example of '[February 8|8 February]' would explain what I meant. Are you saying that example is not clear? Lightmouse (talk) 19:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

We want a in-article example. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 21:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Here are some in-article examples:

Spitzer prostitution scandal ... has [[2008]]-[[March 11|03-11]]
of Wales's feathers ... has [[3rd March]] [[2007]]
Diamondbacks ... has [[November 8]]th
P.O.D.[2] ... has [[January 25]], [[2008 in music|2008]]

Do you understand what I mean now?

Lightmouse (talk) 11:01, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Those are easy for a bot to identify but difficult for a human. Do others agree that these misconceived links should be corrected? Lightmouse (talk)

Convert	To
`[[January 1st]]`	`[[January 1]]`
`[[January 1]]st`	`[[January 1]]`
`[[January 25]], [[2008 in music\|2008]]`	`[[January 25]], [[2008]]`

It would be easy for a bot to periodically clean out WhatLinksHere for the redirects like 1st January, 2nd February, etc. In fact, there are many MOS:DATE fixes that could probably be done reliably by bot. Maybe I'll try and cook something up. Happy‑melon 16:08, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

While the MOS is relatively clear, this topic does seem to stir up a bit on controversy. I would recommend a bot be conservative in what it changes (ex. fixing date formats) and leave the more problematic cases (ex. delinking) to human editors. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

True. What conversions would be uncontroversial? Feel free to add to the table to the right. Happy‑melon 15:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I have added one from the list that I gave above. See also the list at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Autoformatting_and_linking e.g. date ranges, disambiguation page links, section headings etc. Furthermore, you may find useful regex for this at User:Lightmouse/javascript conversion. Lightmouse (talk) 11:14, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Any news on this one? Lightmouse (talk) 09:46, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Happy-melon says that he is involved in other things now. Would anyone else like to take it on? Lightmouse (talk) 08:27, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

if you can create a table of genfixes that you think need to be done Ill see what I can do. β^{_{command 2}} 20:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Here is what wp:mosnum says: Links to date elements that do not contain both a day number and a month are not required; for example, solitary months, solitary days of the week, solitary years, decades, centuries, and month and year combinations. Such links must not be used unless the reader needs to follow the link to understand the topic see WP:CONTEXT. Autoformatting must not be used for the following purposes:

piped links to date elements ([[20 June|20]], [[20 June]] [[1997 in South African sport|1997]]) (several forms of piped links break the date formatting function);
links to date ranges in the same calendar month e.g. December 13–17 or the night of 30/31 May – the autoformatting mechanism will damage such dates (30/May 31);
links to date elements on disambiguation pages;
links to date elements in article and section headings; and
links to date elements in quotations (unless the original text was wikilinked).

Regex to do some of that is at User:Lightmouse/javascript conversion but it will need modification and I can work with you on that. Lightmouse (talk) 21:43, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

As an extension to the above request, is it possible for the same bot to automatically wikilink all bare dates as per guidelines in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Autoformatting_and_linking? This would mean:

Convert	To
`January 1 2008`	`[[January 1]] [[2008]]`
`January 1, 2008`	`[[January 1]] [[2008]]`
`January 1st, 2008`	`[[January 1]] [[2008]]`
`1 January 2008`	`[[1 January]] [[2008]]`
`1st January 2008`	`[[1 January]] [[2008]]`

If I understand the MOS correctly, there is no need to insert a comma before the year, as it automatically appears based on user preferences. Thus, [[January 25]], [[2008]] should instead be [[January 25]] [[2008]]?--Huaiwei (talk) 13:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I think you have misunderstood. That section does not require the wikilinking of bare dates. As I understand it, the wording was written very carefully to avoid that requirement. Lightmouse (talk) 21:27, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I am doubtful I have misunderstood. The section is part of an MOS which applies equally to all relevant articles, with its emphasis in allowing personal user choice to prevail. The illustrated examples of when not to link dates cannot be conscrued to mean applying the brackets are optional, or even discouraged.--Huaiwei (talk) 06:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Whether MOS does or does not require a comma, I think it would be a good idea to insert a comma if the [[January 1]] [[2008]] format is used. User preferences are enabled only for those who are logged in, which many readers are not. For them, either [[January 1]], [[2008]] or [[1 January]] [[2008]] would probably be more visually appealing. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 07:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

If the wikitext says [[January 1]] [[2008]], it displays as January 1 2008 (with a comma) for *everyone*, including users without a date preference setting or not logged in. I have no problem with adding it if other changes are being made, but it's definitely a "trivial edit" on its own. Gimmetrow 07:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

The aim is to correct broken dates. I have no opinion on the comma issue but it sounds fine to me. I would be unhappy if the scope was increased to creating more links that add to the sea of blue and serve no purpose for me. Lightmouse (talk) 09:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

MOSNUM does not insist on the autoformatting of full dates; rather, it says merely that they "can" be autoformatted. In view of the list of significant disadvantages in the current autoformatting system—widely recognised and as yet unaddressed by by developers at MediaWiki, despite entreaties—it is just fine not to autoformat. However, the raw date formats within an article MUST be consistent whether autoformatted or not, since only a tiny fraction of readers have the autoformatted version displayed. TONY (talk) 10:49, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That is what I thought. I agree fully with your other comments. The bullet points in wp:mosnum (quoted above) need to be considered too. This issue is ideal bot fodder. If anyone wants to take it on and wants some regex examples, please see User:Lightmouse/javascript conversion. Lightmouse (talk) 11:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Unclosed ref tags

When an article includes inline citations and a ref tag is not closed properly, all the text after the reference "disappears" (though it is still visible in the edit screen). Is there a bot which can look for unclosed ref tags and close them, or, if there isn't, could one be made? Disappearing text is quite a common problem (judging from the number of threads I have seen about it at various noticeboards), and I think that such a bot would be very helpful to the Wikipedia. Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 13:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

A bot (or rather, toolserver script) could very easily go through and compile a list of mainspace pages where the number of regex matches for something like <ref\s?(name=[^>/]*)?> does not equal the number of matches for </ref>, and hence there are unclosed citations somewhere; but a bot to actually fix problems like this would be much, much harder. Where does the bot place the </ref> tag? After the end of the citation template? But what if extra notes have been added after the template proper? What about references which don't use citation templates? There are far too many possibilities to be able to create a bot that could fix problems like this reliably in all but the simplest situations. Happy‑melon 13:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - I see what you mean! DuncanHill (talk) 13:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I used to run this report (And, User:Smackbot ran the task), it cannot be run from toolserver (we don't have access to page text). The only way I found to do it, was to manually parse the monthly database dumps. I haven't had time to do so in quite a while (took days to run iirc). Also, there are several templates to look out for, outside of <ref>.... HTH SQL ^{Query me!} 14:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Wow, how they grow! :) The present DB Dump is 3.2Gb (probably 30Gb or so uncompressed) compressed... I'll download it, and see what I can do about putting up further lists like the old User:SQL/Reflist. Will likely take up to a week... SQL ^{Query me!} 14:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

As of the last DB dump, actually, I didn't find any, but, I just realized that my old project wasn't the same as this one (was ref tags with no corresponding reflist) SQL ^{Query me!} 20:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Im sorry to say SQL that your method of checking for missing ref sections is broken, (Ive done several thousand edits adding them and Im less than half way done). β^{_{command 2}} 17:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what heuristics are you using to "fix" them (I assume you don't mean edits by hand!)? Happy‑melon 17:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I have a tool that flags pages that need fixed, it looks for <ref> and then looks for <references/> or some other ref section template. if it has a ref without a section it flags me to fix them. I have done a crapload of these just check my mainspace edits. β^{_{command 2}} 17:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

In case anyone is getting confused, Betacommand and SQL are talking about missing reference sections, which is different from the missing ref tags that the OP talked about. I think MediaWiki should warn you when you save a page where a closing tag is missing. For italics and bold, you just get extra italics and bold, but for ref tags, as the OP said, everything after the first ref tag "disappears". Carcharoth (talk) 17:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Yup, that's me :D Nevermind Beta, seems I'm barking up the wrong tree. Happy‑melon 18:14, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Thailand WikiProject needs articles tagged

All articles in Thailand-related cats should have their discussion pages tagged with "Template:WikiProject Thailand" (and also "Template:WikiProject Southeast Asia", if possible). Badagnani (talk) 07:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

A list of categories would be much more useful than just "Thailand-related cats" :D. Happy‑melon 20:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess Category:Thailand and all subcats? Would that work for the bot? Badagnani (talk) 06:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but on your head be it if buried deep in the category tree there is a category with hundreds of articles which are related to their parent cat but not to Category:Thailand - this happens fairly regularly when project come here with tagging requests: see Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 18#Are there any bots who can handle tagging of massive categories? and then Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 18#Bot to de-tag categories that I mistakenly had added to the Museums WikiProject?. For instance, Category:Thailand → Category:Military of Thailand → Category:Wars involving Thailand → Category:Korean War, Category:Vietnam War, Category:World War II, and dozens of their subcategories, none of which are relevant and which will earn you a monumental trout slap if you get them tagged with {{WikiProject Thailand}}. Essentially, yes we can help you tag articles, and there are several bot operators who fulfil requests like this regularly, but if you cause a bot to tag Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944-1946 with {{WikiProject Thailand}}, which would happen if your request was fulfilled as suggested, you are the one that gets the stick... and the trout. So, once again, which categories and subcategories do you want tagged? :D? Happy‑melon 14:07, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I didn't know...I thought all subcats of Category:Thailand would be Thailand related. I'll make a list. Badagnani (talk) 16:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

There are a lot--I think your examples might be some of the few that would be problematic. However, I've identified a few that are "clean" and can be added; can we start with these?

