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Like a bot for an automated email

AS per this discussion, Inactive Admin Email, it has been suggested that some of the Wild Souls here cold be the best folk to help us get this done. :) - Arcayne (cast a spell) 20:25, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The API has a module for e-mailing users. Should be simple enough to write and I think bots are (or should be) excluded from the usual rate limits. Or the rate limits are high enough that you wouldn't hit them. I'm not sure there's consensus for such a mass-spamming at the moment, though. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
there's a fairly involved discussion that concluded with the suggestion to send it to the inactives, to gauge who would return to the wiki-en or relinquish the admin bit if they weren't using it any longer. So, not so much 'spam', in the sense you are implying. This would actually be useful. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 18:19, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Do you have a bot name in mind? And is there a set criteria for what constitutes an "inactive" administrator to be used? I can probably knock this out. Something else to bear in mind: the bot account would also have to have a valid e-mail set, so you'd have to figure out whether you'd want a noreply e-mail address or an individual person or whatever. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps these questions could be answered if you were to pose them at the discussion. My very basic answers to your questions (ie, we were planning to send the message to those admins inactive from the wiki-en for 6 months, etc.) might not be as insightful as you perhaps seek. If you wish to ask about the criteria for the bot, I am sure you;d find answers there. As for names, howzabout 'Inactive Admin Ping'? - Arcayne (cast a spell) 22:23, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Mapit-US-cityscale

I just closed this TFD and will probably need some help orphaning it. In many cases it's redundant to coordinates already listed in the infobox. However, in some cases, it may be the only place where the coordinates are listed. In this case, it would be great if it could be converted to {{coord}} with the "title" option. You can get an idea of what needs to be done to make this conversion if you check the template code. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 21:07, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Null edits

Resolved

Could someone please apply a null edit to all of the pages in Category:ArticleHistory error? I made a small mistake with a template which added hundreds of articles to it, and it is taking a long time to empty which is stopping people from finding the real errors. (I know this category doesn't exist; for some reason they prefer to keep it a redlink.) Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:01, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

This appears to be resolved. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, after a joint effort. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:42, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Portal move, and subpages

Need a bot to move a lot of subpages.

Thank you for your time, Cirt (talk) 20:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Is there consensus for this or any discussion? I can probably have LawBot do it as long as people won't chop off my head. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Here's your consensus: Portal talk:Children and Young Adult Literature#Rename. — the Man in Question (in question) 21:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, we have unanimous consensus. :) Cirt (talk) 21:14, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Should be finished in a few minutes: Special:Contributions/LawBot. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:24, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I think this is now  Done, thanks! Cirt (talk) 21:43, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect case template parameters

Template parameters are case sensitive. Users often type them in wrong. I started manually running reports some time ago for individual templates to find where users had simply used the wrong case for a parameter, then I used AWB to correct the case. Eventually I switched to automatically scanning all templates for parameters they accept, then scanning all articles for parameters passed to the templates. Unfortunately AWB by default only fixes the case on parameters for a very small number of templates. I currently have a list of over 45,000 template calls on Wikipedia where the user simply used the wrong case for the parameter. I dumped it as a wikitable, but could make it any format that is easiest for fixing. I can run the software under my bot account, which is already approved for the task (though a new approval may have to be done if AWB is not used). I'm hoping someone here can help in writing an AWB plugin or something. The full list is over 4MB (too big to post to Wikipedia), but I can easily post it on one of my web servers if you'd like to run it under your own account. I'm not looking for "credit" for the edits or anything, I just want the template calls fixed. Thanks! --Pascal666 07:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Orphan {{Sample box end}}

This template is currently deprecated and should not be any articles given that {{Sample box start}} is basically orphaned. I believe that {{Sample box start}} was converted to {{Listen}} sometime ago, and the uses of {{Sample box end}} were never removed in the process. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 23:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Update, it appears that only some of these should be orphaned. The rest may need to be orphaned soon per a current TFD. For now, it's probably best to leave this alone. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 01:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Bot for NFL Grid Cleanups

See discussion at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Football_League&oldid=340216721#TEMPLATE_NEEDED:_Pre-draft_measurables

This bot request is to do one thing and possibly two.

  1. The bot should find all NLF Players with a "Predraft measurables" grid. This is probably the hard part. If this can be done, the information should be available at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League
  2. After finding that information, if possible, could the bot add the template Template:Nfl predraft in place of the grid, and populate the template values based on the information in the existing grid?

Let me know, thanks... Timneu22 (talk) 23:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Generic future comment to keep this from being archived. tedder (talk) 02:02, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
Can this be done simply by watching this search and then done by hand? tedder (talk) 02:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Not sure if that search is sufficient. We can definitely do the work manually, but if a bot could get the list (even if it is just based on this search) it would be quite helpful. Timneu22 (talk) 12:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Tagging with {{db-blanked}} when the only substantial contributor blanks

This would avoid that recent changes patrollers revert article blankings when it's not vandalism but intended by the creator. I believe I saw such a bot working for some time, but I haven't seen it again. Regards, Anna Lincoln 09:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi there again Anna :). A bot I run, User:SDPatrolBot, will mark pages for CSD G7 when the creator blanks it, as long as the page was marked for some other CSD before the blanking (i.e. it was probably going to be deleted anyway). I've not been running this bot for the last few days, because I've been busy with User:SDPatrolBot II's trial, but I'm now just waiting for ThaddeusB to take over, so SDPB should be running again now. Another bot, User:MichaelkourlasBot, marks pages for deletion if they have only one editor, and that editor has blanked the page. But I don't think that MichaelkourlasBot runs very often. As a previously approved task it may be easier to get approval (or you could see if Michaelkourlas could set up his bot to run continuously). Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 11:24, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Hello! Thanks, Anna Lincoln 11:40, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Template moves

These templates should be moved thus:

Usprimary<YYYY><State abbr>-<party abbr> to <State name> presidential primary <YYYY> (<Party name>)

e.g. Usprimary1996NE-d => Nebraska presidential primary 1996 (Democrat)

Short form of the party name seems best.

Rich Farmbrough, 14:03, 6 February 2010 (UTC).

Repeatable housekeeping task

Replacing (<sup>)?[\[(]citation needed[\])](</sup>)? (or similar pattern) with {{citation needed}}. I've got a preliminary list of 366 articles if anyone wants it. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 23:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

How are you pulling the list? I assume someone with toolserver should do this, so they can do the ongoing search for that phrase. Some sort of consensus discussion/advertisement (VPP?) would help. tedder (talk) 02:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I did a pre-parse with AWB. Didn't want to clutter my contribs with housekeeping, and there are probably more, so I thought I'd post here. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I will take this under a new BRFA I have been planning for this type of fixes, if that's OK. Rich Farmbrough, 16:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC).

Bot to help keep images out of Category:Images lacking a description

Currently there is a nice template message (Imbox style.png) in this category which appears on each image lacking a description and says:

Notify the uploader with: {{subst:add-desc-I|1=filename.jpg}}

I did this about twice (went to the uploader's talk page and pasted in the template) and then thought "why can't a bot do this for the next 14,579 images?"

Please let me know if you need more info on this idea. Thanks, laurap414 (talk) 15:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Well it would be a fairly simple bot to write...scan the category and then simply post to the image owner. My only question is what if a person has say 22 image without a description? Could someone please make a template for letting someone know if they have multiple images without a description? (Or put up how such a notice would be formatted)?Smallman12q (talk) 00:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I would think that it would be OK if the bot was 'dumb' and just left a message for each image, the person could just delete the messages if their talk page got overloaded. The first pass would be messy but then perhaps the bot could auto-run daily (or hourly?) & people would get the idea quickly. What do you think? laurap414 (talk) 19:22, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd rather it be slightly smarter...it should build an array of whom to notify, and each picture for each person. I don't think people would like getting spammed with 20 or so "you forgot to add description" messages. It would probably be best to run it continuously/daily. Also, we have to decide whether or not to message people who upload newer copies... Either way, I'm waiting for other people to comment...Smallman12q (talk) 19:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
The naive approach you describe leads to things like User talk:Giantcn. Users get overwhelmed with the mass of warnings and either ignore them or lash out at the bot operator. --Carnildo (talk) 01:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
Which approach...could you be more specific. Your response appears ambiguous.Smallman12q (talk) 02:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

A one off run would be easier. Even AWB could avoid multiple post though. Rich Farmbrough, 16:11, 6 February 2010 (UTC).

I recently discovered that lifestyle has three hatnotes and likely a fourth on the way, as an editor at WP:Articles for deletion/Snugger Fit Condoms indicated an interest in creating an article for the eponymous condom company. I created a disambiguation page according to the recommendations at WP:DAB, following the suggestion that it's preferable not to create Lifestyle (disambiguation). In retrospect that would have been a better idea because of the number of links pointing to the article. I've been updating them manually to point to lifestyle (sociology) and will continue to do so, but if a bot could help on this task my fingers would be quite grateful.--otherlleft 18:11, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

The solve_disambiguation.py program in pywikipedia (AWB has a similar function) would help you enormously with cleaning up. I encourage you to download and install it. Josh Parris 23:56, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I will check into it.--otherlleft 17:03, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

BLP tagging?

Go through all article talk pages looking for the ones that fulfil all of the following

For all the pages that are found with all of the above criteria, the "blp=yes" should be added to {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}, like so.

Is this a feasible and prudent task for a bot? Gabbe (talk) 19:37, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Need a fix for the bot running DYK updates

DYK operation has much relied on DYKadminBot (talk · contribs) which automatically updated the DYK template on the main page and handed out credits. After a recent event, which might be a [[system-level change in the WP code, the bot stopped functioning and its operator nixeagle (talk · contribs) is hardly available at all. Would someone be willing to write a replacement bot or fix the code (apparently Ameliorate! hoped for this to happen) and run it themselves?

