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SpongeBob SquarePants task

Over at WP:AFC/Redirects we've had a lot of requests for redirects for articles relating to SpongeBob SquarePants. Specifically, SpongeBob can be written as Spongebob, and SquarePants can be written as Squarepants. It is also reasonable to redirect squarepants to Squarepants.
The requested task would search for all articles containing the word SpongeBob and/or SquarePants and create appropriate redirects for alternative capitalizations. These redirects would be tagged with {{R from other capitalisation}}. Thank you. --LukeSurl t c 21:53, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

@LukeSurl: Since the correct spelling is "SpongeBob SquarePants", should redirects with typographical errors "Spongebob" and/or "Squarepants" be tagged with {{R from misspelling}} instead? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:19, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I think you're right. --LukeSurl t c 09:18, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
@LukeSurl: So, for example, for List of SpongeBob SquarePants characters, how many redirects would you want?
What else? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:25, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
If the only difference is in whether "B", "S" or "P" is capital or small, it's not a difference in spelling; hence, those are not candidates for {{R from misspelling}} but {{R from other capitalisation}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:57, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
@Redrose64: {{R from misspelling}} states "This is a redirect from a misspelling or typographical error." Using an incorrect capitalization is not a typographical error? GoingBatty (talk) 15:37, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
It's a special case of a typographical error. Surely it's better to use the most specific template? --Redrose64 (talk) 15:46, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Using {{R from misspelling}} will include it in Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked misspellings, so editors can fix the typos in the incoming links. GoingBatty (talk) 15:51, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
@GoingBatty: I think you've got it exactly right with that list. --LukeSurl t c 07:37, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
Status Unknown. What has ended up happening with this?--88.104.132.1 (talk) 17:44, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
 Doing... manually. GoingBatty (talk) 17:55, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
@LukeSurl:  Done - 184 redirects created. GoingBatty (talk) 18:23, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Brilliant! Thanks. --LukeSurl t c 19:19, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Bot to automatically close speedily deleted articles at WP:XfD discussions

A common scenario at XfD discussions is that a nominated article is eligible for speedy deletion, and gets speedily deleted. This scenario is made more common because the CSD criteria are strictly applied and patrollers are told to nominate articles for AfD if unsure. Although this isn't a significant problem at all on the backlog, it could be easily replicated by a bot. Esquivalience t 00:03, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Note that AnomieBOT already does this for WP:TFD, WP:FFD, and WP:PUF as part of its existing clerking duties. Anomie⚔ 21:43, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Soccerway template

{{Soccerway}} should replace Soccerway.com (*.soccerway.com) in external links. This request is similar to this one. SLBedit (talk) 13:48, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

@SLBedit: BRFA filed. GoingBatty (talk) 16:18, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
@SLBedit:  Doing... GoingBatty (talk) 13:28, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
@SLBedit:  Done! If you find any I've missed, please let me know. GoingBatty (talk) 14:59, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Zerozero profile template

{{Zerozero profile}} should replace Footballzz.co.uk in external links (like this). This request is similar to my previous requests (1, 2). SLBedit (talk) 00:10, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

@SLBedit: I'll work on this over the weekend. GoingBatty (talk) 02:35, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
Note there are links for players – /player and /jogador – and for coaches – /coach and /treinador. SLBedit (talk) 11:17, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
@SLBedit: It appears that {{Zerozero profile}} only supports players, since it includes "/jogador" in the URL. Is that correct? GoingBatty (talk) 14:14, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
I think so. I couldn't find a zerozero template for coaches. SLBedit (talk) 14:17, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, SLB is correct, still no template available for coaches, only players. However, the coaches one can be removed altogether keeping only the player one, because even a player profile as a coach profile when needed, example Raul Águas, if you check his player profile from the corresponding template, you will see his coach profile immediately below without having to click in the manager link. --84.90.219.128 (talk) 19:00, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

@SLBedit: Since some managers won't have player stats, I created {{Zerozero manager}} (similar to {{ForaDeJogo manager}}). To test, I added them both to Raul Águas. GoingBatty (talk) 16:01, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Good job. SLBedit (talk) 20:39, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
@SLBedit: BRFA filed. GoingBatty (talk) 23:40, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
@GoingBatty: I have found a zerozero link with the domain zerozero.pt, see Diego Lopes. SLBedit (talk) 18:11, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
@SLBedit: Will do as part of my existing bot task. GoingBatty (talk) 18:42, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
@SLBedit:  Doing... GoingBatty (talk) 22:14, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Zerozero profile template (2)

This request is identical to the previous request above, only the domain changes: {{Zerozero profile}} and {{Zerozero manager}} should replace Zerozero.pt in external links (like this and this). SLBedit (talk) 00:12, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

@SLBedit: Will do as part of my existing bot task. GoingBatty (talk) 18:42, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
@GoingBatty: another domain name found: footballzz.com. SLBedit (talk) 07:22, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
@SLBedit: Already working on this, per the note I left for you on User talk:GoingBatty#ForaDeJogo. GoingBatty (talk) 13:18, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Need a bot revived from the dead

User:Jogersbot used to do a bunch of helpful tasks. Would anyone with bot knowledge be able to resurrect this bot in order to repopulate lists User:Jogers/List3 through User:Jogers/List7? Thanks, from the WP:ALBUM community. --Fisherjs (talk) 00:22, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Fisherjs, all of them seem pretty straightforward to do. I'll see if I can hack up a script that populates the lists. APerson (talk!) 16:23, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Looking for a Commons bot operator

Could anyone help with a Commons bot request? I left a request at COM:BOTR two months ago, but it was archived without action: it shouldn't be hard to program, so I suppose that it's just that nobody got around to it. Here's the request, copied from Commons:Commons:Bots/Work requests/Archive 11.

I've just discovered Commons:Category:Photographs by date and would like to have its subcategories added to my uploads. This will take a while if I do it manually, as I've uploaded over twelve thousand pictures. Could a bot do it? I'm imagining that the bot goes one-by-one through most of my uploads (details below), adding a date category only when the image uses {{Information}}, and using the date supplied in the |Date= parameter. Bonus points if the bot logs all images that don't use {{Information}} and all images that use the template but don't have anything in the data parameter or have something in it that's not precisely YYYY-MM-DD (example of this), and then gives me the full logs for both types so that I can check them and fix them if necessary. I've started adding date categories to new uploads (example), so it should also check to see if an image is already in a date category and ignore ones that are. Since they're not broken, there's no need to log these images. I was imagining that the bot would go through every image in eight categories; it should ignore things I've uploaded that aren't in any of these categories, and it should add a date to anything uploaded by someone else that's in one of these categories. The categories in question are Commons:Category:Aerial pictures by User:Nyttend, Commons:Category:Building-centered pictures by User:Nyttend, Commons:Category:Community pictures by User:Nyttend, Commons:Category:Highway pictures by User:Nyttend, Commons:Category:Miscellaneous images by User:Nyttend, Commons:Category:Portraits by User:Nyttend, Commons:Category:Scenery pictures by User:Nyttend, Commons:Category:Signs by User:Nyttend.

Thanks for the help. Nyttend (talk) 17:15, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Coding... Seems like a useful bot to have BMacZero (talk) 05:20, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
BRFA filed Commons:Commons:Bots/Requests/BMacZeroBot BMacZero (talk) 15:20, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
@Nyttend: Do you think it would be better, for pages that already have a Photographs by date category, to add "Taken on" and remove the existing category? "Taken on" also include automatic localization BMacZero (talk) 15:28, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks a lot! But what do you mean, "add taken on and remove the existing category"? Could you make such an edit manually and then show me what you mean? Nyttend (talk) 16:39, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Here is an example: [1] BMacZero (talk) 20:20, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Hm, interesting; I've never seen that template before. Sure, go ahead, and it's also fine if you add the template to pages that don't have the date category, e.g. [2]. Nyttend (talk) 22:13, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
@Nyttend: Oh, haha, that's weird - I could have sworn that you had mentioned that template in your original spec. I must have discovered it while I was coding and subconsciously inserted it. That's what I get for working late. Just to make sure I am still sane: what the bot will be doing when it's approved is replacing "|date=YYYY-MM-DD" with "|date={{Taken on|YYYY-MM-DD}}" (which adds the category you wanted), and removing any existing "Photographs taken on" category that matches that date. It will log pages with missing or differently-formatted dates or non-matching "Photographs taken on" categories. Is this good for you? BMacZero (talk) 23:34, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
All's what I was hoping to see. Thanks a lot! Nyttend (talk) 23:37, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Harmonising the use of abbreviation of Creative Commons licenses

Wikipedia often refers to Creative Commons licences in our references and sources. The way that they are referred to is not always correct. There should never be a dash between the CC and its license elements. So CC BY, not CC-BY.[1] Also Creative Commons capitalises its license abbreviations. I've made a table with common misspellings of the abbreviations:

Bad Good
CC-BY CC BY
CC-BY-NC CC BY-NC
CC-BY-SA CC BY-SA
CC-BY-NC-SA CC BY-NC-SA
CC-BY-ND CC BY-ND
CC-BY-NC-ND CC BY-NC-ND
cc-by CC BY
cc-by-nc CC BY-NC
cc-by-sa CC BY-SA
cc-by-nc-sa CC BY-NC-SA
cc-by-nd CC BY-ND
cc-by-nc-nd CC BY-NC-ND

I've started changing this manually, but that seems like a large repetitive task (I also get a lot of false positives as the search engine ignores the dash.[2] To me this seems like a task for a bot.

Full disclosure: I work for Creative Commons in the Netherlands, I do not want to create the impression that I am changing material on behalf of Creative Commons, I want te factually represent the licenses and their abbreviations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martsniez (talk • contribs) 14:11, 16 April 2015‎

References

  1. ^ See the top of https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ as an example of how Creative Commons does this
  2. ^ See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=%22CC-BY%22&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go&fulltext=1
I don't think I'll have time to pursue this but I ran a search on the latest database dump. As a rough ceiling, about 30 000 articles contain the 'bad forms' listed above, though this includes many non-mainspace. See User:Jamesmcmahon0/CC abbreviation typos.
This could be probably be added as a typo correction at WT:AWB/T
That all said, I think you should probably go else where first and get a consensus for the changes. For instance there are quite a few templates such as Template:Cc-by-sa-1.0 (here:Category:Creative Commons copyright templates) that use your 'bad forms' Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:35, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
How does it do so? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:01, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing:The template names are Cc-by-sa-1.0 etc. but 'should be' CC BY-SA-1.0 (if capitalised) or at least Cc by-sa-1.0 - I don't really have an opinion on which way should be used, nor do I really know the template naming conventions, I was just trying to point out a few things Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 12:54, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. I think template names are less of concern than content displayed to our readers. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:16, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
I went through all templates in that category, none of them use the abbreviated license name when embedded in an article. I agree with User talk:Pigsonthewing that the naming convention of these are not a concern in this case. I will link to this discussion from WT:AWB/T to see if we can get more consensus on this. --Martsniez (talk) 10:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
Some examples of where this change might be made are needed. Also, care should be taken that the bot does not change quoted text. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:01, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
I believe User:Jamesmcmahon0 has found over 30k articles where this could be changed, are you looking for more than this? --Martsniez (talk) 10:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
@Martsniez: - I think he meant provide a few diffs of the type of edits. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 15:37, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
I don't see the need for this. The abbreviations we use here are the ones we use here. As long as the license link points to the right page on the CC site, what does it matter if we don't always capitalize things the way they do? This seems to be mostly a non-problem in search of an answer. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:12, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Re-categorize Kenyan towns/cities by county?

This might be impossible, but I was wondering if a bot could help recategorize Kenyan villages/towns/cities into the appropriate county. There were previously eight provinces in Kenya, and most "populated places" in the county were categorized according to those provinces. Category:Populated places in Central Province (Kenya), for instance, contains 625 articles. Category:Populated places in Coast Province‎ contains another 481.