Category:Thailand
Category:Buildings_and_structures_in_Thailand -- and all subcats
Category:Thai law -- and all subcats
Category:Thailand-related lists -- and all subcats
Category:Thai society -- and all subcats
Category:Science and technology in Thailand -- and all subcats
Category:Images of Thailand

Thank you again,

Badagnani (talk) 16:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, definitely learn from what happened to me, (the links Happy melon IDed above). It was fixable but oh what a mess! TRAVELLINGCARI^{My story}_{Tell me yours} 16:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Doing...--Dycedarg ж 04:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Big thanks, DyceBot! Badagnani (talk) 05:08, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Done for all the categories and subcategories you specified.--Dycedarg ж 07:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot to replace NrhpBot

User:NrhpBot only ran for a while in July of 2007. I'm seeking someone to write a bot that can take all red links of List of Registered Historic Places in Ohio and create stubs for each place from the NRIS database and tag articles with: {{Ohio-NRHP-struct-stub}}, Fill out a {{Infobox nrhp}}, and Category:Registered Historic Places in Ohio and tag the talk pages with {{OH-Project|importance=|class=stub}}. Can this be done? Thanks! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 22:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess code wouldn't even have to written from scratch, just modified. See NrhpBot coding here: link. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 18:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Null edits to clean out Category:-importance Geology articles

There's almost 500 articles in Category:-importance Geology articles. Could someone quickly conduct a null edit on the talk pages which would force the articles into Category:Unknown-importance Geology articles? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:22, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Null edits wouldn't do it. I tried doing "null edits" to one of them, and it didn't seem to get it. You may want to look at {{WikiProject_Geology}}. SQL ^{Query me!} 06:22, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I take that back, I guess it did it. SQL ^{Query me!} 06:24, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Done Happy‑melon 15:10, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Assessment request for WikiProject Africa

Could a bot please do the following for all pages in Category:Unassessed Africa articles:

If a stub tag appears on the main article, specify "class=Stub" for {{AfricaProject}} on the talk page.
If the talk page contains the banner of another WikiProject that has a valid "class=" assessment, apply the same assessment to {{AfricaProject}}.

The project's discussion for this request can be found here. Thank you, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SoxBot 5. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 02:47, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added the page to my watchlist. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:44, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

bot

can i hav a bot. I'm On Base 23:36, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Creating a bot. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I can't understand the steps. I'm On Base 23:49, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

then you cannot operate a bot. β^{_{command 2}} 23:51, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

can u make 1 for me. I'm On Base 00:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC).

I could but you dont understand bot policy and can not write in standard English so I will not write a bot for you and I really doubt anyone else will. β^{_{command 2}} 00:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

what do you mean by standerd english? I'm On Base 12:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe he means "u" instead of "you", "hav" instead of "have", "i" instead of "I", etc. And I agree entirely with the sentiment: if you are incapable of understanding the majority of Wikipedia:Creating a bot, you are not capable of running one safely and effectively. Happy‑melon 12:56, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I just learned to understand the steps. and i write in slang to save time. now can someone achually anwser my feraken question.I'm On Base 17:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

It's already been answered (twice). The answer is "no". Happy‑melon 17:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot to replace inactive NrhpBot

User:NrhpBot only ran for a while in July of 2007. I'm seeking someone to write a bot that can take all red links of List of Registered Historic Places in Ohio and create stubs for each place from the NRIS database and tag articles with: {{Ohio-NRHP-struct-stub}}, Fill out a {{Infobox nrhp}}, and Category:Registered Historic Places in Ohio and tag the talk pages with {{OH-Project|importance=|class=stub}}. Can this be done? Thanks! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 22:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess code wouldn't even have to written from scratch, just modified. See NrhpBot coding here: link. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 18:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot to help organize cleanup at Category:Images lacking a description

Category:Images lacking a description (which has close to 9000 images) contains a TON of images that aren't used anywhere. Is it possible for a bot to create of a list of those that (a) aren't currently listed for deletion for lack of a copyright (i.e., not in Category:All images with unknown copyright status); (b) aren't currently used in article space (or are just used in user space); and (c) organized by tag and then by date of upload if possible? I tried going through that mess but it would be better if there was a systematic way to deal with them. I'm not even going to ask for a bot to tag these for deletion as that is NOT a can of worms I want to get into. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I could handle this. When you say "organized by tag" which tag are you referring to? The licensing template or something else?--Dycedarg ж 04:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Licensing. There's been quite a few with no licensing tag so I want to remove those immediately. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:52, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'll get working on this. I've got a bit on my plate at the moment, but I'll have the list up for you some time in the next couple days. Any particular page you'd like it dumped to?--Dycedarg ж 08:43, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Nothing in particular in mind. How about User:Ricky81682/Missing descriptions? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Done Sorry about the wait. I ended up being busier than I had hoped I would be. In any case, your request is complete. Some minor issues: First of all, in order to determine what is or is not a license template, I decided to exclude non-license templates as opposed to including only license templates, as there are over 200 license templates and relatively few of any other kind. I did not manage to account for every kind of template in existence however, and some of the templates the images are arranged by are either other types of templates, or non-existent templates altogether. Additionally, as you requested that the images be arranged by template, an image will appear multiple times in the list if it has multiple templates. Finally, a bug I missed in the code butchered all the non-Latin characters; as there were only 15-20 images with them I decided it wasn't worth running it again and just removed them by hand. If you need anything else you know how to contact me.--Dycedarg ж 04:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Very quick unlinking, please

Just need {{WPTCT}} removed from all the following pages, as the project has been merged with Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism. Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 06:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I can do this this evening when I get home, if you really need it done. Can't you just redirect {{WPTCT}} to {{WikiProject Terrorism}}?? Or will that create duplication of banners on talk pages? Happy‑melon 08:39, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately it would create duplications, as you mentioned. Much thanks though, I appreciate finally getting this merge sorted out :) Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 17:56, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Doing... Happy‑melon 18:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Done Happy‑melon 20:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikilink updating

Hello,

I would like to request a bot update the wikilinks that connect to Writers Guild of America strike (2007–present) so they go to the now-correct wikilink of 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, or preferably if someone could help teach me how to do this work using AWB (I am certified to use it, but haven't figured out how.)

The coding would be for the bot to seek any page that uses the tag " [[Writers Guild of America strike (2007–present)| " (note pipe bar) or "Writers Guild of America strike (2007–present)" and update that string to " 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike ".

The list of pages that use the old wikilink is here at this What Links Here page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Writers_Guild_of_America_strike_%282007%E2%80%93present%29&limit=500&from=0

If you can teach me how to do this with AWB, that would be valuable as I would not need to make bot requests similar to this in future, meaning less work for your bots.

Please let me know, Guroadrunner (talk) 07:18, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I would be willing to teach you how to use AWB, but this task is not necessary and would be a waste of resources. See this page for an explanation as to why, but basically there is almost never any good reason to fix redirects that are not broken unless the redirect is to be deleted or replaced. It is especially useless in piped links as no one can see the text you're replacing anyway.--Dycedarg ж 07:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your offer to help with AWB. I always had trouble loading pages and especially using the KingboyK assessment plugin -- I am not sure how to make a set of pages, such as that with {{f1-bio-stub}} so I can get to work tagging the talk pages with a stub status. Guroadrunner (talk) 08:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Moving Commons and Sisterlinks templates from "External links" to "See also" section

I guess a bot could do this, but I am not sure there is an official policy for this templates to bee in "See also".--Kozuch (talk) 20:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure these template should be in the "See also" section; they are ultimately external links (i.e. links external to Wikipedia), even if they are links to Wikimedia Foundation pages. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 05:28, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Common units of measurement

Would anyone like to run a bot to delink common units of measurement (see wp:overlink)? Lightmouse (talk) 18:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd guess that a substantial portion of unit links probably are rare cases in which the linking is appropriate (e.g. the first mention of the centimetre on the page meter). Might not be worth it given the false positives. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:04, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

This sort of thing usually needs to be monitored. It would be pretty easy to do using AWB if you really cared about it and had a lot of time to kill.--Dycedarg ж 06:12, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Replacing HTML with templates

I'm creating a number of formatting templates for scientific pages:

{{val}} for easily creating values with uncertainty/significance/exponent and/or units.
{{SubatomicParticle}} for easily creating symbols for subatomic particles.
A number of Nuclide templates for easily creating symbols for elements and nuclides.

The goals for these templates are:

make it easier to create values/symbols,
make all values and symbols have the same look and feel across pages that adheres to the MOS,
make the look and feel easy to adjust in one location, should the MOS change.
have one location to put references for the way values and symbols are presented.