Another possibility would be to run another bot that could be activated by making an edit to it's userspace and which would then run once and then turn itself off again. Such a set up could be done using a very slightly modified version of the code and might need less work. Such bot would check periodically if a run was requested and run if so. Materialscientist (talk) 04:49, 17 February 2010 (UTC) (and DYK project)

Bot for url edit

The url for Spin's digital issues site was moved from http://digital.spin.com/ (which now redirects to a Zinio page) to http://spin-cdnsrc.texterity.com/. An example of the requested edit is my recent edit at the Things Fall Apart (album) article, shown here. I would manually change it, but I searched articles with this url link as a reference, and there are just so many. Dan56 (talk) 04:24, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I checked the url and watched the tutorial ;-). Parameter pg contains the page number and pm is the count of pages shown. u1 is just for referrer and all other are leavings from search query, so they can be removed for some shorter urls. There are 82 links on enwiki and 34 more globally (on 23 wikis). I'll start my bot in some hours. Merlissimo 11:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Y Done There where also some 302 because of missing slash and the end. All links to magazin pages corrected. There is only one link to that domain left in Spin (magazine). Merlissimo 15:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

NRHP disambiguation refinement

I dunno if this is complicated or easy. There are currently 1,743 disambiguation pages in Category:Disambig-Class National Register of Historic Places articles, each containing one or more National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) entries. I personally created and/or developed most of these dab pages. Of these, many/most contain one or more "red-link NRHP entries", such as this:

which is not in perfect compliance with wp:MOSDAB guideline. The issue which dab-focussed editors bring up from time to time is that for technical compliance with the MOS:DABRL component of MOSDAB, the supporting bluelink, which currently pipelinks to List of RHPs in AR which redirects to National Register of Historic Places listings in Arkansas, should be more precise. At one time the Coca-Cola Building entry probably appeared on the state-wide list-article there, but that has since been split up into county- and city-specific lists. And for expedience I used the "List of RHPs in [STATE]" shortcut when setting up the dab.

Having just manually fixed up a couple dab pages to address one dab-focussed editor's stated concern, I encountered numerous cases where the equivalent of "Morrilton" turned out to be a city or town that spans two or three county lines, requiring lookup in each of the corresponding county NRHP lists to figure out which county the specific equivalent of "Coca-Cola Building" exists. So, bot-programming-wise, it would seem necessary for the bot to focus on the second approach, i.e. scanning the county- and city-list-articles listed at the state-wide list-article, to find the one having the relevant row. --doncram (talk) 16:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Further thot: depending on what's possible, another approach would be to follow the equivalent of the manual process of going to the red-link and hitting "What links here", and then selecting the NRHP list-article titled "National Register of Historic Places listings in ___" from those possibilities. If this approach could be programmed, it would be of broader application to fixing up lots of other dab pages.
That's exactly what I was thinking of doing. I noticed that sometimes there's multiple pages that link to the redlinked article, so some algorithm will need to be figured out how to pick between arbitrary pages, and it would be wonderful it it was helpful in more general dab-cleanup (at an initial guess, I was going to say anything lower in the category hierarchy - but that doesn't generalize well, so I'm open to suggestions). Josh Parris 14:05, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

For technical compliance, this one should be refined to link more precisely to a county list that has been split out, as in:

To refine these manually takes some bother. One has to look up Morrilton, Arkansas to see which county it is in, discovering that it is in Conway County, then revise the pipelink to point to "National Register of Historic Places in Conway County, Arkansas". Or one could try each of the county lists linked from the statewide list, and discover on which page the "Coca-Cola Building" having "Morrilton" or "Morrilton, Arkansas" in the same row (which would turn out to be "National Register of Historic Places in Conway County" in this case).

In some states there are NRHP entries still at the state-wide location, such as at National Register of Historic Places listings in North Dakota, to which List of RHPs in ND redirects, so in some cases "List of RHPs in [STATE]" where [STATE] is a 2-letter code is okay as is.

A complication is that for some states the county-level lists have been split out, but onto pages having a group of counties, such as for Baker County, Georgia, whose NRHP list appears on National Register of Historic Places listings in Georgia, counties A-B. It would be fine either if the bot could go all the way to figure out that National Register of Historic Places listings in Georgia, counties A-B#Bacon County is the desired pipelink to use; or if the bot could use "National Register of Historic Places listings in Bacon County, Georgia" and identify that a redirect is needed (and possibly create it, i.e. from "National Register of Historic Places listings in Bacon County, Georgia" to "National Register of Historic Places listings in Georgia, counties A-B#Bacon County"); or if the bot could just put in the pipelink to "National Register of Historic Places listings in Bacon County, Georgia|listed on the NRHP in Bacon County, Georgia" and leave it for me and other editors to manually create the necessary redirect.

A further complication is that some city and town lists have been split out of county-level NRHP lists, such as has been done for National Register of Historic Places listings in Suffolk County, New York. But pointing to the Suffolk County NRHP list is better than pointing to the statewide list that List of RHPs in NY redirects to, and would suffice IMO.

Honestly, I don't myself feel that refining all of these supporting bluelink entries is all that important. All of these supporting bluelinks are gradually being eliminated over time, as the NRHP articles are created. And the readers are well enough served, IMHO, by an indication that there exists a Coca-Cola Building that is located in Morrilton and that it is NRHP-listed and more specifics are located on some subpage of the AR state-wide NRHP list. But it is irritating when a dab-focussed editor comes around and deletes all of the red-link NRHP entries, rather than refining them to meet their narrow dab page rules, though. The dab-focussed editor is not all wrong though, they have a point. See User talk:Doncram#Main Street Historic District for a current flareup of this issue. So if a bot could do the refinements, it would be helpful for maintaining relations between groups of editors with different priorities. Would it be possible to program? If it is programmed, the bot should be saved to be re-run again occasionally, as the NRHP list structure gets refined over time. Thanks in advance for your consideration. --doncram (talk) 14:53, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Let me add my support to this request. It is, indeed, some bother to manually refine these bluelinks now that many/most county articles have been split out. This causes repeated confilct between the creator and supporters of these dab pages, and the dab experts. Please, somebody help us reduce this conflict. It would take me probably a year to fix them all manually, while the hundreds of pictures I have to upload and articles I want to write would go undone! Lvklock (talk) 21:37, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Disambiguation? I specialize in that! I haven't got huge amounts of time for this right now, but I'll start scraping something together; it might take a couple of weeks. Is that an acceptable time-frame? Josh Parris 14:39, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
That would be like totally great! There's no rush.
Depending on how what programming strategy is used, it could be more or less important to run a supporting cleanup campaign, first. The supporting campaign could be to use Dispenser's dab-solver on all the NRHP list articles, which would ensure the NRHP list articles would show links to the red-link targets rather than to the disambiguation pages showing those red-links. A separate bot could possibly be run to add more disambiguation pages to the category of NRHP disambiguation (by adding "WikiProject NRHP|class=dab" to Talk pages), by searching all dab pages for occurrences of "National Register of Historic Places listings in " or "List of RHPs in ". Those could give the main fixup bot some more reach, but would not be essential as the vast majority of the cases would already be covered. --doncram (talk) 13:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Make your wikiprojecttagging a separate request, there are others better suited to that than I. And the cleanup campaign I'll leave up to you. Josh Parris 14:05, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, will make sep request and will enlist WikiProject NRHP people to do the cleanup campaign. My guess is many will be glad to help in that. I'll report back here in a week or two after that is done, hopefully. Thanks! --doncram (talk) 14:17, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

"Main" vs. "Catmore" in Category namespace

I noticed that there are a lot of pages in the Category namespace which transclude {{main}} when they probably should be using {{catmore}}. I was going to fix this myself using AWB but for some reason it won't allow me to make the appropriate list. This is admittedly a minor problem, but I think the catmore template should be used in these categories, because that is what it was designed for. --Eastlaw talk ⁄ contribs 07:42, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I think pywikipedia has something like what you're after. Josh Parris 12:00, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
I used an SQL query to obtain a list of all categories transcluding {{main}}. 3421 pages in total; results are at tools:~earwig/reports/enwiki/main_in_categoryspace.txt. I don't know if it helps, but you may be able to use it for something. — The Earwig @ 20:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikispecies transfer?

Resolved
 – 02:11, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

A bot to copy content from Wikispecies (if there's not already an article on it), convert it to taxobox format, and tag it as a stub? Maybe? Thanks for your input. Cheers!☮ —Ecw.Technoid.Dweeb | contributions | talk | If you reply somewhere other than my talk, please leave me a talkback template. 16:59, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Nope, I wrote this a while back and I got in some trouble for it. See the discussion here. Tim1357 (talk) 02:11, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Unblock

I noticed that there are some users who may be making typos when adding templates to their own user talk pages. I wouldn't be surprised if you said that a bot just for that would be inefficient, so perhaps it could be added to modify an existing bot? mechamind90 18:06, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

So are you suggesting that we instruct a bot to correct their spelling mistakes? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 00:06, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Categorization of Massachusetts pages

Could a bot please instruct their bot to added classes to the pages in the "Category:Unassessed Massachusetts articles" category? Thanks. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:58, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand. Josh Parris 02:35, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I was just wondering if we could get classes added to the Massachusetts project on the articles' respective talk pages. I can't find the bot that does this, so I'm wondering if someone could do this for me. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I think you're looking for something like this? Tim1357 (talk) 04:02, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes! Thanks. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 06:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Uncatecorized and Unreferenced BLPs

Could someone make a list of articles in Category:All unreferenced BLPs that are in no categories when one ignore all maintnance categories, Category:Living people and Cat:XXXX births. Rettetast (talk) 19:50, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Rettetast If you look at User talk:MZMcBride#meaningful cats we got part of that from MZMcBride three weeks ago. There were about 200 articles with exactly two categories - one living people the other year of birth. I pretty much cleared that out but there could be loads more with one of those cats only. ϢereSpielChequers 20:43, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. That should have taken care of some of the articles, but there are probably lots more. Wikipedia:Database reports/Potential biographies of living people (1) is a source for articles that lacks {Category:Living people and it is there I have noticed that there is a lot of articles without proper categories. Rettetast (talk) 22:04, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Notification of deletion discussions on commons, for images originally uploaded on en.wiki

When uploaders' images are moved to the commons, they likely won't be aware of deletion discussions so they can address fixable issues like lack of sourcing. Sometimes deletion nominators on commons make notifications on en.wiki, but this is generally rare. I'm not sure how easy it would be to detect all images that have been moved to commons, but if a bot could check for deletion nominations at least of the standard CommonsHelper format ones that would be very useful to avoid unnecessary image deletions at commons. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

This seems like a good idea; how does one discover that an image has been moved from another wikimedia project to commons, soas to notify the original submitter? Josh Parris 03:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Bot needed to change template parameter for football logos

Resolved
 –  Done by contributions

This is a simple plain-text replacement job, which could be done with WP:AWB.