In a 2010 constitutional change, these provinces were eliminated, and replaced by 47 different counties. Yet five years later, a huge number of these place articles have never been updated to reflect the change. The only way to me, as a user, to update these articles is to open the article, click on the geo-location coordinates, figure out from google maps (where the county boundaries are clearly marked) which county it belongs to, then place it in the appropriate category. http://www.fallingrain.com/world/KE/

Is there any way a bot could go through these categories, look for articles with coordinates, compare those coordinates with the boundaries of the counties, and place the article in the appropriate county category? To me, that sounds like a lot to ask, but maybe it's possible? Thanks! - TheMightyQuill (talk) 07:24, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

The co-ordinates approach sounds next to impossible without knowing detailed boundaries, which I haven't been able to find online. On the other hand, I've found this data, which seems to be a fairly comprehensive list of places in Kenya, sorted by their counties. I've got this data in a database now, and it seems fairly trivial to update every article where they match. This won't be all of them (I'm sure there are spelling differences, etc.), but it should reduce the numbers fairly well. The rest could be done by hand. How does this sound, TheMightyQuill? Relentlessly (talk) 21:02, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Sorry for my late reply - I've been on vacation. That sounds amazing, @Relentlessly:. If you move the ones you can, I can manually edit anything left over. By any chance, can a bot automatically update any existing infoboxes as well? - TheMightyQuill (talk) 22:54, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Request for category adding

Could someone have a bot add all the articles on User:Exoplanetaryscience/List of numbered asteroids to Category:Numbered asteroids? exoplanetaryscience (talk) 17:32, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Where's the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy discussion endorsing this? Need to have a positive assertion that we're ok. Hasteur (talk) 20:08, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
I'd discussed it with Tom.Reding in the section Summary of Remaining Redirected & Unredirected Asteroid Articles, and nobody else seemed to have any particular problem with it. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 17:00, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
This is more of a category-maintenance request. Of the 19,237 numbered asteroid pages, only 529 currently exist in that category. Please let us know if a separate discussion is still necessary and we'll start one at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  17:19, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
Posted.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  14:58, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
Coming here from WT:AST; this seems like a very reasonable request; I can't see any downsides to doing this. StringTheory11 (t • c) 15:43, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
As both someone involved in WP:AST and WP:BAG, this request is uncontroversial and has consensus. However, before proceding, WP:AST needs to think about how it wants to sort articles in the category. It's quite likely you'll need some form of 0 padding, and take care of a couple of cases manually. E.g. do you sort Ceres as 000001 Ceres or as Ceres? Do you sort 693 Zerbinetta as 000693 Zerbinetta or as Zerbinetta? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:42, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Why would {{default sort}}ing need to be taken care of in the same bot request as simply adding a category? 693 Zerbinetta is still a numbered asteroid, regardless of how it's sorted. Furthermore, I haven't seen [[Category:Numbered asteroids]] with a qualifier attached (such as [[Category:Numbered asteroids|000001]]). I too want to see a standard {{default sort}} among the numbered asteroids, but grouping all the numbered asteroids seems like it should be the 1st step in that multi-step process.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  16:18, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
I plan to go through every asteroid article and get this sorting done sooner or later, preferably sooner. Creating such a thing for the category itself would be a waste of programming, as I would later undo it anyways, so just leave it they way it is by default and I will later fix it manually or submit a separate request for such a thing to be done. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 18:14, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
What I'm doing is using the fact that [[Category:Numbered asteroids|000001]] doesn't exist (nor should it) as an argument for the simplicity of adding [[Category:Numbered asteroids]] to those articles needing it.
There is concensus at WT:AST, so I hope someone picks up this request.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  13:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
At the time of posting here, there are three people in support of adding the category, but nowhere is the category's sort order addressed. If the sort key is omitted, then the sortkey set by {{DEFAULTSORT:}} will be used, which may not be present, in which case the page name becomes the sort key. This is alphanumeric, not pure numeric, so the sort order will by default be 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 100001, 100002 which might not be what is desired. It is in fact contrary to the present sort order of Category:Numbered asteroids, which is Ceres, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... because those pages each have a sortkey, either a {{DEFAULTSORT:000001)}} or the explicit [[Category:Numbered asteroids|000001]] etc. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:19, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Well, 6 if you include exoplanetaryscience, StringTheory11, and myself.
Thanks for clarifying the problem; I see it now. Even though only 11/564 pages in Category:Numbered asteroids use a 0-padded 6-digit sortkey, the majority of articles to be placed in that category have a {{DefaultSort}} using a name instead of a number, so they'd be displayed improperly. I've updated the discussion at WT:AST.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  19:14, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Interwiki to templates in Arabic Wikipedia

Hi Everyone, I'm a sysop in Arabic wikipedia. Recently, I found there that we have a lot of templates directly translated from English Wikipedia (English names have been maintained) but without interwiki. The templates are mainly for sport and chemistry articles. Is it possible to run a bot in English wiki that tries to find the equivalent in Arabic wikipedia and merge wikidata pages ? For example : Template:Chembox Dipole must be linked to ar:قالب:Chembox Dipole. The word قالب means Template. Thank you a lot. --Helmoony (talk) 16:35, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Local copies of Commons-specific license templates

When transcluding Commons media in the main page's "In the news" section, we upload local copies to ensure that they're protected immediately. Templates for the most common free licenses exists on both sites, but Commons also uses numerous tags of greater specificity or relevance to licenses rarely encountered at the English Wikipedia. In such instances, copying and pasting the image's description results in a broken license template transclusion (a red link).
I request that a bot scan c:Category:License tags (and its subcategories) and create local copies of all templates that don't exist at the English Wikipedia. This would require the substitution of all subtemplates (down to the lowest level), replacement of any Commons-specific CSS classes with code that functions here, and replacement of Commons categories with Category:Wikimedia Commons copyright templates (to be created specifically for this purpose).
Is this feasible? —David Levy 01:13, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Real time net worth

Is it possible to automatically change the net worth to whatever it says here http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime or can it only be done manually? --Iady391 (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea too.--88.104.133.190 (talk) 11:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Needs wider discussion.

Discussion

I added the advertisement parameter to see what people think of this idea.--88.104.132.1 (talk) 17:29, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

A user has requested the attention of a member of the Bot Approvals Group. Once assistance has been rendered, please deactivate this tag by replacing it with {{t|BAG assistance needed}}. << I added this tag, hopefully some help should be here.--88.104.132.1 (talk) 17:46, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Need bot that can change the formats of dates.

What about a bot that can change the dates in reference tags? Such as in the outside of the "cite web" template, date could be incorrectly put outside the cite web template (which is within reference tags), or the date format is incorrect. For example, below is a date used incorrectly used within ref tags. (Note: ignore the filler text.)

<ref>{{cite web|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page|title=Wikipedia}} Retrieved on 25th May 2015</ref>

It should really be...

<ref>{{cite web|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page|title=Wikipedia|accessdate=25 May 2015}}</ref>

Do you reckon this is a good idea? Qwertyxp2000 (talk) 06:15, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this is a good idea. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:39, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Okay, what coding could be possible? Got any ideas? Qwertyxp2000 (talk) 08:33, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
By the way, does your bot, Yobot, correct common Wikitext errors? Qwertyxp2000 (talk) 08:43, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
Qwertyxp2000 my bot fixes common syntax fixes but I think it's better someone else codes this and runs it. Perhaps GoingBatty. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:49, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
Okay. I am just wondering about Yobot. Anyway, why not ask GoingBatty? Qwertyxp2000 (talk) 20:36, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
I would suggest a scan of the database be performed to determine how much of a problem this is. There is a risk that the proposed bot would see a date outside the citation tag and think action should be taken when in fact the date is legitimate. For example, it may be necessary to add date-related information outside the citation template because the citation template cannot represent it. Example:
  • Sean Urban; P. Kenneth Seidelmann, eds. (2013). Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac. University Science Books. p. 12. Errata retrieved May 25, 2015.
Jc3s5h (talk) 21:00, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
@Qwertyxp2000: This would be outside of the scope of my current BattyBot date fixing task, because it doesn't generate a CS1 date error. However, it would be interesting to try it manually for a while. I also wonder how Ohconfucius' date fixing script would handle this. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:35, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
@Jc3s5h: Could you represent the citation as {{cite book|title=Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac|editor1 = Sean Urban | editor2=P. Kenneth Seidelmann | publisher = University Science Books | year = 2013 | page = 12 |chapter-url=http://aa.usno.navy.mil/publications/docs/exp_supp_errata.pdf |chapter=Errata |accessdate=May 25, 2015}}, which renders as:
Sean Urban; P. Kenneth Seidelmann, eds. (2013). "Errata" (PDF). Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac. University Science Books. p. 12. Retrieved May 25, 2015.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by GoingBatty (talk • contribs) 00:40, 26 May 2015 UTC
I have several concerns with the use of cite book suggested by GoingBatty. Most important, since there is no way to deal with errata in the template documentation, editors are at liberty to improvise a way to deal with it, and it is an error for a bot to change any reasonable way of providing this information into false gibberish. Also, the proposed method provides false metadata. Also the proposal puts the word "errata" in double quotes as if it is a title, when in fact it is a description of the material.
I believe if a bot were created with the philosophy "If I find any date inside ref tags but outside the citation template, I'm going to turn it into an access date" the bot will make mistakes. The only hope of writing a bot that didn't make many mistakes would be to look for a very specific pattern. Something like <ref> followed by a CS1 template followed by "Retrieved on" followed by a date in an allowed format followed by </ref>, with not one single character of other information, except white space, present. But that would be such a rigid requirement that there might not be a worthwhile number of errors in the wild to correct. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:56, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
my Sources script will remove the entire ref because it points to a WP page; my MOSNUM script will strip the ordinal notation from the access date, but does not do anything apart from that. I haven't see that "problem format" before, so never contemplated a fix, and my feeling is that a targeted run by someone using AWB with a custom regex would quickly have that sorted. -- Ohc ¡digame! 04:40, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Sync official website with Wikidata part 2

Continuing this Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_62#Sync_official_website_with_Wikidata I asked Ladsgroup to perform a second run in Category:Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia using Dexbot. The bot checks whether the two values differ only in prefix (one has and the other does not). -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:35, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

@Magioladitis: You could also check whether the only difference is trailing slash (example.com vs example.com/ or example.com/foo vs example.com/foo/). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:37, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: Good idea. In fact, Ladsgroup already proposed to check whether the one url is a redirect of the other. I've found some pages with this case. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:46, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Tag inactive WikiProjects

A new initiative (thank you, User:Harej) uses a script to collect stats on WikiProjects; including those which have zero members who have made more than one edit to an article in the project's scope in the last 90 days.

Please can a bot tag those projects with {{WikiProject status|inactive}}, as in this edit? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:06, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I guess Harej can do that. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:15, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm generally not a fan of tagging projects as inactive (I consider it a WikiProject's death knell), but if we are going to embark on automating this (isn't there already a bot that does this?), I would like to see two things happen first: (1) we condense defunct/inactive/semiactive/active down to just inactive/active, and (2) we come up with standard definitions for the two. Harej (talk) 14:35, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
It's worth noting the grades, and wording, at {{WikiProject status}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:11, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Resolved

Basically, a website changed their linking from okazu.blogspot.com to okazu.yuricon.com, and made some other tiny changes to the URL (mostly removing ".html" and replacing it with a "/", and adding a day in the URL).

For example (to use the example given in the discussion):

http://okazu.blogspot.com/2009/05/lesbian-anthology-sparkling-rain.html

is now located at

http://okazu.yuricon.com/2009/05/15/lesbian-anthology-sparkling-rain-english/

You can read the details here. The list of links which need to be fixed is here.

