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Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 31

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Please replace the Template:WP Kuwait on article talk pages with the following code: {{WikiProject Western Asia|class=|importance=|Kuwait=yes|Kuwait-importance=}}, keeping any existing quality and importance assessments, even though the banner to replace isn't actually equipped for assessments. John Carter (talk) 17:45, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Will make all changes using MuZebot at 0600, 18 September 2009 (to ensure quick bot operation during off-peak hours). MuZemike 00:48, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 Done MuZemike 16:32, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

DASHBot

I don't know if this has been suggested before, but would it be possible to create a bot to move pages because there are lots that have hyphenated titles and should have spaced ndash titles. I have moved many manually in the past (e.g. this fun-filled morning) but it is very tedious. I was thinking this would be a simple task for a bot, and had hoped AWB might do it but I don't think it can. Is there anyone who could make or help a complete bot noob make one as there are hundreds more similar titles that need fixing. Thanks in advance, Rambo's Revenge (talk) 22:41, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

How would the bot distinguish between what should and shouldn't be moved? Hersfold (t/a/c) 03:11, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
It would probably have to be manually assisted, it basically would be an ideal job for AWB and run in a similar way, but AWB can't do it so I believe a bot would be required. As someone who has no experience with bots please tell me if I'm barking up the wrong tree. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 08:56, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Is there any case where it would be incorrect to replace the string “ - ” (space, hyphen, space) with “ – ” (space, en dash, space)? I have never come across such a case. If such a case does not exist, there would surely be no problem running such a bot without manual assistance. MTC (talk) 09:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Generally no, but I guess that, as with spelling mistakes, there will be instances where it is deliberate e.g. the hyphen article. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 10:34, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
That’s true for article text, but the proposal was for article titles, and I don’t know of any case where a spaced hyphen would be correct in an article title. MTC (talk) 10:48, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Good point, I can't think of when an article title should ever be a spaced hyphen so I guess this could be fully automated. Does that make life easier for making bots then? Rambo's Revenge (talk) 10:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes... theoretically you could just have a continually-running bot that would repeatedly pass through Special:Allpages looking for articles with a hyphen in the title. It'd be a kinda slow way of going about it, but probably more effective than expecting someone to manually tag every one.
Bot's run cycle:
  • Start up
  • DO:
    1. Get next list of articles from allpages (starting from ! or where it last left off)
    2. Look for articles with " - " in title
      1. Use regexen to replace " - " with "–"
      2. Move said article(s) to new title(s)
        1. Whine and complain somewhere if it can't move it due to conflicting titles
  • UNTIL: it dies or is killed by the operator or emergency shutoff process
For it to continually run, though, it'll need someone with a toolserver account, more than likely. Hersfold (t/a/c) 17:00, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Well it's not urgent so it could run off database dumps. Rich Farmbrough, 19:54, 6 September 2009 (UTC).

Sorry to sound completely stupid, but how exactly would one make a bot to run off either "a toolserver account" or "database dumps" and would I need to get some form of programming software to do this? Rambo's Revenge (talk) 20:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
You can download a database dump from here. Look for "enwiki" and click through to find the list of files. You would want the article names file for this, it is only a few meg - and you will need to find the unpacking software ([[gz]). I have run a scan and I found 8,181 articles with " - " in the title, but I didn't rule out redirects. Yes you would need some programming competence I would say. I was looking at coding a solution for this in perl using the WP:api -it;s fairly straight-forward once you can see the wood for the trees.
Gotchas:
  • If the page is a redirect then either create another identical redirect with the new name or just skip it.
  • Avoid creating double redirects.
  • Don't over-write a target page.
Rich Farmbrough, 09:30, 7 September 2009 (UTC).

This is not a very difficult task in terms of actually getting the list, the difficulty is in choosing whether or not to move the article. Either way, Coding... (X! · talk)  · @988  ·  22:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Here's what I've found when scanning through titles...
  1. What to do with names, like 'Abbas Al-Musawi?
  2. What to do with movie and TV titles?
  3. What to do with pages that are already redirects?
  4. What to do with pages where the target exists?
  5. What to do with names like .38-55_Winchester?
(X! · talk)  · @991  ·  22:47, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Additionally, I have generated a list of all the titles with "-" in the title at [1] (warning: 807 kilobytes), and all the titles with " - " in the title at [2] (warning: 27 megabytes). (X! · talk)  · @003  ·  23:04, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
Just do a wikisearch (title) in awb for " - ". Tim1357 (talk) 00:56, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
How can the " - " dump be bigger than the "-" dump? Rich Farmbrough, 04:31, 8 September 2009 (UTC).
As I hinted above, I would suggest not going beyond " - ", maybe \d\d\d-\d\d\d. In answer to your points 1,2,4 and 5, skip, 2 treat the same as others. Rich Farmbrough, 04:28, 8 September 2009 (UTC).

I really appreciate you guys taking this on in ways I don't know. Just to confirm (possibly going over some of what Rich says) I only request the " - "s be dealt with because these should never exist as articles (only as redirects). That solves 1 & 5 (both ignored). Movie & TV titles (2) should be dealt with the same, and redirects (3) should be skipped. I don't know much about coding but I guess this need to come first. Target pages shouldn't exist for non-redirects, because they are nearly all moved from hyphen to ndash, and most (all?) directly creating articles at the spaced ndash know to create a convenience redirect. So 4 shouldn't be a problem, but I guess skip if it happens because if it is a non-redirect hyphened page and ndahsed one there will most likely be a parallel history problem there too (can these "(4) skipped cases" be categorised if they happen?). Thanks all, Rambo's Revenge (talk) 16:27, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm worried about having a bot decide whether a page should be moved or not. For instance, (before I moved it) Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula was at Gell-Mann-Nishijima formula. Would the bot have moved it to Gell–Mann–Nishijima formula? What about Aix-la-Chappelle? Would it be moved to Aix–la–Chappelle (forget that it's currently redirecting to Aachen)? I got User:Legoktm/User:Legobot to make massive moves of physics articles several times (that is move the page and replace the hyphens with dashes in the main text), but I manually compiled the lists (User:Headbomb/Move). I wouldn't have a problem with the bot-compilation of likely candidattes for moves, but I think meat with eyes should make the call of wheter or not to actually move them. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:12, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
No because this proposed bot is only dealing with spaced hyphens (i.e. " - " not just hyphens "-"). There would be lots of problems if automatically just doing hyphens, but this proposal is specifically addressing one of the points in WP:HYPHEN: A hyphen is never followed or preceded by a space, ..., and moving the many article titles in violation of this to spaced ndashes (the correct title) instead. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 15:30, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Ah, well as long as its restricted to those cases, I don't really have any objections to it. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:45, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Out of interest, as a programming novice, did anyone find a way of doing this I could use. It would be greatly appreciated. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 17:52, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm just wondering if anyone would be willing to take this on. I think X! had intended to but he has since gone on a break. So can anybody else help out? Rambo's Revenge (talk) 15:35, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Bot for find & replace

Hello botmasters, On 16 Jan 2009 an article was requested on Wikipedia:Requested articles/Culture and fine arts:

*Jury (competition) - Over 9000 articles have the term "juried" in them, but a spot check of dozens of them show no explanation of what this means (and the Jury article is not helpful in this regard)

So I wrote the article Juried (competition). Is there is an existing bot that can find all 9000+ articles and update them with internal links to the new article by finding instances of the word (plus surrounding spaces) " juried " and replace that text with juried (bracket bracket juried (competition)|juried close-bracket close-bracket)? Thanks -- Sctechlaw (talk) 02:23, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

OVER NINE THOUSAND????? This might be doable via AWB + Google search for "jury/juried" + some human eyes. @harej 14:33, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, what does AWB mean? (Okay I figured out 'AutoWikiBrowser'. Even that seems like an enormous amount of work. I'm thinking that the bot could look for the first instance of the word in an article only, and then update that word. I'm no botologist :-) so need someone's help please.
Sctechlaw (talk) 23:42, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Replacement of prettytable

Could a bot replace all uses of prettytable (using wikitable), since the class is in shared.css? This is to remove the definition of prettytable in common.css. Locos epraix ~ Beastepraix 16:05, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Replace them with what? @harej 22:57, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
class="prettytable"class="wikitable" Locos epraix ~ Beastepraix 23:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
The big obstacle would be generating a list of pages that use prettytable. In the meantime, would it be possible to establish prettytable as an alias of wikitable, then get rid of prettytable? @harej 23:43, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Scanning a dump? Anyway, it already works the same, it's just to drop the CSS class in the local common.css and to give more standardized class name to tables. Locos epraix ~ Beastepraix 16:43, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/LawBot --MZMcBride (talk) 19:25, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

missing fields in {{GNF Ortholog box}}

All, as part of the Gene Wiki effort, we apparently created a bunch of {{GNF Ortholog box}}es with two missing parameters. It worked fine at the time, but due to updated data those missing parameters now create incorrect links. Unfortunately the student who did it is gone, and I'm hoping someone here can help with a few thousand simple changes. The pages are all listed here (subpages of {{PBB}}), and I've made one example change here. Anyone willing to help out with this? Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 18:58, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

This looks very straight forward. I volunteer to do it. Cheers. Boghog (talk) 19:11, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Great! Thanks, as always... Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 19:48, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Y Done Boghog (talk) 15:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Coordinates for features off-Earth

Martian

Can someone with a Bot please edit List of craters on Mars & List of mountains on Mars replacing the two latitude & longitude columns with a single coordinates column, using {{Coord}}. For example, the first row on craters would contain {{Coord|16.1|N|249.0|W|globe:Mars_type:landmark}}; the first on mountains would be {{Coord|19.0|209.6|globe:Mars_type:mountain}}, but the second there would be {{Coord|-30.1|273.4|globe:Mars_type:mountain}}. I've done the smaller List of catenae on Mars manually, by way of illustrating the desired outcome. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:07, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

A script is what you are asking for, more than a bot. I convert the craters page, but then reverted it. The problem is that WP will crash if you try to have too many template transclusions on one page. All the transclusions after a particular point are broken. The page should first be split into smaller pages (already way too big), then the links can be added back again. For example, A-K, L-T, U-Z or something. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 15:45, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Okay, the craters page is done. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:39, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Bot, script, same difference ;-) Thank you for that. There are still 528 instances on the first article; I think it's probably worth dividing that again. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Please note that you really should be use the name= parameter to distinguish the different spots. — Dispenser 03:15, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
{{coord}}'s name parameter is broken, as I've reported previously. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:01, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
"The name parameter would remain, still hidden, for use by other services. Andy Mabbett". GeoHack, WikiMiniAtlas, ghel, and many text parsers would still be able to make use of the extra infromation. Especially GeoHack as it would list the feature name instead of printing "List of XXX on Mars". — Dispenser 11:25, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Indeed - which is why I suggested removing the unwanted and redundant microformat markup from Coord, rather than removing the parameter all together. Until the former (or indeed the latter) is done, the parameter is still broken. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:13, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Lunar