Category:Football (soccer) logos has been moved to Category:Association football logos, per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 February 5#Category:Association_football. However it is stuck in the processing queue because it is populated by a template, or rather by a parameter to a template.

Currently it is {{Non-free logo|Football (soccer) logos}}, but this needs to be changed to {{Non-free logo|Association football logos}}. (Here's an example of me doing this manually).

About 1000 pages need to be changed, so a bot is needed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:37, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I was actually going to bring this up a day or two ago, but got caught up with other things. There's definitely a need for a bot here, this task would be far too tedious to do manually. — ξxplicit 22:01, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Category:Football (soccer) logos renaming


There are 971 files in Category:Football (soccer) logos, which was renamed to Category:Association football logos. Unfortunately, our standard CfR bot can't handle this one, cause the pages are categorized using {{non-free logo}}. I believe that these pages should be recategorized by a bot; this edit shows what needs to be changed, and gives a suggested edit summary. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:32, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

A bot that generates a complete list of all pages on the wiki and keeps it up to date?

Is there a bot that generates a complete list of all pages on the wiki and keeps it up to date? If so, perhaps there can be some collaboration with the bot operator on creating/maintaining/distributing a centralized list as described here. Thanks, Tisane (talk) 13:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

AWB could generate a list of all pages with the database scanner - but it's going to be way too large to save to a single wiki page. A bot that essentially duplicates Special:Allpages probably wont make it thru BRFA. –xenotalk 14:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Tisane, your proposal is best implemented as a MediaWiki extension which performs remote API queries; you don't need a bot developed to do that. Josh Parris 14:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I was thinking more along the lines of saving the list to an SQL database, for performance reasons. If there were a bot already generating such a list, I figured it would be just as well to share the list. It seemed to me that constant list updating is more like the kind of a thing a bot would do, since it takes place on an ongoing basis rather than whenever there's a pageload. (Don't extensions have to be triggered by a hook rather than always running in the background? Or maybe the extension could be a special page extension; the wiki operator could have a browser opened to the wiki and activate list maintenance via a special page, and the extension will perform queries to update the list every x seconds, as long as that browser window is open.) Forgive me if I seem dense about this; this is my first Mediawiki extension, so there'll be a bit of a learning curve. Tisane (talk) 21:47, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced biography of living persons bot to get projects involved in referencing.

I am looking for a bot to auto-generate a list of Biography of living persons based on the intersection of Category:Unreferenced BLPs articles and a particular wikiproject tag on the talk page of those articles, (i.e. Category:WikiProject London).

User:The-Pope can personally do this for a project one at a time using Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, so it is possible. The bot will need to be smart because the project categories are on the talk pages, but the unreferenced BLP category is on the article pages.

Then a list like Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Unreferenced BLPs can be created for wikiprojects. The list would be updated daily.

Example:

Tahmineh Milani is an unreferenced BLP, with the following tag on the article page:
This article is listed under Category:Unreferenced BLPs from March 2007 but is not actually listed in the category section of the article:
Categories: Iranian Azeris | Female film directors | Iranian film directors | Iranian women's rights activists | People from Tabriz | 1960 births | Living people
On the Tahmineh Milani talk page is {{WikiProject Iran}}
So all articles with a Category:WikiProject Iran articles and the template {{BLP unsourced}} would be added to a list and added to Wikipedia:WikiProject Iran/Unreferenced BLPs, updated daily.

Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 18:56, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

if you give me a list of them I can generate a list of reports from the toolserver. βcommand 18:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
The toolserver is only updated once a month, or once a couple of months right? User:WolterBot already collects this information. Please correct me if I am wrong.Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 18:57, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
you are wrong, the toolserver has a live copy of the databases so its just a simple request of category intersection. βcommand 19:02, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Wow, that is incredible. Thank you for your quick response. I will get back with you on the list, hopefully today. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 19:05, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Well your first request is tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Iran_articles.txt βcommand 19:39, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Will a script like this generate the list anew every few days/hours/weeks or does it only compare the old list and remove those that have been removed from the category/add those which were added afterwards? Regards SoWhy 19:42, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
it uses all clean data, so previous reports do not effect the results. tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Football_articles.txt is the other requested report. All I have left to do is add missing projects and then set it to run daily. βcommand 20:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Betacommand, I am so excited! I will post this on the Iran project's talk page right now. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 20:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I posted your example, on Iran project's talk page, inviting them to create their own bot page, /Unreferenced BLPs.
I contacted 8 projects with existing unreferenced BLP pages, asking if they would like to test out this bot in their projects. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 20:19, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
One thing I think I should raise, I can generate these reports daily on the toolserver, but I cannot automatically update them here on wiki due to restrictions placed on me by the arbitration committee. I am free to create what ever tools/reports/bots that I want as long as they do not edit wikipedia (as it currently stands under their restrictions [1]) βcommand 20:27, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, there are two options as I see it,
  1. If you care too (and I hope you do) You do most of the leg work, and pass it on too someone else,
  2. I/We request a narrow exception to your restriction, which is much more preferable in my opinion. Because:
  1. You obviously have the skills in abundance to do this.
  2. It can be a limited and narrow test case of sorts to show that you will not abuse your bot rights.
  3. That just means we must get arbcom blessing first, which is the best blessing.
Lets see what the community says about this first about the idea in general again. If the reaction is generally positive, I/we can ask arbcom, if you feel that is feasible. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 20:44, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi Beta. I would like to request this for WikiProject Football. I have been doing it manually, but it is pretty time consuming. A list on the toolserver is good enough. Rettetast (talk) 20:51, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Football_articles.txt the football project was already on the list :P βcommand 21:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
If everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon, WP:WPOR and WP:WPMOTO could use it. And I'm with *kip, I'd support an arbcom exemption. tedder (talk) 20:58, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Motorcycling_articles.txt and tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Oregon_pages.txt are now live too. βcommand 21:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
<deindent> I want to go back to doing what I do best, bot work, but I am going to wait until such time as either arbcom modifies the sanctions, or they expire. Ive had quite a few good projects on the shelf due to the fact that I cant do them, nor can I propose others to get them done. If you guys think you have enough support to go to arbcom for tasks, I wont stop you as it would get me one step closer to doing what I enjoy. βcommand 21:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Beta. The Football list has some problems with special characters. As an example; the second name on the list should not be * [[César_Vázquez]]. Rettetast (talk) 21:32, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Thats a rendering issue, if you save the file and then open it in a utf-8 file editor (Im on windows and use Notepad++) it will render properly. Its caused by the webserver the toolserver uses and most web browsers (some conflict) that I have not be able to debug. βcommand 21:35, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, the txt file isn't displaying as unicode/utf8. One more reason the arbcom restriction is getting in the way of Getting Work Done. tedder (talk) 21:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject metal wants to test this bot.[2] Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 11:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

 Done tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Metal_articles.txtβcommand 16:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
This is annoying. Betacommand is demonstrating how helpful he is to Wikipedia, despite being hampered by Arbcom. It's time for some support of Betacommand so this can be done properly. tedder (talk) 17:15, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I am planning an appeal to arbcom, for a few reasons (my edit throttle being the main hindrance to most of the projects i want to work on. 0.4 edits a minute makes it hard to maintain my attention span for more than 20-30 minutes) Ill include your guy's request into my appeal. βcommand 17:23, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I know this is getting OT for BOTREQ, but please give Okip and myself a {{tb}} when you post it. It's certainly not canvassing to do so. tedder (talk) 17:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Betacommand, I think it is better if another editor appeals on your behalf. Okip (formerly Ikip) 19:16, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
One more project member is interested in the list: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cricket I will post the list on the prject page ASAP, and hopefully we get a bot to do this soon. Okip (formerly Ikip) 19:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rugby_union also.[3] Okip (formerly Ikip) 20:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

see Template_talk:WikiProject_Cricket#Master_Category and Template_talk:WikiProject_Rugby_union βcommand 20:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
oh that bites, thanks for letting me know. Okip (formerly Ikip) 20:51, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
its a simple fix of creating a category and adding it to their project banner. I did not want to step on any toes so I just suggested it to them. (If you are part of the project or want to be bold you can do it yourself and I can get the reports going for them). βcommand 20:54, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I thought it had to do with the templates on the article talk pages. I will just do it, as the members have already agreed they want this, and I will let them know, the can always revert me.... Okip (formerly Ikip) 22:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I just added the category, so you should be able to get the data need. thanks again.Okip (formerly Ikip) 02:21, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
and those reports would be at tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Cricket_articles.txt and tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Rugby_union_articles.txt βcommand 02:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
List thus far
  1. tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Iran_articles.txt WP:WikiProject_Iran "semi-active"
  2. tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Football_articles.txt WP:WikiProject_Football
  3. tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Motorcycling_articles.txt WP:WikiProject_Motorcycling
  4. tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Oregon_pages.txt WP:WikiProject_Oregon
  5. tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Metal_articles.txt WP:WikiProject_Metal
  6. tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Cricket_articles.txt WP:WikiProject_Cricket
  7. tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Rugby_union_articles.txt WP:WikiProject_Rugby_union

Scraping the first one or two sentences of each article

While you are twitting your thumbs waiting for approval betacommand :), can your bot scrape the first one or two sentences of each article in your next scrapes? this way your considerable talent is not completely wasted. :)

I could do this by autohotkey with a lot of help on IRC, but I wouldn't be able to update daily without bot permission. And it would take me one hundred times longer than you could do it in. Okip (formerly Ikip) 19:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

beta, is this something that is possible? thanks. Okip (formerly Ikip) 22:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Not sure templates and info boxes would make this very difficult. βcommand 02:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Request for help: Can a Bot developer pick up where Betacommand left off?