They are nearing completion and I'm introducing them to the community for feedback. When they are finished and accepted, I would like to see them used throughout wikipedia in order to reach the goals of uniformity for which they were created. I've found that there are quite a few common ways to write these values and symbols that should be easy to replace with the template version automatically. I'm hoping that somebody who runs a bot can help me determine to what extend we can automatically replace existing values. I have no experience with bots, but I imagine that a bot that will take regular expressions for replacing strings would be perfect for this.
-- SkyLined (talk) local time:18:03, 11 November 2024 (CET), server time: 11:30, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I would be willing to take this on. If you could put up the common ways to write the values you're referring to, I'll see how easily they can translate to regular expressions. The only problem I can see at the moment is finding the pages needing to be changed; I'll probably have to search the most recent database dump for them. It's 11 days old at this point so the results will be somewhat dated, but I think it will give us somewhere to start anyway.--Dycedarg ж 08:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for deletion page maintenance bot

We've recently had a request at Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion#Think we could find a bot? for a bot which might be able to maintain the page, including archiving closed days and keeping the old business marker five days back. It is, as I'm sure you will gather, a truly enthralling task for any editor. Would there be any way to set up a bot to automate these tasks? And, if yes, how would we go about setting up the bot? John Carter (talk) 01:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll take this one, I already have a lot of the code needed. Before I start, please answer this:

Two tasks: Archiving the old transcluded dates from WP:MFD to the archive and moving the active discussions/old business marker
Is this for MfD only, or all deletion pages?

--uǝʌǝs ʎʇɹoɟ ʇs(st47) 01:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I am very grateful for the quick response. I'm assuming that at least initially only MfD. I honestly hadn't thought about trying to set it up for any of the other XfDs. John Carter (talk) 01:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks ST47 (and to John for making this request here, I wasn't sure where to go), I think that many, if not all, of the other XfDs have bots doing one or both of these functions. TfD does and theirs seems to advance their old business marker the way we'd want it done (but they use 7 days MfD uses 5 - the only important thing here is that it only advances at midnight on the 6th day so that ALL discussions have gone through a full 5 day discussion period). Unlike the other XfD's, MfD doesn't have multiple discussions on a single "log" page, each discussion is a separate subpage. Once all discussions for a day have been moved to Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion#Closed_discussions the day is archived, which is a pretty simple process. But often closed discussions are not moved by the closing admin to Closed discussions. Is it possible for the bot to go through once a day (say, when advancing the marker) and also clean up any closed discussions by moving them to Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion#Closed_discussions? This would involve changing {{Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Example discussion}} to *[[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Example discussion]] and moving the link. We currently add the result after the closed brackets but that could probably be omitted if it would be difficult for the bot.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 04:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Did You Know

A system which will undertake the process of archiving old Did you know hooks, refresh the relevant clock and the Next updates page, and post templates at the appropriate talk pages, leaving to the administrators only the task of updating the transcluded template.

Sequence

1. On Template:Did you know/Next update/Clear there shall be an invisible time-stamp, which shall be copied to Template:Did you know/Next update every time that page needs to be cleared after an update (see #6).

2. For an update, an administrator shall replace the old hooks with the new ones in Template:Did you know, copying the time-stamp as well; if the time-stamp is not copied, an error message shall be displayed.

3. The bot shall compare the time-stamps of T:DYK and T:DYK/N on each edit of the former; when these time-stamps are identical, that will signify an update, and the bot shall read the immediately previous version of the page, and copy the hooks.

4. The bot shall subsequently insert the copied hooks in the Wikipedia:Recent additions page, exactly as they were before their substitution; the only edit that it will do to them shall be to make the time-stamp visible, in order to aid browsing of the archives.

5. Then, the bot shall read the credits, locate the new hooks' articles' talk pages and post the {{dyktalk}} template on each. Then, it shall read the hook nominators' and article creators' names and post at their talk pages templates {{UpdatedDYKNom}} and {{UpdatedDYK}} respectively; in order to distinguish nominators from creators, a standard way of writing credits will need to be enforced, possibly but not necessarily by means of a template.

6. Having finished with the credits, the bot shall clear T:DYK/N, copying the template's empty version from T:DYK/N/C along with the time-stamp, so that it shall no longer be the same as that of T:DYK.

7. Finally, it shall refresh the clock, showing that everything is in order; if the clock is not reset several minutes after an update, that shall be an indicator of a problem.

Previous discussion here

The Duke of Waltham (talk) and Art LaPella (talk) 05:50, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

A couple things jump to mind. Archiving to recent additions can be triggered by an edit summary, and it strikes me that admins would do that more reliably than a hidden timestamp. The notices to creator/nom take a long time and I'm surprised someone active at DYK did not write a script for that a long time ago. Gimmetrow 06:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

It sounds simple enough... The problems start when someone forgets to use the key-word in the summary. Many administrators updating the list are not as experienced as one might expect. Waltham, The Duke of 07:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Well I guess nobody else is going to go for this. This is a big project, so it would take a while. Gimmetrow 08:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Much appreciated, Gimmetrow. Take your time... (leaves an envelope with £100 on the table) And here's a little something for your expenses. Call me if you need more. Waltham, The Duke of 10:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Warning history

Could a bot be made or configured to check a talk page's history for the last level of warning received and display it to opted-in users (somehow, maybe with something in their monobook.js). This was suggested at WP:VPP and it sounds like a great idea. I don't know if it's possible but it would be useful. Thanks in advance, George D. Watson (Dendodge).Talk^Help 17:23, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

This could be done entirely with JavaScript without any kind of a bot, and far more efficiently too. Try making a request at the user scripts request page. My JavaScript skills are rather limited, but if no one gets to it by the weekend I might try doing it myself.--Dycedarg ж 19:38, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Null edits to clean out Category:Unknown-importance album articles

Someone's going to love me for this one. There's almost 50000 articles in Category:Unknown-importance album articles. Could someone quickly conduct a null edit on the talk pages which would force the articles into Category:Unknown-importance Album articles? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Same for the 3k or so at Category:Low-importance album articles. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Instead of continuing to come back here, could someone just do a quick check at Special:WantedCategories? Someone changed some major templates and there's plenty of articles requiring null edits to clear categories. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm working on the first one, but can I ask why it's necessary to clear them immediately, rather than waiting for them to work through the job queue? Happy‑melon 11:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Part of the issue was that the old categories were still in use in {{WPBeatles}}, so several thousand articles were actually correctly tagged into that category. Now that I've redirected those category links, the number of articles in the category is falling rapidly. Happy‑melon 16:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Is it a job queue issue? I saw some that had been there for quite a while and was wondering about it. If it's just a time thing, then might as well wait. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 17:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'll just say that it has been a few days and yet 41k articles are still in that directory (starting at B and going forward so it doesn't look like new ones). How long would it take to get through the job queue? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:34, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

OTRS templates

I do a lot of moving of free images to the Commons. Some of the best candidates for moving to Commons are images with OTRS permission on file, because the free license is confirmed by the copyright holder and is basically rock-solid. However, I found when moving these images via CommonsHelper that multiple templates have been used to tag this images with OTRS permission, and only one of them - {{PermissionOTRS}} - is recognized by Commons. So when an image is moved over with another OTRS template, a lot of hand-massaging is required to get the permission details straight on the Commons side. The redundant OTRS templates, {{PermissionOTRS-ID}}, {{ConfirmationOTRS}}, {{ConfirmationImageOTRS}}, and {{Confirmation}} (itself a redirect to {{ConfirmationOTRS}}) have now been deprecated in favor of {{PermissionOTRS}}. However, the deprecated templates are still transcluded on hundreds/thousands of pages, making manual replacement time-consuming and difficult. It would be great if a bot could replace the deprecated templates with {{PermissionOTRS}}.

Unfortunately it's not as simple as a simple replacement of the template name...the OTRS ticket number needs to be carried over, and the deprecated templates use a slightly different format. While {{PermissionOTRS}} uses the parameter "id=ticket number", {{PermissionOTRS-ID}} simply includes the bare ticket number after a pipe as its sole parameter, while the other three templates ({{Confirmation}}, {{ConfirmationOTRS}}, and {{ConfirmationImageOTRS}}) use the parameter "otrs=ticket number" to identify the ticket.

Can someone with a bot help out with this? Kelly ^hi! 22:11, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I've done {{PermissionOTRS-ID}}, but {{Confirmation}}, {{ConfirmationOTRS}} and {{ConfirmationImageOTRS}} have extra information (source URL, usually, but also |license= for the last one) which can't be displayed on the {{PermissionOTRS}} template. I don't think this information should be lost. Happy‑melon 20:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

The information isn't really "lost", it's in the OTRS ticket-referenced e-mail. The license is in the image's license tag, also. The information will be stripped off anyway when the image is transferred to the Commons. Kelly ^hi! 23:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Christianity Banner addition.

Need a BOT help ! I am from WikiProject Christianity . There are other wikiprojects that are subsets of this project , but uses different independant banners. The idea is to add WikiProject Christianity banners to those project articles but doesnt have the {{ChristianityWikiProject}} banner

The work is to :-

Step 1) Identify article talk pages WITH banners {{Project Catholicism}} , {{Anglicanismproject}} , {{Orthodoxyproject}} ,{{CharismaticWikiProject}} , {{WikiProject Lutheranism}} , {{WP Adventist}} , {{WikiProject Oriental Orthodoxy}} {{JWProject}} and WITHOUT the Banner {{ChristianityWikiProject}}

Step 2) Add {{ChristianityWikiProject|class=|importance=}} to all the above talk pages.

Make sure you dont add the {{ChristianityWikiProject}} banner to already existing talkpages.