Similar to the above; to go through the categories for features on the Moon, and change coordinates as in this edit. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:18, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Bot to take over categorising unsourced articles from User:Erik9bot

Hi there. As Erik9bot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) has now been blocked as a sockpuppet, along with it's operator. We have Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) no longer being maintained. If anyone is keen to step forward to maintain a similar category, that would be appreciated. Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 20:54, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

As I noted at AN/I, I'd like to see a broader discussion about the general usefulness of a category like this and the best way to implement it. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:55, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Is there any particular reason why this category was created instead of just having the bot add {{uncategorized}}{{unreferenced}}? I could probably be persuaded to (re-)create the bot task if there is consensus to do so... Although, it would be more useful (and a more interesting programming task to me) to create a bot that can at least classify some article itself. Not sure if the community would be willing to trust such a bot though. Edit: Got confused with one of the bots other tasks, which was to add {{uncategorized}} to articles.--ThaddeusB (talk) 21:06, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
I can't see any reason to use this instead of {{unreferenced}}. — Jake Wartenberg 21:43, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, direct category inclusion doesn't make any sense here. A template can adjust the category on thousands of pages with a single edit, can support parameters (maybe something like {{unreferenced|bot=true}}), and is the standard form for tagging unreferenced articles. If ThaddeusB or another bot op can't be found to run this task, I may be able to. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:56, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
I know that consensus has existed for this bot for some time but I'd like to at least raise some questions about not using a separate category. The bot checks for inline citations--it's not appropriate to tag an article as unreferenced if it contains references other than inline citations. There are still many thousands of our older articles that contain parenthetical citations. These need to be dealt with but I don't see the point in just lumping them in to the unreferenced category. A bot like this is only useful if it does something hidden that a human can then follow up on. Chick Bowen 22:23, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
"A bot like this is only useful if it does something hidden that a human can then follow up on.", as far as I am aware, the said category is set up as a hidden category so it doesn't show up on the said articles pages unless the user has enabled said option within their preferences, so it is kind of hidden so that humans can check them. Humans are checking the category, I know WP:CSQ is working on it but that category does have quite a backlog to see any noticeable backlog progress. Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 23:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
That has been the case, yes. I'm arguing that it should remain the case. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Chick Bowen 00:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
In response to the above, there is no reason a bot can't detect "other types of references". In fact, that might be an interesting extension of its functionality. For example, it could flag articles with external links only with a more specific tag than "unreferenced" and could possible add a "nofootnotes" tag to article where that applies.
If a separate category for bot tagged pages is really desirable, I would think the best way to obtain it is via a "bot=" parameter to the existing template(s). --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:53, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I would really be against the mass adding of the unreferenced templates via bot. those templates are garish, adding a hidden category for humans to follow up on is a better option. it tags the article for review without plastering a ugly template that takes over half the page. (a lot of these are stubs). βcommand 02:04, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
If it uses "bot=true" then we could hide it. I would even support hiding all maintenance templates by default, and having editors opt-in via css... –xenotalk 02:09, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Some templates the reader should know about, unrefs if its confirmed and an issue with the article, NPOV, COI and a few others. βcommand 02:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Yea, I was going to mention there were a few that should display. We could also allow "small=yes" the way it is done with protection templates. This is probably a discussion for elsewhere, though. –xenotalk 02:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
For reference, I just read through the BRFA for the original task & I see the reason the template wasn't used is because some very vocal editors (who more or less objected to the existence of the tag to begin with) showed up & forced a compromise of categorization only. Personally, I think this was a very bad idea as if Erik9bot was shut down or abandoned for any reason, the category would instantly become a liability. As noted, the template can be hidden if that is the only issue.
Of course, there is perhaps a legitimate complaint to be made that the task is pointless given the massive backlog of unsourced articles already tagged. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:21, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
As a contributing editor to WP:CSQ I would like to encourage another bot to take over the managing Category:Articles_lacking_sources_(Erik9bot) probably rename the category to Category:Articles_lacking_sources_CSQ. While the number of articles in the category is large, once they have all been identified it should not grow. The current inventory is mostly if not all older articles from 2001 - 2004 with a few up to 2006. Current rules and new article patrols ensure that new articles meet at least basic expectations of WP:V so there is little if any creation of new articles without references. Jeepday (talk) 18:06, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Bot to replace image redirects?

Is there a bot that replaces file links that are actually links to redirects? With file renaming for admins re-enabled, a lot of redirects will be generated for files but not replaced in the articles. Does such a bot already operate or, if not, can we create one? Preferably, it should also have admin flags to delete those redirects afterwards, but that's not needed. Regards SoWhy 07:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Errr, the entire point of redirects is that you don't need to update the pages using them.... I'm confused. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Actually, the whole point is that different, likely names for the same thing lead to the same place, isn't it? When an article uses an image like File:DSC 0024.JPG somewhere in the wikitext, people will probably be confused as to what the image is about. On the other hand, if they read File:Canmore Museum and Geoscience Centre.jpg in the editing window, they will likely understand what the image is about, making editing easier. Regards SoWhy 08:28, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree with SoWhy here, and when I saw the thread on WT:RFA I actually thought about using a bot to clean-up after moves. There isn't a bot which does it currently I don't think, it may however be possible by using AWB find & replace. Are you wanting to delete the old images once they have been removed from articles? - Kingpin13 (talk) 08:37, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I would take special note of bugzilla:15842#c15. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:44, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I think as long as we keep the redirect their and just bypass it with a bot it would be ok. (Ill ask brion when I see him next) βcommand 13:21, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like WP:R#NOTBROKEN to me, unless T20017 isn't going to be fixed any time soon. Note that the File:DSC 0024.JPG example is a red herring, it could easily enough be taken care of under WP:CSD#R3. Anomie 17:34, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

We also aren't the only ones using them, MediaWiki has a feature called ForeignRepo's that allow site operators the ability to pull in remote images from sites such as Commons and En.Wikipedia and we currently have no way to know who is using what images, therefore removing redirects may be harmful to other people and not just us. Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 23:36, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
And that was what brion said he would de-sysop over. Im all for changing the file names, and leaving the redirects unless there are other circumstances. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Betacommand (talkcontribs)
Actually, the removal of those redirects is not the main reason for this request, so please don't let the discussion be distracted by it. I don't care whether the redirects are deleted or not but I think the redirect names in articles should be replaced no matter what. The File:DSC 0024.JPG example is only a red herring when it comes to deleting the redirect but having the name in the wikitext is still confusing. Regards SoWhy 21:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Not really, it's no different than having a article redirect in a article, of which there are many around. Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 03:28, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

References bot?

Noting the Help:Footnotes#List-defined references change, I wonder if there's utility in a bot wandering through articles munging ref data out of the article body and into the reference space at the foot of the article? Seems to me that would clean up the scary reference text in articles which surely intimidates newbies and some oldsters. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Ive got a tool that assists but be careful it does have a few bugs still. http://toolserver.org/~betacommand/cgi-bin/fix_refs?ip=Pear (replace Pear with what ever article title you have). βcommand 13:19, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I haven't yet seen any consensus (or even discussion to try to find a consensus) for wholesale munging of articles in this manner. So it is certainly too early to be requesting a bot, and IMO mass edits to do so would also be premature. Anomie 17:36, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

RTÉ News and Current Affairs

If all links to RTÉ News and Current Affairs could be corrected, that would be brilliant. The links I am requesting to be corrected are: RTE News, RTÉ News and RTÉ News And Current Affairs, all to go to RTÉ News and Current Affairs. I could not possibly do the work on my own. Thanks,  Cargoking  talk  13:04, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you asking for the link title to be change or are you asking to bypass the redirect. If the latter, don't do it per WP:R2D. Also, don't mark the start of new discussions as minor. — Dispenser 22:27, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
I am withdrawing the request.  Cargoking  talk  07:08, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Automatic creation of translation requests from Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people

I posted the request below three weeks ago and got no response so I'll ask again. I understand that it's more complex than most requests posted here but I'm hoping that someone will eventually take a stab at it.

Ok, this is probably a bit of a pain to program but it would be a big help. Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people is a subproject of WP:MISSING that tries to identify missing articles about notable dead people. There's been quite a lot of work on these lists to classify the individuals and in many cases articles exist in wikis in other languages. When this is the case, a link has been created to such articles. For instance, at the top of the list Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people/A you find links to the es.wiki articles about Anny Ahlers and Anselmo Aieta. What I would like is to have a bot create translation requests for such entries. I estimate that there are a few hundred of these. I'll check the translation requests manually but I'd be grateful if a bot can generate them. Let me know if you need any xtra info for the task. Thanks, Pichpich (talk) 16:39, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Knowing what a translation request is and how one is filed would be helpful. --Cybercobra (talk) 07:28, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
I was about to give you a nice little description and went to re-read Wikipedia:Translation for details. The translation system has however been completely overhauled. I was completely unaware of this and it makes the above request pretty much impossible. Pichpich (talk) 18:51, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Deal or No Deal (US) models self-redirects

Deal or No Deal (US) models is a large list of people. Each name on the list is a wikilink. Almost all of these links lead to redirects, which then lead back to the article.

I'm not sure of what the right thing to do here is, but the existing situation is ridiculous, and fixing it would be hard to do manually. Rees11 (talk) 17:26, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

AFD imo. –xenotalk 15:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Even better. Thank you. Rees11 (talk) 15:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Disambiguation|class=dab}}

Ensure all occurrences of {{WikiProject Disambiguation}} on Dab article talk pages include the paramenter "|class=Dab". This will ensure that the my preferences option on the Gadget tab to display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article interprets dab pages correctly.

For bonus marks:

  1. convert all occurrences of {{DisambigProject}} to {{WikiProject Disambiguation|class=dab}} as the former does not seem to support the "|class=Dab" parameter.
  2. remove the unused "|importance=" parameter from any instances of {{WikiProject Disambiguation}} that contain it.