Thanks for any help! ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:00, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

136 pages. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:31, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Do you need any other info? Please let me know. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 04:47, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Any word on this? It's been over a week since anyone else commented here. Also, I moved the following section up and made it a subsection of this one as the tasks would be the same, just for different URLs. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:17, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Idea is not well explained. @Nihonjoe: Ok, I'll ask a question, How do we derive the YMD structure from just the YM structure that was there previously present short of having the bot opening a search on the new page looking for the "slug" that matches. My gut reaction is that I think this is a bad idea for a bot to do as it will need some sort of human component to decide which one is right. Hasteur (talk) 19:58, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
I can see how that would make things more complicated. Seeing as it is only the day and the .html that are different between the URLs, wouldn't it be fairly easy to have the bot cycle through the (at most, 31 for each entry) possibilities and then replace it with the one which comes up as a valid URL? Just have it go through a process like this:
I imagine a bot could do that much more quickly than a human. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:04, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Nihonjoe Have you contacted the site requesting permission for us to brute force crawl their website like that? The method you describe can be done, but is extremely resource intensive on the server being hit up. Also do you really want all of those pages updated? I think we're more looking at Articlespace pages and possibly active Talk pages (WT: and Article Talk). Hasteur (talk) 23:59, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes (waiting for a reply), though if it was done in small groups over a week or so, I imagine it would be fine as it would spread the load over an extended period. The mainspace and mainspace talk pages are the most important ones, but it would be nice to fix all of them. There are only 136 links which need to be fixed, so if they were done 2-3 at a time, 2-3 times a day? ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:06, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
Got a tentative "Yes", but waiting to hear from the webmaster (the owner of the site replied). ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 02:23, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
@Nihonjoe: Ideally the task will run to completion, but I can insert a ~5 minute period. The links in Archives, I'm thinking not changing because we don't want to change talk archives. Also, do we want to save the state of the page after every unique link replacement or do we want to wait till we have all the links replaced before we move forward? This work for you? I'm going to start designing the bot task over the next few days. FYI: This does not look at the subsection below. Hasteur (talk) 00:15, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
@Hasteur: Okay, the owner of the site wrote back: "Hey, thanks so much for letting me know about this. Most of my traffic is from the USA, although I do get a fair amount of global traffice, but the upshot is, if you do the update during 12AM-8AM Eastern US time, it should be okay." The webmaster also wrote saying it was fine, as well. As for talk page archives, you can leave those alone. If there are multiple links on one page, it's fine to replace all of them and then save the page. If you can have the bot do the following task at the same time, that would be great. The one below is just a simple search and replace, not involving any web searches. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:54, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
@Hasteur: Just following up since it's been about 1.5 weeks. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 04:43, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
@Hasteur: Just following up since it's been about 2.5 weeks now. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:58, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
@Nihonjoe: Thank you I heard you the first time. Beein slightly more than a little busy at work and my discretionary time has been busy. I've got it doing the replacements, but I can't get the page generator set to work correctly so that it'll correctly identify the pages. Hasteur (talk) 22:53, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
@Hasteur: Sorry if you felt I was being impatient, but I reasoned I was being patient by waiting so long in between inquiries. I can understand being busy outside of Wikipedia as I've had plenty of that myself. I appreciate the update. That's what I was looking for. Thank you for tackling this project. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:16, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
BRFA filed. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 03:28, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Y Done Hasteur (talk) 15:41, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:59, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

See my example fix here. I need someone to help me spot and fix those links in case there are more of them. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:39, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

So the only thing is that CGI/search/syousai_put.cgi?key=search&isbn= gets replaced by comics/4253? Nyttend (talk) 01:57, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
This could be combined with the request above as they are both for the same thing, just different URLs. For the same project, too. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:07, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
@Nyttend: did you do this? Hasteur (talk) 15:39, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
BRFA filed Hasteur (talk) 16:03, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
I didn't do anything. I just looked at the "example fix here" edit and asked if I understood rightly. Nyttend (talk) 17:00, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
Looks like the BRFA was approved. Thanks in advance for when this task is completed. WP:ANIME appreciates the help. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 04:02, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Replacing Trains project template with Trains in Japan project template

Per this section on the main page of the Trains in Japan WikiProject, we need to search the talk pages of all articles listed in the Category:Rail transport in Japan (and it's sub categories) for any of the following templates:

...and replace the above templates with Template:Trains in Japan. Additionally, a check should be made for "|Japan=yes" or "|japan=yes" and remove it if present as the replacement template automatically includes that. Here's a few examples of what the bot would do: 1, 2, 3, 4. The purpose of this is so the articles will be properly automatically placed into the appropriate articles by quality category. This will affect several hundred articles, though some have already been done so those would be ignored by this bot process. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 18:44, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Why {{Trains in Japan}}? Why not {{WikiProject Trains in Japan}}? Have WT:RAIL been informed? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:14, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
{{WikiProject Trains in Japan}} would be fine, too. They both point to the same thing. WP:RAIL hasn't been informed as I was just going by the referenced section on Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains in Japan (I'm a member of that project). This is simply implementing instructions already part of the project (the instructions specifically state to use {{Trains in Japan}} (which points to {{WikiProject Trains in Japan}}). As this doesn't affect WP:RAIL in the least (since it's a descendant project), there's no reason to notify them. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:38, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

As far as I recall we should avoid the wrapper and move the other direction. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:53, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Why? The wrapper exists for a reason, so why not use it? It reduces the amount needing to be typed when adding the template. Also, for some reason, the Template:WikiProject Train doesn't put things into the correct categories, even though it should when |Japan= is present. I haven't been able to figure out why not. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:38, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Nihonjoe the later seems impossible. Maybe Frietje can check this. My guess that the wrapper was created for a reason but nowadays with all these bots running and with the WikiProject standardisation we may not need to use these wrappers anymore. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:42, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Hence, the request to replace all of them with the wrapper. If you (or someone else) can figure out how to get the Template:WikiProject Train with |Japan= to work, then nothing needs to be done. There are other descendant projects where it works fine, and I copied the syntax used in those parts of the template, but it still won't work. Using the wrapper does. Very weird. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:55, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Please give examples of talk pages using {{WikiProject Trains in Japan}} where the categorisation is correct. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:32, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Any of the pages showing up in the various subcategories here. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:19, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Many of those pages don't use {{WikiProject Trains in Japan}} at all, but instead use {{WikiProject Trains|Japan=yes}} or equivalent, yet the categorisation is the same. This suggests to me that it does not matter whether the wrapper is used or the main template. One thing that I noticed when I first looked at this matter is that every single one of the pages in subcategories of Category:WikiProject Trains in Japan articles by quality has {{WikiProject Japan|trains=yes}} or similar, which was an indication that it is {{WikiProject Japan|trains=yes}} which produced the categorisation that you desired.
I see that a few hours before this thread was raised, you made these changes. This should have the effect of populating subcategories of Category:WikiProject Trains in Japan articles by quality, and again it will not make a difference whether {{WikiProject Trains in Japan}} or {{WikiProject Trains|Japan=yes}} is used. Is there any problem with the categorisation? --Redrose64 (talk) 12:26, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
I was doing things one step at a time, so the only changes were made to the {{WikiProject Trains}} template. I wanted to get it working correctly there before attempting to get it to work on {{WikiProject Japan}}. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 05:36, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
OK, I've looked into this a bit more. If a page has e.g. {{WikiProject Trains |class=c |Japan=yes }} (and no other banners) it is placed in Category:C-Class rail transport articles Category:Unknown-importance rail transport articles Category:C-Class WikiProject Trains in Japan articles, whereas if it has {{WikiProject Japan |class=c |trains=yes }} (and no other banners) it is placed in Category:C-Class Japan-related articles Category:Unknown-importance Japan-related articles Category:WikiProject Japan articles. There is thus nothing basically wrong with {{WikiProject Trains}}; however, code does seem to be lacking from {{WikiProject Japan}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:47, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
I've added the code for this to {{WikiProject Japan}} — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:14, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. That was going to be my next step after getting it to work in {{WikiProject Trains}}. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 05:36, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
{{WikiProject Trains in Japan}} reduces the amount needing to be typed - yes, it saves one character compared to {{WikiProject Trains|Japan=yes}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:26, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
I generally just type {{Trains in Japan}} or {{TIJ}}, and the latter saves quite a lot. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:22, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Seeing as there are bots going around bypassing those redirects, I considered it fairer to compare the full template names. I could have suggested {{TWP|Japan=yes}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:26, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Maybe @MSGJ: can help? He really knows templates. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:19, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
I really know templates too, particularly the WikiProject banners and especially {{WikiProject Trains}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:26, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Apparently so. In the past, I've always worked with MSGJ when I've run into WikiProject banner issues. Glad to know of a second person who is able to help. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 05:36, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Nihonjoe We can add |Japan= to the existing banners if you like. --- Magioladitis (talk) 22:08, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

See my comment just above. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:38, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
As noted above by several people, it's better practice to use the parent template {{WikiProject Trains}} with the parameter |Japan=yes. If there is a problem with categorisation, I will look into it. I've just replaced one and the categories seem to work just fine ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:20, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

N Not done. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 18:05, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Change MSDS to SDS

The Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) is a harmonization scheme that many countries have adopted, including nearly all major English-speaking countries. Part of the GHS is the Safety Data Sheet (SDS), which is a standardized version of what was formerly known as a "Material Safety Data Sheet" (MSDS) in many countries. The page "material safety data sheet" has been moved to safety data sheet and I have requested a change be made to Template:Chembox & Template:Chembox Hazards. If you need more details, see Talk:Safety data sheet#Move to Safety Data Sheet and Wikipedia talk:Chemical infobox#Change MSDS to SDS.

Many chemicals have a page titled "[name of chemical] (data page)" which has a section titled "Material safety data sheet" and a link to the old page title Material safety data sheet. For example: Methanol (data page)#Material Safety Data Sheet (I didn't change that page so it could be an example for this discussion). I am asking for the help of a bot to:

  • Change links to "Material safety data sheet" to "safety data sheet" (it's not the existence of a redirect link that is of concern, but the text displayed for the link)
  • Change the section titles on pages titled "[name of chemical] (data page)" from "Material safety data sheet" to "Safety data sheet"

I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Chemical infobox#Change MSDS to SDS concerning changes in the chemical infoboxes. At the time of making this request, there was no response in that discussion about whether a parameter in the infoboxes should be changed from "ExternalMSDS" to "ExternalSDS". Another editor made these changes to one of the infobox templates. I'm not familiar with template coding, so someone else will need to determine and coordinate any changes to the template parameters.

Also note that there are some links to the old page title that appear in the "What links here" (with transclusions and redirects hidden), but I cannot find the link in the article. For example Carbon monoxide is on the "What links here" (with transclusions and redirects hidden) for material safety data sheet, but when I click the edit tab and use the find functionality in my browser, I cannot find the link to material safety data sheet. I'm not sure why. On a final note, I'll be around for a few hours after making this request, but won't be around for the next couple of days. AHeneen (talk) 01:32, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

@AHeneen: Do you mean Carbon monoxide, or do you mean Carbon monoxide (data page)? Only the latter appears in Special:WhatLinksHere/Material safety data sheet; and the link is in the "Material safety data sheet" section. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:01, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
I'll rephrase. One request is: in page Carbon monoxide (data page), change section title "Material safety data sheet" (if exists) into "Safety data sheet" (uc/lc this way). There are some 155 such (datapage)'s, listed (indirectly, by parent page) in Category:Chemical articles having a data page. -DePiep (talk) 10:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
This is a small number that can be rapidly done by hand, or AWB. Since the header is linked too from the template I suggest the same person changes both in the same session. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:51, 16 July 2015 (UTC).

The Most Beautiful Women of All Time

Can we possibly change these rankings and automatically place them onto the respective Wikipedia page? The Most Beautiful Women of All Time e.g. in the Audrey Hepburn page mentioned that she is ranked #4 ?--88.104.132.1 (talk) 17:38, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

Needs wider discussion.