Who can take this up? Thanks in advance. - Tinucherian (talk) 17:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

It'd probably be simpler to just change all the extant banners in such a way as to also give assessments for the Christianity project. A few projects have already agreed to having their banners replaced by the main Christianity banner. The only one which has really objected to date is Messianic Judaism. It'd probably be easier to just wait a while until after the election and formally propose all the projects either alter their extant banners or start using the main Christianity banner. John Carter (talk) 17:43, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Hold : please hold the request - Tinucherian (talk) 17:59, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Template substitution

Can someone run a bot through this list and subst: the templates? Thanks! Vassyana (talk) 05:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Working it through AWB. MBisanz ^talk 06:08, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Done I went through 70 and that cleared it. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 22:16, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot to update category of US IB schools

I need a bot to find all items in Category:International Baccalaureate schools which are definitely in the United States and change the category to Category:International Baccalaureate schools in the United States. It's okay if you miss a few, I can pick up the stragglers by hand.

One possible technique is to see if any ancestor category is Category:Schools in the United States or better yet, Category:United States. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I've belated realized the category should be called Category:International Baccalaureate schools in the United States, with a lowercase "schools." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC) new category created, articles already in category moved, old category marked speedy-c2, edited request above. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair use and living people

Could someone make a list of articles about Living people that contains a non-free image. There are still many NFCC#1 violations out there, and such a list will make it easier to find them. Rettetast (talk) 21:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Opera Project assessment process/1

The WP Opera Project is hoping to dip a toe in the assessment water. With the aid of SatyrTN's SatyrBot, we've already had a successful trial using a small subset of articles from an opera sub-project - Category:WikiProject Richard Wagner articles - and would now like to enable assessment for the rest. I contacted SatyrTN on 25 March, but he was busy. Subsequently, he's been absent from WP for 9 days, and I thought I'd try here. Here's what we would like a suitable Bot to do for us:

We'd like a "Start" rating to be given automatically to those articles that are tagged with the Opera Project banner ({{WikiProject Opera}}) and are not already classified as Stub.
Exceptions: articles which have been promoted to Good Article, Featured Article or Featured List should show those ratings on the banner. Also, it would be good if any articles which currently show Stub on the banner but have been manually de-stubbed without the banner having been altered could be rated Start.
We'd also like the facility to comment when we start doing the assessments. For the Wagner project, SatyrTN organised it so that the banner carries a dormant link: if a comments page is present, there's a link, but if not, not. The link will nevertheless appear (and work) if a comments page is subsequently added.
I can give some examples of the various possibilities outlined above if that would help.

Hoping for a helpful reply! --GuillaumeTell (talk) 16:36, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You aren't anticipating using "B" class at all, apparently? John Carter (talk) 17:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I think they're planning on starting all their articles as "start" and then upgrading them to "B" when they improve. Very good idea actually. Happy‑melon 17:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I can probably do this for you, although a few clarifications would help. Is this a fair summary of what you want done:

Assess all pages tagged with {{WikiProject Opera}}
If the article has a stub template on, put |class=stub|auto=yes
If the article is FA or GA, put |class=FA or |class=GA
Else put |class=start

Is that right? I'd also make a few suggestions: your article assessment subpage is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Article ranking, when almost all other projects use Wikipedia:WikiProject Foo/Assessment. Moving the page at this early stage, before it starts attracting too many incoming links, would be much easier than at a later date, and would make it easier for people and automated processes to find your assessment page (for instance, when I was researching this task I typed Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Assessment in directly and then had to search to find the page when I realised that it wasn't at the common title). And, as a project developing the functionality of your banner, I'd recommend you use {{WPBannerMeta}}, a meta-template for project banners which makes it very easy to add or remove functionality from the banner with minimal fuss. Check out the documentation to see some of the possibilities - it can get very complicated if you want it to, but it can also be very simple; if you're interested, I'd be happy to convert the banner for you (I created the meta-template, so I hope I know what I'm doing :D). If you can confirm that the summary above is correct I can get to work. Happy‑melon 17:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the speedy and helpful reply. Yes, your summary is correct, though most opera stubs are already tagged {{WikiProject Opera | auto=yes |class=Stub}}. As I mentioned above, there may, however, be some articles so tagged which aren't in a Stub category (because someone has destubbed the article but hasn't altered the tag). We'd like the Stub assessment in the tag to be changed to Start for these, if that's possible.

Also, I've moved the assessment page as you suggested above. And please do convert the banner to improve its functionality. I've had a look at the documentation, and (before my eyes glazed over) the only thing that struck me was that I couldn't see any provision in the Assessment section for a link or dormant link to a Comments page, as mentioned towards the end of my request up above. Have I missed it somewhere?

(Oh, and in relation to John Carter's remark, you're correct that we do intend to use "B", but first we need to sift through all the Starts - when created - to see if any are currently worthy of "B". There were several in the Wagner subset.)

I hope I'm making myself clear - contact me via my Talk page if it isn't appropriate to go into the real nitty-gritty here. Thanks again. --GuillaumeTell (talk) 15:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay on this, I'm busy at the moment but I'll make time at the weekend. Happy‑melon 20:32, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I'll be around if you have any questions. GuillaumeTell 21:16, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

So much for that. If anyone who's already got the script coded up wants to take this, go ahead - it's not fair me stringing you out like this just because I can't find the time to throw together a hundred lines of code. I'll get round to this eventually if no one else does it before I find the time. Sorry for screwing you around. Happy‑melon 21:02, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot to replace Werdnabot

There most likely is a bot that has already replaced this one but I haven't been able to find it. Does anyone have the information? Mkdw ^talk 06:02, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

ClueBot III does the same job, but with a different setup - see documentation for setup here. — E ^talk _aussie 07:01, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons

There is currently a sizable backlog at Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons. For those unfamiliar with the category: these are images that exist on Commons under a different name and that should be deleted once the occurrences of the Wikipedia image have been replaced by the Commons image. Naturally, this is a pain in the neck to do manually, especially since some of these images have a dozen occurrences. I suppose a simple tweak of Twinkle could automate the process, so could a bot. There's a similar category Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons for images that exist on Commons under the same name so a bot could easily go through images in Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons and

verify that the corresponding Commons image is a bit-for-bit copy of the Wikipedia image (MetsBot already does this)
if the images are indeed identical, replace occurrences on en.wiki by the Commons image
move the image to Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons

This is probably a cinch to program but it would be a big big timesaver. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 14:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BetacommandBot Task 9 β^_command 14:25, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Stats on long-term unreverted vandalism

I think this can be done with API or DB dump queries, which is why I am asking here as I don't have the technical skill for such things. I was wondering if there was a way to gets stats on long-term unreverted vandalism. It is unfortunate that rollbacks don't have edit summaries, but I'm sure someone could generate a list of edits that were either undos, rollbacks, or had "rvv", "rv", "revert", "revert vandalism", etc. in the edit summaries, but were made a month or more after the previous edit. Or maybe two weeks or more. Or a range of times to see what the distribution is. Hopefully most of the edits will be only a few minutes or hours after the previous one, but it is the volume of the long tail that I am interested in. How long does the really long-term unreverted vandalism stay there for, and (impossible to find out) how much is out there that hasn't been found yet? Example. Carcharoth (talk) 13:51, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

you might make a toolserver querty request. β^{_{command 2}} 23:53, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Where do I make that request? Carcharoth (talk) 12:28, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a page for toolserver users? There's one for user-scripts and bot, but nothing for toolserver requests. — Dispenser 02:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

tswiki:Query service SQL ^{Query me!} 02:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. As my technical know-how is rather slim, and I only came back here because someone dropped these examples of 6-MONTH-OLD vandalism on my talk page, could someone else offer to take things from here? Carcharoth (talk) 22:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Template documentation

Resolved.

Replace "{{/doc}}" with "{{documentation}}" and some more work, on template pages.

For several reasons documentation for templates is put on /doc subpages. In the old days such documentation was made visible on the template page itself by putting {{/doc}} between two <noinclude> </noinclude> tags. Nowadays we instead use the template {{documentation}} that causes a nice green box with links to the /doc page and the /sandbox page etc. See {{shortcut}} for an example how it looks.

I still frequently find templates that use the old {{/doc}} code. I do not know how many are still out there but it can be anything between some hundred to a couple of thousand.

The templates {{Template doc}} and {{Documentation, template}} have also been used but are now redirected to {{documentation}}. They are together currently used on about 2600 pages.

Here is the detailed request:

Replace all the following exact strings on pages in the template namespace:

{{/doc}}
{{/Doc}}
~~{{template doc}}~~
~~{{Template doc}}~~
~~{{documentation, template}}~~
~~{{Documentation, template}}~~

Replace them with this string: "{{documentation}}"

Do NOT replace occurrences of the all upper case "{{/DOC}}".

Only replace them if they are between <noinclude> </noinclude> tags. (Or if it is easier to detect, only if they are not on a page that ends with "/doc" like "Template:Something/doc" or "Template:Something/Something/doc". But I think this will be slightly less robust.)

Unfortunately some of the affected pages are fully protected. I could have good use of a list of the affected pages that the bot could not edit, so I can edit them manually.