-Arb. (talk) 16:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Disambiguation}} is a redirect to {{DisambigProject}} (which, as noted, does not use a class parameter), and has been since 2007, which makes this request seem somewhat pointless. Also, has this request been run by the project in question? Anomie 20:56, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
You are right, should have run it past the project first. That is now in progress so let's suspend this request until the outcome of that discussion is clear. -Arb. (talk) 22:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
I've already commented at Template talk:DisambigProject, but I'll reiterate what I said here: it would be more desirable to seek changes in the behaviour of the gadget than to add a redundant |class= parameter to the banner. PC78 (talk) 01:17, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Request withdrawn: It is clearly the wrong way to deal with what turns out to be a long standing bug in the gadget. -Arb. (talk) 12:15, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 Done by KingpinBot (talk · contribs · count)

Requesting a bot to tag all articles in the categories on this list (not the following list on that page which is for categories to be checked manually) with {{WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria|class=|importance=}}. If possible, please also tag any articles marked as stubs with {{WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria|class=Stub|importance=|auto=yes}}. Discussed at the project here. Thanks in advance! Small-town hero (talk) 11:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Hey there Small-town hero. This should be fairly simple, using AWB with bot mode and Kingboyk plugin. But would it be possible to get that list of categories a bit smaller, but with the same categories in the end, because AWB can fill from sub-categories, so, for example, all the Buildings and structures categories could be replaced with Category:Buildings and structures in Lancashire, if the bot was set up to include sub-cats. Hope that makes sense :/. Cheers - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:47, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Note that tagging "and sub-cats" is strongly discouraged, because it's far too easy to wind up in some sub-sub-sub-category that shouldn't be tagged. Anomie 19:35, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Oh right, I've never done it before, but I think you can just set AWB to look one level down can't you? - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:02, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind, I've used the list provided. Should be  Doing... shortly KingpinBot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:34, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to have to do a second run (once the initial tagging is done) to add the stub parameter. - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for doing this! :) Small-town hero (talk) 00:35, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
That's all right, sorry it's taking so long, there's a lot of articles to go through. Almost finished now, about 150 left. Unless you have an objection, I'll go through Category:Unassessed Lancashire and Cumbria articles (once the tagging is finished), make a list of which one's have a stub tag on their page, and then tag all of those as stubs in the project banner. - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:57, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
checkY All done by KingpinBot (talk · contribs · count), all the articles should be tagged, and the ones with stub templates should be classed as such (note that not all the stubs may have been got, since I had to write my own RegEx to look for the stub tags). - Kingpin13 (talk) 14:33, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Content Analysis Bot/Automatic Glossary Bot

I need a bot that will allow me to upload a list of about 1200 items and 'spit out' the Wiki definition of those items. Wouldn't it be great to be able to make a customized 'wiki glossary'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by DMChubb (talkcontribs)

Define "wiki definition". --Cybercobra (talk) 08:39, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Template G8 upgrade

(I think this is a job for someone with AWB.) Please change all articles using {{Infobox G8}} to use the new |date= parameter, with {{Start date}}, and the template's new name, {{Infobox summit}}, as in this edit. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:25, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

There aren't many pages transluding, so probably better for AWB (as you said), try WP:AWB/Tasks. Also, what's the point in replacing {{Infobox G8}} with {{Infobox summit}}, considering that the old one is a redirect, and so essentially the same? - Kingpin13 (talk) 12:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
If you are editing the page anyway it is a Good Thing, as it spreads awareness of the new name, reduces chances of double redirects , eventually allows reuse of the old name, smallifies the redirect table required for any user of the wikisource and removes a look-up. Rich Farmbrough, 19:31, 6 October 2009 (UTC).

periods before and after references

There's a common sort of error that I find myself fixing repeatedly. Some sentences have the refs supporting the sentence at the end right before the period, some right after (and I'll grant that I'm not sure which is right)... but a surprisingly large number have had editing and end up with periods before and after a reference or string of reference, something like this.[1]. That ain't nohow right, and should be easy to address in most cases with a simple bot (a period before a ref tag, and a period after the next end-of-ref tag), and with a little more programming, able to handle such things as single-tag refs and strings of refs. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 02:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The MoS calls for the ref to go after the punctuation: WP:PAIC --Cybercobra (talk) 03:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
WP:REFPUNC says to follow the style established in the article, while noting that after is more common. Seems like this "WP:PAIC" is yet another MOS screw-up.
As for the request here, this seems like something good for WikiProject Check Wikipedia. Anomie 11:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I believe but am not sure that AWB addresses this in gen fixes. Worth checking out. Rich Farmbrough, 19:35, 6 October 2009 (UTC).

A bot to keep track of new stub categories and templates

I think a bot would be helpful in listing all stub categories (defined as categories ending with the word "stubs") and stub templates (defined as ending with the string "-stub"), and listing them on a page for review of users who are part of the stub sorting WikiProject. This can be done using Special:NewPages, and once a day is probably enough. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:56, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Better to use the Category:Stub_message_boxes, the category API will allow you to list those added since a given time. This was one of the benefits I promised with Asbox. Rich Farmbrough, 19:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC).

A programmable spelling bot

Hello, I'd like there to be a bot which has a bot page asking two fields: a mistaken word and its correct spelling. For example I could write "posibly" --> "possibly" and then click "go". It would be much of a search and replace task across all pages. The requests could be stored and done asynchronously. It's very annoying to do this manually :-P Anna Lincoln 10:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Declined Not a good task for a bot. Sorry, but the chances of getting approval for a fully automated spell fixing bot are tiny. At the moment it is policy that this is an unsuitable task, and there is still a consensus for that policy. Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots and Wikipedia:Bot policy. How ever, you may do this a semi-automated task, for example, I believe WP:AWB has a plugin for spell checking, - Kingpin13 (talk) 10:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Ok, thanks, I understand. Anna Lincoln 10:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Sorry again :). I see you just added yourself to the AWB list, hopefully your request will be approved soon. By the way, I just tried out the spell checking plugin, and it works pretty well. There are instructions at Wikipedia:WikiProject TypoScan on how to use it. And you can also add your own find & replace. See some of the diffs you can expect from AWB in my recent contribs. Also, there is a good guide at Wikipedia:WikiProject TypoScan on how to use it, and AWB has it's own user guide, which is also quite good. If you need any extra help with something, please feel free to ask :). Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 12:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your help. I saw your contribs and yes, that is what I was looking for, some kind of automated tool or bot which helps me fixing typos. The link to TypoScan was very useful, because now I can use the database and don't have to guess common mistakes or categories where to search. I have just been approved to use AWB, I'm going to download and install it. I regret that I have to use IE with it because I prefer Firefox, but that's a minor issue. See you :-) Anna Lincoln 14:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
No problem :). Make sure you check "Enable RegEx typo fixer" in the options tab when running AWB :), also you'll see that AWB has a number of other cleanup options built in, so if you enable them, you can do general clean-up at the same time. Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 14:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Oh, by the way, you might find that the current version of AWB is still down, if so, download a beta version from here - Kingpin13 (talk) 14:13, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Useful tip, I'll enable all that. BTW, the AWB page already points to the very download page you pointed out. Oh HELL, the AWB window doesn't fit in my desktop! :-C I have to change to 1024x768. No matter, minor issue ;-) I'll try to get AWB to work during this afternoon, I hope all goes well. Regards, Anna Lincoln 14:48, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

You no longer need to use I.E. I think, since AWB uses the api now. A good thing to try and do is fix any "spelling mistakes" that are actually valid. Where appropriate they can be wrapped in {{Sic}}, {{Typo}} or {{Lang}} - the obvious advantage is that they don't get picked up again, less obvious is that the "front end" of article-space tends to get cleared of the real typos, and everyone is just hitting exceptions for 50 articles and they give up. Rich Farmbrough, 19:55, 6 October 2009 (UTC).

English variant parameter set by bot

1a. It would be useful for a bot to set the English variant for various national articles (discussion pages) that can be accurately determined by a bot. Indian-English for articles about India, for example. This would serve as a useful reminder to editors not to try to automatically revert "misspellings" they are seeing in their interface. (This would have to be done manually for articles which are not obviously one or the other - for example, articles about Turkey).

1b. It would be useful to insert a variant in the actual article itself. This would not display! It would be passed to the user's Mozilla (or whatever) in order to soft-set the dictionary so that "organization" would show up as misspelled in an UK article, "organisation" in an American article. This would have to be done in conjunction with the high-level Wikipedia Editor folks (not us: the software which handles editing). Student7 (talk) 21:15, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

1b - I'm not sure that the browser spellcheckers work in a way that makes that possible --Cybercobra (talk) 21:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

1a. This could be done fairly easily in some ways but in others it's complicated. 1b. Would need to be part of the WikiMedia software to render the HTML - I think there is something in doctype that could be set driven off one of the standard flags. Then either a browser mod or a plugin would be required to switch dictionaries. Rich Farmbrough, 20:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC).

Books clean up.

The Book tool has been updated to automatically generate tables of content. User-made tables of content are now obsolete and actually detrimental to books. If someone could write a bot that would remove these non-dynamics/user-made TOCs, it would be of great help.

For an example, see Wikipedia:Books/Linguistics. Simply remove it the TOC link (in its entirety), and place a {{db-g6|TOCs are now automatically generated by the book tool}} on the /Table of content subpage (or /TOC, or /Table of Content as appropriate) . The relevant category is Category:Wikipedia:Books. (This probably could be done with AWB.) Thanks. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I have a list of pages to tag and a bot request prepared for this task, but before I put that through I want to ask, do you have sufficient consensus for deleting these pages? Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 23:47, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I spoke with the developers of the book tools, and they can't think of any use these pages would have. These TOCs were there because the book tool didn't automatically generate TOCs. But if you include these, you have two TOCs in the books, which are often not synced (if users update the book, but forget to update the TOCs). After toying around with the book tool myself, all the user-generated TOCs I've seen are actually detrimental to the books. If you're asking me if there's a page where this was specifically brought-up, then no there isn't, but that's what I was expecting the BOT approval page to serve as. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:16, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Fair enough, BRFA filed. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Robert SkyBot 3. Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 02:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Replacement needed for User:DustyBot

Seems its operator User:Wronkiew has gone missing, and a few of its tasks, including archiving editor reviews, are piling up. Is it possible for someone to takeover operating this bot or does it need to be replaced with a new one? -- œ 05:14, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I've kinda already taken over archiving of WP:RFPERM from it, with a semi-automated tool I made. If you tell me how the editor review system works, then I'd be happy to have a shot at archiving that too, and may make both of them fully-automated, if I have the time. Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 06:48, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
It looks like DustyBot was closing reviewed entries, removing the transclusions from WP:Editor review, then archiving them on a separate archive page (in this case WP:Editor review/Archive (2009). The link to details of the task, along with conditions for closing, is at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DustyBot 5. Not sure what else you need to know.. but thank you very much if you can help. -- œ 05:35, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Birmingham.gov.uk URLs

As mentioned some time ago, Birmingham.gov.uk URLs in the form http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/parks.bcc (of which there are many on Wikipedia) have dropped the four-character .bcc suffix, thus: http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/parks. Please can someone update all these? BCCWebTeam (talk) 15:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Y Done on 14 wikimedia projects (one wikibooks, the rest were wikipedias), but there where two urls that could not be replaced, because of a 404 error:
Merlissimo 22:55, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Thank you. Those final two URLs are now active; and the remaining instances on this project fixed. BCCWebTeam (talk) 09:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
One thing that often happens in these cases is a templated replacement. This ensures that future well-ordered changes to urls can be a one-edit fix. Rich Farmbrough, 00:11, 10 October 2009 (UTC).