I'd say (a) is it really notable information if it's constantly changing like that and (b) the easier way would be to create a template (template|Audrey Hepburn) that responds with "4" or fourth (although those tend to be deleted eventually). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:49, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Remove persondata

As suggested below, (see last remark) a discussion about a bot operation of this magnitude needs to be held in a broader forum, with more participants and a more focused discussion. Drmies (talk) 02:49, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Persondata has been deprecated by this RfC. A bot is needed, please, to remove it from all articles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:31, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing it's not easy and not that immediate. I supported the deprecation but we first have to check that all info is transfered to Wikidata before start removing. We can stop adding but not start removing. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:33, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
This has been done already; and the RfC closed with "Consensus is to deprecate and remove" (emphasis added). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:50, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Gerda has suggested on my talk page that an infobox ({{Infobox person}}, presumably) with the data from PD be compiled by the bot and deposited on each article's talk page to facilitate the migration of the (meta)data. Alakzi (talk) 15:06, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
That would work, and {{Infobox person}} would be the best box. Perhaps it could be made to pull in data from Wikidata, first? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:20, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, that was my suggestion too, considering that one of the reasons PD has been deprecated is its unreliability. Alakzi (talk) 15:30, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
More specific: for articles with no infobox. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:27, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
This discussion should not be done here. Here it's a place to discuss how to implement tasks that have consensus. Please continue this discussion in template's talk page, Wikidata's talk or the Village pump. Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 15:45, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Please don't attempt to dictate to other users where to have discussions. The tasks "deprecate and remove" both already have consensus. The bot request page is exactly the right page to discuss how to implement the removal of material by bot. However I must point out that we cannot systematically (e.g. by bot) add infoboxes to articles. That is contrary to an ArbCom decision and would require an amendment - which I very much doubt would pass. --RexxS (talk) 11:00, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
The suggestion was to place the infobox on the talk page. Alternatively, we could create a userspace or a WikiProject page with all of the replacement infoboxes. Alakzi (talk) 11:31, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I would strongly recommend that such a list/table be compiled on a separate project page. Throwing an infobox onto the talk page of articles that have rejected infoboxes by consensus with militant opposition will not be viewed kindly. Resolute 20:32, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
It doesn't look like it's going to happen either way. Alakzi (talk) 20:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
@RexxS: I think your memory has let you down. Arbcom haven't made such a ruling; an RfC did, which can be overturned by the community. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:52, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Well, in that ArbCom case, Gerda was sanctioned for adding "infoboxes to many articles systematically", and – daft as I certainly am – I wouldn't want to see any other good-faith editors treated in that way. --RexxS (talk) 14:16, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
(I would like to see evidence that I "systematically added infoboxes", which I don't remember having done, but never mind.) Let me know what is wrong in placing on the talk page of an article two things: a copy of the PD as it has been removed, and a suggested infobox with the data from Wikidata? Seeing eyes of people could decide what to do with it, with the option to ignore or archive, but also to check for differences and update. (Btw, we live in a different time now, - a former arbitrator added an infobox to Beethoven, by community consensus, and its parameters are amicably discussed on the talk.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
I understand the issues that persondata has presented, and I have followed the deprecation/removal RfC with interest. Before we start removing the existing persondata, however, I have a request: we need an alternative for embedding the multiple forms of maiden and married names of our female article subjects. Persondata has become the default location to bury the multiple married names of many of our female bio subjects, and we should not just delete that information when we remove the persondata templates. When a subject has a single maiden name and a single married name, then it is easy enough to deal with that data in the first sentence of the lead. When a female subject has multiple married names -- sometimes as a result of multiple marriages, compound name forms, and nicknames in combination with husbands' names -- there is no elegant way to present that data. I suppose the next best alternative is to create redirects for each married name variation. In any event, care should be taken that some alternative is implemented before the persondata templates are removed and that married name data is lost. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:06, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
The alternative is Wikidata. An RfC has determined that there is, now, a clear consensus to remove Persondata from this project. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:14, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Fair enough, Andy. How and when do you propose to migrate that married name data from the persondata templates to Wikidata? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 08:39, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I suggest you read the lengthy and detailed discussion of data import under the RfC (though you did say you'd followed it?); and on the pages linked from there, on Wikidata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:51, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Andy, I see a five-point plan that was included in the RfC introduction, to wit:
"1. Transfer |SHORT DESCRIPTION= across to Wikidata.  Done
"2. Stop bots from automatically creating new Persondata templates.  Done
"3. Notify users in relevant projects of deprecation.
"4. Transfer any new data to Wikidata, then remove methodically.
"5. lose the template and relevant pages when ready."
Only one item on that five-point checklist has actually been completed. I see that items No. 2 through No. 4 have not been done, and most notably, there is no plan presented here to "transfer any new data to Wikidata, then remove methodically." Unless I'm missing something this bot request to remove all persondata templates immediately is premature by the express terms of the RfC -- there has been no transfer of "any new data to Wikidata," which was an express condition to removal. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:58, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
As of this commit, the helper script at Articles for Creation no longer adds Persondata. (And as soon as Theopolisme gets around to pushing the new version.) APerson (talk!) 16:26, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
You're misunderstanding how a WP:Request for Comment works. Somebody puts up a suggestion or question or plan, and other people discuss it, sometimes suggesting other options, othertimes giving reasons for supporting or opposing the suggestion. At the end of the process, somebody uninvolved will summarise the discussion and close the debate. It's not the proposal-vote scheme that you seem to be trying to cast it as. It became apparent during the debate that Wikidata had no interest in accepting any more data from Persondata methodically, because the data left in Persondata wasn't of an acceptable quality. So the draft plan is no longer feasible in the way it was written at the start of the RfC. That's ok; it happens in an RfC, and the discussion continued nevertheless. We're not going to be systematically transferring any more data to Wikidata from Persondata. Period. You mistook a suggestion on how we might want to proceed for a condition (as if you could have an "express condition" for an RfC). The bots are being stopped as I write; and if you're worried that any projects are unaware of the deprecation, then it's open to you to inform those projects if you wish. --RexxS (talk) 20:13, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Rexx, I've been on Wikipedia for about 18 months less than you, and I have a pretty good idea how an RfC works. Unfortunately, RfCs are nothing like a legally defined document, and closing administrators overlook elements of the discussion all the time. I have asked the closing administrator to clarify whether his close contemplated the discarding of useful persondata information, e.g., variations on female married names before it was transferred to Wikidata. If so, I will defer to the closing admin since there's not a lot of recourse, but I will say that you and Andy sure seem determined to implement this deletion with no delays for any reason, regardless of what information is discarded in the process. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:41, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
It's quite possible to have been on Wikipedia for thirteen years and still not understand many things - we just desysopped an editor who had been an admin for over ten years who didn't understand basic policies - but you shouldn't take it to heart when you get hold of the wrong end of the stick. Nevertheless, I think you've grasped the issue now - RfCs are indeed not legal contracts and we don't do process here in the way that I guess you're used to at work. We do make changes during the course of the discussion and I'm sure now that you've had a chance to read the discussion, you'll have spotted Periglio's contributions. I expect you've seen that the only person who commented and had been involved in transferring information from Persondata to Wikidata had become firmly convinced that there was nothing of value left in Persondata to transfer. Who do you expect to transfer those variations on female married names to Wikidata? That's a decision for the bot operators on Wikidata and as far as I can see, that's not going to happen because they don't believe any fields beyond the short 'description' are accurate enough. Finally, can I ask you to think again when you accuse me of being "determined to implement this deletion with no delays for any reason", when you can read below my earlier comment requesting that the removal waits until we've ensured that systematic addition has stopped? I'm pretty sure that qualifies as a delay (for a good reason), doesn't it? --RexxS (talk) 01:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Sure, and it's quite possible to have been on Wikipedia for seven years and not understand the details of our content attribution policy, even while attempting to quote it to other editors in a dispute, and not be aware that there are multiple ways to satisfy that policy because the editor in question didn't bother to actually read it. One shouldn't take that to heart, either.
As for the problem at hand, I'll take personal responsibility for manually transferring the persondata name variants for about 2000 bios that I entered personally and which I have a very high degree of confidence in its accuracy. In fact, I've already started. As far as I can tell, it's not limited to women's married names, either; there has been no attempt to import full names, as opposed to article title COMMONNAMEs, of males or females. My cursory review of Wikidata profiles that I had not previously edited shows that very little data, if any, has been transferred from persondata to Wikidata, other than the sometimes eccentric "brief descriptions". There appears to be a lot of persondata still to be mined, but there is clearly very little interest in doing so. That's just sad; the whole rush to delete it ASAP, and the complete lack of interest in migrating anything else, smacks of a "not invented here" mentality. So be it. I can't personally fix the Wikidata for a million bios. It would, however, be a sensible and considerate gesture to provide several weeks of wide-ranging advance notice to the hundreds of editors who entered persondata in good faith over the last five or six years, so they could take personal responsibility for migrating it to Wikidata. As far as I can tell, there is no particular reason for rushing the deletion of persondata templates today, tomorrow, next week, or even next month. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
As one editor who has worked on hundreds of biographical articles, I am not taking any personal responsibility for migrating anything to Wikidata whatsoever. I am not part of the Wikidata Project. The persondata templates have been deprecated, so I am no longer adding them to new articles. What the Wikidata people want to dio is up to them. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:01, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
I remove persondata when data is correct on Wikidata. SLBedit (talk) 22:58, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
I also suggest that we should wait until bots that add Persondata are changed (e.g. AWB general fixes) before we unleash bots to remove Persondata. GoingBatty (talk) 16:33, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Approval can be granted, here, with that caveat. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:14, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I believe it is important to ensure that no further systematic additions of Persondata are happening before removal begins. That would enable us to establish a date when all of the Personadata is still in place. Remembering that no content is actually being deleted, we would then have a date that a bot could use at any point in the future to revisit an article's history and extract the Persondata. I agree that the caveat suggested by GoingBatty and Andy is the right way to proceed. --RexxS (talk) 11:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
It is kind of too late because what made me think is that PD was already removed from an article without infobox and without keeping the data anywhere, Statz Friedrich von Fullen, on the Main page right now. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:49, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 24. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:01, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
AWB bots will stop adding Persondata after rev 11039. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:18, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
@Magioladitis: Thank you for updating AWB. I have taken that update, and other bot operators have done so as well. However, since some AWB bot operators may never take an SVN, I suggest that this bot task waits until a new version of AWB and the current version is obsoleted. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:02, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Removal of persondata may be sanctioned by RfC, that doesn't neccessarily mean it is a bot task. I contend it is not per WP:COSMETICBOT policy. Making cosmetic changes that only make a difference in edit mode (and make no difference in Read mode) like removeUselessSpaces are specifically discouraged to be performed by bots unless there is "...a substantial change to make at the same time".
Also the WP:CONTEXTBOT policy comes in play, the context "that would normally require human attention" being the need to check, on an article by article basis, what metadata are valid to be transferred elsewhere, and/or what metadata are incorrect or superfluous. That the RfC was fairly unanimous on casting doubt about the PD metadata, doesn't mean it is true for each of the thousands of affected articles, and shouldn't be checked on an article by article basis (especially as the metadata as such aren't causing trouble in a cosmetic sense).
I explained a bit more in detail as some of the participants in this discussion maybe are less accustomed to bot specifics. Otherwise a "No, per WP:COSMETICBOT and WP:CONTEXTBOT" should suffise. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:46, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Re. "if the addition of personadata by a bot was not a breach of COSMETICBOT, then neither should be its removal" – I fail to see the relevance of that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS remark. Not all persondata was added by bots, even if it were the remark has no relevance. Bots don't get automatic approval of tasks "extremely similar" to tasks they already performed, leave alone opposite tasks. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:44, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