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Lists of pages using {{/doc}} should be created, as should a list of all protected templates which do not currently transclude {{documentation}}, but this task should not be automated, or should be automated only very, very slowly (I'm talking 1 edit/10 minutes). The documentation system was created for a reason: so that templates wouldn't have to be edited as often! 2600 templates each transcluded on an average of what, 500 pages? Bang, that's 1.3 million recaches. It's probably closer to 2500 pages each, which would push five million. Don't hit the servers with that all at once - take it easy, do them one at a time. Actually, come to think of it, perhaps a slow-running script (on an admin account so it can do the complete list) wouldn't be that bad an idea, but editing all these templates at 10epm would put an unnecessary load on the servers. It's something that needs to be done, but we shouldn't put ourselves in too much of a rush to do it right now. Happy‑melon 20:31, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Also note that expanding the redirects is completely unnecessary now that they are simply hard-redirected. Happy‑melon 20:31, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Happy-melon: You are partially right. Editing the redirects is unnecessary. I have striked them out.

But I thought changing the {{/doc}} strings is not supposed to put the pages that use those templates into the job queue anymore? Since {{/doc}} should exist in and only be changed if it is between <noinclude> </noinclude> tags. And nowadays MediaWiki is smart about that. Right?

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:15, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

In the meantime, I've compiled a list of all pages transcluding {{/doc}} as of the last database dump (with the ones fixed since removed and divided into lists of protected and unprotected pages) in my sandbox. There are only 157 of them. If it's decided that fixing them at high speed wouldn't destroy the site, I could do the unprotected ones in AWB; either way an admin will have to get the other ones.--Dycedarg ж 03:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Dycedarg: Oh, splendid! Thanks! Only 157? He, I was expecting a couple of thousand, that's why I did this bot request.

Since most of them probably need some other brushing up of how they use the /doc page I think I will work them through by hand. You or anyone else are of course welcome to help out with that. I copied your list from your sandbox to Wikipedia:Template documentation/List to free up your sandbox, since it might take some time before we have worked through the list.

Could you also do a list of templates that transclude upper-case /DOC pages? That is, that use {{/DOC}} in their code? It would be very nice. (Those ones will need more work fixing since that involves moving the /DOC page to /doc.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:30, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I've finished all the admin ones - this isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. 150 templates is not going to crash the servers, even if there were a couple in the top-500 most-used in there (I got a time-out on the co-ordinates one). The unprotected ones shouldn't be any problem. Once we get through these and the equivalents for /DOC, we (well, those who can :D) should finish the job and (slowly!) add {{documentation}} to everything in an intersection of "is fully-protected" and "in Template: namespace" and not "transcludes {{documentation}}". Happy‑melon 11:49, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I can't find any pages with {{/DOC}} in them at all; I guess they've been fixed already.--Dycedarg ж 19:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, good to hear. Thanks for everything Dycedarg.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I just found this - seems there are more possibilities still to sort out. Happy‑melon 14:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Every time I do template replacement I'm amazed by how many different ways people find to transclude the same template for the same purpose. Anyway, I've run a search for {{{{FULLPAGENAME}}/doc}} and put it on the page with the others. There were 76 of them. If you find still more variants post them here and I'll search again.--Dycedarg ж 22:49, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Opera Project assessment process/2

GuillaumeTell's explanatory message is above (see Opera Project assessment process/1). Our original bot driver (SatyrTN) is moving house. Happy Melon thought he could help us, but it didn't work out for technical reasons. I wonder whether anyone else could hep us with our assessments set-up? Best wishes from an obscure corner of WP facing the prospect of severe long-term bot-deprivation. --Kleinzach (talk) 02:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Replacement of Template:CommonsImageSummary

Request a bot replacement of {{CommonsImageSummary}} with {{Information}} for standardization. CommonsImageSummary was apparently used before the en Wikipedia version of {{Information}} was made compliant with the Commons version. So far as I can tell all parameters work the same, and the only thing that needs to be changed is the template name. Kelly ^hi! 03:37, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Also {{ImageSummary}}, please - it apparently uses the same parameters and was the old version in use before {{Information}}. Kelly ^hi! 05:26, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Why not just redirect {{CommonsImageSummary}} to {{Information}} if the parameters are the same? It would save a lot of unnecessary editing. As for {{ImageSummary}}, that could be redirected too, but it has a parameter for the location of the image and the others do not, so that would need to be addressed somehow.--Dycedarg ж 21:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I would ordinarily just redirect, but these templates don't transfer correctly when images are transferred to Commons. By changing them to {{Information}}, it ensures correct transfers. Also, the "location" problem was fixed so that it displays in {{Information}} so that info isn't lost, see these edits by MECU. Kelly ^hi! 21:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. As there are only ~250 images needing to be fixed I can do this in AWB.--Dycedarg ж 22:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Done--Dycedarg ж 23:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Dycedarg! I have nominated the old templates for deletion. Kelly ^hi! 23:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone know of a bot that fixes links to sections as the sections get archived?

I'm not just talking about auto-archived pages; I would love to able to run a bot on my userpage that would check to make sure section links still work, and if they don't, then make an intelligent guess what the name of the most recent archive is and look for the section link there, and update my userpage to reflect the change. Has anyone written a bot to do this yet?

And while I'm asking, does anyone know of a tool that helps in creating wikilinks? What I have in mind is something that would create the link [[Wikipedia:Bot requests#Does anyone know of a bot that fixes links to sections as the sections get archived?]] on this page, by reading the title of the editing box and the section title at the top of this edit screen, or better yet, simply copy it to my clipboard, so that I don't have to. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:00, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

AnchorLinkBot used to do update section links but has stopped now. I have some source somewhere (in C) if anyone is interested. -- maelgwn - talk 11:13, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll ask around. It seems to me it would be a huge help for everyone not to have to babysit links when they get archived. Another question: Is there a bot that can do a "WhatLinksHere" for section headings? We have a serious need for that on style guidelines pages. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

ClueBot III does this for sections it archives. It doesn't do it for things that it doesn't archive, though. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 22:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Milton Keynes renamed

Could someone quickly change everything in Template:WikiProject Milton Keynes to the one it is redirect to, Template:WikiProject Buckinghamshire? There's only about 100 articles to change. Thanks! -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:47, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

all you need is a template redirect. β^_command 01:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I don't see that at WP:TFD. Would I be going to WP:RFD or WP:RM and have the redirect deleted or move made first, and then the articles transferred? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Just leave it as it is. β^_command 02:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Done Templates updated. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 17:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Reguest under MoS(flags)

Before I knew there was an MoS guideline, I had inserted Image:Red Army flag (Fictitious).svg in all articles that are part of the

. I am not experienced in writing bots, and have no desire to be, but I'm sure that someone has a written one that can be easily used to remove these images from the selected articles, and would appreciate this help.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 04:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Done hopefully i got them all -- maelgwn - talk 06:08, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

You got most, and some other editors pitched in before I had a chance to look in. The last one was deleted manually just a short time ago. Thank you. I really should learn how to write bots since I can see potential usefulness in some of the things I'm doing--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 13:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Category:Album articles without infoboxes cleanup

A decent-sized task. There are about 1900 articles in Category:Album articles without infoboxes. A bot would need to (1) Go to the article page for the talk page listed; (2) Check if the article uses {{Infobox Album}} and if it does, (3) go back to the article talk page and remove the "|needs-infobox=yes" parameter from {{album}}. I hope that's not too hard. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

~~Kinda, but not really. I can prepare a list.~~ Q ^{T C} 15:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Meh, I'll leave this to somebody else, I hate having to deal with unicode/utf and not an easy way to SQL it afaik. Q ^{T C} 15:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I tried using a query, but it seems to me that the templates don't work as expected. For example On My Own Two Feet uses an infobox and the corresponding talk page is in Album articles without infoboxes. However the parameter needs-infobox is set to no. So why is it in the category? I tested some articles from my query results and this is the case for all of 'm. --Erwin85 (talk) 21:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably my fault - I never guessed that anyone would specify |needs-infobox=no. I think I've fixed this at the source - just wait for the category to empty through the job queue. Happy‑melon 21:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I asked. Seem to be nothing but trouble for you Happy. =( -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Dont know if the queue has been work through long enough but here's the list as it stands now (using E85's SQL). Q ^{T C} 09:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The job queue is still recovering from a server-clock-error which suspended all the maintenance scripts on wikimedia wikis, so it's currently standing at about eleven million (average is about 800,000!). It will get there eventually... Happy‑melon 18:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Just ran the query again, output here. If anybody is still going to work through these. Q ^{T C} 01:15, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Bot to replace inactive NrhpBot

User:NrhpBot only ran for a while in July of 2007. I'm seeking someone to write a bot that can take all red links of List of Registered Historic Places in Ohio and create stubs for each place from the NRIS database and tag articles with: {{Ohio-NRHP-struct-stub}}, Fill out a {{Infobox nrhp}}, and Category:Registered Historic Places in Ohio and tag the talk pages with {{OH-Project|importance=|class=stub}}. Can this be done? Thanks! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 2008-04-10 6:29 pm (UTC-4)

I guess code wouldn't even have to written from scratch, just modified. See NrhpBot coding here: link. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 22:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Need a bot to find corrupted REFLIST outputs.

When <ref> tags are not properly closed (or a closing </ref> tag is deleted by a later edit) the entire {{reflist}} output becomes corrupted. Editors do not always notice this because the problem is way at the bottom. This can however be easily fixed by simply restoring the missing </ref> data and tag. So far I have found and fixed two such cases here[3] and here[4] (scroll through the "References" section to see the problem). Additionally what is happening is that the article text you see inside the References section ought to be displaying in the article but instead it is being hidden at the point where the </ref> tag is missing until the next </ref> tag is encountered. Pretty ugly problem.