Templates transcluded more than once on a single page?

Resolved

Not sure if this is necessarily the best place to ask, but is there any way of finding pages where a template is transcluded more than once? Specifically I would like to find any talk pages where {{WPBiography}} has multiple transclusions. PC78 (talk) 22:49, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I might be able to put such a tool together. I'll get back to you on that. @harej 14:35, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
(Bump, because I don't want to lose this in the archives.) Any progress with this? PC78 (talk) 23:49, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
It wouldn't be possible with an SQL query tool since the database only contains unique links and templates for each page. The easiest way then is to scan the dump (regex: \{\{WPBiography.*?\{\{WPBiography). — Dispenser 04:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Would someone be able to do this? All I need is a list of pages, even if it just turns out to be a handfull. The problem is that some people have been using two instances of {{WPBiography}} on a single talk page to overcome limitations in that template's coding. This can be rectified, but I need to know where this has been happening. PC78 (talk) 22:36, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) AWB can scan the dump file for that RegEx expression--if you can somehow produce a list of the WPBIO talk pages you want checked, or at least tell me the specific categories (you are probably aware of the rediculous amount of pages the project contains; this makes generating a list of every single article in the project's parent category impossibly time-consuming), then I can make a dump file out of those and use the RegEx to scan that dump file for the double templates with AWB and generate a list of those pages. Then, a bot (my AWB bot or another bot) could go through that list deleting the extra template.

I realize this is a lot of work to undergo for a simple case of an extra template, but the size of WPBIO is a handicap for any brute processing. If you wish to take this path with AWB, however, I would be willing to help, and I'm sure there are other willing users that can share the workload with me. Awaiting your reply, Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 01:41, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, I'm not sure if I can narrow down the list of pages to be checked. If it's going to require a lot of manual work, then it's probably not worth the bother to be honest. Thanks anyway, though. :) PC78 (talk) 12:45, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, I'm sorry that the workload is so immense--as I said, you're dealing with an impossibly huge Wikiproject. But now that I think about it, there is a solution that doesn't require so much work from you. It is possible to simply download the dump file for the whole of English Wikipedia, then comb through that and find the double templates. If I can somehow get a dump file of just the talk pages, the job would be easier. But, the dump file for the entire Wikipedia, or even just the talk pages is huge (something around 5GB compressed), so the amount of time it would take to find the double templates would still be quite large. There's also the BRFA for the bot that goes through deleting the duplicates to consider. But, if this idea sits better with you, let me know and I'll be happy to get to work. If not, then I'm sorry about the disappointment. Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 16:34, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
Is it not possible to just segregate pages transcluding the banner, or would you require one or more categories to work from? It would be best to deal with the duplicate banners manually, so no need for a bot to remove them. I just need a list to work from. PC78 (talk) 16:48, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
The API has a Query feature similar to Special:WhatLinksHere, but I'm not sure if that works with transclusions. Other than that I'm not sure...does anyone have any other ideas? Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 23:07, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Your database scan idea is the best way to go about it. –xenotalk 19:20, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I will do this now. Rich Farmbrough, 19:17, 6 October 2009 (UTC).

Shame it's talk pages, will take 36 hours to snarf the dump. Otherwise I could have had this done in about 30 minutes. Rich Farmbrough, 19:26, 6 October 2009 (UTC).
Talk pages aren't in pages-articles.xml.bz2? Is it
enwiki-latest-pages-meta-current.xml.bz2	2009-Oct-03 08:15:19	9.9G	application/octet-stream

? I might be able to do better than 36 hours and I kindof need to do some scans in this anyway. –xenotalk 19:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm pulling it, it promises 18 hours now. Incidentally that will probably expand to 50G. Rich Farmbrough, 20:10, 6 October 2009 (UTC).
Thanks for doing this...I don't have enough of a monopoly on my resources to do 18 hour searches so this is helpful. Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 23:10, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
For the record: nothing found. I ran against all namespaces to check and got a handful of pages.
  1. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Dec06-Apr07
  2. User talk:BNutzer/Archive 1
  3. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts/Archive 2
  4. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Peelbot
  5. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Assessment/Assessment Drive/Spring archive
  6. User:Polbot/ideas/defaultsort
  7. User talk:Inver471ness
  8. User:Gtstricky/monobook.js
  9. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Redrocketbot
  10. User talk:Bedford/Archive6
  11. Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell/Archive 3
  12. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/CountryBot
  13. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Jazz/Archives/2008 1
  14. Template talk:WPBiography/Archive 5
  15. User talk:ListasBot/Archives/2009/May

Rich Farmbrough, 00:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC).

That's rather odd. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Dec06-Apr07 doesn't appear to transclude {{WPBiography}} at all, and I only see one transclusion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Assessment/Assessment Drive/Spring archive (those are the only two I've looked at). On the other hand, there are definitely two transclusions at Talk:Michael Jackson. Thanks anyway, though. PC78 (talk) 14:50, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Your first example had two WPBios on one line at 07:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC). Rich, did you instruct the regex to be singleline? (so .* matches everything including newlines)...
(?s)\{\{WPBiography.*?\{\{WPBiography
? –xenotalk 14:55, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Hah! Well done Xeno! I was rather hoping for a counter example per PC78. OTOH I have had some strangeness with newlines and single-line recently. Rich Farmbrough, 00:13, 10 October 2009 (UTC).
  1. Talk:Aaron Abba ben Johanan ha-Levi
  2. Talk:Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra
  3. Talk:Albert Brackmann
  4. Talk:Amália Rodrigues
  5. Talk:Andrea Corr
  6. Talk:Aretha Franklin
  7. Talk:Aziz M. Osman
  8. Talk:Basil Rathbone
  9. Talk:Camilo Sabio
  10. Talk:Catullus
  11. Talk:Cesare Battisti (1954-)
  12. Talk:Coleman Young
  13. Talk:David William Cohen
  14. Talk:Duke Kahanamoku
  15. Talk:Earl Washington
  16. Talk:Eero Mäkelä
  17. Talk:Elfi Schlegel
  18. Talk:Elizabeth Báthory
  19. Talk:Eminem
  20. Talk:Fatma Ceren Necipoğlu
  21. Talk:Gene Callahan (economist)
  22. Talk:Harry Snyder
  23. Talk:Helvi Sipilä
  24. Talk:Howard T. Odum
  25. Talk:Jack O'Neill (baseball)
  26. Talk:Jacqueline Lichtenberg
  27. Talk:James Brown
  28. Talk:Janet Jackson
  29. Talk:Jenny Oropeza
  30. Talk:Jethro Tull (band)
  31. Talk:Jim Brown
  32. Talk:Joey Tempest
  33. Talk:John Lehr
  34. Talk:John Richard Packer
  35. Talk:Jonny Lang
  36. Talk:Joseph Estrada
  37. Talk:Kenny Rogers
  38. Talk:Knut S. Heier
  39. Talk:Lucia Rijker
  40. Talk:Mark McCormack
  41. Talk:Matt Slick
  42. Talk:Maurice Benyovszky
  43. Talk:Michael Jackson
  44. Talk:Mick Karn
  45. Talk:Mikhail Baryshnikov
  46. Talk:Mohammad Afzal Cheema
  47. Talk:Orelsan
  48. Talk:Pat Boone
  49. Talk:Peter Brown (music industry)
  50. Talk:Peter Elliott
  51. Talk:Pierre Richard
  52. Talk:Prince (musician)
  53. Talk:Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein
  54. Talk:Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen
  55. Talk:Quincy Jones
  56. Talk:Rick Comegy
  57. Talk:Rim'K
  58. Talk:Sam Stern
  59. Talk:Samuel L. Jackson
  60. Talk:Stephen C. Johnson
  61. Talk:Stiff Little Fingers
  62. Talk:Tara Sharma
  63. Talk:Tina Turner
  64. Talk:Tupac Shakur
  65. Talk:Whitney Houston
  66. Talk:Yang Wei (gymnast)
Thanks! I'll sift through them and see what's what. PC78 (talk) 23:19, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Meetup Announcment

How can I send messages to users belongs to a specific category?--Saqib  talk  14:03, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

User:GrooveBot can do this for you. GrooveDog • oh hai 14:19, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Derivative License checker

GNUGPL to public domain

I found a file that was licensed under GNUGPL, but its derivative was licensed in public domain.

This file (File:Torchlight help red.png),which is licensed as public domain, is a derivative of File:Torchlight help.png, which is licensed with GNUGPL.

I'd like to request that a bot check the description/source of image files for other images...and then check their licenses. If a conflicting license such as a derivative under public domain against a parent of GNUGPL, then the bot would post these to a list. If the bot is accurate enough, then it could be automated. I hope this is clear enough...

Any thoughts?Smallman12q (talk) 13:42, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

All the bots that have done this are inactive: I want a bot that tags {{dead link}} in the main-space when it finds them. Thanks Tim1357 (talk) 21:30, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Bundling WikiProject Medicine collaboration template and Portal Medicine template into project banner

I would like to bundle a set of Medicine collaboration and portal templates into an update banner. The replacement parameters are listed at Template talk:WPMED/sandbox, and the discussion is at Template talk:WPMED#COTW and Portal links from this template. I had one bot in mind but the op is busy in real life, so I'm hoping any wikiproject bot can handle this. -Optigan13 (talk) 22:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

If you could be a little more explicit with the instructions, I could probably run with this. –xenotalk 19:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, although I just spotted an issue with two conflicting DYK template styles being used so I'll need to sort that out (Portal talk:Medicine) and then come back. Sorry for the premature notice. -Optigan13 (talk) 05:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Category moving

I was wondering if we could have the category "Rapists by nationality" moved to "People convicted of rape by nationality". There was discussion on it before about moving the category to a name-neutral category, and it was agreed upon. I've done some of the work, but I don't feel like moving all 32 categories, deleting them, and creating the new ones (not in that order of course). Thanks Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi there Kevin. Category renaming normally takes place at WP:CfD. If the rename is approved, then a user creates the new category page, and adds {{Category redirect}} on the old category, then there are various bots which patrol Category:Wikipedia soft redirected categories and move pages in that category to the new one. Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 19:20, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. I thought that that was apparently done at the whole CFD thing before and was again supported at the Administrators Noticeboard, as they needed help with an idea on it. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:28, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
I for one, have issues with the requests for bot actions from this User as being in need of further discussion. Off2riorob (talk) 21:26, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Welcome Bot - advanced version

Though this works well at Commons, historically welcome bots have probably been the most frequently rejected idea at this page. However, things are changing; for the better in that this proposal tries to deal with the previous reasons for not doing this; for worse in that we are being less and less open to newbies and very few are being welcomed manually. So I suggest:

If a new editor has not been welcomed manually within 7 days of their first edit that has not been rolled back as vandalism, or their first article that has been marked as patrolled at newpage patrol; Welcome them by bot.