Can someone scrape Betacommand's reports and post them on:

Setting up the bot to scrape new reports daily? Okip (formerly Ikip) 07:58, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Bump :) anyone interested in doing this please? Okip 10:38, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
looks like Mr. Tim1357 is going to take care of this, I appreciate everyone's hard work and help. Okip 02:51, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

{{sortname}}

I've recently been using {{sortname}} a lot to make tables sortable. A more complex use might be to change [[First of Lást (disambig)|First of Lást]] to {{sortname|First of|Lást|First of Lást (disambig)|Last, First Of}}. In these more complex examples there's more chance of getting this wrong, either in the spelling or the sort order. Would it be possible to design a bot to trawl through, accessing each {{sortname}}, and cross-checking that to the {{DEFAULTSORT}} code of the linked article? SeveroTC 22:42, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Newspaper editor categorization

I'd like to see about a bot that would categorize American journalists by their newspaper.

For instance, it would look at articles in the intersection of Category:American newspaper editors and Category:New York Times people for instances of "editor at The New York Times". For each such article, it would replace those two categories with Category:New York Times editors.

Thanks. Maurreen (talk) 11:16, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Tag print version of templates

This is a bot that will (for now) require user account creation rights (editing these pages are temporarily blacklisted). The tasks are relatively simple individual, but they are varied.

  • Find every template ending with Template:Foo/Print (or Template:Foo/print), and tag them with Category:Print versions of templates. A good start is Category:Templates with print versions, but these might not be the only ones (and it might not be up to date).
  • Tag the talk pages of the templates with {{WBOOKS|class=template}}
  • Check if the parent template has {{documentation}} on it. If it does, stop here. If it doesn't, add <noinclude>This template has a [[Template:Foo/Print|print version]]. If you make changes to the this template, please update the print version as well. [[:Category:Templates with print versions]]</noinclude> at the bottom (or in the existing noinclude section).

Run this twice a day (to make sure things were not reverted). In addition, the bot should patrol newly created pages to catch the creation of new /print templates (and run this logic again).

  • If the page is protected, it should make the {{editprotected}} request.
  • Print versions should be semi-protected by default, and inherit the same protection as their parent template. This would requires an admin-bot, but making the appropriate requests for admins to fulfill would be equivalent I suppose.

Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:06, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

A few comments:
  • Do you know how many of these templates there are? Perhaps you could compile a list of them somewhere. If there are not that many of them, this task could more easily be handled by human editors.
  • I suspect you mean {{WBOOKS|class=template}} or simply {{WBOOKS}} as the class is deduced from the namespace automatically.
  • I suggest not adding copies of the same text ("This template has a print version ... ") to each one: add a template instead. Or better still add {{documentation}}.
  • A few pleases and thank yous wouldn't go amiss, as you are asking someone to do a job for you ;)
— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:41, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I don't know the exact number, but a quick search places an upper bound at ~620. But the whole point of the bot would be to act as a rapid-response vigil against the issues raised (which I'll not repeat per WP:BEANS).
  • Fixed the class=category/template thing
  • Yeah a template would be better than the "This template..."
  • Please and thank you.
Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 20:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

remove interwikis to ngwiki

An Interwiki-bot operator should run his bot and remove interwikis to ngwiki (which is closed now: bugzilla:20325). List of pages (user ns excluded) with interwiki to ng::

Asia - Bible - Book of Exodus - Book of Genesis - Culture - Duisburg - English language - First Epistle to Timothy - Geography - Ghana - Gospel of Matthew - Ndonga language - Nowy Dwór Królewski - Piacenza - Pigazzano - Republic of China - Turkey - Uetersen - Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Wikipedia - World Championship of Cricket - Wikipedia:Administrators - Wikipedia:Bot policy - Wikipedia:Protected titles - Wikipedia:Statistics - Wikipedia:Village pump - Wikipedia:Vital articles - Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/2 - Template:Deletedpage - Template:User de - Category:Candidates for speedy deletion - Category:Geography - Category:User de - Category:User en - Category:User sk - Category:User sk-N - Category:Wikipedia - Category:Wikipedia administration - Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation

Merlissimo 02:15, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

 Done using AWB (not a bot). Interwiki was removed on all but 8 of the above pages. The pages skipped were:
Because AWB found no ng interwiki. Robert Skyhawk So sue me! (You'll lose) 01:09, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Martial Arts New Page listing

Resolved
 – 16:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

In WikiProject_Martial_arts, we have accumulated over 2,300 'Stub' and 'Start' articles of dubious notability. Would it be possible to create a bot to generate a list page of articles newly marked with our category? We have an active community of editors: a single page to watch would allow us oversight on the new articles. If there is a conventional way to do something similar, we would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks! jmcw (talk) 09:14, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

This would be a fairly simple bot, if I understand it correctly. But have you considered using CatScan? If you input the category you want to search (presumably Martial arts with the depth depending on how many subcategories you want to include), and select "for changes in the last" 24 hours or so, and only show new pages. That should give you a list of new pages in that category within the last day. Would that work for you? - Kingpin13 (talk) 10:05, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
CatScan looks very interesting for our cleaning of 2,300 stubs. For the New Pages, I would suggest something automated that runs daily and produces a page that the editors could watch: it would fit in the usual work flow. Thanks! jmcw (talk) 10:40, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
We are using CatScan now for cleaning the existing articles. What would be the next step to have a bot that listed the last week of newly tagged Category:Martial_arts articles? Not a New Page Patrol but rather a New Tagged Patrol page? jmcw (talk) 13:13, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I've solved this well enough with CatScan. Thanks for the ideas! jmcw (talk) 15:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Adminbot to F8 25.000 images

I'm moving about 25.000 files tagged with {{PBB Image citation}} to Commons. All images include the required source information and can be deleted here at Wikipedia. This is quite a lot of tedious work for our human admins, so it should probably be done by a bot. All files are uploaded to Commons under the same name. Bot should probably be work like this:

Implementation would just be a couple of lines of python + pywikipedia. multichill (talk) 16:57, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Coding... Have all of the images been moved yet? (X! · talk)  · @945  ·  21:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
BRFA filed (X! · talk)  · @079  ·  00:53, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for helping out! I'm in moving them at the moment. Probably takes a couple of days. multichill (talk) 08:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

General question

Do the people who check this page only work with the English project or would anyone here be interested in meeting the challenge of writing a Navajo-specific bot? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not unusual for other wikis to be supported; perhaps you'd like to offer a broad outline of what you're after? Josh Parris 11:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Navajo spells the glottal stop as ʼ. Occasionally, people will spell '. The bot should replace all single apostrophes with a ʼ - italics ('') and bold (''') must remain unchanged. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 04:16, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Every single page, or should certain namespaces be excluded? Are the any circumstances where using a ' is acceptable? Josh Parris 14:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Can't think of any right now. (if (char)=' and (char-1)not ' and (char+1)not ' then char> ʼ) I know it's a very simple procedure, but I have no idea how to create a bot. If that's done in article-space only that'd be good enough... As a side, this is a long-term plan, so no rush. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 23:42, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Having had a poke around on nv.wikipedia.org, Talk pages are right out. Do any articles quote non-Navajo text? If so, are they marked as foreign languages where the normal Navajo rules don't apply? Given there's just over a thousand pages, it's probably best to deal with the problem in a single pass. It appears that I can't edit my userpage there, as I'm not autoconfirmed, so there'll be a problem having me run a bot against 1100 pages; do you feel up to it? Josh Parris 02:32, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Oh -- you have a bot that can do that? Well, right now, there are no pages that need this, so your bot won't find anything. We do this manually. I figured this for the long run. So, can I keep your name in mind for the future? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 07:06, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Update Template Transclusions

Replace all tranclusions of Template:Children'sLiteratureWikiProject with Template:WikiProject Children's literature - been renamed for over a year but still have over 7000 pages using the old name.[4] Too many to deal with doing manually with AWB.-- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 04:11, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TedderBot 2. Running a trial of this now. tedder (talk) 20:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Great, thanks :-) -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 01:25, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Update- I've been approved and running against the whole thing, but it's burped twice (because it doesn't retry on closed connections). Probably died at "midnight" Zulu time, I'll restart it at home. tedder (talk) 01:54, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Why is this being done at all? They are unnecessary edits per WP:R2D and violate the botpol ("[do] not consume resources unnecessarily"). –xenotalk 17:45, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Because the extensive use of the outdated template name is continued in part by folks copy/pasting the template from one page to another. Further, the old name is really user unfriendly, so updating to the proper name seems perfectly correct. It also removes the whole back end redirect before transclusion thing. I don't see why it is considered "unnecessary" or a consumption of "unnecessary resources" if the bot was approved (which it was). Many projects have done similar tasks to update old names to the correct one. I made a bot request versus AWB because of the sheer number of uses needing updating. 7000+ with AWB manually takes an insane time, versus a few hundred. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 18:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
It was approved by a fairly new BAG member. I've asked them to comment at tedder's talk page. –xenotalk 18:05, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Y Done This is entirely complete. Finished parsing through it earlier today. tedder (talk) 06:02, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Bot to move images out of commons to en.wiki

A large number of video game screenshots published by Ubisoft have been determined to be no longer free (the justification of their free-ness has recently been proven false). As many of these sit at Commons, we need an automated task that:

  • Copies the image to en.wiki, marking them with the correct non-free license.
  • Tags the Commons version for speedy deletion.
  • Tags the en.wiki copy with specific category or template so that those of us at WP:VG can add appropriate rationals to them within 7 days, or else have them deleted off en.wiki.