DPL-bot like approach

  • Seeing this recent edit I was thinking about the nice bot-generated remarks I get on my talk page every once and awhile:
==Disambiguation link notification for <date>==
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited <article(s)>, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page <dab page> ([<check to confirm>]> | [<fix with Dab solver>]). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the <FAQ> • Join us at the <DPL WikiProject>.
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these <opt-out instructions>. Thanks, <bot sig>
I was thinking about a bot doing something similar:
==Persondata notification for <date>==
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited <article(s)>, you added metadata in the deprecated PersonData format instead of using the current WikiData system ([<check to confirm>] | [<handy link for how to transfer these metadata to Wikidata>]). Read the <FAQ> • Join us at the <Wikidata Project>.
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these <opt-out instructions>. Thanks, <bot sig>
--Francis Schonken (talk) 17:44, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

How to transfer Persondata to Wikidata

  • @Francis Schonken: Click on the "edit" button in the upper right of the Wikidata profile page, and that opens all of the fields in the top box of the profile page, including name variants and brief descriptions. The defined fields below the top box are edited individually. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:26, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Tx. I was rather thinking about a how-to guide for transferring metadata (ending with something like "...after you have transferred the metadata delete the persondata template from the article"). Is there no how-to page that explains this? Note for example that for me the Wikidata page opens in Dutch, and various other differences with my usual wiki-editing. What is metadata? What goal does it serve? What is VIAF and numerous other abbreviations used on that page? Why is it a good idea to put time & effort in figuring all that out? In other words: current user-friendlyness leaves a lot to be desired. Is there no tool that can help me pick the Persondata I want to see transferred to Wikidata, and transfer them with a few clicks (the equivalent of dabsolver for links to disambiguation pages, see what I proposed above)? --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:45, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
@Francis Schonken: Your best bet for particular instructions is User:Jared Preston. He is an English langauge editor who is an administrator on Wikidata. He has turned up in several related discussions today, and has been very helpful. I already have an open discussion thread on his talk page. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:09, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
@Jared Preston: is it possible to provide a how to guide for how to transfer Persondata to Wikidata (probably a page in Help: namespace)? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
P.S. If you want to organize a Wikipedia-wide bot message to be left on every appropriate discussion board, I would be happy to help prepare some "instructions," and I'm sure Jared Preston would help, too. If we're going to make a meaningful effort to transfer accurate persondata to Wikidata, we need ready, willing and able bodies to help. There are 1,230,630 current uses of Template:Persondata. I've manually transferred the persondata of about 75 articles in the last 24 hours, and I have another 2,000 or so on my personal watch lists to deal with. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
@JaGa: See my proposal above #DPL-bot like approach - pinging the DPL bot operator to check whether something similar could be implemented for editors updating Persondata. Just to get some input on feasibility? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid there isn't anything I can do to help here, and as per the RfC, it appears that some (or most?) of the information provided by persondata cannot be copied to Wikidata by bots due to the formatting. I can understand that to some extent too, seeing as persondata has an array of differences from article to article. All I can add to this conversation is that the majority of articles I edit regularly have all the information from the whole article on the corresponding Wikidata item, and not just name, dob/pob and a description. Over the years, I've always added a persondata box when creating a new article, but now I use Wikidata, I feel the information is much better preserved there, and for those who need to extract the data far more useful (in any given language). I'm sorry I can't offer any more help, maybe Mr. Mabbett could, if he was interested. Jared Preston (talk) 21:08, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm extremely interested, and intimately involveed in the issue, and I endorse both the RfC closure and the bot approval request.Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

@Jared Preston: So it is not "possible" to write a Help: namespace page that explains the steps for non-bot editors how to use Wikidata instead of Persondata? --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:23, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

  • "'… advised to manually transfer that data …' – That's the most pointless/impractical advice I've read in a long time." ([3]) – this is what I'm talking about: write a practical guide on how to manually transfer the data... --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:44, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Remove persondata practical steps

Bots can't/won't move metadata included in the persondata system to wikidata (apart from a limited set already transferred), which led to the deprecation of the persondata system, and the agreement to remove all {{persondata}} templates and their contents from Wikipedia.en.

Here are the practical steps proposed for a persondata to wikidata migration:

  1. Write a practical guide in Help: namespace on how to manually transfer persondata to wikidata;
  2. Invite a (DPL-like) bot to produce user talk page messages in this vein:
==Persondata notification for <date>==
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited <article(s)>, you added metadata in the deprecated PersonData format instead of using the current WikiData system ([<check to confirm>] | [<link to practical guide mentioned in previous point>]). Read the <FAQ> • Join us at the <Wikidata Project>.
It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these <opt-out instructions>. Thanks, <bot sig>

Tx for considering this proposal. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:25, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

  • Oppose We already have consensus to remove (thus not to maintain) persondata; the migration has been completed in as much as is practical and sensible, as was discussed at length during the RfC, (and on Wikidata). With a change involving one and a quarter million articles, there are always going to be a few edge cases: they are statistically insignificant, and the large gains outweigh the trivial losses. Trying to nudge people into making manual changes for what must, due to volume, an automated task is both futile and asinine. Besides, as has been pointed out already, the data is still in article histories should anyone need to retrieve it. This is also off-topic for this page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:47, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
    • There is no consensus to remove persondata by bot. The RfC didn't request a bot operation, nor did the closing admin grant one. This is exactly the spot to discuss whether and how a RfC result could be translated in a bot task.
    So I proposed a bot task analogous to the task currently performed by DPL bot. The task proposal deals with several issues raised at the yobot BRFA.
    Re. "...what must, due to volume, an automated task" – I'm unimpressed: the volume of non-bot editing provoked by DPL bot is in the same order of magnitude, if not many times larger.
    Over-all judgements on the value of remaining untransferred persondata are not warranted by the RfC outcome. Indeed, I see bot operators refusing to transfer more persondata to wikidata for essentially WP:CONTEXTBOT reasons. In good Wikipedia tradition (analogy: DPL bot) when a task can't be performed by a bot for that reason, leave human editors the opportunity to perform such task based on case-by-case judgement calls, and let an appropriate bot support with invitations etc. That's what I see reflected in the "practicable workarounds" for "good faith objections" noted by the closer of the RfC. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment Using a bot to deliver a message of this sort is unlikely in itself to cause any harm and may do some good. However, making this an open-ended process without time limit essentially nullifies the result of the RfC that agreed Persondata be deprecated and removed. I support anything that encourages Wikipedia editors to contribute to Wikidata (it needs well-sourced data), as long as it's not just a cynical attempt to do an end-run around community consensus here. If this proposal had a time-limit within the next month or so, I'd cheerfully support, but as it stands, I can't. --RexxS (talk) 19:17, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
  • @RexxS: How about a hard deadline of sixty (60) days from the date the bot messages are delivered to editors? I would also suggest picking off the low-hanging fruit pursuant to GoingBatty's suggestion below, so that editors who don't have a full plate already may focus on those remaining uses of persondata that may have data that may be productively transferred to Wikidata. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:27, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Re. timeframe: whatever timeframe that has consensus would work for me. I see several options:
    1. The RfC didn't conclude a timeframe, so having no timeframe is not a transgression of the RfC outcome, so that's a first possibility. After all editors might not be aware of the persondata deprecation yet, and introduce persondata in articles tomorrow or the day after tomorrow: in that case keeping the message bot active ad infinitum seems like a good idea.
    2. As far as I'm concerned the bot-generated user talk page message could end on something like "... In three days any remaining persondata will be removed from aformentioned <article(s)>"
    3. Then after half a year or so an evaluation can be made whether there's an acceptable rate of persondata removal, and if needed other measures to speed up could be applied (e.g. removing all persondata that were introduced by bot and weren't updated after that).
    4. Also combinations of systems are possible, e.g. combination with the system proposed in the next section, and/or the month or two month delimitations proposed above, as said any time frame that has consensus works for me. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:17, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Another proposal

What if the bot was to start deleting only those {{Persondata}} templates where the values within the template are duplicated in categories or infobox parameters? For those who want to get rid of every template now, this would get us started. For those who want to transfer valuable information to Wikidata, this would help you focus on those articles where the information may only exist within Persondata. Maybe logic like this (much of which is similar to how AWB populated the template):

  • If the template contains no parameters, delete the template. (I've done this manually, but more might pop up.)
  • If the template contains no values in any parameters, delete the template. (I've done this manually, but more might pop up.)
  • If the only parameter populated is NAME, delete the template. (There are about 1,000 of these.)
  • Otherwise, only delete the template if all of the following are true
    • ALTERNATIVE NAMES is blank or matches the birth name field in the infobox
    • SHORT DESCRIPTION is blank or matches a category (e.g. |SHORT DESCRIPTION=Italian painter and Category:Italian painters)
    • DATE OF BIRTH/DEATH are blank, or only contain a year and the article contains the birth/death year category with the same year, or matches the birth/death field from the infobox or a template such as {{birth date and age}}
    • PLACE OF BIRTH/DEATH are blank or matches the same field from the infobox

Comments/suggestions are welcome. GoingBatty (talk) 01:36, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: By and large, that's a very constructive suggestion. If the basic idea is to eliminate all of the persondata templates in which there is no usable, non-duplicate data, I would support that. It would permit us to eliminate the useless, and focus on the potentially useful data still to be transferred to Wikidata.
Having manually transferred non-duplicate data from persondata to Wikidata for approximately 240 articles in the last two days, I hthink I have a pretty good idea what data remains to be harvested/transferred, and what does not. I would make the following modifications of your proposal, only deleting the template if all of the following are true:
  1. ALTERNATIVE NAMES is blank or matches those listed in the "Also known as" field of the article's Wikidata profile (infobox is not really relevant for present purposes);
  2. SHORT DESCRIPTION is blank or matches that listed in the "Description" field of article's Wikidata profile (categories are a different system, and not really relevant for present purposes);
  3. DATE OF BIRTH and DATE OF DEATH are blank or match the "date of birth" and "date of death" parameters in the article's Wikidata profile (again, infobox data is not really relevant for present purposes); and
  4. PLACE OF BIRTH and PLACE OF DEATH are blank or match the "place of birth" and "place of death" parameters in the article's Wikidata profile (again, infobox data is not really relevant for present purposes).
I think we share the same goal of making sure as much non-duplicate and accurate information from persondata is transferred to Wikidata as possible. I think my ideas tighten yours, and would permit us to substantially narrow the field from the presently daunting 1,230,000 current uses of Template:Persondata. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:21, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1: I'm not a Wikidatian (is that a word?), but I do want to respect your work. Could you please help me understand why copying information from Persondata is more valuable than copying the same information from Wikipedia categories or infoboxes? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:57, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
@GoingBatty: Nor am I, sir. I'm a Wikipedia editor whose primary concern is that we don't waste 5 to 6 years worth of efforts by our fellow editors. In answer to your question, for the simple reason that such information is, by and large, not being copied from categories to Wikidata. I can point to dozens of examples that I have touched in the last 24 hours where places of birth and death, short descriptions, full names and other name variants have simply not been transferred from the infobox or persondata, nor have basic Wikidata fields like "country of citizenship," etc., been filled with data from the categories. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:05, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1: Is there any reason why editors could not copy data from the Wikipedia infobox and categories to the appropriate property value in Wikidata? GoingBatty (talk) 17:44, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
None whatsoever, GB. But the question at hand is what are we going to do with existing persondata, not whether some editor in the future might copy similar information from the article's infobox or categories. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:10, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1: I agree that "the question at hand is what are we going to do with existing persondata". My thought is that it is safe to delete Persondata if each of its values is also contained elsewhere in the Wikipedia article. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 19:38, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
My goal is to get as much of the metadata into Wikidata as possible. A lot of editors invested a lot of time to create that metadata -- which often does not correspond directly to a Wikipedia category or infobox parameter -- and I believe we should be endeavoring to get the accurate data into Wikidata, rather than simply writing it off. We should be treating this as a golden opportunity to build out Wikidata, not simply draw a line under the old system, delete it, and move on. Personally, I've done more work on Wikidata in the last two days than I have in the last two years. We should be encouraging more of that buy-in, familiarization, and build-out. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:48, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1: Although populating Wikidata is definitely a worthwhile activity, you reminded me that "the question at hand is what are we going to do with existing persondata". I believe that my proposal answers that question and does not prevent anyone from populating Wikidata. GoingBatty (talk) 20:16, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
The data hidden in persondata is not available to our readers, nor is it apparently being used by anyone elsewhere. Any "waste of 5 to 6 years worth of efforts by our fellow editors" won't come about because of the deletion of persondata from this Wikipedia. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:49, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it." -- George Bernard Shaw

Temporarily exclude pre-1924 births from persondata delete warnings

Above, there are proposals to use bots to place notices in articles that the persondata template will soon be deleted, and encourage editors to move the data to Wikidata. Unfortunately, Wikidata is not prepared to receive pre-1924 dates of any kind, such as birth or death dates. This is because the last country to switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar was Greece, and the first full year under the Gregorian calendar in Greece was 1924.