To make this a little more clever the bot could run a little routine to test out different welcome messages in terms of the proportion of newbies welcomed by that message who go on to edit more, and preferentially use the more successful welcome messages.

If we want to really make this really fly we should:

  • Let the bot analyse the message by geolocation, gender and whether the newbie edits existing articles or creates new articles and test out new messages accordingly. So if it turns out that American female editors prefer a plate of cookies with their welcome, Indian editors prefer plates of Somosas, and European men prefer a picture of Jimbo, after a while the bot should pick that up.
  • Program the bot to tell the user about wiki projects whose articles they've edited.

Previous proposals to do this have foundered because:

  1. We don't want to welcome vandals - and with these rules we won't
  2. We prefer welcoming to be done manually. There are still some editors who welcome newbies, and this won't stop that, if anything it might reinvigorate it as welcoming good new contributors who haven't yet been welcomed will no longer be such an overwhelming task.
  3. A welcome by Bot is impersonal, in former times when we had a lot of editors welcoming newbies there may have been some truth in that. But in reality the chance of a newbie being manually welcomed nowadays is not very high, and a bot welcome is less impersonal than none. Also this bot would have the ability to target its message at particular audiences and tailor the message by mentioning a relevant wiki project. ϢereSpielChequers 16:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
This proposal should really be cognizant of the recent discussion here: Wikipedia_talk:Welcoming_committee#Developing_a_personalized_welcome_message_generator. Rd232 talk 17:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I've put a note there alerting them to this proposal. ϢereSpielChequers 20:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer from rd232 and the notice from WereSpielChequers. For evaluating this bot request, I recommend people also check my proposal at Wikipedia_talk:Welcoming_committee#Developing_a_personalized_welcome_message_generator. A one-sentence summary is: being a CS PhD student specialized at building recommender systems, I am capable of building a bot that can generate personalized welcome messages, including pointers to relevant WikiProjects, other articles to edit, and several active and experienced editors that may share the topic interest of newbies.
I am not sure if it is good to have a bot that can only post welcome templates, because it may have negative effects on newbies' feeling. I consider myself a newbie, and to me it is clear that a template is a template and doesn't contain anything personal to my interest. Yes, there is often a manual included for me to read, but I lack MOTIVATION to read it. It'll be much better if you point me to a reasonable place for me to start working on, and then I become more motivated to learn the syntax and rules because now I have work to do that would need them.
I love the idea of experimenting a variety of different welcome messages though. The reason I made my original proposal is because I consider building such a personalized welcome message generator as a possible research direction for my degree, and for that purpose I'll try different algorithms and see how newbies react to them. So the implication is, if a form of this proposal get through, I may be willing to put big chunk of times to work on it. Wondrousrecall (talk) 22:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
I wonder (from your comment) if this is pointing a little in the direction of a thought I had recently, of trying to create a learning curve of Things To Do, along with instructions for learning how to do it, perhaps referencing examples of good practice. For instance, here's a random unwikified article, here's how to wikify things, and here's a good example. I haven't worked out what the learning curve would exactly be, but it sounds like it ought to be feasible, and it's something that would naturally fit here, I think. Rd232 talk 10:27, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
This is a really interesting idea that I haven't clearly thought of, but we are certainly in the same direction. Technologically it is fairly easy to let the bot find a random unwikified article, and the bot I propose may do more, and say something like "thanks for your contribution on Constitution of Russia. I would invite you to help out Politics of Russia, which needs to be wikified. You can find how this can be done here. If you have questions, you may contact good dude A or good dude B, both are experienced editors interested in articles related to Russia." Other help can go from there. Wondrousrecall (talk) 16:39, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
That sounds cool. Rd232 talk 17:46, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Note, I sometimes stray onto other language wikis and I invariably (often) get an apparently form human email as well as a welcome on my talk page. Clearly they have less traffic but also less editors.. perhaps a bot that helps a welcoming committee welcome? Rich Farmbrough, 01:23, 10 October 2009 (UTC).

Obviously a welcome from a fellow editor is better than one from a bot, hence this bot would only welcome newbies who have gone 7 days without a welcome. Perhaps that interval could be varied according to how active we are at manually welcoming people, with a longer delay if the amount of manual welcoming on the pedia increases. We could even have a special - unwelcomed new users that links to wikiproject welcome committee, with a trigger that starts welcoming by bot when there are more than 3,000 unwelcomed users who meet the above criteria. ϢereSpielChequers 10:51, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
How do you think about this? We can ask people in welcome committee to authorize the bot to use their usernames, and whenever the bot posts a welcome message, it puts one of those usernames in the signature. If what those people would have put in themselves are no more than a template plus a signature, then there is no difference if they did the mouse clicking or if the bot did it. The reason I propose this is because I feel nowadays manual welcome is rare anyway, so waiting 7 days may be too long. Imagine I register a new account, made 10 good edits in the first day, I probably should be welcomed in the second or third day for best encouragement and guidance. If I figured nobody cares me, I probably already left by the 7th day. That sounds really unfortunate. Wondrousrecall (talk) 16:39, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
I figured 7 days would leave open plenty of possibility for people still to do manual welcomes if they want to, which has in the past derailed proposals to do this by bot. I like the idea of personalising the template by having people in the welcoming committee, but I think there is a better way to do this that avoids the usual problems of welcomers being retired or blocked when their welcomees get round to looking them up. I'll add it to the proposal as a nice to have. ϢereSpielChequers 17:34, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Technologically it is easy to let the bot check for the problem you are mentioning. For example, we can ask welcome committee to sign up on a list, and tell them we are only going to use your signature if you have made an edit in last 7 days and you have not been blocked recently. Do you think it would remove people's concerns?
A higher level question I have is about the decision process here. We are brainstorming lots of great ideas, and at this stage it seems hard to settle down to a one true bot specification. If no one showed up with strong objection for several days, can we assume that we can begin to build a basic prototype bot and get it approved for a trial? I assume all additional stuff we are discussing here can only go alive after that. Wondrousrecall (talk) 19:28, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Given that this is such a "sensitive" topic and some form of it has been discussed and rejected so many times before, a wider discussion would likely be a good idea before someone starts coding (as it would certainly be required before such a bot could run). Mr.Z-man 01:53, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree that not every Peren idea is worth doing and I wouldn't have raised it again unless I thought I'd addressed all the issues were quoted against it at peren. If you think it needs wider discussion than its getting here, and at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/new users#Welcoming Newbies, where else would you suggest publicising this? ϢereSpielChequers 14:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
FWIW, whenever I've looked into those emails it has turned out that other wikis have an "email me when someone posts on my talk page" preference enabled by default (the mail matches the content of the wiki's MediaWiki:enotif_body). Still rather annoying though. Anomie 14:49, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Welcome Bot - the learning curve

The welcome process should be designed to increase the proportion of new editors who do good things well, and reduce the proportion of disruptive new editors. It would be right to teach new editors how to be forensic about reliable sources but it would be appallingly wrong to encourage them to create unsourced BLP articles. In general, attracting reflective, broadly educated clear-thinkers is strategically helpful to the project, but rewarding narrow thinking or aggressive behavior is not.
Therefore we need to be careful about personalising welcome messages. I'm particularly concerned about anything that encourages people to align their edits around subjects that interest them, because this often leads to like/don't like and interesting/boring arguments. I'm not saying that we should aim for messages that say "Welcome to Wikipedia. I see you just inserted <dumb unsourced POV statement> into <x>. If that's all you have to offer, please leave right now and never return." But if we can move new editors away from their subject interests and towards editing styles that suit them (e.g. find sources/images, copy-edit, fix links/categories) they'll learn more and we'll see less friction.
IMO, Rd232 (talk · contribs)'s idea of creating a learning curve of Things To Do (see above) goes to the heart of the issue. I'd like to see thorough discussion of this approach before we get into the detail of improved welcome messages. - Pointillist (talk) 21:56, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Pointillist, you brought up some interesting arguments. I can see the risk you point at -- some people may register an account only for praising a video game they love, and such POV praise is not going to be very helpful. However, it seems to me that, even in this case, the chance they are going to be good contributors in video games is still higher than in other topics. At least they know about video games.
People are more likely to stay contributing as well if you point them to other video game articles. If you drag them into something they are not interested at all, they may say "why must I spend time on this crap" and leave. I believe that's why now at Wikipedia:Welcoming_committee#Personalize_your_message, human being welcomers are encouraged to personalize along newbies' topic of interest as well --- we need to first make people stay interested, and then we can worry about coaching them and making them better.
Let's talk from another angle as well: What do we have now? Several good people pasting templates on newbies' talk page and sign their names. If that's what we are going to have, then automating this process is a strict plus. That's WereSpielChequers's original proposal. My proposal is, only posting templates is not good enough, and since people are now encouraged to personalize welcome messages by looking at topic interest, we can automate that. Sounds like a plus as well. Then we say, it would be even better if through our suggestion, people can learn more and grow to better editors. Of course that's another plus, and I don't think there is any fundamental conflict here. Wondrousrecall (talk) 00:05, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

It's hard to imagine anything more offensive than being "welcomed" by a bot. Maybe the ATMs and gas pumps that thank you? Yes, I got welcomed by a bot on commons, I think. No human editors welcomed me or even noticed the omission of a welcome, because my user talk page had been spam-attacked with a huge list of useless, pointless, irrelevant information packed like garbage overflowing a dumpster. I deleted it. What was gained? Nothing.

Alerting a welcoming committee, or alerting projects might be worthwhile. You're likely to be welcomed by someone if you annoy them with an edit you make or if you edit articles in the same project they edit. This gives the new editor a basis of conversation with a specific other editor, maybe leading to establishing a working connection for the newbie.

Spam the newbie with a bot message? Meat editors might pass on welcoming them because they've already been welcomed. Then, you get a trashed out new user talk page, and a newbie whose community interaction is with a bot. How does this benefit the newbie? Wikipedia? If the bot didn't spam their talk page, the new user might seek out meat editors with questions. There's one more way to make a human connection that the bot interferes with.

Rd232, you have some good ideas about working with newbies by demonstrating different levels of doing one thing or another. Meat editors do tend to come up with original ideas.