The Commons images affected are within a single category there. Any existing bots that can do this one-time batch operation? --MASEM (t) 21:13, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Note: For task 2, The bot will need to be approved to run at commons by their bot approval process. Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 23:17, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't think task 2 is really essential. I don't think we'd want to images for speedy deletion while they may still be in use on other Wikipedias. We can probably skip that since they're going to be deleted anyway. Reach Out to the Truth 18:36, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Autoreview request bot

Original discussion at WP:VPT

I have very little programming experience, but I have a simple idea for a bot that will be able to churn out autoreview requests much faster than I can:

  1. Go through a list of editors with high edit counts one by one.
  2. If username=[Placeholder], skip to next entry.
  3. (optional)Look up edits. If most recent edit was in 2009 or earlier, skip to next entry.
  4. Look up user rights. If autoreviewer=1 or if administrator=1, skip to next entry.
  5. Look up article creations. If greater than 75, do the following:
  6. Append WP:RFP/A with {{subst:rfp|username|Have a nice day! <name of bot here>}}

Should be easy enough. I will alert the relevant administrators/patrollers to this discussion. -- C62 · Talk 16:29, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure this actually requires a bot flag? It would be fairly easy to make an automated process compile an offwiki list of eligible editors from that edit count page. That list could then be posted on-wiki for human review (article quality needs to be checked), without any edits at all being made by automated processes - only queries (remember to provide that user-agent :)). apihighlimits would of course be useful e.g for obtaining the user groups of all those editors in a single query. decltype (talk) 09:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Another adminbot? Cryptic, if one of us non-admin codes it for you, you're gunna need to find a competent admin who can run the bot. Tim1357 (talk) 11:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
The bot won't actually be granting the UR, just leaving it for an administrator to check. I've offered to create this bot at VPT, so I could technically make it grant the flag (as an admin). But I'd much rather having it list the users at rfp/a. - Kingpin13 (talk) 11:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
In response to decltype: That's all Greek to me. I know how to program my calculator and I have a wee bit of C++ knowledge, but that's it. If you suggest that it's a simple task, what language do you think I should do it in? I've been meaning to learn C# for a while now...
In response to Tim: As Kingpin pointed out, this is not an adminbot because it doesn't actually assign the permissions. WP:RFP/A is not a list of users with the permission, it's a request page. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 14:42, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a job for https://jira.toolserver.org/browse/DBQ Josh Parris 05:33, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree, either take the idea there, or try WP:DBR, which might also help. Tim1357 (talk) 05:38, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
I see DBR as for more of recurring-type reports rather than one-offs. Josh Parris 05:44, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
I put in a request at DBQ. I think this could be applicable to DBR. If it were run every few months or so, you'd always get a nice fresh batch of candidates. Yum. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:14, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

tagging of dab pages for wikiproject NRHP, and abbreviations

I'd like to request a bot to identify disambiguation pages that have NRHP entries in them, i.e. have "NRHP" or "National Register of Historic Places" in text of the dab page, or which link to any page with either of those strings in the article name, and to add them to WikiProject NRHP, by adding "WikiProject NRHP|class=dab" to their talk pages. There are currently about 1,889 dab pages in Category:Disambig-Class National Register of Historic Places articles where that has been done already. I guess the bot, if it searched all disambiguation pages, would find several hundred more.

This relates to Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 34#NRHP disambiguation refinement, a bot request under development that would do something more complicated editing the supporting bluelinks in the text of many NRHP items on these dab pages. That bot would address all articles in the category. Running this tagging bot first would extend the reach of the other bot, if in fact it materializes, and would help in allowing cleanup campaigns or other maintenance, otherwise.

Also, there is interest by at least one editor to have abbreviations of NRHP expanded in these disambiguation pages, as discussed at User talk:Ipoellet#disambig note, at least for the first instance on a dab page, and perhaps for all instances. And for 2-letter state abbreviations to be spelled out in all instances. Not sure if those edits are suitable to be included into one of these bots. --doncram (talk) 16:54, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Also if this bot is run, is it possible to get a list of links to the disambiguation pages whose Talk pages have been updated by the bot? Those ones would be more likely to need other cleanup on their NRHP entries and the list of links would be good basis for a cleanup campaign. Thanks! --doncram (talk) 18:08, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I've filed a request at Wikipedia talk:Dump reports#Pages in cat Category:Disambiguation pages and have ("NRHP" or "National Register of Historic Places") in wikitext to identify the pages that meet the criteria. –xenotalk 15:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! I added another comment there, requesting the dump report omit the ones where the talk page is already tagged for WikiProject NRHP / WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. The point is to find ones missing the wikiproject tag. But, actually, maybe the complete dump report is okay, i am not sure. Could one run through such a dump report using AWB, identifying the ones lacking NRHP or National Register of Historic Places appearing on the talk page, or somehow otherwise identify the ones not placed in Category:Disambig-Class National Register of Historic Places articles? I am not familiar with what a dump report is, hopefully it is an AWB-useable list. --doncram (talk) 21:04, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
AWB will compare the two lists (list comparer) and tag the ones not already tagged. –xenotalk 00:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Warning robot idea

I have registered the user WarningBot, because I would like to write my first bot. I am experienced in Java and would like to use the Java API that is offered to make WarningBot.

Look at the user page for details on it's purpose, but in short, this bot will warn vandals when Recent Changes patrollers or casual reverters have forgotten.

Just to clarify, if this is a good idea, I do not want any developers writing this bot for me.

Anyways, I probably won't have trouble (at least not yet) in writing it. What I need help with is making the bot a bot. ?I don't understand the bizarre ritual I have to participate in to ask if the bot is appropriate and useful in ?Wikipedia, register the bot with the admins, and all that other stuff. Where do I post my idea first? I'd really like to get started soon.  Awesomeness  talk  03:24, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I suspect Wikipedia talk:Creating a bot might be a better place for this question (may want to also explain how your proposed bot would differ from ClueBot). -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 04:25, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Hey there Awesomeness (nice nick!) and let me first thank you for offering your help with writing bots! Normally what happens is that a bot opperator (like yourself) would open a request for approval after establishing that there is consensus to have the bot run. This could be a conversation on the village pump for example. Anyways I would suggest you get some sort of community conversation going before you put in the hours to script the bot. Thanks! Tim1357 (talk) 05:37, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
If, after consideration, you think this particular bot may not be a good idea to pursue, there are a bazillion ideas (just look in the archives of this page) that were never implemented for want of a developer/operator. We're seriously underhanded on that front. Josh Parris 05:51, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Incorporation of DYK talk functionality into ArticleHistory

The functionality of the template {{DYK talk}} has now been incorporated into {{ArticleHistory}}. It would be great if an editor could look for article talk pages where both {{DYK talk}} (or {{dyktalk}}) and {{ArticleHistory}} appear, and do the following:

1. If the {{DYK talk}} template states as follows:

  • {{DYK talk|3 June|2008|... that in January 2006, [[United Kingdom|British]] [[Paralympic Games|Paralympic]] [[sprint (race)|sprinter]] '''[[John McFall]]''''s racing [[prosthesis]] was stolen, but anonymously returned a week later?|num=219}}; or
  • {{DYK talk|3 June|2008|entry=... that in January 2006, [[United Kingdom|British]] [[Paralympic Games|Paralympic]] [[sprint (race)|sprinter]] '''[[John McFall]]''''s racing [[prosthesis]] was stolen, but anonymously returned a week later?|num=219}},
then add the following parameters to {{ArticleHistory}}:

|dykdate = 3 June 2008
|dyklink = 219
|dykentry = ... that in January 2006, [[United Kingdom|British]] [[Paralympic Games|Paralympic]] [[sprint (race)|sprinter]] '''[[John McFall]]''''s racing [[prosthesis]] was stolen, but anonymously returned a week later?

2. Then delete the {{DYK talk}} template.

Thanks! — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:53, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Anyone? — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 20:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks good. Coding... — The Earwig (talk) 22:28, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
BRFA filed — The Earwig (talk) 08:25, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Great, thanks! — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 12:18, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Due to a somewhat recent change which removed the automatic linking if the article existed (this feature was removed to reduce alleged server load), we now have many anime-related articles with no links to the voice actor articles. We need a bot to go through articles (only in article space, not in any other namespace) in this list (just under 1100 articles) and replace instances like {{Anime voices|Some Name}} or {{Anime voices|Some Name|Some Other Name}} with {{Anime voices|[[Some Name]]}} or {{Anime voices|[[Some Name]]|[[Some Other Name]]}} (respectively). Anyone up to doing that? ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

What if [[Some Name]] or [[Some Other Name]] would be redlinks, do you still want them linked then? (This isn't an offer to do it; I'm all tapped out at the moment) Josh Parris 04:06, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes as that encourages articles to be created. If it turns out they are not notable, the redlinks can be removed as necessary. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 08:29, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
So, anyone else interested in this? It shouldn't be too difficult to do, and it's not too many articles. Basically a search and replace in a known set of articles. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 07:01, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Seriously, is there anyone who can help with this? If not, I'll just slog through them by hand, even though a bot could do them in an hour or so. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:55, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
This isn't much different than a oneoff I have sitting around. I'll poke at it, probably tomorrow. Remind me if you haven't heard anything by 3-4 days from now. tedder (talk) 17:20, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Doing... Okay, coded, it'll change 983 templates to add brackets and will skip 43 because they have some brackets already. Ready to BOTREQ if you've signed off. I assume you've already brought this up with the wikiproject? Link? tedder (talk) 06:04, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, we talked about doing it a while back when the template was changed to not autolink, but then we never did it. This is rectifying that. Let's get it done. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:10, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Here's the link to the (albeit brief) discussions: here and here. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 04:33, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

BRFA filed: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TedderBot 4 tedder (talk) 04:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Exclude in print

I'm doing some print cleanup, and I found a category in which all templates should be excluded from print: Category:"Part of a series on" templates

To exclude them from print, simply add <noinclude>[[:Category:Exclude in print]]</noinclude> add the bottom of these templates, or <includeonly>[[:Category:Exclude in print]]</includeonly> in their documentation page. However, since there are a bazillion of those (aka more than 100), it would be nice if someone could code a bot (or who's got superior AWB skills than I) could do this.

Obviously, if the template is already in Category:Exclude in print, then nothing needs to be done. Thanks. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:15, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Do you want to put Exclude in Print in the documentation page or the actual template page? —nn123645 (talk) 04:38, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Nevermind, actually reading instead of skimming helps :). --nn123645 (talk) 07:01, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
If you have any questions, just ask. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:18, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Admin category cleanup drive

Resolved

Inspired by WP:Administrator inactivity, I think that a bot should maintain categories like Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles or Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to grant rollback requests, i.e. categories likely to be queried by new users, by removing inactive administrators from them.