The Wikidata user interface is seriously broken with respect to Julian dates, and contains large number of dates that are labeled as Gregorian but are really Julian. In addition, the format to represent dates internally and in JSON are under discussion with no final decision. An additional problem for dates before the year AD 1 is that some date are stored with the convention year -1 = 1 BC; others are stored with the convention year 0 = 1 BC.

Until Wikidata is capable of storing older dates I suggest that nothing be done to encourage editors to move pre-1924 information to Wikidata. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h: That's kind of a serious flaw in the metadata system that we've been billing as the definitive replacement for persondata, don't you think? Is there a timeline for a fix? Should we be encouraging people to delete persondata from 1924 and before, if such data cannot be accurately transferred to Wikidata at this time? Is the Julian/Gregorian dates problem restricted to Greece? If not, what are the cut-off dates for other countries? I've manually transferred persondata to Wikidata for over 240 bios in the last three days, but all of them were 20th Century or late 19th Century Americans, Australians, Canadians and Britons -- presumably there is no problem with with any of those dates and countries, and I may continue transferring such persondata to Wikidata without negative consequences, right? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
I don't really understand Wikidata development schedules, but considering that some aspects of the Wikidata date problems have been known since the autumn of 2014, and discussion is still unresolved about the direction for a fix, I would guess a year or more. The cut-off date for Britain and British colonies was 14 September 1752. Other countries are described at Adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Some of today's European countries were, in the 14th to 18th centuries, were divided into provinces, kingdoms, principalities, etc., some of which were Catholic and some of which were Protestant. So it may require a lot of historical research to determine if a European date was Julian or Gregorian. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:48, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
If I'm understanding this correctly, Wikidata has only got the capacity to store Gregorian dates, with "Julian" very much counter-intuitively being a display option. Therefore, any Julian dates would have to be converted to the Gregorian calendar before being transferred to Wikidata. Alakzi (talk) 13:59, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Wikidata has the capacity to store pretty much anything, with dates being stored as objects, the format of which can change (as we well know). A typical date might look like:
Timestamp	+1770-12-17T00:00:00
Timezone	+00:00
Calendar	Gregorian
Precision	1 day
Which should be interpreted as "17 December 1770 (Gregorian) - with no more information about the time of the day". As you can see, the calendar type is stored with the timestamp as part of the date object. No conversion is needed to enter dates of any kind into Wikidata, as long as the editor remembers to specify Gregorian or Julian for the calendar. HTH. --RexxS (talk) 15:25, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Okay -- is or is this not a real problem? RexxS does not believe that it is. If it's not a real complication, let's hat this and focus on the major issue at hand: how may we transfer remaining accurate, non-duplicate data from persondata to Wikidata? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:39, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
OK, it was what I gathered from reading user complaints about dates at Wikidata, so it might've been an issue in the past - or not. I queried their JSON API; dates do indeed carry a "calendarmodel". I don't know what form this information takes in Lua or wikitext, but the point is, it does exist. Alakzi (talk) 16:18, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
RexxS, Wikidata user interface allowed users to choose Julian or Gregorian during input, and would convert Julian to Gregorian for storage. Then it changed, and large numbers of dates were pulled from persondata templates by bots and stuffed into Wikidata with no attempt at conversion. (Of course, persondata templates stated dates in whichever calendar was in force at the time of the event). Since so many dates in Wikidata are actually Julian even though they were supposed to be Gregorian, it has been decided to support storage in Julian or Gregorian, but this has not been achieved yet. See mw:Wikibase/DataModel/JSON. Also read all the Wikidata project chat archives beginning September 2014. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:19, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
The page you linked to documents calendarmodel as "a URI of a calendar model, such as gregorian or julian. Typically given as the URI of a data item on the repository." Presumably, the URI is set to either Gregorian's or Julian's when you toggle between the two on the web interface. What is the issue here? Alakzi (talk) 16:25, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Look at the history of the document. JSON used to always be Gregorian, and the calendar model was just a suggestion to the data consumer on how to present the data. Now it can be either, but the information in the database has not been scrubbed. The user interface does not support Julian dates; you can't enter February 29, 1900 for example. Part of the database code, Blazegraph, treats the year 0 as illegal and the year -1 as 1 BC. But the aforesaid data model regards 0 as a legal year and the year -1 as 2 BC. Like I said, read the project talk archives since September 2014, then read all the bugs mentioned in the calendar threads, then read all the bugs mentioned in the bugs. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:36, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
If I wanted to lose my mind, I'd have just picked up some Wittgenstein to read, thank you very much. What do you mean, "it can be either"? How are we supposed to distinguish between the two? Alakzi (talk) 16:50, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
The Wikidata user interface definitely does support Julian dates. The reason you can't enter 29 February 1900 is that the date doesn't exist in any calendar system (leap years are not century years except for millennium years). If you try, you'll find you can enter 29 February 1904 without problems because that date does exist. You can also enter 15 March 44 BCE and that is accepted, and it even allows you to mark it as Julian or Gregorian as you choose. That's Julius Caesar's (d:Q1048) date of death and is currently stored as ["time"] = "-0044-03-15T00:00:00Z" with a calendar model of "Proleptic Julian calendar" (d:Q1985786). It really doesn't matter whether some extension that reads RDF chooses to interpret -44 as 45 BCE because we're not using that extension. If Dirtlawyer1 wants to enter dates into Wikidata and supplies the relevant calendar for the date in each case, there will be nothing ambiguous about what is stored; nor is there any need for ambiguity in the value returned to Wikipedia via a Lua module that calls the mw API. I still don't see what the problem is for anyone wishing to manually add dates to Wikidata. --RexxS (talk) 17:43, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, Rexx. I don't see any conflict with the manual transfer to Wikidata for the articles on which I've been working. All of them are post-1752 birth dates, and they do not include Greek, Russian or Bulgarian persons who were born before 1925. There may or may not be a hitch here, but it obviously does not impact the transfer of accurate persondata to Wikidata in the vast majority of cases. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:00, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
(Reply to Alakzi after edit conflict) In the future, when mw:Wikibase/DataModel/JSON is implemented, when a "time" is put into, or extracted from the database, there must be a time field and a calendarmodel field (among others). You will use the calendarmodel field to determine if the time field is a Julian date/time or a Gregorian date/time. As for the user interface, it's broken; no word yet on what the repaired version will look like. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:48, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
That appears to be the case now; this is the value of "date of birth" of King George II, which includes both a Julian and a Gregorian date:
Extended content
[{"id": "q131981$FBDD5B85-9237-444F-9620-C2B67DE70844",
  "mainsnak": {"datatype": "time",
   "datavalue": {"type": "time",
    "value": {"after": 0,
     "before": 0,
     "calendarmodel": "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1985786",
     "precision": 11,
     "time": "+1683-11-09T00:00:00Z",
     "timezone": 0}},
   "property": "P569",
   "snaktype": "value"},
  "rank": "normal",
  "references": [{"hash": "7eb64cf9621d34c54fd4bd040ed4b61a88c4a1a0",
    "snaks": {"P143": [{"datatype": "wikibase-item",
       "datavalue": {"type": "wikibase-entityid",
        "value": {"entity-type": "item", "numeric-id": 328}},
       "property": "P143",
       "snaktype": "value"}]},
    "snaks-order": ["P143"]}],
  "type": "statement"},
 {"id": "Q131981$0E7308FE-3995-4A3B-AD50-975331E2ED91",
  "mainsnak": {"datatype": "time",
   "datavalue": {"type": "time",
    "value": {"after": 0,
     "before": 0,
     "calendarmodel": "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1985727",
     "precision": 11,
     "time": "+1683-11-10T00:00:00Z",
     "timezone": 0}},
   "property": "P569",
   "snaktype": "value"},
  "rank": "normal",
  "references": [{"hash": "53bfaabf5974a514924dbd0228602ae119c31435",
    "snaks": {"P248": [{"datatype": "wikibase-item",
       "datavalue": {"type": "wikibase-entityid",
        "value": {"entity-type": "item", "numeric-id": 36578}},
       "property": "P248",
       "snaktype": "value"}],
     "P813": [{"datatype": "time",
       "datavalue": {"type": "time",
        "value": {"after": 0,
         "before": 0,
         "calendarmodel": "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1985727",
         "precision": 11,
         "time": "+2014-04-26T00:00:00Z",
         "timezone": 0}},
       "property": "P813",
       "snaktype": "value"}]},
    "snaks-order": ["P248", "P813"]}],
  "type": "statement"}]

The implementation would suggest that calendarmodel is a representational, and not a presentational, value. [Note: I have since corrected his Julian dob to 30 October.] Alakzi (talk) 18:34, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

RexxS, your statement "The reason you can't enter 29 February 1900 is that the date doesn't exist in any calendar system (leap years are not century years except for millennium years)" is not correct. In the Julian calendar every AD year divisible by 4 is a leap year. In Russia and Greece, for example, 29 February 1900 was a valid date. I'll add more about Julius Caesar, but I want to save this post before I get another edit conflict. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Ah, OK - I see what you're getting at now. I stand corrected: I should have said "apart from 29 February 1900 (Julian), 29 February 1800 (Julian), etc. I can't see any problem for anyone wishing to manually add dates to Wikidata." The interface warns you by saying "will display as 1 March 1900". I trust that Dirtlawyer and anybody else reading this thread will bear those century leap years in mind when working with Julian calendars. Thank you for the correction. --RexxS (talk) 18:23, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
The Wikidata death date for Caesar is correct incorrect, according to the current documentation for the JSON data model, and the birth date (12 July 100 BCE Julian calendar) disagrees with the "Julius Caesar" article, which doesn't venture to give a day in July. Evidently the information was incorrectly copied from the persondata, which disagrees with the text of the article.
If the death date is viewed in the user interface, it appears correct. But if another valid way of obtaining the data, the URL http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q1048.json is used, the time value is given as "-0044-03-15T00:00:00Z" but the "-0044" should be "-0043". Jc3s5h (talk) 18:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
We need not concern ourselves on Wikipedia with the vagaries of JSON conventions. 15 May 44 BC is stored on Wikidata as "-0044-03-15T00:00:00Z" - that's all we need to know. If I call {{#Property:P570}} from Julius Caesar I get 15 March 44 BCE. When I'm writing Lua modules I'll remember that the snak value uses -1 for 1 BC - it's convenient because I can use mw.language:formatDate() with the negative value and just stick a 'BC' or 'BCE' on the end. That's all that is going to concern anybody wanting to use Wikidata in Wikipedia.
As for Caesar's birthdate, the Wikidata entry went from 'July 99 BC' to 'June 99 BC' to '1 July 100 BC' to 'July 100 BC' to '12 July 100 BC', without anyone offering a reference. Our article actually has footnote to the opening sentence claim of July 100 BC which reads: There is some dispute over the date of Caesar's birth. The day is sometimes stated to be 12 July when his feast-day was celebrated after deification, but this was because his true birthday clashed with the Ludi Apollinares. Some scholars, based on the dates he held certain magistracies, have made a case for 101 or 102 BC as the year of his birth, but scholarly consensus favors 100 BC. Goldsworthy, 30. I think this is good example of how sources can offer differing dates for an event in antiquity and the article acknowledges this. If we were good at supplying references for the data in Wikidata, then the question of whether Caesar's birthdate should be given as '12 July 100 BC', '13 July 100 B'C, or 'July 100 BC' would somewhat easier to resolve. Of course, all three could be stored in Wikidata, each with a different reference if we wanted to do that. --RexxS (talk) 19:08, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Wikidata lies about dates before AD 1. I will fight tooth and nail against any importation of dates before AD 1 from Wikidata to Wikipedia until the faults are fixed. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:25, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