I just can't see any benefit to welcoming someone with a bot. At least you don't make the newbie delete the spam off their user talk page, which is now blue-linked, so users watching for red-linked talk pages won't notice the newbie requires welcomings.

Welcoming is a human thing. It can't be done by a bot. It's not a welcome if it is done by a bot. It's spam. --69.225.5.4 (talk) 02:35, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that welcoming is better done by a human, hence the delay in welcoming so that can continue, but this is about welcoming those who are missed by the welcome committee. Also I accept that we need to try and make it less impersonal, hence some of the ideas above about linking to a committee so that it is less impersonal. However I'm not sure that I'd agree that this is spam, if you register a new account and join something I think a welcome message with some hopefully useful information is a positive. However I'd be happy to subject it to a test, identify 100,000 accounts that would be welcomed under this system, welcome 50,000 by bot and leave the other 50,000 unwelcomed. Then run an analysis three months later to see how many are still around, how much subsequent editing they did and how many avoided newbie mistakes because of the info on the welcome template. My prediction would be that the ones who were bot welcomed would be more likely to stay and be productive Wikipedians, if however the analysis shows the opposite then I will join you in the anti bot warning lobby. ϢereSpielChequers 14:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I think that makes sense. I had a related thought this morning though: MediaWiki:Welcomecreation is currently (I think) shown once, after successful account creation. Why not ask for a software change so it's shown at the top of every user talk page, until such time as they click a "Dismiss this notice" button? (There could be a preference option to re-enable it.) On registered accounts, the software could then skip this screen (I imagine most newbies click right through it!), and go to the user talk page, showing where that help info can be accessed anytime. The main advantage of this approach, of course, is that it leaves the talk page redlinked, whilst providing very accessible information to the user. PS this wouldn't make a welcome-bot redundant, but it would allow a refocussing on the value-added of a bot, eg analysing edit patterns to make concrete suggestions. Rd232 talk 15:12, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Monitor Category:Unblock on hold for stale requests, inform holding and/or blocking admin

Just came across a few unblocks on hold that had been languishing for upwards of one month! A bot should monitor the unblock-on-hold category and notify the holding admin (and possible also the blocking admin) if it has been on hold for 48 hours or more. –xenotalk 14:20, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Other information

Background

Within Category:Non-free use rationale templates there is a family of related templates. These templates take several parameters, which are all capitalised. Only one parameter, "other_information", is not capitalised. I guess it was added at a later time. This is confusing for editors, and therefore a source of mistakes. Parameters after all are capitalisation sensitive.

Intention

Therefore, I want to propose changing the "other_information" parameters to a capitalised parameter "Other_information" as well.

Location

The templates in question are:

Fully protected: Template:Album cover fur, Template:Logo fur, Template:Non-free use rationale
Otherwise (semi- or non-protected): Template:Book cover fur, Template:Film cover fur, Template:Film poster fur, Template:Film screenshot fur, Template:Non-free image data, Template:Non-free image rationale, Template:Video game cover fur.

Other templates (namely commented out as not important) call these templates.

Technical notes

  • The normal usage of the templates is to paste them from the documentation pages, and fill out the details. As a result, many transclusions of these templates have an empty "other_information" parameter. Because it is possible that future editors will fill in this parameter, they should also be fixed. The only way this is possible is trough checking all transclusions of abovementioned templates. I tried adding detection, but that will work only for non-empty "other_information" parameters.
  • Care should be taken not to change "other_information" parameters inside other templates.

Further

Please contact me with questions and inquiries on my talkpage. Debresser (talk) 00:29, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

So, allow me to sum up what you're requesting for ease of access:

  • Change the aforementioned templates to use the parameter Other_information rather than other_information.
    • Also change the documentation pages to reflect the correction.
  • Use a bot to change all instances of those templates to use the capitalized parameter instead of the incorrectly lower case parameter.

Does this summarize what you're trying to do? Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 00:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes. And change the documentation pages accordingly, to be complete. Debresser (talk) 00:43, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
I see. Well, the changes to the parameters that are called in the File pages will be simple enough to do with a bot. The difficulty here is the nature of the templates. These are used on a large number of pages, so changes to the templates themselves will have widespread effects. That is, when the parameter on the template page itself is capitalized, that will "break" all of the transclusions of that template until the bot capitalizes their parameters.
This caveat means that we would need to be careful about how we fix the issue. My suggestion is that when the template is changed, a note is somehow inserted to inform users that the now "broken" parameter is in the process of being fixed. Then, once everything with that template is done, remove the note.
Perhaps you were already aware of this issue, but I wanted to clarify the nature of your request. Assuming we agree on a way to circumvent the aforementioned, my bot can fix the parameters for you. Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 00:54, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
I had given this consideration, but I though the obvious solution would be to make two edits to the templates. The first adding the capitalised parameter (like {{{Other_information|{{{other_information|}}}}}}), the second removing the non-capitalised parameter. Debresser (talk) 01:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd be thrilled if your bot would do this. How long would it take? I don't know how many files there are using these templates, but 20 thousand seems a modest estimate to me. Debresser (talk) 01:19, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Why bother to ever make that second change to the templates (and therefore, why bother running a bot over such a huge number of images)? Instead, just leave "other_information" as an undocumented synonym for "Other_information". Anomie 02:06, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
That is less elegant, but also possible. If I were an admin and could have edited protected templates, that is perhaps all I would have done. But that remains a patch, no more. Debresser (talk) 02:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
If the bot is preferred over Anomie's patch solution, then I can say that the edits would take an extended amount of time if we do all templates; see this list I've compiled of the amount of times each template is transcluded. The Grand Total is 217645 articles. But if we ignore Template:Non-free use rationale, that total is only 493. So perhaps the best solution is to use the "patch" idea on that first template, then use my bot to fix the rest of the templates. Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 03:05, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Actually, {{Album cover fur}} is used more than 50,000 times, {{Logo fur}} about 45,000, and {{Film cover fur}} nearly 3,000. All of them transclude {{Non-free use rationale}}, so the ~217,000 total estimate is still correct. I think Anomie's solution is the best (and editing thousands of pages to change the capitalization of a template parameter name is hardly "elegant") Mr.Z-man 04:05, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
But those templates all use Template:Non-free use rationale, so Robert Skyhawk's idea seems best. Debresser (talk) 04:20, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
According to his numbers, {{Album cover fur}} is used 119 times, [3] would suggest otherwise. His solution is based on incorrect numbers, 493 pages probably wouldn't be enough to cover any one of the templates listed. Mr.Z-man 04:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
It would, and I think Robert Skyhawk is right here. Your link is not a contradiction, because as said {{Album cover fur}} uses Template:Non-free use rationale. Debresser (talk) 04:34, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Huh? I linked to a page showing that Album cover fur has more than 5000 uses, that is far more than 119 - the actual number is about 50,000. I fail to see how the meta-template they use is relevant. Perhaps you or Robert could explain how even though Album cover fur is transcluded onto 50,000 pages, it could be migrated by a bot checking and editing, at most, 119. Mr.Z-man 04:49, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

{outdent}Adding the code above to Template:Non-free use rationale should fix the problem for all templates using it as well. Debresser (talk) 05:11, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

All I can say about my numbers is that I used this tool to produce them...perhaps that only lists links and not transclusions? This just occurred to me, and I think it may be what is causing the discrepancy. You'll agree that if the other set of (considerably larger) numbers is correct, then using a bot that does 10 EPM is extremely impractical. So, perhaps the patch idea is best. Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 22:58, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
{{Video game cover fur}}, {{Film screenshot fur}}, {{Film poster fur}}, {{Book cover fur}}, {{Film cover fur}}, {{Logo fur}} and {{Album cover fur}} all use Template:Non-free use rationale; {{Non-free image rationale}} uses {{Non-free image data}}. The latter is taken care of already, so tweaking Template:Non-free use rationale should take care of the issue. Debresser (talk) 23:14, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
I have done all that is needed for the non-protected templates, and have added three editprotect tags to the three protected ones. Debresser (talk) 00:51, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 Done} Debresser (talk) 14:50, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
The "What links here" page combines the results of both backlinks and embeddedin (transclusions). You want to use tools:~dispenser/cgi-bin/embeddedincount.py, I've added this to the documentation. — Dispenser 01:39, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
Resolved
 – Done with KingpinBot (talk · contribs · blocks · count · rollback · admin · logs)

Requesting a bot to tag all articles in the categories on this list (not the following list on that page which is for categories to be checked manually) with {{WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria|class=|importance=}}. If possible, please also tag any articles marked as stubs with {{WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria|class=Stub|importance=|auto=yes}}. Discussed at the project here. Thanks in advance! Small-town hero (talk) 10:39, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd be happy to do this again if you want? I can easily make the bot add the empty |importance= parameter this time. Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 10:41, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Great, thanks! Small-town hero (talk) 11:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Just started now, sorry it took me so long to get it going; I was sorting them into stubs/non-stubs. There will probably be a lot less pages this time as a lot of them are already tagged from the last run :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 13:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 Done with KingpinBot (talk · contribs · blocks · count · rollback · admin · logs). - Kingpin13 (talk) 18:02, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Separation of edits list

Is there a way to list the number of users with the most numkber of edits, but who have not been using tools such as Huggle, AWB, Friendly etc? Please also see Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by number of edits#Tools reopened. Simply south (talk) 20:03, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Replace hyphen with en dash in template