It won't be trivial to automatically remove the inactive (by some criterion) admins from the categories if the category is transcluded from userboxes or user subpages, in a first step it would certainly be sufficient to maintain a list of such admins that needs to be processed manually (if the inactivity criterion isn't too sharp that list should be short, after the first cleanup). We already have bots maintaining lists of active admins (e.g. User:Rick Bot), where it should be easy to extend their functionality to check the inactive ones against a list of categories. Spewing out a list into userspace wouldn't even require a BRFA.

Any comments? Would some friendly bot op consider doing that?

Thanks, and cheers, Amalthea 00:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, if the bot doesn't remove the category itself (with proper notification of the admin of course), this could probably be turned into a database report, now that I think of it. Amalthea 00:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Looking at some of the categories, there aren't really that much more categories that would be affected by that, and not that many editors in them, so I don't think that there'll be enough fluctuation to build something fancy. So if nobody jumps at this, I can probably whip something up myself and run it locally from time to time. Amalthea 00:37, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Rick Bot already does something very much like this, see Wikipedia:List of administrator hopefuls. This is a list generated from Category:Wikipedia administrator hopefuls divided into active and inactive users (with additional information added). Creating (and maintaining) a list version of a category only including active admins (as already determined by the bot) would be a nearly trivial additional task for Rick Bot. Of course, given WP:LA is kept up to date by the bot already it would be nearly trivial for anyone else to write something to read the category and the active admin list, and generate the intersection. Trivial or not, is there any particular need for this? I mean, is it a common problem for requests based on these categories to be directed to inactive admins? Would adding "before making a request you might want to check the admin's activity level at WP:LA" in the category description be nearly as effective? Just because we can automate something doesn't necessarily mean we should. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:55, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Inactive folks listed there continue to get requests, yes, so I think they should be removed. 1 2 3, for some random examples. I picked them up before when I sampled the category members, when I also realized that there were far fewer categories, admins, and thus also inactive admins than I expected, which kind of implies that a bot job checking the list regularly is probably more work than it's worth.
I'll just take care of it myself, sorry for the noise. :)
Cheers, Amalthea 01:10, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

User:WolterBot

Hello all, User:WolterBot has not run since mid December. It generates cleanup listings for wikiprojects, which is a useful thing particularly for the less active ones, providing new content in terms of To Do tasks. The bot's owner hasn't been around since early January. Is there any other bot doing something similar? Could someone else take over the bot (might need source code requesting from the operator, it doesn't seem to be public)? Rd232 talk 10:18, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

ping! anyone? Rd232 talk 14:19, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Could you give a quick outline of how this bot worked? Did each WikiProject give a list of categories they wanted monitored for {{cleanup}} or what? I wouldn't be surprised if the bot op returned. - Kingpin13 (talk) 14:22, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
The instructions are here: User:WolterBot/Cleanup listing subscription and example output here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Arkansas/Cleanup listing. It was based on project banner tagging on talk pages. Rd232 talk 14:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Freud is rolling over in his grave right now.

Can someone make, or help me learn to make, a bot that replaces the word "subconscious" with "unconscious?" The subconscious does not exist and it's used in many articles. The only article that actually needs that word is subconscious. The less it is used on commonly accessed websites like Wikipedia, the less people will say it and make asses out of themselves. PÆonU (talk) 06:22, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Can you point us to the consensus for making this change from linking to an article to linking to a disambiguation page? Josh Parris 06:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
My bad. Unconscious mind PÆonU (talk) 06:48, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Again, consensus? Josh Parris 06:49, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Read these two sections for the scientific community's thoughts on the subconscious:

Subconscious#The_.27Subconscious.27_and_Psychoanalysis

Unconscious_mind#Freud_and_the_psychoanalytic_unconscious PÆonU (talk) 06:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I think there's a bit of a mixup. I don't care about the article becoming a disambiguation page, I only want to replace the word "subconscious" with "unconscious" in every article except subconscious. PÆonU (talk) 06:55, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
The easiest way to solve this problem is to make subconscious a {{R from incorrect name}} redirect to Unconscious mind; that also avoids making subconscious an orphan. Any editor can make this change; you don't need a bot. If you want all links to subconscious changed to unconscious mind, a bot will do that automatically in time. Josh Parris 06:59, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I read an article that said something was in a person's subconscious mind, without linking to it. I've never seen that word linked to a page in an article. It's treated like any other simple word. Is there a way to actually swap the plain word "subconscious" with "unconscious?" PÆonU (talk) 07:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Search for the word; each article that comes up, edit it. Repeat. Josh Parris 07:06, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
How would you deal with quotes? Even if the word is wrong, the person said it, so it should be quoted as "unconcious". (X! · talk)  · @339  ·  07:07, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure. Maybe there's a way to add that parameter to the bot? PÆonU (talk) 07:13, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Which bot? No bot exists to do a text-search and replace that I know of. One would have to be written; are you a programmer? It's not all that hard to write a wiki bot. Josh Parris 07:15, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I've never made one before, but I'm a fast learner. Are their any experienced bot-builders that can teach me how or help me create it? A general text replacement bot isn't a bad idea. PÆonU (talk) 07:31, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Go right ahead. You will need to point to the consensus in your WP:BRFA; details for bot development are at the top of this page. Josh Parris 07:57, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

  • N Not done A bot could not be written to know when it would be appropriate to replace "subconscious" with "unconscious". You might consider using WP:AWB in semi-automatic mode. –xenotalk 20:33, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
If it is in a quotation it should not be replaced. - Kittybrewster ☎ 12:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Templates

Can we get a bot to change the

Is this as a result of a WP:TFD? Josh Parris 23:59, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
They are ongoing.100110100 (talk) 02:28, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Can't redirects take care of it? Please see WP:R2D. –xenotalk 18:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Right, you could have it added to WP:AWB, if it's not already, but that would be something to do while making other changes. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 18:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Yea, putting this in AWB's genfixes (after the TFDs are closed) would be worthwhile. Other than that,  Not done. –xenotalk 19:18, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
  1. --RNelson5577 (talk) 01:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC) I need a bot


I just noticed this discussion. Reading the TfD I also concluded we had to do some replacements. I did otheruses3 to otheruses. otheruses2 is a different template and should not be replaced. I started otheruses4 since I though it would be completely uncontroversial but I was stopped. I think we have to finish moving otheruses4 to otheruses and then move otheruses5 to otheruses3 and otheruses6 to otheruses4. At the moment, we have 1,2,5 and 6 working which makes it impossible for new editors to use these templates. Many editors use plain text instead of dablinks which make it more difficult to locate articles with dablinks, programm bots to fix, etc. Adding a feature to AWB is a bit risky because these templates, from my experience, change names from time to time. At them moment AWB replaces "2otheruses" to "two other uses" and moves all dablinks on the top. PS I just sent unused otheruses8 to TfD. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I this the right place to discuss a resume of the process? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:10, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Redirects are fine. Why all the shuffling? –xenotalk 13:53, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Indeed, I don't understand why Magioladitis "concluded we had to do some replacements."
To what TfD discussion are you referring, Magioladitis? Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 March 6#Template:Otheruses3 resulted in a decision to retain the redirect. —David Levy 19:56, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Half of the participants suggested deletion. Redirect was mainly procedural because of the number of transclusions and the non-trivial edit history. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:56, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Firstly, there was clear consensus to redirect. Secondly, you appear to have misinterpreted the closer. The statement that "the long history of this template means that many editors may use it without realizing it is deprecated/deleted" referred not to the revision history, but to the concern that many editors have become accustomed to using it over the years and therefore will continue to do so. This is a reason why the redirect must remain intact (thereby ensuring that it will perform as expected). There was no valid reason to deploy your bot to bypass it. —David Levy 01:26, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Pages categorized in XfD categories over a month ago

Resolved
 – I have taken it to a more appropriate place - WT:DBR. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:01, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I think we can use a bot who will, on a regular basis (I would say weekly), maintain a list of all pages which were categorized for over a month in any of the following categories:

  1. Category:Articles for deletion
  2. Category:Templates for deletion
  3. Category:Wikipedia files for deletion
  4. Category:Categories for deletion
  5. Category:Categories for merging
  6. Category:Categories for renaming
  7. Category:Redirects for discussion
  8. Category:Miscellaneous pages for deletion

While rarely this may be because the discussion is open for that long, usually it's because the nomination wasn't completed, or because of a partial closure of it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 21:15, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Not sure I might poke at this time permitting. Q T C 00:07, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
I would have asked MZMcBride at WP:DBR, but I believe that he left the project after his recent ArbCom case ended. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm sure this will be news to MZMcBride who has edited as recently as today. –xenotalk 20:34, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I guess I'm not up to date - he did take a break of just over a month. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:56, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
The break was so nice, I might take another! This got done as Old deletion discussions (configuration). Go me. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:10, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd like a bot that gets a list of every AFD ever and who nominated it plus how it ended

  • There use to be a tool that did this, but its author took it down for whatever reason over a year ago. http://toolserver.org/~sql/afd.php? Can't find it anywhere now. You could enter in anyone's name, and see a list of every article they ever sent to AFD, and how it ended(keep, delete, no consensus, etc). If someone nominates articles regularly, which end in Keep more than 80% of the time, then this is a person an administrator might want to keep watch over. Also, if the same person has a habit of renominating articles that ended in Keep last time they tried to delete them, doing that regularly, or the articles they failed to have deleted they then replaced with a redirect afterward, without discussion anywhere, thus successfully eliminating it anyway, then this would be a good way to track them. I'd like also to have it list if the article was still there, or later deleted, or replaced by a redirect. Dream Focus 06:13, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Ill take a stab at this. Tim1357 (talk) 11:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
You are a brave man. Josh Parris 11:23, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I got the SQL done pretty quickly, so I have the ability to pull down the information. It's just the web interface that's being a bi*ch. Tim1357 (talk) 01:38, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

"Articles for deletion" used to be called "Votes for deletion". And a lot of old debates resulted in "delete" and the page was subsequently re-created. Or the debate resulted in "keep" but there were subsequent debates that had different results. Or the page was renamed and re-listed under a different title. Lots of things to consider here. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:13, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I feel I have gotten myself in too deep. Do you think you'd like to take a stab at it? I almost have a working version up, but It may not work. Tim1357 (talk) 02:18, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Me? Not at all. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:21, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Project tagging userscript