Can a bot be built to spot this problem and add a category tag {Category:Articles with damaged reflists to be repaired}? If a bot can find affected pages I can try and fix the problem by reviewing what changes happened later and restoring the /ref without disrupting whatever edits followed. If a bot cannot do this what about the {{reflist}} software being modified to spot problems as it builds the output? -- Low Sea (talk) 21:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 19#Unclosed ref tags may be of interest to you. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) 01:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the information Gonzo fan, looks like I am not the only one seeing this. One possible algorithm would be to count the number of bytes between the <ref> and </ref> tags. An abnormally large number of bytes would be a high probability of an error. Report could simply identify "Article=ExamplePage, Largest Refblock=1,234 bytes." and list them on a page in largest first order. -- Low Sea (talk) 06:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, please do something like this. Just don't fix with a bot, but a list of broken pages is urgently needed. I would say use a category, but I would prefer a list so that the size of the problem can be assessed as well. Ultimately, I hope there is a bugzilla report where broken ref tags automatically populate a category and also (politely) prompt the editor to fix before saving. Carcharoth (talk) 07:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Can a Category tag handle a parameter? As in {Category:Articles with large REF blocks|1234} so that this number would show up on the Category list page? -- Low Sea (talk) 13:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The best way would be to wait for the patch from bug 12757 to be reviewed and committed. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 13:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

That patch will be most welcome to prevent future problems, but we need something like a bot to track down existing pages that are in need of repair. -- Low Sea (talk) 00:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I would support a bot or something/anything that would help editors track these down - it does seem to crop up a lot at the help desk or VPT. DuncanHill (talk) 15:09, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Creating redirects

I'm requesting a bot that would go through a single page defined by me (page would be able to be changed) and create redirects to the main link (most pages based on a template). For example on this page, if the first link is blue it would redirect all links in that specific template to that blue link. I don't know of a bot that does this. Thanks. Dividing 17:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll Try this.. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 17:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've created a bot that will do this automatically. The request for this is at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/John Bot II 2. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 20:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Done awhile ago :P CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 19:37, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Purging subpages

I tagged Ecuador category talk pages with Template:WikiProject Ecuador to place the categories in Category:Category-Class Ecuador pages. This also placed the categories in Category:WikiProject Ecuador articles. Categories are not articles, so I modified Template:WikiProject Ecuador to fix this. The categories still appear in Template:WikiProject Ecuador. One way to fix this is to, for example, open each category page and save them to purge the page. That takes a lot of time. Is there a bot that can purge each page listed in Category:Category-Class Ecuador pages so that I don't have to open up each category page and save? Gimmetrow did purge the Category:Category-Class Ecuador pages pages,[5] but this issue comes up every so often for me and I would like to know where to make such a purge request in the future. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 01:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

just wait the servers will update those pages in due time. β^{_{command 2}} 18:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

MelonBot does this occasionally, but only when it's urgently needed - if it's not vital for statistics or something, just wait for them to work through the job queue. More specifically for this instance though, if you look in Category:Category-Class articles (and note the name of the master category) you'll see that a good 90% of projects use the (admittedly slightly counterintuitive) convention of "Category-Class Foo articles, although some have adopted the "page" syntax. You might want to consider using Category:Category-Class Ecuador articles rather than "...pages". You might also want to consult with WikiProject Ecuador about this change, as the Category:WikiProject Foo articles category is often used as a parent category for all pages (articles and not) in the scope of a project. Again, the naming convention of "articles" is just that, convention (some projects just use Category:WikiProject Foo). Just a few thoughts. Happy‑melon 11:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Delivery of a note

I'm working on letting possibly interested editors know about Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 4. Does someone have a bot who would deliver a standard note to everyone on a list of editors - very similar to a WikiProject newsleter?

I've compiled a list of editors who posted on the page for the prior meetup, but haven't indicated whether or not they will attend this meetup. The list is at Wikipedia talk:Meetup/DC 4. The proposed note to go to each person on that list is at Wikipedia talk:Meetup/DC 4/Proposed reminder note - May 1.

Thanks in advance for any help on this! -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I can, just leave a note on my talkpage. β^{_{command 2}} 21:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Inactivity by users

There are two cases I can think of where inactivity by Wikipedians is a concern. The first is WikiProjects, where participant lists can often give the impression of activity when the members have actually mostly been gone for more than a year! Of course, we don't know if active members are active related to the project, but we can certainly say that people who haven't edited Wikipedia for a long time are inactive. I think all projects should strive to keep these lists up to date, moving inactive people to an inactive list and then deleting them. As for how long it takes to become 'inactive', that's a subjective matter, but a bot could surely be programmed to see how long it was since a user's last edit and take an action if it meets a certain minimum (perhaps specified by each project?).

Another is the somewhat controversial subject of article maintenance. Here it is vital that 'maintainers'/'stewards'/whatever-you-want-to-call-them are currently active. If you are maintaining and/or working on an article you must have made an edit within a certain amount of time, otherwise you should be removed as a maintainer (and template:maintained taken down if there is nobody else). It's a very bad look to present someone as a maintainer when they are no longer active, especially when they have been gone for more than a year.

Notifications to the talk page of the person removed would be a good idea too. This isn't a request for a bot as such, but more a question of whether it could be done and how it would work, and any general feedback on the idea. I'd probably have to take these issues to the WikiProject Council and perhaps the village pump for the maintained thing first before I can come up with a specific request. Richard001 (talk) 02:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I also wish there was a better protocol for removing inactive people from projects. Has the community discussed this issue before? --Adoniscik^{(t, c)} 02:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

No idea. What would be the best place - VP proposals? I wouldn't even mind having different colours for users based on how long they have been away, so you don't have to check their contribs all the time to see if you're talking to a ghost. Would probably require too much in terms of resources to keep it up to date though. Richard001 (talk) 09:39, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I have brought it up at WP:VPPR, though it doesn't seem there will be any objection to such a bot's existence (it's more how it gets used for WikiProjects that is relevant). If someone thinks they could make something like this I'd like to hear from them. Richard001 (talk) 06:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I do have a tool to filter a list of users by their last edit. β^{_{command 2}} 15:10, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Category:Ligue 1 seasons

Hi there guys. Any chance someone could do me a favour by creating a bot that will rename all of the articles in this category so that the years are in the format "YYYY-YY"? The reason for this is because that is the format used by the majority of other football-related articles, and therefore the remainder should be retitled to follow the same standard. Any help with this would be much appreciated. – Pee Jay 23:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I could write a script to do this easily enough. To be clear: All you want is the date format changed. Thus Division 1 season 1993/1994 would be moved to Division 1 season 1993-94. Correct?--Dycedarg ж 00:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is correct. Any further changes to the name of each article I could do myself, but considering there's nearly 100 articles there, I couldn't possibly do this task myself at this time. – Pee Jay 00:37, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm writing the script for this now. I should be able to actually do it within an hour or two (I'll be monitoring it for safety's sake, and running it through my standard account as opposed to my bot account).--Dycedarg ж 01:14, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Done Fixed the double redirects too.--Dycedarg ж 03:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Just a note, I ended up doing it under my bot account after all due to my forgetting to log out and back in. Also, I fixed the links on the navigation template.--Dycedarg ж 04:47, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much mate. Job well done. – Pee Jay 09:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I almost forgot. Could you also make it so that each article is sorted by its year in this category? So, for example, Division 1 season 1993-94 would be sorted by "1993-94" and Ligue 1 season 2003-04 would be sorted by "2003-04". – Pee Jay 09:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Done--Dycedarg ж 21:08, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Sweet, thanks. That will be all :D – Pee Jay 23:17, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

If we're going to this trouble, we should use the en-dash rather than the hyphen, per WP:MOS. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

What for? The difference is purely visual, and no one has an endash button on their keyboard, so typing the hyphen is so much easier both in naming the articles and in linking to them. – Pee Jay 09:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Because if we don't follow the MoS when it's easy to do so, we might as well not have it at all. The MOS mandates that we use the ndash in page titles, and create a redirect from the same title but using a hyphen. It's no extra effort, and it makes us look that bit more professional. Happy‑melon 10:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Should we perhaps take this opportunity to convert all season articles to use the endash in the article title then? – Pee Jay 13:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. Go the whole hog. Or else why have a MOS in the first place? The Rambling Man (talk) 16:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

And curiously, look at thread following this one....! The Rambling Man (talk) 16:24, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't have the MOS naming conventions memorized, or I could have reduced the amount of editing necessary for the task below. Anyway, these will get taken care of when I do that regardless.--Dycedarg ж 18:46, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

What ab0ut 1999-2000? Rich Farmbrough, 13:14 29 April 2008 (GMT).