This is probably something that can be accomplished with AWB. I was hoping somebody could replace all hyphens with en dashes in the template {{Cbb link}}. An example of an article/template where this needs to be done is Template:2007-08 Big 12 men's basketball standings. Many people use the red links in these yearly standings templates as the starting point for their article and a lot of them are being created incorrectly. Thanks in advance.—NMajdantalk 13:32, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems that would be a good thing to have done periodically, as people will likely continue to screw it up. If you assume the hyphenated year field is always going to have a 4-digit year in the first position, you could use something like {{#ifeq:{{str left|{{{year|}}}|5}}|{{str left|{{{year|}}}|4}}-|[[Category:Uses of Cbb link with a hyphenated year]]}} to populate a tracking category. Then it would be a simple matter for a bot to periodically clean out the category (and, for that matter, Category:Excessive uses of cbb link, and the corresponding {{cfb link}} categories, and the categories for any other similar templates). Or if you really want just a one-off run, that's easy enough to do too. Anomie 17:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Ideally, I want to recode the template to force the editor to just enter the start year and have the template calculate the end year. This is how {{NHL Year}} works. Unfortunately, doing that will break every instance of the template currently in use. It would require another bot run to drop the the hyphen/en dash and everything after it. But, given the logic you demonstrated, I might be able to code it to handle both. Its been a year or two since I've done really any major template coding so I'm relearning it and learning what has been added. I'm assuming {{#replace:}} doesn't work on enwiki, does it?—NMajdantalk 18:31, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Just created Category:Uses of Cbb link with a hyphenated year and added logic to the template to populate it.—NMajdantalk 19:23, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, the string functions are not enabled here (the devs would rather have something like embedded Lua, never mind that that's quite far from available); {{str left}} uses a side effect of the padleft parser function to pull off the leftmost characters, and we have a few even-more-hacky string manipulation templates based on the same thing to go with it.
If you'd rather change the template to detect single-year versus hyphenated-or-dashed-year until a bot can go around and change the existing uses, {{#ifeq:{{#expr:{{{year}}}}}|{{{year}}}| is single year | not single year }} should detect it. Anomie 21:27, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Wouldn't that greatly increase the number of ifexist calls? I'm worried many of the templates that use this template would break.—NMajdantalk 16:46, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Not if you do it right. Just instead of {{{season|{{{year}}}}}} use {{#ifeq:{{#expr:{{{season|{{{year}}}}}}}}|{{{season|{{{year}}}}}}|{{dash year|{{{season|{{{year}}}}}}}}|{{{season|{{{year}}}}}}}}. Then once the bot is done, you'd replace it with just {{dash year|{{{season|{{{year}}}}}}}}. No change in the number of ifexist calls. Anomie 17:25, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I think I finally got this thing rewritten like I want. It handles the calls that are formatted as they are now and it will work with the new format I have planned. It is still in my userspace. I will probably implement tomorrow morning so I can monitor it to make sure it doesn't break it. I feel I've tested it pretty thoroughly but you never know. Thanks for the help. Once I verify it doesn't break anything, I would still like a bot run to change everything to the new format.—NMajdantalk 22:00, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
AnomieBOT is ready. Note that the current {{cbb link}} also accepts "season" as a synonym for "year", and a fair number of pages seem to make use of that. Anomie 02:49, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, crap. I spot-checked a few articles and didn't see any use of that. Can your bot also change that? If not, then that's probably something I can get AWB to do. That, and gender to sex. Also, my new template just takes the first four digits of the year field and ignores everything after, so I think I can do without a bot run to fix the dashes. I think I can accomplish what I need now with a simple AWB run. But thanks for your help with the template.—NMajdantalk 12:13, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
AWB appears to be broken at the moment pending a future release. That may delay my deployment of the new template. Oh well.—NMajdantalk 13:31, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
You should be able to download a working version from here - Kingpin13 (talk) 13:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Move date articles to Portal namespace

Most articles in Category:Days in 2005 and Category:Days in 2003 need to be moved out of article space to Portal space.

Rather than having the article February 12, 2005, it should be in the portal namespace at Portal:Current events/2005 February 12, like the more recent Portal:Current events/2008 November 23. We should have articles for month year (February 2005), but not month day, year. They, as they are not actual articles, should be in the portal namespace and transcluded to the month article, like how Portal:Current events/2008 September 6 is transcluded to September 2008.

This is already a set precedent, and this is how it has been done for more recent years. Earlier years, however, were not updated and moved to Portal:Current events. All I need is a simple bot that can move date articles such as July 31, 2005, which is simply transcluded into July 2005, to "Portal:Current events/", like Portal:Current events/2005 July 31. Thanks, Reywas92Talk 18:57, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Fix disambiguation links, Italian Socialist Party

 Not done No longer required; article has moved back  Chzz  ►  13:06, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The Italian Socialist Party article was moved to Italian Socialist Party (historical). As there are several links to Italian Socialist Party which will become a disambiguation to both Italian Socialist Party (historical) to Italian Socialist Party (current) (the new destination of Socialist Party (Italy)).

We need a bot in order to change all the current links to Italian Socialist Party into [[Italian Socialist Party (historical)|Italian Socialist Party]] in every single article that includes such links. Is there any bot able to do such a job? Thank you. --Checco (talk) 21:29, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

This request is no longer needed, as I will return the article Italian Socialist Party (historical) to its original place at Italian Socialist Party.--Autospark (talk) 00:30, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

interwiki sorting

Resolved

I have no idea if this is the right place to bring up the issue, but is there a possibility to have the bots sort the interwiki-links ("Other languages") alphabetically by name of language rather than name of prefix?

Right now, they sort (for example) "Avañe'ẽ" under G (gn), "Diné bizaad" under N (nv), and "Deitsch" under P (pds) ... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 14:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Help:Interlanguage_links#Sorting says;

The link tags should be sorted alphabetically based on the local names of the languages, as described at m:Interwiki sorting order. The vast majority of articles are currently sorted this way. Sorting alphabetically according to the two-letter language abbreviations is also acceptable. There are numerous other sorting methods to sort interlanguage links, but consistency between articles is encouraged.

Thus, I think;
  • A. It would be worthwhile informing the owners of any bots who do not sort that way,
  • B. There is no compelling reason for a bot to correct pages that are not sorted that way, because alpha-abbrev is "also acceptable"

 Chzz  ►  12:52, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Hm, I guess. It was just a thought. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 13:04, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Resolved

via manual edits  Chzz  ►  17:00, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Due to the closure of the UEFA EURO 2008 website, all the links to the match reports of several editions of the European Football Championships (previously added into en.wiki pages) are broken at this moment. We need a bot in order to substitute the partial URL string http://en.euro2008.uefa.com/ with the string http://en.uefa.com/competitions/euro2012/, so that the links can be restored correctly into the following articles:

Instead, for the UEFA Euro 2008 articles (UEFA Euro 2008, UEFA Euro 2008 Group A, UEFA Euro 2008 Group B, UEFA Euro 2008 Group C, UEFA Euro 2008 Group D and UEFA Euro 2008 knockout stage), the old partial URL string http://en.euro2008.uefa.com/ must be changed with the following ones:

Best regards, --Mess (talk) 21:06, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Response

With regards to the first part of the above request, only 6 of those pages contained the URL you gave; I changed those - they seem OK, please check them; [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Most of the links on those pages are actually to www.uefa.com and give a 404, such as http://www.uefa.com/competitions/euro/history/season=1972/round=184/match=3836/index.html - but I've no idea what they should be fixed to.

UEFA_Euro_2008 In the QF Spain-Italy, there is a link to

http://en.euro2008.uefa.com/tournament/matches/match=301702/report=rp.html (which does not work), but

changing it to

http://en.uefa.com/competitions/euro2012/history/season=2008/round=15094/tournament/matches/match=30170

2/report=rp.html (per the above) also fails.

After searching the site, I found that it should be

http://en.uefa.com/competitions/euro2012/history/season=2008/round=15094/match=301702/index.html

(ie the actual final part of the URL is different)

I fixed that specific one with [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?

title=UEFA_Euro_2008&diff=prev&oldid=320780876 this edit].

Similarly, the report for the semi between Russia and Spain needed to be changed to

http://en.uefa.com/competitions/euro2012/history/season=2008/round=15095/match=301698/index.html (fixed

with this edit)

There are four other links to en.euro2008 in that article; I'm not sure what they should be corrected to;

In UEFA Euro 2008 Group A there were three match-report links to en.euro2008, which again I fixed manually with this edit. Similarly, the URLs needed changing, not just replacing.

I have not corrected the other groups or the knockout stage.

Unfortunately, I do not think that a bot can help much with these edits; if you do think that some kind of largescale search/replace could help, please let me know.

Two things that you might find helpful are;

I hope that this has helped; as I say, if you can think of any direct search/replace operation that would help, please let me know, but it would appear not to be quite as simple as described in the request.  Chzz  ►  12:32, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry, I thank you for the answer, maybe I wasn't been clear when I explained this request. Nevertheless, I resolved the problem replacing the bad links manually, so you can close this procedure. Bye. --Mess (talk) 16:36, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Move images to the Commons

My request is for a bot to move files from Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons to the Commons. There is currently a backlog of 18,000 files in that category, and I can guess that we all know the benefits of having the files there rather than here. The bot would most likely need to be manual due to some files needing to be renamed when they are moved. I have seen at least one other bot performing this task, but the owner is multi-lingual, and I believe that he primarily focuses on the Dutch Wikipedia. — CobraWiki ( jabber | stuff ) 20:17, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

This might not be the best for a bot since not all the files in that category have complete information resulting in missing information, nor are the details all in one format (eg: using {{Information}}) so it would be hard for a bot to detect which ones, and as far as i'm aware commons deletes all files that are transferred there that are missing information. Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 00:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Skepticism is why I brought up the fact that there is already at least one bot that does this type of work. The bot is registered to work manually, and I assume that he uses it in conjunction with [CommonsHelper] since he mentions being a registered Wikimedia Toolserver user. I don't know how, but I can assume that using the bot speeds up the process otherwise what is the point? — CobraWiki ( jabber | stuff ) 05:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Citations

There are 12 citation templates that use {{Citation/core}}. All of these define a parameter |PS=. That is the postscript parameter, defining the closing character of the citation. In all cases this is a dot/full period. The only exception is {{Citation}} that didn't have the dot as the default value of this parameter. Today this was added, together with a few other things that standarised all these templates. The problem is that in the case of {{Citation}} some editors have been manually adding dots to citations the articles. So now we sometimes have double dots (so to speak). See Template_talk:Citation#Full_stop_at_the_end_of_the_template_2.

My request is, could some bot slowly check all pages transcluding {{Citation}} (must be some 50,000+) and remove the superfluous dots that were added before (be it purpusefully or by accident)? We would be looking for something like {{Citation ... }}., and remove that dot at the end. Debresser (talk) 19:19, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

If that were significantly easier we could remove the dot only from cases of form {{Citation ... }}.</ref> I am sure that would take care of most of them as well. Debresser (talk) 20:46, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

If there weren't that many pages, I'd already have started with AWB. I am certain that on many pages we will not find superfluous dots at all, because the usual form of all citation templates apart from {{Citation}} is with a hardcoded dot. Debresser (talk) 20:51, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I could write something to handle this one way or the other, but there is still debate about how the template inconsistency and the resulting inconsistencies in page output are best resolved. Amalthea 08:11, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Input from bot editors about the possibilities available, would perhaps help people make up their minds. Debresser (talk) 10:16, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLP notification

The discussion at WT:BLP#Should article creators and/or major contributors help reduce the backlog? seems to conclude that a bot notifying editors that an article they contributed to is listed as an unreferenced BLP would be a good idea. The bot should contact the creator, substantial editors (if it can be reasonably defined), and possibly recent editors - ideally filtering out editors who haven't been active for a very long time, and ideally filtering out editors who used automated tools to make minor corrections or add tags. It needs doing carefully however - in particular you don't want to send people dozens of messages - but a single message with a list of articles needing attention which they've created or been involved with would be good. Erwin85Bot, for instance, detects previous messages and adds a short message for additional information of the same type. Probably some form of throttle would be needed to ensure profilic editors don't get swamped (possibly a user subpage could be created for them?). Also the bot would obviously be working backwards from the relevant dated maintenance categories.