I just came across User:Drilnoth/assessortags.js which is a user script to make tagging with project banners easy. However the list of projects is hardcoded; and the creator has been absent a while. I see that User:Ais523/stubtagtab2.js does a similar job for stubs, taking its data from Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. I wonder could someone adapt the assessor script in a similar way to use the wikiproject data at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Compact? I think such a tool could be widely advertised to wikiprojects and to RC patrol; better project tagging of new pages would enhance the usefulness of Article Alerts for pages getting prodded/AFD'd. Rd232 talk 09:10, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Albeit I'm trying the stubtag script and it doesn't work for me - it sticks on "loading". Rd232 talk 08:32, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't see anything to stop you from copying the source code of Drilnoth's assessortags, and then adding in extra WikiProject tags manually. Making the script do it automatically would be a bit ore of a challenge (WikiProject tags are much more complex than stub tags, since they have parameters and what not). I might take a look at putting project tagging into WikiAlerter. You could contact Tim Song and ask him to add it to KISSLE. - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:49, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Hm, thanks, but I was thinking in terms of a userscript really, rather than standalone software. I understand your point about project tags being more complex because of the parameters - but for the purpose I have in mind, I'd be quite happy for the script to ignore the parameters and just add a plain template. And given the number of wikiprojects in existence, adding them all manually does not seem feasible. The point of the script is not to tag pages for an individual project - there are bots that do that. What I want is for people when they come across a newish untagged page that needs attention, to be able to link it with a project through which it may gain attention by project tagging it. Not having parameters here is then an advantage actually, since in the project's assessment table/categories it will appear as unassessed, i.e. as something not fully integrated into the project (yet). Does this sound more feasible? Rd232 talk 17:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:WP

Because I have just changed the WP:WP redirect to redirect to a different place to help prevent confusion (this is because Wikipedia:Wikipedia redirects to Wikipedia:About, therefore, when WP:WP redirects to a different place, it creates confusion because "WP" is considered [on Wikipedia] to have the same meaning as "Wikipedia"), we need a bot to change any WP:WP backlinks to link directly to Wikipedia:List of shortcuts to prevent this from creating even further confusion (as some links intending to point to Wikipedia:List of shortcuts will instead point to Wikipedia:About). Please note to leave the link title the same (the bot should change the links to where they look the same, but have a different target). -- IRP ☎ 04:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC), modified 04:07, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The reasoning may be sound (though I think a hat note would be fine as well) - but there are over 1600 incoming links and it has pointed there for nearly 5 years. I think an WP:RFD is necessary before we can repurpose this redirect. –xenotalk 04:18, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Reference statistics bot

I'm interested in gathering statistical information about which sites/sources are most commonly referenced on Wikipedia, in order to gain a better understanding of Wikipedia's systemic bias. The only such statistics I have been able to find are these, which are very outdated (Nov. 2006).

Essentially, the questions I'm looking to answer right now are the following:

  1. Which external sites are most commonly referenced on Wikipedia as a whole, both in external links and in inline citations? This could be done by gathering all of the external links from each page, and tallying them by domain name.
  2. For each of the categories in Portal:Contents/Categorical index, which external sites are the most commonly linked to in articles in these categories?

I've got a bit of PHP and Javascript experience, but would need technical assistance getting a bot put together to do this, since I've never written a WP bot before. So that I'm not reinventing the wheel, can anyone recommend bots that someone has created that do things similar to the above that I could modify, and/or people who I might go to with questions?

Thanks -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 18:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

You do not need to scan all articles with a bot. You can run some sql queries on the db dump or file a request at the Query service if you do not know sql. Merlissimo 09:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

coordinates_type= in Template:Infobox settlement

Resolved
 – BRFA filed. –xenotalk 18:21, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Currently {{Infobox settlement}} has two methods for generating coordinates parameters for {{Coord}}: either it uses {{CountryAbbr}} or else it uses a coordinates_type= parameter. Due to limitations of the first method, Andrwsc and I would like a bot to transition enwiki over to the second method. This would involve finding transclusions of {{Infobox settlement}} and its many synonyms in namespaces other than Template:. If the coordinates_type= parameter is already defined and not blank, do nothing. Otherwise add (or replace, if blank) the parameter with the result of the first method, basically: type:city{{#if:{{{population_total|}}}|{{#iferror:{{#expr:{{{population_total}}}+1}}||({{{population_total}}})}}|}}{{#if:{{{subdivision_name|}}}|_region:{{CountryAbbr|{{{subdivision_name|}}}|{{{subdivision_name1|}}}}}}}. One or more additional iterations of this process will probably be needed at some point in the future. --Stepheng3 (talk) 05:35, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Is anybody interested in working on this? --Stepheng3 (talk) 00:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
I looked at it but I kindof bugged out. Can you provide an example edit? –xenotalk 00:25, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Here's one: sample edit --Stepheng3 (talk) 00:37, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
That entered hard-coded values. Do you want the bot doing that (in which it would have to be able to natively distill the subdivision names), or is it putting the parserFunction statement into the parameter? If it's the latter, why not just build the parserFunction into the infobox? –xenotalk 14:25, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the intent is to enter hardcoded values into the template, to reduce the reliance on {{CountryAbbr}}. I'm not sure what's the parserFunction statement you're referring to. --Stepheng3 (talk) 17:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
I've learned a new trick today =) This is probably possible. –xenotalk 18:38, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
If population_total, subdivision_name, or subdivision_name1 are missing, what should the bot do? –xenotalk 18:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
From what I gather, if population_total is missing, you can just go with 'region:FOO_type:city', without the parenthetical bit. If the region information is missing, I suppose you could just go with 'type:city'? Stepheng3 knows more about this than I do. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 04:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
If subdivision_name is blank or missing then you put type:city(pop). What happens when subdivision_name1 is blank or missing is determined by the logic of {{CountryAbbr}}. I'm guessing the "new trick" might have something to do with subst-ing {{CountryAbbr}}. Am I right? --Stepheng3 (talk) 00:21, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Correct. –xenotalk 20:35, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
What happens when the population changes? A user not well-versed with the infobox may not see they need to change the value in co-ordinates type coordinates_type=. Wouldn't it be better to pass the parameter? –xenotalk 20:57, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Changing populations are, of course, an issue with {{Coord}} itself--when the template is hand-coded, as it usually is. So far, it's not been a major problem because, for the purposes of {{Coord}}, the precise population is not crucial, just the order of magnitude. It usually takes many decades for a settlement's population to change enough to matter. Even the order of magnitude is not vital. If the population is way off, the worst that happens is that the scale of the map is a bit off or the name label is a tad larger or smaller than it ought to be. --Stepheng3 (talk) 04:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
If population_total is blank, should it add population_metro and population_urban or...? –xenotalk 14:41, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
You can use population_metro or population_urban if you want, but I assume it would be simpler to leave off the "(pop)" bit when population_total is blank or invalid, and that's worked for us so far. --Stepheng3 (talk) 20:48, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
"#expr" does not seem to allow parameter input. Can't coordinates_type receive the population param directly? –xenotalk 16:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "receive the population param directly". The reason for the #expr is to figure out whether the population is a number or not. Surely a bot can do this once and then set coordinates_type accordingly. --Stepheng3 (talk) 20:48, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

← When CountryAbbr expansion fails this is the result. –xenotalk 20:52, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean. In the case of that kind of failure, "| coordinates_type = type:city" would be a more desirable result. --06:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
The problem with this is that the bot won't know it will fail until after the edit is made... And then it is a bit of an WP:EDITH issue. Will that code "work" or will it muck things up? If it works, I can simply run behind the bot to remove the vestigal code (which is still a little undesirable because it's two edits to do one thing), but if it doesn't work then we have an issue that may require the bot to natively expand CountryAbbr. Which is a pain =) –xenotalk 12:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
The incomplete _region: wouldn't actually break anything, as far as I know. It'd be equivalent to what's in the Infobox right now, of course. So rather than making a second edit to remove the _region:, I'd prefer to leave it for a human editor to (probably me!) to correct at some later date. --Stepheng3 (talk) 16:44, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Ok, sounds good. Further discussion to take place at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Xenobot 6.2. –xenotalk 18:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Tagging images for WP:JOURNALS

If anyone could take care of this, it would greatly help WP:JOURNALS.

Steps

And that's pretty much it. This will help monitor deletion discussions through WP:AALERTS. There will be a few false hits, but these can be removed manually. WP:JOURNALS has been notified of this request. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure every single image used on these articles will be relevant to the project? Using AWB there is a lot of pollution: File:Open book 01.svg, File:Feed-icon.svg, etc., so this will probably require a custom script. –xenotalk 21:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
These are found by searching for [[File:...]] or [[Image:...]] on the page? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
De-archiving unanswered request. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 13:09, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
If you ask MZMcBride to generate a WT:DUMPREP on this isolating the files that need tagged, I can do the tagging. –xenotalk 14:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Done. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 14:41, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

He said to point you to WP:DDR. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:14, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I can do the scan. Just look for all [[File:...]] or [[Image:...]] on the pages? Tim1357 (talk) 00:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Pretty much. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:46, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Apparently {{non-free magazine cover}} has to be present on the image page. So I've updated the request to reflect that. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:14, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
But won't the bot also be picking up other images? Perhaps a photo of a journalist or editor-in-chief or something? Those would not be non-free magazine covers... –xenotalk 18:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Speaking from experience, non-cover images in journal articles are a pretty rare thing. With the WP1.0 logs and the File-Class categories, it will be pretty easy to check for false positives (much more than tagging thousands of images manually), so I'm not really worried about that aspect. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Possibly around 20% of articles tagged as unreferenced BLPs have references

Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people#Badly tagged unreferenced BLPs

Can a bot generate a daily list of articles that are tagged, but are suspected to have at least some references.