This is all very interesting, but appears to bear little if any relevance to the request for a bot to enact the community's decision to remove persondata from this Wikipedia. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:45, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I've changed the subtitle of this subsection, to clarify my concern. I don't mind if the persondata templates get deleted after a period of time to rescue worthwhile data. But perusing dates in Wikidata items about people makes it clear that most editors and most bot operators have no idea that it is not OK to just copy and paste a date from Wikipedia to Wikidata. The number of Julian calendar dates is ever-increasing as the year gets earlier than 1924. Editors and bot operators have been oblivious to the distinction betweeen Julian and Gregorian dates. Thus, we should not put any warning in articles that would tend to encourage editors to move pre-1924 dates from Wikipedia to Wikidata; let the editors capable of doing this right self-identify and do it on their own initiative. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:57, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
The "practical guide" (see first step of RfC above) could (and I think: should best) contain a step-by-step portion on how to check correctness of dates (1. whether persondata date matches article & refs; 2. whether it has been transferred correctly to wikidata, and if not, or not transferred at all, how to update wikidata so that the date is correct & unambiguous). Maybe that's a good idea as a starting point to get the guide written. If I knew how it works I'd already started writing the guide but thus far I was still unsuccessful in adding "novelist" ([4]) as an occupation to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1620233 I tried a lot of things but I still have no clue how to update the wikidata record on this person (the only thing wikidata seems to allow me is to edit the Dutch-language short description and aliases which I'm not interested in). --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:46, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
I have added novelist to Erwin Mortier (Q1620233)'s occupation. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
@MSGJ: Tx, but that's not even close to what I meant: how about explaining how to do that to someone like me? --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:18, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
At the bottom of the "occupation" statement, press "Add" then type "novelist" and press "Save". — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
→ There is no such "Add" link when I go to that page, see what I wrote above. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:25, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
It sounds like you might be blocking JavaScript. Alakzi (talk) 13:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Can't find it – JavaScript seems to be working fine. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Try clicking on your Wikidata preferences page and see if you are an autoconfirmed user. That page might not allow edits by users who are not autoconfirmed (but I don't know how to inspect the page to see if that is the case). Jc3s5h (talk) 14:35, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Says "Member of groups: Autoconfirmed users, Users" – tx for the help anyway. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:46, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
Have you tried reading through d:Help:Statements and specifically d:Help:Statements#Adding statements? --Izno (talk) 15:37, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
That help page assumes [Add] links show up on the page, they don't on my screen (the page doesn't explain what to do if they don't). So I sorta gave up on trying to figure this out. I suppose I think my time is better spent elsewhere than trying to figure out a system that doesn't seem to work. Thanks again for the suggestions, but I fail to see a solution. I'd rather update persondata than lose any more time on this. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:24, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
You could try the usual troubleshooting steps, like checking if it works in another browser. Alakzi (talk) 20:43, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Redux

The above discussions have gone off at various tangents. The original RfC remains valid, and should be implemented, now. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:13, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

  • No, not "now", and not "by bot". Neither of these conditions resulted from the previous RfC, neither of them passed the current. Even if a more acceptable solution isn't yet put on track, that doesn't invalidate the objections to the original bot request. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:23, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
    • @Francis Schonken and RexxS: At this point, Andy is the only editor still in support of an immediate deletion of all persondata by bot action; bless his heart, he is nothing if not consistent. What we need is a plan per Francis' comments and a deadline per RexxS's comments above. Personally, I have now manually completed the transfer of persondata to Wikidata for over 500 articles in the past month, and I can say the following with some certainty:
1. there is a great deal of perfectly accurate and usable persondata that has not been transferred to Wikidata by previous bot actions, including, but not limited to (a) common name variations of bio subjects, (b) most persondata datapoints entered since November 2014, and (c) to a lesser extent, places of birth and death;
2. most of the persondata requires a manual review and comparison of the persondata and Wikidata for a given article to (a) confirm the validity and usefulness of datapoints, (b) ensure that duplicate information is not being entered into Wikidata, and (c) properly enter it into Wikidata;
3. based on my interactions with other editors, most editors don't understand and don't care, and many that actively participated in the persondata program are resentful/cynical that their persondata efforts are being chucked without a more serious effort to incorporate existing persondata into the Wikidata article profiles -- we're going to have a harder time getting folks to buy into Wikidata as a result.
My conclusions: in the absence of a more sophisticated bot action to transfer name variants, etc., most of the remaining usable persondata is not going to be transferred unless it's manually transferred by concerned editors. I suggest we set a reasonable deadline of 90 to 180 days, create a set of persondata-to-Wikidata manual transfer instructions, then provide bot notices to every active editor and WikiProject which include and/or link to the instructions, and let the chips fall where they may. Andy is right about several things: Wikidata is a better system for embedding metadata, and persondata has been deprecated in recognition of that. It makes no sense whatsoever to drag this out. Let's settle on a plan and a deadline and get on with it. Reactions, comments, suggestions? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:07, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
  1. What were your experiences with pre-1924 dates?
  2. I still can't edit wikidata from my machine, it sort of incapacitates me to see how it practically works (and from putting together a manual). And makes me wonder whether I'm the only one with this problem?
  3. When there's little animo to go ahead with this (as you describe), I suppose to impose a deadline before some more experience with how editors are likely to cooperate with these tasks is not really feasible. Try to get it running, check conversion rates, and only then decide on a deadline.
  4. what was your point 2.c, seems to have fallen of the cart? --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:34, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
@Francis Schonken: In answer to your questions: (1) I have experienced no problems with pre-1924 dates because fewer than 10% of the articles whose persondata I have transferred have such dates, and all of them were for Americans, Brits or other English-speaking nationalities for whom such dates are not a problem from 1733 to the present. (2) Can you not access Wikidata by clicking on the "Wikidata item" link on the lefthand tools menu for articles? If not, you need to get help at VP or elsewhere. (3) I suggest we prepare instructions and create a talk subpage for questions, etc., at Template talk:Persondata, and get a bot operator on board to provide notices to explain and attract more worker bees. A deadline, however, should be tied to the date of the bot notices. If it doesn't get done in six months, it's never going to get done. (4) I have finished my thought re 2(c) -- pesky client calls interrupted my thought. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:34, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Re. 2: as it happens I tried and clicked a lot of things (see also the advice I got from others in the previous section), but lost interest (the one persondata datapoint I remember entering, is now safely stored in Wikidata by someone else). My only point is: if I'm not the only one experiencing this we'd need to be prepared to answer such questions when we invite people to help out, it's not as if technical impediments are going to be helpful when cooperation interest is low...
Re. 3: then I'd propose a test run with one or two wikiprojects. I'd be happy with Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music, one I'm familiar with.
Re. 2 (continued): compare this, an invitation we got on that project: I clicked a bit around on that proposal to help out, as it wasn't very clear what one exactly was supposed to do to be of any help, I clicked away from it again very soon. In order to get maximum response the threshold for understanding what to do and how it works (including overcoming possible technical impediments) needs to be very low. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:50, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

No, I am not "the only editor still in support of an immediate deletion of all persondata by bot"; we had an RfC which agreed - with no caveats - that persondata should be removed. However, there are only a couple of editors who are trying to wikilawyer around that consensus. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:38, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Bot owner decision

This discussion has gone off many tangents here. It's clear that this is still a controversial decision and as a bot op, I have to consider that the potential for damage is high when operating bots. My final conclusion is that this Needs wider discussion. and a decisive close. I'm not getting any decisive decisions here.—cyberpowerChat:Limited Access 03:12, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Pursuant to the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Can we get a bot to check the Internet Archive for dead link solutions?, we need a bot that will address dead links on Wikipedia by checking to see whether the URL has been archived at the Internet Archive, ideally finding whatever archiving is the closest in time to the addition of the link to the Wikipedia page. The bot would then replace the dead link with the Internet Archive link, with a note indicating that the content still needs to be confirmed by a human editor. Given the proliferation of dead links on Wikipedia, such a bot can massively improve the sourcing of articles. This bot program, once created, will be as important to the quality of Wikipedia as Cluebot is now. bd2412 T 23:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Definitely. I haven't taken up a bot project in a while. I'll attempt this one. Officially, Doing...—cyberpowerChat:Online 15:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Great to see this happening. User:Ladsgroup was also thinking of working on this as we were discussing it. User:Ocaasi is also meeting with Internet Archives regarding API access.
A next step would be to have the bot trigger archiving of urls by Internet Archives which will require a collaboration with Internet Archives. This would be a further improvement as we would then have the correct version and it would occur before the url goes dead. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:09, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
I sincerely hope that I'm the only one working on this. I've spent a considerable amount of time and effort carefully coding up this bot, to let it go to waste. As for archiving URLs that have no archive, I'm way ahead of you on that one, and it's already implemented.—cyberpowerChat:Offline 04:26, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Alternatively (unless it's already done) one could think of creating a bot to archive/link stuff to WebCite; having more than one archive (as a backup and for links for which Wayback doesn't have a valid page) might be good. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 05:45, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
The person who runs WebCite cannot afford to have tons of links added. It is currently hosted by amazon and he is paying for it personally. He was interested in us taking it over but I think their are concerns with us hosting content that is none free. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:37, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Again, to reiterate, the bot is able to instantaneously archive active sites into the WayBack machine. The bot will essentially make sure that there will be an archived copy available before the link ever goes dead.—cyberpowerChat:Online 11:59, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Wonderful :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:22, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
Brilliant. Please. If it also does past links, it could just pick the last archive copy before the edit linking to the page was made (often the later archived versions are 404 redirects or their like; it might also be useful to look for dramatic changes between archived versions). But these are added decorations. HLHJ (talk) 12:12, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm working in the UK Government Web Archive. We have a far smaller set of archived sites than archive.org, but what we do have should be exhaustive - very few missing pages. That means that even if the same page is on archive.org, links from that page to nearby ones are much less likely to be broken. Is there any help I could give to use the bot with our archives too? (I imagine the same will go for various national web archives -eg the Australian Government archive, or the Portuguese one - all likely to have deeper coverage of our specialised areas than archive.org, especially for recent material).New marinheiro (talk) 12:52, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Eleutherodactylus articles family errors

Many of the 276 species articles of genus Eleutherodactylus and linked from that article display the family as Leptodactylidae in the taxobox and the body of the article. But Eleutherodactylus is now considered to be in the Eleutherodactylidae family. Some articles that need this fix are Eleutherodactylus amplinympha, South Island telegraph frog (redirected from Eleutherodactylus audanti), Eleutherodactylus auriculatoides.

This task would take a long time to do by hand. Could a bot be generated to edit each of the Eleutherodactylus species articles and set the family to Eleutherodactylidae if it is not already?