For whatever reason, it seems to be the de facto standard to write that as 1999-00, even though that makes absolutely no sense, because it matches the rest. In any case, I don't make up these rules, I just propagate them willy-nilly throughout the encyclopedia. You should probably be arguing this with whoever came up with it in the first place. Preferably before I go editing some 6900 articles with date ranges in them pertaining to the request below. (The request is specifically to do with en dashes only, but I could work in some changing of this if you could gain consensus for it if only because it is so very stupid looking.)--Dycedarg ж 15:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I usually change article titles that say "1999-00" to say "1999-2000". It bugs me the other way. – Pee Jay 20:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Search request

Would someone be able to take the list found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Green Bay Packers/Infobox needed and search through all the articles for {{Infobox gridiron football person}} and create a list of those articles that lack that template? Thanks, « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) @ 02:35, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Template:NFL player redirects to {{Infobox Gridiron football person}} so I made a list of all pages linked from Wikipedia:WikiProject Green Bay Packers/Infobox needed that don't use said template. I used the database do this and put the list at [6]. --Erwin85 (talk) 14:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) @ 18:26, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Requested redirect migration

Could someone with a handy bot please migrate all usages of the redirect {{Painting}} to its target, {{Infobox Painting}}? It looks there are somewhere around 800-900 usages. The reason is that I would like to use {{Painting}} for a local copy of Commons:Template:Painting. Thanks! Kelly ^hi! 13:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Doing... Happy‑melon 17:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Done Happy‑melon 10:45, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

UN/LOCODE redirects - add values to infoboxes

There are redirects from UN/LOCODEs in the form UN/LOCODE:ABCDE (see Category:Redirects from UN/LOCODE ), if such a redirect goes to a page that has a Template:Infobox Settlement a new variable un_locode should be added after the variable area_code and the value should be the 5 chars, e.g. USNYC for UN/LOCODE:USNYC. The value is currently not displayed, as agreed by Template_talk:Infobox_Settlement#UN.2FLOCODE . UnLoCode (talk) 15:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Redlink removal

Is there a bot that will clean out redlinks from particular articles? I would like the redlinks removed from User:Ricky81682/Missing descriptions and the page might load better once it shrinks from its current huge size. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Well im sure one of the cluebots does this at some point for one of its clerking tasks. ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 06:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Done, and if you want me to do it again, just leave a note on my talk page.--Dycedarg ж 17:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

THANKS! -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Your quite welcome.--Dycedarg ж 02:01, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Tag Genetics stubs with poject template

WikiProject Genetics is a new WikiProject. Would you please have a bot tag the talk pages of all the articles in Category:Genetics stubs with {{WikiProject Genetics|class=Stub|importance=Low|imageneeded=|imagedetails=|unref=|nested=}}. If the bot can determine that the article is unreferenced, please have the bot use |unref=yes as well. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 01:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, if this is allowed, can you have a bot post a notice on the talk pages of Wikipedians interested in genetics to let them know about the new WikiProject Genetics. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 02:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

It is allowed, but you should specify the message so that a bot owner doesn't have to guess at it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Doing... The tagging with User:John Bot. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 21:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Done mostly. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 00:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Free image cleanup bot

I would like to propose a bot to help start to clean up the formatting of descriptions/source/authorship information on at least some of our free images. New uploads are now including {{Information}} with correct fields filled in based on choices made during upload, but our older images are lacking this in most cases. Many also lack descriptions...often the uploader relied on the context of the image's usage for a description, but as images are orphaned over time due to article changes, this context is lost...and as uploaders leave over time, we lose the chance to obtain this information.

I propose the bot do the following:

Search for images with the license tags {{self}}, {{PD-self}}, and {{GFDL-self}} that have only a single uploader.
Place the {{Information}} template on the page if it is not already present.
Place the text "user-made" in the "Source" field.
Place a link to uploader's userpage in the "Author" field.
Place the license tag in the "Permission" field. Personally, I think it would be useful to convert {{PD-self}} to {{PD-user}}, {{GFDL-self}} to {{GFDL-user}} and {{self}} to add the optional "author" parameter to make the source of the license more clear in the event of image renaming, copying, or other image maintenance.
Grab any remaining stray text on the page and place in the "Description" field. If there is no description (i.e. the page contains nothing but the license tag), notify the uploader with {{subst:add-desc}}.

This should correct a lot of the entries we have in Category:Images with unknown source, since the authorship claim is clear when a user places the "self" license tags. And even if they do not return to add a description, the image will at least be categorized into Category:Images lacking a description for human attention. Kelly ^hi! 17:52, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Sounds great. I'd like to thanks Kelly for coming up with this proposal. One thing that should be added is analysing the upload date would help, as I think January 2006 was when the PD tag was deprecated. A date for when the "information" template came into widespread use (on the upload form?) would be good as well. Carcharoth (talk) 18:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the date shouldn't matter for the "self" licenses, as those have stayed stable over time. I haven't yet thought of a good way to bot-sort the {{PD}} images, as they are a mishmash of all types of sources, from self-made images to the Library of Congress. It would help for a bot to automatically notify the uploaders of those images, without the message being a deletion warning for an image that could be fixed. But that's probably a job for another bot. Kelly ^hi! 18:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

It would be interesting to see what the most linked to external website and internal links on the image pages. Image:Chaffinch47.jpg is one of many that links to www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de. Also, find the most commonly used word might provided other patterns. — Dispenser 00:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I wish the best of luck to anyone who writes a bot to do this. You'd be amazed at the sort of garbage you find on image description pages. --Carnildo (talk) 21:40, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Request for new Bot: "ANI-Bot"

I had a brainstorm this morning and came up with this question:

Wouldn't it be convenient if Wikipedia had a bot that could read the ANI board and automatically notify those parties who are involved in a thread?

Let's say I were to reach a situation with a specific editor where I felt that it was necessary to bring that person to ANI. As a courtesy, someone needs to notify that editor that they and/or their recent activity are being discussed at ANI. But, sometimes it seems like it does nothing but further escalate the situation if the user bringing that editor to ANI is the one that notifies them. If a bot existed that could automatically do that, however....

The problem is, I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to most scripts, so I don't think I would be the right person to create the bot. I'd be more than happy to help maintain it and monitor its activities once it's created and running, but as far as the creation goes... --InDeBiz1 (talk) 22:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

How would the bot know who the active parties are? This would require someone having to put some special template on the ANI thread stating who the active parties were, which is probably more hassle than just leaving a note on the users talk page. Also, I would rather someone warned we about a thread on ANI, not a bot. If you feel that by notifying a party will make things worse, than one could just ask someone else to notify the party. Personally I don't see the use for such a bot. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) @ 23:04, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I can see your argument and I'm not convinced that it's wrong. As I said, the idea came to me in a random brainstorm, so I thought I'd put it out there and see what folks thought about it. I'm not emotionally attached to it or anything like that. :) --InDeBiz1 (talk) 23:08, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Haha well I'm glad to see that your not going to get all emotional on me =D Lol, its a good idea, I just don't think bots are that smart ;-) But who knows, maybe someone with the no-how will figure something out. Cheers, « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) @ 00:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Assessment request for WikiProject Africa

(Original request)

Could a bot please do the following for all pages in Category:Unassessed Africa articles:

If a stub tag appears on the main article, specify "class=Stub" for {{AfricaProject}} on the talk page.
If the talk page contains the banner of another WikiProject that has a valid "class=" assessment, apply the same assessment to {{AfricaProject}}.

The project's discussion for this request can be found here. Thank you, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 01:13, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

On hold. I'm coding this. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 19:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Doing... (User:John Bot) CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 21:00, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

On hold more bugs CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 18:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Betacommand will do this. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 18:18, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Image deletion bot

I know this has been proposed before and I know it'll be hard to have the community agree on this but I still think it would be worthwhile for a group of experienced bot operators to design a simple image deletion bot. (I also suppose that there have been many discussions in the past about this, though I'm not sure where to find them.) From what I understand, there hasn't been much complaint about the work of RedirectCleanupBot (talk · contribs) so the community might be more open to this. Specifically, I'm thinking about two tasks.

Automatic deletion of unused unfree images.
Automatic deletion of MetsBot-approved Commons dupes.

Let me quickly make the case for this and give my thoughts on why and how these bots should operate and on how to sell this as a plus for everyone rather than a dangerous slippery slope.

Deletion of unused unfree images is usually done rather carelessly by admins to start with. By that I mean that there are routinely images that are in fact used but remain in the category. Admins that use the Bad Old Ones tool seem to be oblivious to the fact that this tool never reports properly the actual usage of images. This has in the past resulted in broken links to images when Twinkle batch deletion is used. Moreover, a bot could check that the image is never used over the 7-day grace period, which admins don't do. All in all, a bot would likely do a better job than any admin does.
For those who don't know MetsBot's work on commons dupes, let me just say that it's a very very conservative bot. I've been checking its work for close to a year now and I've never seen it produce a false positive. If MetsBot concludes that the image meets all the requirements of Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#I8, then it is unquestionably right. Because of this, the fraction of dupes it tags as meeting these requirements is fairly small.