All articles with the Category:Unreferenced BLPs and the text: http:// in them? (indicating an external link) Okip 02:57, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

This question could be answered by WP:DBR quite easily. Josh Parris 06:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
I went ahead and made a partial list. The items in the list have more then 5 external links. (edwardbetts.com doesn't count) There list is limited at 300. Anyways, it will regenerate every night. If you want more nudge me and I'll make a full list. Tim1357 (talk) 02:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
thank you again. Okip 03:05, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Bot which adds removed unreferenced material link to talk page of article

In the quest to reference all biographies of living people, editors are deleting large portions of text.

I suggest creating a bot which does the following:

  1. Editor deletes large portions of text, in the edit summary editor adds User:DASHBOT/T, for example.
  2. The bot daily looks for edits which have the User:DASHBOT/T in their edit summary.
  3. the bot then adds a message on the talk page:
    ==Unreferenced material removed==
    A large portion of unreferenced material was removed from the article page: [http://LINK]
    Only add this material back to the article if it is Referenced. User:DASHBOT/T 03:04, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Okip 03:03, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

So the bot looks for a message in the edit summary? Not too hard to do with SQL, but where is the consensus? Tim1357 (talk) 23:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it looks for a message in the edit summary. Okay, it is technically possible then, just interested if it is possible first. Now to get consensus. Okip 02:35, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

New Kind of Autoassessment bot

Hi,

I need a bot for WP:ESSAY C/C to crawl pages tagged with our project banner {{essaysort}} and autoassess the article importance based on how many incoming wikilinks the article has. Essays linked to by 1000 other pages, for example, are seen as higher importance than essays linked to by 50 other pages (which can pretty much be accomplished through good category placement). Contact me with questions. Thanks! ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 05:46, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

My bot can do the importance assessing but I've asked another bot to generate a page that shows the incoming links (see User talk:MZMcBride#Task for BernsteinBot - feel free to amend the target). –xenotalk 21:07, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
This is ready. Do you want to look at the page and ensure the importance scale will work with this data? If not, please post at MZMcBride's talk page if modifications are required to the report (restrict incoming links by namespace or suchlike). –xenotalk 04:02, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Noting for the record that this task is  On hold pending a discussion at the project talk page regarding importance judgment. –xenotalk 14:16, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Prepend template to talk pages

Can someone with a bot prepend {{FS-talk}} to the talk pages of pages using {{Football squad start}}. Relevant discussion .Thanks Gnevin (talk) 13:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

(not necessarily taking it on but...) Should it skip when there exists already the 1= or ref= parameter for Football squad start? –xenotalk 14:15, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
The parameters are new so no page would have them
Opinion is at least 6 to 4 in favour. While others have indicated support but not voted Gnevin (talk) 16:13, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
It's still a little tenuous for a 6000+ edit job, don't you think? –xenotalk 16:20, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Discussion has been on going since January no one else seems to care. I've posted at VP,Signpost and there is an open RFC. I agree more input would be nice but as I said no one else seems to care Gnevin (talk) 16:29, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we could do a limited bot run, top 100 clubs? With a request for feedback ? Gnevin (talk) 16:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Frankly I don't even think it would be approved for trial by BAG. Your project is too divided on this, at least that's the picture I got when I glanced at it. I think you need to go back and seek a stronger consensus. –xenotalk 17:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
How? As I've said I've posted at VP,Sign post and there is an open RFC....Gnevin (talk) 17:46, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
I guess just wait for more people to weigh in. Or maybe another bot-op thinks the consensus is strong enough and will file a BRFA... –xenotalk 17:54, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Fair enough. Thanks for your input Gnevin (talk) 18:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

WT:U#CAT:UAA_admin_reminder

Please see the link; there's a request to remove a certain cat from the talk pages of users who have been blocked, and I think this request is uncontroversial, straightforward, and bot-friendly. - Dank (push to talk) 14:35, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Came here from WT:UAA :D. I'd be happy to have a shot at writing this. How often do we want the bot to run? Would daily work? - Kingpin13 (talk) 17:26, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Sure. My sense is that that would work for NJA, and no one seems to be itching to review the cat hourly :) - Dank (push to talk) 17:30, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
BRFA filed WP:Bots/Requests for approval/KingpinBot 3 - Kingpin13 (talk) 22:07, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Creating taxonomy articles (genus) but not on mainspace among other things for WP:TOL and WP:Missing encyclopedia project/Global Names Index

So first see: [5] and [6] for background to my bot request. As indicated on Raul's page, I am now requesting a bot (or several?) to:

  1. Create subpages to include all the names for all the letters in this style: [7]. There seems to be a limit of roughly ~2,000 names per page before the {{search}} template says "NOPE, had enough". They can be created via gathering the names from Raul's list and once the page is complete, continue on to the next page. It can be done as: 'Add names, search template not working? Yes, then remember last name - start next page, add name below remembered name, repeat until finish'. It should be done so that names with numbers are excluded and also names that have brackets or list individuals which can be distinguished since species are named as such: "Genus species" where the second word is in lower case. If the second word is in upper case then it is a person and it can be safely removed. Names with only one word will just be the genus so they can be kept easily. Multiple names should just be looked at the website (global names index). This way, the amount of subpages will decrease. Also, there won't be anything left out since the website will need to be looked at extensively when doing these articles.
  2. Create a list of potential redirects on synonyms (I am not sure how easy this would be as the bot would have to smart enough to look at an external set of websites, note that Genus A from one database/list/website is an AKA for Genus B of another database/list/website). Note that redirects should not be done for Names that have an individuals name in it or a year of discovery and a species should not redirect to a genus (unless by hand in the case of one species in the genus), Only genus to genus and species to species.

I know I might be asking for quite a lot (and I hope my "computer language concepts can be turned into a reality") but any help/info/tips/advice would be appreciated.Calaka (talk) 09:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

number of articles without a talk page?

Can someone tell me how many mainspace articles do not have a talk page- a percentage or an absolute number is fine. tedder (talk) 16:29, 20 March 2010 (UTC) 

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM page WHERE page_namespace = 0 AND page_is_redirect=0;
 3255520
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM page p1 LEFT JOIN page p2 ON p1.page_title=p2.page_title AND p2.page_namespace=1
WHERE p1.page_namespace = 0 AND p1.page_is_redirect=0 AND p2.page_id IS NULL;
 377981
Merlissimo 00:56, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Redirect fix

Almost all pages that wikilink to The Heat Is On (The Isley Brothers album) are redirected from The Heat Is On (Isley Brothers album). Dan56 (talk) 00:21, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

See WP:R2D. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:54, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
  • If the redirect were unprintworthy, there might be a case here; but since it will likely be piped wherever it is found, I don't think bypassing the redirect is necessary. However, open to being convinced otherwise and apparently WildBot (4) will do this if you apply the appropriate tag to the redirect. –xenotalk 12:21, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Grape variety species italicisation

I added forced italicisation to {{Infobox grape variety}}, and now need someone to kindly remove it from instances in articles, as in this edit, please. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

When articles are saved by moving them to the Wikia, they often end up with a lot of red links. I tried eliminating the red links by linking them to their proper Wikipedia article, by changing all [[ into [[Wikipedia: but then you have the word Wikipedia before the link most of the time. If there was a | in the link, then it works just fine. I made an example on the Wikia to illustrate what I am talking about. [8] Notice how if it had a | in it, it looks fine, but if not, it appears with Wikipedia in front of the name of the link. It says Wikipedia:Jesus instead of just Jesus. Can someone make a bot for this? I figure it shouldn't take someone too long who knows how to program. Just scan the page until it finds double brackets, and then scan until it finds the two closing brackets, and if there is no | there, then copy the word and put it there behind a |. Then go through and add the word Wikipedia after the opening brackets, so that the link will point to the proper page. For a Wikia dedicated to list, linking back to Wikipedia for anyone interested in the things on the list, be it books, or whatever, is rather important. Dream Focus 08:40, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't a pipe trick work? — The Earwig (talk) 02:30, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Cool. I didn't know that existed. Still need a bot to see if it already has that in it, then adding it if it does not. I can use Microsoft Works to replace the ]] with |]] and the [[ with [[Wikipedia: automatically, but that'd not look right with links that already had a | in them. See how articles like this: [9] look? Dozens of red links when it was transwikied. Lot of articles like that. Dream Focus 03:43, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
This seems like something that a .js user script could handle. It would add an extra tab at the top; when activated, it would check whether each local link exists (blue) or not (red) and convert reds to wikipedia: interwiki links. You would run it manually, once on each affected page. Do you know if Wikia supports user scripts? Flatscan (talk) 05:37, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikia uses the same software is Wikipedia, so if one does it the other does it. Dream Focus 12:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
User scripts can be disabled on individual wikis, but it seems like many Wikia instances have them enabled. Would you be willing to settle for a script instead of a bot? Flatscan (talk) 05:21, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Whatever works, I'd be grateful. Dream Focus 19:20, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I'll work on a user script implementation, but my turnaround time may be up to a few weeks. Flatscan (talk) 05:15, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject Argentina

Some days ago a new tool was explained at the Village Pump, that will generate a list of articles from Category:Unreferenced BLPs within the project scope. I proposed this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Argentina a week ago, a nobody is against the use (nobody else supports it either, but being an uncontroversial request perhaps there's no much need for it anyway). This project would seek intersections between CAT:BLP and articles with the wikiproject tag, so I would need to request that {{WikiProject Argentina}} (and perhaps {{WPBiography}}) be added into the articles in the following categories. As requested at the top, it's the complete list, there's no need to work at subcategories. To reduce a bit of bot work, I have skipped from here some categories unrelated with this specific task (such as fictional argentines), or whose people can only be deceased people (such as soldiers from XIX century wars)

List of categories

MBelgrano (talk) 00:38, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Ive done one better for you. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:WikiProject_Argentina&diff=prev&oldid=352098478 that will populate Category:WikiProject Argentina articles and Ill cross reference that category with the unref BLP cat and generate reports daily at tools:~betacommand/reports/unref_blp/WikiProject_Argentina_articles.txt It will take some time to fully populate that category so bear with it until all pages are in there. βcommand 03:42, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
PS you might want to have a bot operator tag those articles in the categories that dont have your wikiproject banner on its talk page, to ensure proper results. βcommand 03:44, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
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