I imagine the bot might operate something like this pseudocode: 

edit article
   within {{Taxobox}} template
      if familia parameter != "Eleutherodactylidae" 
         then replace familia parameter with "Eleutherodactylidae"
   after {{Taxobox}} template until first period character
      find the first use of character string "[[...]] family"
          where ... is any string of alphabetic characters.
      replace [[...]] with [[Eleutherodactylidae]]

This would work for at least the three articles listed here. I haven't verified it would work for all affected articles. It would mess up if the family were mentioned after the first sentence, or if the taxobox-style display were generated by a different template such as speciesbox. —Anomalocaris (talk) 04:17, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Add templates using Wikidata to category

There is Category:Templates using data from Wikidata, for templates using wikidata, which currently contains 29 pages... but searching in template namespace for insource:/\#property/ matches 88 pages. Adding missing templates to the category (or at least generating a worklist), and listing potentially miscategorised templates for human checking, seems like a useful task for a bot to run every so often, so that we have a more accurate idea of how many templates are actually using Wikidata. - Evad37 [talk] 06:44, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually, this isn't so simple – some templates are just checking wikidata to add tracking categories, and not actually using data directly - Evad37 [talk] 07:04, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
I suspect there are a number of templates not using the #property but instead using Lua via module-space to get the data. --Izno (talk) 15:22, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Declined Not a good task for a bot. I don't know if a bot can go around and tell if it is retrieving information from Wikidata. Also given the low count, I think it would simply be better to do it by hand.—cyberpowerChat:Offline 04:17, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Help with Category:Historic England citations needing attention

Would it be possible to have a bot help out clearing the above category? I've been doing this with AWB but it's now becoming too big of a job.

What I need is the following changes to transclusions of {{National Heritage List for England entry}}, including redirects {{English Heritage List entry}}, {{NHLE}} and {{National Heritage List for England}}:

  • |separator=, AND |ps= replaced with |mode=cs2

Also the following non-essential changes to be made at the same time:

  • |accessdate= to |access-date=
  • |fewer-links=x to |fewer-links=yes

Probably best to do this in main space only and leave the handfull of non-main space uses for manual review.

Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Listed_buildings_in_Bromborough&type=revision&diff=665627653&oldid=654216431

Reason: This template defaults to Citation Style 1; previously it used the |separator= and |ps= parameters in tandem to switch to Citation Style 2, however |separator= is now deprecated and no longer works.

I'll keep going with AWB in the meantime, but would be grateful for any help. PC78 (talk) 15:28, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I have modified an AutoEd script to clean these and can work on some of them today. Meanwhile, carry on with AWB. It's only a few hundred articles.
Anyone who wants a regex for these changes can look at User:Jonesey95/AutoEd/coauthors.js – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:17, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the help! As far as I can tell the category is still filling up and there are about 5000 transclusions in total. PC78 (talk) 17:24, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
I fixed somewhere over 300. There are currently 200 exactly. You are correct that the category is still being populated by the job queue. Category population based on template changes can take one to three months. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:52, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 Done. This category is empty for now. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:22, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Cheers, I cleared most of the others earlier today. I'll keep an eye on the category, make sure that it doesn't get out of hand again. PC78 (talk) 14:26, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Repair or replace Wikipedia:Changing username/Simple clerkbot

The CHU/S clerkbot has stopped marking completed requests as done, and its operator has signalled that they are unable to create a patch at this time, but would be fine with someone else updating the code or taking over the task.

The source code is here: https://github.com/legoktm/harej-bots/blob/master/chu.php

I believe the relevant code begins around line 276. Please let me know if you require any further information. –xenotalk 12:41, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Xeno has asked me to take a look. It shouldn't be too difficult to take over, but I'd like to first get Cyberbot II moving which should be happening really soon.—cyberpowerChat:Online 20:16, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 Doing...—cyberpowerChat:Online 01:09, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 Question: Can you please give me a description of the bug? It would make it a lot easier to find if I knew what to look for.
BRFA filed with fixed bugs.—cyberpowerChat:Online 23:15, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Y Done—cyberpowerChat:Limited Access 03:02, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

AFC submission cleanup bot

There should be a bot that adds {{subst:AFC submission/draftnew}} on pages on the draftspace when there is no AFC tag on the draft and that removes duplicate AFC tags. --TL22 (talk) 18:32, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Declined Not a good task for a bot. There are two types of pages that live in the Draft namespace, those that are enrolled in AFC and those that are not. It has been expressed several times that anybody can create a page in the namespace and they are not required to be enrolled in AfC. Secure a consensus at the Draft namespace talk page (and with the AFC wikiproject) before making this proposal. Hasteur (talk)
@Hasteur: But can the "remove duplicate tags" task at least be done? --TL22 (talk) 18:48, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
@ToonLucas22: Needs more definiton as to what you mean by duplicate AFC tags, Also you need to secure a consensus from the AFC wikiproject) to make this kind of change as I know that the potential duplicate AFC tags may be useful (i.e. previous AFC declines). Hasteur (talk) 18:51, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
@Hasteur: what I mean with duplicate AfC tags is the markup {{AFC submission/pending}}, {{AFC submission/reviewing}}, {{AFC submission/draft}} or {{AFC submission/draftnew}} written twice. --TL22 (talk) 21:02, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
@ToonLucas22: which tag would then stay? E. Lee (talk) 13:46, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

BOT FOR CLASH OF CLANS

I want a simple UI bot that runs on desktop or pc for the clash of clans game that is played in android and IOS device. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.92.206.138 (talk) 06:11, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, this page is only for requests that improve the Wikipedia encyclopedia or its sister projects. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:21, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Denied.--88.104.134.194 (talk) 07:47, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

The computing reference desk would give you pointers. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC).
Resolved

Please read Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Can_we_add_WikiProject_Poland_template_to_all_articles_that_are_missing_it_but_have_the_milhist-Poland_taskforce_template.3F. Piotrus requested that Yobot adds banners of WikiProject Poland to pages that already have the milhist-Poland taskforce template. Any comments are welcome. IF there are no disagreements the bot will start the task in the next few days.

Just for your information: Piotrus is a member of WikiProject Poland and both WikiProject Poland and WikiProject Military history were notified. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:16, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

 Done -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:04, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Academic journals may lack WPJournals template in their talk pages

Articles in Category:Academic journals may lack Template:WikiProject Academic Journals in their talk pages; could a bot check and list those, please? I guess asking a bot to fix automatically might be risky. Thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 04:16, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

@Fgnievinski:  Done - see User:Fgnievinski/Academic journals. The category tree looks good for requesting the template be added. Note that some of the articles do not have talk pages. GoingBatty (talk) 14:00, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
Click on "►" below to display subcategories:
Academic journals
@GoingBatty: Many thanks! We're discussing a few special cases at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Academic_Journals#1500_untagged_academic-journal_articles and will be back with a decision later. Fgnievinski (talk) 20:52, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Scan colors used by Infobox television season

Resolved

Can someone have a bot scan all the (approx 3650) transclusions of Template:infobox television season and provide a list of the values used with |bgcolour= or |bgcolor= or |headercolour= or |headercolor=? you can put the result in a subpage of my userspace, and I will process it to compute colour contrast ratios. thank you. Frietjes (talk) 14:10, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The following redirects exist:
  1. {{Infobox Smallville season}}
  2. {{Infobox television Project Runway}}
  3. {{Infobox reality dance competition}}
  4. {{Infobox Strictly Come Dancing Series}}
  5. {{Infobox Dancing with the Stars season}}
  6. {{Infobox Dancing on Ice series}}
  7. {{Infobox Television season}}
  8. {{Infobox tvseason}}
  9. {{Infobox Television Season}}
  10. {{Infobox dancingwiththestarsseason}}
  11. {{Infobox dancing with the stars}}
  12. {{Infobox television series}}
  13. {{Infobox Television Top Chef}}
  14. {{Infobox Television Project Runway}}
  15. {{Infobox TV series}}
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:18, 27 July 2015 (UTC).
I'm curious as to the point of this, when we already have a tracking category for the ~1,000 instances with inaccessible colour combinations. Several threads on Template_talk:Infobox television season refer. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:26, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Andy: Frietjes wants the actual values, not only that the values are not compliant. To that end, that means that we actually only need to scan the uses of infobox TV season and its redirects which are also in the category that you provided. --Izno (talk) 21:30, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
What are we going to use the values for? Alakzi (talk) 21:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Besides the stated "compute a contrast ratio"? --Izno (talk) 21:36, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
I mean, to what end? It looks like this was requested by Dirtlawyer1, but the purpose is unclear to me. Alakzi (talk) 21:45, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Thank you. My question was about the point of the request, not its content, which is clearly stated. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:47, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Not being able to read either's mind, I would hazard a guess that the purpose is (one of the two):
  • to get a list so that there's an understanding of the offending color combinations
  • to modify each value in the list so that a bot can update the entire set of offending values at the same time to satisfy the consensus.
Supposition only, of course. --Izno (talk) 13:09, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
The "offending color combinations" are in the tracking category I mentioned above, so if, as you speculate, that is its purpose, this request is unnecessary. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:28, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Let me rephrase bullet one, because bullet two should be obvious and is alone enough to sustain this request (which, by the way, your opinion on whether the request is necessary is irrelevant given that consensus is not needed simply for a request for information): to get a list of the offending color combinations so that there's an understanding of the offending color combinations. That this was the intent of bullet one should have been obvious, but since it apparently was not, I hope this second go at it is. --Izno (talk) 23:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
The list of "the offending color combinations" could be gotten from the subset of articles in the tracking category, rather than from the full set of articles using the template, since those outside that subset are by definintion not "offending". I contend that determining the most efficient way to fulfil the aims of a request posted here is very much relevant on this page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:04, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Which I acknowledged at 21:30, 27 July 2015 with "which are also in the category that you provided." --Izno (talk) 03:03, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

why is a request for information controversial? this is seriously a sad day for Wikipedia. Frietjes (talk) 15:14, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

I've no issue with it, personally; I was just curious. Alakzi (talk) 16:06, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
This should be all of them. Feel free to move the page to your userspace. Alakzi (talk) 17:07, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Alakzi, could you pair these with the transcluding article? Frietjes (talk) 17:21, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
@Frietjes: Done. Alakzi (talk) 17:35, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Alakzi, thank you, now transformed to User:Frietjes/contrast. looks like there are a bunch which are causing the contrast ratio calculator to barf. will work on fixing the module to parse hsl and some more named colours, but others will need fixes in the articles themselves. Frietjes (talk) 17:45, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
okay, all the ones with input errors should be now fixed. Frietjes (talk) 18:58, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Great, thanks for your work. Alakzi (talk) 19:13, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Same here, hence I opened my OP with the words "I'm curious...". It seems we shall never know. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:59, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Template categorization maintenance

As per WP:CAT#T, seeking a bot to:

  • Check Template namespace
  • If a template is categorized in a category which transcludes {{template category}}, check other categories where it is categorized and remove the other categorizations, quoting WP:CAT#T.
  • Not all template categories necessarily transclude {{template category}}, but should and is arguably a solution for false positives.
  • If at least one category is assigned to the template, but no category is found that transcludes {{template category}}, possibly update a list of templates which need to be looked at as breaking WP:CAT#T, as opposed to taking an action that would leave them uncategorized. Slivicon (talk) 14:57, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Needs wider discussion. You should probably seek consensus elsewhere that a bot should go around messing with template categorization, as opposed to leaving it for human judgment to fix. I could easily see a case made that templates may be categorized in other Wikipedia administration categories, for example. Anomie⚔ 19:54, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
@Anomie: Thanks for your time. My impression so far on this topic is that consensus for this topic is likely impossible, as it seems to be woven into a lot of varied opinion and interpretation. I'm learning that various guidelines are more like suggestions for those who care to follow them. While I guess that allows a lot of flexibility, it makes it difficult to find wikignoming niches for people like me to latch on to in the hope that they're actually helping the community rather than just wasting theirs and other's time. Anyway, on an aside, I'm also curious where the 'elsewhere' might be you referred to, as I have no clue where one would hope to achieve consensus in a discussion about such a topic. Slivicon (talk) 01:28, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
WP:Village pump (proposals) is generally a good place, along with posting a notice of the discussion to the talk pages of relevant WikiProjects, policies, and guidelines. Anomie⚔ 02:04, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
N Not done No further discussion took place.—cyberpowerChat:Online 12:36, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
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