User:ThaddeusB expressed an interest in this but implied it might take quite a while for him to get round to it. Can someone else take it on? The unreferenced BLP backlog grows daily. Rd232 talk 14:32, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Thats not a bad idea! Your right about editors being swamped, hopefully ThaddeusB can do that. However, for a long term implementation, perhaps User:SDPatrolBot Can help out. It does a task very similar: it watches the recent-changes for the addition/Removal of CSD and PROD templates, and alerts users about them. It seems like the owner could just add this t the list of tasks that the bot does. Tim1357 (talk) 21:50, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
So far there seems to be support for this idea, although I would suggest trying to get a few more editor's opinions (maybe a post at WP:BLPN? Although this isn't really the kind of thing they discuss there). This task looks fairly straightforward from a programming point of view; the bot goes through one of the BLP unsourced categories, and for each page, it goes through the history, and finds out which editor's have significantly changed the text, disregarding blocked users, users who haven't edited for a long time, users who were reverting etc. And it then leaves a notice on each of those user's talk pages. I can think of a few good ways of making sure the warnings don't get stacked up. Is this to be a one-time run continuous? - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:35, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
I've just left notes at WP:BLPN and WP:VPT, I think that's enough. As to whether it's one-time or continuous, not sure, but it might be a good idea initially to do it in batches and see what sort of volumes arise, eg from doing 2006 cats, and also see feedback from users. Ultimately I suppose it could be continuous; separately from handling the backlog, there is a particular value in pointing out unreferenced BLPs shortly after creation, when the contributor(s) are more likely to be around, and to have the subject matter fresh in their minds. Rd232 talk 10:34, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Centralized discussion would be a good place, too. Lugnuts (talk) 18:54, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
Done. Rd232 talk 19:36, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

LaraBot (talk · contribs) does this for newly created articles. Rettetast (talk) 19:18, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I could do it - I have the time to add this functionality to a bot if the process has consensus - won't object if MZMcBride wants to add to LaraBot though. Fritzpoll (talk) 19:39, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

  • I'm not really sure what the difference between this and LaraBot would be... could somebody please explain this? –Juliancolton | Talk 00:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
    • The idea was to start at the back of the backlog (October 2006?) and notify editors that created those articles who are still active that "their" article remains unsourced. The idea being that they probably created the article when new & unfamiliar with guidelines. Now that they know better, they might be willing to go back now and source their past work. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:06, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
what proportion of them are still around and active? DGG ( talk ) 22:29, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Good question. It was suggested that the bot filter out presently inactive editors, but I'm not sure there are any stats on how many that might leave. Rd232 talk 14:43, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd go along with using the LaraBot or any other means to get through what I'm sure is a big backlog. Bearian (talk) 15:27, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Template:cbb link and Template:cfb link exist to allow an editor to link to a team's article and force the link to use the most appropriate article available, whether it be the University's main article (University of Oklahoma, the article about the athletic program (Oklahoma Sooners), the article of that sport at that university (Oklahoma Sooners football), or to the article about that specific year's team (2009 Oklahoma Sooners football team). If all that exists at the time the article is written is the article about that particular sport at that university, then the use can use one of these templates and it will automatically change to the yearly article when it is created. However, given the number of ifexist calls in these templates, we have to be cautious about how many times it is used in an article. For that reason, when the template is fully expanded to the yearly team article, it will add the article to one of two categories: Category:Excessive uses of cbb link or Category:Excessive uses of cfb link. This indicates that the template is being used in a way that could now be accomplished with simple wikilinks.

I am requesting a bot that could read these categories and replace the template with the yearly article. So, if {{cbb link|2009|team=Oklahoma Sooners|sex=men|school=University of Oklahoma|title=Oklahoma}} is encountered, since the 2009–10 Oklahoma Sooners men's basketball team article exists, the template should be replaced with [[2009–10 Oklahoma Sooners men's basketball team|Oklahoma]]. This bot would really only need to be ran probably once a month or quarter. Hopefully this won't be a difficult task.—NMajdantalk 18:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:PERF ?
The bot will need some way of determining which ones are being used excessively since the category doesn't tell us. –xenotalk 18:49, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
All the ones in the category have instances where they are being used when they don't need to be.—NMajdantalk 18:53, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, and many of those in the category have multiple uses; the bot will need to be smart enough to figure out which uses are excessive. –xenotalk 18:54, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Correct. It would have to spot the uses of the template, then identify if the fully expanded, yearly team article exists, and if so, change the template to a wikilink.—NMajdantalk 18:56, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Coding... Regarding WP:PERF, IMO the developers have said "use #ifexists as little as possible" in making it only be usable 100 500 times per page. Anomie 20:30, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
BRFA filed Anomie 21:56, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
I've reworked (better word?) parts of the template and have created {{expensive}}. It seems unlikely that a page will exceed the 500 call, as the template would be embedded over 100 times. This would likely be symptom of Overlinking. Anyway, from your description of the template it sounds like it is intended to eliminate red links which is a bad thing (as was discussed at WT:FAC). — Dispenser 22:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
This may help the coder (Anomie), whenever the link is found to be an "excessive use", the template calls for [[Category:Excessive uses of cbb link]] immediately after the link. This should make finding those which are unnecessary easier to find.  –Nav  talk to me or sign my guestbook 01:09, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Renaming of all articles in Category:Seasons in Spanish football competitions and its subcategories

It was recently agreed amongst the editors at WP:FOOTY that all football season articles should be in the format "[Season] [Competition] [Modifier]" (e.g. 2009–10 UEFA Champions League group stage). The process to move all existing articles to the new titles is extremely laborious and a bot was previously used to move all of the articles in Category:Seasons in English football competitions. Therefore, I believe it would not be unreasonable to request a bot to move all of the articles in Category:Seasons in Spanish football competitions. One article (2009–10 Copa del Rey) is already in the correct format, but all of the rest will need moving. A WikiCookie is on offer to whichever one of you wonderful bot makers can fulfil this request. – PeeJay 10:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

A little help please? – PeeJay 00:21, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Anyone?! – PeeJay 15:19, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Hello? – PeeJay 22:40, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
I have to say, it is more than a little aggravating to see this request go ignored for so long while other requests are being responded to within a couple of hours. I made this request almost two weeks ago, and it doesn't seem like anyone's even bothered to look at it! – PeeJay 19:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
This seems easy enough. So just to confirm the moves are as follows ? –xenotalk 19:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Segunda División 1929–30  -> 1929–30 Segunda División
Segunda División B 1977–78 -> 1977–78 Segunda División B 
Tercera División 1929–30 -> 1929–30 Tercera División
Copa del Rey 1902 -> 1902 Copa del Rey
Thanks for the reply, xeno. Yes, that's correct. The "Segunda Division B Play-off" articles will also need moving (they can be found in the Tercera División seasons category). Thanks again. – PeeJay 19:48, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
I could do this if only it didn't use that gorram UTF character. I'll create the pairs list and get someone else to run movepages.py... –xenotalk 19:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Here is the pairs list: [10] (please double-check it). This needs to be copied into a text file called moves.txt and the following command run: python movepages.py -pairs:moves.txt -summary:"Standardize per [[WP:FOOTY]]"xenotalk 20:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Running now. Totally meant to have LawBot do it... too many logins and I haven't used pywikipedia in forever. Ah well. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:38, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Cheers, –xenotalk 20:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
I hope the running of the bot takes into account the changes I made to the changelist. – PeeJay 21:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Nope, but the playoff one should be easy enough to fix manually. Why would La Liga 1929 be moved to 1929 Primera División though? (nvm, I get it =) [11]xenotalk 22:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Has the thread at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football#Primera División (part 2) been resolved such that "La Liga" can take the main "Primera Division" year articles, or will this create ambiguity?
Even then, a move of this nature would also require updating each article as well. –xenotalk 22:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
True. Never mind that then. We can always make any appropriate moves later, once an overall consensus has been established. – PeeJay 22:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Also can the bot or someone else edit - Template:La Liga seasons, La Liga (section 15 "Year by year") and List of Spanish football champions (section "Champions"), as the links to the articles in those gives you a redirect.
0-- HonorTheKing (talk) 23:34, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry template merging bot request

If someone could comment at this SPI discussion (Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations#Single sockpuppet template) in response to Avi, it would be much appreciated. NW (Talk) 05:00, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:GAC bot request

Resolved

Until last March, WP:GAC relied upon StatisticianBot to produce the daily Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Report and perform a daily update of Wikipedia:Good article nominations/backlog/items. Is it possible that a new bot could be created to perform these functions again.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 22:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

StatisticianBot has been fixed and is now ready to start running this task again. —Daniel Vandersluis(talk) 20:29, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Feel free to start it up at your convenience.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:52, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

hello there bot operators,

per the consensus here, I'm requesting that a bot apply this regex:

 Find (\n==+[^\n=]+==+ *\n)((?:[^=\n][^\n]*\n)*)([^=\n][^\n]{{[ _]*([Dd]ead[ _]+link[ _]|
[ _]Dl[ _]|[ _]Deadlink[ _]|[ _]Cleanup-link[ _]|[ _]Dl-s[ _]|[ _]404[ _]|[ _]Broken[ _]+link[ _]|[ _]Brokenlink[ _]|[ _]Linkbroken[ _]|[ _]Link[ _]+broken[ _]

)*[\|}\n])
 replace with $1{{dead link header}}\n$2$3

to all the articles that translude the tmplates {{dead link}} and all of its re-directs:

{{Dl}} 
{{Deadlink}} 
{{Cleanup-link}} 
{{Dl-s}} 
{{404}} 
{{Broken link}} 
{{Brokenlink}} 
{{Linkbroken}} 
{{Link broken}}

I'd do it myself but I have dial-up. Tim1357--(what?...ohhh) 16:33, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

BRFA filed; see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Robert SkyBot 4. Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 01:13, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Great, Thanks! Tim1357--(what?...ohhh) 01:48, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Substitution of {{notmoved}}

Per my closing of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 October 10#Template:Moved, the templates {{moved}} and {{notmoved}} should be substituted in preparation for deletion. It would be great if someone could run a bot (or AWB) to replace all {{notmoved}} with {{subst:notmoved}}. The request has also been posted at WP:TFD/H. Thanks. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 23:31, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Doing... Anomie 00:24, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Y Done Anomie 03:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 23:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)