These are not difficult tasks to automate and so it's possible to write a very transparent bot code, which would go a long way into providing the insurances that the community will want before giving the green light to a deletion bot. Furthermore both tasks are as uncontroversial as they come and having admins performing them by hand is just a stupid waste of admin clicks. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 15:49, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Be veryv very quite im hunting rabbit, those bots do exist and are running. β^{_{command 2}} 16:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

? A combination of bad grammar and mysterious formulation makes that comment impossible to grasp. Isn't the redirect bot the only bot that ever was granted admin rights? If these bots exist and are running, it shouldn't be covert. And goodness gracious, I sure hope you're not thinking of doing this through BetaCommandBot which is probably the least transparent bot out there and the one most suspected of running unapproved tasks. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 16:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

The community has a deathly fear of Skynet and getting one of these bots officially approved will be almost impossible. But these bots do exist and are operating behind the secenes. β^{_{command 2}} 16:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Jeez, and then you wonder why people are pissed about BAG and bot operators ignoring community input. For what it's worth, your response here is entirely unacceptable. You're essentially telling me that you know what's best for the community and so you don't need to take its will into account. The mistrust of the community is not the product of its stupidity. It's the product of the stupidity of bot operators who think they can do what they want because their bots are so flawless. When you're in a hole, stop digging. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 17:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

those people who operate these bots due so without BAG approval, I know of two users who do this and this information is public, usage of WP:IAR is not a bad thing. You and many many others agree that these bots are a good thing, but just try and get one to past RfA, Ill watch it crash and burn in failure. people have an exreame fear of Skynet. β^{_{command 2}} 18:00, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Well the redirect-deleting bot RfA is proof that it's very doable. The problem with previous RfAs for bots is that operators were proposing tasks where concerns of malfunction had a bit of merit. No chance this will happen in this case. Just like the redirect bot, this would be a trivial bot running a trivial, very much uncontroversial task. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 19:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that making a safe image-deleting bot is impossible. There are two principal points of failure:

tricking the deletion bot to delete what it shouldn't;
tricking the tagging bot (MetsBot, OrphanBot, BetacommandBot, whatever) to tag what it shouldn't;

BEANS!!!, but how can you be sure that a vandal cannot tag a free image as FU, or fake the MetsBot template? MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 18:06, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

It's actually just as easy to fool a well-intentioned admin, trust me. Moreover, the two cases I'm describing here are the last thing a vandal would be interested in attacking. Unused unfree images? What on earth might a vandal want to do with this? <maniacal laughter> I'm going to take this free image and tag it as fair use, it'll stay in the category for 7 days, no one will notice and then it'll be deleted by an unsuspecting bot. </maniacal laughter> This is beyond improbable. Same goes for deletion of Commons dupes. The deleting bot would verify on the fly that the Wikipedia and Commons images are the same (and even run the MetsBot code on the fly). You can't fool the bot to delete something it shouldn't. Seriously, if you can come up with a scenario, any scenario no matter how contorted, where an ill-intentioned user would take advantage of such a bot, I might take the objection more seriously. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 19:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Ever tried to write a bot? The core principle of internet security says that you shouldn't trust anything that comes from the net. The bot shouldn't trust ANYTHING AT ALL. For example, "it'll stay in the category for 7 days" you say. Why can't a vandal tag an image as 7-days old? Ok, let's parse the revision history. Bah, many validly tagged images are often edited after tagging, so the bot should parse whole history, trying to figure out from diffs when the image was tagged. And there are zillions of conditions like that the bot should check. Sriously ,give me the code and I'll show you potentially unsafe parts. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 19:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

What you don't seem to understand is that if some vandal decides to tag an unused free image as unused-unfree and places it in today's deletion category, the image has 100% chance of getting deleted. Admins are just as dumb as bots and I certainly include myself in that category. I would actually argue that it's easier to fool an admin than a bot in such cases and, especially in the case of Commons dupes, it's very hard to imagine deletion ever being a problem since the copy is on Commons. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 19:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

(1) Do you have examples of incorrectly deletd images? (2) What about the scenario when attacker uploads a copy of image to Commons with obviously bogus description? As a BAG member experienced with bot development, I find approval of such bot very unlikely. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 19:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Admins are just as dumb as bots. Easy there pal, not the thing to say :P CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 20:02, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I find it highly unlikely that any image deletion bot would ever get approved. The Skynet/I, Robot/etc crazies aside, image deletion is controversial enough as it is. The only reason the redirect bot bot was approved was because it was maybe 15 lines of code, was impossible to fool by its very nature, and was doing something that no one could argue shouldn't be done. This bot would be, by your own admission, highly complicated and not impossible to fool. (As stupid as admins may be, people are unwilling to accept that they are less fool-proof than bots.)--Dycedarg ж 20:14, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Image deletion is indeed controversial. But these image deletions are not. They're as uncontroversial as deleting broken redirects. And I don't know where you're reading that I think the code would be highly complicated. On the contrary, it's a pretty simple bot to write. As far as I understand this work is already being taken care of by an unapproved bot so I guess I'm just proposing to make that process more transparent. Yes, it will always be possible to fool but it's beyond unlikely for someone to take advantage of that given how uninteresting it is for a vandal to have an image deleted. Just to answer MaxSem's objections above: (1) Yes I have already had to undo a lot of deletions from Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons which had been deleted with the Twinkle batch mode. The problem was the broken bad old ones tool (which provides incorrect info on usage). I suspect this still happens since the categories are created from a template which encourages admins to use bad old ones. I'm one of the few admins who works the backlog of Commons dupes and I can assure you that no admin would have the patience to do this without the help of MetsBot. If anyone tries to abuse this by placing fake MetsBot tags, they'll succeed easily, bot or no bot. Sure BEANS, but, come on, this would be as much fun to a vandal as placing a "kick me" post-it on his own ass. As for (2), again this is beyond unlikely and it's also true that admins who delete these images rarely double check the description. There is no net gain by having admins do this by hand. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 21:08, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I never said my objections made sense. I said they are objections, that when presented by opposers at an RFA will spawn dozens of knee-jerk "per so and so" pile-on votes because that is the nature of RFA. Rationality is far from the ruling force in oppose sections for bot RFAs (or, for that matter, most RFAs in general.) The redirect bot is deleting redirects that redirect to nothing and have no page history; there is never a good reason to keep those, thus deleting them is beyond uncontroversial. And it still got 15 opposes. Give the denizens of RFA land something almost credible if you ignore objective reality to base their opposes on, and your bot RFA is doomed. But, by all means try anyway, I would love to be proved wrong.--Dycedarg ж 00:03, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... How many bot RfAs have there actually been? Everyone's acting as if this beyond impossible yet I don't see anybody actually giving it a serious go. Of course, the community will be unhappy if the first person that raises an objection is met by "oooooooooh you scawed of tha big Skynet, you moron!" Get a grip people. The only problem here is that bot operators are unwilling to address the community's concerns patiently. When WJBscribe did, it went pretty well. Sure, there are people who will never accept bots with the ability to delete. But there's also a very large portion of editors who can be persuaded if the case is made properly and if there's a willingness to listen to their concerns for checks and balances. Judging by some of the comments above, it sure seems like a few BAG-regulars feel they don't have to stoop as low as actually having to justify themselves to people who couldn't have a bot write "hello world" if their life depended on it. Sure, it's easier to just use deletion bots anyways but that's not the right way to do it and ultimately, this is exactly the attitude that fuels the growing resentment against bot operators. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually very much in favor of giving more leeway to bots but it should be obvious that the attitude against bots will only worsen if the sole principle for development is IAR. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 03:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

As someone who has ventured into the world of tagging images of questionable sourcing or copyright, I totally discount any possibility of reasonable reaction from the community when it comes to deletion of images. People who would not be at all disturbed by a request to source a questionable fact in an article turn completely hostile and unreasonable in response to a request to properly source, license, or justify use of an image. This task is best handled by people who are knowledgeable in copyright matters, behind the scenes, under WP:IAR. Otherwise we will end up inundated in stolen copyrighted images with bogus or no licenses, and the pillar of free content will crumble and collapse. Kelly ^hi! 04:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Well I understand your point but clearly you haven't read what I've proposed. I'm talking about a bot to delete images only in two very very specific uncontroversial cases. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 04:12, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I was only addressing the generic objections. Your bot is a good idea, go for it. Kelly ^hi! 04:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

My memory for remembering exact instances of these things is rather terrible, but the only one I can remember rather clearly was the one that Dragons flight tried for a bot that was meant to protect all the templates that appear on the main page, as that was sorely needed at the time. That RFA was a posterchild for failed bot RFAs, and was eventually withdrawn due to the timely arrival of cascading protection, which rendered the issue moot. I don't remember the details particularly well (or for that matter the name of the bot so as to direct you to the RFA page), but I don't remember any particular lack of the operator being willing to address the community's concerns. In any case, you are correct that the redirect bot is a proof of concept. Perhaps future bot RFAs will be easier with a live example of one that hasn't destroyed Wikipedia. I still don't think that this bot will pass, due to the fiery combination of bot admin rights and image deletion. But I wish you luck regardless.--Dycedarg ж 06:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

If you're thinking about this RfA then you'll notice that (a) the RfA was sitting at over 80% support when it was withdrawn and that (b) the main issue against the bot was that it was closed-source. People opposing simply on the principle that admin bots are a no go were a marginal subgroup. I don't think it's an unreasonable request for admin bots to be open-source and if anything, the RfA for ProtectionBot shows that it's entirely possible to convince the bulk of the community of the soundness of admin bots. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 14:59, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

v t e Armies of the Soviet Army
Armies	1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd 23rd 24th 25th 26th 27th 28th 29th 30th 31st 32nd 33rd 34th 35th 36th 37th 38th 39th 40th 41st 42nd 43rd 44th 45th 46th 47th 48th 49th 50th 51st 52nd 53rd 54th 55th 56th 57th 58th 59th 60th 61st 62nd 63rd 64th 65th 66th 67th 68th 69th 70th Separate Coastal Special Red Banner Far Eastern Red Banner Caucasus
Guards	1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 14th 18th 20th 22nd
Tank/Mechanized	1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th Special
Guards Tank/Mechanized	1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
Shock	1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
Cavalry	1st 2nd
Sapper	1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th
Reserve Army	1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th Southern Front Black Sea Group